Saturday

 

Days of the week

mostly for charm

because every day

owns  an afternoon siesta

each day it's own holiday.

 

 

March 18, 2007 (5:40pm)

TODAY'S SATURDAY JOURNAL:

peacefulness was accentuated by a trip to the city of La Paz a town on the River Rosario settled by Italians from the Piedmont area of Italy. The place had the feel of an Italian village with a certain type of stucco look with swirling looping designs and tile work. I will return with my camera for photos. I bought numerous artisan goods including some magnet designs for the refrigerator and a wonderful hand made cotton (I think) woven bag with jewels in it. I also book a book written by a local guy with poems and stories. 40 pesos for the book, 80 for the bag and 25 for three refrigerator magnets.

In La Paz, the bridge over the river built in 1902, by a Boston firm, was the first iron bridge in Uruguay. We walked across it. It was just like the bridge going to Pleasure Beach, in Bridgeport, with rickety old boards. The height towered over the River Rosario below. I imagined local people from Italy building it with their friends from Boston, all Italians. I imagined many young men stayed on after the bridge was completed. The peacefulness of the city centered around the Piazza which had many trees shaded. Two schools and two churches, a carnaceria among other buildings bordered the perimeter of the Piazza. It felt like about 1600. If no wires hung in the air, and no mopeds drove by, you could easily have been back there in time.

Before the adventure to La Paz, Grace and Juan Carlos invited us to a fantastic barbeque of ribs, steaks, chicken, breaded eggplant, a mixed vegetable salad heated in the grill oven, and then roasted by a wood fire, a cold salad, home made bread, wine, desert of fruits all cut and in a wonderful all natural juice, cognac and finally coffee. What a splendid treat! The damage to their place [from the tornado] was repaired and a glass block area by the ceiling high up on the east wall was installed and looks great. In two weeks Silvia visits.

While in La Paz, Martin sought out and found a wine guy to talk to, and he enjoyed conversing while I listened attentively, basking in the sun and enjoying the facial expressions and intensity of their voices.

Before going to the barbeque I took the old bike I worked on last week up to the horizon line for a look south towards this cottage. The lousy bike has two many problems. The seat is too low and the handle bars are too low, no brakes, it s tires are too low in air and it has a bumpy ass ride. I will use the yellow bike next week. I want to ride everyday. After my ride I hit the beach for a swim. The waters chilled a bit from all the rain and were murky with debris from Brazil hundreds of miles away. I found some interesting driftwood and I want to get some glue or cement and glue these great stones I have in a design on it.

I want to get a bunch of wild flowers and dry them for making my new books for writing. Maria Marta and Gorge start the car to leave. I read a short story about the barber from Fomento to them and they enjoyed it a lot. I enjoyed reading it to them also.

We stopped on the way from La Paz to Fomento to talk to Francis a short while but he was entertaining a woman and kept us at the gate locked. It was fine.

Now, the sun has set for awhile; the temperatures dropped a bit. Juan Carlos and Grace had an inside fire going. The heat comforted their place as it would this place too, even if just for the effect of seeing the flames glowing against the black of the metal fireplace. March 18, 2007 (6:03pm)

Some day, I have to catch up on putting my hand written poems and stories into the computer. I would like to continue with my exercise program, and maybe work the pump, as an exercising tool, maybe half an hour a day. I want to ride the bike up the hill at least twice a day and perhaps three times a day. I discovered a great looking estate not too far from here just north. I didn t go far enough to find the entrance, but I will explore that soon.

Big thing to do will be to pick wild flowers for my writing books. First for photos inside or in the sun outside but with wind blocks. Then I will dry them out for my books. I will call them cuardernos con sessions, or something like that, with numbers, or designs, taken from the flowers like dots, of the color, or maybe the whole flower, as page one, and two flowers for page two, and three flowers for page three, and then maybe petals for the larger number of pages...across the bottom, along the sides, across the top. That would add to the beauty and originality of the look and feel. I could even glue different types of grasses around the edges like a corner of each page designed with different grasses.

In the mean time, I plan to continue to collect my rocks for jewelry designs and for photo opportunities in my kitchen. I need wire and some kind of varnish, or nail polish, to clear coat them, to make them shine again.

I better start collecting wood for my fireplace fires, as I don t know if I have access to Martin s pile up there at the big house. The dampness does make it feel colder than it is here.

There s lots of drift wood up on the beach, but I have to rig up something to bring it back here by bike.