i saw the light

As I write this, sitting on a low table in Tipperary, my feet are resting on a pile of pine-fresh lumber, there is rubble all over the floor and a fine layer of dust covers everything, including the inside of my nostrils. Almost all the furniture has been removed, the wood burning stove or bucari is removed from its place in the center of the room, there is barely enough electricity coming through the wires to power the one incandescent bulb in the only lamp remaining, and yet twilight is gleaming in through a new opening in the roof. Tipperary, the house I live in, is under renovation. For the last two days, and perhaps at least another four or five, carpenters have been breaking through the old slate/lime/mud and corrugated tin sheets to install glorious translucent fiberglass sheets on part of the roof of our house. Today, sunlight streamed in through the ceiling, filling the interior with daylight. It was magnificent. You see, for the last few years, we have been living in what we un-affectionately call “the cave” because our house is dark, dank and generally depressing. What is remarkable to me about this renovation story, however, is the other improvement projects and fixes that it has initiated.
For the last two years, the shelf in the utility room has contained various un-dealt-with items from the previous tenants—empty cans of roach killer and wasp spray, broken pottery painted by a child, moldy rags, broken baskets etc. all covered in dust and cobwebs. Strangely, none of us, including me, have ever cleaned this mess, partly because we rarely go in there, but mostly because none of us really wants to deal with it.
Our kitchen is small, it has four drawers. We use one. It holds the silverware. The others contain(ed) various things left there by the previous tenant (again). Drawer number three: a half-used box of lasagna noodles, blue and pink bendy-straws and a bundle of plastic chopsticks. Drawer number two: only an empty roll of plastic wrap and a roll of tin foil that had melded to the cardboard roll. Drawer four: empty.
The towel rack in my bathroom is booby-trapped. It keeps one on his toes when attempting to hang a towel on it, because actually only two and a half screws fix it to the tile wall. My roommate Matthew likes it that way, who knows why… It is an exercise of extraordinary dexterity to balance a towel just right so that its weight does not exceed the minimalist friction with which the rusty screw clings to the plaster. Inevitably the friction fails, the rusty screw “plinks” to the floor (along with the towel) and rolls under the shelf.
I could go on, but I’ll stop. The point is, suddenly, with all this daylight streaming into the place where I have lived in darkness for two years, I am actually taking some ownership and care in the place. I cleaned off the utility room shelf, vacuumed up the dust and cobwebs, scrubbed the grime, added an electrical outlet and made a hole for the dryer outlet through the window, and placed folded towels and bed sheets on the shelf. (We used to set them on a chair in the living room “cave”.) I cleaned out the leftovers from the drawers in the kitchen and scrubbed how-many-years-of-grime from the face of the cabinets. “Did the previous lady even know how to clean??” I pounded a wood shim into the bathroom wall with glue and added two un-rusty, complete screws to the bathroom towel rack which is presently and successfully supporting two clean, folded towels. Matthew will be so disappointed when he gets back next week.
The remaining lumber on which my feet are resting is for skylight #2 in the darkest part of our “cave”. Who knows what inspiration that will bring…

entering the wide world

finally! i have been longing to do this for some time. this morning, i fought through the seemingly insurmountable jungle that is creating a blog. now that it is created, my hope is to give a clearer picture through words of the ordinary, beautiful, strange and difficult things i experience while living abroad. these postings should fill in the gaps of my monthly updates via email.