encyclopedic post : history meets mail.

{dancer with a bouquet of flowers : edgar degas}

About two years ago, I moved into a room of a hostel. Aside from sharing the kitchen and bathroom with backpackers and all the rampant earwigs brought by autumn, I didn't mind living there. It was a free place for me to be. (Plus I met my husband shortly afterward and spent most nights at his house.) When I moved in, though, during that dead dark of cold winter, the room was still being used as a storage closet. The hostel itself wasn't open yet.

What I remember most about moving junk loads into the room across the hall are the antique encyclopedias, burnt black at the edges and disintegrating. I flipped through their pages, their amazing pictures. Visions of framed word art and collage danced in my head. Alas, the owner of these books--whose previous house burnt down as the paper houses with shoddy electrical work are wont to do here--planned to restore the books. They belonged to her deceased father, who was a doctor on Tierra del Fuego. I handled her heavy heirlooms with care, and didn't nab any of the cool pictures I oh so wanted. I wrote about this ages ago here.

Fast forward... > hostel opens + the books are moved out to the weather, supine to Patagonia's beatings no joke > come end of summer, earwigs hatch; they invade everything, can't lift a sponge or touch a towel without shaking one or five out > the cleaning woman battles them every morning, crushes them underfoot, sweeps out their carcasses, cleans the now overgrown backyard + starts throwing away earwig-infested encyclopedias > I save as many as I can carry and stow them in multiple bags so the tijeretas don't crawl into bed with me at night. They really do that!

{another degas interlude (after the bath, woman drying her nape);
why? because the next package someone receives from me is from the degas page}

Now I use the pages to wrap presents. And every time I send a piece of mail wrapped in encyclopedia, I lament not mentioning (on the card already snug inside the package) where the paper came from. I imagine someone finding the book destruction offensive. Now I realize, the recipient might be scared to touch said package with all my tijereta rantings, but they're clean I promise!

And yet... there's some artful book maiming out there. Take Brian Dettmer's book sculptures for instance. Only a true logophile would create this masterpiece from Webster's Dictionary...

{i say it's synchronicity: webster two point oh}

Not that my ripping out pages and taping them to boxes is artful, but I do like doing it. And playing with the serendipity of the pages as they open themselves up to be torn. 

{anticipate the comfort : the new modern medical counselor : by brian dettmer}

OK, there's a lot of innuendo here, I hadn't anticipated. Not sure if you're catching it; the subconscious is a marvelous poetic thing. I think it's better to just end with some questions...

How do you feel about writing in your books? Or altering them in some way?

friday present: moving to alegre

This week was chock full of wonderful bits, enough to overshadow the not so wonderfuls. (Thank goodness!) It's probably obvious from my recent posts that this week I am crazy thankful for having completed our move.

yay! our move!

 {photo: unknown, please let me know if it's yours.}

I don't want to dwell on all the ghetto (not so) fabulous difficulties of where we were living before. But you know how when you put up with something for so long and finally move on, you are left lighter, unloaded, nothing on your back save that huge sigh of relief? This feeling can be found in lots of life's corners: relationships gone south for the winter--winters ago; the chronic pain in your jaw--that you barely even notice anymore--that changes the your swagger enough for you to eventually require foot surgery; that phone number you dreaded to dial and finally did, insomnia halted. That's how this move feels. 

The tijeretas (earwigs), which weren't even that bad by local standards: gone. Electric and gas piping outside the walls: inside. Wind entering the house and all heat escaping through a zero-ly insulated roof and walls: insulated. This house is much smaller than our last one, but now that we're moved in and our lives are stowed, it feels plenty big enough for the two of us. And we're warm!

a letter from a dear friend. 

On my huge to-do list the day we were scheduled to completely vacate our old abode, was to visit the post office and plea with them not to deliver a letter from my beautiful friend Claire, Bicoastally extraordinaire. There's really no reliable mail forwarding system here, at least not where we live. But I figured if I kept going to the post office to check, it wouldn't get stuck at the other house to likely be tossed out in the trash. Just as I sat down to catch a bit of rest, the mailman knocked on the door with a special delivery. This must be the most beautiful card I have received in years, right down to the adorable envelope! At that moment, I don't think anything could have made me happier! 

i get to play with cuppie! 

Carrie at This Free Bird just sent me Cuppie, so I will lovingly share in a lovely androgynous cupcake, part of the OneCraftyFox Cupcake Challenge hosted by Diana. The whole challenge is hilarious and absolute fundom. If you haven't already seen it, you must check out the boisterous romps of Cuppie while on Carrie's watch. Can't wait to receive the cutiepie and see if I can decipher her gender. Or his gender :) Adventures coming soon!

breaking in the digs with a killer breakfast. 

Long, slow breakfasts are close to one of my favorite things on Earth. This morning I rolled out of bed--early and awake and happy--with an urge to eat a Mexican-style breakfast with homemade tortillas. So I got to work kneading and rolling out tortillas, chopping tomatoes for pico de gallo, scrambling eggs and grating cheese. We ate the little breakfast burritos with some yummy lentil paste that Serkan had made last night for dinner. And I devoured one sweet one with butter and cinnamon-sugar sprinkled on top.

chirimoya alegre.

{chirimoya found here}

In case you don't already know, it's winter here for us. And reading all y'all's blogs had me craving cherries and blueberries! (No canned or frozen versions in these parts.) I've also been chatting with my dad about cheesecakes every so often, so I'm itching to bake one soon. The last one I made blushed with a raspberry topping. For some reason, (that I won't complain about) the local supermarket always carries frozen raspberries.

So what does this have to do with chirimoya? Well, even though we're far far away from fresh berries, today we randomly scored a chirimoya, which I also haven't seen for months! What is chirimoya, you ask? Chirimoya is a wonderful Latin American fruit, whose tree is sometimes referred to as the ice cream tree. (Now who wouldn't want to try ice cream fruit?) It's high in fiber, calcium and vitamin C! Now we're talkin', right? Sometimes we eat it orangified. One of the most common ice cream flavors here is called chirimoya alegre, or happy chirimoya, and it's happiness comes from the dash of sunshine that is orange.

Have you ever tasted chirimoya?

And do you have any cheesecake topping suggestions or special recipes that you adore? I would love to hear them and maybe try one (or several) out!

And what are you thankful for right now?

home sweet home with asian pears.

Yesterday I was loving Asian pears so much I started looking for new ways to eat them. Rather than just juicy sweet lovely plain or alongside some thinly sliced parmesan cheese.

Last night we arrived back from a couple of days running around Punta Arenas, running errands, and looking for economical and scrumptious items to stock our cupboards. Even though it's a few degrees below freezing outside, the three-hour bus ride between Puerto Natales and Punta Arenas is inevitably muggy, claustrophobic and, occasionally, nauseating. Add being hungry to this, and it's just not very fun. When we finally got home, we whipped up some lentil-tumeric soup using a leftover lentil concoction from the vegetarian shepherd's pie I made during the week.

Afterward, I sliced up our last Asian pear and savored every crunchy bite. So happy to be home and eating this fruit that has nothing to do with this faraway part of the Earth. I know this isn't very ecological of me. But nearly all of our food travels down here via boat from Chile's northern valleys. (I'm sure most of your Haas avocados come from those valleys too!) For now, all I can say is c'est la vie and viva la pera!

Currently there is only one place in Puerto Natales where we can buy these delicious pomes, though not so delicately wrapped as in the photo above. Instead they are shoddily separated by pieces of white tissue paper. And sometimes surprise visitors. Eeek! The other day, as I inspected the yellow globe, a tijereta fell from it. An earwig. Sigh. It's part of living in a town with a serious earwig plague. And it is a plague. Today I went to replenish our Asian pear supply for some upcoming cooking endeavors sans alien invaders.

It's winter here, people, so we are eating winter things. Tonight I made a roasted beet and Asian pear salad with toasted almonds and arugula for a friend's going away (or traveling north!) party. But for all my pear obsession, what did I forget to layer in the salad? The Asian pears, newly purchased and still tumbled one atop another in my backpack. I was so concerned about preparing the salad in a way that the beats wouldn't turn into a gooey pink mess that I completely forgot key ingredient #2. So I'm about to cut one up and adorn the top of the salad with it now.

Housekeeping

Shortly after 5 a.m., the clouds seem higher than they are, and more dispersed. All orange-bellied with neon-bright underscores. I steal peeks of it through the big bedroom picture window and jump back under the covers to try to sleep some more, but it’s useless. Instead I squeeze some sunniness into a cup and drink fresh grapefruit-orange juice for a pre-breakfast snack.

We have been busy getting the house in order. Making it livable. Serkan had found this furnished place for us to live before I arrived. Of course, when we returned to Natales from Ushuaia about three weeks ago, I was excited to see our new home. It is by far the best place I’ve lived in Puerto Natales. But that first night my nerves were on edge and I actually cried to see the condition of our new place—which if you compare it to other houses here, it really wasn’t bad at all. We arrived here around midnight after 15 or so hours on a bus with a long snowy delay at the Chilean-Argentine border because of Chilean government workers being on strike (again). We hadn’t eaten for the last 10 hours, so we were pretty much starved and exhausted.

So I lacked imagination that first night, while Serkan with his infinite patience, comforted me. I’m sure being back in the super comfort of the U.S. didn’t help me feel less overwhelmed about all the work this place would need. But we woke up the next morning, ready to tackle house work. Sanding, painting, scrubbing, spraying insect killer, unpacking boxes and bags. It’s been an ongoing project, but it finally feels like home. No more salmon pink walls in the bedroom or diarrhea yellow in the bathroom. No more horrifying lace curtains stuffed with earwig eggs and exoskeletons.

I’ve been pretty obsessed with insect prevention. When we first arrived, hundreds of Patagonian pill bugs would appear inside the tub just about every morning. And elsewhere of course, but not in such huge quantities. Luckily, these insects don’t creep me out that much. But getting rid of them and vacuuming up their dried-out shells was a daily affair for a while. Their colonies have dwindled though we have not obliterated them. I’ve vacuumed and cleaned places in this house that haven’t been cleaned in years, if ever. I’ve scrubbed with bleach and worn through several sponges and gloves and practically erased my own fingerprints.

All this in preparation for the tijeretas (earwigs) that are sure to arrive around February. These silly little bugs have me in a panic. I have nightmares about them, even though I’ve only seen one live one since we got here. When they come, they get into everything. They show in the food containers, in the teapots, in the mate bombilla, in the washing machine, sometimes even in the bed. When sipping mate during a major tijereta infestation, the critters get sucked up through the metal straw, and suddenly a skinny wiggly thing is crawling on your tongue. Thank goodness this hasn’t happened to me yet! But, yes, I am mildly obsessed. They’re not here yet, and we’re doing everything we can to make sure they don’t come. Now that the inside is clean, we have a pretty big yard to tend to. Some friends bought a little black lamb, an organic lawnmower, so we’re hoping to fatten him up for a few weeks. (And, no, this lamb is not going to be eaten for Christmas dinner.)

It may sound weird to have to do all this to a place that we are only renting for probably less than a year. But that’s how the houses are here. We are really lucky to have found a well-furnished house with heaters in every room. Some places you rent here might not even come with a kitchen sink. The fridge, stove, kitchen and bathroom sinks are still considered furniture, something that renters supply themselves. That said, I haven’t seen a rental that didn’t come with at least one heater. And it’s cold enough here to live without a fridge. I hope it doesn't sound like I’m complaining too much, because really I just want to give some context.

After all the poison, paint and love we’ve put into this place, it truly feels home. It’s our little nest and I love it. I have a sturdy writing desk where I’ve started to work in the mornings. I rough sanded it to get rid of the pink paint splats and to give it a rustic look, filled it with family and travel photos, and topped it all with a square of glass.

Earwig Bookmarks

Today, in a rare stint of warm weather, I hurried through some burnt piles of books, which Isabel, my landlady, was just going to throw away!!! In fact, they did dump about 3/4 of the books INTO THE GARBAGE before I said STOP!

Basically the books are from Isabel's late father, who was one of the first doctors on Tierra del Fuego. Sentimental for Isabel, right? Her house burned down a couple of years ago and these books are one of the few remnants of the house and of her dad. Books not in great condition, charred black on the spines and fore edges, and completely out of order. Which is bad for an encyclopedia whose whole existence is based on order--good ole alpha order.

They were awesome hard-bound encyclopedia type books with stellar pictures, examples, photos, glossy thick paper, quality stuff. And really, truly: they just don't make 'em like that anymore. I went through some of the pictures and craziness that is encyclopedianess when I first arrived here from my travels to Ecuador in August. They were stacked high on a desk buried in my bedroom before I shoveled all the clutter out of it. (You should have seen this place when I first got here, but that's a different story.) In August I asked Isabel what she planned to do with the books. She told me their story and said that she was going to take them to a specialist to have them reassembled.

After two months, they were shoved inside a doorless cabinet and tossed outside, in the Patagonian wind-rain-sun-wind-weather-120 km wind-vertical rain-street dogs and street cats-patagonia elements for christsake-weather. Then the earwigs moved in. Nests of them. Thousands of the creepy scissoring insects creeping and scissoring in and out of the loose blackened hinges. I put a plastic shopping bag over my hand and shook the tijeretas (earwigs in spanish) off of the remaining encyclopedic pieces, flipping through the pages again and missing something that I cannot remember. A series of pages with fruits and WWII and Gauguin and Ghana. One page in particular I nearly nabbed back in August. But I didn't because that one page would be integral in the remaking of the book. Part of me is still rapt in my first experience of those pages, but I can't remember exactly what lured me and I can't say with any certainty that if I saw it again, I would recognize it.

There is so much in this about non-attachment. Losing a parent (even at a 'natural' age), losing your home and all your belongings to fire, then throwing out what's left. I have gotten rid of everything and started over more times than I have fingers. But here I am packratting away the burned leftovers of another packrat. Incidentally, Isabel never would have taken the initiative to throw the papers out herself. It was the cleaning lady, who is also named Ysabel but with a Y, who couldn't handle all the earwigs inside the kitchen, so she started to clean up the mess that was in the backyard in hopes of slowing the swarms spiraling up through the drain in the kitchen sink.

I don't know what I will do with the books. A series of poems maybe, because the idea of ordering the world alphabetically fascinates me endlessly. Or just cutting up the pages and doing collages. So... maybe it isn't just a love of books, especially if I cut them up. But it pained me too much to see them bagged up and hefted to the side of the road to await the dump truck!