Painting badly (sort of) on purpose
Many years ago, I was visiting my family in San Francisco, and my nephew, then small enough to fold up in my lap like a little frog, frustratedly told me he didn't like a particular video game because he wasn't any good at it. In my older, frog-holding wisdom, I told...
Fever Dreams, Painting Badly
Laying in bed in a feverish haze, thank you science, my overreactive immune system (and a 3rd Pfizer shot), I snuggled deeper into a pile of blankets and duvets in the warm Chilean summer temperatures that would normally have me using just a sheet or at most, a single...
6+ months post breakthrough COVID, and an idling motor
And on Day 111, she could smell. No, really smell. Smell that the honey-scented soap that she bought in the hopes of making her nose happy, which heretofore had smelled like lemon and had a certain copperyness to it, which then suddenly smelled like honey. And her...
Quantifying the unquantifiable, Getting Better after Breakthrough Covid Infection
Of all the household tasks, perhaps the most vexing is the putting on of the duvet cover. For those who don't know, the duvet cover is a giant pillowcase-type-thing that goes on a down (or whatever) quilt. But unlike a pillow, the down duvet has no body to it, no...
Breakthrough Covid Infection/Infección Irruptiva por Covid, post double vaccination with Sinovac
One of the many tasty things I ate that I could not taste. I could feel the lime though. Read on to learn about chemesthesis. A buzzing, churning, roiling, banging, grinding machine has been just outside my door for fifteen months. Inside the house, I hear it less,...
On sewing, nostalgia and the challenges of the day
Way back in a recess of my mind I am sitting in the backyard on East 19th Street in Brooklyn and it is early summer. My grandmother is sitting in one of those woven beach chairs with the light aluminum frame, like the one she uses when she sits out in front of her...
New (to me) feria report, and the continued joy that living in Chile brings me)
In talking about the civil unrest, this fríend of a friend asked me what it would take for me to leave Chile. And it’s a good question. For a while I was seeing a gringo exodus, but it was mainly the same people that always leave, end of the contract, short-termers,...
Not just curtains (leaving centro/social upheaval and more)
Curtains! Not a scintillating topic. Except why do I need curtains? And why have I spent fifteen minutes out of the last several days trying to get them back from the place I left them, and why do I leave empty handed, the smell of burnt coffee in my nostrils, as I...
Don’t forget to turn your cats off, a linguistic lesson from Chile
I thought I knew about cats. Yes, cats. After 15 years in Chile, surely I know enough not to look for their fifth foot, from the expression "no buscarle la quinta pata al gato," which means to keep on looking for an explanation for something when there is none. I also...
8M, the International Womens’ Day March in Santiago, Chile (a commemoration, not a celebration)
"Casi me emociono" said a woman standing next to me as I used the back of my hands to dry my own eyes. She "almost" got emotional. It was her way of saying it brought tears to her eyes, as it had mine. I was tempted to tell her "Y no soy ni chilena" (I'm not even...
