squids belong in bed.

hearts and hearts and hearts

2010-07-08T12:19:00.015-07:00

\\\\\\
currently in love with joette maue's fiber art. (photo is from her website). hand stitching on reclaimed old linens - what amazing texture and character to her work. plus, as is probably clear by now, text-based art is a minor obsession of mine. seeing so many people creatively incorporating embroidery in fresh ways is really getting my crafty senses tingling.

you can buy her work on her etsy store!

blog revival

2010-07-06T11:16:00.004-07:00

alright, internet. me and you. again.

sadly, there is not much of interest that i have to write about anymore seeing as i work a desk job on the west coast and am currently on a trajectory to a very boring and unfulfilling career. Luckily for everyone though, I do have a lot more bright white rage than ever before. i think that this can be good sometimes. at least, it provides a motivation for change. as well as a motivation for crafts.

so, travel blog no more. but this will become e-documentation of making the best of things.

a new life strategy:

2009-12-07T22:08:00.002-08:00

... what would jay-z do?

inspired by ben lee, my sister, and of course, HOV.

i think that if we all adopted this strategy,\\\\\\\ well. everything would be better.

jay-z would not bomb final exams on legislative interpretation because he wouldn't write them. he would be in st. tropez with "the hottest chick in the game" (beyonce).

some of us take so much

2009-10-22T01:04:00.002-07:00

too much talk radio (not enough?)

2009-10-04T01:19:00.002-07:00

i can't sleep

it feels like i haven't slept in days.

when it rains, i can't get out of bed

2009-09-29T10:31:00.004-07:00

recently, i got word of a really exciting happening in vancouver at the end of october. some of my favourite writers will be speaking and reading from recent works (like anik see, who is giving a talk on the book as object and also reading from her latest book, postcard and other stories.... since i am a giant geek for her, i have been anxiously counting down the days until its release. yes, i have it on pre-order. and yes, i think about it all the time).

when my brain started gearing up for this festival, i realized - i haven't written ANYTHING since june. i hate that feeling. WRITE MORE WRITE MORE WRITE MORE! but no amount of yelling at myself can really make things fall into place. settling into a new city hasn't helped (the settling part. i am not used to being so permanently bound to a place).

i miss montreal. the leaves don't change colours here in the fall and it is leaving me feeling rather out of sorts.

i seem to be a verb

2009-09-26T22:49:00.006-07:00

... is a book by R. Buckminster Fuller (that guy with the glasses). He, apparently, was all of the following things: comprehensive designer,

inventor, engineer, mathematician,

architect, cartographer, philosopher,

poet, cosmogonist, choreographer and last but not least, a visionary.

I bought this book a couple of years ago not knowing anything about it. Mostly i bought it because of the quote right on the cover: "The most important fact about Spaceship Earth: An instruction book didn't come with it." Looking through this book is quite an unsettling experience... everything is all twisted around, upside down, with text and images everywhere. needless to say, incredibly intriguing. Every now and again, i pick up the book to try to see if I can take get something new out of it. Mostly, I enjoy the sensation of reading it and feel inspired by some short passage or quote. Everything in the book is so disjointed, though, and I never really know where to start. Maybe this is just me...

[I just discovered that there is a Buckminster Fuller institute which puts on events like Park(ing) Day 2009 in Brooklyn - reclaiming parking spaces on one day a year to turn them into people-friend public spaces. ]

The greatest part, so far, of my current re-reading is the following Frank Zappa quote that Buckminster Fuller put upside down somewhere:

"A lot of things wrong with society today are directly attributable to the fact that people who make the laws are sexually maladjusted. 'Why should those dirty teenagers have all the fun'?"

or alternatively, this little nugget of truth:

"the sun doesn't rise or set. the earth revolves around the sun into sight and out of sight. sunset is merely a word with poetic imagery that creates erroneous reflexes. how about two new words: Sunsee and Sunclipse."

well. how about them?

sound and vision

2009-09-23T22:34:00.005-07:00

it's wednesday, so here are some general thoughts on sound and vision:

bob dylan themetime radio hour happens to play on pacific time before my morning torts law class. it is the best hour of the week. new musical revelations include dinah washington's song called 'big long slidin' thing'. there are now many scraps of paper around my apartment with song names scribbled on them of things that i have never heard before bob dylan created the best radio program ever.

these days, i've been noticing dandelion spores on my walks to wherever. i never really SAW them until recently. now i know. they are made to shine in west coast sun!

toronto yearnings?

2009-08-28T12:14:00.003-07:00

it never occurred to me that i might miss toronto. but i think i do? i've only been gone for a day.. but for some reason, it feels more permanent than it ever has before. west west west and it is beautiful here. i saw a deer just down the street from my new place this morning, and isn't it nice to wake up three hours earlier than normal because of the jetlag? the air is so crisp before 7am - a feeling that my lungs rarely experience. today seems to be the day of garage sales and unpacking boxes. both the tires on my bike are flat from the long flight (which makes me nervous for no explicable reason). i know what i'm doing here but at the same time i don't. i yearn for everything past.

i know you'll be back

2009-08-18T15:19:00.002-07:00

i've been thinking about how weird it is that old injuries can randomly resurface, seemingly out of nowhere... as if to remind you that you are not as far along as you may like to believe. when i was three, i broke my pinky finger on my left hand. well, my baby sister broke my pinky finger on my left hand when she shoved me into a coffee table. as a three year old, i never really noticed the pain until it was visibly crooked. and so, the only true constant in my life has been my ragged left pinky finger. despite the fact that, for all intents and purposes, the bone has been healed since then, it creeps up on me about three times a year. the joint gets sore, and it hurts to bend it. although annoying, i almost enjoy the hurt because it reminds me that we are more fragile than we let ourselves believe.

except for this time, when the joint really started to click and it was more painful than ever. it prompted the first x-ray that i've had on it since i was three. i may actually have to get it fixed? (apparently, things tend to creep up on you).

if words had names

2009-08-17T18:59:00.002-07:00

"as we've found ourselves saying before, we didn't really ever talk about much. the reason for this is quite possibly that we never finish our conversation. but i feel i can draw you a map of what it is like to have something to tell you. i can tell you about trying to get back to you, trying to get the airport, trying to get home, waiting for you. i can tell you in different ways, following these different maps. i think of all of these as great possibilities and yet still as subtle, beautiful failures. i wrote you out a map titled 'variations on getting out to or getting back from the airport'. i have that much to tell you."

-- kyle buckley

backwards and forwards (til dawn)

2009-08-05T21:23:00.004-07:00

i recently discovered that i own (at the very minimum) three copies of 'catcher in the rye'. i was thinking about holden caulfield for the first time in many years... i never before realized how badly i can want things to stay the same. [the words are so close but i can't make them out]

you are what you eat

2009-05-29T08:44:00.004-07:00

it's been an exciting day in toronto - i got two letters in the mail from better places (greece and the yukon). also, i don't go to the scuba slaveship today which means that i can spend time writing letters to better places (anywhere, really...) . i'll fill them with half-filled crosswords from the week's newspapers, photos of me and you superimposed (analog style - scissors and glue) into places we haven't been. this elephant one is real though.

cello music sometimes makes me cry

2009-05-27T21:17:00.003-07:00

i took this photo in chile.
it reminds me of listening to nick drake, over and over and over.

i miss feeling like i could be anywhere.
that all i had to do was ride the bus for twenty four hours.

i don't want to be a bandit (i don't want to be alone).

2009-05-18T20:50:00.004-07:00

for some reason, i can't write in toronto. over the past month since i've been home, i've written nothing but letters (and sometimes lists). the last time i really sat down to write, it was april 25th. only a bunch of scribbles, a couple of sentences about how depressing it was to count the number of airplanes that i've cried in over the past two years, and some silly drawings of planes.

so on that note, i am trying out trying to feel alright in this city. a positive attitude, maybe? i bought a map of bike routes and i've been contemplating spending less money on whiskey (more money on pens).

for now, i was thinking about when steph and i hiked Salkantay in march. a list of the finer points of hiking mountains in peru during the rainy season:

- first of all, you can see the most impressive variety of moss specimens. granted, moss is not the most majestic of plants but it is certainly one of the most magical. not to mention they are cute and fuzzy when you rub your cheeks on them. anyway, the colours you can see in the mountains during the rainy season are on account of the mosses, i like to think.

- there are waterfalls everywhere (including on the trails... or rather, where the trails used to be. we spent many nice moments together quietly cheating death and no longer noticing the subtle rotting smell inside our new - matching - hiking books).

- mostly everything, actually. (all there is to do in the city is to dodge hipster fixey bikes on dundas and fill your ears with candle wax to avoid overhearing any conversations that sound anything like: "if you want to quit drinking, you should move to L.A. it's so not hot to drink in L.A." or "i don't know how to break it to my waxer that i won't be coming in anymore to get my chest done. you know, the whole deep v t with fat/phat gold chains is pretty ironic with chest hair").

anyway, i said that i was TRYING to feel alright but i can't constantly give it my most solid 100%. it tires me out.

(but wouldn't it be nice to have an apartment with big windows and wood floors. stay in on fridays and play scrabble. read in bed with scotch and not have to talk. drink coffee and coffee and more coffee when it rains in the morning... not have anywhere to be. work makes me too tired for all of the things that i want.)

where the sun was born (it rained).

2009-03-14T08:48:00.003-07:00

we've only been in Bolivia for 5 days now, but it feels like much longer. maybe it's because we spent so much time in Chile (almost 6 weeks) that to get somewhere that shares a border but is so radically different in every possible way really throws you for a loop. We left Arica on the 9th on a bus bound for La Paz. even before we stepped off the bus, i knew that it would be unlike anything we had seen in Chile. The ride there was incredible - we saw wild llamas and alpacas everywhere. The roads were winding through the mountains, and we started to feel dizzy from the altitude before we even arrived. When we neared La Paz, I looked over to my right and all of a sudden, this enormous colourful city appeared nestled between mountains in the Andes.

La Paz is chaotic, to say the least. It reminded me of how I felt on my first day in Hanoi. Walking down the street and dodging food vendors and kids. The landscapes in Chile are dramatic and beautiful but nowhere we've seen could ever compare to the energy and bustle of La Paz. It was exhausting to be there but amazing. all we really did was walk. through the winding stalls of the main mercado and the streets in the centro. not to mention afternoon beers and real coffee (no nescafe!). i like getting a feel for places this way.

When we left La Paz, we hopped a bus to Copacabana and then a boat to the Isla del Sol on Lake Titicaca (the birthplace of the sun in Incan mythology, and still a major pilgrimage site for a lot of Peruvians). As we were walking around Copacabana before getting the boat, I was thinking to myself about how I never wanted to travel again. At least, not this way - a couple of days here, a couple of days there. Always moving on. And parts of it just feel like a joke. There is something a bit contrived about having the same experiences as every other gringo that has the desire and cash to have them. But then we got on the boat heading north and the air was crisp in my lungs - like canoe trips in the fall. Lake Titicaca is... well, there was no way my imagination could have ever captured it bforehand. It's majestic, to say the very least. They say that ¨she¨can swallow up all of your sadness if you talk to her. Being there, I could see how this would be the case.

When we got off the boat, there was hardly anyone around. We bypassed the more tourist-friendly parte Sur because we wanted quiet. We walked around trying to find a hostel for awhile, and the whole scenario seemed rather unbelievable to me. Donkeys, pigs, llamas, sheep, all roaming around the island in what seemed to be a giant game of something or other with small children. No tour offices, no internet, and we didn't see a single other tourist for hours. Certainly no other English-speaking tourists. At first, I felt uneasy walking through the island - like I was invading someone's home and space, which makes every step hesitant. I felt reluctant to take photos. After the first couple of hours, I let go of that feeling a bit and just enjoyed being there. The path that unites the entire island from north to south is an unbelievable walk (I know that I use this word a lot, but sometimes there aren't any others that make sense). Huge granite cliffs, rolling green hills where corn and coca grows, and the lake is as calm and clear as glass in the morning. Before any tourists came out from the Sud in the morning, we stumbled upon an Incan labyrinth overlooking the lake that we walked through without anyone else around and in total amazement at the combination of human agency and the sheer beauty that exists when you step out of what you are used to and just walk. It was undoubtably one of the most amazing places I've ever had the privilege to just sit and think in.

Short and sweet, we head to Peru today. To Puno, a town that shares the lake. I asked her to stop the rain for a bit, but I´m pretty sure that I brought this all upon us with that one spider I killed on the island.

esperar (to hope, or to wait?)

2009-03-06T06:46:00.004-08:00

i looked around and thought, this is a place where nothing is possible. and therefore everything is possible. it was a wide open space of fuck everything. and why wouldn't you want to be here? Here you could do anything you wanted, and no one would care. here you could live your fullest dream, and it would't matter to anyone but you. and if your dream involved drunkenness or amphibians or an investigation into the human condition, so much the better. this would be where you would want to be. (anik see, obviously).

we're finally in san pedro after a 24 hour bus ride. i may be getting used to excessively long periods on the road - the time just passed. the drive here blew my mind - empty space as i{ve never been able to conceive of it before. we drove for hours and hours without seeing anything. quite literally. the further north we got, the less life there was.. not even cacti or shrubs. literally just wide expanses of nothingness. just a cement plant at some point. it was almost eerie in a way. for some reason, it made me anxious in a very visceral way. i remember at one point driving through these huge cliffs and boulders where a thick fog clung low to the mountains. two minutes later, it was gone. it's weird how quickly things can change in the desert.

san pedro is really beautiful. listen to my girls by animal collective because that's what's been going through my head. everything is made of adobe. i've been trying to speak a lot of spanish, which helps to feel connected i think. if you travel even two minutes outside of san pedro, you start to see why so many people come here. volcano after volcano after volcano, and the desert will quite literally leave you speechless.

yesterday, we bussed out to these salt lagunas in the middle of nowhere. it was blazing hot and we swam (floated) for awhile. you know what they (i) say - you never regret a swim. especially not here. the lagunas were in the middle of all of these salt deposits, and when you are at eye level with them from in the water, it tricks your eyes into thinking it's snow. the colour of the water was unreal... this really light electric blue. it made me think of photos of ice diving in the arctic.

around 730 at night, we were at the last salt lake that dries up completely during summer so that you can walk all the way across it. the salt crunches under your feet in a strangely satisfying way. it was huge and just felt good in my bones to be there. i kept having this weird urge to take up as much space as possible... to run and scream and lay flat on the salt as wide as i could (i guess these kinds of experiences make you realize all of the things that you can't feel when you live in the city.)

the unexpected thing about this place was all of the colours. in the middle of the desert, on this blazing white anomaly of a space, i really wasn{t expecting this depth and variety and movement of colours. they kept changing as the sun slowly sunk lower. at one point, the salt flat turned some variety of gold while the sky made a transition from different shades of blues and whites to electric purples and reds. just before the sun set, it looked like tie dye, with all the colours of the landscape swirled into some sort of chaotic explosion. the sunset here was dramatic, and very different from most of the others i've seen in chile. further south and on the coast, it always seemed like the weight of the clouds pushed the sunset into a thin srip above the horizon. here, everything blended together and engulfed the entire sky. it almost felt like some kind of long-awaited release. i've been in chile for more than a month now and i've never seen anything like it.

the sky is always wide here.

on the road again.

2009-03-03T09:33:00.003-08:00

it's funny being far away when plans change. for the first couple of days, everything is terrifying and daunting and the best plan of action changes ever 18 minutes. steph and i were in and out of internet cafes in viña del mar, at coffee places scribbling notes on napkins, talking to ourselves a bit too much. i've been in chile for more than a month now, and i'm starting to get restless.

today, steph and i will embark on a 24 hour bus journey to san pedro de atacama. apparently, its the tiniest city full of only the biggest adventures (the driest desert on earth, salt flats, horseback riding, nice slovenian-chileans that we will stay with... sandboarding - for steph, probably not for me.) i'm always a bit apprehensive travelling to towns that seem to exist specifically to sell me things. in any case, we've been in Viña for so long now and with so much emotional and logistical chaos that it feels pretty good to be imminently on the road again.

originally, we planned to stay in Chile for our entire 9 or so weeks abroad. now that we were forced to start from scratch, i feel infinitely more liberated from whatever was keeping me within the border. now, we plan to travel by bus through Bolivia (hopefully reaching as far north as Lake Titicaca), and then south through Argentina (through the mountains, to Salta and Cordoba and Mendoza).

sometimes in the middle of a trip, I start to yearn for some more permanent kind of thing. a room that to live in for more than a couple of days (or a couple of months, how it usually goes in canada). and i start to think - okay, this is it. when i get home, i'll get plants, a record player, and maybe even a cast iron skillet. this kind of thinking is dangerous, of course, because it just invites opportunities that you can't pass up. that very night of thinking those thinkings, i get a phone call in our viña room from my mom that went something like this:

lils: do you want to go to lebanon on april 15th with sila and the kids? you can stay with pierre's family.
me: what?
lils: yeah. well. do you?
me: umm. yes. yeah. yes. definitely.
lils: okay gotta book ticket bye.

(important post script: i've been dreaming about this happening since i was about 16.)

so there you have it. i start to feel things settling, but off i go again. (no complaints, of course. i'm incredibly fortunate. its just funny to me). everyone that has ever me obviously knows what bruce springsteen song i'm thinking about at this very moment.

i know your dreams are bad...

2009-02-20T09:39:00.004-08:00

in pichilemu, men walk on the beach in sombreros leading llamas dressed in woven mapuche tapestries offering to let you take a photo with them and it makes me feel like crying. not just because it´s claro que llamas probably don´t thrive on a short rope tredging through deep sand but because of what it means and what it does. how did things get this way?

voy pa´ quellon

2009-02-15T11:21:00.003-08:00

today we reached the endpoint of the panamerican highway just outside of quellon. there were at least a thousand seagulls and the sky was eight shades of grey. i shot an entire roll of film, it felt big to be there. we drank whisky and talked about our highlights and lowlights of the roadtrip so far. symbolically enough, i had my first standard driving lesson from ET.

it´s been raining all day and we´re just trying to get warm.

chiloe feels different from anywhere that í´ve ever been before but i´m not sure why. for some reason, it´s how i imagine the far canadian north to be except warmer. there´s nothing much to base this on, just a feeling i get.

a birthday letter to kyle

2009-02-13T20:14:00.003-08:00

i've never met kyle but steph has. and i was just thinking about what i would say to someone i have never met on their birthday if i were to hypothetically send them an email. and i decided that it would be as follows:

dear kyle,

if i could wish any one thing for you on the joyous occasion of the anniversary of your successful emergence from the womb, it would be this: that you could somehow have six arms, each one of them holding a different flavour of ice cream, and you would be in the middle of the atacama desert surrounded by purple llamas floating on cotton candy clouds.

on that note, here is a birthday haiku:

chile has llamas

and alpacas roaming free

but not even one kyle

anyway, just hanging out in chile driving to the end of the world in the little eazy and filming a travel mockumentary con las banditas (that is, when we are taking breaks from making our hit reggaeton album under the name reggaetronic, first single: yo me pongo con las chicas - to the fiesta. second single: she's so lucky - i can't tell you what this one is about (until we go platinum).)

surf's up!!

beeks&penkala.

for when i really come around.

2009-02-12T12:49:00.000-08:00

the past weekend was spent attempting to get some camping in with ET's cousins in vichuquen, 6 hours southwest of santiago. the campsite is on a coastal lake, and as seems to be the case everywhere, the drive there was incredibly beautiful. even in the pitch dark on the dustiest of all dusty roads with ET cueing up some of the creepiest of all creepy string music and pablo driving like a chileno.... it really blew my headlamp, as they say (and by they, i mean me. i say that.) however, to our surprise (and later, disappointment), vichuquen was packed with young rich kids on spring break and it was kind of an eyesore. we arrived at 11pm and had nowhere to sleep. in the end, we crashed on one of ET's cousin's sites (which ET later noted looked like a camp in Kosovo considering how packed in all of the tents were. maybe this is a bit of an exaggeration, but in any case...). think the polar opposite of camping in algonquin park. we ate some hot dogs and followed the cousins to the "ramada" (because this campsite had a party zone for the youth where reggaeton was blasting until two in the morning. in case you are unfamiliar with the reggaeton style of dancing, search 'girl dancing reggaeton' on youtube and you will understand immediately. lots of young girls gyrating their hips and shaking their vaginas and boys with their hands in the air surrounded by girls. it really cemented it for me that i was.... you know, in another country. ha. who knew?)

needless to say, we left the next morning en route to pichelemu (a surf town on the coast). we got in the car around noon, and it didn´t occur to us that this might be a problem - pichelemu is only about 80km away from vichuquen. so we drove and we drove and we drove, through valleys and mountains and farmland, until we realized that we had no clue where we were. we stopped at the one house in sight to ask the man that lived there to locate us on our map (the most detailed chilean road map you can buy), and as it turns out, the road we had been driving down for the past hour was nowhere to be found. we drove the little eazy (the new nickname of our car, a bright blue tiny suzuki alto) around for a couple more hours until we found the highway again. but to give you a sense of our car ride, pablo drove fast on dirt roads, dredging up dust and making us cringe and shout. ET kept yelling for him to drive slower and to be careful. finally, she decided that she would drive on the windy mountain paths. she did, and she drove right into the side of a mountain and into a ditch. (we were all fine). pablo and i got out of the car, and it went something like this...

p: oh, the tire is really wedged in there. i don´t know how you´re going to get it out.
e: maybe i´ll just drive out.
p: no, you can´t. it´s really stuck. you can´t reverse or go forward.
e: no, i´m just going to drive it out.

and she does. she just gave it some gas, with this look on her face like it ain´t no thang. and just like that, we were on our way.

we ended up arriving in pichelemu around 6pm but apparently, people visit this town on the weekends. every possible place to sleep was full - LLENO. luckily, this old man overheard our conversation on the street and offered us a room in his house, essentially, which we gratefully accepted. there´s not much to say about pichelemu except that when we woke up and made breakfast in his brightly-painted kitchen with salsa music playing on the radio and his wife chopping up a squash and corn for dinner, i really felt the eagerness of a beginning. it is one of those feelings that i think i had been missing for a long time but couldn´t identify what it was. i know that i´ve been here for a while now, but sometimes it takes a definite turning point (breakfast that one morning) to make it really clear. i missed waking up not knowing where i would be at the end of the day.

we drove back on ruta 5 that afternoon and the sun was blazing. we stopped on the side of the highway to eat a whole roasted chicken and mote con huesillos (the national drink of chile). it´s exciting to be on the road again.

we made our way back to santiago that night. sunset over the city is beautiful. i think the smog eases up a bit in the night and the mountains become really clear, taking on all the colours of the fading light. we were waiting to pick up steph the next day. i realized that it was the first time that all three of us had been together since thailand. serendipity is a word that´s been tossed around a lot in the car so far.

after a couple of packing obstacles and long days in santiago, i´m writing from valdivia. we are halfway to quellon, the town at the very southern end of the panamerican highway (if you take the same highway north, you can reach alaska). on the drive here, i listened to this song by martha wainwright at least 8 times. it´s beautifully written and there is one line about wanting to ¨do everything in truth¨. i have been thinking about it a lot today. i woke up today with black pen on my thigh that read billboards space travel so that i would remember - i saw three billboards advertising space exploration with really old photographs of rockets and with the idea of expanding life. for some reason, i found this to be pretty funny. on the way, we stopped in a town called teno, where we visited pablo´s friend PABLO at his family´s house. it was really beautiful - filled with interesting things from different places in chile and plants growing everywhere. he was muy cariñoso and so was with mother, who invited us to stay for lunch and cooked the most delicious beer-battered fish, papas, humitas and ensalada chileno. i was just floored by how sweet and welcoming they both were, and wished that my spanish were better so that i could explain to his mom how much we all appreciated this.

valdivia is a small university town surrounded by rivers. there are quite a few chilean tourists and a huge fish market (which, if you look at from above on a bridge over a river, has huge colourful letters that read: ¨¿que conserva la memoria?¨). one of the best things about chile so far is the writing in public spaces. if you know me at all, you probably know about my inexplicable passion for text-based art. i just like words, i guess. and here, people write everywhere. with colour and scale. it makes me stand still more than i normally would.

soon we will be on the island of chiloe and in quellon, that i like to romanticize as driving to the end of the world. i know that it´s not technically true and this kind of thinking gets a bit risky, but i find myself needing to feel some kind of adventure pumping through my veins.

i have a real camera now, one that makes me work a bit harder and think a bit longer. i´ve taken a lot of photos.

and then i was gone.

2009-02-05T13:50:00.004-08:00

i only got to chile four days ago but it feels like forever. we spent only a day and a half in santiago before we got in the car, but it's beautiful. it's colourful and dynamic and there is food everywhere. the most interesting thing, though, was that there are libraries in the metro (!!). we went to a frida kahlo/diego rivera exhibit at la moneda but wished that there were more paintings and less angsty sketches.

on tuesday, we decided to drive to ET's house in costa dorada, 3 1/2 hours north of santiago. the ride there was like nothing i've ever seen. it felt like being in at least six different countries because the landscapes change so drastically. the whole time, i was struck by how alive everything was - literally. there is agriculture everywhere, even in the harshest of environments. i read about this a lot but it didn't really hit me how incredible it is until i saw what it means to grow crops almost all the way to peaks in the andes. when we got to the house, i mean it literally when i say that we were in the middle of nowhere. there were no other people in sight whatsoever (there were, however, quite a few wild horses and tiny scorpions). just mountains to the north, the pacific to the west, and cacti forever. i thought that it would be really quiet but the wind was so strong that it made the inside of the house sound like driving through a tunnel.

the first night we were there, we drove into Ovalle to get food for dinner and gas for the stove. there is a specific kind of fog that rolls over this valley, se llama la camanchaga (i think). it is heavy and sits low over the mountains every day. it's incredible to see. we drove right through it and you can literally see it sliding down the mountains really quickly. i don't know what the words are but i felt humbled by it. as we were driving through this valley, everything in the middle of the desert was suddenly green. the most interesting thing that ET pointed out to me was these sort of net-like structures surrounding the fields that are used to capture the fog moisture - which is ALL the water used to irrigate crops. on the drive back a couple of hours later, sunset over the valley made everything stop in my head. it was unreal. we were listening to nick drake and i couldn't peel my eyes from the horizon. living in the city, it's so easy to forget about these things. the drive back to the house was a bit terrifying. it was totally dark and the roads are rough and winding. the gas tank was on empty, and i kept thinking that as we were driving up steep hills, it would cut out and we would roll backwards. at home, we made dinner - completos and ensalada and drank wine. the stars were so clear that night. i realized that this is my first time in the southern hemisphere and you can't see the north star from here. i mean, obviously this makes sense but it didn't really occur to me.

the next morning at the house, i was just really happy. ET woke me up with coffee in a clay mug. i walked outside and the sun was shining. it wasn't windy yet so it was completely quiet. the ocean looked calm from far away and the mountains were clear and golden. sometimes the sky is so blue that you can't tell where the horizon is. i didn't want to leave. the emptiness is what makes it beautiful, in a way that provokes thought and feeling. i was thinking about an essay in 'saudade' where anik see writes about the canadianism of being accustomed to open spaces. that when people from countries less blessed in that way find it very overwhelming to feel so small in such a wide expanse, almost like a reverse claustrophobia. to me, though, it might be one of the best feelings in the world.

later that afternoon, we drove out to fray jorge national park, which is an oasis of green in the middle of the desert - also because of the camanchaga. we didn't see any other cars for at least half an hour on the drive. the magnitude of it was unbelievable. we stopped at one point because six wild horses were standing on the road. they didn't even move when we were a foot away and stood there looking directly at us. we climbed up and up and up this mountain until we rounded a bend and everything became technicolour. we walked all around and it was the most bizarre thing, seeing all that colour in the middle of the desert. on the way home, we stopped ont he side of the road to buy homemade goat's cheese and manjar. i tried to speak more spanish but it makes me tired (which then gets me down a bit). (i want to share this someone but my heart is all twisted in knots lately.)

that night, it was dusk and we were standing outside. at dinner, ET described it like this: "and then the ocean swallowed the sun". i liked that so i wrote it down.

i never meant to do this but.....

2009-01-31T19:50:00.003-08:00

... as it turns out, i'm going to write about my trip on this thing that they call, you know, the interweb. my flight leaves in an hour so now seems like a good time to start. a twist of fate has granted me free access to the airport LOUNGE, where i am currently surrounded by older men in suits drinking cranberry juice and eating pickles and talking on their blackberries. needless to say, i feel slightly out of place wearing an old stained t-shirt, dirty velcro shoes, and drinking scotch while writing on this thing. apparently, they close up here in fifteen minutes... meaning i will write for 12 more before heading to the bar section for another drink and to stuff my backpack with free snacks for the ride.

in twelve hours, i will be 5353 miles away from where i'm sitting right now. and i know i've done this a bunch of times in the past two years, but it never ceases to amaze me.

i'm starting to feel nervous. i'm not really sure what about, but i think the abundance of physical things i have with me has something to do with it - over packing never fails to make me anxious. i know that when i finally meet ET in Santiago, i will have to find some corner to hide my things so that i don't have to see them and can forget that they even exist. it's too constricting to be a mover-around-der (i've slowly made the shift from conceptualizing myself as someone who moves around sometimes to a "mover-around-er", if this distinction makes sense to anyone but me)and to have more than you would want to comfortably carry for hours on end.

a lady over the intercom is reminding all of the guests that "the bar will be shortly closing" - so this is my cue. i would like to end with some deep thoughts for reflection by stevie wonder: "if it's special, then why aren't we more careful?" or something like that.

hasta pronto. manana, a Santiago de Chile.

make it hard to say

2009-01-19T21:31:00.000-08:00

i thought it was all for fun but before i knew it, i had my headphones on and i was staring out the window wondering what you were listening to at home.

i wrote this letter on pilot logbook paper

2009-01-18T11:42:00.000-08:00

dear r.s.,

i'm writing to tell you about the thirty minute long infomercial for the magic bullet that i watched with my parents at midnight last night. i thought you might be interested on account of you own one and i bet you don't know about all of the magic tricks you can perform with it. first of all, i learned that everything requires mayo and when they say "a squirt" of the delightful product, they really mean at least half a cup. also, if you want to make treats like chocolate mousse, the magic bullet allows you to omit all of the usual ingredients (like chocolate and egg). instead, all you need is heavy cream and nesquik syrup. also, for a healthy milkshake alternative, take note of these secret ingredients: a handful of hard peppermint candies, one whole chocolate bar, nesquik syrup for good measure, ice cream, and smidgen of homo milk. finally, for the piece de resistance (and now that you are enrolled in french class, you will know exactly what i mean) - the uniform-textured omellette! simply add all of your ingredients to the bullet at once (for example, ham, a full onion, maybe some sort of green vegetable, a chunk of cheese, and three eggs) and blend for six seconds. the mixture will appear silky smooth and it will not fail to impress your guests, who will marvel at la belle mystere of what exactly went into your omellette since no elements with be distinguishable. finally, you should know that if anything takes more than ten seconds to materialize, you may return your magic bullet to "as seen on TV" for a full refund.

anyway, what's the news? (i know, i know, what else could you care more about besides the magic bullet, but here goes). toronto remains covered in snow-dirt and frozen dog urine, but other than that, it is a beautiful city. i think that the only reason why i am stll here and partially alive is because i know it is temporary. in two weeks, i will be off in the land where all of our imported, underripe fruits come from at this time of year and i will be eating a lot of sausages. as a side note, one thing that has been, as they say, "freaking out my dome cap" (or whatever), is my intense and constant meat cravings. i don't know what has happened to me after six years as an herbivore, but all day i dream of bacon, sausage, and beef jerky (which once really weirded me out... until a certain man from new brunswick introduced me to the finer points of jerky - like donair seasoning and the fact that it never goes bad... what a reliable snack!)

i also recently participated in an eating competition that made me think of you - it was at a beloved, time-tested toronto tradition: "bluegrass brunch". while being serenaded by the sweet sounds of fiddles, twangy guitars, mandolins, and voices of heartbreak, you can enjoy all you can eat breakfast. that's right, unlimited scrambled eggs, potatoes, maple-doused mini sausages (bangers?) and blueberry pancakes. the first two breakfasts i consumed were nothing short of delightful. however, by the fourth plate that arrived at our table, both new brunswick jerky enthusiast (henceforth NBJE for short) and i were ready to throw in the towel (metaphorically speaking) and swear off bluegrass brunch forever. you will be relieved to know that we perservered until the end (3 pm, the closing time) at which point, NBJE drank a quarter of a litre of coffee cream to claim victory in the competition. so although i technically lost that sad early afternoon, at least i maintained my dignity in the eyes of the brunch waiters and the greater dakota tavern institution. if you one day choose to visit this city, we will certainly eat there again.

besides all of the meat products (i'm not happy about it, by the way, but i've just given in) and breakfasts, i have been fortunate enough to drink quite a lot of fine scotch... which, of course, brings tears to my eyes (awkward in social situations) because it makes me yearn for the times we spent together, and how much i would love to snuggle into the perfect scotch-induced afternoon nap in your bed. don't worry, though. for the taste/price ratio and the value of good memories of montreal in the fall, jameson is still my number one and the namesake of any future accidental spawn of mine (and yours too, i hope). and on that note, i will leave you to ponder the following questions:

- what do you think about me becoming a travel writer?
- where and when can we meet again?
- hypothetically, if a squid could ride a bicycle underwater, what do you think the bicycle would look like and most importantly, what would you name it?

yours forever,
bks

p.s. i hope that this pilot notebook stationery reminds you of the glory of that red hat, the world's most delicious pumpkin tarts, real cameras, and unemployment in the fall. i know that we have both moved on (you to "gainful employment", me to "doing dick all" somewhere else in the world.) but the glory days will always be in my heart. wishing you many delicious winter squashes, and single malt in mason jars with the ones that you love.

but my mind is made up...

2009-01-14T10:15:00.000-08:00

things you can miss about montreal:

1. taking over entire lanes of traffic on bikes.

2. poutine in the late night/early morning.

3. how the light looks in the afternoon walking towards the mountain on marie anne.

4. new music at the biblioteque national (every day).

5. freebies at jean talon market.

6. two summers ago.

7. au fin du monde and dinners that last all night.

8. crooked walk-ups.

9. sunsets over the canal and farine five roses.

10. honesty.

[i used to worry that i would start to forget it once i left. not so much the "what" of it or the concrete but the "how", the feeling of being there. the problem is that i tell myself that i can go back, that i will always go back. but there is never enough (time, money, commitment) and i don't know how to move on. it can't be the same. i often feel stuck... torn between all of that places i have loved and unable to really commit myself to any one place. i remember writing about this in may before leaving for London. my mind was on Chiang Mai, my heart was in Montreal, and nothing would stand still. sometimes i think i could explode.]

2009-01-13T13:40:00.000-08:00

i have always thought that words are important (how they are used and misused)... but i never realized what this meant for me until i started moving a lot, the people i love started moving away, and i wrote a lot of letters. my friend ET once wrote to me on a bunch of old library catalogue cards (depressing what we think we don't need anymore...) she was writing about a conversation that she had with her mother about letters:

"she said that people used to pay attention to the words that they wrote and were careful, knowing that it would be some time before they would get a response. also, that the letters that they sent would be read and re-read over and over. there is something calming about taking time to write, especially when it comes to feelings (quite often contradictory)"

With that in mind, i'm writing this blog. In the past two or so years, i have lived in many different spaces and contexts... and soon, it will be another. this is an attempt to write something about them. about that sensation of motion and changing landscapes and existing in the midst of all of it. i remember reading a story by dave eggers a little while ago called "the only meaning of the oil-wet water", that follows two friends/lovers in Costa Rica. he writes: "this story is equally or more about surfing. people are no more interesting than waves and mountains." it's a simple statement but i thought about it for awhile... landscapes are difficult to put into words. people in places, reacting to the feel of a space, and how that can change you in very real ways. but here goes, a work in progress.