Ousia

[No apologies for not posting in months]

Poor Man´s Style

I wanted to write a little bit about how people I know in Chile don´t allow things to go to waste. DIY has been picked up by middle class white people as a trend but it´s something that poor, resourceful, creative people of color have been doing for a long time. Here in Valparaíso, before the garbage workers come to pick up the bags that appear on the corners, the dogs rip them open and eat all of the food and people diligently sift through them to find things of value. After the market, when bruised or somewhat damaged produce is left behind on the street, people collect it, cut away the problematic parts, and use it. I have cooked and eaten many delicious recycled meals.

Although daily consumptions generates way too much paper and plastic (receipts for everything, including riding the bus or buying an egg), thrifty people (and people who can´t stand to see a ton of plastic being sent to landfills) collect plastic bags and bottles and make “bricks” out of them, like this. As is mentioned in the video, you can construct houses out of recycled things such as these, and out of all sorts of other re-purposed, found material.

My host family lives in one of the most privileged and beautified cerros in Valparaíso where it is common to hear more English and German than Spanish at certain times of day. Tourists come here to soak up the big colorful houses and eclectic street art, quirky alleyways and craft boutiques. This area has suffered from gentrification. After the city was named a World Heritage Site in 2003, a multimillion dollar beautification campaign was started to sweep away the “tragic elements” and less-salubrious parts of El Puerto. Unfortunately, this process drove up property values and many of the beautiful houses that are in Cerros Alegre and Concepción are not actually homes, but vacation spaces for wealthy people from the capital or museums, or completely abandoned, their previous inhabitants having been displaced. This reality is stark in light of the poverty in other parts of the city and the many people without real homes.

When a building is abandoned, people occupy it. There are whole squat neighborhoods. People learn how to access water and electricity and create homes out of stuff that they find. I spend much of my time at a house that used to be a squat. The current inhabitants are refurbishing it using mostly materials that we find and reappropriate. We salvaged four huge pieces of wood from an abandoned lot the other day (it was worth the splinters) and carried them on our backs down one hill and up another for the house. We´ve found cement, lots of wood, funiture, food, tools, paint. Re-appropriation of trash is celebrated and practiced by many, as it should be. I find that people here in general know how to work the things that they use much better, because often they have built them, or fixed them themselves. Creativity and ingenuity abound where resources lack and the result is beautiful patchwork things and homes, warmed by the fire of the people inside of them. These are the spaces that should be celebrated in Valparaíso instead of the clean streets, non-political art and safe, empty houses, but it´s just as well that the tourists don´t discover them.

😉

OUR BODIES ARE BATTLE GROUNDS

A few weeks ago I went to a Subversive Gynecology Conference at one of the Universities in Valpo. It was incredible. I went alone, without really knowing anybody who was going to be there (facebook told me about the event). We were about 60 or 70 total and we created a big circle made of women bodies (and a couple of little kids). For two days we talked together, in a loosely structured way about the female body, about women sexuality, menstruation, abortion, birth, body politics and the importance of self-knowledge.
Some of the ideas that I most loved that came out of passionate and personal conversations that we had:

We are all creators.
I am you. We are the same. If I love myself, I love other women as well.
Love fuels revolution.

I left feeling really lovely and connected to every single one of the gorgeous women that I met there.

MUSIC AND NONVERBAL LANGUAGE

Also, about a month ago, I was playing violin up on the roof patio when somebody said “vecino, o vecina de violin?” (violin neighbor?) and a head appeared above the wall that connects our house to the neighbor´s patio. He said he´d been looking all over for a violinist and invited me over to jam a little with him and the other neighbor. They then asked me to play in their band (la banda de los amigos) and since then we´ve been playing together regularly in bars and restaurants near our house(s).

Here´s a video of another one of the neighbors´ bands, The Pilsen. I played a show with them the other day. Here we are. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-kSQawhdg0

It´s pretty great to have music friends in my life, and I am reminded how important the ability to play fiddle is for me. I recently learned in my linguistics class that 70-90 % of all human communication is non-verbal. This makes sense, especially when thinking about the fact that I can articulately speak a phrase musically in a way that I sometimes can´t in Spanish.

Beyond music, I´ve also been noticing other ways in which I communicate nonverbally with people around me, whether it be by the way in which I walk on the street, different kinds of eye contact, laughter, touching, dancing, greeting, shifting, miming (I mime so much more without even noticing sometimes, to accompany or replace words). These movements and other ways of sending messages are what some call vibes or “ondas” and, if you pay attention to them, you can learn so much about your surroundings, what´s happening with a relationship, etc. Intuition is pretty nifty, and useful.

SEED POWER

Chile, along with many South American countries, is participating in the worldwide movement against Monsanto, the huge creater of GMOs that is taking over global agriculture. I went to a march against Monsanto and GMOs the other day here in Valparaiso, and to a seed sharing event in a park afterward. Even though I didn´t have any organic seeds to give away, a bunch of people gave me seeds (I filled my pockets with little pieces of paper wrapped around carrot, quinoa, green been, bell peppers, hot peppers, and sunflower seeds). A couple of days later I planted some of those magical little things in the Earth at my friend Moisés´house. He has a garden that we´ve been clearing out and organizing for a little while, and now it has real stuff happening inside of it. A pretty nice feeling thing to do, both for myself because it´s great to dig around in the dirt and nurture life but also in the political context…seed saving is very important especially in light of the corporate takeover of plant species, land, and farming practices. Simple and important.

Just over 5 months ago I left Madison and now am halfway through my time in Chile. I am still processing what that means. Simultaneously, I feel as though I have been here much longer, but that the time passed very quickly.

I’m going to start tutoring a 10 year old girl in English for 6 or 8 hours a week. I am both excited and a little nervous about this opportunity, nervous partly because my sessions with her will constitute a large part of her homeschooling.

I just moved from my Viña del Mar home to a new house and host family right in downtown Valparaíso, in one of the prettiest (and most touristy) hills, Cerro Alegre. The neighborhood is stacked with old, wooden houses painted many colors, decorated with vivid murals and full of cafes and restaurants. It’s quaint. I live with a yoga teacher, Catalina, and her 21 year old son Diego who studies medicine and plays in a punk band. The house is wooden and beautiful, above a pedestrian stairway tunnel called Pasaje Bavestrello. My room is right above the tunnel, which feels a little bit mystical; I can hear people talking below me, sometimes. The other night a cat yowled in the otherwise quiet street.

Here’s a picture of the house. Currently I’m in that special little box on the top, which will become my room when it’s warmer out, but right now it’s a quiet roosting place. Photo cred to the internet.

Here’s another picture from the internet of Pasaje Bavestrello.

A song about resistance and social change. The video’s good as well. Alerta Sometime music can give hope in a way nothing else can. It also makes me want to cry a little.

Here’s a another song: Cariñito Innumerable are the times I have danced to it.

A couple of nights ago I went out to celebrate the going-away of two friends I have come to know well here. We ended up at my friend’s house/punk palace/Casa Ugauga, where somebody projected short films on the wall and people ate good food and drank bad beer and we made a little fire outside and spent the entire night sitting and talking around it and then I slept in a single bed between two friends, Chris and Moisés, from 7-noon.

The other day I took a walk up the cerro and found a fenced-off area that was begging me to enter. There were big ole trees like you don’t see a lot of around here, and tall grass and some flowers and strange window-less ruined buildings made of stone crumbling into the dirt and seemingly random artifacts left around, like a tarp strapped to a tree, and an old rusty thing. I self-policed for a minute, saying things in my head like “I probably shouldn’t climb the fence” and “this is private property” and “people will judge me” and then I realized that all of those things were stupid and I climbed over the fence, only ripping my jeans a little bit.

Once inside, I was immediately so happy that I’d gone in, and I also found an easier hole in the fence for next time. Grassy spaces like this are few and far between in Valparaíso, a city where a bunch of concrete and some fucked up benches can be called a park. Selfishly, I was also happy to find a place where nobody else was likely to be, at least during the day. I took the old rusty thing home with me and no use it to put other things in. Today I went back to what I have now learned is called “Patiganja” and read and ate walnuts for about four hours in the grass and sun.

A week longer of schedule-less wandering, then classes start. The students are still striking, so this semester I will only have classes with extranjeros.

Over and Out for now.

Last month’s Critical Mass ride was Cerro Arriba (up in the hills!), and the most fun yet. That day I had already biked around for a couple of hours, and the ride was about 3 hours up and down in the cerros. We took breaks to wait for everybody to catch up, shared juice, yipped and yelled as we zoomed down the curves all together. Here’s the route that we took:

https://maps.google.cl/maps?saddr=Molina&daddr=Salvador+Donoso+to:Blanco,+Valpara%C3%ADso+to:Blanco+to:Altamirano+to:Subida+Leopoldo+Carvallo+to:Gran+Breta%C3%B1a+to:Gran+Breta%C3%B1a+to:Gran+Breta%C3%B1a+to:Camino+Cintura+to:Camino+Cintura+to:Camino+Cintura+to:Camino+Cintura+to:Camino+Cintura+to:Camino+Cintura+to:Mackay+to:Alemania+to:Baquedano,+Valpara%C3%ADso+to:Manuel+Verdugo+to:Col%C3%B3n+to:Argentina+to:Pedro+Montt&hl=es-419&ie=UTF8&ll=-33.041263,-71.611848&spn=0.020398,0.042272&sll=-33.041263,-71.620045&sspn=0.020398,0.058622&geocode=FfbBB_4dwSm7-w%3BFSPIB_4d3h27-w%3BFazUB_4dGRi7-ykfk1bYKeGJljEsV47n2Di2nQ%3BFRfvB_4d_QO7-w%3BFTQsCP4d1Nm6-w%3BFQgYCP4da9a6-w%3BFbANCP4dmui6-w%3BFaEACP4dj_O6-w%3BFRT7B_4du_S6-w%3BFRvxB_4diu26-w%3BFVXtB_4dq-a6-w%3BFf_XB_4dhOO6-w%3BFTbUB_4dZOa6-w%3BFeDHB_4dPvG6-w%3BFWG-B_4dOPS6-w%3BFXW_B_4dR_y6-w%3BFSGmB_4dfxK7-w%3BFdyqB_4dPi-7-yllIwoP3-CJljHl0jxiE0dY3g%3BFXKrB_4d9EW7-w%3BFTyrB_4dNHG7-w%3BFfO9B_4dbmm7-w%3BFYS_B_4dAi67-w&oq=pedro&mra=dme&mrsp=21&sz=15&t=m&z=15
¡Viva la Masa Crítica!

After all of my classes were canceled because of the student strike, I decided to go Buenos Aires, sort of on a whim, and because I found a very cheap plane ticket. It was my first trip entirely dependent upon CouchSurfing (for those who don’t know, it’s a global network of travelers and people who offer to host them in their homes for free- a great way to meet people and see their place through their eyes). I took only a backpack and spent most of the time I was there walking or biking around without many plans, trying to see, touch, taste what I could of the city.

It’s a beautiful place- the many parks and bike paths make the skyscrapers and traffic a little more tolerable, although there are some serious infrastructure problems (while I was there, a commuter train crashed and some people died). There is also an enormous inflation problem so everybody uses what’s called the blue market, buying dollars and euros because the Argentine peso is so devalued. I found the people to be friendly, interesting, and like the sort of people I’d like a lot more time to get to know. (Also, shhhhhhhhhhhh, but the food is WAY better than Chilean food). I’ll be back.

Here are some pictures:

^Delicious last meal before I hopped on the plane.

^From a bike ride I took through the nature reserve within the city.

lamps

^I liked those lamps.

^Some companions at the Museo de Bellas Artes

I meant to post this almost a month ago. Here it is, now.

Tuesday the 21st was a national holiday commemorating the Battle of Iquique. Every year in Valparaíso the president gives a speech and the naval forces march around and people come from far and wide to watch and to protest the State. This year is an election year and the popular social organizations are calling for radical change, including a new constitution, reproductive rights, free and quality education and an end to oppressive neoliberal policies. The Critical Mass folks took to the streets on bikes which allowed us to get from plaza to plaza faster and also to more quickly flee from the cops when they started chasing everybody down with water and tear gas (see video below). We ended the afternoon with a lovely vegetarian meal with squash-veggie soup, salad and lentil burgers and serious reflection accompanied by beer and friends.

Even if you don’t understand Spanish, this video has footage of some of the police brutality and demonstrations from the 21st ——> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VJcayaYTfY

One scene from that day that will stay with me was when I was standing with my bike watching, on one side of Plaza Victoria, a teenager getting violently torn from his family and arrested by police in riot gear who were unscrupulously blasting people with chemical-water and tear gas while, on the other side of the plaza, children were playing while their parents sat peacefully on benches. Jarring, how normalized state-sponsored violence is in this country.

In related news, there is a new law that makes it illegal to insult a police officer. FTP.

While trying to figure out what enthralls me about the messes that I see so often in this old, beautiful city, I’ve begun thinking about the restorative powers of decay.

Some say it’s a city built on trash. Although the disgusting levels of littering and general disregard for the environment is disturbing, there is something strangely aesthetically appealing about seeing stuff rot and decompose in urban spaces.

Part of what’s interesting is the juxtaposition of these beautiful spaces (old government buildings, long skinny stairs painted with poetry, curvy bridges, walls of mosaic, colorful houses) the beautiful scenery (the sea to the west, the overlapping hills, the lighted trees that line the streets) and the beautiful people that make up this city with an abundance of scum and squalor that just doesn’t exist in Madison.

I watched a lovely little girl play on a bench surrounded by broken glass as half-drunk inhabitants of the underworld stumbled into Sunday and flea-ridden dogs barked at nothing and leftover food rotted on the ground. Her mother sat next to her and smiled, a woman sold flowers, people in jumpsuits swept away food wrappers and bottles and the salty waves washed away regrets from the night before that lingered on the faces of disheveled young people with blurry eyes and messy hair. I saw an old man fall asleep at the bar with a drink in his hand just after sunset. His glass fell and shattered and the bartender just swept it away as he poured himself another and proceeded to fall asleep again as a table of drunk men chanted singingly at his expense and another looked on with tender eyes and thin lips.

People carry their music in their hands and it comes pit-pattering out in parks, restaurants, the streets. Anyone can become a percussionist at the moment when they start hitting their thighs in the circle jam that is born at some twilight hour in the plaza. Anyone can dance cueca twirling a napkin for a scarf with some fire in their eyes, and a rhythm can make any place a home. Salty autumn wind and endless patchwork nights and the friendliness of the piss-covered streets strewn with discarded avocados and kiwis are turning me nocturnal. Sordidness and beauty bleed together as I increasingly choose the messy paths and notice things growing in garbage corners accidentally converted to fertile soil.

Here’s a morsel of something. It’s the current soundtrack to this day’s questioning about what I’m doing here, etc. Sometimes being an interloper feels hollow. Music makes it better.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWCD9EtKPAY

I spent Sunday drinking mate, shelling beans, being quiet and writing. Last week was full, especially the nights, passed in many cobblestone and well-worn spaces.

I went to Santiago on a bus by myself, followed wheat-pasted signs on the walls which lead me to an Anarchist book fair where I spent the day meeting people and discussing the education system, the Chilean student movement, queer visions of anarchy and Mapuche political prisoners on hunger strike against discriminatory dictatorship-era laws (like the so-called “antiterrorist law” which unfairly deals significantly greater sentences to Mapuche people for being “terrorists” for crimes like arson, or alleged arson). I ate free vegan food and spent all of my spare change on interesting propaganda and literature and art and took the bus home at night to celebrate my friend Alejandra’s 22nd.

On Saturday I participated in a Critical Mass. (For those who don’t know, Critical Masses are big group bike rides practiced all over the world). This ride was in opposition to the Hinzpeter Bill which, if passed, will effectively prohibit all forms of protest or demonstration, including blocking traffic and covering your face. Most of us in the ride covered our faces as we took the streets of Valpo and Viña, including my favorite participant; a 12 year old who came on his own and lead chants about the fascist state and the fucking pigs and cordially waved goodbye to everybody at the end as he biked off alone. I will be getting my own bike soon and begin a whole new relationship with these streets.

Despite everything that is filling my life here, my thoughts are often with my friends back home; all of the gorgeous young people about to graduate from Beloit and take strides along their paths, my little sister Maya who’s the coolest 13 year old I know, and everyone else in my life that I am so proud of.

I take myself on dates. Movies, walks, to read at the beach. Often I run into people I know, which is sort of astounding to me given I’ve only been here for two months. I think I’m dating this city.

I’ve been paying special attention to the moon. Tomorrow it will be full. It is becoming fall; the ocean wind is chilling even in the day and I crunch the big brown leaves that fill my neighborhood sidewalks when I walk home. The nights here are textured and filled with new people, smells, music. Valparaíso in the dark is a twinkling labyrinth of colorful alleyways and mystical hills. The longer I am here I am able to see more and more of its layers and textures.