Send me a leaf

Send me a leaf, but from a little tree
That grows no nearer your house
Than half an hour away. For then
You will have to walk, you will get strong and I
Shall thank you for the pretty leaf.

-Bertolt Brecht

Homecoming

I Everyone picked me up from the airport and it was pretty magic. Zak managed to delay his flight so I got a couple of days with him,  all happening, and some by ourselves talking time as well. Especially after this year with him, I really needed to like hold on.

I am up to actually making plans on a day with my dad. That's a thing.

I have been loving so much all these tiny familiar things. Where my bedroom is, 24 hour western style hot water. Food I know what's in it. I actually like American cuisine, I'm gonna say it. And the leaves of the Christmas tree were still moist and it's raining for winter in North Carolina. I can't describe it, I just know where everything is and how to do things. There's nothing to be figured out and I know where I'm going to sleep tomorrow.

There's just a thousand tiny familiar things and I think I'm a bit ready to know what's going to happen.

Last day in chile was a bit magic. We went to Neruda's house which was a bit of an art home, designed by an architect friend of his with beautiful inside and outside connectivity. It was a bit of an art collector's house as well, with his passion for well selected objects collected over the years. And it was a bit of an artist's house where he lived with his lover and friends, entertaining passionately.

I learned a lot about him too. Like he had a whole political career with the Allende government, so when he died people supporting the dictatorship vandalized his house. His wife, hard as nails (there's a Diego Rivera of her in the house) did his wake in the wrecked house for all the world to see. People came out in masses to carry his body and it was described as the first mass demonstration against the regime.

I bought a bilingual copy of the captains song.

It's a few days after I started writing this. I went up to VA to see Toney and Melinda the day after Zak left. It was a lovely day but big. Then I had a mom/Michael split yesterday and a Harmony /mom split today. We've got Harmony's house half clean. Some steps taken to figure out mom's Medicare stuff. I did some crap paperwork that's important. Micheal made me a lovely meal and we watched ballet docos.  Been on a couple walks. Caught a buffalo in pokémon. Pretty tired and maybe getting sick. The weather has been positively spring like, daffodils are coming up everywhere.

Los desaparacidos

One guy when he was interviewed kept saying how they beat him but didn't ask him any questions, he kept saying they asked the man in the bunk underneath me, but not me, not me.

They are not afraid to show things, diagrams of the types of torture, direct full text of the commission on truth and reconciliation report. I guess all the silence makes them not want to leave anything out.

The handicrafts people made, doves breaking out of bars, hands holding the barbed wire which opens a gap to look out, embroidery by one prisoner of another prisoner carving things from bone. They are all so gentle.

The families of the disappeared did this dance called the lonely coalco (sp?).  It's a traditional dance in chile, but you see it's performed by a couple. So these women, they would do it alone because their husband, brother, son, had vanished.

Apparently sting was also affected by this because there was a song.

In unlimited badass news, everyone really should look up Chilean two time president Michelle Bachelet, who was herself detained and interrogated by Pinochet's regime along with her mother, and whose father was disappeared and killed by the regime. She founded this museum, and donated a copper plate carved by her father in detention.

The pope visits, and so people assemble, and this becomes this tremendous protest, or riot. The tremendous power of the Catholic Church sometimes, as a rallying point for revolution and hope.

And then just people came out and voted and it was all over. History is hard to believe.

I find it tough to get into the heads of people living through this because so many just didn't capitulate. Some schoolteacher who tried to intervene in a kidnapping, like years in. I think I would just look down. You could be next. I mean when you know how many of the relatives of the disappeared were themselves disappeared, yet still the group persists, people join.

I guess to quote my audio guide "this is not a history of which we are ashamed because of the horrors committed by the dictatorship, it is a history of which we are proud because of the infinite ability of men and women to overcome adversity, horror and oblivion and continue fighting to build a country at peace in which human rights are respected. "

So I'm on my way from the museum to the detention centre memorial, and Google lets me down, the address is way wrong. I don't know this so I'm asking a random local for directions. He walks me around the block to his friend who has great English. On the way he tells me Pinochet was the best president ever, developed the country more than any other. His friend says the memorial is "a small memory" "the memory of the left",  but then his friend shows up and says that it has some memories that need remembering significantly, and they mutter to each other for a while, and then do dualing directions for me, helping a damsel in distress seeming to cut right across the political aisle. Left friend says it divides the country, but he hopes less and less. I wonder what these old men think of the disappeared. Trumped up? Overblown? False? Worth it? I don't ask though, they're at work and I want to listen to what they do say.  Especially since it's so far outside of my understanding or experience. How do you like a guy who demonstrably tortured a bunch of people to death?

And then I went to the real 38 Londres, an unremarkable house on the nice side of the city centre, three stories, a balcony onto the street. Which was one of the number of torture and detention centers scattered around Santiago, like seven in santiago and 400 in the country. An empty house, abandoned feeling, with some quotes or lines stenciled on the walls.

The most confronting thing was that if just watched at the human rights museum a video of a guy being interviewed walking through this house and explaining how he was tortured and where.

But went through it quickly because there wasn't much and then home to jes and a giant Mexican dinner (skipped lunch) and thinkings.

I fly to the USA tomorrow. God help me. Trump is inaugurated while I'm in the air.

Crossing the border

The border between Chile and Argentina is framed by two small towns,  Chile Chico and Los Antiguas, our precedent and destination.

The border is a river and the two towns are both about 4-5 km from the river.

You are not allowed to take a tour of people across the border without bringing them back but you are allowed to cross the border on foot.

So here's what we did. We got a taxi to the border, crossed on foot. Walked the 5km to the river where we had set up a tour operator to pick us up. He was supposed to get us and drive us to the other border which we would then walk across, and then take us to the ferry terminal, where we would buy the ferry tickets across the lake and onward minibus tickets to Cohaique. Then he'd take us on a tour and stuff.

Unexpectedly this whole plan came off without a hitch, and by ten in the morning we were headed off to a national park.

Now I had booked this tour because I had read in a guidebook about a turquoise lake full of flamingos. Spoiler alert, this turned out to be a brown lake with two flamingos. Far away. In a paddock.

However it wasn't that disappointing for two reasons. Firstly, our best day in Los Antiguas happened to drive by two other flamingos in a puddle in a field who were fantastic colors, pink and scarlet, and who we pulled over to look at and then took off, showing the scarlet and black undersides of their wings.  So we did get to see a couple beautiful flamingos in the wild and that's actually what made me remember to go here. The second reason is that we started the day with an excellent 7 km hike so I was already full of awesome when we got there.

So the hike. The Patagonian landscape is hills, still the Andes, covered with deserty bushes that flower at least now in summer, and provide canyon gulfs with rivers between them. Some snow capped peaks depending on the elevation. Few big trees, those are more north and on the Chilean side. They say the Andes are born in Venezuela and go all the way to Antarctica. They run north South, except just above ushuaia where the continental plates bend them and they go east west. We crossed them there but that's another story.

This whole time we've worked our way up the Andes.

So the hike. We started a gentle uphill, a Mongolian kind of slope, straight up but even and not too steep. Straight along through the deserty bluff until we got to the mouth of the canyon. Then it turned greener, the trickling waterway through the canyon feeding brighter plants. We made our way further up the canyon base until we hit these impressive rock formations. Think like the Torres in Torres del Paine. The best one was a total totem pole, 40m high and 4m diameter. And standing all alone so it was tall and stark.

Then we started the most serious climbing, cresting the ridge at a saddle back that was also a view point. This had a great view of the next canyon, and the jagged rocks that led into there. A baby condor flew over.

From there we descended on a bit of a curve to a little cave of the hands. Now this was not an impressive display compared to the one we went to on the best Las Antiguas day, but you could totally make out prehistoric hand prints and you could go right inside the cave so you could get as close as you wanted. I could have touched them though of course I didn't.

Then we descended steeply down, and you had to be careful with your footing because it was treacherous. Jes fell but did not retwist her ankle. I got a bit behind, but when I rounded a corner I saw Jes and the guide on top of a giant white rock in a white stone landscape. A moonscape the sign read and so I called it right away as volcanic. Because when I went hiking in the canary island they called the striking post volcanic rocky desolation a moonscape. 

This one was magic because it was white. So I get there and climb this 3m tall white rock which totally has like a ramp up the back. And all around us are these crazy convoluted rock formations. The guide says it's where the volcano imploded and then a river poured in making all the swirls and pockets.

Then we clambered down the cliff back to the car. A long way but satisfying. And then to the disappointing flamingo Lake and then to Chile Chico, where we spent the night in a palatial hotel room which we got cheap because it was under construction 👷. This tragically meant there was no heat but we got space heaters which worked good and cooked Asian food and slept in a bed with crisp white sheets.

Next afternoon we took the ferry across the lake. The lake of our heart, lake Buenos Aires / Lake general Carrera that we've been at for days now, said goodbye to the lake and minibussed up to Cohaique. The regional capital where we worked out our next step, did laundry, and solved our cash problems.

Booked the ferry from Puerto aysen to Isla grande de chiloe, a 24 hour ferry, booked our first night on the isla,investigated a bunch of options that led to that. Made Mexican food. Did I say that jes lost her debit card that can take out cash? Probably in the atm. Managed to western union ourselves some money after investigating some options. Walked around the square. Played some pokémon.  Also this hostel did not have heat. Also the dogs of chile are adorable.

Then today we got up, had a leisurely morning, then got the minibus to Puerto aysen, and then the other minibus to the ferry port, and now we're on our ferry. A little two bunk cabin with a window, our home for the next day.

Slade house

I have nightmares about running out of food
Go to bed with a packet of digestives.
Not that kind of food
What other kinds are there?
Food that makes you hungrier, the more of it you eat.

You may find a weapon in the cracks... For you it's too late, but pass it on.

Promise me, promise me I'm not dreaming you.... And you're not dreaming me?

People are masks, with masks under those masks and masks under those, and down you go.

Little fluffy clouds by Orb! Is a song that I've been looking for for years and it's here in this book! Also honorable mention to a double supergrass joke. As well as the diving bell and the butterfly. Oh Mitchell you own my soul. You don't even need to drink.

What if slade house is the hallucination and this door's my way back? Not a rabbit hole into wonderland but the rabbit hole home?

My stubborn Me insists

Grief is an amputation, but hope is an incurable hemophilia : you bleed and bleed.

Once you've been a psychiatric patient, nobody ever gives you the benefit of the doubt again. Easier to fix a bad credit rating than a bad credibility rating.

Eternity, jade. It's Maori. I chose it, I wrapped it, I sent it once to someone I loved.

Perhaps this calm is the silty stillness between the sucked away and the tsunamis roaring horizon wide hill high arrival, but while it lasts, I'll use it.

Hatred is a thing one hosts: the lust I feel to harm, maim, wreck and kill this woman is less an emotion I hold than what I am now become.

Traditionally we'd stage another climactic battle between good and evil. We'd never agree which of us is which however and the only prize on offer is a slower death.