Hey friends, it’s been quite a while.
My parents were down here in Chile with us for the last 5 weeks or so, and though much has transpired, I just have not found the time to hammer out any updates. Turns out, when you are in your 40’s, cohabitating with your folks in any iteration can be…interesting. This is not, however, a forum to unpack all of that, and in the end the good times overwhelmingly outweighed the tedious.
We sadly have only 4 months left in Chile, and all of us are pretty bummed about it, each coming to terms with the reality at our own pace. It’s amazing how quickly the time has gone by, especially when one considers that the first 3-4 months we were really just learning the ropes. I think that is the part that stings the most: we have finally broken the code of how to live comfortably and harmoniously here, only to have to pull up the tent stakes and clamor back to the chaotic energy and frenetic pace of the USA…during the tail-end of an election cycle, no less.
When we showed up here in late July last year, my kids were capable of saying a handful of useful phrases in Spanish, as well as (between the two of them) counting to 20. Now, as I sit by my bedroom window typing this, I can hear both of the kids excitedly chatting away in perfect Spanish with the neighbor girls as they play in the street. Even if nothing else significantly important happens on this year-long journey, I would consider this acquisition of a second language a mission accomplished beyond even our wildest expectations. But SO much more has happened, and along the way we, as a family, have fallen completely in love with life in Chile, and we find ourselves excitedly planning a more long-term return in the future.
One aspect of our lives that is incredibly different this year is that K and I are CONSTANTLY with the kids, all day long, every damn day. Of course, on the one hand, this has done wonders for us as a family unit, and I can say that without a doubt we are closer on the whole than ever before, but on the other hand…kids are hard, and sometimes you need a break. With the arrival, independently of each other, of my parents, we took advantage of having some “babysitters” at our disposal, and took a three day trip out to the Valparaiso/Viña Del Mar region. Though these essentially twin cities are only about 25 miles away from us as the crow flies, the route between us is circuitous enough to require a 90 minute bus trip. Renowned for it’s night life and incredible street art, these cities on the hill(s) draw much comparison to San Francisco, particularly from sailors who had sailed port-to-port in the early part of the 20th century. This is also the region that was recently hit with a spate of devastating wildfires that killed several dozens and displaced thousands.
Apart from just having some alone time without the kids, the purpose of our excursion was to see a Manu Chao acoustic concert on the grounds of the former prison, which is now a cultural center. I was lucky enough to catch Manu in Denver back in 2006 when he toured with the full Radio Bemba Sound System, but as an avid fan since the beginnings of his career as a soloist post-Mano Negra, I was over the moon to get to catch a rare appearance from the guy. In addition to almost never touring anymore, I am pretty sure he has boycotted coming to the US for personal/political reasons for several years now. Perhaps to underscore this, the concert was kicked off with speeches from local human rights organizations that were championing the cause of Palestinian liberation, an issue which has overwhelming support here in Chile, a country with the largest Palestinian population outside of the Levant.
The show was, of course, incredible…though through some stroke of bad luck, K and I found ourselves somehow sandwiched between the only groups of people who did not want to dance that I have seen at ANY concert here in Chile. You know the type: they dejectedly stand there with their arms crossed as though unimpressed, casting annoyed glances at you when you “accidentally” bump into them while dancing (which “accidentally” happened more and more as the show progressed…), filming entire songs on their phones and immediately uploading them to social media, etc etc. We made the most of it, and had a good chuckle trying to be as intrusive to their personal space as the situation allowed, the notion of which, in the front rows of a concert, is ludicrous anyways. If you have ever seen or heard a live Manu Chao performance, you know that there tends to be a musical leitmotif that he and the band return to (think, for example, the similarity of the songs “Bongo Bong”, “Mr. Bobby”, and “Homens”), which can cause the show, for some, to seem redundant and repetitive. The boring people’s visible annoyance at this, as we jumped and yelled along to the chant the group kept returning to, just made everything even more enjoyable for those of us who don’t suck at life. And of course, what would a concert in Chile be without some ironic coincidence? My buddy “Rata” from Anarkia Tropical ended up being the DJ for the whole mini-tour, and it was great to be graced with yet another amazing selection of tunes from him.
In the few short months between deciding we were moving to Chile and actually getting here, I tried to go to as many live shows in the US, assuming I would have very little opportunity to go to any while here. Ironically, all of the bands I have been DYING to see, but that never come to the US, have been drifting through my transom down here. Obviously, my two-nights of photo access for Bad Religion was well documented, but in addition I have had Chilean cumbia legends Chico Trujillo play down the street from our house, saw Son Rompe Pera TWICE, including once with Macha y El Bloque Depresivo, Manu Chao is in the books, Voodoo Glow Skulls are on their way in June, and the absolute icing on the cake: seeing my favorite LatAm band in history, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, coming up in mid-April. After I “discovered” them in Chile back in 1997 when I was 16, my uncle took me to see them, as they happened to be in town, but I knew almost none of their catalogue and the sold-out crowd was beyond overwhelming to me at the time. I will have more to say about this incredible group after the show, which is coming up on April 12th.
*note: books were read in English, but I like to share the original covers
“Anxiety creeps up my neck like a cold, crinkly black insect with a stinger. Do you know the creature I’m talking about? It’s hard to explain the feeling when it nests on your back. It’s like dying but you’re still alive. Like trying to breathe underwater. Like being cursed.”
— María Fernandez Ampuero - “Human Sacrifices”
I’m not gonna lie, I have been in a bit of a book rut recently. That is not to say that I have been neglecting reading, I just happened to go through a slump of picking books that I really did not enjoy. I always promise myself that if it doesn’t grab me by page 20 I will just walk away, but there sure are a lot of books that start out great, only to let you down well beyond the crucial cutoff mark.
This was not one of those books, as a matter of fact this one had a pretty tight clasp on my jugular the entire way through, as did Ampuero’s other story collection “Cockfight”, which I immediately tore through after this one. Ever since reading Mariana Enriquez’s short fiction I have been waiting to find another LatAm author with the same bite, and these stories definitely scratched that itch. Macabre and terrifying, without a monster in sight, only the evil that men do, which has been a constant thread throughout all of the LatAm women authors and their works I have read this year. I struggle with maintaining interest in short story collections, but these were all so poignant and visceral that I didn’t want to put them down, with enough thematic cohesion to keep me from being bored (or loving SOME stories but hating others, as is usually the case).
“Over the weekend the vultures got into the presidential palace by pecking through the screens on the balcony windows and the flapping of their wings stirred up the stagnant time inside, and at dawn on Monday the city awoke out of its lethargy of centuries with the warm, soft breeze of a great man dead and rotting grandeur.”
— Gabriel García Márquez - “The Autumn of the Patriarch”
Thus begins the most tedious goddamned book I have ever read in my entire life. Notice the lack of commas in the above paragraph? Be thankful there was at least two commas, most pages didn’t even give you THAT. Total stream-of-consciousness for 300 pages, with sentences that quite literally went on for 4 or 5 pages at a time, eschewing commas or punctuation (of which I am a bit TOO big a fan, some say…), and MOST frustratingly, switching narrators 2 or 3 times within said paragraph. At no point in this mess of a novel do you, the reader, ever find out who is telling the damn story, because the perspective changes on a whim.
The good news here is that it is Márquez, an author who has remained in my “Top 5” of all time ever since I read 100 Years of Solitude back in high school. I always intended to read this one, but a quick flip through my physical copy, with nary a paragraph break in sight, always convinced me to save it for a rainy day. It is, however, my father’s favorite Márquez novel, and being that my dad was coming down for a visit, I figured I would tackle it, hoping the digital edition would be more forgiving.
Look, it’s a great story: an unnamed dictator of an unnamed nation has skated through life by surrounding himself with only those who wish to kiss his ass and obfuscate the reality of his kingdom’s sorry state, as well as his people’s complete disgust with every fiber of his being. As the generations pass, the dictator lives on, and he becomes an almost mythological figure in the minds of the populace, many even doubting his very existence. Like any Márquez novel (you know: hammock siestas, oppressive heat, mistresses….bananas…) there are some lines of absolute genius, like “One learns too late that even the broadest and most useful of lives only reach the point of learning how to live…” (WOW!), you just have to stay attentive long enough to find them. You know that thing you do when reading before bed, where you say “I’m gonna just finish this chapter…” before dozing off? I literally tried to do that one night and, after 4 more pages, had to give up in the middle of a goddamn sentence. You’ve been warned.
Márquez DOES have a “new”, posthumous tome out this month, “Until August”, which was published against his dying wishes after receiving the green light from his sons. In his final years, Gabo was suffering from Alzheimers, and, according to his sons, he would sometimes read his own work, only to see his picture on the back of the book and realize that he was the author, only to start the novel again. His sons stated that they felt this last manuscript constituted a complete work, and no parts have been edited from the author’s latest remaining edit. I guess I have mixed feelings about this, but truthfully, I am excited to have one last story to read from the late master. I am of the generation that watched another hero of mine’s private journals be published after his suicide, and this does not strike me as anywhere near that level of inappropriate.
“The owner of the bar, an old guerrilla fighter called Pedro Alfonso, had lost his right leg when a landmine exploded. This had not robbed him of his love of dancing. To see him dance, you would never have guessed he wore a prosthesis. He came over when he heard the two friends laughing, tracing out some ornate rumba steps on the beaten-earth floor: “God invented music so poor people could be happy.”
— José Eduardo Agualusa - “A General Theory of Oblivion”
This book broke a streak for me that I have to say I am pretty proud of: I came to Chile at the end of July, and since then had read 58 books in a row by LatAm authors, this one by an Angolan was number 59.
I don’t quite recall how or why this book drifted through my transom, but I’m sure it had to do with the fact that the number of LatAm books my Denver/Pikes Peak library account has access to has been drastically depleted. This is not a bad thing, I am stoked to have gotten so much reading done in these past few months, and it is pushing me to explore reading in Spanish, chipping away at the minor mountain of books I have purchased down here. The other fortunate side-effect is that I am branching out to explore world lit from other corners of the world, something I have been neglecting, in order to maintain the illusion that I will just stay in Chile for the rest of my life.
In any case, this book really blew me away, and the premise was right up my alley: a Portuguese woman living in Angola is caught off guard by the impending civil war in the 1970’s. Finding herself alone in a lavish apartment she had shared with her sister and her husband, she builds a cement wall outside the front door, effectively cutting herself off from the outside world for the next 28 years, and surviving only on what she has available or can trap. As chaos reigns around her, she documents her life in a series of journals, later taking to writing on the walls with charcoal.
The center of the narrative focuses on this woman (allegedly an actual person, though I cannot independently corroborate the veracity of this statement), while the remainder, and really MOST of the book’s meat and potatoes, revolves around the lives of those who exist outside of this walled off safe haven. In ways at once tragic, bizarre, and inevitable, their deeds are shown to connect them in ways that they remain oblivious to, converging on a central climactic point. I enjoyed reading this one so much that I moved right into another of Agualusa’s novels, “The Society of Reluctant Dreamers”. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but I’ll be damned if this guy doesn’t at least have great titles.
I’ll try to not be a stranger and be back next week. Much love, as always, from the Southern Cone.