Sí, sí, mis amores, estoy aquí. I arrived yesterday morning, sailed through all the trámites getting through the airport, the cab ride that was almost as much as my previous airport shuttles but half the distance, twice as fast, and private. Already I got inquisitive obnoxious older unattractive chilenos getting their noses in my tattoo business, but that´s life. I don´t know if there´s a key here for just a plain apostrophe, but it´s not used in Spanish, so you´ll have to live with the accent marks. I´ve been writing pretty non-stop, processing, processing, so here´s what´s been on my mind since we last spoke.
From the plane ATL->SCL
It´s actually a bit anti-climatic, this flight, but I had to say something. The flight is pretty booked, less leg-room than my domestic flights, and just an unfriendly Chilean guy next to me. I´m tired but giddy.
Later: I dreamed I was on the plane next to some Chileans (which, of course, I am in real life) and Rachel O. We are likely going to Chile, or it could be some other international desintation. And the plane is in these weird flight patterns, where it dips very low to the earth and then surges back up. I seem to think wer are having some kind of landing each time--touching down to Cuba in one instance--or at least physically collecting something each time we get so close to the ground. I´m alarmed but comforted each time it climbs into the atmosphere again.
Ups and downs of travel, especially air travel. I´ve been through a few of them, and now I´m arriving. There will be still more challenges and downers, but whatever happens, I will face it.
I woke up gassy and restless, opened the shade to catch the last few moments of bright stars in the sky--the big diper immediately outside my window over the wing. Wait, is that possible, facing south? I can´t remember. There was just the faintest hint of color on the edge of the wing, then over the minutes, it grew stronger, until the stars faded to memory and the sky was as bright as my eyes, realizing we were just along the coast of Southern Perú, with Antofogasta showing on the flight map, though no Santiago yet.
We´re still over water, nearning the land of the thin country, approaching Valpo and Viña (which we never actually flew over-ed.), Santiago so close, so hot, so wet, so pregnant--maybe when we land, I will finally bleed from the relief. For now, a fluffy layer of clouds masks whatever land or water we speed over, to an unseen destination somewhere soon.
Noonish (yesterday), at Polo´s in Barrio Yungay
I guess I feel pretty much how I thought I would: nervous, like a tourist, forein, awkward, uncertain of my step, my mission, even a daily plan to feel strongly about, in my hands. My words falter, never coming out with the clarity that pronouces meaning in my brain. Vocabulary, diminshed. Verbs of all tenses, mixed up and questioning.
I am struggling with the fatigue. Someone told me it takes awhile for your soul to catch up to you when you fly, and I like to believe I´ve had it with me this whole time--I´m just a little out of touch with it. Of course I am struggling with the same feelings I had the month before I left, ungrounded with all the trámites getting ready for this moment. Then I had purpose--it was all for this, for today, for these five weeks en el sur. But in the day to day, if I didn´t have each moment micromanaged, I couldn´t tell you what I really wanted to do. I felt small, insecure.
That´s just being human, of course. It can´t be helped. We´re all needy sometimes.
Polo´s house is amazing. I rang the bell, my mochila on my back (one of the straps just broke, I´ll have to sew it back on), my other bag on my shoulder--dropped on the floor just inside the house to hug this flaco, this mustached, 5 o´clock-shadowed man (Polo, really, the beard was much more becoming). I was remembering when Khury came to visit me a year ago last fall, and we just collapsed and napped all afternoon that he arrived, just relaxed in our friendship, at home together. I suppose I wanted that here, but it´s too awkward. I am too awkward, too much a stranger to him, and he to me. Later, when we walked down the street together, off to look for my old housemate Marcelo, it was worse than when I sat across the room from him while he smoked, or ambled around the apartment looking for things in the piles, much like someone I know, chuta, dónde está esta cosita...Finally, on that walk, I reached out to just put my arm around his tiny waist and sighed with relief. It´s hard to go through all I have the last few days and have no one to relax into, no friend into whose arms to collapse. He returned the gesture but pulled back, asking if I feel better, less nervous, said something about feeling out of sorts when you´re in the air. Yes. Very. Ungrounded.
Back at home, with a new key in my pocket he made for me--but disappointed and worried because Marcelo is in Quillán with his family, where his father is very ill--I marvel at the beautiful home he lives in with the many young people I would meet and re-meet. It´s the kind of house that anyone in the Bay Area would think of as a potential hippie eco-village. (I swear, I even looked at one as a possible new home before I moved to the City.) You enter from this alley (luckily I arrived in the morning), onto this patio that all the rooms surround. Towels and other laundry are being aired out, and sleepy, flea-ridden but adorable gatitos lounge around in the plants in the sun. The tiny kitchen and bike rooms are open, the bathroom is closed, and Polo´s rooms look out over the patio and take in the sun. When I came here before, he had only a tiny room with a tiny bed, where he made all his jewelery and wrote his poetry. Now, he has fewer roommates, and has taken over the entire upstairs on one side. Very small ceilings, I keep bumping my head on one of the doorways. But it´s great, and his quarters are mine--Corina, estás en tu casa.
Chuta, I´m tired and scared about the city before me, about being alone in it, physically. I think about being on my own in SF, and there are always one to five cuddle buddies and nice long warm huggers. Here, there is warmth even amongst strangers, but some necessary physical distance, everyone paired up who was before soltero, or just friends but fear of sexual tension keeps that friendship at a distance. I never got close to any women here, though I sense in Polo´s roommates more friendliness than I ever met with other chilenas.
11pm
I guess I slept half the day, in a self-conscious daze in Polo´s matress on the floor while he ran errands and then went to work. We had lunch at El Sindicato, this great leftist spot where I had heard beautiful music before. Muy rico. Bending, but not outright breaking, my usual dietary restrictions, for this trip. But I feel good, I like having a real meal, a real plate of food for about $2. He ordered this cherry drink I´d never seen before, it has an actual dry cherry in every bottle. Riquisimo, as far as bebidas go. Nada que ver con Coca Cola, which he also boycots.
I felt better going out alone, with his key in my pocket, though it was getting dark and I got a few timid catcalls as I went about buying what I needed for the dinner I envisioned. It would turn out more expensive than lunch (especially because I´m sure I paid too much for the box of Gato Negro), but better. Somehow, being here, I forgot how to cook anything I would normally make. O sea, I suddenly forgot how to improvise anything but a typical Chilean rice dish. But it turned out well, and I left the leftovers on the stove for the roomates to enjoy. I got cuts on my achilles from walking without socks. I´m regretting not bringing my Chacos sandals--did I not buy them with hiking in Chile on my mind?--but when I look around at what people make do with, I realize I´ll be fine.
He´s lending me his bike, and I´ll go out on it tomorrow to look for a play he says is happening at Republica. Hopefully won´t get lost. Too lost.
I like it here, though I couldn´t get the hot water to work (the tub looks worse than any in any squat I´ve been in, but the rest of it is cared for by women, which is more than I could ever say about my old house here). So it was a cold shower, no hair washed to too thourough a scrub-down, but who needs a hot shower in the summer? Now it´s just me and the kittens and various roommates passing through--and Baldwin. I finished the messenger book on the plane and had to buy two more novels (drat! I hate buying books at full price, especially from a store owned by CNN!).
It dawned on me as I rested earlier: all the solitude really wasn´t necessary. I easily could have brought someone with me to Chile. But of course it will be okay anyway. It is what it is.
Now...
Now that I have spent an hour here, that is one hour that I have not spent in this hot city. I´m at Bellas Artes, which seems to be a place of the young and hip. I saw a super tattooed guy ride by on a weird bike, and a couple of boring young foreigners. Always got to look for the freaks. On Sundays at Parque Forestal, the punk rockers have their flea market and circus. At least I think they still do. My health food store is gone though, so I´ll have to seek out other options. The Chinese markets are still here, so my tofu source is good. There´s not really much to do in the city, but hey, I´m on vacation, so I really don´t have to do shit. That´s the best part. Marcelo gets back on Sunday, and Rafa is around, even while Polo´s at work. Looks like I´ll go to Mendoza next week, and then Chiloé después. Hey, I have lots of pictures, but no way to upload them yet. They´ll be on my flickr when I´m able.
I´m a block from Cerro Santa Lucía, recuerdas? The hill for lovers...and me, solita. No. Sola. But that´s not even true, because I have todos de ustedes en el corazón, y mi libro en mi bolso Zo.
