Mbuti speak and sing constantly about, and to, the forest, with love, humor and reverence. Their forest symbolism is self-referential and multivocal. Amulets made for children and initiates from forest materials, and the sweet water of forest vines in which newborns are bathed, are also imbued with this nurturing, protective energy. Most forms of pattern-making are ephemeral. Women paint meandering lines and animal-like markings on their children and themselves.
Men shave assymetric designs into their hair, and cut clan-emblems and signs into leaves.
They even vary the effects of firelight by re-arranging logs. There is an extensive repertoire of named motifs and ideograms abstracted from nature and the objects of daily life. Although women share modes of imaging and coding, meaning is elastic and idiosyncratic, allusive rather than representational. They also evoke teeming insects, ant trails or celestial patterns. In Mbuti compositions, wavering, recurving lines meet, intersect, recede, and diverge to create dense pattern interweaves or gossamer lattices.