Click HERE to listen. My first memory of Minérvó Léovēs is a fragment; but, it stands in singular clarity as some strange beast balanced on the razor-edge cusp of image and scent. The date is unclear, but there was a sense of monsoon torpor in the air: the promise of rain and of mud (and later, nectar-dripping blossoms gone ripe with the ecstasy of fruit-flies.) I can clearly recall meeting Minérvó at the Library. I remember our quiet talk and his quiet wonder. He was a foreigner at the time, and so there was wonder in our land, or at least the exotic promise of the Yabori tribes at home in the secrecy of rainforest shadows. We talked. He asked questions. I gave answers. Until a single inquiry broke the rhythm of anything I might say. Is there a gallery nearby? he’d asked, and I knew the point of his question. He was interested in one of the Yabori mysteries: a woven, billowing sheet of sun-stained canvas suspended between two poles. A gallery. They are the profoundest of Yabori mysteries. We took to the streets after that, and to horseback. West. It might have been easier to take the journey to Santa Corscoro, but we went the opposite way. Into the shadows of shaggy cacti and trees with leaves as large as pillowcases. I knew of a gallery, suspended in the sun-dapple of deep forest, and I took Minérvó there. I do not remember the journey or the words I’m sure we didn’t say. But I remember his first sight of the Yabori. He’d never seen them before, and in the dapple of shadow and sunlight playing over the gentle billow of wind-touched canvas, they approached. Three of them. They were young men: older than Minérvó and myself, but by little more than a summer or two. They came quietly, as always, a secretive note whispered in the near-silence of their footsteps. Like all Yabori, they wore skin in the colors of walnuts and caramel. Black hair crowned their heads. Like all Yabori, they spoke silently to one another. And like all Yabori, they came so that they may see us seeing. I told Minérvó what the Yabori expected, and he laughed at the idea of those cat-quiet people watching us see. We stood in silence after that, watching the billow of canvas and shadow and sunlight until at last, stories came to us. We saw what the stories showed us, and the Yabori saw us seeing. They watched our sight as we watched our imaginings painted in shadow, wind, and in sunlight. I cannot say what Minérvó saw, but for myself, I remember fragments… …a stranger walking through some street in my city …sunset before a storm over Valentin Bay …trees at night, blurred through the window of a carriage I don’t visit the canvas walls anymore. I live far from the city of my birth, and thus, far from the Yabori. Minérvó has remained back there: content, I assume, with what life has given him. But, restless as I am, the North has called to me, and so I have forsaken the forests beyond my city, and the floating galleries woven by Yabori so that we may look at them, and so that they may see us seeing. * HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARK (anahata.c) This is what happens when I listen to Peter Gabriel and fiddle with photography before posting an image with text. OK, Jorge Luis Borghes popped in too, it seems…and well…there you have it. I have no idea who the Yabori are, but I kinda like ‘em…and so why not introduce them on the birthday of a friend? As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and again: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MARK!