I made an art project!
All by myself!
Hooray!
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
A Luck With No Name, March 3, 2009
Here I am with these words again.
I can´t really think of much to say except that we´re damn lucky to be here.
Where exactly?
Well I could get specific about where I actually am, sitting on a sandy spit beside an unnamed lake in Chile, but really I just mean that we´re lucky to be anywhere at all.
Here.
I could get specific about the miracle of a life-supporting planet dangling like a thought through corkscrewing infiniti, but even that would only be a scratch on the surface.
You. Here.
We could talk at length about the miracle of your parents ever meeting. Or each of their parents for that matter. We could go on and on through the corkscrewing unlikelihood of it all, but why bother? It´s all too vast. Perfection is either all of it, or it doesn´t exist.
Luck?
I don´t know. If it is luck it´s certainly not the type we humans ever talk about. It´s too big and it doesn´t involve sex or playing cards. Generally we´re not all that comfortable with the really big stuff.
We like to keep it manageable. If we always just stared off into the impossibility of it all we might just forget to do the laundry, feed the belly, punch the timecard.
But that´s all fine. There´s lots to be done on this particular freckle of the Milky Way. Lots to be done to keep our minds off of our unlikely lives, lest we begin to feel minute, even unimportant, which our evolution never would have allowed.
And if everything is perfectly how it is meant to be, which is beginning to feel more and more likely, than we can feel as lucky as we like. We can decide to look no further than:
Pretty sunset, a green bug on my arm, friends, a lake with no name, young man watching his thoughts roll in like the salty tide sitting in the Valdivian Rainforest who somehow still has a pair of dry socks on.
I must be the luckiest guy on this whole damn freckle.
I can´t really think of much to say except that we´re damn lucky to be here.
Where exactly?
Well I could get specific about where I actually am, sitting on a sandy spit beside an unnamed lake in Chile, but really I just mean that we´re lucky to be anywhere at all.
Here.
I could get specific about the miracle of a life-supporting planet dangling like a thought through corkscrewing infiniti, but even that would only be a scratch on the surface.
You. Here.
We could talk at length about the miracle of your parents ever meeting. Or each of their parents for that matter. We could go on and on through the corkscrewing unlikelihood of it all, but why bother? It´s all too vast. Perfection is either all of it, or it doesn´t exist.
Luck?
I don´t know. If it is luck it´s certainly not the type we humans ever talk about. It´s too big and it doesn´t involve sex or playing cards. Generally we´re not all that comfortable with the really big stuff.
We like to keep it manageable. If we always just stared off into the impossibility of it all we might just forget to do the laundry, feed the belly, punch the timecard.
But that´s all fine. There´s lots to be done on this particular freckle of the Milky Way. Lots to be done to keep our minds off of our unlikely lives, lest we begin to feel minute, even unimportant, which our evolution never would have allowed.
And if everything is perfectly how it is meant to be, which is beginning to feel more and more likely, than we can feel as lucky as we like. We can decide to look no further than:
Pretty sunset, a green bug on my arm, friends, a lake with no name, young man watching his thoughts roll in like the salty tide sitting in the Valdivian Rainforest who somehow still has a pair of dry socks on.
I must be the luckiest guy on this whole damn freckle.
Laguna Negra, Santuario El Cañi, Chile. Valentine´s Day
Dear Mom,
I saw mountains on the moon last night.
I was just about to drift off to sleep beside the shore of a Chilean Lake when that fat, old battlefield came peeking over the granite to the southeast.
The umbrella top of an ancient Araucaria Tree was silhouetted perfectly by the three quarter moon, and I reached into my pack for my binoculars, this certainly being an occasion deserving of a closer look.
I think it was more startling not to see the long neck and head of a Brontosaurus go drifting in front of the moon than if it had.
Once clear of that Jurassic Tree I could see fields of craters and long, shadowed valleys. On the upper left side, where the earth´s shadow had taken its bite, I saw a frozen range of silver mountains with a backdrop of infiniti.
It was like one earring in a set that I´ve always meant to give you. Finally a gift deserving of your love.
It was neither a holding nor a pouring moon, as you´ve told me about from your midwive´s folklore. No, it seemed postpartum if anything, still swollen with milk for the suckling heavens, or maybe for me, or at least for that night-black brontosaurus.
Momma, you who greet people at the gates of the world, I wanted to give you that moon with its sunlit mountains. Trouble is I couldn´t quite reach it, so instead I´ve written you this letter, and will probably continue giving you Earthly attempts at earrings that could never say enough.
I saw mountains on the moon last night.
I was just about to drift off to sleep beside the shore of a Chilean Lake when that fat, old battlefield came peeking over the granite to the southeast.
The umbrella top of an ancient Araucaria Tree was silhouetted perfectly by the three quarter moon, and I reached into my pack for my binoculars, this certainly being an occasion deserving of a closer look.
I think it was more startling not to see the long neck and head of a Brontosaurus go drifting in front of the moon than if it had.
Once clear of that Jurassic Tree I could see fields of craters and long, shadowed valleys. On the upper left side, where the earth´s shadow had taken its bite, I saw a frozen range of silver mountains with a backdrop of infiniti.
It was like one earring in a set that I´ve always meant to give you. Finally a gift deserving of your love.
It was neither a holding nor a pouring moon, as you´ve told me about from your midwive´s folklore. No, it seemed postpartum if anything, still swollen with milk for the suckling heavens, or maybe for me, or at least for that night-black brontosaurus.
Momma, you who greet people at the gates of the world, I wanted to give you that moon with its sunlit mountains. Trouble is I couldn´t quite reach it, so instead I´ve written you this letter, and will probably continue giving you Earthly attempts at earrings that could never say enough.
South Like A Stone
Rio Gallegos. March 19, 2009
The Sierra Institute chapter of the journey is now behind me. I am no longer assisting any teaching other than my own. I have much to report about the entire second half of that incredible story, but for now, an update on my current whereabouts.
I left Bariloche the day before yesterday with my new friend Laura from the trip. After sinking like a stone southward for 28 hours we arrived in the small, off the map town of Rio Gallegos, and tomorrow morning early we will be back on a bus to travel another 12 hours to the southernmost city on Planet Earth, Ushuaia, in Tierra Del Fuego. South. The early morning´s phosphorescence was very predictably going to be out my left window, and when I awoke with my face smooshed against that very window it looked like a giant school of mackerel had broken the water´s fluidity and spangled the sky in tangerine tracers and apricot ripples. The southernmost city in the world. It´s a strange thought. We don´t have easternmost, and westernmost cities, but we do have northern and southernmost. Silly humans. It´s as if the rotation of the earth implies a continuum while the still poles are seemingly static, when in reality (reality?) we are just a sleepy waterball tangoing with a very lively fireball on a small node of the infinite corpus of the universe. Whoa. I seem to be especially fixed on thoughts of our miniscule little planet out there in the great drapes of space at this moment of my life, maybe because I can watch myself slide around on the surface of glossy maps, I don´t know.
So tomorrow we cross the Straight of Magellan, and in the evening we will arrive on the banks of the Beagle Channel, and when I have had a moment to grock Tierra Del Fuego, I´ll be sure to tell you all about it...Suerte.
The Sierra Institute chapter of the journey is now behind me. I am no longer assisting any teaching other than my own. I have much to report about the entire second half of that incredible story, but for now, an update on my current whereabouts.
I left Bariloche the day before yesterday with my new friend Laura from the trip. After sinking like a stone southward for 28 hours we arrived in the small, off the map town of Rio Gallegos, and tomorrow morning early we will be back on a bus to travel another 12 hours to the southernmost city on Planet Earth, Ushuaia, in Tierra Del Fuego. South. The early morning´s phosphorescence was very predictably going to be out my left window, and when I awoke with my face smooshed against that very window it looked like a giant school of mackerel had broken the water´s fluidity and spangled the sky in tangerine tracers and apricot ripples. The southernmost city in the world. It´s a strange thought. We don´t have easternmost, and westernmost cities, but we do have northern and southernmost. Silly humans. It´s as if the rotation of the earth implies a continuum while the still poles are seemingly static, when in reality (reality?) we are just a sleepy waterball tangoing with a very lively fireball on a small node of the infinite corpus of the universe. Whoa. I seem to be especially fixed on thoughts of our miniscule little planet out there in the great drapes of space at this moment of my life, maybe because I can watch myself slide around on the surface of glossy maps, I don´t know.
So tomorrow we cross the Straight of Magellan, and in the evening we will arrive on the banks of the Beagle Channel, and when I have had a moment to grock Tierra Del Fuego, I´ll be sure to tell you all about it...Suerte.
Monday, February 9, 2009
Junin de los Andes
Sitting in an internet cafe´in Junin de los Andes, and not thinking of much to say, so how about a journal entry written while I actually was where I am trying to write about?
January 16th, 2009 (weird)
Los Vertientes de los Radales, Estancia Ranquilco, Provencia de Neuquen, Argentina, South America, Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy, Town of Infiniti, State of Mystery...
This place seems to be wittled down to its adult teeth, and even some of them have started to go. That whiskey wind and old tobacco sun have taken their toll throughout the years, and perhaps we don´t choose our vices afterall. The condor shit builds up in long white lines beneath the roosts, and these cliffs, which I´ve already likened to decaying teeth, seem to have the eyebrows of an old man. And now I´m guilty of anthropomorphizing the anthropomorphism. It seems we´re married to these lenses. The goats grazing on the slope to the south look like a herd of pygmy polar bears, and the moon in the morning blue sky a thumbnail caught between the folds of dimensions. Speaking of things breaking through often uncrossable barriers, the veil between this world and the next seems to be especially flimsy at the moment. The dearest people in my life who have stepped out of their bodies into the nakedness of spirit (a fancy way of saying: those that have died), have been visiting my dreams just about every night, especially Hodi, and I have been getting hugs that I thought were lost to me forever. I sat on the sheep so it couldn´t get away as Brett plunged a knife into its jugular and I held my hand against its heart as it went through its final beats, and suddenly life seemed little more than a fancy vanishing act. Perhaps I will have engraved on my tombstone: ¨How´d I do?¨
This is a prickly place. Seems evolution held a competetion in the best spine and thorn category right here in these mountains. Even the soft looking bunch grasses give you that itchy sort of poke that can peel away a layer from the weaker parts of one´s sanity.
Brett and I have been perusing his book on stars, and I think it´s got to be the most rewarding and fascinating route to an existential crisis yet. So here I sit, pondering the stardustiness of it all, a medium-sized life form on the crust of a mostly molten planet that´s dangling like a teardrop, or an intergalactic cranberry, on one wing of a tiny spiraled galaxy in the middle (because what isn´t the middle?) of infiniti. These thoughts make me feel like I´m fifteen again, but without the pot. I must be evolving!
January 16th, 2009 (weird)
Los Vertientes de los Radales, Estancia Ranquilco, Provencia de Neuquen, Argentina, South America, Planet Earth, Milky Way Galaxy, Town of Infiniti, State of Mystery...
This place seems to be wittled down to its adult teeth, and even some of them have started to go. That whiskey wind and old tobacco sun have taken their toll throughout the years, and perhaps we don´t choose our vices afterall. The condor shit builds up in long white lines beneath the roosts, and these cliffs, which I´ve already likened to decaying teeth, seem to have the eyebrows of an old man. And now I´m guilty of anthropomorphizing the anthropomorphism. It seems we´re married to these lenses. The goats grazing on the slope to the south look like a herd of pygmy polar bears, and the moon in the morning blue sky a thumbnail caught between the folds of dimensions. Speaking of things breaking through often uncrossable barriers, the veil between this world and the next seems to be especially flimsy at the moment. The dearest people in my life who have stepped out of their bodies into the nakedness of spirit (a fancy way of saying: those that have died), have been visiting my dreams just about every night, especially Hodi, and I have been getting hugs that I thought were lost to me forever. I sat on the sheep so it couldn´t get away as Brett plunged a knife into its jugular and I held my hand against its heart as it went through its final beats, and suddenly life seemed little more than a fancy vanishing act. Perhaps I will have engraved on my tombstone: ¨How´d I do?¨
This is a prickly place. Seems evolution held a competetion in the best spine and thorn category right here in these mountains. Even the soft looking bunch grasses give you that itchy sort of poke that can peel away a layer from the weaker parts of one´s sanity.
Brett and I have been perusing his book on stars, and I think it´s got to be the most rewarding and fascinating route to an existential crisis yet. So here I sit, pondering the stardustiness of it all, a medium-sized life form on the crust of a mostly molten planet that´s dangling like a teardrop, or an intergalactic cranberry, on one wing of a tiny spiraled galaxy in the middle (because what isn´t the middle?) of infiniti. These thoughts make me feel like I´m fifteen again, but without the pot. I must be evolving!
Me and Catato
How about a story?
We sent the students off on their solos, which consists of them spending two days and two nights alone without food, a sort of forced suffering in the hopes of an eagle swooping down and telling them all of the elusive answers to propel them into their greatest work in life, but actually ends up being a horsefly killing competition (between the right hand and the left hand), and a lot of grumbling lonesomeness...So there we were, Brett and I, free from responsibilities for a few days, staring vacantly towards our relaxation, when Brett remembered that he needed to walk a few miles down the valley to a puesto where a gaucho lives so that we could order a sheep to be delivered to us for slaughter and eating. Well of course, being the esteemed teaching assistant that I am, I considered internally to offer to do this task for him, but then thought better of it, and remained mum. The conversation dragged onward, and in a moment of extreme stupidity I said, ¨Geez, I really wish I spoke better spanish, because then I could go in your place.¨ And Brett, being the encouraging and empowering man that he is, said, ¨You wanna try?¨
Let´s set the scene a bit, shall we? The place that we spent the past month is a 60 square mile Estancia in Central Argentina, near the border of Chile. The Patagonian Steppe. Very dry, zeric if you will (as you can see I´ve paying attention in class...). The land stretches out as far as the eye can see, rolling spines of mountains, all gold and green from the bunch grasses, with hardly any trees to speak of. The mountains rise steeply up from the valleys carved by the Rios Trocomon and Picunleo, and the massive Andean Condors have their many nests tucked into the caves of the cracked, crumbling, arthritic spires of red stone, and condensed grey layers of volcanic ash.
We sent the students off on their solos, which consists of them spending two days and two nights alone without food, a sort of forced suffering in the hopes of an eagle swooping down and telling them all of the elusive answers to propel them into their greatest work in life, but actually ends up being a horsefly killing competition (between the right hand and the left hand), and a lot of grumbling lonesomeness...So there we were, Brett and I, free from responsibilities for a few days, staring vacantly towards our relaxation, when Brett remembered that he needed to walk a few miles down the valley to a puesto where a gaucho lives so that we could order a sheep to be delivered to us for slaughter and eating. Well of course, being the esteemed teaching assistant that I am, I considered internally to offer to do this task for him, but then thought better of it, and remained mum. The conversation dragged onward, and in a moment of extreme stupidity I said, ¨Geez, I really wish I spoke better spanish, because then I could go in your place.¨ And Brett, being the encouraging and empowering man that he is, said, ¨You wanna try?¨
Let´s set the scene a bit, shall we? The place that we spent the past month is a 60 square mile Estancia in Central Argentina, near the border of Chile. The Patagonian Steppe. Very dry, zeric if you will (as you can see I´ve paying attention in class...). The land stretches out as far as the eye can see, rolling spines of mountains, all gold and green from the bunch grasses, with hardly any trees to speak of. The mountains rise steeply up from the valleys carved by the Rios Trocomon and Picunleo, and the massive Andean Condors have their many nests tucked into the caves of the cracked, crumbling, arthritic spires of red stone, and condensed grey layers of volcanic ash.
So there we were, sitting in a little ñire invagination which was our kitchen at basecamp, and suddenly Brett is urging me on to go down and place the order for a live sheep to be delivered to us day after tomorrow. I put on the one nice shirt that I had, tucked it in, washed my face, and had Brett write me out instructions of what to say when I arrived. The two plus mile hike down the valley was beautiful, and suddenly I felt all puffed up with confidence for the task ahead. I began to imagine myself showing up to this puesto, greeting the gaucho with my best manners and phrases, having him invite me in for a mate´, and discussing life in the campo, with the spanish suddenly blooming off my tongue like a spring day after the rains, a true cultural experience was at my fingertips and I was ready! Then I got lost. Like I said, the ñire grows in thick, shrubby clumps, and at its most profilic it creates vast, impenetrable labyrinths. As I neared this still invisible puesto I found myself surrounded by one such labyrinth, and as I crashed around in the bushes, trying to find my way, but constantly hitting deadends, my mind began to wander into such thoughts as: ¨Do gauchos have rifles?¨and ¨Maybe if I just curl up in a ball and close my eyes I´ll wake up in California?¨ Finally I emerged in a field of goats, and knew I was close by. I wandered a little ways further, and there it was, the puesto of Don Troncoso. I walked up, whistling my pathetic, high-pitched, through the crack in my front teeth whistle, which is the only one in my command, and was met by a swirling fury of dog barks, and a mass of giant cows tearing away from me in all directions. I saw the gaucho, who I assumed was Troncoso, brushing his horse near the puesto. I walked up to him, greeted him as best I could, and asked if he was indeed Don Troncoso. He muttered a lot of short little syllables that I had no comprehension of, and I smiled moronically as little beads of sweat emerged on my forehead. I later realized with Brett´s assistance that he was telling me that he was not Don Troncoso, but was instead his puestero, Catato, which I never caught, and I must have called Catato Don Troncoso at least 15 more times throughout our ¨conversation.¨ After a weak attempt at navigating the conversation without the piece of paper that Brett gave me, I reached into my pocket and unfolded the page, saying, ¨Yo tengo instucciones,¨at which time his look of disgust deepened, and I commenced to read to him our request. When I was through we both stood there staring at one another, I said, ¨¿Claro?¨, to which he responded, ¨Si.¨and then I just stood there, and he turned around and began brushing his horse again, and whistling a far superior whistle to mine. We were the only two human beings in miles, and as I stood there holding my instrucciones, and he brushed his horse, and the nearby radio was cranked at full volume shooting out nothing but pure fuzzy static, I couldn´t help but think that this moment was as pure a distillation of true and utter awkwardness as was ever conjured, a manifestation of discomfort unparralled in all other arenas of my life, and I loved it! I began to slowly shuffle off, shouted my saludos, and laughed and laughed at the hilarity of it all as I climbed through the maze of ñire, the maze of ridiculousness, the maze of life.
And a must for any gringo writing home from a spanish speaking country...Enter here: Fancy spanish phrase that inaccurately shows how much I´ve learned, and makes every one who doesn´t speak spanish feel stupid and left out. ¡Bueno!
Sunday, January 4, 2009
And Now A Word On Peugeots
Just as I was struck two years ago, I was again incredibly pleased to see that nearly half of the cars on the roads in Buenos Aires are Peugeots, and many the same model as my own beloved. Even with the many catastrophes with my students, the overwhelm of a foreign city, the deliciousness of the beef, I still have been dedicating many of my thoughts to my dear, old car, which I likely will no longer be driving anymore, after a hell of a run. This past year my job forced me into commuter life, which entailed 90 plus miles a day on Highway 101, and I assumed that the Peugeot would likely not survive the year. I must say I was not surprised, though I think everyone in my family was, when it not only made it through this year of freeways, but never even hiccupped the whole time...The engine that is. The car runs perfectly, but all of the accessories have gone to hell. Two doors don´t open, including the driver´s door, a third door barely opens, but I know the trick, the key is stuck in the ignition and cannot be removed, one window doesn´t roll down, and a few others labor, but function, the sunroof had to be caulked shut, and supported by wooden blocks because it leaked, the heater only works if you´re going over 65, and then it works far too well, the windshield is cracked, the allignment is off and unfixable, the paint is damaged and flaking off, it stalls when you crank the wheel all the way to one side or another which made parrallel parking in SF all year pretty interesting...But, the damn thing runs like a charm, and I have been waiting and waiting to drive it until it wouldn´t drive anymore, and it seems to be impossible. Once my own door stopped opening, and I had to get in on the other side and crawl through it was enough to convince me that it just isn´t cute anymore. When I get back from this trip, after the Peugeot has been sitting beneath the douglas firs in Lagunitas for however many months, I will turn the key, it will start right up, and I will only drive it for as long as it takes to get a new, far-inferior car that will probably break down twice a month, but will at least have AC, air bags and a seat buckle that doesn´t take a few minutes of wiggling to unbuckle. There, I said it, I will get a new car, and I´m sure my family is rejoicing at the proclamation.
And why am I writing pages about my car in an internet cafe in Argentina? Because I put the mental in sentimental, and by admitting to myself that my time with the Peugeot is over, and now admitting it to you all, I now have a long grieving period ahead of me. I learned how to drive that car when I was nine in a parking lot in Petaluma with my dad, and our dog Rosie in the backseat. It was given to me when I got my licence over nine years ago, and now is a part of my identity as critical as my nose, and I´m gonna miss it. And Willy, no, this does not mean you can bring it to the junkyard when I am gone, you filthy assassin...
Okay, that´s enough, I said it would be a word on Peugeots, but it turned into many, many words on just one, extremely special Peugeot...Thanks for listening.
And why am I writing pages about my car in an internet cafe in Argentina? Because I put the mental in sentimental, and by admitting to myself that my time with the Peugeot is over, and now admitting it to you all, I now have a long grieving period ahead of me. I learned how to drive that car when I was nine in a parking lot in Petaluma with my dad, and our dog Rosie in the backseat. It was given to me when I got my licence over nine years ago, and now is a part of my identity as critical as my nose, and I´m gonna miss it. And Willy, no, this does not mean you can bring it to the junkyard when I am gone, you filthy assassin...
Okay, that´s enough, I said it would be a word on Peugeots, but it turned into many, many words on just one, extremely special Peugeot...Thanks for listening.
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