The opning of an art gallery a few buildings away from me prompted an old-time band (complete with smart straw hats, striped red dress shirts and white trousers) to start up with some rag time:
(Bad view of the band due to the tree, but nice 180 view from my balcony.)
Friday, November 12, 2010
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
The Roof, The Roof, The Roof is on Fire...
I melted all over the taxi's backseat on Monday afternoon. Bits of me dribbled onto the floor mats, dripped over the plush valour seats, and formed a little puddle that could have previously been my exhausted, sweat-shimmering arms draped limply over bags and bags of our luggage. I was in the process of moving everything to my new apartment, which is in a tiny corredor closer to Plaza de Armas and Mercado Central, but still rests on the edge of Parque Forestal.
In a liquidy haze I overheard the driver animatedly telling me about the "storm" Santiago had a week ago (by storm, I mean it maybe rained lightly for two hours). "Last one of the year, I believe, though you never can tell," he told my limp, lifeless body.
Santiago could give SoCal a run for its money in terms of sunny days. The shift from freezing wet winter to hot arid summer was so immediate I barely had a chance to blink my eyes. Here it was: a golden land of stagnant summer smog and parks full of pirouetting pollen. Definitivamente me estoy derretiendo.
Coming from temperate Connecticut, I've never had to worry much about fire danger. Smokey the Bear was often confusesd with Yogi Bear. Every summer I've vaguely watched massive forest fires rage across the West Coast on tiny t.v. screens, disinterested by the massive power of nature unfolding 3,000 miles away.
But yesterday night my ignorance literally exploded in my face. I lie tossing and turning, a pool of slowly desolidifying flesh in my hot hot bedroom, when the sound of literally dozens upon dozens of fire engines rose up from below. Peeking out of my window with my half-deliquesced eye, I saw this:
The heat from the flames was so strong I could literally feel it on my face through the glass. Buildings popped and fizzed like popcorn on a stove, sending up epic flares of fresh flame and cinders. Men scrambled on rooftops, shielding their faces from the smoke and the light, desperately looking for a way to get down. The whole of Santiago Centro lit up with the blue, red, and green of ambulances, fire engines and cop cars. The initial fire was actually MUCH bigger than what I caught on film - at least three times this size. I stayed awake, awkwardly got dressed, and remained with a blanket and water bottle by my side in case an evacuation was called.
But, perplexingly, there has been NO NEWS on this fire. I've Googled in both English and Spanish, scoped out electronic versions of El Mercurio and The Santiago Times, and I've seen no reports on last night's scary and awesome events. Brittaney, who lives a few blocks down from me, said that none of the people in her building had heard of anything last night. She slept soundly, although I text-messaged both her and Tosh to warn them, as all of us live very very close to where the fire occurred.
So, this prompts me to very eloquently ask: WTF, Santiago?!?!?!?
I've been trying to Google fire precautions and safety measures that Santiago takes in the case of a firestorm like last night, but haven't come up with anything. I'm going to interview my Duoc colleagues tonight and re-edit this post based on the information I get.
For right now, it seems odd that santiaguinos aren't fuming over more effective fire-safety measures. I don't know what caused the flames, but I sure hope to find out that there's something in place to deal with occasions like these, and to inform the public when they occur.
CIEE people: has anyone seen or heard anything about this? I'd be interested to have more information.
In a liquidy haze I overheard the driver animatedly telling me about the "storm" Santiago had a week ago (by storm, I mean it maybe rained lightly for two hours). "Last one of the year, I believe, though you never can tell," he told my limp, lifeless body.
Santiago could give SoCal a run for its money in terms of sunny days. The shift from freezing wet winter to hot arid summer was so immediate I barely had a chance to blink my eyes. Here it was: a golden land of stagnant summer smog and parks full of pirouetting pollen. Definitivamente me estoy derretiendo.
Coming from temperate Connecticut, I've never had to worry much about fire danger. Smokey the Bear was often confusesd with Yogi Bear. Every summer I've vaguely watched massive forest fires rage across the West Coast on tiny t.v. screens, disinterested by the massive power of nature unfolding 3,000 miles away.
But yesterday night my ignorance literally exploded in my face. I lie tossing and turning, a pool of slowly desolidifying flesh in my hot hot bedroom, when the sound of literally dozens upon dozens of fire engines rose up from below. Peeking out of my window with my half-deliquesced eye, I saw this:
The heat from the flames was so strong I could literally feel it on my face through the glass. Buildings popped and fizzed like popcorn on a stove, sending up epic flares of fresh flame and cinders. Men scrambled on rooftops, shielding their faces from the smoke and the light, desperately looking for a way to get down. The whole of Santiago Centro lit up with the blue, red, and green of ambulances, fire engines and cop cars. The initial fire was actually MUCH bigger than what I caught on film - at least three times this size. I stayed awake, awkwardly got dressed, and remained with a blanket and water bottle by my side in case an evacuation was called.
But, perplexingly, there has been NO NEWS on this fire. I've Googled in both English and Spanish, scoped out electronic versions of El Mercurio and The Santiago Times, and I've seen no reports on last night's scary and awesome events. Brittaney, who lives a few blocks down from me, said that none of the people in her building had heard of anything last night. She slept soundly, although I text-messaged both her and Tosh to warn them, as all of us live very very close to where the fire occurred.
So, this prompts me to very eloquently ask: WTF, Santiago?!?!?!?
I've been trying to Google fire precautions and safety measures that Santiago takes in the case of a firestorm like last night, but haven't come up with anything. I'm going to interview my Duoc colleagues tonight and re-edit this post based on the information I get.
For right now, it seems odd that santiaguinos aren't fuming over more effective fire-safety measures. I don't know what caused the flames, but I sure hope to find out that there's something in place to deal with occasions like these, and to inform the public when they occur.
CIEE people: has anyone seen or heard anything about this? I'd be interested to have more information.
Monday, October 25, 2010
To Autumn (Sad When I Think of Missing This)
An ember faintly shines in autumn darkThe pulse of light, the heartbeat of a fire
Emits a ghostlike, ectoplasmic smoke
That dissipates on eddies in the wind.
A fiery ensign branded in the bark
A thousand stars in coal I must admire
They constellate, and laugh at private jokes,
And murmur crackles in drowsy lovers' ears.
It could be coaxed. To woo inspired sparks
With gentle blow I could ignite the flame.
But court too harsh, live cinder could be choked,
Extinguished by too strong of a desire.
When I am spent and doused, may it prove true
That charcoal is a useful object, too.
Photos by Google Image of fall foliage in Connecticut.
Poem by me.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
New Digs in the Old Country
There is no internet in my new house because the house is so old that the cable lines do not exist close enough to the location to have internet.
I love my internet. I love my cruddy late-night Grooveshark dance mixes and my pirated t.v. Project Runway marathons. I love calling my mommy on Skype whenever I want to. I love wasting several thousand hours of my life on Facebook. Oh, and I love blogging.
You think I would have thought to ask if an internet connection existed at my new place, but I found myself falling into the Chile trap - thinking briefly that Chile is as technologically pimped out as the U.S., and forgetting it actually isn´t.
So, resigned to my fate, I will be spending the last two months in Chile internetless, excepting forays to Starbucks and the internet at my school. I will also be spending the next two months without: a fan or air conditioner, a washer, or an oven (luckily I have already resigned myself to lacking a dryer, hairdryer, hot water, dishwasher, microwave and any semblance of affordable prepackaged food).
After so much time here I´ve just kind of forgotten how much harder it is to do simple tasks in Chile. I´ve reached the ¨meh¨ phase of my trip, where it doesn´t really bother me to spend two hours standing in line at a bank, six weeks to fix a washing machine (lucky there was one to fix), or ten thousand hours cooking completely everything from scratch.
I´ve grown to enjoy the rusticness and simplicity of some of these activities. The physical labor acts as a calming force in my life. I like that I´ve learned how to fix broken pipes, use a sodering iron, bake from scratch, construct a makeshift mop, and do my laundry by hand (in a bucket with one of those funny-looking scrubbing boards). I kind of feel like I should be milking goats or something, or composting my trash.
It has definitely inspired me to live more simply when I return to the States. There really is just so much you don´t need. So internet, schminternet. I´ll be alright getting it when I can. And maybe I´ll spend more time outside in this beautiful weather...
I love my internet. I love my cruddy late-night Grooveshark dance mixes and my pirated t.v. Project Runway marathons. I love calling my mommy on Skype whenever I want to. I love wasting several thousand hours of my life on Facebook. Oh, and I love blogging.
You think I would have thought to ask if an internet connection existed at my new place, but I found myself falling into the Chile trap - thinking briefly that Chile is as technologically pimped out as the U.S., and forgetting it actually isn´t.
So, resigned to my fate, I will be spending the last two months in Chile internetless, excepting forays to Starbucks and the internet at my school. I will also be spending the next two months without: a fan or air conditioner, a washer, or an oven (luckily I have already resigned myself to lacking a dryer, hairdryer, hot water, dishwasher, microwave and any semblance of affordable prepackaged food).
After so much time here I´ve just kind of forgotten how much harder it is to do simple tasks in Chile. I´ve reached the ¨meh¨ phase of my trip, where it doesn´t really bother me to spend two hours standing in line at a bank, six weeks to fix a washing machine (lucky there was one to fix), or ten thousand hours cooking completely everything from scratch.
I´ve grown to enjoy the rusticness and simplicity of some of these activities. The physical labor acts as a calming force in my life. I like that I´ve learned how to fix broken pipes, use a sodering iron, bake from scratch, construct a makeshift mop, and do my laundry by hand (in a bucket with one of those funny-looking scrubbing boards). I kind of feel like I should be milking goats or something, or composting my trash.
It has definitely inspired me to live more simply when I return to the States. There really is just so much you don´t need. So internet, schminternet. I´ll be alright getting it when I can. And maybe I´ll spend more time outside in this beautiful weather...
Monday, October 11, 2010
Night of the Living Death Metal
Sebastian probably wears a leather jacket every day of his life. I can't picture him without it, even in the increasingly hot, dry days that have landed suddenly in Santiago. He wore it every day we had class last semester, and every day we didn't have class but I'd see him in the cafeteria, or on campus. I couldn't really quite place his body structure or build because of the bulk of the jacket.
So it is no surprise to me when I turn the corner out of the metro Saturday night that he is immediately recognizable in the thing. But it DOES surprise me when he takes it off and offers it to me to fight against the "cold" night. (This is a thing Chileans collectively worry about me - that I am underdressed for "cold" weather that could be taken to be downright balmy in the Northeast.) And it surprises me how incredibly small and skinny this kid is without his bulky cowskin.
Sebastian is a smart kid, and he was one of the only students I had last semester who was vaguely interested in learning English. He and his friend Mauricio have really looked up to me in that 18-year-old-boy way, gawkily trying to please me because I was their hip young foreign teacher. They respect me and they desperately want me to love them and to love where they come from. Sometimes I do, like tonight.
I haven't seen Sebastian since class ended, and it is nice to feel respect oozing off of him as I inquire about his life, his family, his friends; if he is okay with work and money; how he is handling the recent loss of one of his best friends. (Being inquisitive here is taken as a sign of intimacy and kindness. It is not at all viewed as being "nosy" or "prying," as it might be considered in the States.) And he grills me about my time here, and about my relationship, and about politics here and back home.
He's come to break down the teacher-student wall. We're working now on learning how to be friends. I have a very strict rule that I do not hang out with students outside of class while I have them in class. At my old campus I found it to be a sort of necessary evil - placing myself cold and distant from kids who would otherwise be my peers - so I could earn enough respect to teach them effectively.
So I think that there is no better way of breaking down that distance than by getting silly over a few beers at a local bar. Sebastian takes it one step further by inviting me to go see a death metal concert with his brother. I'm buzzed enough where I am strangely comfortable with the idea.
An unhealthy love for heavy metal is something that most Chilean men share. Like Sebastian, some of them dress the part of badass rocker - long hair, leather jacket, huge boots, dark clothing. They're diehard Metallica fans, and they know all the lyrics to Anthrax songs by heart. There's this strange attraction to being bad - to acting out, to being out of control - that lures them in and fascinates them.
I've tested this theory out on Sebastian a little bit. He's told me that he thinks it's due to the political oppression in the past. In the eighties, he explains, when metal first became universally popular, it was the first time Chileans really had a safe arena to act out decades of pent-up agression against the government. Music was a safe "f-you" to The Man. And I guess it makes sense and I can see it as another extension of the Chilean desire for free and uninhibited expression. I just kind of wish acoustic rock had the same effect.
So I'm packed in a room with about a hundred sweaty men with long sweaty hair, shoving each other back and forth. I almost can't pay attention to the music because I'm too busy swinging other people's hair out of my face and trying in vain to protect myself from being absolutely soaked in beer. But the band - Dorso - is surprisingly good. You know, for loud screamy stuff. The most amusing part is the montage of B-rated horror films the band has chosen to project on a background screen - everything from claymation cyclops to lesbian vampires.
This spectacle is what people come for, I think. It's like watching professional wrestling in the States - the band members are costumed, wearing fake alien claws and dog collars studded with nine inch spikes. The movie montage is the sickest, fake-bloodiest gore you could ever possibly come across. And even the actions of the fans - the violence, the rage, the protest - is all really very staged. No one seems to actually want to hurt each other, and I think honestly they wouldn't even be acting out at all if the whole environment wasn't so conducive to being absolutely ridiculous.
This ridiculousness - this spectacle -might be able to be extended to the whole protest scene in Chile today. Chileans love a good protest, but I think they love more the idea of a good protest. Maybe in the 80s there was some significance, but now a lot of protests seem to be about the practice, not the faith. Even very serious protests - like the current Mapuche hunger strike - are built on arguably ludicrous grounds. (The Mapuche have asked to sit down at a table with the heads of the three legislative sectors in Chile to talk about receiving some ancestral lands. The thing is there AREN'T heads of two of the three legislative branches, so even if the government wanted to, they couldn't fulfill the Mapuche request.)
I can't blame them, though - spectacle is definitely fun. And it does serve a purpose: playing make pretend emotionally might help assuage real dissatisfaction in other areas of life - in your job, in your relationships. Blowing off steam, and blowing it off in a safe, productive way, probably keeps everyone contentedly ticking along. So I raged and screamed along with them, and flung my sweaty hair in other people's faces. Oh yeah. I'm bad to the bone. At least on the surface.
So it is no surprise to me when I turn the corner out of the metro Saturday night that he is immediately recognizable in the thing. But it DOES surprise me when he takes it off and offers it to me to fight against the "cold" night. (This is a thing Chileans collectively worry about me - that I am underdressed for "cold" weather that could be taken to be downright balmy in the Northeast.) And it surprises me how incredibly small and skinny this kid is without his bulky cowskin.
Sebastian is a smart kid, and he was one of the only students I had last semester who was vaguely interested in learning English. He and his friend Mauricio have really looked up to me in that 18-year-old-boy way, gawkily trying to please me because I was their hip young foreign teacher. They respect me and they desperately want me to love them and to love where they come from. Sometimes I do, like tonight.
I haven't seen Sebastian since class ended, and it is nice to feel respect oozing off of him as I inquire about his life, his family, his friends; if he is okay with work and money; how he is handling the recent loss of one of his best friends. (Being inquisitive here is taken as a sign of intimacy and kindness. It is not at all viewed as being "nosy" or "prying," as it might be considered in the States.) And he grills me about my time here, and about my relationship, and about politics here and back home.
He's come to break down the teacher-student wall. We're working now on learning how to be friends. I have a very strict rule that I do not hang out with students outside of class while I have them in class. At my old campus I found it to be a sort of necessary evil - placing myself cold and distant from kids who would otherwise be my peers - so I could earn enough respect to teach them effectively.
So I think that there is no better way of breaking down that distance than by getting silly over a few beers at a local bar. Sebastian takes it one step further by inviting me to go see a death metal concert with his brother. I'm buzzed enough where I am strangely comfortable with the idea.
An unhealthy love for heavy metal is something that most Chilean men share. Like Sebastian, some of them dress the part of badass rocker - long hair, leather jacket, huge boots, dark clothing. They're diehard Metallica fans, and they know all the lyrics to Anthrax songs by heart. There's this strange attraction to being bad - to acting out, to being out of control - that lures them in and fascinates them.
I've tested this theory out on Sebastian a little bit. He's told me that he thinks it's due to the political oppression in the past. In the eighties, he explains, when metal first became universally popular, it was the first time Chileans really had a safe arena to act out decades of pent-up agression against the government. Music was a safe "f-you" to The Man. And I guess it makes sense and I can see it as another extension of the Chilean desire for free and uninhibited expression. I just kind of wish acoustic rock had the same effect.
So I'm packed in a room with about a hundred sweaty men with long sweaty hair, shoving each other back and forth. I almost can't pay attention to the music because I'm too busy swinging other people's hair out of my face and trying in vain to protect myself from being absolutely soaked in beer. But the band - Dorso - is surprisingly good. You know, for loud screamy stuff. The most amusing part is the montage of B-rated horror films the band has chosen to project on a background screen - everything from claymation cyclops to lesbian vampires.
This spectacle is what people come for, I think. It's like watching professional wrestling in the States - the band members are costumed, wearing fake alien claws and dog collars studded with nine inch spikes. The movie montage is the sickest, fake-bloodiest gore you could ever possibly come across. And even the actions of the fans - the violence, the rage, the protest - is all really very staged. No one seems to actually want to hurt each other, and I think honestly they wouldn't even be acting out at all if the whole environment wasn't so conducive to being absolutely ridiculous.
This ridiculousness - this spectacle -might be able to be extended to the whole protest scene in Chile today. Chileans love a good protest, but I think they love more the idea of a good protest. Maybe in the 80s there was some significance, but now a lot of protests seem to be about the practice, not the faith. Even very serious protests - like the current Mapuche hunger strike - are built on arguably ludicrous grounds. (The Mapuche have asked to sit down at a table with the heads of the three legislative sectors in Chile to talk about receiving some ancestral lands. The thing is there AREN'T heads of two of the three legislative branches, so even if the government wanted to, they couldn't fulfill the Mapuche request.)
I can't blame them, though - spectacle is definitely fun. And it does serve a purpose: playing make pretend emotionally might help assuage real dissatisfaction in other areas of life - in your job, in your relationships. Blowing off steam, and blowing it off in a safe, productive way, probably keeps everyone contentedly ticking along. So I raged and screamed along with them, and flung my sweaty hair in other people's faces. Oh yeah. I'm bad to the bone. At least on the surface.
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