FROGSTOCK

Yesterday evening the long right arm of a typhoon, more like the pinky actually, or perhaps better the very edge of a pinky gesture, brought us an extended bout of heavy rain, the kind that only typhoons seem to carry-- rain that doesn't merely fall, but can't seem to wait to get to the ground it is so worn out from the effort of staying heavily aloft-- there is a kind of heavy relief to the overall fall, a kind of "at last...", like a lake falling on a sofa.

It just so happened that this sky-relief coincided with, or perhaps induced, the emergence of a new generation of mini-amphibians, fresh new frogs about 1 cm in length, fresh from their paddy incubators. As it also happened, Kasumi and family would be stopping by at about 11 for a brief farewell before departing on their long drive back to their home up north, so we had left the outside light on, the only light around for kilometers, and it was as the beacon of a new truth to the green and restless young. When Kasumi arrived she didn't come in, but rather called us outside to see the flabbergast.

Our dark brown front door was not a door, it was formless, green and glistening, it was moving, it was a concert, a door of song, it was covered with vocalizing frogs, a froggy Woodstock generation drawn to the light of a new dawn: singing young frogs were falling from the porch ceiling, rapping young frogs were hanging from the light, young and upcoming folk-singer frogs were climbing the walls... if there is such a thing as amphibian concert fever, it was right at our front door; within seconds we had a couple dozen tiny a capella frogs in the house that turned up later in the oddest places: singing atop an onion, rapping on the caboose of a toy train.

This morning the front door is dark brown again; in the evocative silence, Frogstock is a fond green memory to all who were there.

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