Bikin on Loverly Lady Luck

Outside of the center of town, I found that lines were tremendous in the groceries not too damaged and that the earthquake defeated buildings felt funereal in presence. I´m glad of course not to be waiting in hopelessly long lines to fill my gas tank as I empty the car of it´s fuel. There are many sad pods of homeless neighbors I´m glad not to be a part of and sad faces on the news that luckily are not mine, nor those of my loved ones. I have several places near by to restock on bread and toilet paper. I think I witnessed today the growing force of forgetting. There was dust and failed construction, sadness and sweet cream.

My heart, as it does exist, goes out to those hurt and endangered by this event, those nervously waiting to hear from loved ones, and those desperate for health attention and basic resources. I´m glad that the prisoners that escaped in the quake seem to have been recovered. I´m also achingly depressed in thinking of those trying to escape with their families via car as the tsunami swept away their traffic jammed efforts. I´m even sad about thinking that my life just isn´t that different now that they´re gone. Sadness could be consuming in Santiago at present, in Chile at large, or for anyone aware of the lives of others. And I´m still glad for a little sensitive in my coffee. I guess I´m just glad to feel alive and glad. I remember that life is a rich gift.

So is my bike.

Recently, Claudio took me to a place where Lady Luck was affordable and available. I took her home the day before the quake and I am so happy to be with her now. To break from yesterday´s fearful home lockdown, today I took the opportunity to ride the streets with my wonderful new bike around Santiago along with my camera to see how things are holding up. I started with some of the destruction sites from news shots that have been cycling through the news. Of course, destruction is a more interesting subject than normalcy and it happened to be what had brought me out doors, but I found my focus changing slightly once in motion. Life was almost normal.

So that´s the subject of many of my pictures. Life is just happening like always, people moving on. We were in the grips of a weird and shaky perspective, and then the danger lessened. Tension relaxed. People still enjoy a good ice cream cone and stroll. I found people moving like unmotivated half zombies and a few people gathering to photograph building crumbs, but most of what I saw just wasn´t what CNN had showing and it didn´t sound like it´s deathly sountracks either. Aint no body gonna hold Santiago citizenry back from walking through Plaza de Armas or eating sweets with friends. I appreciated a little normalcy and tried to capture both ordinary and less ordinary wreckage of my town before hygienic forces put it back together again.

My bike, as it turns out, is more present in my mind then all of the death and destruction in my residence. That which I see, feel, and use are the only things my mind can consider real and concern itself with. Even though my mind is undisciplined and wandering, imaginative and fanciful, it apparently rooted to simple restrictions of tangibility, and these days, glideability.