Scenes from la Cuenca de Los Angeles y otros Natural Disasters

X. Mountainess/Montañ(os)a Crónica

X Mountainess/Montañ(os)a Crónica 5 mayo 2008 Montalvo Arts Center Saratoga, Califas For Tim Miller and for Juan Carlos Galeano Islept pretty well last night, my first night here en el Montalvo Arts Center (sola), because Pierre insisted I get a friggin’ squishy, almost hongo-like memoria-foam mattress topper to improve on the bed-o’nails feel of the mattress they provide. Bueno, it helped. The repair oke, Steve, came over this morning, perceived the unlockable condición of the upstairs studio sliding-glass puerta and later—su palabra—“fiddled” with the lock un chingo y finalmente proudly announced que le echó un lubricante (?). Pero all his fiddlin’ ended up being for naught: en cuanto saqué la llave, la puerta just slid right open again. 76 77 Mountainess/Montañ(os)a Crónica El tal Steve bears more than a passing resemblance to Texan cantautor Steve Earle, BTW. Me echó un solemne discurso sobre los mountain lions (aka cougar, puma, panther)! First off, me dijo que hay que respetar a la naturaleza, and to only do what you feel comfortable doing. And to mos def not hike ALONE, and to stay near people, on marked trails, etc. Bueno, OB-vio. But today, there seems to be basically no one en los trails. A bunch of little school kiddies up on the lawns at the villa (now they’d be tasty morsels, ¿qué no?) with some officious, printfrocked , oversized, probably designer sun gafa-ed, chupamedias, Stepford-looking teachers shrieking at them, “Line, I said LINE . . . ,” as the littlies scattered erratically, shouting and squealing. Anygüey, el Steve further informed me that según él, the best way to enter the bosque (or vohquie, pace Lemebel!) is with a .457 Magnum elephant gun. After I told him I’d lived in Africa, pronunció, “Well then, I’m preachin’ to the choir.” Um, not. Pero ni modo. I took his point. Currently, he has temporarily abandoned ministrations to the writingnook door. Tendré que insistir: That is where I want to write—es como si hubiesen construido el little crow’s nest justo para mí—y no puedo, I can’t leave my (Pomona College–owned, a fin de cuentas) MacBook Pro up there if it can’t be locked! Pero he’s now fishing about en el baño, since I had the most unpleasant experience, cuando finalmente me duché esta mañana, of emerging to an entirely puddled floor. When I, siempre science-minded, como saben, turned on the ducha again—this time standing outside para observar el water flow—vi que salía un atroh spray, out of the muy flimsily put together, supposedly hand-holdable shower. QUEJA INTERRUPTA: Talk about rasquache CENTRAL! You can’t even take the handheld showerhead off and actually hold it in your hand, to luxuriate en una Euro-style ducha, pues está fixed, held fast in its tracks, by an elaborate wrap of hot pink cellophane that looks like nothing so much as a condom (el Steve estaba muy de acuerdo con mi descripción, FYI). Anygüey, it was spraying out right there, de esa especie de joint, or joist, o como coño se llame, you know, that gasketlike thingie. Bueno, a blast of agua came out all horizontal, shot past the shower curtain (or through, for all I know, it’s a dead-cheap, thin, annoyingly billowing white thing . . .), and even drenched the little IKEA-ish (por suerte es de metal) cabinet donde guardé mi makeup y mis remedios! Can you imagine? The horror, the horror! I snatched up my precious little plastic thirty-seven-cent fruit-print travel case que compré hace mil años en el Cost Plus de San Francisco (que ya—disco rallado, ya lo sé—ni siquiera existe anymore), con todas mis pahtishas, etc., and rushed it outta there to dry land. Fixate yourself que habría directamente matado al tal Steve, o a la Julie, la residency manager, if anything aquatic had happened to my remedies! Or, God forbid, to my new Nars sombras, recently purchased from Sephora in tasteful, Wiggue-like shades of sand and taupe that I thought would be just the ticket for this bucolic artist-in-residency Retrete. Apropos of . . . bueno, de nada, exactly—excepto quizás el predecible, cíclico resurgimiento de mi fijación en el Africa—creo recordar que el eye shadow...