Some alcoholics have all the luck

I wrote this last night:

How is it that some of the greatest writers are also the biggest drinkers and that, though it has sadly killed many of them, not everyone can use substances to their creative advantage in this way? (Have you seen the set of shot glasses that pretentious people—such as I aspire to be—have: Drink with the Great Drinkers, with a face of an important literary figure/drunkard on each glass?) How is it that, though I could hardly cast myself with either the Great Writers or the Great Drinkers (really, you must think I’m an alcoholic, but I swear I don’t drink to emborracharme!), I can’t even bring myself to cobble together two coherent sentences for my blog when I’ve had a non-sober/non-restive patch?

OK, so maybe that last question is nonsensical or even unfair, but I am noticing how marked it is that during my rock and roll days in Chile (ok, that’s more like bad salsa dancing and clubbing nights), I am so far from eloquent. Of course this is probably just enigmatic for the various ways that I am undoubtedly hiding from myself, but being superficial as I can be, this is the area in which I notice it the most and aspire to improve my intellectual state.

Because the thing is that millions of things occur to me to write about, and I can only hope I can capture their essence well enough to convey even the slightest notion of them, and well, now I feel like that’s in my reach.

Like the past few weeks of classes at U Chile, I’ve spent my Tuesdays and Thursdays in a similar manner. As I don’t have class until 16:10 (that’s 4:10 to you North Americans) on those days, I’ve been going to the EAP Study Center at PUC (Pontificia Universidad Católica) Campus Oriente in Ñuñoa—either from El Centro, by micro, or my house, by Metro). In the morning, or early afternoon, I can use one of the free computers that happen to be working at the office, check my mail (send me some!! I keep forgetting to give folks the address, but hey, I’m here for another four months at the very least, and I need some lovin’ here), and take care of any bureaucratic business (trámites, as they say). But anyway, that’s just boring stuff. The nice thing about those days is that I have to either take a 30 minute walk to my campus in Macul or a 15 minute bike ride there.

I know you know I walk a lot, and I’m always telling you about the mundane but fascinating-to-me things I see on these passes through the city. But this is a kind of surreal walk, because I pass through a super-bourgie area with sweet houses and then Plaza Ñuñoa, with all the kids getting out of school (who are all so much hipper than I could ever be), and then toward a grittier area, which is Avenida Grecia and the Macul campus of U Chile.

But usually I’m in a bit of a rush to get there because I never leave enough time for these travels, and though I’m getting to know the route better, I still have my little panic moment at about 4:05, all worried about disrupting the class if I’m late.

But do you know how I know when I’ve suddenly arrived? I come across not one but four Shell gas stations in as many blocks.

Yeah, you know how it’s weird when there are three or four gas stations of different companies, all on the same corner? Well, maybe I’m sheltered, but I am always a bit surprised to pass these ones. Two are on the same intersection (one is right next to the McDonalds the Macul kids bombed—good for them! [just kidding, you know I don’t support terrorism in any form]—and was just recently reopened), and the other two are super close on Avenida Grecia. Grody.

I don’t know though—it’s such a weird street. It’s about a six lane road in some places, which of course justifies all the petrol stations, but the only reason I don’t feel like I’m going to die while crossing it or being in traffic on my bike is that there was some actual planning that went into it. I know this is boring, but you have to picture it to understand why the public transit here is so much superior to anything in the US. It maybe rivals New York, but I’ve never lived there. And there’s another clarification to that, too, which is that it’s locomoción colectiva, but the micros are all privately owned, and mostly by the Mafia. Bad ass. Not really.

But the point is that on this particular freeway, the outside two lanes in each direction are for autos, and in between are one to two lanes of bus traffic in each direction. So what you get is these huge bus stops in the middle of the street, and it feels a little like you’re waiting for the train.

Sometimes after class, I go to the big evil supermarket on the same infamous intersection as all the Shells and get lost staring at the miles of mayonnaise-in-a-bag and other condiments similarly packaged. You know how people talk about living in so-called Communist Eastern Europe and Russia and then coming out of it and just being overjoyed at the marketplace democracy of hundreds of choices of the same product but with different labels? Well, I feel like I’ve been missing something living in the not-nearly-consumerist-enough US society, and getting to successfully neoliberalized Chile and having the freedom to choose from mountains of long-grain rice and spaghetti and Ají and MSG- and sugar-laced uber-processed foods. Needless to say, my eyes glaze over (“…lost in the supermarket…”), but it’s sometimes more relaxing than mulling over the impossible lecture I was meant to absorb.

Remember in Sentimental Education, when all the law students are just scribbling away during their classes (not to mix cultural references too much, but I just heard the voice of Agnes Gooch croaking, “I’m your sponge!” in Auntie Mame), and that is the elite education they are paying for? While U Chile is hardly elite, this scene from Flaubert strikes me as exceedingly familiar here.

One thing I love about the public transit here is that you never have a fixed itinerary for getting around: at Macul, for instance, you can catch one of dozens of buses that pass by because any number of them will pass near where you need to go. Some days the first bus that comes when I’m waiting after class will take me all the way home, which is cool if I want the scenic route, because it usually takes about an hour that way. Or I can usually catch one that goes a quarter or half of the way to my house, and from there I can take the Metro—that journey only takes about a half hour. Biking is much easier, though always more solitary, and though interesting, can’t really compare to the entertainment that is riding the micro.

But I was going to tell you about the cafés con piernas, because it’s this big Chilean cultural phenomenon (hey—don’t let anyone tell you there’s no national culture here, because this is hot and very original stuff). The best way to explain this thing is to walk you through a little visual exercise.

Picture yourself kind of hungry, walking down the street in Santiago in the afternoon or early evening. You pass this building that looks like a restaurant: there’s a big board outside the door advertising what would appear to be relatively tasty café food. It helps if you imagine you’re vegetarian, because such establishments seem a little yummier than your average Chilean restaurant with its hambergeusas, chorizos and lomos a lo pobre.

But then you wonder, huh, I wonder why the windows of this place are so dark I can’t see in. Or you might happen by an place with the door open but with a funny lay-out inside: a big bar instead of tables and chairs—but the bar is set up so that you can see the legs of the servers…which are startlingly scantily clad.

So either way, you think, huh, this is a strange place to get lunch. And that’s the disappointment of the day, because you are an anti-sexist and you are not charmed by the kitsch these places offer and you have to argue with your friends to find some other seedy place, so long as it does not attract its clientele on the basis of objectifying women in such a blatant way.

Humph.

But I guess coffee is somehow classier and less sleazy than a strip bar (which seem to be non-existent, though porn theaters there are a-plenty), so Chile has that up on the US. The worst part is that, since coffee here = Nescafe, cafés con piernas are about the only exception to that. I always preferred tea anyway.

I don’t think I mentioned I’m doing English conversation for this class this woman Jessica does out of her home once a week. Super interesting. So one more random fact for the day, before I put you to sleep with this shit. I found out why, though there’s amazing produce here, they hardly cook with vegetables. Jessica told me that many years ago, they had a lot of problems with dirty produce, so that the women of her grandmother’s and mother’s generations only learned to over-cook veggies, so that it was a boring trámite to consume them. And now that there’s no problem with them at all here, no one knows how to cook them well, so they stick to what they know: chicken, pork, and beef. The food revolution has yet to arrive here.

Oh, but speaking of revolutions, I finally saw Machuca last night! Super good, and you have to see it when it comes to the states. It’s about the life of kids (about 10 years old, but of economic exremes) at this English school with a leftist priest in Santiago in 1973 and what happens to them when the coup goes down on Chile’s September 11 that year. I could geek out about it, but I’ll wait until you see it and we can talk about it. But all you really need to know is that this film is a Big Deal for the culture of this country (it’s up there with those cafés, I tell ya), since they have only recently had the resources for a film industry here. So this was a long time in the making, and it soaked up about all the cultural funds this place has to offer. Lots of jobs created: the kids had a lot of them, and they were phenomenal. And the most important thing is that it creates new space for dialogue about the dictatorship, which many people have been very callado about, due to denial or horror.

Trying to make this an earlyish night, so sweet dreams to you.