coffee with Towan

"Remember when you told me you liked what that researcher wrote about orangutans creating their own sunshine? Be like your orangutan friends, Emma." Someone I love v.v. dearly said this to me after I had just ended a little-more-than-four-year relationship and was feeling lower than a bow-legged caterpillar. The Ex did not take the culmination well, though he did take my camera and hard-drives. This red-headed ape just could not understand The Reasons Why he did the things he did (feelings were hurt & feelings changed), so I bowed out as gracefully as I could. I put on a brave face and traded in a tired relationship for a pair of running shoes.

I put miles between myself and the past, searched for a job and a new place to live, and the orangutans became strangers while I found the parts of me that had inadvertently been put aside in the years prior. I took respite in the Hoh rainforest and became an arboreal ape; I slipped off of sea stacks into the Pacific Ocean and became an aquatic ape. I ate delicious new foods, looked at art, met new people, and saw things every single day that made me think: "I wish I could show this to Towan-- he would love it!" I ran through snow and scampered up mountainsides in Snoqualmie Pass, played with dry ice, drew large pictures with chalk, saw my first Major League Baseball game, and found sun-bleached beach treasures. Photo booths, fireworks, and souvenir penny machines fit in there somehow as well.

Every thing seemed to be coming together but there was something/someone missing... or I was missing someone. The cure was a simple visit with Mister T; however, a small part of me thought he would not meet me at the glass like before, so I was putting off seeing him and the other orangs. On a sunny morning I went to my favorite escape in the city, where the big lug took one look in my direction and walked over like it was no thing. Orangutans have the most admirable sense of time. What felt like forever and a half to me was probably not very long for Towan (am learning patience, among other things, now).

I can think of two apes that make it impossible for me not to smile. One is a person who has adventures all day, ev'ry day & knows ALL the things (what a wonderful way to be). The other is of course Towan, whose child-like sense of wonder and curious eyes inspire me to never stop appreciating the little things, to constantly be looking up & moving forward.

"You have to smell this-- it is fantastic!" (photos by Ryan Heaney)

Lucy, Melati's sister (Nat'l. Zoo, Wa., DC)

Dawn, of Chimp Trainer's Daughter & the Intimate Ape, told me that my darling Melati has a sister in Washington, D.C. I had no idea! The photo on the National Zoo's website was enough to make me smile-- the Diva's little sis, the oldest orang there (!!), shares the same beautifully wrinkled visage and choppy bangs that I've fallen in love with over the past year.

And then there's Rusti, Towan & Melati's kazuo. He lives in Hawaii with his girlfriend Violet. I wish I could photograph them all and make a visual representation of their family tree. One of my favorite things about orangutans is the extreme facial morphological changes-- especially in the males. Rusti has his mama's eyes, deep & thoughtful. And those blunt bangs. Perhaps its time to do some traveling.

Rusti, the first-born of Seattle's Towan & Melati, lives in Honolulu with his girlfriend Violet.

The most obvious difference between the two simians? Monkeys, such as the lion tailed macaque to the left & the golden lion tamarin on the right, have tails... perhaps not in the photos I took, but they do have 'em. Apes, like the orangs and siamangs up top, do not.

There's a photo of Birute Galdikas in The Intimate Ape in which she is hand-in-hand with a flanged male-- every time I see that image I wonder if orangutans like dancing. Not in an exploitative Vegas performance way, just in the I feel good & want to shake my moneymaker way. Climbing trees, swinging, pushing, pulling, swaying, and looking to the world for cues-- it all takes a bit of rhythm and whole lot of going with the flow... that's what dancing is to me: being so okay with how one moves that all conscious effort is replaced with intuitive grace.

here are five songs for the five orangutans at Woodland Park.


Towan: If I Were a Rich Man - the Magnetic Fields
Bela: I Can Change - LCD Soundsystem
Melati: Duchess - the Stranglers
Chinta: Pulling Mussels (From the Shell) - Squeeze
Heran: Elvi$ - Felix da Housecat