It's a dead heart in the middle of the city. It's dead because if you were to cut it nothing would bleed from it. The gash would just sit gaping open like the mouth of a fish after suffocation. It's cold despite its earthly red color which would otherwise connote heat. The dichotomy doesn't work. The color would make you believe it should still beat, it should still feed the city with warm life. But it doesn't. It sits lifeless save that warm color of blood that covers the walls. The blood scabbed over long ago, to the point that now the Cathedral of San Francisco has begun peeling. Flakes of scab exfoliate off the walls revealing fresh pink flesh underneath. The wine colored paint chips are crushed into the sidewalk by passersby. The chips mix with dog feces and cigarette butts. They are the sands at the base of the temple, the sign of age and deterioration. Perhaps that's where the cold lifelessness comes from, from the fact that it is in the process of death, or ruin, or of being forgotten.
The city of Salta ignores its heart save a few religious nuts that still go in to pray. They're nuts because only madness would lead you to want to enter that sanguine structure. It's a house of God that has graffiti on the walls and smells of urine. It's piety is issued, not felt. Even the convent attached to it, tumor like, seems atheistic. I have not seen the nuns inside that are rumored to live there. Nor have I heard their prayers. Has God?
The pedestrians that walk by seem to have already forgotten it as the life organ of the city. There is little reminder of the heavenly, just pollution choked streets that extend from the crimson mass like black arteries. Its superior vena cava is a byway. The left subclavian is a mess of motorcycles and vintage Mercedes. It's a circulatory system filled with swarming flies and exhaust, extending to the ends of the city where finally the veins can release the chaos and breath.
* * * * * * *
I like the Cathedral of San Francisco. Sure it doesn't sound like it, what with all the death and filth metaphors. But I like it like I love Picasso's Guernica, which is about the massacre of innocent townspeople in the Basque Country. I stood and stared at that painting for half an hour, not able to take my eyes of it. I did the same with the Cathedral of San Francisco in Salta, Argentina. There is emotion in it. Emotion that does not have to come from optimism or from the conventions of what you are supposed to like. You're not supposed to like dead hearts...but you do like the color crimson, you like ruins, you like antique like deterioration. I like the idea of a cold religious temple. There is something telling in the idea, something darkly playful.
I suggest a visit to the cathedral if you get a chance. How would you describe it?
Friday, May 28, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Weak Cochamo Post
Since it seems that my Cochamo writing may be lost forever in writer's block, I opted for the easiest way out: a photo essay that's not even grammar or spell checked. Hooray! All this happened about 4 months ago now, but I thought I'd share it anyway.
This is a rest for those of you who don't like to read that artsy fartsy stuff. Just click the link below to see some nice photos and read some very bad writing.
Cochamo Post
This is a rest for those of you who don't like to read that artsy fartsy stuff. Just click the link below to see some nice photos and read some very bad writing.
Cochamo Post
Saturday, May 8, 2010
The Treehouse
She told me that she always wanted to live in a treehouse. So did I. So I took my paints and went to work creating a painting of a giant oak tree on a hill. I painted the branches reaching out into the cool air. I painted the leaves with colors of autumn. And cradled in the nook of the outstretched branches I painted a treehouse. Below the oak with the treehouse I painted text. It said,
"This is the treehouse I built for you. It's in a tree in the countryside of Spain, or in the South of France, or overlooking rice patties in China. This is where we'll live together with the freedom of childhood, where we'll walk barefoot across its creaking floorboards and drink tea next to the woodstove. This is where we'll cook delicious food that we'll eat in bed and where we'll read aloud to each other by candlelight. It's where we'll hang this painting on the wall along with pictures from our travels together.
This is the treehouse I built for you. This is where we'll spend hours talking honestly under blankets, laughing at a time when life seemed difficult. This is where we'll make love, where I'll learn something new about you every day and every time that happens I'll be fascinated. It's where I won't be afraid to look deeply into your eyes, where I'll give you kisses for no reason other than I wanted to. It's where I'll write and paint and wait for you every afternoon to come back from your walks. And every time I see you enter I'll think, 'Beautiful'.
This is the treehouse I built for you. It's in the mountains of Colorado, or the foothills of Patagonia, where the only sounds are that of the brook in the distance, the finches playing on the terrace, the wind caressing the leaves. It's where our son will take his first steps, on a floor suspended above the earth. It's where we'll go to celebrate and to greive, where we'll know real happiness together.
This is the treehouse I built for you, where I wait for you now, watching the sunset in the distance."
The painting was honest. The text, even more so. But I wasn't satisfied after I painted it because what I really wanted to create wasn't the painting at all. What I wanted to create was the treehouse itself.
"This is the treehouse I built for you. It's in a tree in the countryside of Spain, or in the South of France, or overlooking rice patties in China. This is where we'll live together with the freedom of childhood, where we'll walk barefoot across its creaking floorboards and drink tea next to the woodstove. This is where we'll cook delicious food that we'll eat in bed and where we'll read aloud to each other by candlelight. It's where we'll hang this painting on the wall along with pictures from our travels together.
This is the treehouse I built for you. This is where we'll spend hours talking honestly under blankets, laughing at a time when life seemed difficult. This is where we'll make love, where I'll learn something new about you every day and every time that happens I'll be fascinated. It's where I won't be afraid to look deeply into your eyes, where I'll give you kisses for no reason other than I wanted to. It's where I'll write and paint and wait for you every afternoon to come back from your walks. And every time I see you enter I'll think, 'Beautiful'.
This is the treehouse I built for you. It's in the mountains of Colorado, or the foothills of Patagonia, where the only sounds are that of the brook in the distance, the finches playing on the terrace, the wind caressing the leaves. It's where our son will take his first steps, on a floor suspended above the earth. It's where we'll go to celebrate and to greive, where we'll know real happiness together.
This is the treehouse I built for you, where I wait for you now, watching the sunset in the distance."
The painting was honest. The text, even more so. But I wasn't satisfied after I painted it because what I really wanted to create wasn't the painting at all. What I wanted to create was the treehouse itself.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Saturday, April 24, 2010
El Chalten Sunset
Somebody threw a match into a field of violet wild flowers. The flames burned pink and slowly moved across the petals, kissing and tickling them. As they moved over the field, the flames left ochre ashes glowing with heat. Ever so slowly, naturally, the fire spread, dancing atop the field of violet.
The fire soon found an aspen grove caught in the radiant metamorphosis of autumn. Clutching the aspens, the fire exploded into rolling columns of flame, tossing the changing leaves into the sky, blanketing the earth in illuminant, lively light. Each burning aspen leaf, of which there were billions, was sent tumbling, turning and glittering among the others. The acrobatics were stunning. The mass of surging and ebbing leaves, burning red, orange, pink and yellow looked like a colossal school of brightly colored fish darting through the deep blue sea; like someone breathed life into a collection of shattered, stained glass and then lifted it in front of an evening sun.
South, in the distance, the sea overflowed. But rather than spill out over the earth, it grew vertically, swelling over the tops of snow capped peaks. It did not advance, nor retreat. It held its firm position, towering in the distance, swallowing the light emitted by the fire in the foreground. The light was lost in a blue that grew steadily darker, deeper and ultimately abysmal.
With the spread of the wind and the inevitable fatalism of time, the fire began to dissipate. It became brush strokes inspired by Van Gogh. The color did not loose its intensity but did become cooler. Apparently the artist who brushed these strokes into the blue canvas had not decided whether he preferred oils or acrylic. At first the paint held the form of the violent strokes, where the bristles carved the paint into intertwining lines that ended in independent, fading color. But then, as if operating with a mind of their own, the firm lines would begin to bleed through the canvas. The colors would drip and mix into themselves always maintaining their independence among the other colors, yet wanting to blend and share their luminance at the same time. The burning colors fervently explored one another in tumultuous curiosity.
The strokes were nonsensical, erratic. They randomly cut at the canvas like the artist painted with a handful of shattered glass rather than with a brush. The cuts bled like flesh does. Then the artist added strange form among the macabre, bloody background. It wasn't quite an addition, because it had been there the whole time. Rather, he brought attention to the forms, a Dali-esque profile in the center, a cold grey clump of cauliflower left in the distance. The artist was psychotic, a serial killer perhaps. He loved massacre, medieval war, slaughterhouses.
It was the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen. And it scared me to death. It was true madness. I laughed out loud at it. Then, I was completely silent, like a frightened child in a pitch black room. I was too frightened to breath and hoped to wake up from the nightmare that was that sunset. It foretold of terror, of irreversible change, of heartbreak. It portended doom, apocalypse even. I tried to laugh at it again, but no noise escaped from my throat. I couldn't look at it any longer. I curled up beneath it and hid my head.
Hours later, a lifetime maybe, or seconds, I lifted my head and the colors were gone. I stood up, looked at the blue black sky and walked out of the mountains. I couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible had happened.
The fire soon found an aspen grove caught in the radiant metamorphosis of autumn. Clutching the aspens, the fire exploded into rolling columns of flame, tossing the changing leaves into the sky, blanketing the earth in illuminant, lively light. Each burning aspen leaf, of which there were billions, was sent tumbling, turning and glittering among the others. The acrobatics were stunning. The mass of surging and ebbing leaves, burning red, orange, pink and yellow looked like a colossal school of brightly colored fish darting through the deep blue sea; like someone breathed life into a collection of shattered, stained glass and then lifted it in front of an evening sun.
South, in the distance, the sea overflowed. But rather than spill out over the earth, it grew vertically, swelling over the tops of snow capped peaks. It did not advance, nor retreat. It held its firm position, towering in the distance, swallowing the light emitted by the fire in the foreground. The light was lost in a blue that grew steadily darker, deeper and ultimately abysmal.
With the spread of the wind and the inevitable fatalism of time, the fire began to dissipate. It became brush strokes inspired by Van Gogh. The color did not loose its intensity but did become cooler. Apparently the artist who brushed these strokes into the blue canvas had not decided whether he preferred oils or acrylic. At first the paint held the form of the violent strokes, where the bristles carved the paint into intertwining lines that ended in independent, fading color. But then, as if operating with a mind of their own, the firm lines would begin to bleed through the canvas. The colors would drip and mix into themselves always maintaining their independence among the other colors, yet wanting to blend and share their luminance at the same time. The burning colors fervently explored one another in tumultuous curiosity.
The strokes were nonsensical, erratic. They randomly cut at the canvas like the artist painted with a handful of shattered glass rather than with a brush. The cuts bled like flesh does. Then the artist added strange form among the macabre, bloody background. It wasn't quite an addition, because it had been there the whole time. Rather, he brought attention to the forms, a Dali-esque profile in the center, a cold grey clump of cauliflower left in the distance. The artist was psychotic, a serial killer perhaps. He loved massacre, medieval war, slaughterhouses.
It was the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen. And it scared me to death. It was true madness. I laughed out loud at it. Then, I was completely silent, like a frightened child in a pitch black room. I was too frightened to breath and hoped to wake up from the nightmare that was that sunset. It foretold of terror, of irreversible change, of heartbreak. It portended doom, apocalypse even. I tried to laugh at it again, but no noise escaped from my throat. I couldn't look at it any longer. I curled up beneath it and hid my head.
Hours later, a lifetime maybe, or seconds, I lifted my head and the colors were gone. I stood up, looked at the blue black sky and walked out of the mountains. I couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible had happened.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
In An Effort to Convey the Effects of Too Much Mate
I’m trying to write about Cochamó, (something that happened months ago now and I still feel a clinging responsibility to get something on the page about it), and I’m not motivated. I prepare a mate to help get my motivation started. But the problem is is that I’ve had too much mate already. And when you’ve had too much mate, the last thing you need is more mate. What you need is to go do something, something productive, something that provides an outlet for all that excess energy produced when you’ve had too much of the tea. And like I said, I’ve had too much. So the last thing I need is more. But I pour hot water into the mate and sip from the bombilla. Bitter. Delicious. I tap my pen on my notebook. I have no idea how to sum up the Cochamó writing and I get so frustrated that I close the notebook completely. I take another sip of mate. I think: maybe you should draw something instead. I try to draw. I start off with a convex line. Or is it concave? It doesn’t matter. I draw a curved line, maybe it’ll become the bottom of an eyelid later, but right now I can’t decide. I shade it. Where the shade comes from doesn’t matter because the piece has yet to have a light source. I’m just fed up with trying to draw a solid line and shading is easier to do. It feels more natural. It feels like I’m painting the drawing. I’d rather be painting anyway, but I have no paint. So I scribble wild strokes that go any which way. In Spanish, scribbling is called garabatear, and I think that garabatear is a much better word for scribble because my pen seems to be making that noise more than it is “scribbling”. I garabatear angrily on the page. I’m getting frustrated again. This drawing is going to be terrible. If it can’t be genius, why even try? Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect is only a mix of luck and perspective. And I have had no luck at drawing and my perspective says that the garabatear that’s on my page is terrible. I shut my notebook in disgust. I shouldn’t have had so much mate. I’m in such a fragile state. Maybe reading would be better. I go to my hostel room and it has to be at least one thousand degrees Fahrenheit in there. I don’t have a thermometer, so I don’t know for sure but it has to be at least that much. I sit on the rock hard mattress and open my book. There is no way that I’ll be able to read. My frustration grows. I’m so angry that nothing is working out and I know it’s the mate talking because I’m not an angry person and my life is easier than ninety nine point nine percent of the world right now so I can’t really be angry. Just frustrated. No more mate. A shower. That’s what I need. A shower. I haven’t showered in two days and my feet smell sour. So I’ll take a shower. I gather my shower things and go up the hostal stairs and remember that when I tried to take a shower the day before I ended up with a lukewarm dribble coming out of the showerhead and I didn’t even try to go in. So I’m not psyched on a shower. But I give it a shot anyway. I turn the knob and suddenly a deluge of water pours out of the showerhead at at least one hundred miles per hour. Actually it could be a thousand miles per hour, I’m not sure because I don’t have a speedometer, but it’s fast. And it’s hot. Steamingly hot. There is no actual shower head to stream the water into even, mini streams and so I am left with the insane, uncontrolled, cascade of burning water that is blasting against the shower wall and filling up the floor because that amount of water can’t drain fast enough. And I’m thinking: This shower feels exactly how I feel right now. This is my only kindred spirit in the world. And I’m elated, utterly elated. I jump in and my skin burns, but I’m psyched that I’ve found an environment that models perfectly how I feel about the world. The water crashes down on me like a ton of bricks but I take it like a solid boulder. It won’t smash me to pieces. And it’s at least a thousand degrees. And I’m loving every minute of it. I pop open the shampoo, spray more than I need into the palm of my hand and go to work lathering my hair while the water hits my back so hard that it sprays over the shower curtain and all over the bathroom. I’m sure my clothes are getting soaked outside of the shower because of the ricochet of water I’m sending over the shower curtain, but I don’t care because that shower and I have joined in some sort of holy bond because we feel the same way about the world and nothing else matters. I'm too crammed into the damn thing to avoid the water anyway, so I might as well enjoy it. I put my shampoo lathered head into the high velocity stream and all the suds are instantly gone. Instantly! I go for another. I lather up my head, get it really foamy, even so that a bit of foam drips down into my eye and stings it red, and place my lathery head under the stream. Gone. Instantly. I love this shower. We are on the same page. My skin is burning red at this point and I know it’s best to probably get out of the shower. I turn off the knob and think: Yeah! Awesome shower. It’s the first really clear thought I’ve had for an hour. The heat must’ve induced some sort of normalcy because I feel a bit calmer. I can focus my energy enough to decide on what to do next. I’ll go to the computer and write about mate.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
The Gaucho
Often I see things while traveling that are amazingly beautiful but only last a second. What is written below is one of those flashes of beauty, as best as I can capture it.
THE GAUCHO
It's that time of evening I like, when the earth remembers the heat of mid day but begins to breath the coolness of evening. The sun still holds a position high in the sky but is beginning to retire, packing up his things before the walk home where he'll rest for the night. The Patagonian pampa is dry, unfriendly perhaps, but more likely lost in introspection. It unfolds past the limits of the horizon, to the end of the world. In one of its small pockets, land forgotten, dust is kicked up. A faint deep sound is heard, growing. Thunder? No. The sky is clear save a few giant cotton balls pouring through blue. The sound grows louder. It's the sound of boulders rolling down mountain sides, of racing heartbeats screamed through loudspeakers. Galloping hooves.
"Hep!"
Flashing out of the dust comes a man on his horse, flying. The thunder rolls under the horse's hooves. Its muscles are taut. Its head is forward. The wind is whipping across its face. Bound to the beast a gaucho rides. His muscles are taut. His head is forward. The wind is whipping across his face. They seem to be chasing after the sun rays that are breaking through clouds and settling on the pampa impossibly far away.
"Hep!"
Each beat of hoof to earth reverberates deep, bass like vibration into the dirt. Brush disintegrates into powder. A trail is left scribbled behind the darting horse. A few seconds pass and a quarter mile is covered. This is haste as only Patagonian wind can teach. The gaucho and horse move like a gust that bends trees. The thunder rolls. Black eyes squint keenly into the distance. His features are dark, his nose sharp. The gaucho wears a red scarf around his neck, a black, wool beret on his head. The rest of him is a blur.
"Hep!"
Up ahead a fleet of horses gallop, pounding down the pampa. Twelve of them, all colored hues of the desert. They run with fury, wild, crazed. The gaucho is in hot pursuit.
THE GAUCHO
It's that time of evening I like, when the earth remembers the heat of mid day but begins to breath the coolness of evening. The sun still holds a position high in the sky but is beginning to retire, packing up his things before the walk home where he'll rest for the night. The Patagonian pampa is dry, unfriendly perhaps, but more likely lost in introspection. It unfolds past the limits of the horizon, to the end of the world. In one of its small pockets, land forgotten, dust is kicked up. A faint deep sound is heard, growing. Thunder? No. The sky is clear save a few giant cotton balls pouring through blue. The sound grows louder. It's the sound of boulders rolling down mountain sides, of racing heartbeats screamed through loudspeakers. Galloping hooves.
"Hep!"
Flashing out of the dust comes a man on his horse, flying. The thunder rolls under the horse's hooves. Its muscles are taut. Its head is forward. The wind is whipping across its face. Bound to the beast a gaucho rides. His muscles are taut. His head is forward. The wind is whipping across his face. They seem to be chasing after the sun rays that are breaking through clouds and settling on the pampa impossibly far away.
"Hep!"
Each beat of hoof to earth reverberates deep, bass like vibration into the dirt. Brush disintegrates into powder. A trail is left scribbled behind the darting horse. A few seconds pass and a quarter mile is covered. This is haste as only Patagonian wind can teach. The gaucho and horse move like a gust that bends trees. The thunder rolls. Black eyes squint keenly into the distance. His features are dark, his nose sharp. The gaucho wears a red scarf around his neck, a black, wool beret on his head. The rest of him is a blur.
"Hep!"
Up ahead a fleet of horses gallop, pounding down the pampa. Twelve of them, all colored hues of the desert. They run with fury, wild, crazed. The gaucho is in hot pursuit.
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