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Published: March 30th 2010
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Aftershocks; replicas. This afternoon, 5.8. Ho hum. They keep coming. Noticeable, but barely. Not likely to jiggle any crumbling edifice down on your head at least. After hundreds, they don´t even elicit much comment anymore, especially since most people are hallucinating them fairly often - psychological replicas. They are stronger, easier to see, usually commented on. Clearly, first was the fear. When the ground beneath your feet is wobbling like a 3 am drunk, the brain recoils in panicked horror. Fear is one response; metallic and cold. White of the eyes stuff. Stupefaction is another, dull and formless; glazed. Then comes concern. I am okay. You okay? Family, friends, neighbors, the guy who watches the cars at night? This is frantic and busy, but has the cold clean edge of action, decision, confirmation. Then euphoria. Wow! I did an awesome job of not dying. A sweet flooding intoxication that goes down well with cold beer.
Then the mental aftershocks start. This seems to take a multitude of forms. There is the endless frenzied talking and what-ifing where some work themselves into a renewed fearful agitation. There is desperation by those who still have questions unanswered. The nervousness that is like
a parasite, draining you slowly; the lingering doubt of when is the next one and how strong will it or can it be. Then there is the gnawing need to do, which is just the response to all the previous. The ‘save-the-dayers’ talk of loading the car with clothes, soap, diapers and water and caravanning south to save the unfortunates. The most alarming version being the gun toting american who planned to blaze her way through looters and rubble to deliver succor to the needy. Those burdened with a little sense and bereft of cars and guns, read the news and deal with the nausea and numbness of powerlessness. Powerlessness before the force of destruction that at any moment might take a second helping, but also, the powerless to do anything meaningful. Rummaging through the closet and picking out used clothes and old blankets seems hollow: “Well, this red shirt does make me look a little rotund. I guess, maybe, I could possibly give it to some guy whose house and family just got swallowed by the sea”. Frustration builds, contributing to the manic energy pulsating through the city. People go through the motions of normal, but the usually delicious
cold 202 beer on the corner on a sunny fall afternoon is tasteless and bland, bitter with impotence. People read, email, update, pass and deny rumors incessantly as if information is contribution. In one three hour period I heard both that Matanzas, a small beach town, had been completely destroyed and was unscathed.
After about a week of this, my nerves are shot and my tolerance for the frantic people almost used up. I am starting to vent this publicly. Before the earthquake, I had planned to be in the south volunteering for Conservacion Patagonia, but earthquakes screw up schedules. The volunteering project is off the table, so I either a) eat the ticket or b) go fly fishing for a week in the middle of a national disaster. Choice b sounds fantastic, but may be a bit callous. The alternative though seems to be open ridicule of people who truly do want to help or tragedy tourism masking as help. So, I abandon carly, embrace the souless selfish choice and go fly fishing.
The airport is a mess. The terminal is damaged so passengers have to line up on an access road, pass through a big tent
and then walk out on the runway to their plane. The incoming flights are packed with returning vacationing Chileans and a disproportionate number of the religious flock: there are Catholic nuns who may actually be Chileans and then hoards of suit wearing Elder so and so mormons and north american evangelicals with distinctly southern accents; this later group epitomized by the middle aged southerner with blue jeans hiked up around his armpits (a style also popular with my late grandfather from Alabama so maybe it is a southern thing) and a red felt baseball cap pulled low on his head emblazoned with an American flag and II Corinthians 3:14: “But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away.” That’s me: hardened mind. veiled. You: soft mind. no veil. Lots of America and Jesus coming to save the day. While they joke about taking pictures of the port-o-potty and stratergize on how to attend to the spiritual needs of the victims, I lift up my veil and vomit a little. Ok, I may be a wee bit cynical of religious conquistadores, but
I will admit that they do some good: needed money and supplies exchanged for the good news, i.e. cultural, political, economic, religious etc hegemony. Leaving the shepherds, I get on the plane and fly south.
Chile, if you hadn’t noticed, is a really really long country. This means that though the middle is still shaking, in Patagonia, everything is calm and the fishing is good. Good is probably the wrong word. Amongst the obsessive compulsive fly fishing crowd, about 98% of the people who fly fish, Patagonia is the ameliorated vision of the Elysian Fields: the clean, clear, cold as a Coors commercial rivers fairly bubble with innocent credulous trout bigger than both hopes and dreams. Unsurprisingly, I saw little evidence of these mythical monsters, but I saw their smaller cousins. I suspect part of the problem may have been that I had forgotten to buy thousands of dollars in Orvis gear and/or any week long inclusive lodge package deals. Obviously, both of these things greatly improve one’s standing with the fish. Nevertheless, I flailed away at the water using the patented ‘I grew up fly fishing in the Savannah, MO reservoir for bluegill and crappie’ technique my father
taught me. (This is kind of the hillbilly version of a ‘River Runs Through It‘ where one isn’t really haunted by water or dazzled by mountain majesty). Much to my surprise, slightly more fish than trees were caught, especially along a river called the Magote. Even if the fish count had been zero, it is hard to be unhappy when you wake up in some place as spectacular as Patagonia and the day’s agenda includes nothing more than walking up a mountain river to try to entice fish into biting some metal wrapped up in feathers. More so when central Chile decided to have a terremoto encore of 6.9 while I was gone.
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Andrew
non-member comment
pretty awesome
Thanks for the update. Great stuff. You are quite the writer, you damn heathen!