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Today, my group heard African music coming from the old city. We were in Annecy, France and the old city is medieval. Annecy is also called Little Venice because of the canals. We turned our heads to see strange heads bobbing down the old stone street. Strange limbed ten foot tall Africans with the gold necklaces that extend necks were dancing down the streets. We could see immediately they were puppets. Looking closer, we could see how they were constructed. Human beings on stilts wore masks and powered the limbs of the dancing figures with sticks.

We were compelled to follow. But, after a few minutes of watching, as we drifted off to the side to get around the crowd, we noticed we were at a glassblowing shop.

The glassblower told me not to take any more pictures, it was forbidden. I apologized and we started talking. He noticed we were interested, began to speak a bit about his craft. There are five at his level in the world, he said.

He certainly looked like a captain, if not of a boat, then of his craft. Or perhaps the most interesting man in the world, in the XX ads. He was dressed in a white suit, with a white beard and a discerning face. Yet, also at times a kind expression seemed to arise naturally from the roundness of his nose and face and hospitality at inviting us into his shop, in our shorts and with our backpacks. Not once did he warn us verbally to watch ourselves.

He pulled down from the shelf a piece of glass that was improbable. It contained a painting made of glass.

How on earth had they managed to get so many tones though, so seamlessly integrated?

The secret was layers. The glass had been made like so many layers of candy coating. Then, afterwards, the glass was polished through to the proper depth to achieve the proper color.

Before we left, and as I was relaying what he had told me to the students, he came outside to speak with us again. I mentioned a bauble of glass I’d seen with mossy worlds inside. At this he motioned me back in the shop and shared an amazing work: a glass reptile englobed in glass. Out of respect for his trade (glassblowers carry secrets), I will not divulge more, except to say that it was amazing.

Now of course, in writing we use layers all the time. Having all the necessary layers present, and digging to the right layer in the right place and time in the story is what makes writing art.

Photograph of a photograph of Thomas Hart Benton by Alfred Eisenstaedt.

There is a place in St. Louis, Missouri called the City Museum. It is an awesome and magical place, an embodied love song continuously created out of the work of what must be hundreds of creative minds and hands.

The “museum” truly has a life of its own. It has a circulatory system composed of wood and metal tubes with intent, marveling, or laughing visitors who move through them. It has a reproductive system as well, sending forth the people who are inspired by it like so many seeds.

If you are able to make the pilgrimage here from anywhere in the world, do it.

Infinity flies

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When Rakotomalala read the text I paired with his photograph, this was his response:

On a toujours besoin de toutes choses même les plus petites. Et vive les petits mondes car ils sont l’espoir de ceux qui pensent être grands. La biodiversité est une grande richesse et notre devoir est de la proteger au maximum. I LOVE NATURE. Thanks.

We need all things, even the littlest. Long live the little worlds because they are the hope of those who think/aspire to be big. Biodiversity is a grand richness and our duty is to protect it to the maximum.

I paired this picture with this text for a number of reasons. One being that the chameleon reminded me of Pinocchio. But really, it is not the chameleon speaking angrily with the voice of Pinocchio here, it’s us.

It’s those of us who throw the apple core in the trash when we could plant it, compost it, or toss it in the backyard for a squirrel to eat. It’s those of us who drive cars for less than noble reasons, leave our personal computers running at night, eat meat every single day, and feel perfectly justified in doing so:

I need to for my job. I work hard, I deserve to be a little wasteful.

Yet Americans are not just a little wasteful. We are extraordinarily wasteful compared to the way we lived even two hundred years ago. If we say we’re not, our noses are growing longer.

Pinocchio is hungry later and there is nothing else to eat. So he ends up eating the apple core and is satisfied.

There have been some improvements in the last few years. We don’t need nearly as much paper now, if we plan right, because we can read papers and maps on mobile screens that require minimal electricity. We are gradually moving to wind and solar — just not fast enough yet.

It’s not always bad to throw things away. It’s just that there’s almost always someone who can use it, and it’s sloppy to throw something away that someone else can use. That’s why we have Y Buys, Goodwill, and the Salvation Army store.

Then there are those things we should have never bought in the first place. I can’t stand looking at a cheap plastic chair breaking down in the sun, plastic dandruff dusting the ground where one day our children might need to plant a garden or an apple tree.

How far will we go before there is nothing else to eat? What will it take to satisfy us? Will we one day eat the core of our own Earth? Will we tap out everything we can?

There is intrinsic value in other creatures, not just in how they can serve us. Even seen in that human-centric light, we can learn from watching them move, from watching the way they live. This chameleon provides a window into another way of being. And even though its grasping hands are used in very different ways than our own most days, we do have a common ancestor. Learning from the little things teaches us about ourselves: our genes, our maladies, our cures, our humanity, our potential.