April is rolling out the heat in Laura's new apartment. Her muted beige walls practically bronze in the loud summer light. I have so much sweat rolling down my spine that it feels like I could be swimming. Good thing Tim's brought the booze and a rather large pitcher of ice cubes. It's sangrias all around as the day dims.
We're laughing and chatting and, as wine induced evenings usually go, I've failed to notice a rather good-looking...Chilean?...not sure, occasionally brushing up against my shoulder as our love-seat reaches max capacity and spills over to people perched on the armrests. I've also failed to notice a full wrapper of Oreos. The two seem like a good mix, and to have an excuse to indulge on the one (the Oreos) I offer them to the other (the hot guy).
The wine has loosened my tongue and I'm steaming along in Spanish, questioning and laughing and offering more and more Oreos until topics are wasted away. "Eres chileno?" I finally ask, and with an unbelieving and kind smile he says, "Definitivamente no. Soy peruano." "Ah, eso es por que puedo entenderte," I laugh.
The party moves into the still warm night. We, wobbly, seek out a bar not all that far away and continue coupling our conversations with empanadas and schop. Erik wears intelligence casually, like a favorite shirt. Our conversation skips from language learning to geology to physics and I'm captivated, intoxicated, and perfectly pleased.
Laura is making eggs in the kitchen a few days later as Erik prepares to head off to the mountains to work. "Este es para ti, si necesitas cualquiera cosa, me avisas, okay?" he notes, handing her his email information. Giggly Laura smiles and laughs over her inherited new big brother.
Erik turns to the door, but hesitates and grows red. "Oh, y...tengo un poquito verguenza en preguntarte pero...si querrias compartir esta informacion con tu amiga con el cabello corto....seria muy bueno...." He smiles cutely and walks off.
Three minutes later I have a Facebook message in my inbox. "YOU WILL NEVER BELIEVE WHAT JUST HAPPENED," Laura spills. "soooo....guess who wants your info? My Cutie McCute roommate, Erik!!!! He was so freckin cute!!! Ima tell you all about it later but it was so cute!!!! okay, well his whole name is erik chavez and his email is (blah), and he'd like yours as well, so get on that! I can't wait till you do the walk of shame out of my apartment, it's gonna be great! LOVE YOU!"
And so I emailed him, and so he charmed the pants off of me, and so now I'm staying in Chile for a little while longer than I had expected. Funny how life changes over wine and Oreos and sticky summer evenings.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Stable Ground
"I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason." - John Keats in a letter to his brothers, 1817
The cobblestones on Providencia's boulevard make William's car shake so badly that he has trouble smoothly shifting his rusty Fiat standard. A Duoc colleague and a Santiago native, William is kind enough to offer me rides home after our twelve-hour Wednesdays at the university. He has to jimmy the lock on the driver's side door now because his car was broken into a few weeks ago. I ask if he will fix it before he leaves for South Dakota, where he and his wife have decided to move to raise their children. "What's the point?" he counters. "I am leaving so soon. It might as well stay broken."
The six months I have spent in Santiago could best be described as shaky. Our beginnings here were unstable. We were shook to the core our third night here in the world's sixth strongest recorded earthquake. We turned corners to find ourselves lost in the maze of the city. Every stare reminded us of our outsider status. Every word I spoke in Spanish felt unsure in my mouth. We had no stable ground. Emotionally, I was homeless, and it seemed the outside world had decided to reflect the rubble and the ruin I felt inside.
When our world is taken down, there comes the question of how to rebuild. We have the chance to see where our previous flaws in thinking have brought about rubble. As I tried to construct my own home here in a cavernous apartment, I felt increasingly isolated. Everything that had brought me a sense of security in the past - my friends, my family - simply weren't here. Chile's physical devastation brought about a reflection on my perceptions of "Home." I relied too much on thinking of home as a physical embodiment of my security: a signpost that existed 3,000 miles away from where I currently reside.
Back in the car, William complains about the anti-intellectualism that he perceives to be a growing phenomenon in Chile. I ask him if he is nervous about making friends when he moves to the States. "I think it's easier there, actually," he reflects. "There, it doesn't matter what your interests are - if you're big into communism, you can find peole just like you. If you're a Trekkie, there's a group for that. Here in Chile, if you are at all different from the norm, you're on your own. It's much harder to form a community, because the thought here is to be the same, not different."
I don't know exactly what it was that set off sirens in my head, but I knew immediately that I didn't agree with Will. I realized that I had set a trap for myself in the Here vs. There binary that Will was now narrating; I perceived, suddenly, that I had told myself the wrong story about establishing a home abroad. What peole liked about me here was that I WAS different, and what I liked about my home here was that it offered me new ways of living outside the construction of my home in the U.S. I wasn't exected to be a type or to fit into a group. I was acting as a primary source for how chilenos perceived people in the United States - for how they perceived my home through me. The story I'd been telling myself - of being a lone wolf unable to find a way in - began to evaporate. My new story, immensely liberating, was that I was seeking to marry my outsider status and my inherited Chileanisms.
I have begun to think of my home abroad as a combination of an inner stability and an outward willingness to connect. I just have to be willing to say yes - yes to staying out dancing all night at a dive bar, even though the American in me is dog tired; yes to mercilessly shoving people aside to grab a spot on an overcrowded bus; yes to allowing my Chilean friends to borrow my cell phone because theirs has run out of saldo. Regardless of the mistakes I make, I use Spanish unabashedly. If I get lost on my way home, I know I'll eventually wander to a familiar landmark. And, even though it adds thirty minutes to my commute, I accept rides home from Will, because he helps me to feel welcome and wanted.
Will gets us lost on the way to the bar and we have to ask four different people for directions. It makes me feel better that he doesn't know this city all that well, either.
My home here in Santiago will continue in its instability. The people I have connected with here and who are part of my home here will come and go, as William will. But that doesn't bother me. The next time the ground shakes, literally or figuratively, I will tell myself a different story to build some stable ground.
The cobblestones on Providencia's boulevard make William's car shake so badly that he has trouble smoothly shifting his rusty Fiat standard. A Duoc colleague and a Santiago native, William is kind enough to offer me rides home after our twelve-hour Wednesdays at the university. He has to jimmy the lock on the driver's side door now because his car was broken into a few weeks ago. I ask if he will fix it before he leaves for South Dakota, where he and his wife have decided to move to raise their children. "What's the point?" he counters. "I am leaving so soon. It might as well stay broken."
The six months I have spent in Santiago could best be described as shaky. Our beginnings here were unstable. We were shook to the core our third night here in the world's sixth strongest recorded earthquake. We turned corners to find ourselves lost in the maze of the city. Every stare reminded us of our outsider status. Every word I spoke in Spanish felt unsure in my mouth. We had no stable ground. Emotionally, I was homeless, and it seemed the outside world had decided to reflect the rubble and the ruin I felt inside.
When our world is taken down, there comes the question of how to rebuild. We have the chance to see where our previous flaws in thinking have brought about rubble. As I tried to construct my own home here in a cavernous apartment, I felt increasingly isolated. Everything that had brought me a sense of security in the past - my friends, my family - simply weren't here. Chile's physical devastation brought about a reflection on my perceptions of "Home." I relied too much on thinking of home as a physical embodiment of my security: a signpost that existed 3,000 miles away from where I currently reside.
Back in the car, William complains about the anti-intellectualism that he perceives to be a growing phenomenon in Chile. I ask him if he is nervous about making friends when he moves to the States. "I think it's easier there, actually," he reflects. "There, it doesn't matter what your interests are - if you're big into communism, you can find peole just like you. If you're a Trekkie, there's a group for that. Here in Chile, if you are at all different from the norm, you're on your own. It's much harder to form a community, because the thought here is to be the same, not different."
I don't know exactly what it was that set off sirens in my head, but I knew immediately that I didn't agree with Will. I realized that I had set a trap for myself in the Here vs. There binary that Will was now narrating; I perceived, suddenly, that I had told myself the wrong story about establishing a home abroad. What peole liked about me here was that I WAS different, and what I liked about my home here was that it offered me new ways of living outside the construction of my home in the U.S. I wasn't exected to be a type or to fit into a group. I was acting as a primary source for how chilenos perceived people in the United States - for how they perceived my home through me. The story I'd been telling myself - of being a lone wolf unable to find a way in - began to evaporate. My new story, immensely liberating, was that I was seeking to marry my outsider status and my inherited Chileanisms.
I have begun to think of my home abroad as a combination of an inner stability and an outward willingness to connect. I just have to be willing to say yes - yes to staying out dancing all night at a dive bar, even though the American in me is dog tired; yes to mercilessly shoving people aside to grab a spot on an overcrowded bus; yes to allowing my Chilean friends to borrow my cell phone because theirs has run out of saldo. Regardless of the mistakes I make, I use Spanish unabashedly. If I get lost on my way home, I know I'll eventually wander to a familiar landmark. And, even though it adds thirty minutes to my commute, I accept rides home from Will, because he helps me to feel welcome and wanted.
Will gets us lost on the way to the bar and we have to ask four different people for directions. It makes me feel better that he doesn't know this city all that well, either.
My home here in Santiago will continue in its instability. The people I have connected with here and who are part of my home here will come and go, as William will. But that doesn't bother me. The next time the ground shakes, literally or figuratively, I will tell myself a different story to build some stable ground.
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