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!!
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