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.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Best Responses of the Semester
Some of my students like to get creative. Here are my top picks for responses on exams:
Too much Catholic school...
When I was a child...
-I spak as a child.
Not enough Catholic school...
List three wishes.
-I want to get you luv drunk of my hump.
Girls, girls, girls girls, Girls I do adore...
Write about an occupation. List details such as job location, salary, and responsibilities.
-A teacher learns persons about subjects like History, Geography, and Englich. Sometimes teacher is mean but sometime is beautifull, like my teacher of Englich.
Write about your likes and dislikes, as well as those of a friend.
-Miss LOVEEEEE Radiohead. I LOVEEEEE Radiohead. Miss and I are perfect pear.
Spelling counts:
What is your favorite food?
-I likes the fast foods but not the fishs becose they are back tasties.
...Full points?
What is your father's favorite actress?
-I don't kno becose my father died when I was a child.
Be cuter. Please.
What types of movies do you like?
-I like the movies of action but romantic films are okay, they aren't very disgusting for me.
Giving up:
What do you do to keep fit?
-Que significa "keep fit".....oh miss.....I no f****ing kno this s***!!!!!!!?!?!?!?!
Or trying really hard:
What is your job?
-How is job for me why like i do.
More Yoda?
Change the direct question to an indirect question.
-Tell me what time it is, you will?
Too much Catholic school...
When I was a child...
-I spak as a child.
Not enough Catholic school...
List three wishes.
-I want to get you luv drunk of my hump.
Girls, girls, girls girls, Girls I do adore...
Write about an occupation. List details such as job location, salary, and responsibilities.
-A teacher learns persons about subjects like History, Geography, and Englich. Sometimes teacher is mean but sometime is beautifull, like my teacher of Englich.
Write about your likes and dislikes, as well as those of a friend.
-Miss LOVEEEEE Radiohead. I LOVEEEEE Radiohead. Miss and I are perfect pear.
Spelling counts:
What is your favorite food?
-I likes the fast foods but not the fishs becose they are back tasties.
...Full points?
What is your father's favorite actress?
-I don't kno becose my father died when I was a child.
Be cuter. Please.
What types of movies do you like?
-I like the movies of action but romantic films are okay, they aren't very disgusting for me.
Giving up:
What do you do to keep fit?
-Que significa "keep fit".....oh miss.....I no f****ing kno this s***!!!!!!!?!?!?!?!
Or trying really hard:
What is your job?
-How is job for me why like i do.
More Yoda?
Change the direct question to an indirect question.
-Tell me what time it is, you will?
Sunday, July 18, 2010
The Shadow and the Soul
There is a unique perspective given to life when a person leans their head against a bus window. If it is sunny, your cushion of hair absorbs the day through the glass. One of your eyes is inevitably stunted, so that your other has to cock itself up and out to survey the land. I was in this position of the ergonomics of head-against-bus-window contemplation, the wind trailing in faint little bits of seaweed smell from the upper deck, when the conductor abruptly stopped and I slammed my roving eye into the bar in front of said bus window. We were in the middle of nowhere along a rocky coast. Houses facing the ocean looked like sad bits of laundry left waving on the line, connecting this town seemingly to every other nameless, faceless coastal village in Central Chile. There wasn't even a designated bus stop: the driver had whimsically pulled over.
"Isla Negra," he grumbled in our direction. I plopped myself onto the sand-whipped pavement, holding my eye. The bus rumbled off.
Let me repeat that we barely had any clue where we were. Let me state that the lonely beauty of the place made me not really care. I was staring at an endless ice-blue sea on a cloudless day. The wind sounded off the rocks so that all I could hear was a sonic boom of wave after wave and a constant whistling. We bundled up and haphazardly wandered down the road.
I had come on the second installment of my commune with Pablo Neruda, (not even barely arguably) Chile's most famous poet. "I wait for you like a lonely house / till you will see me again and live in me. / Till then my windows ache," he had written once to a lover. Neruda was a natural architect and contractor; his words leave me sure that he viewed life, in part, as a constant construction project. I had come to see one of his favorite places - a "lonely house" built on the raw shore of a rough coast, so close to the edge of the world that the sea could spit at its windows.
Neruda loved the sea, though was famously afraid to ever set foot upon it. The entrance to Isla Negra contains a boat moored safely high up on a rocky outcropping. Neruda would sit in this boat, staring at the sea, and drink red wine - as the slow workings of alcohol had the same effect of being on the waves. His three houses in Santiago, Isla Negra, and Valparaiso all incorporate this nautical love into its archetecture and furnishings. Shipless figureheads find port off of ladder-stepped balconies in Neruda's living rooms; the curve of kitchen ceilings echoes the ribs of a boat's waistline; and knotted wormwood is found in abundance in every inch and corner of his homes.
The houses are as whimsical as I would have imagined Neruda to be, and show that he was a man who enjoyed, above all, the pleasure of enjoyment. He drank out of stained glass cups, saying that water tasted better when in a colored chalice; he placed old toys about the house, saying that "the man who doesn't play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly"; and the portraits and statues he hangs about his houses all are positioned to be staring at a portrait or statue of the opposite sex, so that they will "not feel lonely."
Most enchanting is how his words come alive as you walk around the house. Every spot, every nook, has been inscribed in his house of poetry, and it is obvious that these houses, in a way, built his poetry, and vice-versa. Just stand at his desk, looking through a porthole, to see his muse - the sweet, forlorn feeling of Home constructed in harmony with nature; the fragile beauty of manmade composition in the unforgiving path of the sweep of the sea.
Neruda was laid to rest after a battle with cancer shortly after the takeover of the country by Pinochet's military coup. His dream of a functional Communist party in Chile died with a gunshot to Allende's head. Flowers grow thickly out of his grave at Isla Negra, facing the sea, the gravestone inscription eroded into a faint echo of his name, once carved deeply into the rock.
"Isla Negra," he grumbled in our direction. I plopped myself onto the sand-whipped pavement, holding my eye. The bus rumbled off.
Let me repeat that we barely had any clue where we were. Let me state that the lonely beauty of the place made me not really care. I was staring at an endless ice-blue sea on a cloudless day. The wind sounded off the rocks so that all I could hear was a sonic boom of wave after wave and a constant whistling. We bundled up and haphazardly wandered down the road.
I had come on the second installment of my commune with Pablo Neruda, (not even barely arguably) Chile's most famous poet. "I wait for you like a lonely house / till you will see me again and live in me. / Till then my windows ache," he had written once to a lover. Neruda was a natural architect and contractor; his words leave me sure that he viewed life, in part, as a constant construction project. I had come to see one of his favorite places - a "lonely house" built on the raw shore of a rough coast, so close to the edge of the world that the sea could spit at its windows.
Neruda loved the sea, though was famously afraid to ever set foot upon it. The entrance to Isla Negra contains a boat moored safely high up on a rocky outcropping. Neruda would sit in this boat, staring at the sea, and drink red wine - as the slow workings of alcohol had the same effect of being on the waves. His three houses in Santiago, Isla Negra, and Valparaiso all incorporate this nautical love into its archetecture and furnishings. Shipless figureheads find port off of ladder-stepped balconies in Neruda's living rooms; the curve of kitchen ceilings echoes the ribs of a boat's waistline; and knotted wormwood is found in abundance in every inch and corner of his homes.
The houses are as whimsical as I would have imagined Neruda to be, and show that he was a man who enjoyed, above all, the pleasure of enjoyment. He drank out of stained glass cups, saying that water tasted better when in a colored chalice; he placed old toys about the house, saying that "the man who doesn't play has lost forever the child who lived in him and who he will miss terribly"; and the portraits and statues he hangs about his houses all are positioned to be staring at a portrait or statue of the opposite sex, so that they will "not feel lonely."
Most enchanting is how his words come alive as you walk around the house. Every spot, every nook, has been inscribed in his house of poetry, and it is obvious that these houses, in a way, built his poetry, and vice-versa. Just stand at his desk, looking through a porthole, to see his muse - the sweet, forlorn feeling of Home constructed in harmony with nature; the fragile beauty of manmade composition in the unforgiving path of the sweep of the sea.
Neruda was laid to rest after a battle with cancer shortly after the takeover of the country by Pinochet's military coup. His dream of a functional Communist party in Chile died with a gunshot to Allende's head. Flowers grow thickly out of his grave at Isla Negra, facing the sea, the gravestone inscription eroded into a faint echo of his name, once carved deeply into the rock.
Monday, June 21, 2010
"El que no salta..."
It is minute 73 of Game 2 for Chile. Tension builds to a boiling point as Chile teases our Alameda restaurant onlookers with close-but-no-cigar tries. The swears get nastier. My barros luco grows colder. The horns become more annoying. I could kiss the ref for throwing a red card at Suiza number 11 and could kill him for calling offsides on Chile's first goal (which wasn't really offsides). It is ON and we are pounding the tables and shouting and chanting chichichilelelevivachile! as Chile bears down on the Swiss, cleats flinging turf in tiny missiles and Isla passes to Valdivia, Valdivia passes to Vidal, I think of Vidal Sassoon and my mullet and I forget if Vidal's nickname is Celia Punk or is it Valdivia's and as the fumes of one thousand chain-smoked Lucky Strike cigarettes fill the room all of Chile explodes in a bloodthirsty howl as Chile finally scores a
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our enterprisers quickly close the gates over their front glass windows and discreetly dole out bills to the twenty or so packed restaurant tables as we pay and join the growing mob outside and all around me is the red and white and blue of painted sweatstained faces and flags as capes flapping in the winter wind and the somber olive green of the caribineros as we stampede chanting and throwing confetti in our hair and spitting it out of our mouths and little Chilean babies crawl on mountains of confetti and we are packed, packed in Plaza Italia, holding onto each other for dear life, screaming our heads off, being shoved and our feet not touching the ground as the density of the crowd keeps us moving without walking, jumping and piggy-backing and laughing and smiling and running, running out of fear of being tear-gassed, or, worse, sprayed with sewage water, back to the safety of Laura's apartment and the comfort of a soothing cup of hot chocolate.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Our enterprisers quickly close the gates over their front glass windows and discreetly dole out bills to the twenty or so packed restaurant tables as we pay and join the growing mob outside and all around me is the red and white and blue of painted sweatstained faces and flags as capes flapping in the winter wind and the somber olive green of the caribineros as we stampede chanting and throwing confetti in our hair and spitting it out of our mouths and little Chilean babies crawl on mountains of confetti and we are packed, packed in Plaza Italia, holding onto each other for dear life, screaming our heads off, being shoved and our feet not touching the ground as the density of the crowd keeps us moving without walking, jumping and piggy-backing and laughing and smiling and running, running out of fear of being tear-gassed, or, worse, sprayed with sewage water, back to the safety of Laura's apartment and the comfort of a soothing cup of hot chocolate.
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