To Autumn (Sad When I Think of Missing This)

An ember faintly shines in autumn dark

The 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.

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...

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.

The Long Bus Ride Travelers: Bariloche, Argentina

If there is any very important information I have learned about myself onmy trip to Bariloche, Argentina, it is that I'm not cut out for the elite of the Long-Bus-Ride-Travelers. I sat for so long that I could literally feel my bones deteriorating from the constant friction of my tush on the bus seat. I was delighted the entire way to the heady, intoxicating (emphasis on the "toxic") perfume of corn chips and feet. And (intimate friends and family would be impressed to know) I had to pee so bad that I actually braved the horrifying bathroom facilities with female delite and the success of not vomiting out my insides.

In the grand scheme of things, twenty hours on a bus down here is nothing. Certain trips can take 5 to 7 days. Imagine spending FIVE TO SEVEN DAYS. ON A BUS. So I'd like to take a moment to honor those who have heroically perservered traveling by bus around South America by offering them the worldwide recognition they so deeply deserve. They are the few. They are the proud. They are the Long-Bus-Ride-Travelers.

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You can imagine the soil-kissing, tear-leaking relief I experienced as our trusty coach rolled on in to the bus terminal in Bariloche. Erik and I had come to escape what we though would be certain chaos in Santiago during Chile's Bicentennial Celebration. And what an escape it was: even at the terminal we were treated to stunning lake views and towering blue mountains. The air was crisp and smelled of wood smoke curling up through the chimneys of tiny cottages. I was on the frontier of Patagonia and I could not help but feel the giddy magic of my surrundings.

We checked into luxury at La Cascada, a boutique hotel on the edge of town, and I blasted away the dust of our journey with a nice, hot shower. No view on the trip was more impressive than that from our own bedroom window. It left me feeling excited and inspired every time I awoke.

Bariloche is a popular ski resort during the winter. We had luckily come toward the end of peak season, so the town was fairly calm, which felt appropriate in the quiet majesty of our surroundings. We explored the city center our first night there, enjoying some Argentine-German fusion arquitechture.

Cafe del Pueblo serves submarinos (a type of hot chocolate where you stir a submarine-shaped chocolate bar into a glass of steamed milk) as well as live flamenco music every Friday night. We clapped out the beat on the sidelines as the complexity of the songs grew and as more and more intoxicated patrons stood to dance. I smiled at a young girl as she rumbaed alongside her mother. It was a beautiful welcome to Argentine culture - warm, rustic and friendly, which I sometimes miss in the bustle of Santiago.

The next day could have put a smile on Snow Miser's face: it was 1,000 below. Although I might have complained a little as I sat shivering atop Cerro Campenario, the view was absolutely stunning. We were surrounded on all sides by mirror lakes, snow-capped mountains and verdant green valleys.

We also paid a stop to the Fenoglio Chocolate Factory and Museum on the edge of town - $6.00 U.S. per person, roughly, got us a brief guided tour of the museum and factory as well as some personal history of how chocolateering came to be in Bariloche (read: Italian immigrants are always responsible for the best things to be found in any country). And, of course, we got to sample some hot chocolate and bonbons. Erik and I literally flew back with a kilo of chocolate each. (Choclate is very expensive in Santiago, but VERY cheap in Argentina. For comparison, a candy bar here is about $4.00 U.S., while a whole box of artisan chocolates in Bariloche was the same $4.00.)

Our last day in town was spent on Nahuel Huapi, which roughly translates to something about a very big cat, I believe, although with the wind and the rain it was hard tohear the tour guide talking as our catamaran island-hopped across the lake. We stopped first at Victoria Island (the original name was a man's name, but the locals mis-pronounced it as Victoria). The island was purchased for private use and in 1902 all the native wood was forested for profit. Later, a man who bought the island turned it into an arboretum for trees native to North America, Europe, and Africa. Imagine my surprise standing on an island on the tip of Argentina face-to-face with a baby sequoia (still hundreds of years old).

It's got nothing on California, but the smell of the pines made me a little homesick. Ecofreaks will be pleased to know that they are slowly trying to reforest the island with native flora and fauna. It is a VERY slow process, as indigenous trees only grow 1mm maximum per year.

Next we went to Arrayenes National Park. The island is covered in these trees with flaming orange-colored bark that peels away in strips to reveal a white chalky wood underneath. The effect is pretty po-mo. This location was so inspiring that Walt Disney actually based the setting of "Bambi" from a small cottage located on the island, and the small native deer (huapu huapu) inspired Snow White's close friends.

We were tired and beaten traveling back over the mountains, through Puerto Montt, and onto Santiago. But WHAT a journey. Cold, wet snow fell heavy on my face as we walked through the customs line. Erik asked if I wanted to make a snow angel. I must teach him that different types of snow call for different types of snow art.

Best Responses of the Semester: Part Two

I would like to be a model because...

they only need to walk.

I have many fans.

I look great in my underwear.

(from a boy) I am very beautiful, and my size is perfect.

I am twin with Paris Hilton.

I wouldn´t like to be a model because...

no one wants to see my fat mountains.

I like eating.

I don´t consume drugs.

I have the ¨muffin top¨.

It is exhaust to hook up wiht many persons.

that isn't manly at all.