CAPPADOCIA IN GAVEA

 

Oswaldo’s work as a logician and philosopher has taken us to many interesting places, Athens, Paris, Bucharest, Sevilla, to mention a few, but the most interesting and splendid trip was to Turkey in 2008, where we spent a week in Istanbul, while Oswaldo and Keith Lehrer, another philosopher from the University of Arizona, gave several lectures. We then traveled around the country, ending up in the magnificent landscape of Cappadocia, visiting the famous cave dwellings there. I wrote about our trip here: http://www.siriinturkey.blogspot.com/

 

At home the other day, I happened to look up to discover a couple of wasps busy building a papery nest of open cells, teetering on the edge of a lamp on our veranda. It didn’t seem like a very desirable location for a dwelling, swaying at the end of the wire of a small clay pendant next to a bright LED lamp, but the builders seemed unperturbed by my presence and very focused on their work.

Truth to say, I was not surprised. Throughout the 40 years we’ve lived in this house it’s been our experience that the big wasps have a distinct preference for the artwork distributed around the house and garden. They work discreetly, and when we discover the tell-tale clay bumps on, for example, a painting or a sculpture, it is often too late and too dangerous to try to remove it - their clay-like substance has simply melded into the, often gritty, surface of the artwork. 

Thus, in the gravel-like collage part of a Newton Rezende painting of Noah’s Ark, we eventually noticed a large splotchy contribution by some wasps that we indulgent imagined had felt left out of the painting. And indeed, they’re quite right, Newton Rezende did not include any insects in that original rescue effort. 

Similarly, on the outside of the house hangs a cement sculpture now adorned by a rather large bumpy clay lump, filled with holes – the birthplace of some long-gone baby wasps. Again, we admire the initiative and feel reluctant to start chipping away at it. After all, the nest has earned a place in the history of our house.

That, however, is not always the case. There was the night that Oswaldo and I to our horror discovered a glistening trail across a rather expensive Italian painting hanging in our bedroom, the artist of which shall remain nameless.  At the end of the trail was a little sticky cluster of eggs. At that moment, without hesitation, we worked swiftly and silently together to remove all traces of the intruders, praying that there would be no vestiges left in the morning light – which there weren’t – almost. We never spoke of this except to each other.

 

In 2008 I went into the caves in Cappadocia built as a refuge for the early Christians. I sat then, looking out the small punched-out window-holes, wondering how life had been for the cave-dwellers, how long they had stayed, and how they knew was safe to come out. I did not imagine I would find similar miniature caves made by wasps in Gávea, nor did I think that I too would be living in a much larger and more comfortable cage, wondering when it will be safe to come out.