imagery

The power of an image. We will all nod our heads in vague agreement, but we stop there, afraid of what it means to recognize something that is truly powerful. We tilt our heads and bite our lower lips when set before some photograph or painting that creates a vocabulary of its own to describe a split second in our sloppy human condition. And nobody disagrees with the outrageous injustice that advertising as an elusively Big-Brother-esque institution does for society (another word that we spout off when the rot in our heart lies to have us believe that bemoaning existence might make it go away). The indigenous peoples of the Americas occupied an entire concept of the universe centered in the image, relaying what we try to call ‘absolute truth’ through these images that remain open to interpretation, recognizing that each viewer might see a different version of the same story. Memory was a beautifully chaotic performance of dance, music, and images, or perhaps some colorful knots on a string or plated silver adorned by a youth. Westerners arrived with their written word and obsession with precision, and they feared these people of the image. They prohibited their images and incarcerated their memory in languages that were never made for such a realm of mystery and imagination. They burned their pages and punished their dances, forcing upon them images of a glorified virgin mother and verbal submission to the invisible powers behind the rising sun. They took their culture captive and injected it full of that disease called Progress, then complained at the inconvenience that its limp body lying on the floor caused for their efficient gluttony. But they did not eliminate the image, and dance has not been stilled. The poison of that western hatred mutated these forms of expression, these once-glorious ways of being, into a murderous fiction. I walk through the streets or glance at a television through a window, and see this land’s fictitious identity lying through its teeth to a captive audience. “We are white, we have blonde hair and straight teeth,” she says. “We have sculpted bodies and smile as we bow to the gods of consumerism,” he chuckles. I have seen in my own country the damage that idealized figures in advertising and pop culture have caused to a world craving a God to worship, but what amazes me even more here in Latin America is that these images are borrowed not only from an invented reality, but from an invented reality of another world. In the same way that indigenous spirituality was slowly strangled by the cult of Christianity, the Latin American image of self is held hostage by a European ideal. They are exhausted from trying to find God in the gold-plated cathedrals where the plaster eyes of a dead virgin and the soft hands of a plump bishop seem only to laugh at their pain, those houses built in God’s name with bricks borrowed from the devil. Since they do not find God here, they turn to these lying images, these blonde beauties who assure them that they will never be allowed the luxury of beauty. Their sleek dark hair and softly rounded noses deem them uncivilized; they enslave themselves to the images and the lords of consumerism who mockingly offer indulgences. “Perhaps,” they tell them, “if you buy into these things, and if you can lose who you really are in a cup of pisco, then perhaps you will become who I want you to be.” Speak English, mimic a world apart. The evil spirit that inhabited the invading Europeans thought it expelled the image, but it merely turned it into a lie.

...feel free to not read this one

A long pause, now a deep sigh, and the symphony starts again.

My parents came to visit last week, breaking a long record of not leaving North America. Can I write that again? My parents flew to Chile to visit me for a week. That´s pretty sweet. It was a week of chaotic togetherness, fueled by an inhuman amount of desserts and miles of steps across the sidewalks of Viña and Valparaiso. We saw sights, tasted foods, met friends, bickered, changed plans, changed them again, and took a crap ton of pictures. In this moment I can´t conjure up any sort of list of what we did, those memories have already taken their place as a permenant warm-fuzzy for me to retreat to when words fall short and reality is a cold concrete bench. In fact, I am a bit brain dead right now, so I´m not sure why I thought it would be a good idea to write a blog. I just took a major exam and, now that it´s finished, need to start studying for the next major exam I have... which is tomorrow at 11:45. I´m consumed with school right now, which is a nasty feeling. But it´s a different kind of consumption, I´m remaining calm, feelin´groovy. I have too many things to be thankful for to let any peas in the mattress ruin my party. I happen to be part of the best family there is -- not just my birth family, my host family, or all the other families here and in the States who have adopted me -- God´s family. I´m typing-then-erasing here trying to make this not sound like the same cheezy sermon, but words really just haven´t been my forte here lately. But you get the idea.

On a compltely unrelated note, I have developed a bunch of gardening ambitions while I´m here that I hope will be actualized when I get back in the states. I´m really excited to grow things like Broccoli and Tomatoes and Squash and Tulips. I also think it would be cool to have chickens someday so I can have fresh eggs. I don´t think my apartment complex would allow that.

On the exciting tendency to Change

This past weekend marked the halfway point for my time in Chile, and I find myself eagerly facing the second half as a newly turned page. The first three months were about -- among other things -- learning who I am through experimenting with who I could be. We hitch hiked, we made friends with strangers at hostels, we went to bars and discoteques. I learned how to dress myself up to go out on the weekends, and then how to enjoy a friday night spent in pajamas with a good movie. Within and around all of these little things I learned grew the theme of faith -- a faith that I have spent years talking about but am only just now learning how to live. We were able to try on so many different things that we could be, and now we're taking the wisdom we gained there and stepping into life as who we are with a new confidence and passion.

In many ways the first half was a selfish time, about figuring things out for ourselves, learning, living off of mercy and grace, boldly making mistakes in order to boldly make good decisions. As we traveled through Chile in February and then later as we navegated the social playing field in search of new friends, our needs and our growth were the centerpieces. And it was beautiful. I saw God in so many ways that I would have never thought possible; He is in me no matter what I do, and those moments of true vision or true happiness are God personified. My prayers changed, and often stopped involving words. The faith that I put in Him wasn't a blind faith in a false happy ending, but rather a faith that this greater entity who creates, unites, and distinguishes us all is that which we call Love.
I finally got to stretch my limbs, which had been twitching, cramped up in a plastic tub, starving for adventure to run through their veins. I got to see how my ideals shape up in reality, and to love them for what they are because -- not in spite -- of how they differ from what I could have imagined. Plans fall through, choices turn out to be bad, judgements come back to bite you, but at the end of the day there was always that hot cup of coffee.
Not only coffee, but my best friend. She was always there, never more than a kilometer away from me, sensitive to my heartaches and soulaches (for both heart and soul can ache for pain and for joy). I can't wrap my mind around the fact that not everyone in the world has a best friend in the way that I have Molly. This trip would have been something entirely different had I been without her, and not a day goes by that I don't give thanks for her being here not only in the sense of her physical presence in the same country, but in her being there for me.


And now, the new page.

The second half started all-too appropriately with our new friends, Francisco and Karenth. Perhaps the meaning of truly knowing a country is knowing friends there. And not only these friends, with whom we cook, camp, party, and explore, but a new group of friends who we got to know for the first time over plastic cups of soup on a chilly night. They are the friends whose mattresses are cardboard boxes and whose roof is the starry sky. Monday night we went on our first outing with Hogar de Cristo's nocturnal route, giving out food and sharing in conversation with people living on the streets of Vina del Mar, a city known for its high-rise resort-style apartment buildings and clean, well groomed streets. We don't go because of any kind of necessity, as the meals could certainly be handed out without the help of clumsy gringas, but rather we go to know and to be known. To hear stories. To see life with the lenses off. A man by the name of Ulysses at our first stop told me about his wife leaving him because of the alcohol, but that all he wants from life is to be able to see his great-grandchildren, and that some nugget of wisdom he learned from life will be passed down through his bloodline. He invited me to meet his friends in their home, a mildewey mattress tucked in an alley.
"Here, we're all family" he tells me, "whatever we have we share, even if it means we all only get a little. And we take care of each other. People need that. We're never alone, you know?"

We converse with people living under tarps, people with shopping carts, people in wheel chairs, people who were drunk, people who were in their 30s, people who worked, people who begged, as diverse as the grains of sand in the ocean. The girl who was with us, who has done this route for several years now, was explaining to us their situations.
"Most of them have problems with alcohol. Most of them will never make it off the streets; they will die there. But you don't judge them for that. They've chosen this life, we just do what we can to help them and to make sure they're loved." Nobody has been mistaken enough not to deserve being loved.

I've also started getting to know Ivan, the man who lives on the corner by my house. For two months I passed him every day, wondering at the contents of his shopping cart and avoiding his glance, trying not to see what his face revealed -- that he is a normal person, and no more than 35 years old. But then this new paged was turned, and God told me that it was time to start looking outwards, and I saw him for the first time. I looked him in the face. At first I couldn't bring myself to stop and help him when he was sick on the sidewalk one morning, I was afraid of being that which I know I am made to be, but now that's changing. Yesterday he told me his parents and his wife are all dead and in Heaven, and that he doesn't know why God left him here by himself. But he just loves every day and someday he'll be up there with them. We talked about Jesus, and how he was all about loving people. Ivan knows all about people being afraid to love. They walk by him by the hundreds, day by day, just like I did, looking away. But that doesn't stop him. He's there on that corner every day, without fail, waving at cars as they pass by, singing down the middle of the road when the weather's nice, or even if it's not. He knows a lot about love, and I have a lot to learn from him.


I imagine that now, after 3 months, I've lost several readers. I can't expect my adventures to keep being as exciting to the stationary reader as they are to me. So, I salute you, brave reader, for sticking through to the end -- er, middle. I'd love a comment to know you're sticking with me. But you already knew that.