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Published: January 6th 2008
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We are in the centro Santiago. The centro is roughly a triangle with points to the north, south and east. Parque Forestal runs along the northern leg of the triangle following the Rio Mapocho, an ugly angry brown river, that tears down from the mountains to the east. Barrio Belavista is sandwiched between the Rio Mapocho and the enormous hill Cerro San Cristobal. Atop the hill is the ubiquitous South American testament to the lasting legacy of Loyola and his band of religious zealots. Whereas Christ the Redemptor with his arms outstretched towers over Rio, Santiago got fourteen meters (some 45 feet) of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, gleaming hard white in the sun and presumably lord of all she purveys. Along the southern side of the triangle is the main east west arterial, Avenida Liberador Bernardo O’Higgens, a liberator with a most un-Spanish sounding name. On the southern side of the Avenida are two universities: U. Catolica, the conservatives, and U. de Chile, the leftist rabble rousers. A superhighway forms the western side of the triangle and runs north to south. Barrio Brasil and the U de Santaigo de Chile lay beyond. Inside the triangle is the
downtown: banking districts, old colonial cathedrals that have withstood the earthquakes, the Mercado Central, the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and various plazas with names like de Armas, de la Constitucion, and de la Libertad. We are out in the eastern tip of the triangle past another hill park (Parque del Cerro Santo Lucia) and the old American Embassy. Just off of the calle Estados Unidos is a tiny street called Nueva de Bueras. Although very close to main thoroughfares gasping, groaning and swarming with traffic, Nueva de Bueras is a dead end. Consequently, it is much quieter.
18A is about halfway down on the right side. The little silver key with the roaring lion slips into the lock on the thickly barred gate. With a slight turn, it clicks and swings in. Four sets of stairs. Six then a landing of two and then five more. The walls are a dirty salmon dusty rose. The windows on the landing overlook a barren strip of dirt behind the building, a wall topped with a high gate separates this ‘yard’ from the neighbors, which has a wide set of stairs leading off of an expansive white tiled patio into a green plant filled yard. Tall slick leafed trees grow in the yard and provide something of a barrier to the buildings that encircle it. A few of these are residential so there is laundry - a welcome splash of color against the muted tones of the surrounding buildings - hanging off of lines strung between windows. At the top where the stairs end is apartamento 42. Many locks on the door. The top one is the square key. Three times around with loud ‘thunks’ the tumblers fall. The next is only two staccato clicks; the door lock turns just once. 3. 2. 1. This is home for the next couple of years.
The front door opens into the living room. It is 10 feet wide and 13 feet long. On the far wall is a bank of windows which overlooks the courtyard. The concrete walls of the living room have been wallpapered and subsequently painted pale yellow. From the ceiling hangs the electrical wiring and socket. In it is one of these new mercury supposedly last til Kingdom come light bulbs. This seems somehow incongruous as light fixtures, like stoves and refrigerators, are still superfluous amenities. Books lay piled on the parqued wooden floor awaiting the purchase of a bookshelf. When found and bought, it will go next to the faded pine green couch. The couch and a matching chair face each other over a box that currently serves as the coffee table. The box is covered with the left over fabric from the reupholstering, and although not as sturdy as one might hope, works quite well. On it sits a decapitated plastic 2 liter Coke bottle vase filled with a massive bouquet of flowers; white and pink shot through with deeper burgundy. On the window sill are plants left by the prior occupant: thick stemmed jade with red tinted leaves, reddish brown succulents, and something that looks like red calancho. Carly has added an azalea in hopes that it will bloom and add a little color.
Off the living room is the kitchen. It is small enough that it might easily be filled by the words used to describe it: 6 ½ x 6 ft. With the stove, sink, refrigerator, countertops, and cabinets, there is a 2 ½ x 4 bit of tiled floor space in which to rotate. Cooking was clearly not designed to be a group activity. The hot water heater sits above the sink and requires lighting the gas whenever hot water is desired. Similarly, the gas line for the stove has a shut off valve next to it. Vertical off. Horizontal on. Box of matches to light. Bottles of Chilean wine huddle in the corner under one of the cabinets. At $3US (1.500 pesos) a bottle for drinkable wine, making dinner in a shoe box is just fine.
Past the kitchen, opposite the front door is a dark hallway that leads to the two bedrooms and the bathroom. The bathroom is small and the shower so atrocious that bathing will clearly be more chore than pleasure. It is something like standing under a kitchen faucet. The spare bedroom is currently nothing more than a dumping ground for boxes, suitcases, camping gear, papers, things that shouldn’t have been brought, a guitar, some dingy curtain rods, the kitchen door, and my clothes. Although this will all hopefully change, for now, the door isn’t often opened. The bedroom is on the opposite end of the hallway. Warm morning light spills into the three east facing windows once the sun gets high enough to make it over the towering Andes rising over the city and the apartment building just beyond the windows.
I, in particular, will spend some time here, so it is imperative that this space be more than temporal. Things gathered, bought, brought and borrowed will slowly transform it into something familiar. As comfortable physical space is a prerequisite to facilitating mental space, the creation of one will nurtures the other. Like the concentric rings formed by a pebble tossed into still water, isolated physical space slowly expands to encompass different streets, different metro stops, different neighborhoods, a different city, different friends, a different language, and ultimately a different culture: a long term view on the pebble just tossed. Hopefully, not naively optimistic. So it goes.
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