Shoestring wanderlust

Our tickets to Peru have been purchased!  We are arriving August 18th in Lima and then we will be flying out of Santiago October 7th.  I have purchased the first three levels of Rosetta Stone and all our South American shoestring travel books arrived a few days ago.  We're budgeting $10-$50 per person per day and I think we'll make it back with enough money for a security deposit on a new apartment (that we don't have yet) and some foodstuffs until we start our new jobs (that we also don't have yet).  

It seems a little reckless sometimes when I think about it, but it's also kind of ridiculous to expect to be able to find a job now that doesn't start until October.  I'm hoping that I can just show up at some inner-city early childhood program, mention that I've encountered children before and know CPR, and have a job.  My absolute last resort is nannying, though in all honesty it's probably generally more lucrative than a job in a school to begin with.

And so now I wait.  I began painting portraits of the more Germanic versions of my favorite fairy tale characters (I'm laboring over what I'm hoping will be a more sympathetic Rumplestilskin.. is it just me, or does he sort of get screwed over in that story?) and researching their origins.  The most widespread of the classic princess tale seems to be Cinderella, though across cultures and centuries, we've still been fed the most watered down, sugar-coated version possible.  From the most inane and only slightly scandalous discrepancies (in the French oral tradition, fur and glass are almost indiscernible, but they go with glass because a Prince trying to find the perfect fit of a fur slipper on every maiden in the land makes him seem somewhat less.. noble) to much more disturbing details (the wicked step-sisters hack off their toes and heels to fit in the shoe and later have their eyes pecked out by birds for their wickedness) to the absurd (in China, the fairy godmother is a giant talking fish) the most boring is the Disney version.  It seems bestiality, mutilation, and incest are hardly uncommon themes, and unlike the Scandinavian versions (which sought to frighten children into desirable behavior) most of these tales were for adult men in seedy taverns.  

My favorite so far has been Sleeping Beauty.  In an early version, she doesn't get pricked by a spindle but rather gets a piece of flax lodged under her fingernail.  When the prince finds her sleeping, he doesn't nobly awaken her with a chaste and dutiful kiss but simply is so "overcome by her beauty" that he beds her, which of course does not awaken her as the flax is still beneath her nail.  So, he leaves.  She then becomes pregnant and gives birth to his twins while comatose, who eventually suck the flax out while searching for milk.  She wakes, and presumably has a lot of questions for the prince who knocked her up, only he is in his other kingdom with his wife.  The end.

Rumplestilskin is hardly a disappointment as well-- the little man throws his tantrum as we've all learned, only he either rips himself in half or lodges himself in the Queen's vagina, depending on the translation. 

Beaver fever

I am currently at a coffee shop outside Albany, a good 60 miles away from the house in the mountains.  I would be a liar if I said we came for the coffee and not for the wifi.. to our credit, this WAS the closest Bank of America and we had $2000 in checks we needed to deposit (and neither one of us trusts the whole mail-in system...) But I'll be honest: once we connected to the high speed internet we both sort of did this sigh/shudder combination so intense that it resembled a drug-addled Watutsi dance. 

The house is unbelievable: built in the late 1800's and the product of a quirky series of renovations by the decade since, it hosts chartreuse cabinetry, wood burning stoves, exposed birch support beams and large, wrap-around glass porches.  The property is also in the throes of being reclaimed by nature: there are foxes living in the storage barn, blackbirds in the studio attic, chipmunks burrowing through the stone steps and bright yellow finches that erupt around you in the grass like butterflies.  

Outside our window, a mother hummingbird has nested above the porch light, and she has mistakenly seen my poor cats through the screen as potential threats.  She spends hours taunting them-- these slow, lazy and completely unobservant indoor cats who never would've known she or her babies existed if she hadn't started dive bombing them through the window.  Nigel almost threw himself through the glass in frustration and I've had to barricade them from view with my luggage.

One of the artists we are living with is an amateur chef and in the mornings he whips up home made scones and frittata.  Last night we had a smorgasbord of fish tacos, sweet corn, lemon-broccoli and fresh guacamole.  

My studio overlooks the pathway to the garden, and beyond that there is a pond swarming with beavers: every morning, someone has to go down and break up the dam they rebuild each night in front of the tiny stream that runs through and down into a ravine, catching frogs and small fish in the mud.  The beavers wait outside and slap their massive flat tails against the water, and you have to be careful not to slip and fall on the thousands of beaver-made stakes surrounding the shore.