Odes

I sit now in the home of a kind lawyer in Puerto Varas, Chile. Snow-frosted volcanoes loom surreal over an indigo lake, and I’m sipping tea, reflecting. As always there is too much to recount. We’ve worked for two weeks for a old man from Ohio, we visited my old friends in Temuco and danced until 5 a.m. through an earthquake, and now we’re here, in the picturesque tourist haven of Puerto Varas, discussing religion and politics with our wonderful Couchsurfing host.

I have mentioned, I believe, that the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda is the shit. In one particular anthology, Neruda writes every poem as an ode to something: “Ode to the Bicycle,” “Ode to the Artichoke,” “Ode to the Onion,” etc. In this spirit, I am going to try to allude to my experiences of the last couple of weeks in a brief series of odes. Enjoy.

Ode to Thistle
We are now intimate enemies, Cirisium arvense. Farmer Daniel calls you "Canadian Thistle," but I know that you're really called "Cursed." After spending untold hours chopping your invasive thorny hide into bits with a hoe in the cherry orchards, I'm confused. I think I've come to love you as much as I hate you. There's something almost proud about your spiny face under a gray spring sky. You know what "green" means. Your evil is pure.

Ode to Steinbeck
You genius, you. Of course it’s strange to be reading your North-American epic East of Eden, being on the wrong continent and all, but it’s so true and mythic. I can’t stop. You are my company during lazy afternoons on the Valdivia farm, where I read post thistle-murder with tea. I binge on your words, wonder where I come from, get lost in your universe. Pristine phrases float through my mind like clouds… “I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul.”

Ode to the Sea
You must be tired of odes by now, you infinite expanse of base-notes and lights. I can't help it, though—you're too beautiful outside of Validvia, framed as you are by the ramparts of old forts and yellow flowers. As pelicans muse like old men above your turquoise tufts, Nathaniel and I talk about the grandiose intangibles of life. God becomes a hypothetical mollusk, and we wonder what we can know.

Ode to Beer
European immigrants pander your strange golden rainbow, and we sample every variety in little plastic cups. I didn't think that you could come honey-flavored; thick and sweet like syrup. The "Gran Torobayo" is clearly the best, but I don't know where the name comes from and you're not nearly as good as your Oregonian cousins. I love your improbability, however, and I laugh to myself as I sip something so rich and brown and German.
  
Ode to Marcelo
“Temuco.” We wanted to go there, but the gleaming labeled bus wouldn’t stop for two grungy backpackers waving their arms on the side of the Pan-American Highway. You stopped, though, with your giant empty tea truck. We didn’t think that our shyly waving thumbs would yield any results, but you stopped and you saved us. You honked for us to come and then threw our backpacks where the tea used to be. For two hours you ferried us, laughed and chain-smoked, shared pictures of your son. You asked to friend us on Facebook and showed us how people are good.
  
Ode to Coffee
Grounding beautiful delicious dirt—I could write an anthology just for you (poor Nathaniel listens to excerpts daily). Everyone here drinks Nescafe, which isn’t coffee at all, and you’ve become a distant dream during the last few weeks. But then Vickie, a fascinating entrepreneur, serves you up steaming as we talk about chocolate and organic food and entertaining the prince of Monaco. Maybe we will work for Vickie arranging her porch and watching after her bed and breakfast. Maybe I will drink more of you, you beautiful bevarage. The possibilities are delectable.