Inspiration

The Andes Montanas have a way of silencing you and forcing your gaze to stay only on them. For five hours I couldn't take my eyes off of them after Chrissie and I buckled ourselves into the two front seats next to our mini-van driver and sped west from Mendoza to Santiago. By 5pm that afternoon were sipping cerveza in Santiago.

The next day we headed further west to Valparaiso where we spent two days wandering around the hills, shopping, eating and gazing at the pacific. What a delight that city is...it's rough around the edges, but some of the neighborhoods, such as where we stayed, are bohemian and delightful. On good Friday we hiked up to Pablo Neruda's house. Neruda is a hero of mine. His words are rich, powerful and enchanting and his life was the same. Thank you Pablo for the inspiration!





Arte Poetica  - Pablo Neruda

Between shadow and space, between harnesses and virgins,
endowed with a singular heart and fatal dreams,
impetuously pale, withered in the forehead
and in mourning like an angry widower every day of my life,
oh, for every drink of invisible water I swallow drowsily
and with every sound I take in, trembling,
I feel the same missing thirst and the same cold fever,
an ear being born, an indirect anguish,
as if thieves were arriving, or ghosts,
and inside a long, deep, hollow shell,
like a humiliated waiter, like a bell gone a bit hoarse,
like an old mirror, like the smell of an empty house
(poem continued here)

Ghosts of the Past
Santiago is a gigantic city. On Easter we took a funicular to the top of one of the cerros where the Virgin Mary stands tall amidst a crowd of cellular towers. 

What struck me most about Santiago was that it seems to be wanting to forget the past but it doesn't really know how to embrace the future. It feels in conflict of old world and new world. You could still feel the ghosts of Pinochet's blood shed in the streets, yet the people of Santiago are incredibly optimistic, even in the face of the last earthquake and the endless aftershocks (we had a taste of one on Sunday night!).
 Tomorrow we are off to the Sacred Valley in Peru. We may be offline for a couple weeks, but more to come!