Vignettes from Chile

February 3rd

And drinking a dunkin donuts coffee, sitting in a plush chair, surrounded by stressed out Santiagino families on vacation, I write my final entry.

I had a planned some grand summation, some insightful, perfectly deft piece on what it has meant to live here in Santiago for a year and a half.

I’m exhausted from saying goodbye.

Sad and optimistic and stronger than I ever have been before.

Fresh from barely shed tears. Watching Natalie go into her antique apartment complex one last time, I cried and she gave me a smile of satisfaction underneath her own tears. Holding a weeping Nicol in front of customs, thoughts racing through my mind, I didn’t cry until I looked into those reddened, moist eyes. We said ciao too many times and her final image as I looked back one last time is blazing through my mind perpetually.

They mean the world to me. They were the majority of my world.

My last night in Santiago was spent watching Natalie play nostalgia via songs selected on Youtube, Nicol stare into her hands with a terribly pensive face, with eyes that already betrayed heartache and longing.

I have 20 plus hours of international airports and airline food and hopefully a few restless naps ahead of me. 

The emotional weight of what has just happened hasn’t sunk in yet.

Maybe that’s why I’m typing away, ignoring my inner thoughts, trying to prolong the adventure, the romance of living abroad.

There is an engorged sense of pride that fills me. I feel untouchable right now. There is a sense that no matter where I land back in my beloved LA, I’m gonna be okay.

There some part of me that doesn’t want this to be the final installment but it must be this way.

Somewhere in here there’s a metaphor for life.

Farewell Chile, you endearing, insecure, horrifically bureaucratic, monosyllabic, occasionally drunk, slow walking, fast talking, nature loving, trash throwing, fast growing little gem of a country. I hope you don’t get too big for your briches. I hope I see you again and we talk about the good old days. I hope you know that you taught me a lot.

It’s a matter of when and only when for our futures together.

Bye.

Adios.

I’ve never been good at goodbyes.

Or endings.

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January 27th

There’s one more week of life to be lived in Santiago.

There’s a secret list of things in my head of places or things or people that need to be done, visited, relished one last time. Most of it has already been accomplished, really. The list is not concrete. It changes daily, like my feelings about returning and staying there. Lots of emotion, but the kind of emotion that reminds you that you are living a whole life.

I came here with goals. Also secret and in my head.

Learn a language. DONE. But still always a work in progress.

Meet Chileans. This is laughable on the surface but when I look back at asado smoked afternoons and wine soaked evenings in the bowels of working class Santiago, surrounded by machine gun, badly spoken Spanish that I barely understood, feeling accepted and apart, feeling the love and feeling for home at the same time, this is MEETING CHILEANS. Overall acceptance. Not impossible, really, when you live in a country as insecure as Chile, but I did it right. When Carde thanked me, as we sipped warm beer, in a plaza, with a stray dog, at the end of the world, half drunk, I’m gonna miss you so much, thanks for showing me that not all gringos are ass-holes, I MET CHILEANS, goddamnit, I earned that respect. 

Go to Patagonia. See previous entry and see the last sentence above, that memory alone was worth every hour wasted in corporate conference rooms, teaching slow, puffy, upper class Chileans how to communicate in my language in order to make it down there.

And suddenly there’s these last days.

And I’m just trying to enjoy them as much as possible. Forget trying, I AM.

I feel a lot of emotions, but more than anything I feel a sense of the sublime. Not always, but it’s there often.

Like the last 2 days in the refuge of the Andes, surrounded by huge jagged rocks, in a tiny little cabin with my girl, NO, my love. And we walked a little, and we gazed up at the infinite stars holding each other and we spent a lot of time just in the bed. With the river flowing outside our window, the horses talking to each other, the wind screaming through the valley in the trees. Every day she means more to me. I think that nothing compares to the love of a good, real, done to earth woman.

Or an impromptu day at the beach with that other girl that means so much to me. The one that fulfills all my intellectual needs. The one that will be my creative, shit talking partner in life forever, no matter where we each eventually decide to settle ourselves. The beach, something so important to me. The day was a bunch of sweet nothing, but I want to let Natalie tell you about it:

Radiating contented red baked sun glow from a long day on the beach, picking rocks out of scratches and scrapes.

Red blood flowed down my knees today, out on the beach of El Canelo, just the right amount quiet and busy, near by Algarrobo, central coast of Chile. Some trips on the seaweed, oyster, caracol covered rock spreads, which always bring out the exploring mischeivous little boy in all of us.

And a little boy under a coca cola tent gave me a cookie for my running blood, ‘para quitar el dolor” [get rid of the pain].

later, he keeps digging the bizarre starfish out of the sand his boyhood frenemy wants to bury and kill, screaming asenina! asesina! estoy matando!, encouraged as me and Chris giggle.

And we make friends with the kids, a little girl speaking her rambling Spanish to me, me better able to catch the bizarre gist and realize when to say ‘SI’, having taught Chilean kids. They respond enthusiastically, “SI!” to who knows what.

She chastizes me for not bathing my full body—it is too sandy. Also, I am chewing my gum with my mouth open, this is is not appropriate.

We eventually get a whole cadre of dark brown kids, passing their days in the sun. They explain the mouth, the eating mechanisms of the starfish, its inflating head when it eats.

They turn on whims never to return.

Chris and I bake, I read Nicaraguan memoirs, falling in love with Latina, the Sandinista poet.

Later on the metro, standing in perfect comfort, alongside that constant LA blue hat, I know everything is ok.

So little pena, in a good way, for my yunto’s departure. We stand in comfort. I know what phone he called his friend on at age 10, hirs first inappropriate bulge.

Down the metro’s days and ways, this dirty city.

The more years I pass, the less I fear loss. The things you’ve lost, not quite present or absent, somehow still, always just are.

Fearing the abyss, my dad said, in many ways, you’ll always be you.

Reading this Nicaraguan memoir, her loves her losses, the endless dear friends and lovers and lands. They are…always…nada mas.

I don’t believe so much in estaba anymore.

Sera.

I read this the day after, trying to fall asleep on my hot pink, throbbing back, I read this entry at 2 in the morning, restless in bed, thinking too much about what I’m gonna lose here, I read this earnest, beautifully written piece and one long, hot tear came out of each of my eyes. And I realized that I hadn’t cried in a long time. And I thought about how beautiful friendships can be and how different and soon after that, rolling on to my side, wiping away my 2 silent, stoic tears I feel into a deep, blissful sleep.

A memory occurs to me, when I used to wear all black, when I was in that first confusing decade of double digits, when I was angry and scared all the time, when I still had a pair of man breasts and ate too many cheeseburgers. My 2 best friends and I ingested half an once of psilocybin mushrooms and went to wander the streets of Hollywood. We found ourselves on Melrose, with it’s endless and pointless boutiques of overpriced clothes, hip record stores and tattoo parlors. And I was standing on a street corner alone, as Arnold and John ventured into a comic book store, giggling about nothing tangible. There was a little brown skinned man staring hard at me from across the street, staring right through me, as the peroxide blonds with hard bodies walked their toy dogs, the tough Chicano teens wandered out of Fairfax High, the mustached pseudo bikers got more ink on their biceps, this man continued to stare. And I could not summon the courage to stare back. Manic and varied thoughts flooded my head that would not cohere. He approached me, crossing the busy street with determination, reached my personal bubble, shattering it entirely, paused, and without breaking his gaze told me with a heavy middle eastern accent, you’re very lucky, you know that? I said nothing, frozen in fear, he briefly squeezed my shoulder and moved on with his life.

A little more than 10 years later, thousands of miles away, in a congested South American metropolis, I finally know what he means.

Jan 16th Dispatches from Patagonia

These are the things I wrote daily during my days spent in Patagonia

-January 5th

Slept a total of 2-3 hours in the last 48. When we were landing in Punta Arenas and I saw the straight of Magellan, I thought about world history class in elementary school. YES, I am at the end of the world. It was sunny, then cloudy, then sheets of hail fell for about 5 minutes, then it was sunny again.

Now in smaller town called Puerto Williams, jagged mountains with glaciers, sea lakes, Lots of foreigners in zipper pants. Eating sandwiches smothered in mayo with Carde as we talk about THINGS.

BACKPACK CONTENT FOR TOMORROWS EXPEDITION:

Flashlight

Combo knife

8 bags of spaghetti

2 300g bags of peanuts

14 bags of dehydrated soups

6 snickers bars

1 canteen

3 pairs of underwear

3 pairs of socks

2 pairs of shorts

3 t-shirts

1 sleeping bag

2 bandanas

Wool Gloves

1 scarf

1 sweater

1 Columbia™ jacket

A bar of soap

1 towel

Shampoo in a little mustard bottle

Chapstick

Dominos

Roll of TP

Toothbrush/paste

Sunscreen

1 pack of pall-malls

120.000 Pesos

Salt

Sleeping Mat

GOOD NIGHT

-January 6th

Just arrived in the National Park Torres del Paine. A forest fire just burned a good chunk of it. I’ve been waiting for this day. The media was at the entrance, filming tourists, the park just reopened yesterday. First sight was mythical looking, tall rock towers made of ancient volcanic eruptions, crested with glacial ice. Condors floating high in the sky. Then backpackers. Today, I’ve hear Russian, German, French, English, Japanese, of course some Spanish, and Portuguese, too. Lot’s of hiking, first with about 25-30 pounds on our backs. Then we set up our tent at a site full of well prepared, mostly foreign backpackers and headed further into the park to get a closer look at the towers. Into thick groves of tree I’ve never seen before. We were buzzed by a condor, HUGE. A few hours later and about 1500 feet higher, we made it to the towers. Time, water and ice, and the shifting plates of the earth have made a masterpiece of austere simplicity.

We sat and looked as the glaciers melting onto rushing waterfalls into a sky blue lagoon and condors circled in the heavens and clouds licked the sides of the towers. We headed back through the forest of trees I couldn’t tell you the name of, made a bag of spaghetti, drank a ceremonial bottle of wine and played dominos with a cute, young Chilean couple. It’s 11 and the sun is still vaguely illuminating the sky. We’re in the tent taking refuge from a mild and sudden rain. Going to try and sleep.

-January 7th

We’ve just reached our second site after about 8 hours of hiking. 15 Kilometers. A lot when you have 25 pounds on your back. Never done this before. My back is yelling at me. A lot less tourists on this new route. We’re going the back way, which is longer and tougher, because it’s the only option we have thanks to the fire. It’s about 7 and still very bright out. We wandered through ancient woods. Up and down. Stopping for fists full of peanuts, on one occasion a Snickers. That’s about all we’ve eaten. Plus plenty of glacier fed water. Huge blister on my left heel already. Contemplating the pros and cons of popping it right now. I feel like I will be doing this a lot more in Cali. Right now our location is a windy valley full of daisies and daffodils. Been sunny all day, never know when it’ll start to rain again. Now we make spaghetti and slip into brief comas.

-January 8th

Day 3, camp 3. LONG TREK. 19 K. Amazing geography along the way. Huge valley. Lakes, rivers, glaciers and jagged peaks. Through forests, pastures, at one point a swamp. Rain, then sun, then clouds threatening more rain. 6 hours, it took us. Half way through my blister started to hurt so much that I only looked at the path in front of me, at the various colorful bugs, big ugly black spiders and caterpillars and their own vast universe. The pain started to recede, or I just ignored it well enough. My muscles and back are pretty good now, STRONGER. Our new site is gorgeous and I don’t use that word often. 2 lakes, big trees, in the distance a HUGE glacier, on another horizon, the back side of the towers (i think) or some other amazing rock formation. It’s raining again so I’m hiding out in the tent. Going to take a hopefully hot shower. It’s amazing what the body can do. We’ll see how I feel in 4 more days. I love this. I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to do this. Maybe I just needed a place like this or I needed to be at the end of the world or maybe this place is more breathtaking because it’s so goddamn far from everything else.

 -January 9th

Today’s trek was much easier. It’s also the last leg of our journey. Tomorrow, we begin to do everything in reverse, doubling back to the last refuge, then the day after, the one we stayed at on the 7th and so on. I’m okay with that; today’s journey was exactly what I had been waiting for. A full and ancient forest. Canopied by trees, surrounded by green the entire trip. Rustles in the thickets, little colorful birds hoping down from their perches to cock their heads with curiosity and then flutter back into their homes in the canopies.

I now have big ugly blisters on the heels of both feet. I just popped the older one, swathed it in iodine and covered it with 2 bandages. The new one’s still coming into it’s own. After the forest we ascended to a little glacier. The path up to the glacier, out of the forest, was full of little rocks and because of my blisters; I loathed every single one of them. Our new refuge is about 1/2 Km away from the glacier and every now and then I hear the crackling, thunderous noise that is ancient ice breaking under the rays of the sun. Tomorrow, we do it all over again in reverse with stronger legs and feet and with the determination that back in Puerto Natales, a heaping plate of meat and copious amounts of wine await us. Our diet for each day has been relatively consistent. For breakfast, usually some bread, sometimes a couple of eggs, if the site is selling them. On our treks, like clockwork, 3 or full generous fists full of peanuts and 1 snickers bar (which usually gives us the perfect amount of energy for the last push of the day). Dinner is always half a bag of Spaghetti (between the 2 of us) with dehydrated soy meat and sometimes a little cheap tomato sauce. It’s always the best thing I’ve ever eaten. Sometimes, if it’s cold or we’re still hungry, we heat up some dehydrated soup.

-January 10th

We doubled back today. More on that later. Since my last entry some noteworthy events passed. Right as I finished writing my last entry Carde said, with enthusiasm, let’s go to another Glacier. A hidden path, Glacier Puma. To get to the path, we had to cross a rushing, Glacial fueled river, wearing rubber boots with our shoes tied around our necks and our socks in our pockets. The water was powerful, we crouched through it until we unexpectedly hit a deeper part and freezing water violated our boots. That woke me up. Then into forests again with our hiking shoes on again, following a haphazard trail up into the jagged mountains, a trail marked by blue ribbons tied to the trees. Dark, thick forest up to the top and then another glacier. The best thing about that trip was that we encountered no one. No forced smiles and accented holas. Then we returned and I bought us a couple of overpriced cans of beer.

This morning we headed back to where we were and it immediately started to rain, a freezing rain. We rushed passed the rocky parts of the trail, exposed to the elements and the forest was our refuge. I’m really glad I bought an expensive jacket. My pants were useless. But I think the boots I have and the jacket are the most important things. Our packs were wet and so were we. We got to about hour 3, even though the forest was protecting us, I got nervous, thinking about how vulnerable we were and wishing the sun would come out and I thought about a bed too. But, now that I’m dry in the tent, I wouldn’t change a thing. When we got to the site, the sun came out at that exact moment, albeit surrounded by menacing clouds. A Chilean man and his daughter saw us soaked and pathetic looking and invited us to his tent for some soup. PERFECT. We conversed in Spanish and then black clouds started to form. And we ran to set up the tent. Panicked and exhausted. I’ve never seen anything like that. These are the things that happen at the end of the world. The storm lasted about half an hour. Then we went out to see the sun again. Then the clouds came back with more rain and wind and we hid in the tent again. I only hope we get sun tomorrow cause we won’t have the luxury of trees for tomorrows trek.

-January 11^th

We did the 19 K section again today. Carde’s ankle was hurting a lot; my blisters were okay for the first 2/3’s of the way. The first 2/3’s is pure valley, flat and relaxed. Then, when we started to ascend out of the valley and into the next, the wind picked up tremendously. You could see the waves on the lake adjacent and below us, at first it felt like getting lightly shoved from behind. The higher we went, the stronger the gales of wind. At one point it was just fucking stupid with wind and I took a knee for a couple of minutes because I literally couldn’t move forward. Carde made it ahead of me around the bend. Then 2 Chileans dragging horses came by, trying to hold ground. The horses looked pretty pissed. Carde came back around to look for me with his camera recording and a big smile and I laughed and we tried to see what the wind was made of, and it was a lot tougher than us. As I write this, it perpetually batters our cheap tent. We’re back at the site from our second night here. It’s FULL of gringos and other international people on vacation, I realize we were lucky because we arrived the 2^nd day the park was re-opened and now all the sites are flooded with North Face Jackets and very expensive tents. But also, with some very interesting people. I guess. I don’t really know. I’m hiding in the tent with Carde from the elements. I’ve had enough today. More pasta and dehydrated soy meat. Huzzah! Tomorrow’s our last full day in the park. We’re just going to hike to the base camp and take it easy. Maybe take some stupid pictures. Burnt out, but happy too. Lots of experience gleaned. I’m out of interesting things to say right now.

-January 12^th

And on the 7^th day God rested. On the 7^th day, I winced in pain and Carde gritted his teeth as we completed our last 12 K back to the base camp. We’re tired as shit. Every step was painful but worth it. At the end of it I started to talk to myself and the rocks in my path. The blisters are huge and red. Next time I’ll bring special bandages. Here at base camp, everything is quiet and peaceful. Perpetually changing clouds keep coming over the huge glacier leaden rock formations and there is something sublime just looking at that as the various species of birds yell in the background. This is Patagonia. Once again, we eat spaghetti. Maybe today we’ll stay awake until after the sun goes down. As of today, we have yet to have the energy to do that. It doesn’t get dark until around 11:30 and the sun comes back at around 5 in the morning. One night, in the most remote location we stayed, the deepest site in the park, near the glaciers, I did leave the tent, half asleep to pee, but it was so dark and ominous and I was out of it. And there were clouds. And it was very cold, that I can’t say that I really experienced the night.

-January 13^th

Last morning in the park and we were awoken by a powerful wind beating the shit out of the tent. I went out to try and reinforce it. An hour later, the tent collapsed from the strong gales, first a piece of plastic gave way, then the strings started to snap. Luckily, that never happened during the heavy rains or anywhere in the middle of our excursion. I was warned that a quality tent would be needed. But we made it anyway. Now were back in the same hostel we stayed at before in Puerto Natales. Clean after long showers. Before we left the park, we did some last minute hiking near the entrance, through pastures and past grazing guanacos (similar to llamas). Tranquilo. Last minute vistas, photos, thoughts. Then I slept on the bus back to town. Now that we are clean and considering that we’ve only eaten a few cookies today, we are going to feast on a huge, heaping plate of barbecued lamb and wash it all down with a few bottles of Chilean red wine. Happiness. Earned.

-January 14^th to the dawn of the 15^th (written on the airplane drunk off of beer)

Writing my last Patagonian entry from the seat of my plane back to el capital. Today, I woke up with a red wine hangover and when I went to bathroom, I had stained lips and teeth. Last night we gorged on Lamb and it was the best thing I’ve tasted in months. As I said, woke up with a wine hangover and we spent the day languidly walking around Puerto Natales buying cheap souvenirs. I woke up with intense thoughts about LA. I’m pretty drunk and don’t feel like elaborating much. I got the emergency wing seat so yay for legroom.

At 7, Carde and I took a bus back to Punta Arenas. We arrived at 10 for the long twilight, straight of Magellan looking purple. Our last night at the end of the world. Our flight was at 5 AM so we decided to look for a place to whet the whistle and we ended up in a disco/bar/pub at happy hour sipping piscolas as the typical fair walked in, women in skin hugging jeans, men in shirts that display the yearing for pussy. Carde and I looked at each other and laughed about the fact that we were in a place like this, with our backpacks, and dirty faces, and unwashed hair. So we finished our mixers and walked into a local bar that said Karaoke on the sign and promised beer on tap. Empty save for a girl wearing jeans painted on to her thighs and ass. She new how to work the room, “calentar el ambiente” Carde said. And the night went on as we got more wasted and local drunk men trickled in and Carde started to sing songs and the girl in skintight clothes encouraged people to sing and I remembered that I was still at the end of the world. And Carde got too drunk in a good way. And we made friends. And they bought us beers. Did I mention that this is being written on a blue purple dawn 20,000 feet above Patagonia, as I return to el capital, with heavy thoughts about that other return less than 3 weeks away? More importantly, Carde is my Chilean brother for life and I’m his gringo and this must never be forgotten.

Jan 4th

By this time tomorrow, I will finally be in the southern most part of the inhabitable world. This was what I came here for or what I thought I came here for. Or why I originally chose Chile. When I looked at my globe back then, and I looked at that little tip of land, so far removed from everything and decided, to myself or aloud, I don’t remember which, I’m gonna go there. And I am. This is the first time in my life I have ever done something like this. Decided, with confidence, that I will go here. There were periods of my time here in Chile where I thought it would be impossible. Last week a huge fire broke out in the park that I am going to, the President said it’ll be closed for a month, I said to myself, “sera” like a Chilean and now it’s open again. So, here’s to closing my computer, getting out of el capital, living off meager things, seeing real live condors, and who knows what else. My next post will be a retyping of everything I write down there, at the end of the world. I’ll end this entry with the last paragraph of a story I once wrote, back in the University, it’s not perfect, but it’s strangely prescient now that I read it again for the first time in 3 years.

You might think that after such a hollow and futile experience such as this that, James would, predictably, retreat into his world of the written word. Not really. After Melinda’s absence becomes more and more of a distant, abstract concept, James buys a one-way plane ticket. His destination? The home of his heroes, the place where great literature, but more importantly, canonized literature was conceived: England. He visits Tintern Abbey and Oxford and the real and replicated homes of his beloved authors. This changes nothing. So he gets himself a train ticket and goes through a man-made tunnel underneath the English Channel to the continent. And he smokes and reads in Parisian cafes and remains an introvert. But he has nowhere to retreat to, so he continues riding trains all through Europe and disembarks at numerous cities as he travels further and further east until his native tongue is no longer spoken on regular interactions. And the deeper he goes, the less he thinks about literature and the more he thinks about his own survival, that is to say how he will eat his next meal and so forth. So he starts to work strange jobs, jobs that a self-described intellectual would never ever do. He’s a taxi driver in Prague, A shoe shiner in Warsaw, a falafel vendor in Istanbul, a dishwasher in Damascus, and finally, a line worker at a vodka distillery in Moscow. When the unforgiving winter approaches, he takes the Trans Siberian railroad to the other side of the vast continent. And he ends up in Japan, boards an oil tanker in the port of Kobe and floats around the Pacific back to his native land. Except, when he returns, he does not want to go back inside. So at the Juarez-El Paso boarder he walks into Mexico and hitchhikes all the way to Patagonia, drinking and eating and dancing along the way. And this is where James’ story really begins.

December 23rd

In exactly 6 weeks, at about 4 in the morning, I’ll lug my two overstuffed suitcases out on to the quiet street, hail an overpriced little Nissan taxicab and head to the airport. I’ll walk through customs, I’ll wait for the first plane, fly to Lima, wait for the next one, fly to Panama, wait for the next one and eventually, I’ll land in Los Angeles. After a year and a half.

6 more weeks in Santiago. Relatively certain it won’t be my last time here. Too many connections to leave behind.

People have been asking me, what will you do back there? How do you feel? Will you come back to Chile?

I imagine I’ll eventually start working. See everyone that matters. Eat massive burritos. Feel nostalgic for Chile. Make references to things nobody will understand. But all of those things will have to wait for another blog/journal/what have you.

How I feel changes everyday. But it’s always good. Confident. I’m getting things done here in Santiago on my last days. Not wasting time yet without urgency. I think that can be a blissful, albeit impossible to sustain, state of mind. Pushing myself physically. Took an 80 KM bike ride into the wilderness on a whim. As the city receded, and the mountains grew more imposing, and the insects and birds sang their songs, I felt the closest I have ever felt to a state of bliss. There was nothing else on my mind. It was my swan song, my last hurrah, etc. because a couple of days later, I sold my bike to an eager teenager. Thought it would make me sad, but seeing that kids face, as his father haggled over my asking price and I relented, as his eyes shone brightly, made me happy. Holiday cheer.

When I come back here, it might be for a couple of weeks, it might be for more, but it’s a matter of when not if.

Every remaining day spent living. Not looking too deeply into the future. Not harping too much on the past. Making sure that the people I know and cherish down here won’t forget that they matter to me and I to them.

December 9th

Remember when this blog was just vignettes? When I was perpetually blown away by everything? When every entry was detailed and full of hyperbole?

Obviously it would be impossible to sustain that forever and honestly, boring, for me and whomever is actually reading this on a consistent basis. I think there’s about 5 of you.

This is more or less a journal and a means to exercise my writing chops once and while. Natalie once or twice called it a project and I like that too, even if it is just for me and my audience of half a dozen.

I have been looking back on the past year and a half of entries as I sit here helplessly hot and shirtless in my room and have decided to write this:

~ Saturday, December 3rd ~ 

Carde brought me to Pamela’s house, with it’s rescued sad little cute mutts, her colleagues from the high school she works at, a lot of meat and salad, and even more marijuana. Carde brings me in, Pam hugs me warmly and 3 other couples on a patio look at me with bloodshot eyes, mumble greetings and then spend the rest of the afternoon avoiding eye contact, sometimes mumbling something like: mas carne? quieres? Como va? Giggles. Pamela dominates the mood and conversation around the table. Charming, intense and in control. Perpetually rolling joints. Passing, peer pressuring, singing along to Janis Joplin. I’m briefly lost back in LA, thinking about very specific friends and memories and projected futures. A hollowed out honey dew melon filled with white wine and sugar is passed around ritualistically and when I put it to my mouth the first time, I wanted to kiss everyone on the lips. Carde was catatonic. Our friendship is a real as it ever was.

Later, Carde and I took Pam’s car and went to Aunt Norma’s. Reunited with family members that I hadn’t seen since the bicentennial last year, when my Spanish wasn’t really Spanish, when I felt so at home and so far away from home simultaneously, when I played soccer and they cheered me on with good intentions, when I sat there surrounded by beautiful real people and listened to the meaningless syllables coming out of there mouths and their bodies and eyes told me I belonged. So I walked into Aunt Norma’s and people screamed and hugged and kissed and I felt like a goddamn rock star. And Camila was there, Carde’s sprite little second cousin, with her crooked teeth and awkward gait, long fleshy legs and perfect hips. My first patient dancing partner. She hadn’t forgotten a thing about me, she shadowed me and we flirted as I received gushy texts from Nicol across town and I felt like a Chilean MAN and I dreamed about Camila later in Pamela’s guest room.

~ YESTERDAY ~

I put on a pair of expensive hiking boots, purchased for my journey to the tip of the continent, where I will camp and hike and aw the splendor of Patagonia. I walked around my neighborhood trying to begin to break them in with the sun making me sweat almost instantly, walking past uninspired landmarks, pharmacies, gated ugly apartment complexes, into and immediately out of a super market when I saw the long depressing lines at every single check out stand. When I entered my apartment, I was greeted by a cluster of shirtless young Chileans, William (also shirtless) and the smell of pork and burning coals wafting into the room. Chriiiis, they said, most of them, I’d never met before, their eyes already glazed over from swilling ice cold cheap Chilean beers. So I sat and beers were brought out and questions were asked and eventually they began to thump their own chests and talk about nothing loudly, the young ones, all from Willy’s home town. Life is short. The world’s ending, let’s fuck and party till then. Suicide is for cowards. I’m not anybody’s bitch. And so on. Loud, empty words. William looked at me a lot, detected my boredom, and said these are my people, this is San Carlos. And I looked at him, and his beginning to sag stomach, his red puffy cheeks, his fading muscles. Then I looked at the 23 year old guy sitting across from him, his perfect tan, his sinewy chest and abs, his strong chin, his swagger, his boundless confidence and I saw his future in Willy. And I got bored. And I said as much. And I said that you talk a lot and know nothing. And Willy said it’s not worth it. And the boys stopped talking to or looking at me. And I wondered where in my mind did that sudden aggressive outburst come from. Eventually Willy and his other, older friend got rid of the lean little drunk vessels of testosterone and I went to my room, napped and waited for Nicol to come over. She did. We cooked and laughed and made love and I started to worry about things that don’t really matter, but do. Then, her brother came to get her and she read my face and asked me where I went and I told her I’m here with you and she said are you sure and I said I don’t know and we kissed and it felt real and then she was gone.

Nov 30th

Free time, dog days and writer’s block.

I want each sentence to be full of deft insight and razor sharp prose.

I’ll have to accept that this is already coming across a little forced.

I want to weather outside to be just a little bit cooler.

Summer can stay, I just wish the sun would stop being such an ass hole.

I want to be full of perfectly articulated insight about what will happen and what has happened. Right now.

I’ll have to stop writing soon, because there’s nothing happening.

I want a Ruben Sandwich but I’ll have to wait.

I’ll have to wait and walk and shower and live and teach and do the things I do until something else, physical, abstract, cosmic, literary, conversational, hits me in the face and I have something more substantial to share.

November 18th

 “Words are symbols that posit a shared memory” -JLB

The man, we could call him Mark or Steve or even Greg has returned to a certain Latin American city because he believes he’s missing something in his life. He’s rapidly departing his thirties, he’s never married, he’s twice been in love (unrequited), he’s losing his hair (about this, he projects indifference and has taught himself to believe that), he’s found nothing back in the purposefully anonymous metropolis of his birth. On a bench alone in the nameless South American city, for the second time in his life, in a park of trees, open lovers, screaming birds and laughing children he finds a moment to reflect, forcefully, upon the last 10 years of his life. The man he was, the man he is, etc.

The man that would go there hand in hand with a local girl, look for a generous tree and a soft bed of grass. They would talk and touch and kiss and smell. She’d ask him about his future, he’d say let’s live in the moment, she would try. Later, after he’d gotten her into his bed, he told her in two months he would board a plane and leave her city indefinitely. And then she wanted to live in the moment, and said as much, but they both knew it was impossible. 

He gets off the bench, walks out of the long thin park that is bracketed by busy thoroughfares, crosses one and leaves the man made ambiance of trees, jungle gyms and ice cream vendors. The sun, stronger than he remembers, bears down on his exposed scalp. He walks, on one side of him, late afternoon traffic the other a concrete river. Beyond the river, on the summit of a hill in the middle of the city, the Virgin looks down at him with outstretched arms. He crosses a bridge over the river and pauses, giving the writer an opportunity for a striking, possibly forced image. The river, it’s rushing filthy gray water, it’s stone walls covered with colorful and fading graffiti, stretch out before him, beyond that a cluster of high rises and cranes and other signs of capitalism, and further still the Andes, partially obscured by thick brown smog. Vague memories of mid afternoon English lessons in conference rooms, with flabby married businessmen sighing out of their noses, remind him why he might have left.

He continues his walk down memory lane, (forgive the cliché), as the sun dips down towards the coastal range. Past the indigenous Peruvians selling questionable ceviche, the poverty stricken men kneeling in front of blankets offering toothbrushes, batteries, stuffed animals and so on, into the dense labyrinth of stalls. The marketplace. The heart of the city, he believed when he first arrived, fresh and sometimes terrified, sometimes serene, never able to articulate anything in proper Spanish. The smell of fresh fish, the filthy cats roaming, the fruits and vegetables that he’d never seen before, were all still there. This irritates and comforts him simultaneously. He buys some fruit, avocados, talks to the vendors in unbroken Spanish, smiles; all out of long forgotten habits that have stubbornly remained throughout the passing years.

Back in the center of town, he realizes that little has changed superficially. The same old buildings, discreet whorehouses, cathedrals, little tiny restaurants offering hot dogs smothered in mayonnaise and a mug of stale beer. But he hears more English, French, German, the occasional Cantonese, sees expensive cameras, hiking pants, back packs covering abdomens. This makes him mad, a quiet rage that has absolutely no purpose or discernible foundation. He then remembers that the sight of huddled packs of tourists was also common then. He briefly wonders why he came back.

The writer interjects to inform us that this started as a dream.

The man walks down a cobble stone street lined with cafés and bars, full of smartly dressed college students. He remembers circular conversations in English with his closest friend, there and then, about life abroad, sex, home, friendships, literature, movies. Nothing and everything, he used to say, finding that to be the most inclusive, clever way to summarize a smoky, alcohol soaked, late night conversation.

My return was a foregone conclusion.

I came here because I wanted something new. I wanted to prove something to others or myself, I’m not exactly sure. And that is true for everything that I have done and everywhere I have been. That’s what I believed in my dream and that is what I believe today.

November 8th

At the risk of sounding sentimental or perhaps even disingenuous, I would like to share some recent memories that remind me how life can sometimes be lovely. And that I sometimes I need to take a step away from all of the manic thoughts that come and go and remember what is simple and especially what is sublime.

*Under a backyard veranda in Puente Alto, I sit alone on a chair, not sad nor happy, just observing. Observing my girl Nicol as she shakes her hips to salsa, moving in ways that would never come natural to me, smiling, giggling, watching me every step of the way, surrounded by a dozen other Chileans. The music stops, the Chileans move on and off the temporary dance floor and a song comes on that I feel in my bones. Puerto Rican grooves, I get up, walk over to my lady, and we dance real close, and we are surrounded by other couples in the throws of rhythm and the only thing that matters is the way her hair smells, the way her teeth are framed by her earnest smile and how naturally the music is flowing through me in that rare moment.

*A bus station in La Serena, about 7 hours north of Santiago. A beach town. The beach town. Early morning. After an overnight bus, Natalie and I sit and wait for a little bus to haul us into the valley where green and lush grape vines contrast with dusty hills for miles. We sit there half dreaming and a beautiful stray leopard spotted Pit Bull sits next to us. Then we notice his little pink boner and his futile attempts to get him self off with his sinewy belly. Up and down. And we laugh. And others laugh too. And that poor canine’s face is showing a kind of eagerness and desperation that is so human. And I laugh harder because I know exactly how he feels.

*Riding that little baby bus into the valley, surrounded by weather beaten faces raping in harsh Spanish. Briefly reminded in the most pleasant and comforting way that I am still living in a foreign country.

*Standing around the back of the institute, surrounded by tired, chain smoking and complaining colleagues. Tired of the late paychecks, the sensation that what we are doing can sometimes be thankless, the conversation in rapid Chilean Spanish. My contributions, observations, thoughts, digested with just as much validity as the most seasoned veterans. Acceptance. Well earned.

*Two hours into a bike ride around Santiago on a hot hot Sunday afternoon. Just me, my bike, my lycra, a patch kit, and a tire pump. Climbing a very steep hill into the foothills of the Andes as the houses get bigger and bigger and I focus on the hot asphalt, my measured breathing, and the contrasting sound of birds screaming and the laughter of little children. At the top, I discover a beautiful park that I tell myself I will return to with hiking shoes and a decent supply of water, above it all, I find a place to rest with a view and I look down at my city, the new and ugly high rises, the faint smog, the planes rising up into the atmosphere off on the horizon, the jagged mountains sticking out everywhere, and I fall in love with Santiago again.

*Standing on the balls of my feet on the green train, underground, surrounded by impatient commuters, reading late Borges, the knife fights, the economically detailed landscapes of a quiet and unforgiving past just over the boarder, just over the Andes, the story within the story within the story within my own incidental story, wholly oblivious to those hostile faces and thoughts around me.

*Taking my time and getting it done.