Photos, then text…
Last night, without any planning or close to enough warm clothing, we hopped on a bus that took us into the desert´s back roads outside of tiny San Pedro de Atacama. There we found a French astronomer with a good sense of humor and bad politics–Martina later told me my face went from an enormous smile to dead serious the instant he made a joke about Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales–who used a laser pointer that appeared to actually reach the stars in order to teach us about a sky that can´t ever be seen from the hemisphere where I´ve spent most of my life. We listened, we followed the outlines of constellations, we looked at Saturn and Mars through gigantic telescopes, but mostly we just stared up at more stars than I´ve ever seen at once. He gave us warm jackets and hats, taught us more in two hours than I learned in a semester of college astronomy (though I admit I didn´t quite attend all of the classes back then), and reminded us how impossibly small we all are.
Something worth remembering, especially as I´m coming out of some strange and difficult weeks. I´ve been tempted, in so many of these last days, to look forward to a time when I´ve placed this last month into a narrative, when I´vesecured for it an order and rationale–as we do–to help me imagine that a few weeks spent recovering from a careless accident in the most expensive small town I´vevisited on this journey was in fact a positive occurrence, that it enabled so much. But even before the astronomer, the past week–my first without the giant boot–at the coast and in the desert had begun to convince me that my trip is alive again.
Allende loves my boot. Valparaiso helped. The morning I arrived I walked into another protest, the scene a familiar one, with water cannons and armored trucks chasing students in the streets. This time I avoided jumping into the middle of things. I suspect that carrying out running battles with the police in the street is tough when you can´t run.
Two days later I found a very different protest when I came down from the impossibly steep hills in one of the city´s ancient ansensores. Some university students/musicians took over the empty second floor of a corner building downtown and put on a concert to raise money and protest the cutting of music programs. I found a spot in a doorway to listen and watch the reactions of the midday rush hour crowd, including a few truckloads of day laborers who started cheering and dancing when they stopped below the open windows.
¿Como? I stayed with Ben, a friend I met in Pucón several weeks ago, in a room immediately above the base of the Asensor Reina Victoria, which also happens to be an outdoor party spot for an enormous crowd of street drinkers, so my sleep had an impressive soundtrack. Getting me there took some effort, though: Ben is French with decent Spanish and very little English; Martina–whom I also met in Pucón–is Italian with good Spanish and even better English; and I´m a gringo with a little Spanish (and no Italian or French). So the three of us exchanged many text messages and phone calls before I finally made my way to Ben´s place, and poor Martina did most of the work. My first night in town, Martina and her Colombian roommates came over to cook some serious Italian food and we had a blast. It´s so interesting–and frustrating–to be in this seemingly vast in between space with my Spanish. I´ve definitely surpassed the hordes of gringos who don´t care to speak Spanish and seem to avoid it as much as possible, but I´m still not very capable of carrying on complicated conversations. At dinner that night and at so many other times, I can follow the conversation with some effort, but if I´m going to participate I have to plan in my head what I will say, to visualize the string of words piece by piece. Usually by the time I do the conversation has moved on and I´ve missed another four or five sentences. If nothing else, at least this is forcing me to listen more and talk less.
Maitencillo. My last days con la bota took place in Maitencillo, a gorgeous seaside town north of Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, where I met my friend Danica and her friends for a birthday party, some booted dancing, some (rather slow) walks on the beach, and Chilean food courtesy of Danica´s Chilean ¨parents,¨ all of which provided just the right motivation to get me out of Pucón.
Oswaldo. In the five hours we spent together, we talked constantly, though his English is slightly worse than my Spanish. He works 14 hours per day, first at a doctor´s office in Villarica and then in his own little Kinesiology practice. He´s hoping to have enough money soon to quit one job and spend more time with his three young sons. He wants to open a clinic for the poor. He has good taste in futbol clubs. His aunt and uncle and several other relatives were founding members of a leftist party that fought a guerilla war against Pinochet´s regime. Most ended up dead or in exile–some are still afraid to return to the country, even with Pinochet dead–which might account for his desire to stay away from formal politics.
In five sessions of physical therapy he helped my foot enormously, made me begin to feel like I might actually return to my usual mobility, storming across campus with more bags than I can carry. On my last visit, he invited me to stay with his family should I ever return to Villarica, and he told me that his talks with me have convinced him to take English classes. I told him that if I ever have a home, he and his family should come and stay. We each tried, in the other´s language, to communicate how much we enjoyed our time together, both sure that we would be great friends if geography and language and an endless string of constructed, imaginary and murderous boundary lines were not conspiring against us.
Neruda. On the eve of May Day, I sat next to Neruda´s house and grave at Isla Negra, which is neither an island nor black, and watched the ocean until I knew I had to walk–with my slow half-limp–to the bus stop if I was going to catch the bus back to Valparaiso. I thought about Neruda dying just months after the coup, after Kissinger and Pinochet and the boys began they´re work. I thought about where I would go next, about what I would do back in Seattle. I reminded myself of all I could think to remind myself. I missed everyone and felt good about missing them. I was happy to be alone and wished I wasn´t.
Sand and Salt. Martina and I came north–one of us by plane and the other via a 22-hour bus trip–on Friday and have spent each day since visiting surreal salt flats, moon-like valleys, 4000-meter high lakes, and much else that I don´t find myself capable of describing. Tonight I will get on another bus. With any luck, I´ll be in Peru in 24 hours, my boot still in a bag at my side until I can find a clinic that will take it.
