May-2015
Boy hunters (Part III)
Is hunting a big boy’s thing? Neto is only 2 years old, the second youngest of nine brothers, an attentive boy with a voracious intellect. As I followed the filming of his older sisters, he was tugging at my clothes and inviting me to look around. I asked him to wait a bit, more worried about the scene with the girls. Wait? The sand crabs were there, calling his fingers, and fingers don’t wait, they do. Ok, then. I switched strategy and found a small bottle for him to collect the largest number of sand crabs while we finished playing with the girls, that way his fingers could stay focused on his own desires.
Driven by his cunning eyes and immersed in the courage and clear objectivity the prey requires of the hunter, Neto followed the sand crabs coming and going from their holes. Each challenge made his fingers improve their gestures, create strategies to dodge the claws, and impose himself as a hunter. An entire body moving in order to learn countless lessons through experience.
The level of his enjoyment in this hunting “game” infected all of us and the scene shifted its focus. His sisters became more interested in helping him on this task than in the initial game we were playing. Great! After all, are we or aren’t we open to children’s spontaneity? And so time took on the qualities of time, of time enjoyed, until the time the sun got tired of playing with us.
Text and photos: Renata Meirelles
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