Lost and Found

I have been reading this book since I left the States. It's a series of essays with a heavy emphasis on memoir and art and cultural history, all about the concept of being lost. I have found it almost viscerally poignant to my current experience at times. I haven't picked it up in over a week now. Partially because I find it difficult to read in English when I am concentrating on learning Spanish so much. Partially because I hate the sadness of finishing books I really like.

Today I used an ATM on my way to the grocery store and thought that the cash that I withdrew fell out of my pocket somewhere on my way home. I looked in every pocket, the bathroom, my shopping bags. I was so annoyed/frustrated/upset about what amounted to carelessness on my part. But then my roommate found the cash on the kitchen floor. The relief of finding something I though was lost was such a wonderful sensation. Even something unemotional like money (an amount that will have very little long term consequence, anyway). It was like a really nice surprise. There may even be something about the feeling that's similar to falling in love. Or at least a fraction of it. Finding something that really belongs to you that you had been living without.

I constructed an inventory of things I have lost over the years that I really miss. About seventy-five percent of them are winter outerwear (that blue hat from tenth grade, a pair of my grandmother's gloves, the perfect street-pashmina, etc) and the rest are single earrings. None of them is worth nearly as much as the cash I misplaced today. Probably not even all of them collectively. But if, through some strange tidal flow of the universe, any of those things were to come back to me the elation I'd feel would be exponentially greater. I even have a box full of mate-less, former favorite earrings awaiting that unlikely turn of events.

Maybe the lesson here is that I care far too much about material things. That objects shouldn't hold such emotional worth for me. Everything should be dispensable. But it could also mean that, despite all evidence to the contrary, I might want to fall in love again.

Night at the Cinema

This evening Nike and I went to a film club screening. The movie, The Grin Without a Cat, was in French and the subtitles were in Spanish so I spent much of the time confused. Especially since we both thought we were going to see this visually rich, surrealist Czech film (which I had already seen, but thought would be fun to see again). Anyway, besides an extended exercise in comprehension, it was a sort of fascinating look at a subculture here. Well, subculture might be to strong a word for six middle-aged, leftist film buffs. Since I understood approximately every seventh word, I was relying heavily on audience reaction, gesture and tone to follow the post film chat. But I was definitely picking up some, "Oh no he didn't say that about Chris Marker!" kind of facial expressions. The film itself (which I have since learned is something of a classic, in the scope of documentaries dealing with the failures of the left in the late sixties) relied more on voice over than a non-fluent viewer would hope. But I really enjoyed the spectacle of the event itself: in a basement screening room of a university building, the strange blend of men with graying hair and film students, the guy sitting next to me with a Che Guevara pin and a paperback copy of a Balzac book... It was familiar but completely different.

Currying Flavor

So the Chilean diet has some quirks. Or maybe it has absolutely no quirks at all. The food here is definitely not bad. But it's certainly different and not in a particularly exciting way. I like the two national street foods: giant, calzone-like empanadas and completos, which are hot dogs covered in avocado, tomato and mayonnaise. But generally the intensity of flavor around here is pretty low. Culinarily, the most exciting thing is being able to buy a kilogram of strawberries and two perfect avocados for about two dollars. Many can attest to my abiding love for strawberry-avocado salads, but like anything, one gets sick of them after a while. Especially when one is consuming strawberries by the kilo to avoid spoilage.

So today I decided to branch out a bit and make a curry. I wouldn't say that curry is a staple of my repertoire, but I feel comfortable making it. The nice thing about curry is you can make it with anything as long as you can find curry powder (or paste, but they don't even have milk in the refrigerated section of the grocery store here). When I began my adventure I wasn't sure I'd be able to find the powder. But sure enough, it was on the shelf in the international section of the grocery store, tucked behind some soy sauce. I also bought the brownest looking rice (it was not actually brown rice), some chicken legs (easy) and a can of what I thought was coconut milk. It was actually coconut cream, unfortunately. Which turned out to be really delicious and I ate some spread on a piece of bread as dessert.

Veggies were of course no problem. Cauliflower, strangely awesome potatoes, carrots, peppers... my roommate even had a ginger root stashed in the freezer she let me use (thanks, Nike!). So the curry was coming along nicely. My other roommate demonstrated the completely foreign can opener (thanks, Rodrigo!- It actually seems to just be a blade you use to cut open cans). I sort of just added gobs of coconut cream and lots of water where I would normally use coconut milk. And honestly it wasn't bad. The curry powder had a nice kick. It was definitely better than the curry powder I bought from the bodega on fourth avenue in Park Slope. All in all, I think I'll be able to figure out how to approximate all the varieties of foods I have been missing. Maybe next I'll try chili. Because puns make things more delicious.

Jitters

So in case you haven't picked up on this, I am making a go at National Blog Posting Month. I am sort of challenging myself to write more substantive things here and use my tumblr for my one-offs... But after a full day of bike riding yesterday and a full day of walking in the sun today, I'm afraid I don't have a ton of energy. And tomorrow my super-expensive Spanish classes begin at nine am so I need to get to bed pretty much now. According to the rules of the school there will not be more than five people in my class tomorrow. Which is a pretty small first impression to make. But the standard first day of school anxiety is still creeping in. Will I make friends? Will everyone else be muchmuch better at Spanish than me? What if I make some crazy pronunciation faux pas (like the time I tried to ask the dishwasher at Aroma for the "vasos" but said something more like "besos")? The "what to wear?" questions are not so pressing since wearing anything other than jeans and a t-shirt here garners far more unwanted attention than its worth. But, you know, which t-shirt??

Life on Mars

Today my friend Jaime took me to Reñaca* to teach me how to rock climb. We walked down a rocky gulch into a sort of chasm by the sea. Even about twenty feet away from the opening, I could see dots of sea spray on my sunglasses. I'm not a geologist, but the rocks were completely fascinating. Boulders in a standard grayish color (limestone? granite?) were interspersed with deep black ones. Like a lava had flown between the rocks and cooled as it reached the sea. Even though we didn't get there until after five the sun was incredibly bright. The glaring difference between shadow and sun gives the afternoons here an almost extra-terrestrial intensity. Like how you hear about temperature differences on the surface of the moon. The sun, the wind, the ocean, the ache in my arms and legs from the exertion... it was just a completely singular experience.







*According to Google Maps, the route we took today was 18.3 km each way. We went on bike, so I am pretty much ready to collapse right now.

Call Me

I have a Chilean cell phone. I bought it solely based on price and ended up with a package intended for children. It came with a tiny t-shirt, stickers, a bracelet, a notebook and a lanyard. It also came with 50 text messages and about $20 in credit. So that should last me a while. Especially considering that I simply don't have anyone to call. Coupled with the fact that I signed up for a Spanish class today, I am feeling pretty productive.

Theft and loss

When I was about five my mother's purse was stolen. It was carelessness, as I remember it. She left it on the front seat of the car which was parked next to the soccer field where I was playing. I might have forgotten to lock the door. They found the purse a day or so later, dumped in a mailbox without any money in it. I remember a conversation between my parents about canceling a Mastercard.

Later that year the family station wagon was stolen. It was parked outside our elementary school. Something about the way the story was told made me imagine that it was used as a getaway car in a bank heist. In retrospect it probably was not a bank heist (in Roxbury, in the late '80s). But it was gone and along with it a particularly special blanket with trucks on it. The blanket was of course irreplaceable. The hassle of replacing a car that my parents experienced (insurance, police) did not affect me in any way. Only the new smelling, silver Ford Taurus that replaced it held any interest at all. In the end, the car theft was no great blight on my childhood.

During my first year in New York, my credit card and bank card were stolen from my wallet. I realized the theft the next morning when I received a call from my credit card company about a strange number of purchases made in Jersey City the day before. Nothing was really lost though. It was the sort of fictitious money that exists in banks and gets spent with checks and swipes. I filed reports with the police, the bank, the credit card company. I made statements. I talked to officers. I identified the likely time of the theft. The money was back in its virtual place before it was missed. Someone got $125 in socks from my credit card company, but all it cost me was a temporary annoyance.

When I moved to Valparaíso I had read a lot about petty crime here. One day last week two men stopped me on the street unprovoked and told me to be careful. I think I must have been looking particularly gringa-ish that day, wearing a skirt and boots. People around here talk about theft all the time. The people living at the hostel all had stories or stories of friends- cameras ripped from hands, cell phones taken at knife point. It's an expectation. A sort of mistrust everyone has of everyone else. It's hard to explain really. It's not a hostile feeling. Just sort of sad.

I guess I was bound to see it eventually. Today my roommate was robbed while we were walking down the street together. A kid, who looked about eleven, grabbed her bag and ran down the hill. She yelled and threw a coffee cup at him and ran after. And then eventually, I yelled and ran after. But my shoe came off and I had to make my way more slowly. The police came. And witnesses said various things. A report was filed. Ultimately not so much was lost. Money. Things of personal significance. And I think she feels those losses now in ways that won't be as important in time. I am surprised really at how much it affected me. That invasion of personal space. The almost violent moment when he grabbed the bag. The paralyzed feeling right after. There are worse things. Many many worse things. Knives or guns could have been involved. It could have been a group of people rather than one kid. In time it will just be a small trauma. A little reminder that even in the glaring sun, it's not always safe.