Jagua, A Journey Into Body Art from the Amazon , livre ebook

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150 pages

English

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In search of the jagua fruit, author Carine Fabius takes readers on a journey into the deepest realms of the Amazon jungle, where a prized tattoo ink weaves magical tales into the heart and culture of the region's indigenous people.

Written in a breezy, engaging style, the book includes:

- 40 pages of gorgeous color photographs, including contributions by noted documentary photographer and travel writer Cristina Mittermeier
- Over 25 black & white photographs and illustrations
- The author's personal account of her and her artist/explorer husband's journey into the world of temporary body art, beginning with henna and culminating with the discovery of the jagua fruit's promise to deliver a beautiful tattoo that looks real — yet fades after two weeks
- Excerpts from her husband Pascal Giacomini's diary as he travels on a motorized dugout canoe into the deepest reaches of the jungle, where he spends weeks with an indigenous group called the Matsés
- Brief histories of various indigenous groups associated with jagua
- Personal and insightful essays by veteran explorers and lovers of the Amazon
- Information on the medicinal and mystical properties of the jagua fruit
- Magical tales and beliefs surrounding this extraordinary fruit
- A short history of tattoos
- A short history of ink
- Frequently asked questions (and answers, of course!) about jagua tattoos
- Overview of the Amazon, the Indians that populate the area, and issues that currently dominate throughout the region
- Traditional tales from the Amazon

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Publié par	eBookIt.com
Date de parution	21 février 2013
Nombre de lectures	5
EAN13	9780978500320
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	5 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0498€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

JAGUA
A Journey into Body Art from the Amazon
By Carine Fabius

Photographs by
Pascal Giacomini and Cristina Mittermeier

Jagua, A Journey into Body Art from the Amazon
By Carine Fabius
Kouraj Press
6025 Santa Monica Boulevard, #202
Los Angeles, CA 90038
323-460-7333
www.kourajpress.com
Copyright © 2012 by Carine Fabius
Cover and Book Design: Rodney Bowes Design
Notice of Rights
All rights reserved under international and pan-American Copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.
Fabius, Carine
Jagua, A Journey into Body Art from the Amazon
ISBN-13: 978-0-9785003-2-0
Published in eBook format by Kouraj Press
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com

Also by Carine Fabius
Mehndi: The Art of Henna Body Painting
Ceremonies for Real Life
Sex, Cheese and French Fries Women are Perfect, Men are from France

A Note from the Author
No trees in the Amazon rainforest are cut down to generate the skin-staining ink used for temporary jagua tattoos. Happily, harvesting of the jagua fruit does provide desperately needed income to the Indian group with whom we work.
Like many others who, by chance or fate, become involved with underserved peoples, we feel compelled to assist the Indians with the pressing issues they face (i.e., stemming the spread of malaria or flu in their village). In that respect, you may be interested to know that your purchase of this book and/or jagua tattoo kits from our company directly contributes to helping the Matsés Indians achieve economic sustainability.

Acknowledgments

I WANT TO THANK MY HUSBAND Pascal Giacomini for his hard work and for all his help in the making of this book. You’re a great partner! My gratitude goes out to Frank Weaver for his editorial expertise, attention to detail, and generosity with his time. Thanks and appreciation to Henrietta Cosentino for the freshness and largesse that she brings to any project she touches. A big thank you to Rodney Bowes for his special brand of creativity and flair, as well as for his constant ability to make me laugh. A special thank you to David Fleck, Peter Gorman, and Cristina Mittermeier for their generous and priceless contributions to the book. Thank you, thank you, thank you Steve Coombs for the generous use of your time, for your support, and for your friendship; and to Morena Santos for her magnificent talent as a jagua artist, and the gracious gift of her time. Gracias a los Matsés por su hospitalidad. And a huge shout out to all the people I know who continue to give me their love and support in my work as a writer. You know who you are!
There is a fruit that grows in the lush and steamy verdant jungle of Amazonia that can only be described as noir . Dreamlike, strange, erotic, and cruel these are some of the terms used in defining the classic film noir genre, and there is a case to be made for the comparison. Imagine a fruit whose innocent green skin belies a buttery yellow center, which yields a transparent liquid resembling fresh water. Smear this juice on your body and, a few hours later, a surreal transformation occurs. Your skin color has metamorphosed to black. Blue-black. Noir. Some might think it erotic; however, it is no stretch to imagine that, in some circles, this might be considered cruel. But relax. It’s not forever. Give it a couple of weeks and you’ll be back to normal....

The jagua fruit and flower
Chapter One: Jagua The Prequel

T HE YELLOW RUBBER GLOVES ARE ON and my splattered apron safeguards my clothes. Spatula in hand, I stand over the noisy whirring of a XXX-size KitchenAid mixer filled with a shiny, viscous black goop when my husband shouts from across the room, “Don’t breathe on that!”
“I’m not breathing!” I say.
I step away from the mixer and feel a squishing sensation underneath my foot.
“Oh no! Do you think you could ever one day wipe up a spill when it happens?” I ask. “Now I’m going to have it all over my foot. Look, it splashed up on my leg too.”
He ignores these comments. He’s too busy pouring jet-black jagua fruit juice from a plastic gallon jug through a funnel and into a sieve in order to make sure any remaining sediment doesn’t make its way into the mix. At the bottom of the jug, it’s all sediment. With a black plastic spoon he pushes the thick stuff through the strainer so that he can gather every last drop of this rare, precious liquid that we like to call “black gold.” In the process, some of the juice splashes on his chin. No matter the precautions, we always end up looking like we work in the semi-permanent ink business, which, come to think of it, we kinda do. A few minutes later, I pull off my gloves and stare in horror. My hands have turned completely black.
“How did this happen again?” I say. “How did it do that? Thank God jagua doesn’t stain the nails!”
Wait a minute, haven’t I done this before? Feels like a déjà-vu. Is that the tinkling sound of the opening music to The Twilight Zone I’m hearing...?

A pot full of brown mud sits simmering atop my oven burner as I race around the kitchen, wet dishrag in hand, working desperately to get the fine film of green powder that has worked its way onto every surface it can find in the room. While one bright orange-stained hand feverishly wipes at the brown spot that refuses to lift off the blond wood table, the other hand, whose nails have not escaped the reddish tint, reaches for ground cloves. I debate in my mind for the hundredth time whether eucalyptus oil would be a better choice. The scent of eucalyptus snakes it way up my nostrils and I take a moment to breathe it in and clear my nasal passages.
“Don’t forget to keep stirring the pot!” my husband shouts from across the room. He has been standing over the sink for an hour, pouring the green powder through a fine mesh wire sieve, and is the one responsible for the stuff finding its way into our throats, hair and, I’m sure by now, our pores.
“Should I pour the coffee in now?” I shout back, vowing silently to withhold all snarky remarks about his chaotic ways, “Or did we decide to go with black tea? Oh, and what about the okra?”
“Okra?” he says, “Aren’t we using indigo?”
“What does indigo have to do with okra?” I say with disbelief in my voice. “Okra is for the consistency, indigo is for the color!”
He ignores the commonsense element of my question and parries with, “Let’s go with the walnut hull extract.”
“Hell, this glop is looking kind of thick to me right now...think we need to add water?”

Yep, that was us in 1997. Back then, the concoction brewing on the burner was a paste, with the henna plant at its base, that stained the skin a deep reddish brown. Fast forward to 2009 and nothing has changed except the color scheme. I should be used to this by now.

The Henna Back Story
A dozen years ago, my company, Lakaye Studio, introduced henna tattoos to Los Angeles, and the news spread as quickly as the seemingly insatiable desire for real tattoos. Back then, I thought permanent tattoos had reached the height of popularity, but it was only the beginning.
Some would argue that tattooing is nothing more than a fashion trend, right alongside baggy pants whose waistbands have to fall just under the butt to be in step with the times. Of course, by the time this book comes out, beltless baggies will have gone the way of the fedora once the rage before baseball caps came along. Wait, you mean fedoras are back? Oh, hell. Thank God I don’t write about style. Maybe I should stop trying to figure out what’s hip, and get back to tattoos, which, as I write this, are still very much in although I disagree that they are merely fashion accessories (more on this later).
After all these years, I can still say without hesitation that people love henna and its beautiful, organic reddish-brown color. But a temporary tattoo that looks like a “real” one has always been extra high on everybody’s wish list, including that of the henna lovers. So, as business owners, my husband and I kept looking for a way to deliver the goods in a painless, all-natural way.
And then we found out about the jagua fruit. We heard it was an edible fruit from the Amazon, full of medicinal properties, plus the ability to stain the skin blue-black just like a real tattoo and then disappear completely in 10–14 days.
What!?
It wasn’t easy, but after much investigation, following numerous leads that more often than not brought us to dead ends, sending a hundred emails and making a thousand telephone calls to friends, and friends of friends, and often complete strangers, someone finally put us in contact with an American living in Peru. I’ll call him Mr. X. This Mr. X had had dealings with a number of indigenous groups living in the jungle and, for a negligible fee, he offered to facilitate introductions. A couple of months and multiple conversations later, we decided to dispatch my husband and partner, Pascal Giacomini, on an extended trip to some of the most isolated villages in the world, deep inside the Amazon rainforest where jagua grows.

Are you going, too?
That’s what all my friends wanted to know.
Um, no thanks.
This journey reminded me of how our Moroccan affair began with the family of farmers who supply us with the henna we use in our Earth Henna Tattoo Kits. Pascal was the one who made the initial trip out to the isolated and inhospitable desert terrain where, before his arrival, the family had only once before in their lives been visited by a foreigner and she was a scientist on research assignment for a book. I did eventually visit the family, and enjoyed myself treme