Noncommittal Noises

The morning after I graduated high school, I left on a plane bound for Alaska. Since then I have seldom been home: two weeks before school starts, two weeks at Christmas, two weeks before the next adventure.

So part of coming home involves various appointments and waiting in outdated, drab waiting rooms, reading outdated, drab magazines. Dentist. Gynecologist. Optometrist. Open your mouth, legs, eyes.

The questions invariably arise once I am vulnerable to their probings. Just graduated college, huh? English major? Huh. Whatcha gonna do with that? Teach? I make muffled, noncommittal noises. Stall. Lie.

Make an appointment for a year down the road. Wherever that road leads.

Metafiction from the Blood Donation Chair

I  give blood while watching a crime drama about vampires. The nurse is needledeft, and gore pours from my arm. Coiling lines of red wrap my wrist. Crook of my elbow looks unreal, the hole in my arm, my blood - the nurse guards my wan face, drapes a white cloth over the elbow. I still feel the hot, tubed blood trailing down open palm. She has brought me a soda, so that one hand is cold and dewy, the other, on fire. A vampire bites into the white hollow of a sleeping woman's neck. Control is key. Bleeding to death would be so easy: replace the pint bag seven times, and I am a sheet. An old man stops in for coffee, can't donate now because of his medicine, but he's a pint away from having donated thirty-nine gallons. The vampires escape, of course. I wonder if they take phlebotomy classes at their local community college. Watch as the line between saving life and taking it approaches asymptotic. A lone vampire steals into the shadows behind the police chief's house. Watch the bag of my blood fatten. Remember not to stand up too fast, and be sure to grab a cookie on your way out the door.

El Blog Rides Again!

Many moons and many miles from my last post, here I am again to blog. Since that sleep-deprived swan song I wrote in the limbo between abroad-life and life-life, I have come a long way.

Allow me to summarize the past year and a half: rounded out junior year by living in a garage-apartment with Rebecca, or How to Survive in Suburbia and Share Recycling with a Family of Four When You Drink Beer; moved to Goshen, Indiana for the summer to live with the love of my life, Clayton; dressed as an Amish girl for a predominately Amish catering service (breezy dresses + desserts); moonlighted once a week as a weed-puller, cow-coaxer, veggie-picker, tomato-tickler, professional food-eater at Clay Bottom Farm; rollerbladed my way from danger to mediocrity; roadtripped from Ohio to Maine; learned how to read maps; embarked upon my senior year at Davidson College, which involved a lot of Herman Melville, William Faulkner, and coffee; visited Clayton in the lovely, lake-y Madison, Wisconsin; wrote a collection of poetry in my first year as a working artist; and, hot damn! completed undergraduate studies.

So now, along with my fetching Bachelor of Arts degree, I have copious amounts of spare time, undreamt of since the days of middle school summer drudgery. You see, I have a job lined up in Saint Mary, Montana, at the Park Cafe, outside Glacier National Park, but I will not be leaving for another thirty days or so.

I am resurrecting El Blog because writing in times of great change feels good. Actually, writing always feels good. I have been haunting local libraries since coming home, trolling aisle after aisle of information about parrot-training or science fiction featuring vintage 1970s covers, teetering up to the checkout counter with a  tower of books, staying up into the wee hours of the morning, forefingers and thumbs propping eyelids open, because dammit! it is time for some pleasure reading.

All these trips to the library not only make me consider library science as a potential course of study (which might appease the scientific hive mind of the family), trips to the library make me want to write. I get into the blog-mood, narrating my bike ride back from the air-conditioned recesses of the stacks... On the tee-ball field a young boy zings one into the great unmown, the pitcher, an older man with cigarette dangling from mouth, lazily turns to follow the trajectory, reaches into the white plastic bucket of baseballs, launches another. A miss. The blue of North Georgia summer sky is endless, grass still green, sun just getting hot. At the dentist, the bank, the same pronouncement over my wandering ways: You shore don't tend to stay in one place fer long, do ye? And I, No ma'am, no sir, sure don't. It is June. I am home. For now. 

Let this blog be a chronicle of my foray into pseudo-adulthood, and let my roots not grow too deep. Not yet.    

Farwells and Fur Walls

We gringos just had our last she-bang, carrete, shin-dig, fiesta, blow-out, whatever you want to call it, we did it.

I am writing this at 6:30 A.M., and words fail me.
Or perhaps my brain is failing me.
Or maybe the Spanish has finally squeezed out all the English skillz from my cerebro.

But that won't stop me from trying to express what's about to come.

As I sit here, the sun rising behind me, my ears pounding, my clothes reeking of bar, and my breakfast waiting in the wings, I could not be more thankful for mis amigos, mis experiencias, o mi vida. Those were some fuerte goodbyes we just gave, but the friendships are todavía más fuertes.

But I will try not to dwell on the mushy stuff.

I love you all very much. And you know it.

So.

Allow me to describe the scene of our farewell.

Primero, as I was riding the bus last night, I counted at least twelve people cracking open beers as we tooled along in public transit.

I took this to be a good omen. And it was.

So we met at the firestation to kick off the party. Yes, the firestation. Through friends of Chilean friends of Chilean firemen, over the semester we became good buddies with the men of the First Company of Firemen of Santiago.

FYI, these bros really know how to get down. If it's four in the morning, these sonofaguns are just getting started, pleading for the sleepyheaded gringos to keep the spirit alive and shoving drinks in hands like it was their job.

But seriously, they do have a job to do, as we found out last night. We were so used to hanging around with the firemen, we forgot they actually fight fires. At the beginning of the night, two of our friends had to scramble from the station to answer a call; a building down the street was in flames. Meanwhile, we gringos were setting up camp in the hang-out room of the station, playing pool, chatting it up, and starting to realize that this would be our last night all together.

Now this firestation. Consider it more of a frat house. A very nice one. Very clean (Did I just negate my first comparison?). Anyway, this place has bunk beds and video games and pool tables and a schnazzy bar. And so we partied.

From this firestation, the brave-hearted proceeded to a club (less than a block away).

Now this club. It's called El Tunel (The Tunnel), and it was a former strip joint. The walls are covered in fur. Dwell on that for a moment.

Many stripper-poles still remain for those so possessed by the demon water as to need to self-exorcise (exercise, also).

The music was funktastic. Think "Jungle Boogie" and "Robot Rock."

The scene was a little Shady-McGrady, with oodles of ogling chileno-bros, who looked as if they half-expected El Tunel to still be a strip club instead of a regular club.

Regardless of the creepy drullets that seemed to be lurking closely behind us every time I turned my head to pull off another stylish dance more, I had the time of mi vida, dancing, grooving, boogieing, and saying all those things you say in a farewell that you have been meaning to say for a long time.

After a wonderful night in El Tunel, I saw the sun come up this morning, over the mountains whose faces I feel like I know as well as my own, from the 25th floor of an apartment, from the right side of the clock.

I live a blessed life.

Thanks for the love, the friendship, the adventures, the laughter, the support, the readership, the everything.

This experience has truly changed me. So thanks be unto you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, aaannnddd you.

And now, I guess I will stop delaying the inevitable.

This is my final post from Chile. I promise to continue blogging about the reverse-culture shock/about the holidays/about random adventures/about Crunkle Mike/etc.

Ya me voy, y a Chile, te echo de menos ya.
No es adiós para siempre.
Volveré.

And to the gringos, expect to come around the corner of your abode one fine morning and see a redhead drooling on your couch cushions. 'Cause I'm coming for a visit!

Whoowhee!!!

Haiku

Now I need to pack.

For real.

In the meantime, enjoy this haiku inspired by the Chilean affinity for adding eggs to every dish, showcased in last night's dinner (lump o' mush with corn bits, topped with an egg, sunny-side-up):

Throw an egg on top.
Fried or hard-boiled: call it done.
Chilean dinner.

Packing

This morning I awoke from a nightmare.

A "packing" nightmare.

In the dream, I was late for my flight, and I was careening down the street, loose socks trailing behind me, strapped down with more weight than a Mexican mule on moving day.

I had waited until the last possible second to pack my suitcase.

I suppose my subconscious is telling me to get to work.

And so I will blog.

As I survey the contents of my room, I realize my stuff has multiplied like a room full of fourth graders studying for a math quiz.

And yet my luggage remains unchanged.

Although I can fit into my own suitcase (Yes, I tried. In the name of scientific discovery. And curiosity. I had to know, ok? What if I needed to be smuggled home?), it still looks painfully small in comparison with all the things I am about to shove into it.

I guess this is problem to be solved logically and spatially:
Cram what you can, and when all else fails, cut your pants into shorts.

Oh yeah, and watch this video of the great philosopher Mr. Bean as he packs his suitcase.

Moving Pictures

I have now seen my first Chilean flim: Post Mortem.

It was... strange.

But good.

And it was in Spanish.

Thank goodness it was one of those modern films that has five-minute scenes dedicated to silence, broken only by the sound of an egg frying or some other mundane thing.

So I understood most of it.

The lead role had a haircut like John Paul Jones at his finest. Or Prince Valient.

There were gratiutious sex scenes, albiet the awkward kind.

The plot took place right around the time of the rise of the dictatorship. The lead with the tragic haircut participated in the autopsy of Salvador Allende.

The film was impresionante, especially because the theater was full of older citizens who likely lived through the time of chaos portrayed on the big screen.

It ended with a ten-minute single shot of the lead stacking chairs against a door.

I left feeling confused.

The movie was distinctly Chilean: less-than-sexy actors, depressing ending, bland food prominently featured, and ridiculous amounts of Chilean slang.

Needless to say, I enjoyed it.

And I recommend seeing it for yourself; it was the only Chilean movie playing in the theater. The rest were Disney knock-offs or dubbed-versions of Harry Potter #7.

This feels like the end of a Reading Rainbow segment, where the kids tell you a bit about the book, then they say something like "But don't take my word for it. See for yourself!"

But seriously. Lamar Burton aside, "See for yourself!"