tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-666027588804943602024-02-19T07:48:31.054-03:00TabubilgirlTabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.comBlogger498125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-15034094754813034412016-12-29T09:00:00.000-03:002016-12-29T09:00:04.347-03:00Dog. Drum. Duet.<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Up at Metro Tobalaba, where the Tip y Tap beer garden fills the plaza in front of the entrance to the metro, a couple of musicians had set up shop. One had a guitar, another a drum kit, and they were good - I mean, really good, or at least they almost certainly would have been, but when I came into the plaza, the guitarist was putting away his guitar with a face like a sucked lemon, and the drummer was going at it on his own.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> The dog thought he was fabulous. He was a big black dog - mostly labrador, with a bit of mastiff about the shoulders, and he had parked himself nose to <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">brass </span>with a cymbal, and every time the drummer hit a drum the dog barked a great big <i>whoouff</i>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> The drummer hit a drum. The dog barked. The drummer hit another drum. The dog barked bigger. The drummer drummed faster. He reckoned he could out-bark the dog<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">. <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">P</span></span></span>retty soon he was going about a hundred and fifty beats a minute, <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">but </span>the dog's tail was going about double that -</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> As far as that dog was concerned it was an ecstatic, practically hallucinogenic, full-on meeting of souls and minds<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">. It </span>barked and it barked and it <i>barked</i>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> The drummer was beginning to look a wee bit lemonish himself. He and his guitarist had counted on a beer-generous Tip y Tap audience, and what they had was about fifty people laughing their heads off and holding up their cell-phone cameras - not even pointing at him. They were all aiming at the dog.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> I would have love to have stayed<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, but </span>I was late for an appointment<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">,</span></span> and slipped past them into the metro station. A machine-gun whoouf-and-drum-kit duet followed me all the way down the stairs.<br /><br /><br />It was a GOOD day.</span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-6173967123675236802016-12-23T09:00:00.000-03:002016-12-23T09:00:18.303-03:00Santa-Lanterns<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Just before Halloween I went a little bit mad - my local supermarket was selling Halloween pumpkins, I bought seven.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> We didn't carve them for Halloween, and miraculously, a month and half later, in this high summer heat, they are as hale and whole as the day I brought them home.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> So we carved Christmas lanterns. Santa-lanterns? Ho. Ho. Ho.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-51459478893189169502016-12-07T09:00:00.001-03:002018-05-15T00:06:24.950-04:00Why Architects Really End Up Talking Like That<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It's November, and it's getting hot. Yesterday I went down to our <i>bodega</i> (storeroom) to put away my winter sweaters and<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> <a href="http://www.tabubilgirl.com/2016/07/pirates.html">pirate hats </a></span>and I came across a box of drawings from back in my first year of grad school.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> The drawing on top was a sort of vector diagram - done in footprints. Memories came rolling back. It had been a "assignment now - final product tomorrow!" all-nighter sort of project - in which we neophyte architects had been asked to go someplace where a lot of people came through and map the traffic patterns - putting all the four-dimensional traffic down on two-dimensional paper in an exciting and really neoteric fashion. (<i>Neoteric</i>: architecture-speak for '<a href="http://www.tabubilgirl.com/2010/04/how-i-learned-to-talk-like-architect.html">an artistic vanguard that you imagined up right now all by yourself</a>."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> And then we had to write about it. Obviously, the drawing would speak for itself, but in practical terms, a short museum-style blurb wouldn't go amiss. (A good professor is way ahead of student neoterism as a matter of course.)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> The problem with being asked to describe a drawing project in a paragraph or two on short sleep and shorter notice is that you end up turning out some <a href="http://www.tabubilgirl.com/2011/07/tabubilgirl-has-flu-so-she-is.html">purely awful drivel</a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Because you weren’t thinking clearly. You weren't thinking <i>at all</i> - you were snoring between your words. And you were surrounded by people who'd gotten even less sleep that you had, and while you were confident that your own ideas were pretty darned great, to your sleep-deprived ears theirs approached towers of literary <i>genius</i>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> There’s no color of jealously like sleepless green.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And I remembered that I'd written about it, afterwards, when I'd woken up. And pasted it to the back of my neoteric masterpiece so I wouldn't forget:</span></span><br />
<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></i>
<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> One fellow held a degree in ancient literature. He had mapped the smokers on their nicotine breaks in Dundas Square.</span></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> “Since the Dawn of Time” he said solemnly, “Ancestral Man has been Drawn to Flame.”</span></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> “That’s probably true” I agreed, grinding my teeth, and went off to ask editorial opinions on “The pulse, the tide, the ebb and flow of harried, feverish commuters at the Bloor-Yonge Subway station” from two students lying on the floor behind me and looking, respectively, vacuous and pained.</span></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> One of them winced.</span></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> "Isn't that a little…damp?"</span></span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> On cue, Mr. Ancient Literature walked past declaiming “And Now, a Tattered Subculture of Social Pariahs Clusters Around the Vestigial Memory of the Ancient Hearth Fire!”</span></span></i><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i> I, who belong to the extremely tattered Subculture that feels stoned rather than euphoric when we don’t sleep, turned back to my laptop, typed out ‘In my map I marked out a sour by fix goot frid” and ran spell-check twice.</i><br /><br />Down in the bodega, I shut the box and sealed it up with tape, but I won't forget. I think I need a little ceremony.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> I'll unfurl the map. I'll enter the pulsing commuter tide that hustle down my street at rush hour every evening. When the ebb and flow of shoulders and elbows have crumpled it beyond the reach of even the most accommodating professor, I will go home and make it an offering on the fires of my BBQ on my balcony. Neoterically.</span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-87387776391435434732016-12-04T09:00:00.001-03:002023-05-26T09:37:44.629-04:00Summer Kitchen PSA<u><span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: small;">Advice for when you drop a cherry pitter:</span></span></u><br />
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<span face=""verdana" , sans-serif"><span style="font-size: small;">Don't do it. The splatter radius is indescribable.</span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-45187510207012175022016-11-29T16:28:00.000-03:002016-11-29T16:28:00.777-03:00<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The Jacaranda trees are in blosso<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">m, and <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">t</span></span>he wisteria is blooming <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">on </span>the fences. In the park, a young man and woman climbed a tree to sit in the canopy and kiss up there.<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span>It's a nice day.</span></span><br />
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Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-56119882405356075032016-11-24T15:08:00.001-03:002016-11-24T15:08:37.555-03:00Doctor Strange<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />I've just seen Doctor Strange - the new Marvel movie starring the very British Screen God Benedict Cumberbatch. It was mildly jarring to watch a film about holy men studying the eternal verities so that they could learn how to kick someone's nose out through their earholes, but then things went boooom and i remembered that this was a <i>Marvel </i>movie - these fellows weren't holy men, they were doorkeepers! And the fellows knocking on the door burned with manifest destiny and carried nuclear weapons. With the safety off.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> (I wonder if any of the 21st century Americans involved in the project picked up on the irony of that?)</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Mr Cumberbatch plays a bossy white guy who thought he knew everything, and then found out he didn't, and then he did, and then he saved the world.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> And there are three whole women in the cast! Really! And two of them even have speaking roles! One of them is a very nice white lady who was the Supreme Sorcerer, and she gets to say lots and lots of portentous wisdom things that clearly looked better on the cue cards than they sound being wrestled around a set of actual tonsils (portentous wisdoms are all right in their own time and place, but two or more characters standing gravely in a mostly-Tibetan-temple taking it in turns to drop fortune-cookie truth-bombs does not cinematographic conversation make) and the other is the love interest!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> She gets to say things too, whenever Doctor Strange needs an emotional reaction beat. She also gets to sigh, and be sad, and look worried, and look determined. She even <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2016/11/rachel-mcadams-doctor-strange-marvel-love-interest.html">gets to tear up</a>!!</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The very best bit was learning just how the studio rationalized turning the Very Tibetan character of the Supreme Sorcerer into a white lady:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> "Well, the character is traditionally a Tibetan male, but Tibet won't play well in China, and we didn't want to make the Supreme Sorcerer a "26-year-old leather-clad fanboy dream girl" because we wanted diversity."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/02/doctor-strange-director-owns-up-to-whitewashing-controversy.html"> True story</a>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> That somebody gave decision-makers of this caliber a whole movie's worth of budget to play with tells me a lot more about the pharmaceutical industry in Los Angeles than I ever wanted to know.<br /><br />The wonderful Benedict Wong was stuck as the Ur-librarian with the original humorless biblio-funk, but Chiwetel Ejiofor did his very best Royal Shakespeare, and he and Cumberbatch between them have more charisma in their little toes than a whole summer's worth of blockbusters.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> It was boom-boom, popcorn, a little snark, with action sequences so deliriously kaleidoscopic that they must have needed heavy medication to even visualize - as for story-boarding them, possibly migraines and a rest-cure.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> It was pretty. It was fun. And the climax of the whole fun-house upside-down mirror-ride was a privileged, 1-percent white guy flying into the heart of absolute evil, and standing nose to nose with the face of scorched-earth selfishness and telling it to <i>GO AWAY.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> He died for it, of course. And then he got up to die again. He went down over and over and over, dying in a million terrible, painful ways, and every single time he got back up - doggedly, tirelessly, <i>willingly</i>-</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Until he wore down even the embodiment of ego and "I want," and then Doctor Strange took back the world. All of it.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I'm almost certainly reading too much into this, but right now it's an image I need right now. I'll take it and I'll keep it. It was a <i>good </i>movie.<br /></span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-79380369842796708292016-11-16T09:00:00.000-03:002016-11-21T14:27:41.630-03:00WorkPlace Health And Safety for the Win!<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As seen</span> on the streets of Providencia today.</span><br />
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Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-90569507770803094812016-11-09T12:39:00.002-03:002016-11-10T13:42:06.562-03:00Everyone is Going to Have to Stand Up Now.<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If you live in the Unites States and you're a woman, a person of color, trans-sexual, non-heterosexual, native American, a person who has suffered a sexual assault, a person with a disability<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span>or a chronic illness - <br />Maybe you're not a Christian. Maybe you're not a citizen, or you are a citizen but your parents weren't citizens, or you've got a name that maybe doesn't sound like it started out in Western Europe way back when - </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Maybe you're related to or <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">k</span></span>now someone like that<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> -</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> is <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">starti<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ng </span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">to be an </span></span>awfu<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">lly large numbe<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">r <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">of people<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">,</span> isn't</span></span></span> it? <br /><br />This sure is one extraordinary day.<br /><br />I got nothing. Except a song. This is by Danette Beavers, <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">a<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> member of the Washoe tri<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">be </span></span></span>who writes and sings at <a href="https://thegoodelephant.wordpress.com/">The Good Elephant</a>.</span></span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/s1wANt4WyWw" width="560"></iframe>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-35966914713920754212016-08-30T09:00:00.000-03:002016-11-09T12:30:49.923-03:00Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic (Recipe Not Included.)<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Say you find a recipe called Roast Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic. <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The </span>instructions <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">read</span>"throw everything in a slow cooker and wait four hours<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">,</span>" <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">s</span>nd say that the garlic cloves turn out really <i>really </i>good - particularly<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span>smeared across a <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">fresh sliced </span>French baguette. And say that after you’ve dreamily chewed yo<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ur way </span>through half a loaf, your husband yelps and says "Hey! I've only had two cloves!" and you look down and discover that you've eaten the other 38.<br /><br />Hypothetically speaking.<br /><br />That night, you just might just find yourself sleeping by yourself on the living room sofa. For health and safety reasons. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />It's just like <a href="http://www.tabubilgirl.com/2011/07/french-onion-soup-redux.html">French onion soup</a>. Only louder.</span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-87048885316327686242016-08-24T09:00:00.000-03:002016-08-24T09:00:35.612-03:00Memories Don't Keep You Warm Enough.<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The neighborhood around the Los Leones Metro station in Providencia is full of second hand and vintage clothing shops. They bring stock down from North America and the neighborhood is a godsend for those of us with rangy gringo builds that don't fit lines designed for the rather more petite Chilean figure.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> Right now, that's me. I left my leather winter jacket in a taxi and I'm looking for a new one.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> There are a lot of really lovely leather jackets in Chile - but I'm tall, and broad across the shoulders, and if the jacket doesn't fit so tight across the back that I can't lift my arms, the waist doesn't drop below my bellybutton, and the zipper won't meet across my chest, and when I ask hopefully for a larger size, I'm already wearing XL and the line doesn't go any higher.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> Yesterday I went to Los Leones. I started in a store called Vintage, just off of Calle Santa Magdalena, and deep in a rack of high-eighties leather (bat-wing sleeves, malignant shoulder pads, vented fronts, elasticated waists, studs, fringe, patchwork and brocade - and every benighted bit of it on each and every jacket) I hit the jackpot. On my very first stop.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> You could practically hear bells ringing. Because this was <i>it</i>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> This was <i>really </i>it - a soft suede duster, with a flared collar, and a gentle drape to the long skirt and wide split cuffs that ran almost all the way up to my elbows.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> It was the sort of coat that Destiny's Child would have rocked if they'd dreamed that high. My college-aged self would have given a half a point off of my GPA for a coat like this. The Dixie Chicks would probably have thrown in a solid gold record.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> It didn't fit me like a glove. It fit like a memory, like a song, you know - the one where you copied the lyrics into a notebook because they got you - got you in a way nothing else ever had before. They laid it all out like it was, and told you who you were in a way you'd always almost known, but had never quite understood until you heard that song - </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> That's how that coat fit. <br />I stood in front of the mirror and admired, and I turned one way, and then I turned the other, and then I turned back the first way again -</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> and I suppose one day I will be grateful to the big burly fellow with the Harley Davidson beard who was put his hand on my shoulder and said, very gently, "No. This is not a winter coat. This is not 2003. You are not buying that coat today." <br /><br /><br />It <i>could </i>have been. It could have been 2003. Because I have dreams.</span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-61454670831033979202016-08-16T21:00:00.000-03:002016-08-16T21:00:41.980-03:00Doors and Holes<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Mr Tabubil is feeling peevish. That <a href="http://www.tabubilgirl.com/2015/09/83.html">8.3 earthquake last September</a> knocked our front door <a href="http://www.tabubilgirl.com/2015/10/the-estufa.html">out of skew</a>. and we now have a one centimeter gap between the bottom of the door and the floor. It's not much gap, but in cold weather it leaks heat like a broken sieve, and whenever there's a wind, the draft hits the far side of the apartment with a speed that makes one ponder more exotic aspects of physics and meteorology. It's probably something quantum.*</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> Mr Tabubil has bought a rubber weather strip to cover the gap. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">We didn't get one last winter, because most of the city <a href="http://www.tabubilgirl.com/2015/08/gustery-blustery-oooooooh.html">was in our position</a>, and there was a run on the hardware stores and by the time everything was back in stock, the weather was warm.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> This evening he took the door off its hinges, screwed on the brass plate of the weather strip, and spent three quarters of an hour fussing and straining and worrying and fiddling and putting a hold in his hand and hammering and crimping and bashing and pulling to get the un-skewed door <i>back </i>on its hinges. Turns out a <i>lot </i>of things were out of skew.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"> And then he closed the door - and the rubber bit of the weather strip, quite unceremoniously, peeled off.<br /><br />Ow.<br /><br />Right now he is browsing the websites of the major hardware chains with the request to be left <i>alone </i>please, and, at intervals, huffing hugely.<br /><br />*(Sir Pterry - respect.)<br /></span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-31099657570806636762016-08-05T14:49:00.002-04:002016-08-16T15:13:03.121-03:00The Flat Roof of the Shed<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It is <a href="http://www.tabubilgirl.com/2016/06/surf-sounds.html">still winter</a>, and the air is still grotty, and curling up with a book and being somewhere else still feels like Very Good Idea.<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span>Back in June, I wrote about Surf Sounds - a book of poetry<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span>by the Australia <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">poet </span>Roger Higgins. Surf Sou<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">nds is </span>full of somewhere-elses. <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">T<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">his one is a memory.</span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>The Flat Roof of the Shed. </b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br />As a boy he would lie on his back<br />spread-eagled over the corrugated iron<br />on the flat roof of the shed.<br />He would look for familiar faces in the clouds,<br />his second grade teacher as she tried and failed<br />and tried again to make him a right-hander<br />leaning over his shoulder to gently take the pencil<br />from one hand and place it in the other,<br />and the long unshaven face of his grandfather<br />who kept a high gloss on the old green chevy<br />and sometimes let him ride in the rumble seat.<br />The boy would anticipate whether the next arrow head<br />would drag a contrail in from the north or south<br />turning the sky on a clear day<br />into an ancients’ map of the world with places<br />that were just names to him around the rim<br />and himself in the centre.<br />He did not feel the metal ridges<br />under his shoulder blades and buttocks<br />and easily filled in those aimless hours<br />between school and the family dinner<br />climbing down at the last minute to do his chores<br />chopping and bringing in wood for the combustion stove<br />or picking fresh corn and carrots from the garden.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Surf Sounds: Poems by Roger Higgins</span></span></b></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7mNpsKEEukvHDHxzDG7QEnuMSDuAWw5VjgHgxSjISvwIl0aKgT3Q2qd9D80e2jrsEHvJFA5HhkgQP_oevKwn79GfErKRW7gvtUHEVsRUlPzpTPBx6Ip_1_vJ1v7LCCg9Mqzje23cZg/s1600/Surf+Sounds_FRONT_COVER_1.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7mNpsKEEukvHDHxzDG7QEnuMSDuAWw5VjgHgxSjISvwIl0aKgT3Q2qd9D80e2jrsEHvJFA5HhkgQP_oevKwn79GfErKRW7gvtUHEVsRUlPzpTPBx6Ip_1_vJ1v7LCCg9Mqzje23cZg/s400/Surf+Sounds_FRONT_COVER_1.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><br />Roger
Higgins' poetry is both day by day and exotic. The poet washes his
socks and jocks when he showers. He prefers description, narrative and
irony to self-dramatization; there’s a lot more to Surf Sounds than
ocean, beach and desert.<br />~ Graham Rowlands, Poet</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><b>Surf Sounds can be purchased through </b></i></span></span></span></span><b><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.liquidlightpress.com/RogerH.htm">Liquid light Press</a> ,</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Surf-Sounds-Poems-Roger-Higgins-ebook/dp/B00P0JG5B4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466527923&sr=8-1&keywords=surf+sounds+roger+higgins"> amazon</a>, and <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/roger-higgins/surf-sounds/ebook/product-21874668.html">Lulu</a>.</span></span></span></span></i></b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR8VJqhf6erGFtCfXN2WOpUHxS9kHuMddjzGsU1BPhjePWhdoFV3zz6o0awqr9KGXTk54zGqHhtCCIGLLTvgvi5ibQr3b6o7VSiQMVDdisGxpP05TOaJi7_yNKz_wbFM7xvOBxWoAmOw/s1600/Author+photo+2.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR8VJqhf6erGFtCfXN2WOpUHxS9kHuMddjzGsU1BPhjePWhdoFV3zz6o0awqr9KGXTk54zGqHhtCCIGLLTvgvi5ibQr3b6o7VSiQMVDdisGxpP05TOaJi7_yNKz_wbFM7xvOBxWoAmOw/s200/Author+photo+2.jpg" width="135" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=roger%20higgins%20poet">Roger Higgins</a> has been published in various magazines and journals. He is an Australian who has <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">traveled</span>
widely and lived in (alphabetically) Canada, Chile, Papua New Guinea,
Scotland, and the USA. Roger is an engineer by vocation, and has
utilized his pen rather more than his camera on many of his travels,
bringing together his physical and emotional responses to the
environments and situations which he has encountered. First collection <i><b>Hieroglyphs</b></i>, Friendly Street Poets 2008. Most recent collection <b><i>Surf Sounds</i></b>, Liquid Light Press 2014.</span></span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-43540233328128962042016-07-13T09:00:00.000-04:002016-07-13T09:00:06.015-04:00Pirates!<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">It is <i>cold </i>tonight! <span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">The air is cold and damp</span> <span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">and I'm puffi<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">ng it out in clouds.</span></span> I'm rugged up - coat, scarf, gloves and a big pink wool beret.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> And as I headed out, a<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> family</span> walked in the door. A small girl<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> </span>gasped.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> "Look!" she crowed, pointing at my beret. "A <i>pirate</i>!"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Her</span> face had gone white and eyes were as large as stars. Every storybook she owned had just come to life in the middle of mundane everyday-world Santiago.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> I grinned and said "That's right." and came very close to screwing up my face and growling "Argh."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> But I didn't. I settled for a pirate grin, and walked out, feeling rambunctious and yo-ho-ho-y.</span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-2192202917102563472016-06-26T20:38:00.001-04:002016-06-28T11:34:09.470-04:00The Copa América: Chile vs Argentina!<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Tonight is the Final Match in the Copa América, and it's Chile - vs Argentina!<br /><br />We're the defending champions. <a href="http://www.tabubilgirl.com/2015/07/the-copa-america.html">Last year we beat Argentina</a>, so this year, there's honor on the line - on both sides. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> The streets went through a mad rush of unseasonable traffic a little while ago (traffic jams on Sunday night of a long weekend? Did the festival of Peter and Paul agreeably accommodate itself to a night when the whole country wants to sleep in on Monday morning?) as people rushed home to their televisions, but now the streets are so empty you could walk down El Bosque with your eyes closed from Apoquindo to Eliodoro Yanez and not meet so much as a shadow.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> It's so silent out there.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> So still.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> You can hear a pin drop -</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> Until a Chilean grabs the ball and the cheering rises up - and the hooting and shouting and barracking and the choirs of men singing footy songs and the children who've been unwisely given <span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">vuvezulas </span>stick them out of windows and set off the neighborhood dogs - and we're only 15 minutes in to the first quarter.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> We're settling in for an <i>amazing </i>night.</span></span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Update: <i>Chi</i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>-Chi</i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>-</i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>C</i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>hi! Le-Le-</i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><i>Le! </i> (We won.)</span></span></span></span></span> </span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-39943620197039917372016-06-21T13:02:00.001-04:002016-08-16T15:13:18.037-03:00Surf Sounds<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Today the air tastes sour and smells like burning rubber. We are on the fifth straight day of <i>pre-emergencia</i>, where the government tries to keep cars off the road to give the city a chance to breathe. There's a rumor of mountains out on the horizon, but I'm taking it on faith because I'm straining to see the buildings four blocks over. It's winter in Santiago. On days like this, all I want is to curl up in bed with a good book that will take me somewhere else.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Summer is my favorite. Summer with a beach.<br /><br />This post is about a very good book: <i><b>Surf Sounds </b></i>- a new volume of poetry by the Australian Poet Roger Higgins.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Roger knows beaches. Australia is coastal country and summers are mostly spent by the ocean, squinting into the sun on the water and learning how to walk. You don't walk fast, or slow. It's a proceeding sort of pace - one you can keep up for hours, or the end of the beach, and in Queensland, where Roger was born, you will generally run out of day before you run out of sand. He has learned how to walk and he has mastered when to stop - for a good shell, or a jellyfish, a crab or a cloud, a sunset, or a place where the tide is running out and braided channels form to carry the beach with it out to sea. Channels need to be dammed and new ones dug out with your foot. You have to stay and watch the patterns change, the way the different sands settle out, dark over white, grain by grain, making little sandbars, marking little currents -</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> It is good to have another person walking with you, to teach about tides and little rivers. Alone, though, is better. Alone, you don't have to talk to anyone. You walk, and watch and you stop, and you think. Your stories are all your own.<br /><br />Roger's first poem, Travels through Time and Place, was written in a Moscow hotel room - which admittedly is not a beach, but he has walked a lot of beaches since, traveling from one place to another place. Along the way he has done a lot of writing - on restaurant napkins and torn of sections of paper tablecloths, the back of airline boarding cards - even credit card slips, when he has needed to.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> It's amazing what you can find in your pockets, in a pinch.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Roger writes about the places where he lives: Canada, Australia, and Chile, from the Atacama Desert in the north all the way through the Isla de Pascua down to Patagonia and Lago Grey. He writes about the places he passes through: Kazakhstan, the Cook Islands, the Congo, Mexico -</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> A walking beach, Roger reckons, is a state of mind - you find it in long roads, long nights, long showers and the long flat roofs of sheds.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> "I write," he says "about the places that I love or have hurt me. Places where words lead into emotions and points of view I'd never anticipated that they'd hold."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Kitchens, late night bars, horse paddocks, bare desert mountains, long roads, long nights, long showers and the long flat roofs of sheds.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Little rivers that shift and reform beneath the weight of a toe -</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The drag of waves of your feet as you stand ankle deep in a rising tide-</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Waves that wipe the pattern clear and write it fresh - </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Surf Sounds: Poems by Roger Higgins</span></span></b></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7mNpsKEEukvHDHxzDG7QEnuMSDuAWw5VjgHgxSjISvwIl0aKgT3Q2qd9D80e2jrsEHvJFA5HhkgQP_oevKwn79GfErKRW7gvtUHEVsRUlPzpTPBx6Ip_1_vJ1v7LCCg9Mqzje23cZg/s1600/Surf+Sounds_FRONT_COVER_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz7mNpsKEEukvHDHxzDG7QEnuMSDuAWw5VjgHgxSjISvwIl0aKgT3Q2qd9D80e2jrsEHvJFA5HhkgQP_oevKwn79GfErKRW7gvtUHEVsRUlPzpTPBx6Ip_1_vJ1v7LCCg9Mqzje23cZg/s400/Surf+Sounds_FRONT_COVER_1.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Roger Higgins' poetry is both day by day and exotic. The poet washes his socks and jocks when he showers. He prefers description, narrative and irony to self-dramatization; there’s a lot more to Surf Sounds than ocean, beach and desert.<br />~ Graham Rowlands, Poet</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><b>Surf Sounds can be purchased through </b></i></span></span></span></span><b><i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.liquidlightpress.com/RogerH.htm">Liquid light Press</a> ,</span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Surf-Sounds-Poems-Roger-Higgins-ebook/dp/B00P0JG5B4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466527923&sr=8-1&keywords=surf+sounds+roger+higgins"> amazon</a>, and <a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/roger-higgins/surf-sounds/ebook/product-21874668.html">Lulu</a>.</span></span></span></span></i></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=roger%20higgins%20poet">Roger Higgins</a> has been published in various magazines and journals. He is an Australian who has <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">traveled</span> widely and lived in (alphabetically) Canada, Chile, Papua New Guinea, Scotland, and the USA. Roger is an engineer by vocation, and has utilized his pen rather more than his camera on many of his travels, bringing together his physical and emotional responses to the environments and situations which he has encountered. First collection <i><b>Hieroglyphs</b></i>, Friendly Street Poets 2008. Most recent collection <b><i>Surf Sounds</i></b>, Liquid Light Press 2014.</span></span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-82983169116012400802016-06-11T15:01:00.000-04:002016-06-11T15:21:28.470-04:00Dogs in the Dark<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Last night, being a crisp, cold, clear sort of night, I walked down to <a href="http://www.tabubilgirl.com/2014/07/the-park-when-weather-is-unseasonal.html">the park</a>. Wrapped in an aura of twilight and church bells ringing the local faithful to evening service, I wandered all the way down to the slides and swings, and was standing happily under a lamp post when two small dogs came boiling out of the dark. Their teeth were pinned back over their lower lips and in a torrent of snarling and snapping and loud whuffs, they were aiming directly for my shins.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I shouted "NO!" in my biggest baddest "bad dog" voice, and to my extreme surprise, they actually stopped. The schnauzer subsided a lunge-length from my knee and with a filthy look, commenced to growling:</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> "Boy oh BOY," it said. "Boy oh BOY. If you ever let me to get my hands on you, I'll, well I'll -" and it flung me a look of such furious passion that it brought him to its feet in another howling hail of barks. "Get you get you get you get you" - and the dachshund joined in - "Yowowowowow!"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> From the darkness outside the cone of light came a voice. "It's your hat." The voice said. "They don't like hats."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Me and my winter hat stepped forward into the dark. A man stood in front of me. He was wearing a hat himself: a woolly beanie pulled right down over his ears. A cigarette flared. A woman sat with her feet up on a park bench, nodding her head. </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> "They don't like hats." She had one of her own as well - a wrap of elderly fur. Behind them, another young woman - hatless - wrestled with something enormous - possibly a wolfhound - on a leash. It leaped in silence, but the silence was pregnant with menace. The little dogs boiled around my feet, yapping shrilly, telling me they wanted blood, - or at least a bit of skin from my knees - and an enormous German shepherd looked up at me with liquid brown eyes and pressed her nose against my hip pocket.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> "Shut up, dogs." The man said casually. He aimed a kick at the dachshund and they subsided abruptly into silence.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> "That's Sofia" he said, pointing at the shepherd. "She's a good dog."</span></span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Sofia
sighed and looked up at me, and her tail thumped, once. I reached down
and scratched her ears. "GOOD Dog, Sofia." I said. "GOOD dog." </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> She
sighed again, and lowering her chin into my hand, sat down at my feet.
She was clearly ready to sit there forever, to settle in there with me
for the night.</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Behind her, the little Schnauzer cocked its head. He
looked at Sofia, and he looked at me; you could practically see the
little cogwheels working inside his little skull. Perhaps a different
approach was in order? With a short, conciliatory "gruff!" he trotted
over and sniffed my trouser leg.</span></span> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> "Nothing doing, kiddo." I said. "After the way you carried on?"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I bent and scrubbed at Sofia's soft neck, by way of illustrating what he'd missed. Sofia got in on the game with gusto - twisted half on her side, she was leaning heavily against my legs and banging out a tatoo on my thigh with her long brown tail.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> The schnauzer gave her a disgusted look and turned her back. I stuck out my tongue. Behind her, the dachshund made a spluttering sound. The young lady with the wolfhound had clipped a leash onto its collar. With one furious bark it leaped for the wolfhound, aiming for its belly. The wolfhound yelled in shock and bit its own leash, and the schnauzer, yapping joyfully, leaped into the fray. The wolfhound tried to eat its leash, the dachshund tried to eat the wolfhound, and the schnauzer was getting in a few good bites anywhere it could. The man in the beanie was in the middle of the fray, bellowing and flailing. The young lady tried very hard to go in several directions at once, and on the bench, the lady in the fur turban contemplatively <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">extinguished</span> her cigarette. Fur was flying, sand was flying, and in the middle of the scrum, Sofia got up and lay down on the man's feet and rolled herself around on her back, tugging his trouser legs and begging for a cuddle.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Very quietly, I tiptoed away.</span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-13117416662108219922016-03-27T20:29:00.002-03:002016-06-11T15:02:06.660-04:00Peak Chocolate<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">My parents are visiting us here in Santiago<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">. Today </span><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">t</span>oday we reached peak chocolate. The two are not unconnected.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"> The Chilean Easter bunny over-calculated <a href="http://www.tabubilgirl.com/2013/05/the-chocolate-rum-and-raisin-mousse-of.html">how much chocolate</a> four people could eat. The Australian Easter bunny wasn't interested in how much four people could eat - she knew <a href="http://www.tabubilgirl.com/2010/08/best-chocolate-brownies-ever.html">how much chocolate</a> she wanted to bring, and that was took up most of a suitcase. A friend gave us a reasonably large chocolate chicken that turned out to be brooding a reasonably large clutch of chocolate eggs, and what with one thing or another (and most of a chicken) I am not feeling entirely my best.</span></span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-27429872168818565882016-02-01T11:36:00.001-03:002016-06-11T15:36:04.796-04:00Finding the Light<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Today <a href="http://www.tabubilgirl.com/2010/12/happy-first-anniversary-mr-tabubil.html">a friend</a> of mine is having surgery. She has cervical cancer. It was treated, it went away and at the end of last year it came back. Today she will undergo a rather radical procedure - quite a lot of her insides will be removed.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> It is difficult for her and for her family<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">. She has a</span> husband and two beautiful children - a boy proud of his missing front teeth, and a girl with an urchin grin and the largest curls a small child can reasonably carry on her head.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> It is difficult, and she finds consolation in what she phrases as "finding the light" - the light of a dinner with friends, a helicopter trip over Niagara, a son in second grade and a daughter old enough to imitate <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">grownups </span>and be useful - even if that useful is scrubbing down the bathroom when she can't reach the taps on the sink. The water in the toilet solves that problem, and the hysterical laughter that goes along with a hasty shower for a kid and a Clorox scrub for all bathroom surfaces under 4 feet high is about as much light as a human body can stand.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Today she reckons she can use all the light she can get.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> I find my lights in the endlessly variable<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">dimensions </span></span>of human imagination.<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span>Like your daughter, my frie<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">nd, </span>we dream, and when we <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">have dreamed<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> - </span></span>then<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, </span>we simply can't help ourselves. We make it. <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">W</span>e tinker and fix and because we did this one thing, we make the dreams bigger and bigger until - to take an example that is <a href="http://www.dendarii.com/">not mine</a> - "we find ourselves playing complicated instruments while marching in complicated patterns in lockstep with half a hundred other humans, all of us wearing funny hats" and the result of what is, considered soberly, a rather odd collaboration, sets a million watchers on <i>fire</i>, screaming for joy.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Sometimes those million people, building and tinkering, iteration by iteration, adjusting and learning and loving, find themselves coming together in a different sort of dance - their<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> million </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">labors </span>condensed into a dozen people with dozen complicated tools each, <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">dress<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ed in ma<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">sk<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">s and silly gowns</span></span></span></span>, moving in unison beneath a circle of bright surgical lights and making life.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> And it is exhilarating. For this to happen, someone <i>dreamed</i>.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">You got this, my friend. You're gonna come out flying.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-87123531392220128762016-01-14T12:22:00.000-03:002016-06-11T15:37:00.151-04:00Among Friends.<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Daniela and Mike have a deep-pile shag rug on their living room floor.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> I was sitting on the rug.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> My earring fell off.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> My big, bright, sparkly, knuckle-dusting Christmas Eve earring - as hard to miss as a Christmas cracker.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> We found two almonds, three crackers, half a walnut and a raisin before we found that earring.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Mike reckoned that if we expanded the search beyond the immediate area where I was sitting, we might have enough to serve up to his sister's new boyfriend when he came for Christmas day lunch.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> Mike is a composer and a singer. A very good singer. The boyfriend came into money five years ago, bought a guitar and collected a band of like-minded two-chord enthusiasts. As he layered raisins and cracker crumbs on a plate, Mike played us a recording of the boyfriend's latest, and it was a very special recording - like the last Karaoke song of the night before the bar closes and the microphone is pried away from the leftover lush. We felt for him, and suggested a vacuum cleaner with a stocking tied over the hose. To dig up the good stuff.</span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-36642505263562650652015-12-25T04:30:00.000-03:002016-11-15T11:13:02.440-03:00Christmas Carols<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">For the past five hours a bird has been sitting in a tre<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">e outside our window, </span>singing. Since he began he has not stopped, or barely even paused for breath. He is singing his little heart out - he chirps, he chirrups, he warbles, he hop<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">s</span>up and down his branch<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, </span>working up the most fantastic runs, tweeting and whistl<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ing and </span>chortling, harder and louder and l<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ouder and </span>faster until he chokes on his own whistle, and with only the slightest of pauses to clear his windpipe, he starts again -</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">It is three o'clock in the morning<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">W</span>e can't sleep<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">.</span></span></span></span> <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">T</span>he sound of this one small bird echoes off of the building to our left, and echoes off of the building to our right, and bounces up and down the parking alley between the two buildings across the street, and on its way back to us, meets the bird's next terpsichor<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">e</span>an assault, and it grows and it grows and it grows-</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We are afflicted with a lover. You know the guy<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, </span>the one crouched below the window of his beloved<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> and </span>strumming furiously on his guitar -<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span>the guitar strings are smoking, his fingers have turned to rubber and his shoulders are on fire and the stem of the rose between his teeth has been crushed to a bloody pulp, but he <i>will </i>show her -</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> He'll show everyone - </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Be<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">neath his love the</span></span> world will give way - </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Ooooh, you just watch and <i>see </i>how deep is his love.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Right above him, his senorita's daddy is out on the balcony, ready to <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">dump </span>a bucket of <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">i<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ce </span></span>water over the edge.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Or if we're back to talking birdies, he<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">'s got </span>a cat.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> It might have been amusing, but an hour ago the lover from hell was joined by a second bird. They are not friends. </span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Feather to feather, they are trilling their little beaks off. </span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">There's no </span>quarter being given - <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">this</span> is war. </span></span>If one pauses for breath the other finds it in his <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">tiny </span>diaphragm to double his volume and show of just what sort of deathless devotion <i>he </i>is made -</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> The <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">father</span> is still upstairs on the balcony, but this time, the he's got <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">the </span>full complement of family retainers lined up on either side. Sleepless and grim,<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> t</span>hey've all got buckets, ready to go. <i>He's</i> <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">traded <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">in his buck<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">et </span>for a<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> shot<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">gun.<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span>And the señorita is inside on a sofa, with an ice-pack on her head.<br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Merry chirping Christmas.</span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-22623174371002153032015-12-24T09:00:00.000-03:002015-12-24T09:00:00.861-03:00Christmas Season Gets Serious<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi4WKHDXAgmpHw36pGBBoqHzK-qtRFf_R7Zm_e9jm1PwFziTebaxODtXTBSsalZD1oWYaf7fHRZlU0biqpcuMYwgtuDysZm6ABhZlGtHr-6sdaFOUyrGljTc03MSsrh4beCFH-qidN3g/s1600/IMG_4041.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi4WKHDXAgmpHw36pGBBoqHzK-qtRFf_R7Zm_e9jm1PwFziTebaxODtXTBSsalZD1oWYaf7fHRZlU0biqpcuMYwgtuDysZm6ABhZlGtHr-6sdaFOUyrGljTc03MSsrh4beCFH-qidN3g/s400/IMG_4041.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-18645481269651341292015-12-23T09:00:00.000-03:002015-12-23T09:00:04.330-03:00Christmas in Santiago<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-74620745771361126182015-12-22T09:00:00.000-03:002015-12-22T09:00:00.861-03:00Christmas Cats<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-55551448437839261912015-12-21T09:00:00.000-03:002015-12-21T09:00:05.381-03:00Christmas Baking<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br />Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66602758880494360.post-14321879504799652002015-12-08T09:00:00.001-03:002016-06-11T15:40:44.858-04:00Summer in Santiago<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Summer Summer has hit. For real. The air is light and balmy, the<a href="http://www.tabubilgirl.com/2014/02/the-platano-orientale_18.html"> platano trees</a> are a mass of green and a bird is chirping its little heart out just outside our window.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> This afternoon I went places. I took a taxi. We were stopped at a light; the windows were down and I lay in my seat with my head back and my eyes closed, enjoying the early summer warmth, overlaid with the smells of petrol and hot tarmac. There was music coming from another car nearby, happy boppy summer pop-</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> "Look." The taxi driver said.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> I opened my eyes. The music was coming from the next car over - a red <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Volkswagen</span> beetle; not fire-engine red, but ladybird red, which is brighter and more alive<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, and b</span>ehind the wheel was a girl. Her lips were painted a bright barbie pink. Her long hair fell down a high ponytail, tied up with a blue twist, and she was dancing in her seat, shaking that long fall of hair, bouncing her fingers on the wheel, singing and shimmying her shoulders, sending her summer-blue shirt slithering and slithering from one bronze collarbone to another.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> It was a performance, but she wasn't playing to anyone. She was dancing her heart out for herself in her bright red summer car.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> "Look." The driver said again, and his voice was one long sigh. "She even has a flower."</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> I looked. There <i>was </i>a flower, a peony tied with a bit of ribbon to the rear-view mirror.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> "<i>Es ella una maravilla</i>." (<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">S</span>he is a marvel.) "Una maravilla." He folded his hands on the wheel and watched.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> She was Joy, and in a whole day full of summer, she was the most wonderful thing I saw. </span></span>Tabubilgirlhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12649863258781206012noreply@blogger.com0