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Published: October 23rd 2008
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Wednesday is not usually altogether much different than any other day of the week. Sometime around 7 carly gets up. She is understandably not happy about this, so I am considerate and stay in bed til 8ish so as not to get in her way. Often I wake to the sound of cell-fon bull frogs. On occasion, I discover a freshly ground and brewed french press of strong dark coffee, which is surely a sign of the gods’ benevolence. Whether bull frogs or café, there are a few peculiar variations. Some days, it is the gas man. He pedals about the streets on a three-wheeled bike loaded down with tanks of gas. Loudly beating an empty one, he recites his incomprehensible (to me) cry for gas. During winter, gas ‘balons’ are a brisk business as Chilean architects seemed to have missed the day when they taught about indoor heating and insulation. In addition to the ‘beating on metal tank with a metal stick’ wake-up call, there is another equally incomprehensible fruit and vegetable vendor who seems to enjoy the particular acoustics of Nueva de Bueras. The fruit man pushes a huge two-wheeled cart that should, and most certainly once did, utilize
some draft animal for locomotion. Heaped upon the cart is whatever happens to be in season. In a single breath, he bellows an undulating avalanche of words presumably related to the abundance being offered. I can rarely discern more than an occasional ‘grape’, ‘strawberry’ and/or ‘tomato’ from the torrent, but this is, admittedly, because my Spanish skills leave more than a little to be desired. However, easily the most enjoyable- and least comprehensible- visitor is the organ grinder. He arrives with the organ and, following some organ grinder law unbeknownst to me, a canary or parrot in a small cage. Then he starts cranking, and the sound rises from the narrow street and fills the spaces between the buildings. Twenty minutes later, he goes away. It is an utter mystery what, if anything, the organ grinder sells, but I appreciate his effort.
Morning time is dedicated to the greater pursuits of email, reading both Spanish and English words in preparation for the afternoon, and then attending to the dirty underbelly aspects of domestic bliss: market, laundry, sweeping, dishes, etc.
Usually around noon I am emboldened enough to confront the day. Contingent on caffeine intake at home, the options are either a street side café for an (almost useless) espresso or Starbucks for the 4-shot Americano before class. (An editorial note: while living in the US where such things as local coffee shops suffer under the Starbucks hegemony, I was politically correct and dismissive of Starbucks borg presence. Once your choices are espresso or Nescafe, you step lightly from the high horse and run quickly to the benevolent green mermaid). After the given daily form of caffeine, I teach English for an hour and a half. Then immediately return the majority of this money to study Spanish for the same amount of time. The money goes international corporation (GFK) to me to Chilean who is paid $4 an hour by language institutes. A friend and I pay $30 for 1.5 hours, so we at least cannot be held accountable for exacerbating the inequality gap that is one of the blessings of Mr Friedman’s economics. The hour and half is often enough to make me consider again the possibility of never being able to speak or understand Spanish, which seems to trigger the need to drink beer. Luckily, this instinctual resignation is usually stymied by the 7 o’clock Wednesday night gringo basketball game. After a couple hours of something that occasionally passes for the game of basketball, all is well in the world again.
Last Wednesday however, the Catholics told us we couldn’t have their gym, which was just as well as last Wed was also the final debate between ‘The One’ and ‘Grumpy McNasty’ and we had forms to hand out. Background: compelled by the nearly diminished naïve idealism imparted by a liberal arts education and adult embarrassment and disgust over the travesty of the last 8 years, carly and I joined the group Americans Abroad for Obama. The smooth talking smarmy ‘I’ve been on the band wagon since day 1’ youthful representative showed up in town loaded down with PDF files and optimism to rally the faithful to rock the vote. This initial info meeting drew an illustrative cross section of the No More Bad Republicans (and there haven’t been any other kinds since I was born) demographic, which means that a solid majority I didn’t want to have to talk to . . . . ever. But desperate times call for desperate company and so flyers were hung, debate parties planned, people registered, forms with acronyms like FWAB distributed, completed, sent to the embassy (black hole?), and the like. This particular Wed we were returning to the same shitty bar where we had held our 2nd debate event. It isn’t even worth mentioning except that they actually were charging what amounts to around $6 US for a beer that was warm and only comparable with the Milwaukee’s Best Light circa 1989 that someone stole from their parents fridge, kept in their trunk for 24 hours in August in MO and then chilled by putting it on the floorboard with the AC on. Yes. It was that good. And $6.
So the debate happened. Some jack-ass from Ohio named Joe became the poster boy for ‘Everyman’ and the pundits in a desperate attempt to keep ratings high for their candy cane news networks gushed about what a dominating performance Blinky McHuff gave at persuading ‘undecided voters’ (i.e. liars or absolutely dense as a rock morons who aren’t going to vote anyway) that the Russians were coming. Or Socialism - which I guess is more Latin American these days. Anyway, then the debate was over, and time for the talking heads, 'strategists' and other TV imbeciles to tell the public what to think, so we went home.
However, while we were preoccupied, much more important events were transpiring across town. The some 16 odd million people living in this country had just witnessed a 'miracle', 'history in the making', 'the blessing of God' etc.: Chile beat Argentina 1- nil (in football-soccer). Apparently, this was the first time ever in some classification of games that is rather meaningless to me, and almost assuredly, meaningless to you if you reside in the USA. But in defense of hyperbole, ‘ever’ is a really really long time. Chileans were deliriously happy: lots of honking of horns and hanging out of windows and flag waving. Funny hats. Good old fashioned nationalistic chanting: ‘Chi! Chi! Chi!’ echo: ‘Lay, Lay, Lay.’ Altogether now: ‘Viva Chile!!!’ Undoubtedly, the majority of the population was enthusiastically drunk. In Plaza Italia, the cops’ troop transport van and the water cannon awaited over ambitious revelers.
A few of the enthusiastic drunks arrived on our street 30 minutes later. Unfortunately, they had moved past celebration and decided fighting and screaming were a great way to cap the evening. When the yelling reached obvious non-football related fevered pitch, we opened the window. We were late. Twenty or thirty heads poked out of dark windows while on the street below a fat long hair in a black Iron Maiden t-shirt stumbled in and out of the amber pools of street lamp light swinging a metal pipe and spewing a predictable litany of profanity at a non-descript fellow. In addition to Iron Maiden and non-descript man, a few others milled about trying in varying degrees to prevent ‘I wish I had my knife’ Maiden from reaching the other fellow. Rather unsportingly, one of the ‘peace keepers’ would occasionally sucker punch the non-descript man. After thirty minutes, the neighborhood riff raff removal technique was engaged. This entails getting a large pan of water and dumping it on what or whoever is making noise in the street anytime after 3 AM. When the violence became more than words, water dumping increased from both sides of the street and the heads in the windows booed disapprovingly. On one occasion, when it seemed likely that Iron Maiden was going to stomp on non-descript’s head while someone held him, one neighbor launched potted plants and I was forced to throw a paint brush. Eventually, it now being after 3 in the morning, participants and viewers fatigued. Shortly after, the cops arrived. Then it was 8 am and there were bull frogs croaking and the reverberating echo of the gas man’s clanging mantra. Everything else was quiet in the street below.
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Joel
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next time
Next time I come and visit I´m waiting by your window with water and potted plants, it sounds awesome. Iron Maiden makes shirts?