I saw a ship fall off the end of the world today....

I saw a ship fall off the end of the world this afternoon. My family left and the water flattened; it decided to brighten, to submerge itself in melted metallic blue, and I saw a ship teeter at the edge of the horizon, caught against the washed-out sky, and gently fall, disappearing into nothingness.

From the window of the micro I stare out at the familiar buildings and streets as they pass by, noting how clearly they are not part of my vision of home—o sea, no son partes de lo que era mi visión de casa. I can identify with the Cap Ducal; I can see it appear in Padre Nuestro, I can point it out in a postcard, I can call it mine for awhile, but I can’t really escape the fact that it still looks foreign (or, mejor dicho, that it makes me feel fuera de lugar).

Don’t cry, you say; but what have you done? What good does it do to push away all things familiar, to aléjate from home, if it results in that sickening, claustrophobic, inward-crashing feeling vulnerability?

I cringe at the thought of just how alone I am. I feel like I’m floating slowly further from the shore, clinging to the sides of my small lifeboat like in a movie. The Humboldt makes the Chilean Pacific cold, even as the heat of summer seeps ever stronger through the streets. What have I done? I’ve stubbornly ripped myself away from what I know—from comfort, from home—and I just keep ripping away at every thread loosely clinging to the tattered seams. And as the various beams of my support system successively drop to the floor, I find myself having trouble breathing. Now I have to wait and see if all this—the fairy tale family, the host community, the pila of friends, the sense of accomplishment, the competence—is real or, as I’ve often feared, just something that was placed in front of me, without effort or contribution of my own, and will now fall silently away. I’m afraid I’ll wake up a few days from now, look around and realize I’m completely alone in a strange land gasping for air.

It was a slightly dramatic morning-after. Dropping my family at the airport, the COPA goodbye dinner, the ever-nearing move-out date, the fear of finals (and the finality of finals)—it’s all hit me a little harder than I was prepared for. I don’t like that my originally-allotted five months in Chile are almost over—the thought makes me angry, a little teary, and probably crankier than I’d like to admit. But now the thought of actually striking out on my own, instead of living within the confines of a pre-existing, pre-paid support system, is leaving me awake at night. I am, of course, slowly recovering from my bout of crashing bolts of vulnerability. After holing myself up in my room, crouched in the corner hiding from both my Latin American poetry essay and any semblance of the outside world, all of Sunday morning (which in Chilean time translates until about 5:30p.m.), I micro-ed it over to Valpo, had onces in a now very familiar apartment with two very familiar friends, and passed the night away in Spanish. Just like usual. Today I got up and went to class, I continued in my clearly unending quest to get a handle on what the hell is going on in this ridiculous place they call a university, and had yet another doctor’s appointment to try to figure out what the hell is causing my skin to turn against me (this one reached a new level; it left me very iodine-yellow, with several dozen tiny scratches dribbling blood and cutaneous things…very attractive). Maybe things won’t change; maybe they will. Suena tan cliché, but maybe this is where the real test comes. Or maybe I just need to be convinced that I already passed that test sometime back in September.

Showering with the stars

Friday, November 10

La Serena has been cloudy—stubbornly cloudy and dreary and gray. The beach has been socked in by a cement-colored wall that bleeds into the cement-colored sand, and even manages to augment the already chilly effects of the Humboldt Current. When we got on the bus a little before 8pm on Friday, the wall hadn’t budged, and we were all a bit skeptical of our planned trip to an observatory up in the hills. But somewhere near Vicuña, a town about an hour from our hotel, the sky dropped out from under the cement, and a dizzying field of glittering black spilled out above us.

Up on top of the observatory after the slick Big Bang (sounds very cute with a Spanish accent) presentation in the planetarium, the dome of billions upon billions of shiny things busy transmitting their shininess across millions of light-years of black had a dizzying, fall-over-backwards-at-the-thought-of-your-relative-insignificance sort of effect. While we were there, several shiny things got the urge to wriggle free of their perch, and fell quietly from above, making a glittery arc that stretched overhead before disappearing like fireworks. We got to spy on galaxies made up of millions of stars that hang to the left of tiny little specks that are really more millions of tiny stars many more times further away; we saw the southern hemisphere’s constellations, including the very tip of the southern cross; and we even got to marvel at our astronomer’s super-cool laser pointer that beamed over 4 kilometers into the inky night. Needless to say, most of our questions revolved around the price of said laser, where one might purchase said laser, and whether or not we could play with said laser (which we did). Later, we were “surprised” with a personal concert put on by the resident astronomers who apparently have their own—unbelievably good—garage band. It was slightly surreal to be sitting there, at the top of a windy road nestled into the Elquí Valley hills, showered by stars falling around us, being serenaded by an homage to Fito Paez sometime past midnight.

Saturday, November 11

After breakfast, we headed back toward Vicuña and then further into the valle Elquí, which is a gorgeous desert basin walled by dry walls of light brown that contrast perfectly with the cloudless light blue of the sky (apparently the valley is almost always cloudless, unlike our cement-infused coastal residence). Large spiny cacti dotted the brown, interrupted by what had to have been arbustos espinosos—some sort of bushy thing that keeps coming up in my geography class. We stopped for lunch in Villa Seca at a restaurant that cooks its food entirely from solar heat. We got to wander around the various solar panel-winged wooden boxes that dotted the patio and were filled with mix-and-match pots and pans slowly warming their respective dishes as we learned how the process worked. Later, we all rejoiced at the taste of bread from the sun, as we took to calling it, followed by salad from the sun, chicken and rice from the sun, flan from the sun, and finally coffee from the sun. Plus, I discovered the amazingness that is Canada Dry Soda limón. After stopping at the Gabriela Mistral museum, we headed for the Ruta Norte pisco factory for an amusing tour and an even more amusing jaunt through the gift shop.

Later that night, Amanda, Graciela, and I made ourselves a highly balanced dinner of completos--followed by Chilean get-to-know-you games (i believe it's a bit late for that...) with large numbers of COPA kids, pineapple slices, donas, and the occasional churripan. I have to say, even though I'm really glad I was able to break away from the group and make Chilean friends, the time I've had in La Serena has made me feel a little sad for not having gotten to know the group better. Not to say that I wish I were best friends with all forty kids, but there are a lot of cool people on the program who I love spending time with, and I'm really glad I was able to do that this weekend. Plus, how often do you get to reminisce with someone about childrens books that entailed highly ripe strawberries?

Watch that imperio fall

I kind of reminded myself of my dad when he watches Broncos games as I hulled myself up in my room on Tuesday night, crouched on my bed facing the tv, glued to CNN. Every few minutes, as yet another incumbent Republican representative lost his (invariably) seat to Democrat X, I would let out a squealish-yell, slap my hands together, and finish with a strong "yes!". It was quite satisfying. The next day I took every possible opportunity to discuss the latest developments in Virginia, Montana, and the Pentagon. I don't think I've ever watched so much CNN in my life--nor have I ever been so deeply in love with a right-leaning news channel. And it was cool to watch it all happen from my perch on the outside; it made me realize how much I love being from a society in which politics still sparks so many people's interest, in which you can at least have the impression (once in awhile) that change is possible. It makes me feel even better about dropping $30 to rush my absentee ballot home to Denver so it would arrive in time. It's nice how the 20-year ebb and flow of the balance of power makes you feel at peace with the price of democracy.

Wednesday was also the encuentro internacional in la católica, which meant the casa central was dotted with stands from various countries, each manned by exchange students. It also meant that, from my stance behind the Finland table (which was next to the USA table...I was close enough), I got to gorge myself on Minna-made Finnish goodies in between triangular halves of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and the occasional s'more. The Americans even did a lovely rendition of the electric slide, and there were tiny cups of Peruvian pisco, Mexican tequila, and Finnish vodka to go around.

Right now I'm in La Serena, which has turned out to be a bit cloudier and fome than originally expected, but we're all pasandolo bien. Last night we even had an ER Chilean season premiere party last nigh--complete with Fanta-laced pisco--in one of the cabañas we're staying in. Bring on the observatories!