portales

[asakiyume]

The high school volunteering I do isn't actually in a high school, it's at a special program for kids who have to amass a fair number of credits in a short period of time in order to graduate, and it's on the third floor of a downtown building. It shares space with a program for adults who never got their high school diploma, who are catching up on education and passing a high school equivalency test.

The program director had these little scenes hanging on her wall. She told me they're portales--representations of storefronts doorways (but a lot are storefronts; those are the ones I especially liked)--which are a folk craft. Hers come from Puerto Rico and Ecuador.



Here are some of them up close. If you can turn yourself small, you can go into them, and you'll find yourself in the actual place. I think. I mean, it stands to reason, right?





I said it would be fun to make those for storefronts here, and she said, "Wouldn't it! And our students would love it; they're so creative. I can't tell you how many times I've written grants for arts-related things, but we never win them."

Comments

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

YES! Maybe the main character and her favorite cousin exchanged portales, and they like to visit each other - but of course eventually things go round somehow, as they always do in stories - one of the portales is broken, or something, with one of the cousins trapped inside, and the other has to mount a rescue mission...

Gosh, this would be super cool. I don't know enough about the cultures involved to write it, but I would read it so hard.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

lifeinroseland commented below that they also make them in Venezuela--I'm thinking if they're that widespread, someone **has** to have written a story. Tell me Latin American writers wouldn't go to town with them! And if I find one, I intend to launch the full force of my rudimentary Spanish at it.