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.