mexico, part ii

in Todos Santos we stay in a huge poured cement house with mismatched linens and doors that slam. in every room there is a dead bug on its back. some with wings, some without. one night, clutching tequila and limes in plastic tumblers, all of us gather to peer over a particularly many-legged one and try to decide if it is a cockroach or not.

it is.

the waves sheer feet from the beach. the noise is so intense we are often startled from sleep trying to decide if there is thunder outside or not. the moon is waxing while we are there. the pale reach of it is cool and dusty like fluorescent bulbs. one night i rise from the bed to see if we had left a light on and instead got an eyeful of moonlight in an instant when the curtains groped into the room on a breeze.

we buy tortillas by the two dozen, stagger out of the bodegas delirious with joy and open the damp brown paper parcels on the ride home. the road to the house is so bad we have to let our jaws go slack so our teeth don't cracks and slam into each other over the ruts.

in the afternoons everyone separates like a fraying rope. some to verandas to torque the cracked and dusty plastic chairs on back legs and regard the tide. some to those deep and disoriented naps the seaside breaks across the day; waking crease-faced and bleary at strangely lit early evening hours.

some days we realize we haven't eaten enough and catch ourselves looking around, baffled, with our shirts on backwards and our hairpins falling out. we grate large blocks of soft cheese over the little corn tortillas, push them around in a wide, scratched aluminum skillet. the stove, four gaping and sooty burners sunk into the concrete counter, hisses solemnly when we spin the sticky dials. there is no pilot light, only that clandestine smell of gas blooming in the air. if we are too slow at ticking the butane lighter across the burners, a howl of blue light and flames swoop and swallow our arms briefly, the hair on our forearms singeing, fronds of ash pale and curled against our skin.

on the fourth day we buy oranges from the bed of a pickup truck, the sign is written in pink and green chalk and has curled at the corners from the damp air. we buy ten kilos of fruit in a crackling plastic net sleeve and try to count out our coins without looking too baffled. sometimes the denominations snag in our brains, decimal points and conversions leaping about and tangling. in the end, sheepishly, we hand over bills of inappropriate size and ready our palms for a rain of change in tiny coins. this jumps and rattles in the car. some of the oranges escape the bag and go knocking forwards at backwards as we jerk home.

the oranges are dusty, perfectly round and heavy. green and gray patches are streaked over their sides. so much juice comes out of them we grow suspicious. surely so much could not be contained in such a small vessel? we drink some, peer at the folding juicer, put our glasses down, pick them up, squint into the cloudy depths, drink some more and shake our heads. the seeds are enormous

from the earth to the earth

 

 

she can finish things

because of frequent occurrences of this...

  

and with regards to this (thanks smockshop!)

here are... results! it has happened, handicrafts. for real.

 

 

 

 

(with the obvious help of a professional photographer, a high-tech camera and an aesthetically pleasing backdrop...)

bring it on flying tempera!

bring it on small boogery hands!

bring it on juice stains!

bring it on school-dog-constantly-rolling-in-dead-maggoty-fox-kit!

my smock and is totally ready!

decrees

 

courtesy of school, forty six students and four adults were funneled into the salt lake valley to visit this gem. such a maniacal collection of fussy cataloguing, bone chips, various bits of easily-overlook-able debris labeled with the neat proclamations of age and worth make me giddy at any rate. but this. this floored me.

thanks to thoughtful grant writing and a turn out of chad punching Salt Lake Locals (who do, as it turns out, have opinions about the health of local museums) the natural history museum was moved from a stuffy mausoleum of a place to a new beautiful location that was built to blend in almost perfectly with the sand stone bluffs of the foothills.

the above photograph is an aerial view of a simulated sandstorm. it whirls, day in and day out, the sand below changing and drifting in a tiny mimicry of the real and roaring thing. the plexiglass window, perfect for squashing a nose against, is roughly three feet across and lit from above. of all the muddy, slimy, tactile, shiny and speaking exhibits the small ones visited (they are at the oldest six) the blowing sand enthralled them the very most.

to try to assign any mouthful to the visual order and impact of a natural history museum -- that of sandwiching eons of time into neatly labeled glass cubes-- and this natural history museum in particular, is somewhat bootless. but to try to reign in the gesture of such a place is more manageable.

there is, i think, a reason humans of all ages ogle and become giddy in these buildings that house physical records of dirt, slime, bones, rocks and mud. perhaps it is the relief of knowing that some white-coated and sagely collection of scientists have made visual order of our natural world when that task is otherwise so hugely daunting. or maybe it is our preoccupation with condensation and distillation; that the novelty of such a compression of time and space thrill the pleasure nerves we are such slaves to.

for me it is, as usual, the exaltation of the mundane. for only very infrequently does a case containing neatly numbered and labeled rocks of all the same size, shape and color lift the hair on anyone's neck. but somehow, a museum demands that we evaluate the placement of the exhibit. it is the age old question asked of artists and art critics- Duchamp most famously- why does an object become suddenly important when it is on stage? the exhibition space and the object have a babbling silent dialogue with one another as to who bolsters the existence of the other and it is over this dialogue that we, the viewers, float to ask ourselves why we are looking at a case of rocks with anything other than a flitting gaze. this is the magic of museums! and surely clenching a fist around any cupful of dirt in the outside world should kindle a similar luminous light if only we knew where the pullstrings were.

this kind of ranting make one hungry to go load up arms in the library with the opinions of various people on the subject

Edwin Teale (any, all) on the intimate lives of quiet things (mainly insects, trees and rocks)

Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and An American Childhood) on the epiphanies of the wild (silver eels migrations across meadows, the new found sight of previously blind cataract patients, etc.)

James Putnam (Art and Artifact) on the question of museum and display as art object

Candy Jernigan (Evidence) on showcasing the every day

France Morin (Heavenly Visions: Shaker Gift Drawings and Songs) on the economy of the visual in the metaphorical and literal sense

Anne Carson (Nox, Plainwater, Autobiography of Red, Decreation,)  on the saintliness of any and all things

Gregory Blackstock (any collections) the autistic visual cataloguer who draws, from memory, collections of various kinds

i could go on and on. but it is important to be steeped in these variations on the plain. it is this kind of ritual for the sacred that has sustained humanity since the beginning. we could be so lucky to learn to fine tune our eyes to the every day, even in the smallest ways.

 

spring time tricks

spring is coming, which means frivolity is allowed. hence: fashionable moments at school

more importantly is the cuisine of spring- those episodes in unseasonable lightness, where one braves the crisp cold in bare arms or strives to survive on light salads and steamed fish. these of course are often disappointing exploits but they cannot, seemingly, be avoided.

the most recent project was inspired by reading a batch of new cookbooks

(this, this and this!) also the joyful eyefuls of this blog. 

and although i am not as eager to proclaim "goat is the new cow" as Miss Britton brashly can, I was seduced by the billowy cloud of homemade ricotta.  this stuff is unlike any solid tupperware-shaped block of ricotta that comes trembling into a bowl when one undertakes lasagna. it is a revelation not only dairy- and delicious-related but also in the homestead sphere where it is, actually, possible for the everyday gal to make cheese in her kitchen! yes truly, with such a breezy and delicious project as ricotta cheese making one can, for awhile at least, where the hat of the Cheese Mongress!! (obviously worth it.)

the effort is minimal, the time is a laughable! get after it and spread it on toast with jam, spoon it over wide eggy noodles with arugula pesto, eat it from the jar in the bask of the refrigerator light at midnight, frivolity is the rule of the day, remember?

homemade ricotta

(adapted from the My New Roots blog)

1 quart whole milk (the fattier the better!)

juice of half a lemon

generous pinch salt

pinch nutmeg

warm the milk over medium heat stirring often to prevent scorching. right before the milk boils, when a billowy swinging of steam begins to fog your glasses, turn off the heat, tip in the lemon juice, salt and nutmeg and stir gently. the milk will respond at once and become curdy. leave this mixture to sit for five minutes. while the milk is resting line a bowl with cheese cloth.

pour the curdy, hot milk into the bowl, bring the cheese cloth up and tie tightly in a knot. suspend the cheese over a bowl hung on a wooden spoon or, in a more ghetto fashion, suspend from the neck of the sink with kitchen twine. leaving the cheese  for 45 minutes makes delicate, light, soft ricotta. the longer the hang the richer and stiffer the cheese will be. like most soft dairy products (yogurt, kefir, etc.) this will be happiest in the fridge in glass for up to a week.

cheers!

novelties

spent Friday rummaging in my new crazy cupboard. there was an infinite project of sorting to undertake: poms poms from glitter beads, pipe cleaners from ribbon, craft feathers from popsicle sticks, etc. etc. and all under the maddening, inescapable and oddly itchy presence of years worth of spilled glitter. below, a few good finds:

 

**

** to be clear, for those of you not born in the dusty and brown-paper lined decades of yore, the above rectangle gridded and labeled with the strange "date due" was an actual card that got stamped (by human locomotion, with a large rubber dating stamp that had a profoundly satisfying sound when fiercely clomped onto paper) and manually tucked into an oaktag envelope on the back of library books to let that patron know when her library materials were expected back because other, eager, book-reading patrons were often eager to have their go at reading them. now you knowwwww.

winter feather lining

feather lining the nest to get through the cold and dark. new plants, newly cut cream and butter dough (grapefruit ginger scones), newly harvested contributions to the Science Pile (those below are different samples of coarse, strong moose hair), and parting with the first sprouting green narcissus bulb of the season.

embarking on a Pretty Big Deal printmaking project, collecting small scraps and compiling some small drawings. more later!

: : :

the good kind.

(  )

         Yo La Tengo's |  more stars than there are in heaven  | from their newest, Popular Songs

some festivities and some triumphs

christmas came and went. big deal for those who celebrate it, somewhat of an anticlimax for those of us who don't. there is a common misconception that channukah is the equivalent of christmas for a jew. not so. it is not a holiday that lights us up, or one to which we look forward all year. merely it is an opportunity to exchange gifts and meals (should we choose to) or, more commonly, to light up the sparklers for the wee ones. not having any wee ones proper we spent one day this weekend exchanging practical things (merino socks, mittens, shearling lined boots) and drinking out of every available fancy glass in the house. cheers to mum who can assemble a party quick as a bunny, we were all more than satiated.

one thing that happened was something i have truly been yearning for my whole life. something cast iron, with an enamel finish and a very blunt little name tag

yep. it happened. a covered french masterpiece with a myriad of uses. i had to keep creeping into the living room to peek under the lid and ensure it was really there.

it was!

after we ate too many lovely things, and drank early in the morning and so of course had to allow ourselves a nap just for posterity. (well, some of us. others of us (ahem) had to go to work and serve christmas dinner to strangers.)

cava, orange juice, stovetop espresso, steamed milk, kahlua, b & b (to each their own, not all at once of course.)

and then after, the dutiful ingestion of the cleansing food. a shot of orange juice mixed with a tablespoon of the most green spirulina (tastes just like it sounds) with a grapefruit chaser. smoothies with rice milk, chia, hemp, kale and bananas and, newly, water kefir! it is an experiment i have been working on for a few weeks. milk kefir grains (who subsist on lactose) can be transmogrified (or transmogged) to ferment juice, morphing into something very close to (although completely different than) water kefir crystals. this is done by training the milk kefir grains to switch their eating habits to sucrose or dextrose (not ideal, the dextrose.) once they are used to sucrose they are left with a fistful of raisins to ferment the basic sugars into a beverage with an astonishing probiotic load. (similar to kombucha). truth be told the process scared more than a few folks away from the counter

and understandably so. but it worked! huzzah! this morning the first fizzy (indeed, these guys give off some substantial carbonation) throaftful of water kefir, flavored with a clutch of raspberries from this years pick frozen to hold us over until something vital occurs. like this!

cheers.

down (south) time

 

it has taken some getting used to - this idea that, despite a complete dissolution of plans, buoyancy can still be achieved. or, if not achieved exactly, can still occur when you least expect it. maybe especially so.

given that winter here is indecisive, manic, dogmatic and absolutely enraging, it is always somewhat of a surprise when it passes. although now it's still not clear if that's what It has decided on. where, in the East, water sprung readily from dry ditches to float detritus into a gay clog of gutters, here it is still frozen and resolutely clenched at the mountain saddles. the snowpack that lounges at the peaks of the Oquirrhs, the Henrys, the La Sals, all of it still accounts for our annual sum of snowfall- not counting the bulk that has already run and flooded the basements of the valley towns. a veritable crushing of stillmoving snow.

but we were gifted a surge in temperature, a warm smell- that prickling green waft that lifts your collar and fills your nose. without turning,  we could feel the lilacs stir into heady bloom and dip low into the grass. so we figured the best thing to do was to head to directly into desert country to see what sort of remote places we could take off our clothes and generally get back to feeling like real animals.

to our utter surprise there was water in the most unexpected places. (like, for examples, in the low draws of parched caps of earth whose linear scrawling indicated water had not passed for easily a year since the first snows.)

 

which is not to say there wasn't dust. it poured, it followed all movement. it filled seams and small places, and it had faces of its own.

 

 

but it was restorative. the desert has a way of belittling all the tangles of everyday life and smoothing them into a sandblown mass. manageable, if not slightly blurred. it was, as i sat there and felt a great red pulse in the ground , important to remember that, given enough distance, most things can be seen in their entirety and are thus navigable. it also helps to be surrounded by kindness and love and fur and bone. but profundity and a good dose of bone shaking heat is almost always a cure-all.

adaptable cartographers

we spent some real time getting.

getting prepared, getting packed, getting sorted, getting anxious, getting ready, getting in, getting confused, getting on with it, getting there.
 - - -

it is an important thing, journeying. it forces you to ask yourself what to do with the expectations that are heavy like wrapped stones in your pockets; things to acknowledge without looking at too closely.

 - - -

breakfast happened, and then a latching ourselves into a practical and dependable station wagon, and off we went.

 

in a fanfare of defeat winter is receding and the lowlands are overwhelmed with water-drapery. water in all directions, all dimensions. water that is forded by stubbornness and balding tires, parted like fine braids at mountain passes, assimilated dreamily into the fabric of our new lives, water endured through fitful sleeps.

as the magnet of the northwest kingdom pulled on us, water rose. for the untrained eye of a westerner, the roads began to dampen, spread and look all alike. the drive was punctuated by little other than varying densities of forests and the weak crests of elevation. fog abounded. blue smoke like spindles hung motionless over weedfires. vaguery was absolute.

we arrived in the late afternoon: watered down sunlight, a slant of pack clouds. Lake Champlain's banks had not been as immersed in as much water as we saw for over one hundred years. Grand Isle was in a panic over failing septic systems; flood plains and leech fields of debris shone wickedly at the feet of the animal pastures.

but when we did finally get out and don our muck boots we came, it seemed, as a surprise to our host mother who apologized in a daze for not having finalized our accommodations. their septic tank had currently backed up into the sheep pasture and they were devising various ways of disposing of water. or, more aptly, not using at all. (...minimal showers, dumping dishwater out of the window, foregoing toilet flushing completely....) we followed her through her small parcel of front land. there were icelandic sheep and their lambs, a hobbly old dairy cow, many small pullets under a gas heat lamp in a slouching, softening green barn.

...thoughtfully described hoop houses for young lettuces, promises of fireflies, red wing black bird abound. 

sound was a physical plane to cut through with boots. insects and biplanes resonated along bare arms. we trudged out to see our tent spaces (though the tents themselves were no where to be seen.) we learned a surveying crew had taken bits and parcels from the pastures in order to discover (hopefully) deposits of natural gas (to no avail.)  the pockmarked pasture was greened over in a ferocity of swamp weeds and water skeeters. who knew what flatness was navigable? we tested our footing. we stumbled into holes and ditches. we were warned of electric fencing wires submersed in the mire. we became alarmed. questions began to arise with the mosquitos.

why weren't the tents set up? (we had called emailed two days before, we had called just this morning after breakfast, was there some crucial etiquette we had foregone?)

why, when we dug in the dusty barn, had the tents been stored in a crumpled up piles, furred over with the mold and mildew of an obvious hasty and damp dumping?

why, when the tents were taken out, as the light began to fail, was she missing not only the totality of the tent poles (how many did each tent need, was it?) but also the rubber stoppers that served to cap the central thrusting pole and thus keep the tents from toppling over?

how could we get two thirteen foot high canvas tents, all the poles, the tarping and stakes out across the two and half acres of pasture to the tents sites when we could barely cross the pasture on foot carrying nothing?

how, as the rain began to fall into the open and still unpitched tents, were the promised futon frames and mattresses going to be hauled across the same pasture when we had barely succeeded in hauling them in a decrepit hand cart?

how, as the rain set in and we were left alone in the field to pitch and stake the tents while the family was inside enjoying a meal, were we going to get the lives we packed, into only a few very heavy duffel bags, into the tents?

how, as we were hauled in a tractor hitched to a hay wagon, balancing a broken futon frame (who knew to check and make sure all the parts were serviceable  before offering them to an intern for four months?) were we going to get the wooden palettes, joined by bailing wire, that served as the platform for the damp mattress stored in the wet and leaking barn that smelled of chicken shit, (since they had assumed they had had two but really only discovered one futon frame to offer us), apart, since, not an hour ago, the palettes has served as temporary fencing for a lambing sheep and were still warm and hay-smelling?

how, when we had at last deposited wet luggage into the mud-filled tents erected crudely and with no precision, were we to keep the rain and wind out when the zipper that kept the door closed, the only central zipper to the entire tent, came off in our hands as we tried to close ourselves in for the night?

how, when we trekked back in the mud to find some remaining dinner  and address a tent with no door, and to look into the house at last, were we to share a shower with 8 other people in a bathroom swollen with mildew, not cleaned since its construction, and being bailed out with a paint bucket?

how could we, in our right minds, undertake an education putting up food, baking bread, and cooking the bounty of our farm labors in a kitchen so filthy and fitfully maintained that it had given food poisoning to its third intern and from which it took an entire week to recover?

how would we stand making $50 a week, in broken and moldy tents, in the soft cornered squalor of a flooded island see fit to say until the frosts came?

and in short, we couldn't. 

and so after pantomiming drinking a bowl of soup from the self same pot of the previously poisonous lentil soup a week earlier, we trudged back out into the rain and mud, to curl up on our animal mattresses, draw our own clean but damp bedclothes up to our throats and let the soul darkness flatten the day.