Written: 2008-08-29 11:10:21
Firefly… I love the word and I have no idea why but it has been on my mind all morning so I decided to write down what caused me to go back to my childhood. Firefly somehow reminds me of the time I spent in France. As a child I would spend a month in France each summer, twelve years in a row. After those twelve years when I was old enough to travel on my own I would still go there each year but I would often stay with friends in Paris. I love France and I still have a soft spot for Paris which I hope to visit again in the near future!
I would stay at the same place each year: a large house owned by a rich baroness and maintained by a Dutch person, about 60km south from Paris in a tiny rural village. The baroness lived in a castle a bit further away from the house surrounded by a dense forest. We weren’t allowed to go there but I remember we would sneak through the hole in the fence next to the house and walk all the way up to the castle to peek through the windows to see the large rooms and beautiful Baroque furniture, ornaments and sculptures.
I remember that back then the baroness was negotiating about selling part of her land: the Disney people had offered her money to build EuroDisney there but in the end she refused. I’m glad she did, it would’ve been such a waste of beautiful nature… We would’ve breakfast and dinner outside in the garden at an eight metre long table made out of trestles covered with planks. I always checked underneath for spiders before pulling up the chair, there would be millions of them hiding there in the morning when the grass was still wet with dew.
Since I was the one with the best results in French at school I had to do the talking with the French people all the time and it was my task to go to the boulangerie each morning to buy fresh baked bread, a nice pain de campagne or baguette. Crispy bread with a thin layer of salted butter [margarine is a total no-go to me!] still has an affect on me. Another thing that still has an affect on me is the French UHT milk: nothing will change the disgusting flavour of UHT milk when you’re used to drinking the pasteurized version… *yuk!*
Often in the evening I would wait till it was dark enough to go for a walk through the fields to look for fireflies. Fields with grass growing so high it would tickle your armpits. I could spend hour after hour, looking for the tiny greenish lights hiding in the high grass. I was and still am intrigued by them, wondering how it is possible that they have a light like that [of course I know now *hehe*]. Most of the ones I would find would still be in the larval phase. At times I would collect them in a jar and bring them back to show to my parents.
Fireflies have something wonderfully mysterious and magical about them, like tiny guides in the dark, showing you the way home. It’s been ages since I saw one, perhaps it’s time to start looking again…
[Scotland, Aug. 2001] I so want to see the dancing fireflies in Kampung Kuantan Malaysia
In East Asia, the ancient Chinese sometimes captured fireflies in transparent or semi-transparent containers and used them as (short-term) lanterns.
In Philippine folklore, a tree surrounded by fireflies is believed to be haunted by a tikbalang, the local term for a mischievous satyr.
In Japan, Hotaru have been a metaphor for passionate love in poetry since Man’you-shu (the 8th century anthology). Their eerie lights are also thought to be the altered form of the souls of soldiers who have died in war.
The Nimitas is the name given to the fireflies in the Dominican Republic. Superstition says that the Nimitas are the soul of the dead who are watching out for their loved ones still living. They are always watching over and shining a light for all to know they are here.
