(no subject)
I realize it's been a while since I've been active on livejournal. I think mostly because I've been spending more time on my writing blog and my work blog that I created for the students.
But I guess I wanted to do a "signs of life' update.
Things are good right now. My job is coming to an end, so it finally feels fun. I think I'm becoming a better teacher and a better person.
Here's some writing I did a little while ago:
Chile
These are the things I remember. A reconciliation with Alma in her middle-class apartment. She offered me tea, Lipton’s, as usual. I drank while my palms sweated. At the end she said, “Forgive us” in Spanish, and I think I did. I let it go, let her go.
She told me that when we left, the gringas, my friends and I, we would be moving on. To wide, open pastures. The hearts we broke, the men we left in this Chilean city, were bound to different destinies. They would stay in one place because money and visas exist in separate realms there. She was right, of course. I don’t like to think about how privileged I am, how freely I can move from place to place. It provokes a dissonance so intense that for a few moments I feel I should stay where I am, and stop my prideful migrations.
Life with Alma had been difficult. It had finally ended a few months ago, when I left for Arica and a new life. Later, back in Valparaiso, I stayed with another family. Still, when I picked up my stuff from her house, I felt compelled to take tea and converse awkwardly. It was sort of the least I could do considering I’d eaten her meals for months.
It’s funny that there are so many things Alma understood about me and so many things she could never know. She got me; she could read my moods. But she didn’t know that in fact a gringa had broken my heart. That we slept under the stars together with two different men in a kind of friendly love quadrangle. It was all very strange and very gay. Two things that made Alma uncomfortable. While my gringa and I chased after two waiters, I think we were really chasing after each other. The mattresses we set up in the desert to share with the guys were at a comfortable distance. But she could still hear me laugh in the morning. And she told her friend that she liked to hear that. My laugh.
Alma didn’t know that in Buenos Aires I had a seedy love affair with a porteño. I had gotten over the girl a little bit, even though I never know if I’ve really gotten over anyone. He played a trick on me. He pretended he was falling in love so that I’d check into a hotel with him. My heedless 21-year old self spent two hours with an almost total stranger in a motel room and returned home starry-eyed. The next day it was all “Anne who?” I avoided him on the street and told him the vegetables he sold were of bad quality, which was true. They were. When I came home from Chile people asked me how the trip was. I had lived so much there, four months felt like five years. For a while I couldn’t think straight in English. Spanish constructions flooded my thoughts and conversations were stilted. Or at least they lacked their normal flow.
In Alma’s apartment, it was almost Christmas. She showed me a talking tree that sang carols. I vaguely remembered my first few days there, meeting her and her husband. I burned the eggs I made for once and while we were cleaning up talked to her about the cuicas, or snobs, from Viña. Money doesn’t make the person, she said, but it can sure help.
But I guess I wanted to do a "signs of life' update.
Things are good right now. My job is coming to an end, so it finally feels fun. I think I'm becoming a better teacher and a better person.
Here's some writing I did a little while ago:
Chile
These are the things I remember. A reconciliation with Alma in her middle-class apartment. She offered me tea, Lipton’s, as usual. I drank while my palms sweated. At the end she said, “Forgive us” in Spanish, and I think I did. I let it go, let her go.
She told me that when we left, the gringas, my friends and I, we would be moving on. To wide, open pastures. The hearts we broke, the men we left in this Chilean city, were bound to different destinies. They would stay in one place because money and visas exist in separate realms there. She was right, of course. I don’t like to think about how privileged I am, how freely I can move from place to place. It provokes a dissonance so intense that for a few moments I feel I should stay where I am, and stop my prideful migrations.
Life with Alma had been difficult. It had finally ended a few months ago, when I left for Arica and a new life. Later, back in Valparaiso, I stayed with another family. Still, when I picked up my stuff from her house, I felt compelled to take tea and converse awkwardly. It was sort of the least I could do considering I’d eaten her meals for months.
It’s funny that there are so many things Alma understood about me and so many things she could never know. She got me; she could read my moods. But she didn’t know that in fact a gringa had broken my heart. That we slept under the stars together with two different men in a kind of friendly love quadrangle. It was all very strange and very gay. Two things that made Alma uncomfortable. While my gringa and I chased after two waiters, I think we were really chasing after each other. The mattresses we set up in the desert to share with the guys were at a comfortable distance. But she could still hear me laugh in the morning. And she told her friend that she liked to hear that. My laugh.
Alma didn’t know that in Buenos Aires I had a seedy love affair with a porteño. I had gotten over the girl a little bit, even though I never know if I’ve really gotten over anyone. He played a trick on me. He pretended he was falling in love so that I’d check into a hotel with him. My heedless 21-year old self spent two hours with an almost total stranger in a motel room and returned home starry-eyed. The next day it was all “Anne who?” I avoided him on the street and told him the vegetables he sold were of bad quality, which was true. They were. When I came home from Chile people asked me how the trip was. I had lived so much there, four months felt like five years. For a while I couldn’t think straight in English. Spanish constructions flooded my thoughts and conversations were stilted. Or at least they lacked their normal flow.
In Alma’s apartment, it was almost Christmas. She showed me a talking tree that sang carols. I vaguely remembered my first few days there, meeting her and her husband. I burned the eggs I made for once and while we were cleaning up talked to her about the cuicas, or snobs, from Viña. Money doesn’t make the person, she said, but it can sure help.