The intertidal zone

At Elena’s flat in Buenos Aires, we were taking an inordinately long time to clean our teeth, and we had three tubes of toothpaste — but all at the identical stage of oversqueeze. (Thanks for the charming photo, Elena.)

Is it worth cutting off the lids and scraping the aluminium lining? When is it time to buy a new tube? Should I stick with the tried and true or risk a new brand? Why not go without for a while (salt and water served the ancesters, and frayed sticks)? How about having them removed (the teeth)? Or making a whole new hybrid product: is the world ready yet for cybertoothpasta?

A few (more) of us lost jobs this week; yes, Longacre Press is moving north, to live on Random’s verandah. So, it’s Opportunity Time. I went off to ponder mine in Naseby, ‘2000 feet above worry level’. Polly was in dog heaven, sniffing and poking and rolling about wherever rabbits have been — which is everywhere. The air was clear and so was my head. I had an idea and it seemed like a good one.

Back home, it doesn’t look quite as simple but I’m toying with a sort of manuscript consultancy seguing into a kind of publishing mumble-mumble…

Watch this space — or send me your manuscript.

I’ve tried to translate what Elena wrote to me (with the photos — thanks, Elena) about this important day in Jujuy in the north of Argentina; this is the gist, anyway, of the bits I could manage:

… people don’t go to work because their dead are expecting them. As I live near a cemetery park, I find myself in the middle of the fiesta …The night before, in their houses, they set up a table with bread for an offering — bread that substitutes for whatever the dead loved in life; also they prepare their favourite food and drink. They leave the table set up when they go to sleep so that the souls can come at sit down at their leisure, eat and drink with gusto and without frightening anyone ….

Although I live in the country, in a very peaceful place, today the house is surrounded by cars, people have been coming to the cemetery since morning … to share lunch with their loved ones … They put coloured paper flowers on the graves and have a kind of picnic, they drink chicha and dance until they ‘drop dead’.

2 noviembre — pane y chicha por los muertos

The dead are allowed until midnight.

Pueblo de los muertos

In Argentina the dead are given the goods: their own miniature town with the best view in the neighbourhood, flowers galore, gossipy prayer sessions with the living, and food. On the annual ‘day of the dead’ families spread picnics on the graves including the dead one’s favourite dishes, tell stories, and celebrate their life and memory.

This year (in NZ) we lit candles one by one and wrote beside them the names of our remembered dead: grandparents, aunts and uncles, friends who died too young. I thought especially of Clare at sixteen — stroppy, funny and fiercely intelligent. She loved hockey, Latin and our pink VW, and appointed herself window cleaner when my flatmates and I moved house in her neighbourhood. The day before a bus knocked her from her bike, she bought flowers for her mother. After the funeral I was shown the tiny striped socks she’d just knitted for our new first baby. Clare was always as bracing as a tonic; just thinking of her straightens my spine…

Following the milk, Jujuy

“Congratulations!!!congratulations on the pregnancy. How many months are you?”

Gosh the dangers of mistranslation. I thought I was signing off my message to Silvia with a hug. Con un embrazo. But no, I should have said un abrazo. This is how rumours begin. However, I was flattered that she considered it a possibility for me, and a joy… (and delighted that her father’s op went well for the removal of ‘waterfalls’  from his eyes).

I am not with child but there’s certain pregnancy in the air, don’t you think? In spite of political blindness and folly , in spite of our collective dimness and selfishness, Spring is irrepressible …

‘What is all this juice and all this joy?

A strain of the earth’s sweet being…’

… and each morning, each moment, we have the chance to choose again, to make our corner a little greener, to write the stories in us, to create, to say yes, to love … to be pregnant with our own life — with our life.

Could be Canterbury? We were heading a little left of here, towards the marvellous rock faces of Mt Fitzroy. Or is it Fitz Roy?On to the Perito Moreno Glacier. Mesmerising, except that staring eyes eventually were stabbed by needles of snow.

3000 miles to the north it’s warm in Jujuy. I swam amongst demented Alsations, and Jorge cooked our dinner on the asado. Estoy muy feliz.

Work and play run together. Here’s the lunch table. Just un poco vino at this time of day…

When is a dog not on the (forbidden) sofa? Meet Pocha.

We happened upon a tango class. Lovely Alejandra (L) gave us two lessons before she and Ariel returned to Buenos Aires. In the class we met lovely Lidia (R) who happens to be a masseuse … Today she fought with the writers’ knots in our backs — and won. Tomorrow we’re going to let her have our forty digits. My first-ever mani-pedi-cure. Don’t cry for me (in) Argentina…

Okay, so the risotto looks oddly like the jellyfish I saw washed up on one of those toxic Auckland beaches the day before I came here, but it tasted fantastic (except that the mushrooms had the texture of, well, jellyfish, probably).

Talking of mushrooms, an hour up the road is the fast-growing city of Mar del Plata, filled in summer with tens of thousands of portenos — Buenos Aireans on holiday. Down at the port, sea lions sport amongst the fishing boats. They make Otago’s ‘Mum’ look like a pixie.

The next largest mammal frequenting our neck of the woods … every house has one, many two. This wag was beside itself to be petted; most are functional. They guard the house.

I walked home from lunch, half an hour along the Atlantic. Note the nor’west arch, and those are mares’ tails on the left. I thought I saw a penguin in the surf, looking to come ashore, but the sandhills are so (newly) built up, there must be many, many birds that have lost their original habitat.

I’m thinking of painting the brickwork when I get home.

Wanting soap, I held my hands under the pink thing. Waved them about. Squeezed it. Nada. Then I realised it was the soap. You wet your hands and carress it…

Go out the door of our little house and look left due west up the sandy road. La pampa begins.

Drive for an hour and a half to Ayacucha. Have a cup of coffee and wonder where everybody is.

Talking about the colour, okay? Fooksia.

I was alarmed when Elena whooped and began to scrabble up these hongos from under the pine trees. You know, the sort that turn to slime, the ones you’d tell your children not to touch. Perfecto, she says. Tomorrow’s risotto. Watch this space.

… to Pinamar four hours down the Atlantic coast.

That’s taken up the first week in Argentina. We’re doing some good work on our novel, have hired bikes which we park inside at night like two pampered ponies. I’m working my way through Spanish Pastries 1, and Calvin and Hobbes, the Spanish version, for the sake of mi languaje.

Papa! Papa! Donde guardas las pistolas?