Posted by Dave Bonta on September 13, 2008 (last modified at 7:53 pm, 9/13/08)

Anthropological Notebook
The choreography of light and color — its evanescence — remains an elusive quality to capture in words. Knowing the Batek words helps to some extent, to understand how they order their time and what they associate with different parts of the day. But they too see and appreciate and find ineffable the possibilities of poetry in their world.
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  • "On the whole I concentrated on things and people that I found charming and splendid; my notes are also full of poems and observations on trees and plants, birds and insects."
    — Sei Shonagon, 994 A.D.

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