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.

Hail Caesar...

The new president, while doing nothing, seems to upset everyone. Many on the left, myself included are stymied at his lack of action and seeming dithering. Everyone on the right, which itself has grown very extreme, hates him fanatically and screams in apocalyptic tones about all the evil he is to unleash on the nation.

This, of course, ignoring the many evils already unleashed by the late Bush II, who has only lately left the throne.

The neutered Senate divides itself into two, one half eternally filibustering the other. In their impotence they put forward weak ideas and strong attacks. They are useless. Among them few have any courage to think, but rather follow and attack like packs of wolves.

I fear we are entering an age of Caesars, though we are in the first few chapters of this new volume of American history...

Soon there may come new crisises, and the Senate and President, unable to disengage themselves from the poisonous game of partisan character assassination, will be unable to provide leadership. When the dollar crashes, or another war is lost, or another attack happens where then will the die fall?

Who can say.

What I can say though is that there is a vacuum of real power. Whenever the next thing happens, and it will happen, there will be no unity and no one with enough support to do anything about it. The result will be chaos, a democratic chaos.

The result of that, my friends, will be a strong man who can make a unified policy. When that happens the death of democracy will not be met with tears, but rather with cheers for the new stability it will bring.

Hail Caesar Agustus....

Windows 7

Today one of the headlines from The Economist is the following...

"An imminent Pakistani offensive in Waziristan, Windows 7 Launched, protests in Bankok.."

It is interesting that now the launch of a product is now History in the grandest sense of the word.

Where does the rabbit-hole of comodification lead?

Rubix Cubes and Jewel Quest 2

Lately two things have been consuming my time. One being a rubix cube at work and the other being Jewel Quest two during the late, borring hours of homelife.

Late last night, while playing Jewel Quest, trying to manipulate the matrix to produce 5 and 6 in a row I came to a realisation that, while obvious to everyone good at math, was totally hidden to me since I am very poor at the mentioned... That realisation was that Jewel Quest is more or less a logarythm which is interactive, and changes in and out random varables whenever you cancel a piece and as a result new jewels come into the top to fill out the matrix.

This was an interesting thing to realise becuase it made me think of all the other potential activities that I may be envolved in that are similarly live performances of a logarythm or at least of an equation where changing variables effect other changing variables.

I´m sure that none of my terminology is right in this respect, but I saw the jewel quest as a changing system that added new complications every time I cancelled or solved, I guess, exisiting factors given to me.

Anyway, the Rubix cube also presented me with an interesting idea. Let it be known again I am no good at math, but have always been interested deeply in physics.

Now, on the cube there are cells which one can switch around to put them in different positions. At first I had difficulty manipulating a block from one place, facing one way, to another facing a different way or in a different area at least. After a while I learnt how to do this, but in learning about it I realised something.

I realised that basically the switching from one side to another is tantamount to changing the dimension that that block is in, if we define the dimension of the block as being it´s relation to all the others and it´s "side". Such a change, from the perspective of the block, would be unexplainable, magical and totally imperceptable as one does it.

I am reminded of the book "flatland" where the author suggests that higher dimensions are simply not visible or understandable to those of lower dimensions. If I were to use my finger to poke into a 2 dimensional universe, the 2 dimensional creaters could only percieve the flat tip of my finger.

This is the matter of the rubix cube. The flat block, no more than the flatlander, would be able to explain the dimensional shift of his position vis a vis his past side or anything else.

In effect, when one is playing with a rubix cube, one is playing the role of a higher dimensional being manipulating a surface or the reality of a lower dimension.

The Greatness of Being Small

I've been listening to a lot of Greek lately, in addition to all my regular current events reading, and one thing that has really impressed me was the ability of the Greeks to do great things given a small amount of resources. I mean really crazily great things, like defeat 100 million Persians with 300 Spartans.

In light of my other readings, about current events, and especially the current battery of failed attempts to reform various aspects of US culture and political economy one thing became clear to me: smallness can be a huge advantage in both adaptability and creativity.

The question has been asked many times before by historians: After seeing how successful the Greeks were with their hoplites and war tactics, why didn't they copy it? Was the Perisan empire not the largest empire then ever seen? Was it not the richest? The largest? etc.

Of course it was, but it's very hugeness became a factor, in my opinion that impeded it's progress. The Persian monarch was in the habit of collecting from the subject peoples around him to form an army, would it not be very difficult to break this tradition and make his own in the Greek school? Arrogance, that of the large toward the small, no doubt also played a factor. Why should the great Persians copy the puny Greeks? We have the empire, after all, not they. Maybe their victory was a mistake. Persia is still #1. So the logic goes.

For the Greek city-states, much like the Italian city states or the modern European Nation-states, none of those excuses holds water though. Each of those small units, without any excuses to fall back on, does it's best to get the best results. If they fail they pay for their failures, historically sometimes pay with their very existence, and then try to make a better solution. The result of this is progress, technological as well as cultural on every front.

Looking at the modern us Healthcare debate through this lens I can't help but laugh a little and remember the Persians. We are the greatest, the biggest, the strongest, why learn from the little guys around us?

(Beware, the above is a dangerous attitude)

The Night Land

The Night Land is a book written by William Hope Hodgeson which is utterly stunning in it's vision, scope and cruelty while at the same time falling prey to an awful writing style and a stilted, farsicle romance.

Written in 1912 the author somehow manages to clearly imagine a sunless, hopeless, chilly future wherein the "final millions" of the Earth crowd tougether in an 8 mile high Pyramid made of metal. Against this great fortress the powers of darkness aways sit, wait, and watch. From the great pryamid at all times the masses of people can eye the watchers, huge motionless Godzilla-like nightmares that at all times are waiting for the forcefield protecting those final millions to fail or falter. All around the pyramid myriad horrors half-manifest in the darkness, threatening dangerous possbilities to this last base of mankind.

This is where the book is at it's most sucessful and why I recommend it for a very slow read. The feeling of a watching breathing doom, which never sleeps or rests but only stares is the jewl of the text. One must wonder as he wrote this if he wasn't thinking of the final conflicts between Germany, England, France and Italy that would ultimately result in 9 million pointless deaths.

The feeling of being balanced perilously in the middle of the dark nothing is well alive in the text. Add to this a great amount of very origional and iteresting ideas (I wouldn't mention everything in a review, should I?) then we have a far-seeing work, if not of prophecy, of real psychological horror.

Of the negative points I will very breifly speak. They are legion. The book is written in a childish attempt at 17th century prose. That is all of the difficulty and none of the depth. The plot itself is pretty simple (the world is more interesting by far than the plot). The love story featured prominently in the work is NAUSEATING becuase it is so saccharine. However, if you can survive all these tortures (I recommend reading slowly and possibly skipping the first non-sequitur of a chapter) then you can read the book.

You don't even have to buy it. Google has it here: http://books.google.cl/books?id=eITGn5W3q5wC&dq=The+night+land&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=es&ei=h7_PSvinI5HO8QaV5tXuAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CCAQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Happy readings!

Office Life

Hey nobody,

I have started to fall into the rythm of the new life. Now, after 3 weeks in the new company I no longer feel like I have to be careful with every decision (better to not show my incompetence) nor careful with the content of every sentence (better to not alienate the people I will have to work with).

Now more or less the office stasis has won out finnally and I come in every day and do my job without much comment. My job, in case you are interested, is translating factory production demands and questions into Chinese, then getting the answer and putting it back into Spanish. Occasionally, English gets a use here and there, if only becuase I get tired of looking at all the possible characters that I could mean when I type "ji" (the answer is in the hundreds). Those who type Chinese know my pain, those who don't, well, be happy you don't.

The co-workers are more interesting, a bit. At first they were frosty and standoffish like Chileans like to be, after that they become more normal latinos. The workday is crazily long, from 9am to7pm. In reality this means no one (exept me perhaps) actually arrives anywhere near ontime and generally drift out a little after 7.

How does working work when you have such a long day? Well I am writing this blog at work, so that should tell you. Also our rythms have to do with the factories in China, which are on a whole other schedule. . . usually each day we work in two short bursts, right in the morning when it is still possible to get something done in china, then right before we leave when the Chinese are waking up.

As for the personalities of the officemates, I don't know yet. The big boss seems somwhat combustable, but he seems to save it mostly for recalcitrant factory owners. In general the atmosphere is pretty relaxed ... and it has to be. For anyone to maintain stamina over this period of time it's necessary to have rests and bursts of activity.

If I ever get to know any of these people I'll tell my audience of none all about it. Trust me.

Taking a Clean Shower

To add you what I just put I have to very quickly sum up a month and a little more.

I was sick and tired and saw Santiago and was alittle astrainged by it, I came back to Argentina and rather liked the little time I had left, even though this was a little embittered by not having quite enough money coming in.

About a week ago I came back to Chile to start work. I had too many things to do with not enough time but somehow managed to cram it all into some sort of working package. I suffered in a frozen, cold-water shower hostel cramed with a mottley crew of Peuvian Radical Liberal party members (who were actually quite nice) and passed those few days frantically searching for a real appartment, a bed and all those other thousand comforts and conveniences we take for granted.

I did it, and secured for myself with the help of my new employer a very beautiful if unfurnished appartment in the historic part of town. It is on the 14th floor and entirely new. I could never afford this in manhattan - it´s really something to see.

The new job can be stressful and the hours are quite irregular, but everyone seems here to be in it tougether. The Chilean work ethic is not the American one and days are long and full of dilatory space with frenetic action only here and there. This is an unaccustomed kind of work schedule for me and will take some getting used to, but already I am starting to acclimated (after all I am at work now).

The Chileans are more guarded with their friendships than Argentines are and I am yet to make any real amigos. Their dialect is utterly basilectical in all aspects and I am asked constantly if I am from Spain. My way of speech sounds hilariously proper and formal to the man on the street.

Anyway, we did a big deal last night and I was up here till 10 at least in the office, so I can see how it will be. Some long days with nothing and some very full nights.

I took a shower this morning in the new appartment and enjoyed the hot water. The first time in more than a week that I had a real hot shower, and it was utterly orgasimic. I can´t describe how nice it is to feel actually clean again instead of being a dirty ball of mush, which everything from between Buenos Aires to Santiago has stuck too.

I was horrified, as I turned on the hot shower and felt its pleasing waters wash over me, to see the dirt litterally comming off in big, muddy rivulets.

Four Days in Chile - pt 1 of 2

I was sick at the time, so my recollections are all dimmed by sickness. During the whole interview process and my treks around the city itself I could breathe only with difficulty and could talk hardly at all - so bad that it took a lot of effort to get people to understand me.

Somehow I formed a presentable semblance and got everything together; but I am getting ahead of myself.

About a week ago I went to Santiago, the capital of Chile from Buenos Aires, the Capital of Argentina. I went by bus, and as I said I was sick with the flu at the time. Only now I have I found the time and inclination to try to express my little journey to myself and everyone else. It was remarkable because I was born in Chile in that same city, and had not returned since my birth, for well over 20 years.

On the day I left I got up in the morning and went to work as normal, which for mean means as an English teacher. I went to and from early morning lessons with a black duffel bag in tow. It contained my suit, a black pair of business shoes, passports (US and Chilean) and some other little things I would need in the upcoming trip.

So I dutifully lugged all the stuff to and fro. I got very tired of it very quickly due to the fact my flu restricted my breathing tremendously, and I remember sagging under the burden of the stuff and the heat of the sun (it was a hot day).

After my last lesson at 3, I met up with Richard and had an ill-advised meal at some fast food restaurant where I ate up a burger as quickly as I could. I begged him to go with me to the bus station and he assented. I wanted him to come with me because I was tired, and valued at least a little companionship before I would set out on this long and uncertain journey.

Before long we were both out of the subway and navigating our way though the squalid, teeming marketplace that squats outside the chaotic and noisome Buenos Aires central bus station. I had already bought the tickets the day before so there was no hassle with ticket counters. Rather things went smoothly until we realised that the bus had not yet shown up on the overhead TV announcing departures and arrivals. Fortunately for me I then bid Richard goodbye and entered the gate anyway, and found my bus by luck.

The atmosphere of the hulking 60s BA bus station was basically that of an airport, although denuded of wealth. Everything similar but a class rung or two lower sums it up.

We took off at five on the dot with 7 passengers in a cavernous double decker bus. The lack of other people definitely made for a more pleasant ride.

The bus was called Andesmar, and was a pretty nice little affair. The seats were large and comfortable and the ride fairly pleasant. I immediately got sick to my stomach not 45 mins after leaving (due to my unwise hamburger lunch) and made friends with an Austrian girl.

Being very sick I tried to isolate myself from her a little bit that first day. We talked for a good 30 mins at first, but soon the boring movies came on to the little television screens that the bus had to show the passengers boring movies. The hypnotic spell of it pulled most people in and chatter ceased. I went back to my seat and listened to a few HP Lovecraft short stories/novellas on tape.

They fed us a tasteless but acceptable meal, which for me was fine since my stomach had been pretty well irritated by the hamburger. I ate sparingly, but I ate.

Before long the dull and featureless pampas replaced the seemingly endless Buenos Aires urban sprawl outside the window. This in turn was darkened by the lowering sun till all was utter blackness. I stayed on awake until the very early hours, very uncomfortable with my breathing and cough. I read alot, but eventually I dropped off to sleep in the semi-cama chair. . .

DAY 2

Very bright light awoke me, and that light was none other than the reflected effulgence of a lot of snow.

Apparently we were closer to the Andes than to Buenos Aires - and it was the winter, as the seasons are opposite here below the equator. The terrain had now changed from the dull flatness of the pampas to a vista at least capable of maintaining the interest of the traveler; it not totally interesting him. The undulations and ripples of the land grew imperceptibly and new species of vegetation seemed to replace old and more familiar ones. We were entering the Argentine zone of the Andes.

We arrived just then at the bus station in Mendoza. Each of us grabbed our stuff, shuffled out in the early morning chill to the other bus, and then either went back to sleep or to watching. For me it was the latter, and I spied the earth intently as we went up and up and up subtly but now perceptively. Snow seemed to come and go but sand became a factor.

Then I began to see really great mountains, and deserts with cactuses everywhere. Once in a while a deserted structure would stand, skeleton-style, a testament to the rawness and unbroken spirit of the place. The air was very cold, but dry. Few people were about because we passed few settlements. In fact as soon as we left Buenos Aires it seemed we left the centre of Argentina, and the rest being only small sheltered hamlets strewn here and there.

The bus then really started to gain altitude and my ears popped all the time from the changes. The vista at this point recalls the American old west but probably much greater in it's size and majesty, for the Andes are something really awesome to behold. They are much larger than they appear in any picture or movie, and truly dominate all one's perception and sight. They seem to arc up endlessly and have no straight path through them, as if they present some huge and unassailable obstacle. Each one is so high that it is capped with a large white glacier and spidery rills of ice which crouch downward from it. This is all the more impressive because when one is viewing the Andes one views them often from the desert and already from a fairly high elevation.

The roads through this area are, as you can no doubt understand, tiny and perilous looking. They are well maintained, but very narrow. I never felt unsafe because of the poorness of the roads, because again I say they are well kept, but just because the bus was very large, and it seemed like the road was too narrow to hold it and other traffic at the same time.

All the same our driver was very careful, and went slow.

Eventually we passengers got to some very high areas, and got to see, as our rode wound it's way around mountains, how far up we were. This was a bit of a scare, but there was no looking back then...

Eventually we got to the Chilean-Argentine border after much strange nothingness, and were given a change to get out and walk around.

At that time we, which is me and my Austrian friend, limped our way out of the big bus and did what any good tourist does and took pictures:

(the Chilean Border station)

Our surroundings in the ICE

A mighty mountain.

A dirty and tired me.

We passed through the customs house in an uneventful way. I paid my fine for overstaying my Argentine visa 4 or 5 months. That came to 100 pesos argentinos. I went to the Chilean side and checked in. I was officially in Chile.

I immediately noticed that the Chilean officials were efficient and thorough. They inspected each bag and interviewed each passenger in an orderly manner unlike the Argentines who took a rather scattershot approach.

After we passed the boarder we had a really crazy road to go down. It was very frightening but also, in a strange way, very fun. This road is called el paso de los libertadores:

This picture is taken midway through.

A slightly better one, but my Austrian friend Lena couldn't get a photo from the top at the time.

It was an interesting crossing to say the least.

This is the end of part 1. I will post part 2 soon.

Thank you :)

Live, Dying, Dead : A vivisection of American Health Care reform

America is sick; the healthcare debate in America has grown more and more shrill while real facts and figures grow rarer and rarer. The current healthcare polemics (I find myself hard-pressed to call them debates) seem collectively to ignore the serious social, moral and economic impacts of the current health care market in this country; rather they trivialise and stereotype. In short: facts count for nothing with either party. Rather the Republicans seem content to hysterically whine and mew about some "socialist" balderdash or predict with doom-toned clatter about death-panels. Simultaneously the weak-willed Democrats mimp and lisp in a pathetic whisper something about the public good of reform. The intellectual inertia on both sides is great, partially because only one of those sides can be said to have any intellect at all.

Bear with me, for in the next paragraphs there be more fact than opinion.

First though, statement about nomenclature: I call the healthcare market a market and not a system because that is what it is. I won't call it a "Healthcare System" because that phrase is overused, incorrect, self-aggrandizing and sycophantic. It is an undeserved national self-complement. There is no coherent whole nor palpable structure that underlies the conglomerate hulk that is the modern American health apparatus. No. Rather what we have is an infestation of tiny protected businesses, each connected to the next through an adhocracy of lobbyists, toothless-but-nonetheless-petty regulators, private boards and personal-professional relationships between the practitioners themselves. The word "system" imparts the meaning of orderliness, routine, fit function or of an accepted and methodical means of doing something. In all of these catagories, the American medical establishment lacks. Therefore in this article I will never write the phrase of convenience "American Health System".

Or at least I won't write it til' it be existent.

Anyway, to the facts:

First we must touch on what is the root problem of American healthcare and why some kind of National Healthcare System is needful and desirable. From an economic perspective the cold fact is that the US spends 17.6% of its GDP on healthcare (1). This is up from around 15% in 2004. (2) Obviously costs are rising. Estimates vary slightly among reports and I have come across other, lower, figures in my extensive reading (I apologize for having no social life) but lower only by a few points, ergo a statistical dead heat. In any case some of the exact figures are open to debate, for example we may have spent 12% in 2004 instead of 15%, however the overall trend is one which is steeply upward. This doesn't seem to be open to debate. The current year 17% figure I have seen in several sources, with only one dissenter stating 16.5% , which means it probably rings true, making that figure very troubling indeed.

So costs are rising, so what?

Unsustainability.

The reason rising costs are important is because in our system the people will, directly or indirectly, shoulder all of the cost. The result of all this is that insurance companies will recieve higher bills from healthcare providers (hospitals, doctors), a pre-negotiated percentage of which the ins. company will pay, and as time goes on they will raise their premiums in order to pay their bills, keep their shop open, and of course rake a profit. This is not necessarily bad in itself, however when played out across the whole market it creates a dangerous situation much like a price spiral, where everyone is raising prices because everyone else is doing it. Also part of the problem that Doctors and Hospitals do raise bills on paying customers is because it compensates them for the nonpaying ones, which occurs under many circumstances.

Projections of the total GDP in the future which the US is going to spend on healthcare are nightmarish. 31%, 25% x% by 2025. They are not worth citing at length in my opinion because they are predictions, and a lot can happen to reduce or raise costs in ten years. However it can clearly be said from the trend that given the current situation there will be a big increase in all healthcare bills as the market swells out of control into a bloated American healthcare mess - obese, flabby and disgusting as it paws at the US' collective pocketbook.

Why do the hospitals charge high prices then? Why does a night of hospitalisation cost 2,500$ and up? Why did a visit to the ER at a certain hospital (my previous employer) cost 457$ plus any private fees incurred?

Two simple reasons: 1) FFS (fee for service) and 2) Legal responsibility (little discussed, but I suspect just as important.)

FFS is very simple. Almost everything in the United States is fee for service. You walk into a gas station, buy a tank of gas for your SUV (50$), buy a candy bar (3$), buy sodas for the kids (10$) and a sub sandwhich for lunch (8$). Your total is 71$ plus tax. Wow, an expensive trip! For every service you requested you paid a separate fee. Those fees added up to something monstrous.

Apply this to a hospital visit. You are struck by a car. You go to the emergency room(457$) and see a doctor (300$), they preform some tests (1000$) and think something might be seriously wrong. You spend the night in the hospital (2500$) waiting to see the doctor again (300$ private fee + 108 consultation fee) and get your results (free!) they think you have had some severe trauma to your lung and want you to come back. Your arm is broken, but I don't know what they'd charge you for the plaster of paris. Grand total: 5665$ Forgive me if I miscalculated, but basically you get the point: a lot of rather large things add up quickly.

There you have it.

Reason two is legal responsibility - which is less insidious but probably no less obvious. Let's say you go to the doctor and tell him you have a pain in your lower left abdomen. Your complaints are generalized and rather hard to pin down. The good doctor believes you probably just have the flu and some muscle aches as a result - just like the last time you came to him with a similar complaint.

Turns out you had full blown xyringious xanthus cocotophyotis! He should have known! You sue the good doctor and win big. For this reason, Doctors in the US often perform huge and unnecessary batteries of tests, procedures and medications on people who don't really need them. Not only "just in case" but also to protect themselves in a court of law, just in case they happen to miss some possible treatment for some possible ailment.

Oh ho! Oh ho! Alas!

So what do we do?

Perhaps take our heads out of our asses and look around us. Europe, Canada and rich Asia have both confronted the twin issues of the uninsured poor and high costs. All of the above parties have done something about it.

We have done nothing, and seem very busy at the moment still doing it and speaking of it's relative benefits.

We need to look at and learn from the outside.

One place to look would be a single payer European system for a start. They spend a Fraction in terms of GDP(3) of what we do (between 10-8%). and cover everyone in the country. Something which we haven't managed to do.

We need to face the fact that with the private market alone we have achieved neither low prices (actually, quite the opposite) nor universal coverage. The outcomes of our health system are comparable to Europe/Japan's or inferior. We may be the only country in the world that over-treats a portion of the population while giving no treatment to others.

So we pay more, get less and deny healthcare to the poor on the basis of market principles. This is not only morally repugnant but highly hypocritical from a country that likes to think of itself as some sort of pinnacle of civilization. Meanwhile we argue and lie among ourselves when the real possibility of reform even remotely becomes obtainable. Other countries surge ahead.

The political parties seem so shy of actually attaching any logic to their right conclusions (Democrats) or any wit to their venom (Republicans) that they seem to be locked at the moment in some idiotic and endless brawl of incoherence. One brainless and dangerous and the other headed in the delusory direction of a Pollyanna's "Hope and Change", I feel myself ashamed to even listen or read any of their collective pabulum. This is an insupportable climate where everyone official seems afraid of saying anything of substance.

It's all "Hope and Change" or "God, Guns and Gays". Where did all the brains go?

I will close this essay saying this:

It seems to me that few people of political wit seem inclined to set pen to paper these days. On the left they too often scupper their own theories with politeness and cute personal/group conceits whereas on the right they wold rather appeal to the worse plebeian forms of jingoist sentiment; or failing that simply prostitute themselves in whorish, shameless manner to the hopefully now ebbing forces of a peculiar type of Christian idolatry. The bankruptcy out there runs deep, so deep that as a result of this American Sickness there is even a debate about wether healthcare should be extended to the 50m poor that go without it every day. How is it this country reckons itself so great when it is so arrogant and ignorant? Is there enough cultural or intellectual power left to even make this internal reform? What if there isn't?

Perhaps that is the answer after all to this American sickness. Our problem isn't that we can't but that we won't. We are enmeshed in a cultural decline as profound as that of old Greece or Rome. We are losing the will to even want to be better.

Note: Thanks to my mother, whose conversation was invaluable for the gleaning of the kernel of idea that was to become this essay.

Works Cited:

(1)-A National Coalition on Heathcare: http://www.nchc.org/facts/cost.shtml See "National Healthcare Spending".

-B The Economist (Newspaper), This is going to hurt: Healthcare reform in America http://www.economist.com/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13900898

(2) -a The Commonwealth Fund, Commission on a High Performance Heath System: Slowing the Growth of US Healthcare expenditures - What are the options?http://www.commonwealthfund.org/usr_doc/Davis_slowinggrowthUShltcareexpenditureswhatareoptions_989.pdf

See Page vii for graph.

-B U.S. National Health Expenditures - U of South Carolina. Report by Samuel L. Baker http://hspm.sph.sc.edu/COURSES/Econ/Classes/nhe06/

(3) Healthcare in Denmark. Official Page. http://www.sum.dk/publikationer/healthcare_in_dk_2008/ren.htm

See graph comparisons of EU nations.

Introduction

In this web log I aim to post my reflections, essays and short stories. These entries shall have no particular theme and may focus on questions of literature, politics, travel or be pure works of fantasy and fiction. I am gladdened if you, a real reader, are reading this because then it means you may enjoy what will follow this message.

Also I must add to this a short addendum: Do not be insulted by anything which you are about to read. I regard the writing space as a space in which I may scream or utter strange things. Those things I may not even actually believe or agree with, but out of literary license or inclination I may embrace. If you are happy or sad, angry or pleased I have done my work; you are entertained or at least interested. One thing I should never court is ennui.

With that said, please enjoy.