It's Christmas Eve which also means that it's the anniversary of my birth. I'm now 23, which is pretty solidly in the realm of what most people would consider to be "adult." To me it feels... prime. By "prime" I mean completely indivisible by anything rational, e.g. "I am living the prime of my life, nothing appears to make much sense, but maybe a really nifty interpretation of the randomness can garner some sort of symmetry." You know?
The first birthday I've spent away from home has been filled with mate-drinking, Andean Fox wood carvings, and sentimental e-mails from my faraway family. I've never so tangibly felt distance like I feel the hemisphere between myself and home. I mean, I don't know explicitly what "home" is at this point but tears pricked my eyes here in the hotel lobby as I thought of things like evergreens, guitar-strumming, my parents, my brother, cinnamon rolls, and a steady Oregon downpour.
This feels real, though. The wind is gusting as per usual and the clouds are really outdoing themselves. The towers are spearing the sky, I'm surrounded by wonderful people (my fellow volunteers gave me a ruler of intangible things as a birthday present), and I know that the void of the things I miss is a sort of fullness because it means I've lived beauty.
And thus another arbitrary ritualistic flag has been waved. I'm far from home but I'm still reaching; forging my identity around fleeting semaphores like "birthday," "family," and "prime."
12.24.2010
12.21.2010
Required Items Delivered to the AMA Volunteers
We are living in the wilderness, miles upon miles from civilization. When our supervisor, Viviana, asked us what she could bring us from town, we requested the following:
(1) 2 bottles of wine
(2) a remedy for foot fungus
(3) 4 santa hats
(1) 2 bottles of wine
(2) a remedy for foot fungus
(3) 4 santa hats
12.20.2010
A Home Among Towers
As I write I sit in an exorbitant hotel lounge. There's a Christmas tree with a broken string of lights, a blazing hearth, and a French family playing fuse ball. It's all very incongruous here in the national park. Soon I will have to steal myself for a ten minute hike through a gusty downpour to the tent where I sleep. With a full-sized mattress.
My volunteer stint here in Torres del Paine has been an exercise in strange contradictions and surreal beauty. Along with my fellow volunteers, I've destroyed bridges, analyzed worm census data, pretended to be an endangered deer in front of skeptical Chilean youth, and written found poetry from the back of a whiskey bottle while a band of damp Portuguese read heartfelt verse aloud. I've marveled at the improbable fairy-tale grandeur of this place, what with incandescent glacial lagoons and monolithic granite spears and mid-summer snowfall. I've marveled at my own freedom, at the moon, at the disconnected slide-show of odd and wondrous things that somehow must cohere into the trajectory of my existence.
So, you know, I've been living.
And the holidays approach! I will be 23 in a mere four days! There are a few strategically placed Christmas trees around the hotel, but I can't help but miss the smell of my mother's cinnamon rolls, ritualistic construction of paper snow flakes; stealthy attempts to flock my brother with fake snow. I've never spent my birthday and Christmas away from home before, and it's a lingering sort of homesickness. But we four volunteers are organizing a gift exchange that involves broken tent parts. We discuss our families' holiday traditions over tea, and asked our boss to bring us Santa hats from Punta Arenas. Something festive is happening, and it just might be that I'll grow closer to my family and its rituals through distance.
I'll conclude with a sneak preview of the pictures that we recently uploaded to Picasa. For the full exposition, visit this link.
My volunteer stint here in Torres del Paine has been an exercise in strange contradictions and surreal beauty. Along with my fellow volunteers, I've destroyed bridges, analyzed worm census data, pretended to be an endangered deer in front of skeptical Chilean youth, and written found poetry from the back of a whiskey bottle while a band of damp Portuguese read heartfelt verse aloud. I've marveled at the improbable fairy-tale grandeur of this place, what with incandescent glacial lagoons and monolithic granite spears and mid-summer snowfall. I've marveled at my own freedom, at the moon, at the disconnected slide-show of odd and wondrous things that somehow must cohere into the trajectory of my existence.
So, you know, I've been living.
And the holidays approach! I will be 23 in a mere four days! There are a few strategically placed Christmas trees around the hotel, but I can't help but miss the smell of my mother's cinnamon rolls, ritualistic construction of paper snow flakes; stealthy attempts to flock my brother with fake snow. I've never spent my birthday and Christmas away from home before, and it's a lingering sort of homesickness. But we four volunteers are organizing a gift exchange that involves broken tent parts. We discuss our families' holiday traditions over tea, and asked our boss to bring us Santa hats from Punta Arenas. Something festive is happening, and it just might be that I'll grow closer to my family and its rituals through distance.
I'll conclude with a sneak preview of the pictures that we recently uploaded to Picasa. For the full exposition, visit this link.
12.09.2010
A Brief Anthropomorphism of Birds
I have arrived at Torres de Paine National Park. My four days here have been strange for many reasons, one of which is imminent access to internet in the wilderness. There is also an eerie light at 11:30 at night and, fabulously, tea time.
I could say many things about this strange life that combines tent-dwelling with lounging in a high class hotel, but for now I want to reserve most of my commentary for my observation of Patagonian birds. Specifically, I want to observe that THESE BIRDS ARE THRILL SEEKING DANGER ADDICTS.
Nathaniel does not condone this claim, stating, and I quote, "There is no logic in the anthropomorphism of birds." However, I cannot help it, given the ridiculous weather in the Region de la Ultima Esperanza. The wind hear gusts at upwards of 100 miles per hour. Impelled by this preposterous force, the avian of life of Patagonia is wont to plummet horizontally across the ragged contours of the earth at velocities far greater than those induced by gravity. They careen through rain and sleet and wind and snow, and there is no way they are not having fun.
Sometimes I wish I could be a bird in Patagonia. That is all.
I could say many things about this strange life that combines tent-dwelling with lounging in a high class hotel, but for now I want to reserve most of my commentary for my observation of Patagonian birds. Specifically, I want to observe that THESE BIRDS ARE THRILL SEEKING DANGER ADDICTS.
Nathaniel does not condone this claim, stating, and I quote, "There is no logic in the anthropomorphism of birds." However, I cannot help it, given the ridiculous weather in the Region de la Ultima Esperanza. The wind hear gusts at upwards of 100 miles per hour. Impelled by this preposterous force, the avian of life of Patagonia is wont to plummet horizontally across the ragged contours of the earth at velocities far greater than those induced by gravity. They careen through rain and sleet and wind and snow, and there is no way they are not having fun.
Sometimes I wish I could be a bird in Patagonia. That is all.
12.02.2010
Cochamó to The End of the World
Oh dear. I need to update this blog more often... Shall I recount how it is to herd geese on a swimming horse in a beautiful bay at sunset? What it feels like to reconnect with beautiful long lost friends beneath impossible granite megaliths? What about my experiences as a recent victim of theft and impermanence, or my 30 hour long existential bus ride South, or the way in which Nathaniel and I battle travel-weariness by scrambling chocolate chip cookies on the stove top?
In the face of profound absurdity I suppose I will start with Thanksgiving. On November the 25th I found myself with one of my best childhood friends in the Chilean equivalent of Yosemite, a 10 mile mudslide away from civilization. There in the wilderness a French woman had taken it upon herself to recreate the North American holiday of Thanksgiving by employing pack horses to cart in turkeys, wine etc. We were an eclectic Thanksgiving bunch, and the motif of bubbles pervaded our conversation as we consumed a miraculously delicious, abundant, and authentic Thanksgiving meal. When it was my turn to say what I was thankful for I said freedom.
And then it began: the sudden dessimation of my most valuable possesions. While hiking down a step slope I fell directly upon my high-falootin-oh-so-convenient electronic reader and shattered any hope I had of finishing Cat´s Cradle. Then in the Puerto Montt bus station some light-fingered asshole lifted my small backpack whose contents included but were not limited to my computer, my camera, my iPod, and a significant written segment of my soul.
Luckily travel insurance will cover some portion of the loss, but my journal is the really big heartbreaking problem. I had been writing in this journal for the past three years. I had filled up all the fronts of its 180 pages with the tiniest handwriting I could muster, and I was starting to fill up all the backs of the pages too. It contained the only truly selfish writing I´ve ever created, and all of my secrets, exaltations, and tragedies that seemed too raw or trite (or maybe too true) to share with another human being. It was often sad and rambling but sometimes it was beautiful and I loved it because it was a part of me. It was like a fucking Horcrux.
And then some dude in a bus station stole it and he probably can´t even understand English. As our Patagonia-bound bus pulled out of the station I cried for the first time on the trip, and I also wondered about the deliberate construction of ego, attachment, and suffering. Ah, impermanence, when you strike you strike hard, you bastard.
A thousand miles and 14 degrees of latitude later I find myself in Punta Arenas, a bleak windy outpost city that overlooks the Straight of Magellan. The wind is so strong here that the trees are bent, and geographical phenomena are named things like "The Last Hope." The times have been a bit demanding lately, what with the theft of my things and a pesty stomach illness of Nathaniel´s. We have consoled ourselves with culrinary adventures and incredibly improbable duels with fate and fortune. Most notably, we have scrambled cookies, purchased scratch-it lottery tickets, and composed a letter to an admiral of the Chilean navy explaining why he should grant us passage on a naval vessel bound for Antarctica.
.
In three days we are going to be commencing a three-week volunteer position in Torres de Paine national park. I have no idea what we are going to be doing. All I really know is a) it is supposed to be jaw-droppingly beautiful and b) we will be living in tents. Hopefully I´ll also befriend a gaucho with a horse, meet some other interesting people, and find something vaguely festive to do for the holidays.
And thus live continues to be vivid, overwhelming, beautiful, unexpected, and all that jazz. To Freedom. Cheers.
In the face of profound absurdity I suppose I will start with Thanksgiving. On November the 25th I found myself with one of my best childhood friends in the Chilean equivalent of Yosemite, a 10 mile mudslide away from civilization. There in the wilderness a French woman had taken it upon herself to recreate the North American holiday of Thanksgiving by employing pack horses to cart in turkeys, wine etc. We were an eclectic Thanksgiving bunch, and the motif of bubbles pervaded our conversation as we consumed a miraculously delicious, abundant, and authentic Thanksgiving meal. When it was my turn to say what I was thankful for I said freedom.
And then it began: the sudden dessimation of my most valuable possesions. While hiking down a step slope I fell directly upon my high-falootin-oh-so-convenient electronic reader and shattered any hope I had of finishing Cat´s Cradle. Then in the Puerto Montt bus station some light-fingered asshole lifted my small backpack whose contents included but were not limited to my computer, my camera, my iPod, and a significant written segment of my soul.
Luckily travel insurance will cover some portion of the loss, but my journal is the really big heartbreaking problem. I had been writing in this journal for the past three years. I had filled up all the fronts of its 180 pages with the tiniest handwriting I could muster, and I was starting to fill up all the backs of the pages too. It contained the only truly selfish writing I´ve ever created, and all of my secrets, exaltations, and tragedies that seemed too raw or trite (or maybe too true) to share with another human being. It was often sad and rambling but sometimes it was beautiful and I loved it because it was a part of me. It was like a fucking Horcrux.
And then some dude in a bus station stole it and he probably can´t even understand English. As our Patagonia-bound bus pulled out of the station I cried for the first time on the trip, and I also wondered about the deliberate construction of ego, attachment, and suffering. Ah, impermanence, when you strike you strike hard, you bastard.
A thousand miles and 14 degrees of latitude later I find myself in Punta Arenas, a bleak windy outpost city that overlooks the Straight of Magellan. The wind is so strong here that the trees are bent, and geographical phenomena are named things like "The Last Hope." The times have been a bit demanding lately, what with the theft of my things and a pesty stomach illness of Nathaniel´s. We have consoled ourselves with culrinary adventures and incredibly improbable duels with fate and fortune. Most notably, we have scrambled cookies, purchased scratch-it lottery tickets, and composed a letter to an admiral of the Chilean navy explaining why he should grant us passage on a naval vessel bound for Antarctica.
.
In three days we are going to be commencing a three-week volunteer position in Torres de Paine national park. I have no idea what we are going to be doing. All I really know is a) it is supposed to be jaw-droppingly beautiful and b) we will be living in tents. Hopefully I´ll also befriend a gaucho with a horse, meet some other interesting people, and find something vaguely festive to do for the holidays.
And thus live continues to be vivid, overwhelming, beautiful, unexpected, and all that jazz. To Freedom. Cheers.
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