"Tears of Ochun"
The description of the very special holiday gift I received from Brandon Ballengee is my gift to you. While it is regrettable that you cannot hold the tiny glass flask in your hands and observe the beautiful biological specimen it contains, the story that accompanies this gift may inform, disturb, and inspire you, as it did me.
My “Tear of Ochun” consists of an actual baby shrimp, one of many that Brandon collected from the Gulf of Mexico in 2012, two years after the Deep Water Horizon oil spill. Despite claims by British Petroleum that it had cleaned their mess, aquatic babies are being born with alarming abnormalities. Evidence confirmed this suppressed truth. The frail baby shrimp, stained magenta and turquoise blue, swimming in a tiny flask instead of the open seas, was dreadfully asymmetrical!
Ochun, the Yoruba goddess of love and happiness who brings good things to life, is not crying alone. But it may require such thoughtful works of art to help humans share her sorrow.