Isla Negra: An Addendum

I wanted to post a few photos of Isla Negra where Pablo Neruda's main home was. I'll just write a few quick tidbits too. I leave Chile in the morning and I have had a great time here. I will be back for a quick night in march in order to fly to Lima, but this is pretty much it. I look forward to the day that I can come back and do some more exploration of the south of the country; Chilean Patagonia. It is beautiful there.

There is a perception amongst North Americans, and presumably people from the other continents too, that the people of South America are all one homogenous mass of people, all sharing the same cultures, histories and ideas. That a Mexican and an Argentinian are interchangable in a story or joke. This is, of course, ridiculous, but it is indeed a widespread misconception. I have been really interested in the multitude of differences I have observed in between the countries that I have stayed in, and Chile, has been an interesting observation in that area. Seperated from Argentina by only the Andes, (I know they are big) it is amazing how different they are from their neighbors. Chileans don't tend to pronounce the letters 'd' and 's' in many words. There are times when the word demands it, but normally they don't. Entonces, is pronounced without the 's', confirmado is pronounced confirmao. It almost sounds portugese at times. They have a shit-ton of slang and those words are funny to hear and fun to put into action. 'Cachai' means, 'ya get it?' or 'ya heard me?'-as they say in New Orleans. Instead of como está?, they say como estai?...which means the same but sounds Italian. A cute girl is a mina, a handsome young man is a lolo, a girlfriend is a polola and an ugly face is a cara de poto. (literally face of ass.) Nice. In all of South America, one's age and size play frequently into what they are called. For instance, gordito or gordita means little fattie, which sounds harsh to us, but here it doesn't tend to have a mean connotation. (It can) It is more a term of endearment. Weight is an issue here, and certainly self image is too, but it isn't as touchy a thing to talk about as it is in the US. I am often called flaco or flaquito due to my accidental diet as a traveller. (Thin guy.) I also get called joven a lot. Or chico. Those are words that describe a young man, joven is literally 'young man'. These are words for people who are in between young and old. Lolo/lola and mino/mina are for the younger ones, and then you get into viejo and hombre mayor on the other end. As I mentioned before, the young ones remind me a lot of the American youth. More off the leash than in Argentina. I know I am not one to give much fashion commentary, but the haircuts that the young dudes have here are atrocious!! Many have straight black hair and slick it forward on the top and then spike it straight up at the back. These people are refered to as 'Pokemons'. No joke. Usually they have a long shoot of hair running down the back too, in memory of the lamentably rejuvenated 'rat tail'. Remember that fuckin' thing? Why in the duece would you want that? On that note, you actually see a lot of straight up 'rat tails' too. I figure that somehow it is a 'geek chic' sorta thing but it really does look bad and I am glad that we don't do this at home. (I really should not be talking though, I currently am sporting a look similar to Don Mattingly in the eighties...minus the mustache of course, but yeah, sorta like an 80's ball player. Oof.)

Youth crime is a phenomenon here. You can watch these little bastards at work at the parks and bus stations. A lot of times these folks are called 'flaites'. They are the equivalent of our wannbe white boy rappers. Here, rap is popular, but Reggaeton is HUGE!!! So these guys wear the bling in the style of the reggaeton artists. I was waiting for my bus the other day and I watched a loosely affiliated group of five little punk ass bitches scoping for victims. They are good too. Having been gotten once myself, I pay a lot closer attention now and I wanna let them steal a backpack full of skin-eating bacteria or something just to get them back. Ha ha! That's mean, and I am joking. I know that a big part of crime in South America is necesity, but these guys don't need to do it, it's just something that makes them 'men'. (In all the world it seems that one of the most dangerous things, currently and historically, is young men trying to act like 'men'. All the most horrible genocides who were orchestrated by old and smart/twisted men, were carried out on the day to day by impressionable young men trying to make their presence known as 'men'. Gangs in all parts are filled with boys in this stage. Armies, bands of thieves, juvenile detention centers etc. This concept is unrelated, but that's never stopped me before!! Ha ha! I'm stopping.)

Chileans love hotdogs. They have entire restaurants devoted to the sole production of them. They don't really eat much pasta, and the meat tends to be imported. They have a wonderful heartland full of produce, and that is all great. I will greatly miss the 'nectars' here. Passionfruit, strawberry, peach, apricot and kiwi being among my faves. A brand called Watts. I have been known to drink a liter and a half of peach nectar in one day! Take that! Ha heh! The beer is average, the coca cola is the same as anywhere else. I did hear it called something funny here though, "The black milk of capitalism", and "The dark milk of imperialism". Good ones. One guy was explaining to me that we know not to drink black water from birth. A baby will not drink bitter black water, he spits it out. But we have been conditioned through marketing to like it and crave it...it has made us its consumer. In the form of Coke. Make what you will of that, but it tells you a little about the mentality.

On the subject of corporate world domination or globalization or whatever you want to call it. I have a confession to make. I got to the point where I couldn't face another hotdot restaurant and the other choices looked gloomy so I caved in and bought a Whopper!! Yep, I did. I did it, and I except whatever stones shall be thrown later on. My future presidential candidacy will be in ruins. But here is the good part. I walked in there and there were a bunch of elderly people from Middle America in line ahead of me. I don't know where, but somewhere like Nebraska or Kansas. They were on an organized tour, enjoying Chile. The thing is, I am not sure that they knew where they were! I am sure that they knew. But I am not sure that anyone told them that here in Chile, the people speak a funny little language called "spanish". Maybe you've heard of it? I don't know. I had. But then again, I'm a young guy, and a "goddamn liberal"!! We "goddamn liberals" know that other countries have other languages! Ain't it strange. Something about God's children and the Tower of Babel. I thought those bible beaters would remember that story, seeing as it clearly is the reason that the world has different langauges and some real big problems communicating with each other. Well, obviously this "goddamn liberal" must have missed the George Bush bullshit spewing session(read: speech) where he issued the law stating that: "the world, from this moment forth, will only speak english." The language of God and the Baby Jesus. (What did God and the Baby Jesus speak before somebody came up with English? Conspiracy theories abound!) I must have had my head turned or something. Or maybe I was confused in that moment 'cause here I was, tryin' ta speak a funny little language called "spanish". My bad. Anyway, (I had to unload a little bit because these people were without shame!) these tall, lurky old men were yelling directly into the sweet faces of the young spanish speaking (!!!) counter-help in accented and colloquialism-ridden Midwest American english. It was incredible. I won't go into what they were saying, but they were so rude and impatient, I ended up wanting to bury my face in my hands to weep from embarrassment. I ended up doing a little bit of translating that made things go faster, but their order was a 'special order' in addition to being so poorly spoken, that it still took forever. I felt a little better when I asked this old guy, "hey, you do realize that in Chile they speak spanish right?" And no joking around here, he looked me in the eye and said, "Aw, they can all understand ya anyway, it's jist sometimes they don't want you to know." Wow. I could really dig into a thing like that. But you can probably imagine what I would say, so I'm not gonna. Plus, I do have respect for my elders, but come on!!! This is why they fucking hate us everywhere in the world! This is that imperialism thing we keep hearing about and pretending to deny. This is why they have paintings of the Statue of Liberty holding an armful of nuclear bombs on a normal old sidewalk on any old street in any city outside of America. But anyway, after unburying myself from my cultural verguenza, I had a whopper and it wasn't really that good. I mean, less good than average. I'm not sure what I expected. I did get a good blast of state dependent memory of many a road trip, swinging through the drive through and then getting back on the highway. That, and some entertainment from the people from my own country who still think we are in Iraq to fight for the freedom of the American Homeland. Ha ha! It's quite a world this world.

So yeah, this was again supposed to be short, but given that I don't have much opportunity to speak any english, I guess I have an easier time writing a lot in The Only Language In The World!!! Just havin' fun. Don't get all mad. So to sum up, I will miss these Chileans and their funny omittance of letters. I will miss the nectar and God knows I'll miss the wafers. It is a cool country, and I look forward to making it back someday. Chau!

Noisy Aromas, Broken Glass Streets, And Hearts Still Beating Amongst The Rubble...

Valparaiso, in Spanish, has a meaning that contradicts its current state of being. El Paraiso is one of their words for heaven, and Val, is a contraction of va and el, meaning 'to go' or 'going to heaven'. The city has a long history as one of the most important ports in the whole of the continent. It has been looted and sacked and raided and burned enough times that I am sympathetic to its state in this moment. Each time something horrible happened to it, it was rebuilt and reinhabited, only to be trashed again later on down the line. In the early part of the 1900's it was leveled by a massive earthquake. So much has happened there in the last few hundred years it is understandable that it isn't in the best of shape, but still, this crumbling condition did take me a little bit by surprise. When I first got off the bus, and walked out into the craziness of the street, I was invigorated by the energy, but this enthusiasm was quickly curbed by the sights and smells of the district that I was in on the north side of the town. I got to my hostel with a minimal amount of hassle, but I left soon after to find some food and my subsequent walk around woke me up to how things are there. My initial impression of the noise and smell was reminiscent of Asia. Like a stinky market in a backwater part of Bangkok or Phnom Penh. These streets were permanently stained with all manner of muck and debris and the air was ripe with the smell of rotten things. Being a port, you expect the smell of fish, but this was something really, really intense. I strolled through the stalls of produce and meat and fish and other random things, all sitting in the open sun of the early afternoon. People yelled in all directions in some language particular to the market. I ducked in and out of a few sketchy restaurants and found, after quite a stroll, a good place to eat. That was the best place I found actually. With all the market action I assume that most people were doing their eating at home.

The streets of Valparaiso have a certain menace to them. The people have a worn down gait and their faces are less taken care of than in Santiago and other places I've seen here in Chile. There is graffiti everywhere, there are people laying in the filthy street gutters with their eyes diverted, letting long abused cardboard signs do the begging for them. The buildings have an interesting look to them, architecturally speaking, despite the smeared seaside grime that coats them. As you look back across the city you see it's initial visual appeal. It pulls up and away from the bay and the colored houses hug the contours of many of the hills that roll along the coast. Under a bright blue sky, the red and yellow and blue of the houses glow from a distance and make it seem a much happier place than the streets would imply.

The place could be described as noise and aroma. Loud noise and stank aroma. If the implied name of 'heaven' had to be invoked, then it could be considered to be the 'heaven of the downtrodden' or the 'grim paradise of the grizzled'. For sure it could be acknowledged as a disagreeable tourist destination...but I ended up seeing it as more than that. I spent a few days walking around in the winding streets filled with dogs and beggars and garbage and broken glass, and I think I got a taste of why it is an inspiration to people. As I mentioned before, Pablo Neruda had a house built there, in the heights above the chaos, and I was interested in why he decided to station himself there to write. What I began to recognize was, that built in amongst this gnarliness were a million little stories in every passing moment. And these are the kind of stories that bring us to emotion, sometimes strong emotion. Stories of pain and loss and things not working out. Stories of the roughness of difficult love in the gritty real world...far from the glitz of any generation's glamour centers...it is a living ruin of a history that is strong and proud. I can imagine Pablo walking the morning streets, eating empanadas and berlines and taking in the vertigo that swirled around him. I can imagine an artist walking through the bustle, watching the actions and faces of the denizens before returning to a room with a paintbrush and an easel, a pen and a notebook or a guitar and a pick. I was inspired in many unexpected ways while doing this same camino. I only wish I had my guitar present to do something with it all.

On the first afternoon I was there I walked to one of the fifteen or so ascensores (slanted elevators) that have been built to bring people from the lower, sea level part of the city to the upper more residential parts and vice versa. These are seemingly ancient contraptions of wood and steel that crackle and groan as they haul you up an incline on an old metal track. No matter how dangerous these things would seem to a New Worlder, they are certainly a point of interest, and they have worked without incident for the whole of their lives. I got out at the top of what was almost a sheer bluff and was immediately confronted by the first growling mutt of a dog of the day. I skirted this grumpy little bastard and walked further up the winding hills. I was at this point up amongst the colored houses and it was really neat to see the people living inside and out in front of these quiet residences. The racket of the city could still be heard down below, but it was a din in the distance and here the slow summer afternoon seemed to be passed more enjoyably. Not that there wasn't broken glass and pungent odors to be found here as well. There were. But I ended up really liking the day that I had walking around up there.

The next morning I walked out of the hostel into the chilled morning fog of the city. It was cold, the first time I needed my jacket since Antarctica. I went up to La Sebastiana, which is the old Neruda residence of Valparaiso. The property can be explored without a guide, the only of his three houses that operates in this way, and it consists of the house itself and then an art gallery that displays different pieces of Neruda-inspired art. The display I saw was rad, a 1960 collaboration between Neruda and his good friend Pablo Picasso! It was inspired by a long poem that Neruda had written about the civil war in Spain called "Toro". The paintings were classic Picasso from the 'bull' period and you could tell that he was inspired while he painted. From there I walked through the narrow halls and rooms that made up his house. As I talked about before, Neruda was a great collector and this house was full of things made by hand from all over the globe. The collections there and in Santiago would be small in comparison to the collection that he had in his Isla Negra home, which I would visit the next day. The Valparaiso home was set more or less central on the tall hills behind the port's heart, and from his large windows one could see across almost all of the sprawl. The steeples of the churches, the scattered colors of the houses, the ships moving in the busy bay and the clouds that seamlessly slide across the sky. It was impressive. His house seemed magically quiet, the grounds filled with palm trees and all sorts of plants and flowers. Much stonework had been done and it had a distinctly old world feel despite the degree of modernity it possessed. I spent the rest of the day meandering the gnarled streets and watching those faces of the people. One moment that left an impression was when I came to a lookout point over the old part of the city and drifting up from the depths of the streets below was the sad, gypsy sound of a sitar being played. It made the place sound haunted and I could feel a better connection to the slowly pulsing heart of the place while I listened and watched the boats and cars and humans passing. I found my way down a maze of steps and after some hunting, I located the player. A long haired bohemian looking man with very light skin. He had his eyes downcast and even in between songs he wouldn't look at anyone. I put some money in his case and he looked up. I smiled and his face registered nothing. It was as stone and weathered as the street he was sitting on. Our eyes were locked for a split second, but I could sense the loss and lack of his life and again I came closer to understanding the city itself.

Yesterday I got up early and headed down to Isla Negra on the bus. It is a little over a hour down the coast from Valparaiso and has a distinctly different feel. I was expecting a somewhat touristy feel, owing to the fact that it is the largest and most important of Neruda's houses, and while there was a little of this sort of vibe, it was a lot less than expected. I ate a huge fried cheese empanada and then strolled down through the fragrant seaside forest to his house on the rocks. Let me just tell ya that this place is amazing! I am totally inspired! It is once again built in the form of an old boat body, and it is just full, I mean FULL, of things that he collected from all over the place. There is a giant collection of ships in bottles, butterflies carefully pinned in cases, wooden siren women from the front of ships, paintings, sculptures, seashells, carvings, masks, stones, and many, many more things. I marvelled at the variety of these things and wished that I had a better way of getting stuff back home from places far away!! (More money is the answer to that one...guess I shoulda been a lawyer of something.) Neruda is buried with his third wife, Matilde, in the yard between the house and the crashing waves of the Pacific Ocean, just a few feet from the house. After checking out the memorial, I headed to the beach for another empanada. The waves there are giant and crash with the roar of a blue-gray explosion. I enjoyed this maritime rythme for a while and then headed back to the city to the north.

This morning I bussed back to Santiago, where I sit at this moment. It is a short stopover this time, as I will be departing in the morning to meet up with a buddy back across the Cordillera in Mendoza. I was not sad to leave Valparaiso, as I was when I left Cusco and Buenos Aires, but I did feel glad to have gone there. It really isn't much like San Francisco, (they call it 'Little San Francisco') except for that it is built on hills and is full of people and history. But that is ok. I am glad that it doesn't try for that name. It has it's own identity and that is a good thing, no matter how run down that identity may seem to those of us who come from the outside. I am still not sure about the 'cultural capital' moniker that the place holds. I think if I were to have a 'cultural capital' in my country, I would do a little bit of something to make it appeal to the people who come there with the expecations that such a name may give birth to. I always try to travel without pretense, to arrive to a place open to what it may be like. It is egotistical, really, to hope that a place will be what you want it to be. I guess it's why the wisemen say, "Expectation is the root of disappointment." (Expectation does have a habit of seeping in though, I wouldn't deny that.)

Maybe I wouldn't recommend this place to just any traveller; maybe it would be the kind of place that a person could enjoy, but in a not-so-traditional kind of sense for a tourist. It did make a strange sort of mark on me. In my mind, in my imagination, and in a sort of sadness in my heart. It may sound sort of cheesy to say that, but when one has witnessed that certain kind of melancholy in the world, one can recognize it anywhere, especially in Valparaiso.

Roncadores, Jettin' Ta Valpo, And A Little Dose Of Fyodor...

I have now moved out of my host family's house and am back in the world of hotel and hostel living. The one I am in here is pretty freakin' cool, actually. It is in this really old building in Paris-Londres in the central part of Santiago and the whole place looks like something out of a movie. Super elaborately decorated and very wooden and squeeky. The guy who runs it is a very nice chap, and the fact that it is affordable seems incredible to old Matteo.

We(the family)had some funny stuff go down at the house I was staying in; seemingly every night something happened that made sleeping well tough. The night of the eclipse there was a party in the street. You can hear almost everything that happens in the four residences around the courtyard I mentioned before. There is a blind lady who lives across the courtyard and she has a clock that announces the hour, every hour, in a loud and stern sounding digital voice. It is a 24 hour clock and it is funny because it is set backwards so that the nighttime times are actually the daytime ones. You'll be sleeping and you'll hear, "It's 14:23 in the afternoon..." And you roll over and go "Huh?" A real knee-slapper. I suppose it doesn't really matter when you don't need light. Then the best one was this homeless feller would sleep just outside the hedge to our house, and he would snore so incredibly loud. Rattle the furniture loud. Kety, the mom of the house, actually hooked up a hose on the third day and went out and used it on the poor bastard that night!! You feel bad for the guy, but snoring sucks. It reminded me of the common plight of the non-snoring hosteller. I am such a person, and the phenomenon is truly a universal one. Doesn't matter where you are in the world, there is always some loud snoring bastard making life tough for you. Over the years I have built up a repertoire of tactics and techniques to protect my sleep from such nocturnal troublemakers, but still to this day, I am amazed, sometimes shocked, and always quietly annoyed by these folks shenanigans. In a hostel room of four people, you might be lucky enough to not have a snorer. But in a room of eight, you most certainly will have at least one. Sometimes two, and if God really hates you, three. If you are in a room of twelve or more, you can forget about sleeping well. Unless you have weapons-grade earplugs and/or enough sedative-type drugs to put yourself in a land far, far away. For some reason, snoring is very agitating for your buddy Matteo del Norte. He gets sorta chaffed when he lays there wide-eyed in the dark listening to some rumbling bastard get the sleep of his lifetime. What is really funny is when no one can sleep except for the snoring person. I call these guys Roncers, because the spanish verb (which is great) for snoring is Roncar, and a snorer is a roncador. One night, a while back, I was laying there in a similar situation in some random hostel, and a fellow 'awake person' turned on a headlamp to do some reading since he couldn't sleep either. I took advantage of his light, and there in the dim and rattling dorm room, I composed a poem for all snorers everywhere, I'd like to reveal it for the first time here, under the title, "Ode To The Snoring Kind". Any implied violence is serious in every way!! Ha ha ha! Just kidding.

ODE TO THE SNORING KIND

We watch you stomp into the room,
We realize that our sleep is doomed...
Your stomach size, your barrel chest,
We understand we've not been blessed...
Your eyes are closed, your sounds ensue,
Our grimmest dreams are coming true...
Your breathing slows, you set the tone,
We miss dreamland, your there alone...
You only sleep upon your back,
We'd like to give your face a smack...
You keep the whole damn room awake,
We'd like to drown you in a lake...
You grunt and groan but still you snore,
We wish you'd roll and hit the floor...
And while we listen to you sleep,
We'd like to put you six feet deep...
Between your roars you wheez a sigh,
We just wish that you'd choke and die...
Your rattle shakes the cieling beam,
Your silent death, our waking dream...
When daylight shows, the light of dawn,
We leave our beds but you drone on...
Our heads like lead and full of woes,
While you still whistle through your nose...
We've got no sleep and pity is,
We hate our lives and he loves his...
And the worst part, we have to say,
You've slept so well, and enjoy your day...

Well, I hope you liked it...And by the way, nothing personal against you fine people who snore, I happen to know some really good humans who snore. It's just at night it is harder to see these good qualities!! Ha ha! I am just playing around with all this. It is annoying though. I am a sponser of weapons-grade earplugs.

This will be a shorter blog to compensate for the last one, which I think may have set the record at this point. I am at a really crappy cybercafe, but on sunday, beggars can't be you know whats. So the keypad only sort of works and at times the space bar gets stuck and goes scooting across the screen. If I am not watching when this happens it can cover a lot of ground. The thing that I like here at this place is that the old man behind the counter is spinning some gangster rap! Again, go figure. Tomorrow I will be heading to Valparaiso where there is a music festival going on, among other things. It was an important port city for many years and was known among sailors as 'Little San Francisco'. I am excited to see it. It is also now considered the cultural capital of Chile. So we shall see.

The other thing that I want to quickly reference is something interesting that I have been thinking about in the past weeks. Here in Chile the society is experiencing a generation of youth that is quite similar to ours. That is to say, raised without much of a family influence, a lot of TV and violent video gaming, not a lot of positive future thought, and with a heavy emphasis on consuming. A lot of black clothes and dyed hair, underage drugs, alcohol and easy sex, low self esteem, lack of respect for elders and others and an ever existing desire for 'satisfaction'. (Think Mick Jagger) I have nothing against this style of life really, having partook in an albiet earlier version of it. But it is also easy to see the changes that have taken place in the few short years since I was wearing black and screaming into microphones. These changes are significant, and worrisome to those with fingers on the pulse. And this is another societal symptom that contributes to the system of discontent in our America, and more and more in 'modernized' countries all around the world. Like Chile. My teachers and family here have talked a lot about these societal factors and the way that the post-Pinochet youth have embraced a bleak view with little hope for the future outside of consumerism. This is a huge topic, and I am going to keep it brief. Say a few things and then let it go for the moment.

So I was reading some Dostoyevsky and I swear to The Baby Jesus that this guy was one of the greatest geniuses of all time. You read his writing from the mid 1800's and he could be talking about human psychology right this minute. Granted, in terms of his epoch, but the underlying truth is still the same, as it always will be. So just about everything he writes could be applied to the situations and persons around any one of us, and he is particularly unnerving when you realize that he has entered into your cranium and is describing your very own psyche. Other times, he just says shit that you go, "yeah, that's just it!" Often it is some sort of manifestation of behavior or thought. So thinking about the Chile/US teenage bleakness, this passage, and a few others that I didn't include because I think you'll get the point from this one (and it takes a long time to copy it), struck me as being dead-on in a certain fashion. Granted, much of what he is talking about would go on to be known as existentialism, and so this passage and the others, have an exaggerated sense of gravity. Though not at all out of proportion with true life, just slightly differently, applied to each case. This is a passage from a short story that I like a lot, it is called The Dream Of A Ridiculous Man and can be found in The Eternal Husband, a collection of short stories. Not what I would recommend as essential or first time Fyodor reading, but interesting nevertheless, the passage is beginning to explain the reason a certain character has taken it into his head to kill himself. I think if you think in terms of the school shooters and almost school shooters and to varying degrees, lots of other 'lost youth' in our country, this is on the money. It is as follows:

"Maybe because a dreadful anguish was growing in my soul over one circumstance which was infinitely higher than the whole of me: namely -the conviction was overtaking me that everywhere in the world it made no difference. I had had a presentiment of this for a very long time, but the full conviction came during the last year somehow suddenly. I suddenly felt that it would make no difference to me whether the world existed or there was nothing anywhere. I began to feel and know with my whole being that with me there was nothing. At first I kept thinking that instead there had been a lot before, but then I realized that there had been nothing before either, it only seemed so for some reason. Little by little I became convinced that there would never be anything. Then I suddenly stopped being angry with people and began almost not to notice them. Indeed, this was manifest even in the smallest trifles: it would happen, for instance, that I'd walk down the street and bump into people. It wasn't really because I was lost in thought: what could I have been thinking about, I had completely ceased to think then: it made no difference to me. And I would have been fine if I had resolved questions -oh, I never resolved a single one, and there where so many! But it began to make no difference to me, and the questions all went away."

So you take this as a basis for thought, perception of surroundings and behavior, and add into it our very own brand of modernised boredom and instant gratification addiction, and you're asking for some wierd shit to start happening. I have an easy time in asserting that this wierd shit has indeed already began to happen...in the circus side show we call America. I bet most people would be annoyed just by my bringing this up. It isn't really fun to think about for the average Joe. It isn't a feel good type of thing. It would be funner to just tune it out. But for those of you who do enjoy bouncing these ideas around, let me know what your experiences have been in this realm of observation. On that front, we have to live in the best people watching country in the world!! Ha ha ha! You might be sitting there drinking a coffee on a bench and all the sudden be lucky enough to see someone get shot! Hey! Cool!

So I'll post again in a few days about what happens in Valparaiso. March is going to be a busy and very social month so I am sure that the adventure gauge will be set to high. That's my favorite setting! Take 'er easy, M

(What I would recommend as first time Dostoyevsky reading is either 'The Idiot' or 'Crime and Punishment'. Be warned though, they are heavy reads, and require some attention and thought. It isn't Stephen King.)

Root Beer Shortage, Trying To Find A 'Specialist', and Another Diatribe About Corrupted Modernity... (That You May Not Really Like...)

I have to begin this one by saying that I have hit a strange sort of wall in my journey and am all the sudden really feeling the lack of Root Beer!!! Gawd Dammit I really want a Root Beer!! Supercold and frothy...I mentioned this to a friend from the states a couple days ago and she said, "Yeah, or like a root beer float!" and I almost passed out right there. If I could eat a root beer float right now I could die right after and be that happiest dead person ever!! Heavenly brown and frothy liquid...shimmering in the distance...on the horizons of the future and in the recesses of the past...Root Beer, why'd you leave me?!? I guess technically I left you, but still, dammit, where are ya when I need ya!?! I'm in a sad state, a bad way...the only thing keeping me going is my newly discovered wafer addiction!! The wafers here are intriguingly splendid! Travel really is pretty romantic, can't ya tell?

I am almost done with school here in Santiago and it once again blows me away how fast the time motors by. I will be back in Paris-Londres for the weekend in the center of the city, and then monday I head to the coast with the quest of exploring more Neruda territory. I regularly employ the Steinbeckian theory of vacilar, I may have written about this before in a blog...I can't remember, and in the spirit of your grandpa and his habit of telling the same stories over and over again, I proceed...vacilar is a verb in spanish that implies choice and incertainty. So Steinbeck would pick something, like a place or a random item that he wanted to find, and head off in search of it. The thing about it is that the place or thing is not really important. It doesn't matter if you find it today, or in a hundred years, or ever...it represents a direction that you are more or less headed, but the point of the act is the adventures you have on the trail in between...that's to say, there's a point on the horizon and you head indirectly towards it, going which ever way the wind blows you in the meanwhile. If you ever have the free time to try this, it really is a healthy and enjoyable thing to do. You'd be amazed the things that come to pass while vacilating this way and that....sounds kinda dirty doesn't it? Ha ha!! So yeah, the only thing I really have to do in Valparaiso is go to the house of Neruda...but I know that adventure will find me in the process and I look forward to that without a doubt. I'll now segway into the forthcoming rant with this: For us Norteamericanos it can be tough to really embrace the concept of vacilar. It flies in the face of all our training in life and business...leave without plan or direction, heading towards something that may or may not matter, to be a leaf in the wind with no real attachment to time or distance...yeah, how practical is that??? Most people I know would consider this a complete waste of time! What about your career? But I swear to you that some of the most important things that have ever happened to me have happened in these blessed periods...I have found that most of the time, the most important things in life defy our contemporary logic...and for that I am thankful because I was not designed, built or programmed for logical operation!! Ha ha! Y estoy agradecido por eso!!!

So, I gotta just vent for a second about something. This is something that I think you can all relate to. Something that is really, really, incredibly annoying in our country. It is reflective of some of what I would refer to as our 'collective insanity' as Americans...the story goes something like this:

I have a bank account with Bank Of America in San Francisco. I actually have two, and only two, accounts there; a CD and a checking account. While travelling, at times, I need to move money from the CD (which obviously gets much better interest, so that is where the gradually decreasing bulk of my dough has been kept) to the checking account, where I can get at it from an ATM. Well, as you might imagine, there aren't any Bank Of America branches in South America so I need to occasionally make contact with my bank to make the switch. You can't do this online, because they are protecting your security...so they offer a rainbow assortment of '800' numbers for you to call to get this done. The thing is, frequently, when trying to call the US from abroad, you can't dail an '800' number. I used to have what they call a 'Personal Banking Specialist', whatever the hell that means, but she effectively bailed on me last fall and I have been swimming in a sea of international banking frustration ever since.

Ok, so I get on the website and find the one non-'800' number to call. It is for lost or stolen cards. This isn't my problem, but I figure maybe they can give me a non-'800' number for the CD department that I can call. It turns out that they can't give that number out for 'security reasons'(?). But they do give me an international number for customer service, then they transfer me there. I have to pay quite a bit for these calls from the locutorios (phone booth stores), so the being-on-hold makes me extra nuts. I wait through about fifteen minutes of alternating patches of classical music and mechanical voices telling me how much my business means to them and how a 'Personalized Specialist' will be with me shortly. This is all bullshit and I happily tell the machine this. (This is last thursday, by the way, which will become important info later in the story.) Finally this nice lady answers and I explain my deal and she says that she'll transfer me to the right place. Well, after some more fantastic minutes on hold, a sort of dumb sounding guy answers and I again explain my sitch in full and he tells me that he needs to transfer me again to the CD department...I say that I thought that this was the CD department, he reminds me that it isn't. So back on hold I go...this is about 45 minutes in...and after about 5 minutes on hold, a mechanical voice suddenly tells me that my call could not be processed at this time, and that I should call the '800' number again later!!! And then it hangs up on me. Little mechanical bastard hangs up on me!!! After 50 minutes!! Ok, you say, that isn't terrible...well I called back and the same thing happened again! With a different series of operators of course, but with the same outcome. After almost an hour and a half in the booth, I stand up and stretch and go to pay. A lot. I give up for thursday. I go back friday, feeling fresh and ready to spend some more happy-time in the booth. I bring a book. I call, I wait, I get hung up on. (Yes, I did tell everyone I talked to that I was getting hung up on. They all thought it was strange. On this we agreed.) I try one more time on friday, and a machine ends up telling me that they are now closed for the day and, in fact, will be closed on monday too, because y'all have some sort of holiday up there. I say fark it and go slam a beer.

So on tuesday, I buy a telephone card, which is cheaper than the booths, and make another try. Once again I explain everything very calmly and politely, and of course by now, thoroughly, with each and every person I speak to. And once again, I get hung up on in the final stretches...during the wait for a CD 'Specialist'. (What the hell is that supposed to mean?!?!) By now I am seeing red, as they say, and ready to hop around in circles, bashing myself in the forehead with a ballpeen hammer. I call back one more time, with more determine than ever. I start asking each of them for their full names. I write these down and hope that my asking for this info will make these Phone People somehow give a fraction of a shit about getting me connected with the hallowed 'Specialists' in the faroff and well guarded land of Deposit Certificates. The Phone People are all very careful this time, especially in dailing the right extension numbers for me. Even though I get transferred to the wrong place a total of three times and was on the phone for almost sixty straight minutes, I was not cut off! Finally, I break through the force field that surrounds the CD Realm and I am talking to a real, live 'Specialist'! Turns out that this first 'Specialist', we will call her Ivory, is not so special. That is because she is only 'authorized' (WTF...) to handle accounts outside of California (WTF!!!) She is going to have to transfer me to a 'Specialist' who handles California. Cuz I'm in that jurisdiction. "Whoa whoa whoa Ivory!!!" I cry, beads of sweat standing out on my furrowed brow, my hands clenched in balls of desperation. "Don't do it!!!" She doesn't understand my emotion. I explain. She agrees that that is indeed 'too bad'. She says she thinks she might have an associate who can help me, and puts the phone down and goes off to look. For fifteen minutes I listen to the tapping of keypads and the sluggish sounds of distant office banter. Finally she comes back and says she found someone who can access the sacred accounts of a place called Cali. This lady actually gets the job done, and it's a good thing too because I was, at that point, explaining to each and every one of these Phone People that you can get better service at banks in the third world...and, in fact, you do. The funny part of it, is that all they have to do is punch a couple of things into the computer and it's done. It's a process that takes 45 seconds to complete. Wow, quite a thing. All in, it took about four hours of hold time, upwards of 16 operators in at least five states, about 35 dollars in long distance fees, an incredible amount of patience and an uncalculable quantity of minutes off the end of my life. (From frustration, of course!) Almost took a lot longer off my life because I was about ready to do myself in right there in the living room towards the end of that last call!!! What the duece!?

Ok, breathe for a minute...ya, good. I was thinking about this a little bit, and it strikes me as something important, even if it is something completely common in our fine new world. You look around you in the US, and you see so many people who are chronically frustrated with things. Their lives, their jobs, the people around them or the things around them. And this is important to notice because people always wonder why we have so many problems despite being 'the most advanced country in the world'. (Imagine this line spoken from a megaphone, in a really deep and commanding, movie-type of voice.) And please note going in that I realize that the causes of these problems and various 'discontents' are wide-ranging and not easily capsulated...I am approaching only one of which right now. And the cause is that we have the notion that things are supposed to work, but in reality, they only sort of work. This is a two pronged problem in this case. The first prong is that the machine or system or program is supposed to do all these fine things; it is supposed to make your life easier. (It is advertised in this manner, it is guaranteed for life, it is sold so enthusiastically!) But it turns out that it only does these things part of the time. Of course they generally can work, but you find yourself needing to fix these things a lot. You realize that you don't know how to fix them, and you have to call tech support, where they leave you on hold for a half an hour and then the 'Specialist' that you have been waiting for throughout your lunch hour, is not 'specialized' in the area that you need help with. In the end, it takes more time figuring these things out than the device or system that you have was designed to save for you, and that is indeed frustrating. But that is only the half of it. The part that is even worse, is that when one of these machines doesn't do its job, there is no one to tell about! No one to go to. No one who represents culpability... If the computer fucks up and erases the work you have been saving for three years, who are you gonna tell? Who will give a shit? The computer? If only. The tech support may give you the standard "aw, that's too bad..." but what does that do besides make it worse? In the case of the bank phoneline, my Chilean mom said I should write an email to someone about it...to who? Who is going to care that a cook with a few pennies spread between a couple of their accounts is having problems transferring them over the phone? The operators? No. The managers? Are you kidding? The bosses? (Whoever the duece they are...) No. Then who? The machine you leave the message on? The Inbox that houses the email? Yeah right. There is no outlet in this system. You realize that in this Shiny Modern World it really doesn't matter if this stuff doesn't work. What are you going to do? Sue them? File a complaint or a lawsuit? No. It's too small an issue for that. So there is this double futility that the average person feels from these things. We have an expectation of things that should tend to work, but in reality they don't always. Think about the 'Casino' re-enactment scene in Office Space...it's what you'd like to do.

"Well, Matt, these things work most of the time, and such is the nature of things, sometimes they stop working."

Yes, of course, but that is not what the marketed expectation is...that is not understood in the random seeming 'behavior' of a failing machine...that is not the way the average person thinks about these machines...that is one of the dark sides of technology and it's percieved role in our current world. So you get frustrated. You want to do something about it. Then you are funneled into an automated system of voice responsive machines and computer voices that don't really help you at all... and it is all in the name of progress...they tell you that we are making progress. This is progress.

Alan Watts once wrote that with every solution (to one functional problem or another) that we come up with, we create twenty new problems. (Twenty is an arbitrary number...it would obviously depend on the situation.) His example is cars. We came up with cars so that we could better move around. So that we wouldn't have to worry about the fickleness of horses or -god forbid- walk. And so that we could travel longer distances in less time. Get places faster, etc...you get it. But then think of the infrastructure needed to support cars. All the sudden you need; roads and pavement and road maintenance and gas and gas stations and oil and oil wells and overseas investments and wars for 'foreign interests' and occupation for drilling rights and cops and tickets and courts for violators and secretaries who keep records of the violators and licenses and license bureaus and licence records and (thanks to satan) DMV's and cranky counter workers at DMV's and airbags and shocks and struts and every little thing that is underneath the hood of the car and car commercials and used car salesmen and mudflaps with naked girls on them and windshield wipers and wiper spray that doesn't streak and jesus friggin' christ!!! All sorts of other things too. Vertigo vertigo vertigo!!! All having to do with solving this one fundamental problem. Now consider all the branches on this vast tree, and all the individual problems that each little bud on each little branch has and needs to be dealt with, and then try to make it all mechanical and digital...take all the human interaction out of it and tell everybody that this is going to function even better than ever and you end up with a world of frustration!! And frustrated people. People shooting up classrooms every couple of months, people killing each other in the streets with guns that we are guaranteed the right to own, people abusing a veritable cornucopia of drugs and alcohols in attempt to escape from the daily reality, psychologists and psychiatrists clogging up the now digital yellow pages, prisons choking with inmates, frustrated juvenile offenders with frustrated parents who are never around because they are too busy working two frustrating jobs to put food on the table in order to be a little less frustrated by the now deflated idea of the all important 'American Dream'.

Oh, but Matt, you can't say that people kill other people as a result of having to be on hold with the bank for forty five minutes...

Alright fine, not directly, but certainly indirectly, and if you don't think that all these factors are related to each other, then I envy the bubble you live in. (Stay there, you're far better off!!) Of course these things are interconnected, and of course the mounting frustration towards one thing contributes to the frustration towards others. Add these things up, and push it to the limit, and you have a highly combustible situation frequented by a society of matches and cigarette lighters. Socio-culturally we live in dangerous times where the prevailing causes and factors for things that we feel and experience are difficult to understand because they are impossible to isolate or separate from the always moving mass of other causes and factors. Through the medium of technology, the multiplication of details has occured exponentially, while our understanding of what is happening has not, leaving us confused and understandably frustrated by our position.

Please understand that I offer this view not as a blanket condemnation of development and technology as a whole, but rather as a frequently experienced and thoroughly thought out observation. The way that I see it, there is no 'solution' to this. It is just the way things are now. "La Vida Moderna." "The World Getting Smaller." "The World Getting Better." "The World Going To Hell..." Call it what you want to, but the way I see it, there is no denying that this frustration is here for the long haul. More technology will not make the frustrations of human beings go away. As humans, based on a natural human system, diminishing the presence and role of humanity in favor of machines will never result in a more present humanness. Ironically, but of course naturally, the thing that will actually most help with this human frustration, is human contact and human interaction. And remembering nature. Yes, actually leaving the house and/or office every now and again! Going outside. Smelling the mountains, the air, the wind and the water. Experiencing silence and the vastness of the natural world that we shun in favor of our urgent urban lives. Going back in time, so to speak, going back against the technological current to humanity and nature will be what keeps this boat afloat. I will doubtless encounter opposition to this way of thinking, because the mechanical replacement of humanity and human interaction is more and more frequently accepted as the mainstream version of what is good and right, what we were destined to do as 'enlightened beings.'

"You're an ignorant hippy," they'll say, "You're a backwards socialist-type who thinks solely of ideals and utopias. There has always been suffering and frustration amongst humans...can we not say that we are minimizing it in our 'progress'?"

And to that I say fine. Not quite so, but fine. That is another topic for another time. To the idea of this progress that is spoken of, and to finish this rant altogether, I offer, oncemore, a favorite quote of mine that was uttered by an aging John Steinbeck:

"Why is it that more and more, progress, seems to look a lot like destruction?"

Well, I have now made two Steinbeck references in one blog, which has to violate some sort of blog rule. And it makes me look like I am the trumpeter of all things Steinbeckian!! Ha ha! Ironically I haven't read him for months and I am currently neck deep in a bout of Dostoyevskyism!!! (The first picture/illustration at the beginning of this blog is of his Brothers Karamazov) His writing really gets into your head. To quote the female boss character from the 40 Year Old Virgin, in albeit a totally different sense of the quote: "He'll haunt your dreams!" Ha ha. That movie is brilliant.

So this is a pretty long blog now. If you have made it this far, you deserve a wafer!!! I'm having one!! Ha ha ha! Wow these Chilean wafers are really something...

Random final notes for today: Ciao Fidel, que te mueras bien...Incredible, the diarhea that flows from the mouths of American politicians...School shootings could be a sign of something deeper happening (ya think?)...Wafers are tasty...Cats are actually rather selfish...Root Beer really does have something special going on...How ironic is it that Ronald Reagon's son Ron, is a democrat...Food poisoning is a drag...and a few words from a Neruda poem that I memorized the other day...:

Pero no hay nada como el viento de los duros montes,
El agua de riego en los fríos canales, el espacio inmóvil,
La luz colmando la copa del mundo, y el olor verde de la tierra...
...si no me enseñaron la tierra, si solo para recorrerla,
Si nunca entré con el arado, si no vivi con los terrones,
Ni dormi sobre la cebada,
No puedo hablar con los violines, porque la musica es terrestre...

Translation...

But there is nothing like the wind from those hard mountains,
The water of irrigation in the cold canals, the unmovable space,
The light filling the cup of the world, and the green aroma of the earth...
...if they didn't teach me the earth, if only in order to know her,
If I never entered with the plow, if I didn't live with the soil,
If I never slept upon the barley,
Then I cannot speak with the violins, because the music is of the earth...

So take that technology! A little Pablo for yer ass! Take that!

Strange Dreams, Cordillera Views, And Checking Out Pablo's House

I must say that the Santiago life is agreeing with me. Not only this weather that I keep running on about, but the life I have here is pretty chill, which allows for a lot of time to think and write and wander around with neither stress nor direction. This morning I woke up early and from my bed I watched the sunlight slowly creep up the contoured orange-yellow stone shingles on the roof across the courtyard. My mind was moving slowly through the sounds of the wings and cooing of the pigeons; the fan blades turning in another room; the soft, diffused light on the bed sheets; the smell of the morning and the bleeding together of the past and future. The echoing words of a Dostoyevsky story; the dim blue glow of my curtains being illuminated from without; the sad resolution of the tale Bolivar's unification plan; the as of yet unknown fate of so many winding roads...just thinking of this big world that really isn't so big, in this big life that really isn't so big either. So often it is easier to distract one's self with work or study or the speed of life or whatever other thing...easier to cover up the reflections and implications of one's trailings and doings...as to not have to deal with them so much. I often realize, in the travelling, that so much happens and it happens at a rate that is difficult to keep up with mentally. I think, 'later I will reflect on this event or feeling because I know it has signifigance', but then I generally don't because I get carried away with all the craziness that happens later on in those moments. So I guess I have had a little island of time here to do a little of that type of thinking. That type of reflecting. And while I know that it is dangerous to get too far into one's own head, I have still valued this short period of time for that allowance. It seems to me that it gets easier and easier to recognize and appreciate the things in life that are beautiful; for the beauty itself, and for what it gives to a person. And also in understanding the things that are dark and terrible, complete with the gifts of persective and depth that they give a person if that person is ready for them. In all the blur of these things whizzing by it seems easy to be overwhelmed and disillusioned by the obvious and obligatory inability to comprehend it all...it is natural after all, this inability, because of how vast our sphere of occurance is, but still we find it frustrating in a world so increasingly sure of it's own omnipotence. In the noise and vertigo of the machine we call The Modern World...maybe these brief glimpses of silence and nature are just what we need to stay sane, to stay balanced and grounded. I am content amongst the chaos, but in a windless meadow of peace, like the one I find myself in right now, (without warning) I can recognize the value of each setting, and for me that is helpful. But enough new age muttering...on to the news!

To start, I want to mention one quick thing that made me smile from ear to ear and really sort of typifies the kind of things in life that I find great. It is nothing really, just a moment, but it really did make the world better for me yesterday afternoon. I was sitting at one of my new favorite restaurants here in Santiago, a doner kebap restaurant like the kind you see all across Europe and also in Australia, and I was watching the coming's and going's of a typical summery saturday afternoon. I was being tended to by a pretty Chilena waitress, and between our banter and the antics of the passersby, I was thoroughly entertained for a full hour. I was on my own, so I was doing what I often do in restaurants or parks...imagining what the lives of random strangers might be like. Sort of watching the interactions of different people, listening to the voices, reading the body language. Well, there were these two old guys across from me chatting about this and that, and when they stood up to pay the tab, one of them popped up onto his bald and wrinkled head...nothing less than a Slayer hat!!! No joke, he had a brand new black baseball cap with the band logo of Slayer emblazoned in bright red across the front. Man that was funny. The waitress caught it too and we gave each other the "huh?" face across the sidewalk. He payed the tab for the both of them and then the two old men slowly embraced and then the Slayer guy ambled off down the street. I have yet to make any sense of it, but man am I glad I got to see it!

I finished out the week in my classes with a teacher called Juan Luis. He is a cool guy from Santiago who is really into music so we talked a lot about bands. During the dictatorship all sorts of forms of expression were heavily sensored or banned altogether. As a result there is a rich and very inspired musical history of anti-establishmentarianism. (Man I love an opportunity to use that word.) In no other country in my travels have I seen so many death metal, heavy metal, and punk rock band t-shirts. Everywhere you look there is a bearded and tattooed dude wearing a Morbid Angel t-shirt, or an Obituary t-shirt, or a Black Flag t-shirt. It is impressive. They say it is a generation without dreams...an immediate gratification generation based upon the American model...full of anger and lacking much guidance. I will write more on this theme later, because I think it is interesting and I have learned a lot in the last week that has fascinated me about the cultural identity of Chile...and how strangely similar it is to our own...only through a much different process of arrival. Yeah, more on that later...I feel like staying away from the politics today.

So yesterday, before I was blessed by the viejo in the Slayer hat...I woke up at the usual time...about eight, and took my clothes to the laundry. Here they hang you out to dry on the laundry payments!! (Excuse the shitty laundry pun...heh heh heh) It costs almost triple here what it costs in Argentina. But whatever. The lady at the laundry-mat gave me a discount because she is from Peru and she saw my Cusqueña beer t-shirt in the laundry basket and got all excited and nostalgic. We chatted for a few minutes about Lima and I was out the door and on the way to the Santiago home of the much exalted dead poet, Pablo Neruda. For those who are fans, such as myself, it is quite something to see where he lived. In total, he had three estates: the one here, one in Valparaiso on the coast, and the original in Isla Negra. The one here in Santiago was originally built as a place to house an affair he was having behind the back of his second wife, with a woman who would eventually become his third. (I know I probably just lost all the women who are reading this with that one...his poetry is great!! I swear! But I don't claim to support his morality! Ha ha!) So the place is named after the crazy hair that his third wife Matilde had. Las Chasconas it is called. It is actually three separate buildings that share a hillside, in the trees of the Bellavista neighborhood, beneath the Cerro San Cristobal. When he lived there, there were numerous streams that flowed around his property and when combined with the houses that he designed and constructed, and the views out over the city, it would be what you would expect from an artist like him. I was really impressed by his collections of things from all over the world. He called himself a man of things, and this is easily observed by looking at all the stuff in his houses. The houses are all inspired by ships and adorned with things from the sea and representing the sea. He lived in the Far East, Italy and France for long periods of time, among other places, and his houses are full of art and remnants. The houses are made of wood and bear many features of an old style ship. I spent an hour wandering the garden paths and twisted stairways of the poet and I came away feeling more interested than ever in the history of Neruda. After all, he is a foremost representative of most things 'to the left' (liberal) here in South America. He died just days after the military coup was carried out by General Pinochet in 1973, technically of a heart attack, but local lore has it chalked up to a broken heart. Fitting. In that sense, the end of his life marked the beginning of 17 years of hell for Chile.

From there I took off up the dusty trail of Cerro San Cristobal. My plan was to walk from one end to the other, to get a better idea of the situation of the city of Santiago. (Cerro essentially means hill or small mountain. This one is planted in the middle of Santiago, that's to say that Santiago sort of curves around it, and from the summit you can see all of the city's panorama.) It was getting hot at this point and I pounded the water as I gained in elevation. After about an hour of strolling and sweating, I came to the plaza of the Virgen at the top. A massive Virgin Mary statue with her arms held out above the city. This is where the view is at. The sun bore down without mercy, making the wind at the summit more than welcome, and from there I drank a coke and looked out over the city and all it's smog to the magnificent mountain range behind. La Cordillera De Los Andes is as impressive here as it is anywhere else, and it seems to stand behind the city like an ancient protector. (On a tangent, Chile has never been faced with any of the vine plagues (like Phylloxera) that ravaged most of the world's wine scene in the last two hundred years. Amongst Chileans, the reasons for this include the natural boundaries of the Pacific Ocean to the west, the great desert to the north, the Strait of Magellen to the south and the Cordillera to the east...) From the small peak I was on, you could take a gondola across to the other part of the Cerro and that is what I did. I ate cookies and sweated even more profusely as I cooked like a chunk of beef tenderloin in the sun in my little glass bubble, hovering high over the city's skyline...it was a real trip. From there I did a bunch more walking and after not too long had a delicious doner kebap while watching the Slayer-hat guy. I am not quite sure why, but as I said, this Santiago life is a happy one currently. Last night I drank peach nectar with some friends long into the night while discussing the state of it all, and then I dissolved into the strange, dream filled sleep that I am tending to have here...and that lead to the first paragraph of the blog.

So yeah, I guess that's about it for today. As you can see, I got a USB port adapter for the camera and got a few photos loaded up. I finished with Marquez's The General in His Labyrinth and am now happily immersed in Dostoyevsky's The Eternal Husband. Fyodor is and was the best. Coming to the end of february, this trip only has a few more months to go...down here the seasons will soon begin to shift towards the chill, and I will head northward...to follow the sun. To chase it, as one of my Bozeman friends recently put it. In thinking about heading north, I am really excited to spend time with all my friends and family up in the states again...to any of you reading this, I miss you and can't wait to see you!! Chau for now!

Three For Three, Poems Are Good And A Crappy But Interesting Movie

Well, I can happily say that I got lucky three times now with the housing situation during my periods of schooling here in South America!! On sunday evening I moved in with a woman and her son, Enriqueta and Pablo, and it is a great set up. From the moment I entered the house I had a good feeling. I think it had to do with the old olfactory/state dependent memory thing that we all have going on inside of our brains. The smell of this house is not overtly good, like cookies baking or vases full of flowers, but is smells like a nice, clean home. A place that has been lived in with love. A good, homey smell that puts you at ease and makes you happy to be there. It has old wooden floors that squeek when you walk across them and all the lace curtained windows are kept wide open to let in the late summer breeze that I have come to love and regale here in Chile. My room has a large window that opens out above a courtyard that is shared by the downstairs neighbors, and there are the almost constant sounds of music and voices rising up in the afternoon and evening. Enriqueta is the consummate mother, (none of these mothers get anywhere near the greatness of my own mother though!!! Hi Mom!) always doing whatever she can to make our stays a success. (There is a young college student from Long Beach living there in the house too.) Each afternoon Enriqueta spends time in the kitchen preparing classic Chilean dishes. (Yes the cooking is better at home than in the hallowed hot-dog houses of Avenida De La Moneda!) We eat at around eight each night and the conversation around the table is full of laughter and stories of Chile and it's children. Her son Pablo is well versed in the political science and history of South America, and in the few short days that I have been staying here, I have learned a ton. About the military dictatorship of Pinochet, about the ensuing period of depression and cultural rehabilitation, and about the collective mind of the Chilean people in our day and age. And about the relationships between the different nations outside of Chile as well. He is a fellow Scorpio, and despite the fact the we operate using different sides of our brains, (Me=art, Pablo=science) we have many interests and methods in common and he is someone I am happy to call a 'brother'.

The school here is pretty much the same as the other two that I went to in Buenos Aires and Lima. There are a lot of students here, all gringos, and I'm not gonna lie to ya, I am over the gringo scene. These are mostly young'uns who are here to party and speak english with other gringos. That said, I spend most of my time with my 'family' and the Chilean friends I have made, trying to speak spanish. It is coming along well, as far as I am concerned. I am not sure where I thought I would be at this point in my trip, but I am happy with my development in the language of Castellano. It is nice to actually be able to understand most of what is being said finally. With the family this time, the difference is that I can actually partake in discussions that change course rapidly and frequently. Yay me! I have a friend here named Ruth who was the acting program director in Lima while I was there and they were starting the new school. The night before last I went to her birthday party and had a good time with the diverse crowd that was there to drink beer and barbeque pork and chicken in the Chilean style. I am sticking to my earlier observation that Chileans are more open than other latinos I have met. Aside from the strong accent and the difficulty in understanding the landslide of slang terms they throw around, they are very personable and quite easy to chat with.

Last night I went with the fam to see a movie from Spain called Zulo. There is a theater near the house that is located in the Spanish Cultural Center that screens Spanish cinema nightly without charge. I recommend this movie to people who want to feel extremely exasperated and quite existentially confused and frustrated afterwards. ;) I am not sure why I am going to even give a brief review of it here and now, but I am, so it must have done something for me. A zulo is a place where a captive is held without much food, water or light, and of course against his or her will. So this was the story of Whatever Guy from Whatever Life trapped down in a well for over a year. He has no idea why he is there and his ski-mask clad capturers never let on to what he did to end up there, or what he needs to do to be released. So, for 82 minutes we watch This Guy sleep, sweat, curse, yell, giggle insanely, vomit, shit, eat sandwiches, light candles, walk in circles, urinate, pound the walls, chew his nails, grow a beard, develop sores, catch numerous colds and slowly and savoringly smoke the occasional cigarette that is tossed down to him from above by the two aforementioned masked and potbellied men. This is all shot on high quality film, with lots of close ups and time changes and a full score of dramatic and emotional music. So that is good; but as far as the story goes, it could have been told in all of 15 minutes...and it took 82. 82 long and excruciating minutes of wanting something, almost anything, to happen. Man this movie drug on. It took forever to end. Some people snickered and some even left. Buy the end, I was ready to punch myself repetitively in the face in order to have something happen!! It ends with no sense of reason at all. You never find out why he was there, who he was, who the masked and bellied men were, where they were...nothing. It ends with him waking up in the middle of a huge desert, unable to see due to the blindingly hot sun, cackling like a madman and stumbling off in some random direction. So as a movie, it seemed like shite as we, ourselves, stumbled blindly out of the theater. But on the walk home we talked it over and it turned out to be something rather interesting...and maybe even a little bit cool...if you happened to be in the right mood for it. (Turns out I don't think I really was.) It is a metaphor, surely, but at the same time, the director vividly achieves the goal of getting the viewer to feel the desperation and confusion of the protagonista, and essentially, despite your disgust and desire to be done with the whole thing, gets you to think about it. (Here I am doing so now...) Spain, and especially Chile, are places where the average movie goer can understand the context of living in fear of some unknown, shadowy entity that lurks above and lets you eat, but not very much and certainly without dignity. (Franco and Pinochet, respectively.) The viewers who made it all the way through clapped enthusiastically, and I was interested to hear the take of the Chileans around me after the film was over. I thought about it last night, and this morning at school too, so it must have made some kind of mark on me. Not a good movie really, but something happens while you watch it. Not a movie to leave you without a feeling of one kind or another.

In related Spanish language news: In school we have been examining the writing of Pablo Neruda, who was from Chile, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Magic Realism writer who hails from Colombia but lives now in Mexico City. (Good friend of Fidel, lookout he's a leftist!) I know that poetry is often considered an archiac interest, and/or kinda pansy, but I strongly recommend looking into Neruda if you like poems, or if you just like very expressive writing. (I am going to make a short pilgrimage to his Santiago home tonight or tomorrow.) Marquez, too, is really interesting to read, due to his style of combining reality and vivid surreal allusions to achieve something very unique in literature. I am currently reading The General In His Labyrinth about Simón Bolívar, known in his time in South America as The Liberator. One quick quote from this book and the lips of an aged and ailing Simón Bolívar that was aimed, at the time, at the European colonizers, but could equally be leveled nowadays against the Americans, goes like this:

"So stop doing us the favor of telling us what we should do. Don't attempt to teach us how we should be, don't attempt to make us just like you, and don't try to have us do well, in twenty years, what you have done so badly for two thousand!"

Bolívar has a street named after him in just about every pueblo, pueblito and ciudad on this continent. (Not counting Brasil por supuesto.) And too, he is the reason Bolívia is called Bolívia. Anyway, if you like to read, check these guys out. If not, sorry I wasted about 45 seconds of your time.

I'm going to keep this one short, because I don't have a lot of interesting stuff to report really. Or I do, but I am not sure that it would be that interesting for everyone. As far as rebuilding my daypack equipage after the robbery incident in Mendoza, I have everything again except a hat and a USB connector for my camera; the reason that once again there will not be photos attached to this blog. I will get some local shots on here before too long. Thanks for the emails of concern about that by the way, I too am glad to be in one piece still!! Until next time, chau, you guys rock!!

Hotdogs With Everything, Smiling Chileans, And Questions Across The Distance

The days go by and it is sunday now and I find myself in Santiago de Chile. I am not sure why, but all the sudden it seems like summer has perfectly set in. I have been told that summer is the best time to be in Santiago because the sun shines a lot and there is an almost constant breeze that blows, keeping the temperature moderated and the sky clear of smog. Or more clear than normal. I have been staying in an area called Paris-Londres, which is full of cobbled streets and historic buildings. Today is sunday and the people are all spending time with their families. I found a little cafe for lunch and then have been strolling around the Plaza de Armas where everyone goes to walk on sundays. Today I move in with my third host family and that is exciting. The last couple have been really good and so I hold my breath and hope to go three for three. With my luck lately, we shall see. I seem to be in a downswing...but I can laugh about it and I hope that it gets better, but when you are floating around on a breeze in the world, you have to be willing to take some shittiness at times. I have been thinking about the stolen journal, and have likened it to the breaking of clay jars in the zen cultures...you spend a lot of time making something as perfectly as you can, and then you destroy it. To remind yourself of the temporary-ness of our lives. When I think of it like that, I seem to have an easier time letting go of all that writing and all the addresses and info I had in there. It is kind of the playing out of a travel nightmare really. I always tell people that the only thing that I wouldn't want to lose on a trip is the journal and the photos...luckily I had all the photos saved in an account online, but the journal is irreplaceable...it is a perspective thing I suppose. Now I have the experience of losing that and realizing that everything is still ok. I explained what happend to an old man on the street in Mendoza and he said that that was too bad. Then he looked at me and smiled and said, "Maybe it's time to start writing about a new future..." I think that is just about right.

I have discovered that the food scene here in Chile leaves a lot to be desired. If you like hotdogs, however, you will be in hotdog heaven!!! (I am reminded of John Wadd and his hotdog eating contests back east...) Everywhere you look they have hotdogs stuffed with mayo and relish and all sorts of other things. Hot dog lovers paradise. Me, not such a big hotdog fan...unless I cook that bastard myself on an open flame in the woods! Nice and charred, with some spicy mustard and onions and I'm good to go...but here, I'm just not feelin' it. When I was in Curicó I found amongst the slim line of food options, a place called The House Of Chicken (couldn't make that shit up could I?) where I ate a couple of times. They serve you a few different options of fried birds, with fries and these little fried cheese dumplings. Nothing special by itself, but one of the redeeming features of the Chilean table is a red bottle labeled Aji Chileno...and that stuff is great!!! I poured that and some mustard all over my chicken and chowed it down like there was no tomorrow...and there may not be, given the amount of fried food I'd consumed in just a few days. Here in Santiago I haven't found much better. All my friends who have travelled here agree that there isn't much to be found. Some alright pizza, but mostly it is fast food shite. I did find a little cafe that serves chicken, avocado and roasted pepper sandwiches on croissants and those are good.

Bagging on the food is not really my intention here, just a quick observation. Another observation about Chile, is that the people here aren't chilly at all!! Ha ha, get it...Chili...chilly...ha ha! (Pretend I didn't write that.) I have found them to be warm and open and generally quite talkative. More so than the Argentines and Peruvians. That is not to say bad things about those other country's people, just that the Chileans seem a bit more welcoming. They talk about the wine and the mountains and the culture and seem very interested in the US. I have been asked numerous times about what I think will happen in our American election. I want to take a minute to say a couple things about the US right now, that are not really politically related at all. It is not even really a criticism, so don't worry. (Or maybe it kind of is, but it is well intentioned, if you know what I'm sayin'.)

I have been away from North America for four months now, and never before in my travels have I felt more distant than I do now. Maybe it is the degree of immersion here linguistically, I don't know. But I do know that I have never felt farther away, culturally, from the country I have known all my life. I have been keeping track of the election and some of the news, but I get a lot of questions from people down here about the way things happen in our country, and more and more, I feel amazed at what I have to answer.

One of the things people ask the most is, "Is it really like that in America?" Usually the answer is yes. I realize that this is not a very specific example, but the question is usually prompted by a news item on tv, the internet, or the radio. Do people really dress up in clown outfits to go take a shit on the salad bar at Wendy's (Thanking George Carlin for that one...) and then shoot four people? Yes. Do astronauts really mess with other astronauts and then drive across country in a daiper? Yes. Is the Terminator really the governor of the fifth largest economic system in the world? Yes. Are there people in real life that act like the ones that go on the Jerry Springer show? Yes. Do people really believe that America is the greatest country in the world? Yes. More and more, to me, the country seems like some sort of surreal carnival show. Sensationalism and individualism have created a forum for occurances and happenings that could never be approached or understood in other parts of the world. Does America still offer opportunity to people? Yes. Is there anywhere as culturally varied as America? No. Is there anywhere more difficult to pin down a behavioral norm of identity than America? No. Of course the place has its pros and cons...like everywhere else. But from out here, it truly is a scary-looking place. There is a cultural madness in America that lurks below the sheen of a life of uninterrupted plenty. This idea is supported by the amount of psychiatry in our country and also by the escalating nature of our crimes and the reaction of our correctional facilities. (Among other indicators.) No where else in the world has the strange degree of crime that we have. No where else has the same dedication to selfish ends that our country has. Our country is so hard to define in it's commonality because essentially, there are 400 million little orbits that head out the front door every morning. 400 million little me's with all the hopes and dreams and needs and wants spilling and oozing out around lattes and Mini Coopers and Prada bags. So much me, and so little perspective.

"Oh-oh, Old Matteo is getting close to mounting the soap box..."

No, I'm not. I am just observing something, from a position of distance. I am from it, but currently not of it, so I see it differently. America is a country in which there is the illusion of truth. But when you listen to the press speak, or the pundits about the election, all you hear is "safe speak". No one is really saying anything, let alone the truth. The election that I get so many questions about now for example, is just a game. It is like a great drawn out sporting event, that has some sort of artificially injected sense of importance. (I'm sure somewhere there are rooms full of old men smoking cigars and drinking cognac and betting large quantities of money on the day to day happenings of all this...quite entertaining really...) The 24 hour coverage of this grand and patriotic event is regurgitated by the masses both in America and abroad ad nauseum, until something else happens and it completely negates the media gurgling of the day before. All these predictions and observations mean nothing day to day, and even though this is a special sort of election, on the front of racial and gender issues...we can't actually talk about these issues openly without breaking the myriad unwritten laws of our strange and surreal cultural landscape. The things that were discussed on CNN and Fox News during the South Carolina primary, for example, where so safe, so polished and safe, because one can't really just speak anymore without fear. Fear of upsetting this person or that person. Fear of being scrutinized under that ever present media microscope. Fear of reciprocity, fear of retribution. Who actually takes a stand for something that they believe in these days without at least a back up plan for how to recorrect or 'spin' the course of things should something be 'misinterpreted' in a way that looked poorly upon that person? It is a culture of fear, and it is a culture of falseness. And the fact that people subscribe to this wholeheartedly is a fact that is hard to get ones head around when viewing it from a distance. People ask these kinds of questions. People out in the world have a hard time making sense of such a nation because they have only what they see and hear to form ideas and opinions from. The war, the economy, homeland security...who could understand these concepts about America without understanding that it is a country with a very distinct and unique sense of cultural madness. Is it a dangerous place? Depends on where you go. Is it a dangerous country in the world? Yes. Do people in America actually think their government's goal is to spread democracy? Yes, a lot of them do. But the common sentiment in America in regards to the questions of foreigners might be this..."Who cares what they think? If they don't like it, screw 'em. They don't have to come here then. What do I care of some Chilean questions my values?" These are dangerous answers. Answers that may deserve at least an inkling of thought before they are spewed out in the manner of the global school-house bully... And that is enough of that. It is a strange position to be in...answering these kinds of questions. Because it is my homeland, and those are my countrymen. My best friends live there, my favorite places are there. I love the country of my birth, and for that I bring this observation to the table. If we really are such a great country in this world that is so big and yet so small, then we have the maturity to know that open and honest discourse on such subjects is not only necessary, but desirable...no matter how busy our days may be. It will indeed be interesting to see how this election turns out...but I hope that we can be collectively aware of our unique position in the world...and not forget that power, like journals full of written words and jars made of clay, are temporary, and can be stolen away or dashed against the rocks in a short matter of time.

And on that note, I go to meet my new host mother!!! Hopefully she likes food other than hotdogs!!! I have no means of getting photos on here yet...I am working on that and will put some up as soon as I can. I hope that all of you are well and I look forward to being amongst you again before too long...