Small things about Santiago

29/07/2009

Pablo Neruda has me wanting to write odes to everything around me. An ode is due to the gummy bears, hot showers, new blanket, hungry cat, loneliness, game face passengers, Nescafe, the subjunctive, plastic bags, Santiago sidewalks, late nights, mullets, toilet paper and foreign friends. Something about his respect and careful attention directly affect my relationship with surroundings. Ambient characters and pests are part of my life here and rather than step over them I love to give them thought.

Maybe odes will come later. I’m going to step towards poetic respect through these notes...

Gummy bears make resistance futile. Simple sugars in every color and fake fruit flavors lasted a short lifetime in this drawer before calling me. Their control over me extended far past an arm’s reach, taking command trans Santiago where they came into consciousness. I knew for hours that I had little choice, that when the time came to study windowside the demand would be too loud for me. Surely I ate them gummy bears, one by one.

At first, I thought that perhaps all Santiago showers were mislabeled with “caliente” nobs. But only a few weeks in, I happily learned that hot water does in fact exist here.

Hot showers. One does not know a hot shower until having faced a series of cold showers on wintery tile floors. I have now had two hot showers, both of which were easy to identify and hard to salute adieu. And now I am boldly resolved to return to responsible shower sessions and time limits too, but I hope not to forget what a hot shower is not.

Brown and white, white all down and up the front, brown backed blanket on my bed, I am happily bringing you home to me. Before you came, I was sad for me but you have made a bad sleeper glad.

Nescafe, I would love to meet your dad. You must be grand, since your name is every place imaginable. You invade cafes, restaurants, homes, sidewalk advertisements, desiring consumers, conversations, shopping carts, and imaginations. You dominate the coffee world here. How do you do it?

Plastic bags are victims of over use in Santiago. Every bag I buy is bagged and sold, required to come home with me. I am depressed over the volume of bags collected in no time in this city. “No necesito una bolsa, gracias” is met with confusion and insistence. I will know that I have learned to communicate masterfully in Spanish as soon as I can make a convincing argument not to take another armful of plastic sacks with me after making a purchase. This is my new aim.

Little known in places worldwide, Santiago’s a network of slip and slides. Sidewalks are continuously waxed and shined so that a pedestrian here need only skate from place to place. I haven’t picked a foot off the ground in weeks; I just glide. Push off and let the city move your body from one door to the next. Careful though, not falling can get tricky.