Wrap Arounds

I. Wrap Around Eyes

I could've used double the 125 God's eyes, but by spacing them out, we did wrap a line of them all the way around the fence yesterday morning. 
They glowed in the sun, and caught the breeze.

The monarch mural ^ had gone up in happier days, before George Floyd's murder, when the park was open to the public.
photo ^ by bink

BELOW: KG photographing God's eyes she helped hang

BELOW: Photographed from the alley that borders the thrift store. A glimpse of L & M hanging eyes.

So, that's done. 
Not sure if I'll keep making eyes to add (or to hang on utility poles around the neighborhood).
Maybe...
Especially since I've started to listen to audio books, free from the library on the Libby app.

Do you use Libby? 
You just sign in with your local library card!
libbyapp.com/interview/welcome#doYouHaveACard

II. Secret Agents 

I've always preferred to read than to listen, but as I've wrapped the sticks, I've loved listening to Smoke and Ashes: Opium's Hidden Histories  (2023) by Amitav Ghosh.

So interesting, history connecting our opium troubles today--which damages the neighborhood where I work--and is why I hung the God's eyes. 
It's all connected.

It's largely about the history of the West (starting with the British--an "imperial narco-state" Ghosh says) smuggling opium into China.
(What I previously knew about the Opium Wars was that they happened.) 

But more--it's about the role of non-human agents---plants!--in driving human history. Not just opium, also tea--and flowers.

I've just started reading Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1985) by Sidney W. Mintz (on paper, not available on Libby). 

Sugar and opium and tea are easy to see, still very much in our lives--
but nutmeg was a huge deal in global trade too, leading in the 1600s to Spice Wars between Anglo-Dutch colonial powers over control of Indonesian spice trade. 
I had no idea!

And get this:
The Dutch traded New York City for nutmeg:

"In 1667, the Treaty of Breda was signed, bringing an end to the Second Anglo-Dutch War. The treaty is perhaps most famous for one of its territorial exchanges: 
the Dutch agreed to cede control of New Amsterdam (which the British promptly renamed New York) in exchange for the tiny island of Run, one of the [Indonesian] Banda Islands and a key source of nutmeg."
--Eats History

III.  SWIRLS of History

So many things we haven't seen, refuse to or cannot see...

My coworker Teeter photographed the top of my head after my super-short haircut yesterday (free in the thrift store parking lot), to show me my cowlicks.
And when I got home, I took a photo of the front, where a badger stripe of dark hair is now clear (badgers are inverse white and black):

Weirdly...
1. In my entire life, I don't think I've ever seen the crown of my head like this;

and, 
2. Last week, I'd gone to see  Yi Yi (2000, dir. Edward Yang, Taiwan--this is the 25th anniversary re-release of the film--on Criterion), 
and in it an 8-year-old boy, Yang-Yang, photographs the back of people's heads to show them a part of themselves they cannot see.

Which is what stories can do, right? 
This was one of those immersive movies that leave you feeling when you exit the theater that you are playing in a movie of your own life. 
(What are the ingredients of making that happen?)

Not at all like Yi Yi, but also related to MY HAIR:
 Seven Samurai (1954, dir. Akira Kurosawa, Japan), which I saw on the big screen a couple weeks ago.  (It is my favorite movie, every time I see it.)

The lead samurai (Kambei Shimada, actor Takashi Shimura)* gets his head shaved so he can imitate a monk in order to save a little boy.

It's a big deal for a samurai, to lose his top knot, but he does it calmly. Because he's like that. 
I'd like to be more like that too. (Maybe in another lifetime. But in this one, maybe the haircut will help. 😆)

 As the bandits start to attack the village, he says:

I should print this out and plaster it everywhere, or get a tattoo or something.
___________________

After all, WHO KNOWS where history is going.

On a day when many bad things were happening (could be any day), Marz, who is studying international relations and diplomacy this semester, called me all happy about a Syrian president speaking at the United Nations for the first time in six decades. 

More drugs, and not nutmeg...
NPR article:

"President Ahmad Al-Sharaa said that the new authorities in Syria have destroyed the drugs business that Assad used to fund his government.... 

"Assad's fall revealed industrial-scale manufacturing facilities of the amphetamine-like stimulant Captagon, also known as fenethylline, which experts say fed a $10 billion annual global trade in the highly addictive drug."

If sanctions are lifted, perhaps Syria could get their economy together...

Who knows.
But good things are possible.

_______________________

* It's not necessary to rank them, but here are all seven samurai described (spoilers):
https://collider.com/seven-samurai-characters-ranked/