Oct. 20 | The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen

A Claterynge of Choughes; A Sprinkling of Cloves; A Small Boy's Treasure Troves

Snow leopard taste: seeds of small wild Cannabis
At home: cardamom and cloves

With thanks to "10 Most Bada** Comic Book Heroines"
by Mike Madrid in HuffPost Books

Snow leopard sight: a great copper-colored grasshopper gleaming like amber in the sun
At home: the red, yellow, green of an historic home; foggy mornings; perfectly round red holly berries, jagged green leaves, white flowers
Snow leopard sound: scrabble across loose rocks; Aum...Ma-ni...Pay-may...Hung!; prayer flag's tatter; steady thump of faithful stave upon the mountainside; the dry scratch and whisper of sere leaves; the exalted dog, crazed by the pale tents in the moonlight, barks unceasingly from midnight until dawn without the smallest loss of tone or volume
At home: rasp; sweets; Neil Gaiman reads his story The Ocean at the End of the Lane:

"I was sad not to have won thousands of pounds (I already knew what I would buy with it. I would buy a place to go to be alone, like a Batcave, with a hidden entrance.)"

Snow leopard smell: turnip gardens, manure dust, pine smoke, soot
At home: cloves
Snow leopard touch: spring in leg and lung; firm footholds
At home: roots, bulbs, earth, planting
Snow leopard word of the day: Masta-ancient mountain god
Snow leopard quote of the day: All the peaks are covered with snow—why is this one bare?

"Confronted by the uncouth specter of old age, disease, and death, we are thrown back on the present, on this moment, here, right now, for that is all there is. And surely this is the paradise of children, that they are at rest in the present, like frogs or rabbits."

"What mask will cover my child's face on All Hallow's Eve, as he celebrates the festival of fire and death?"

Snow leopard notable: "to clutch" in Egyptian, "to clutch the mountain" in Assyrian, euphemisms that mean "to die"
Snow leopard extra: the snow-extinction and renewal; transience and eternity; a wildwood of children's tales
At home:

“We say a congregacyon of people, a hoost of men, a felyshyppynge of jomen, and a bevy of ladyes; we must speak of a herde of dere, swannys, cranys, or wrenys, a sege of herons or bytourys, a muster of pecockes, a watche of Byghtyngales, a filyghte of doves, a claterynge of choughes, a pryde of lyons, a slewthe of beeres, a gagle of geys, a skulke of foxes, a sculle of frerys; a pontificatye of prestys, and a superfluyte of nonnes.’”—Dame Juliana Berners, Booke of St. Albans (1486)

Snow leopard gratitude: free of vertigo; broken in boots
At home: a peaceful day and night in; the flower pot on the porch

Panthera progress: finding patterns

What is this? Blogging The Snow Leopard project.

Comments

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