Going back to Fencing

After years of disuse, I dusted off my swords and went to a fencing class. I was beaten black and blue. After such a long time, my skills, once formidable, had turned to utter shit.

Everyone was faster, everyone had better aim, precision, energy, balance. It was an awkward spectacle. You can tell in fencing when people respect you as an opponent, and when they do not. When they do not - they viciously attack you - what is to fear? It is not as if this person has any defence. That is the reasoning.

For that day and some others I was in that poor position, a defender without the ability to defend. I went every day to try to stop the bleeding and put some life back into my skills.

Life did come back to them, some of the old trickiness, quickness and spring - but not immediately.

I began to get a sense of timing again, of movement, of distance, the invisible space between you and the oppon ent that keeps you safe. Then, how to threaten, how to make them move to your feints and attaks.

Yesterday I went again, and won better than half of my matches. One poor girl I made short work of - the old spark was comming back to me. Distract them, misdirect them, come from a thousand and one angles, never let them control the action, and if they do attack - do not be there, be too close, or too far, but control the distance. See the tells they give, the hesitations before a move, an attack - all you need is for them to come a little closer...

I am learning, still learning, but this is a first step back to the sunlight.

A Story of Leaving Chile

Good things can never last. I remember our last embrace. It was night and a cool breeze came from the open window that overlooked the interior courtyard of the house. I hugged him close as we lay on the bed, the TV was playing something pointless. I remember the softness and the gentleness, he brushed my hair, and I stared into his endless eyes. They were dark,  almost black in that twilight, like his straight, soft hair. His skin was the colour of coffee with cream in it. The beauty was unsupportable, so I looked away, but I felt free to feel his warmth, his body against mine.

We didn´t talk much but protected each other against the cold. I started to sob, slightly, the tears running over my cheek: tomorrow was another day, and I was leaving this country. This was the last taste of his sweetness I would have, the last kiss from his lips, the last chance to hold him in the gathering dark. I was going back to an old, hard place – New York. I knew her steel embrace quite well, I knew she would eat me up with a thousand chores, with the laundry, with buying food, with dieting, with broken elevators and bus conductors who didn´t speak English and policemen who didn´t care. I knew her shit would bury me, and I would lose the taste of sweetness on my mouth, the being and the soul that I held in my arms. It was as if the blood of my life would flow away; could I forget him? Is it a sin to leave real love?

It was in this way that I cried foolish tears; one must never let the ones one loves know it too well. He kissed me and wiped my tears. Who else has loved him? He turned around and held me in the bed, my head against his shoulder. The minutes passed like years – I made each second drag out in my mind. Perhaps the sun would never rise that night, and this would be the wonderful ending to a life of searching.

His hands were rough, big, powerful as they slip inside mine. I could see the sadness there behind the face I would have killed for. Eyes that are about to cry always seem larger, more vibrant, more alive, as if the feelings want to explode out of them. We are all very sensitive and alive in moments of acute sadness. He did not cry though, he turned his eyes away, and I mine. The sun was setting and gloom crawled into all corners, the light of the television was the only thing to reveal our two twisted forms in the dark; there was total silence.

A time passed, and I pushed myself away from him. It was late, and time to go home, to pack the last packets of shirts, to put toothpaste in clear baggies for the TSA, to wonder how I was going to give away everything, to take last looks at the skyline of Santiago from my balcony before I threw it all away.

When I arrived home nothing was done. I stuffed stuff into things, making rude bundles of memories and clothing that I had bought down the street from that nice old lady. I took a figurine that a friend had gifted to me. I left an expensive set of pots. There was a tea canister I bought for dollar. It came. There was a sweater that was now too large for me, it stayed.

The dawn came, and I had no rest. I texted people, telling them to come and take a slice of my life. Books, dishes, forks, a cushion, a desk chair, tables – all for them. I hugged them all goodbye. I met my lover again briefly downstairs, near the elevator. He was going up to grab a thing or two, and he suddenly hugged me in the elevator, kissed me, we lingered on the edge of things we shouldn´t say, but we said them with our bodies, with touch, looks and warmth. The doors opened and we were our normal selves – pretending not to die under the weight of the invisible.

Then I left, falling apart in the taxi to see my whole life crumpled into carry-ons. Whole eras of my life rolled by in the window, my office, the place where I went once to get breaded fish, the store where they overcharge foreigners, that café where I met my best friend in Chile for the first time, not to mention the bridge I would have to drunkenly stumble over on my way back from the clubs. A whole life in the palm of the hand, and all the people known during it, faces, names, laughs, the textures of their hands, the way they pronounced their words. Who leaves this?

New York was cold, rude, ordinary and occasionally fantastic. At once stiking and beautiful it was possible in the same day to have trash dumped on you in the street but then stand at night in awe of the lights of the city flying over the dark waters of the Hudson – lights that seemed to float between here and a dark heaven, a wonderful world that seemed almost mystical, to promise more.

By day all of that disappeared and it was all mean bosses and soggy, cranky clients. They wanted more for less money, and you were nothing. Big fat men, who noisily sloshed their tongues inside lazy mouths made decisions over your salary, your life, when you got to work – if you were hired. There was a sense of always being in the power of the other.

The nightlife was flaccid in many ways too. The liberating insanity of nights in other places, Rio, Buenos Aires, Santiago – was replaced by surly waitstaff and 18 dollar mojitos with very little alcohol.

Maybe it was something else that was really missing. Maybe folding towels had distracted me from the beauty I had experienced. Huge mountains that tower over Santiago and threaten it with destruction or wonderment at all times – the Andes, I could see them from my office window, always there suggesting a beautiful thing. Maybe it was that wonderful embrace, the secrets shared in the dark between two people who might have loved each other, the feeling of fear between us in that bedroom that only ever occurs when things start to matter dangerously.

It was there. I won´t let my parking fine make me forget it.

The other day I scraped the side of my car on the Wendy´s drive through. Am I meant to be here? What if he was here?

I had a dream:

He came to New York, but it ate him alive. I saw him, we touched hands, there was a bumping sound that his suitcase made as he pulled it toward the hotel. It was a black suitcase. His face was happy, but he didn´t know.

The next day a call came, he was lost, lost somewhere. I searched the endless twisting avenues as they turned grey, turned black, then turned back into their daytime hues. They cycle continued of normal lifes, and they did not take notice of a madman searching frantically. Questions were given to people afraid to see me. They mentioned his problems, his sadness, that maybe he killed himself and faded into oblivion.

Had it been years since arrived that day in the sunlight under the huge buildings of the city? Or had it been hours? Dream logic – nightmare logic – does not draw a difference.

The lost thing had to be found, to be collected up into my hands and arms like sand, to be splashed on my face. Like a ring of great worth and beauty, or a part of myself, an answer to a question.

When I awoke after this dream the world spun. I still thought it was real, that I had a mission and a thing to do today. I could make this a quest. I reached for my phone – remembered the real. I was just far; he was away, down there, with my memories. Safe? I sent some messages, and got a response. My silly self; what a fool I am. 

Revival.

I decided to revive this blog. I am still a nobody - so the title is perfect. I have moved countires several times since my last post. I have a lot of life to tell anyone who wishes to hear me tell about it.

Love,
A Stranger
:)

The 2010 Chile Earthquake: The Events I saw

On friday sometime between 3 and 3:30 AM I had a dream in which things were shaking. I dreampt this in the same way that a person can dream of music when the neibour is playing some tune particularly loud.

Before long I woke up and found the real world was shaking. I reached out my hand and touched Richard, who was next to me, sleeping. "Tremor" I said, and I shook his arm. He stirred while everything rumbled. "TREMOR" I insisted and shook harder.

"What" he mumbled and stirred. The walls were banging agains the side of the bed, and the whole room seemed to be creaking and grinding.

"Tremor" I said again, and he got it this time. In the darnkness his eyes opened and said "It will be over soon".

He repeated that over the next few seconds, that at the time seemed extremely long but in retrospect seem extremly short. He kept repeating it even though it wasnt true, and then as if to mock his promise the earthquake intensified greatly.

The bed, he and I moved, I think. Cracking, grinding and yawning sounds multipied into a cacauphonous scream as the building wobbled with the force of the quake. At one point I heart huge crashing sounds that sounded like thunder, but all it was was the gigantic structure

giving and breaking in its insides somewhere.

Richard stoped talking, I think, and I thought about the fact that I was about to die. We were on the fourteenth floor, and this was not getting any better. Those sounds were probably the building comming appart. We were going to fall hundreds of feet to our deaths, and be crushed by thousands of pounds of shattered concrete.

My heart was racing, but I wasn´t crying or begging for salvation. The huge beast of a building was going to bury us all in it's fallen skeleton. I was going to be crushed or splattered or trapped. Everything is over now. Okay.

Then the cracking stopped. The 22 story high building stopped moving left to right, the bed started to shake less. We weren't dead yet. We might live through this.

Finnally things ceased in a few seconds of infinite time, and a thousand alarms seemed to go off in the city far below. I got out of the recently/jumping bed and looked at the city below and saw utter depths of darkness, all electricity everywhere was gone. Richard announced it, and he tried the door. It was locked. He told me to get the key. I got it and it didn't work. The door was jammed and we were trapped in this only-god-knows-how-dammaged building. Images ran threw my head of passengers trapped on the low decks of sinking ships. I did not want to be in the aerial version of that.

I started to franticly struggle with the door, but it did not give. The pins inside had broke somehow, and the knob was utterly unresponsive to our attempts to open it.

A half an hour passed, and Richard tried to open it with a knife and later with tweezers (to remove a part that looked like it was broken that was preventing the door from being opened).

Nothing worked.

The neibours were all out doors and we heard them in the hall. Richard was absolutely, stupidly, absurdly and impossibly calm. He was too young, I thought internally, still obstinately afflicted with the juvenile belieif in his own immortality. If he had any sence, I reasoned, he would be more concerned about opening that door now, right now.

I wasn't being stuck in this room, and we were leaving now. I talked to the voices in the either outside the door and told them they were trapped. After an annoying wait someone came and kicked down the door from the other side.

All the time the building rumbled, and I am told taht we experienced heavy aftershocks during the whole proces, one of which itself was not less than 6.9 in itself. Really, over the weekend anyone in the Chilean centre of the country was not a survivor of one earthquake, but of a number of not less than 10 good size seismic events. Events that in and of themselves would merit the title of earthquake if they occured individually in the United States or Europe.

The constant shaking of everything made us into cats. All of our senses were heightened, and we were always on edge.

We went out to the hall after I gathered matches and tissues (I was sick) as well as a package of cookies. Richard took the wad of cash that was our paychecks and I took my passports. A percentage of my brain mentally said goodbye to the room that I was not entirely expecting to return to.

We sat in the hall and faced eachother wondering what to do next. If the neibours stayed or left, I am not sure. I think they left immediately, but others waited near their appartment door listening to a radio.

A breathless man came down the stairs telling us to evacuate. He paused, looked around, then continued his mission down the stairs.

Plaster was lying on the grownd as the mouldings had come off of a lot of the doors. We left rubble in front of our defenseless unlocked door before we left, to leave a trace in case some robber decided to take advantage of us while we evacuated.

We then stupidly took the only remaining elevator down to the grownd floor. When we arrived at the ground floor we quickly observed that everything was flooded everywhere. The whole building's plumbing was dealt a mortal blow by the quake, leaving it a leacky mess of water and combustible natural gas.

We filed out into the courtyard along with the rest of the residents for a very long wait. People had been caught in the middle of their dreams, right before the disaster and the evidence was everywhere. They were calm, sleepy but alert. They were dressed in payjamas, robes, sweaters hastily thrown on and mismatched outfits searched for in the dark.

The waiting game began...

Wanderings of a Nobody.

I´ve spent a lot of my life drifting about.

I was born here, in Santiago, Chile however I grew up in NY. Fastforward to college, and I took a scholarship to Taipei. That was my real first experience of the "other" so to speak. It was fascinating and stimulating. Smiliar to a baby´s experience, I had to learn everything again, even learn to speak all over again.

After I graduated I moved to Argentina for a while to be foreign some more. It worked. I finnished that trip up by moving next door, to Chile, a country that I was born in but knew nothing about. My Chilean passport is still the big, red, scary passport of the dictatorship, and I myself am very much an artifact of that time.

Now, the effect of all this wandering/travel on me has been a broadening of my horizions. I no longer see any rule, any constant, any one cultural norm that dominates anything. This is especially hillarious in the US, which I now often see through "other" eyes. It has a peculiar cult of self-worship and delusion that I haven´t really seen in most other places. . . All the comfortable middle-class conservative certitudes of life seem like a joke to me.

The world is made of strange pieces, which are not made necessarily to fit tougether. Nor should they, otherwise the beauty of their difference be lost.

Ramble.

Andrés Borges Aragón

Ramble.

Inside his mind he could be anything, bat, pot, emperor, king, queen or song. Even then, if not a king then a nothing, a leaf, a tambourine, a sound that floats and disappears.

From his appearance this would not be gathered, for he was ugly. Heavy and ungraceful, a gangly bulk he was, unbecoming. It was the inside mind-wheels in his head that could really fly when given a surety of freedom.

Often consisting of a boring afternoon, a wait at an office, or an interminable walk (he had no car), were the bases of his flights into the huge unknown darkness inside his mind. On these travels into the outer oorrt cloud of conscience, he could encounter the whole meanness of the universe, its cruelty, its kindness, its ultimate impartiality, but never its condescension.

For example the awesome planets spinning huge, dumb, horrible, resplendent in their ancient courses through unmeasured darkness overfilling fathoms of incomprehensible darkness, that was one vision one time.

For example, there was another of volcanoes and fire which gushed endlessly over an alien land, fire waves killing the land, consuming the slave-aliens, who were dumb towards their impartial gods. He watched unblinking.

Mind space, real space, for it is all space. The painting needs the watcher, the fire needs the wood. How many volcanoes only erupt for the islanders?

Delight and wonder can be found within his mind, crowding for space with wonders and extract. More and more they cloud the doors of his perception, overflowing until he is consumed by the dream.

His body sits stiff, eyes dull and far, watching nothing. For his mind enjoys a buffet of unthinkable, unexplainable enjoyments. Such are the ten thousand flavours of a mind open to taste everything.

Who can say that his job is not a fake? Who can say that the toilet is real?

The chair hurts his body after hours prone. He moves but still clumsy legs, arms, feet bump and hit things. Those things slide and sometimes break when they are in his way,

They make certain sounds.

Another day, night, year, age, they all pass. He is old now, outwardly. He still goes to work, and then he still goes to dream.

For Heliogabalus, High Priest of the Sun

This painting done by Simeon Solomon in 1866 feautures the tired image of the Roman Emperor Heliogabalus, born Varius Avitus Bassianus. He was known for his various sexual pecadillos, sun worship and general ecentricity.

Reading the story of his life, I pity him. He was Emperor for 4 years during a particularly bloodthristy time in the Roman Empire. Economic, political and religious instability seemed to be everywhere, lurking on the German borders, in the heards of the Romans and in the bloody hands of the dastardly Praetorian guard. During his short reign he was ultimately unable to control the army, history, the world, or even himself. It seems to me that as time went on he focused on the one thing he could master - his body.

He was stabbed to death by his own Imperial guard on 11 March 208AD.