This is Coming Clean.

I have a habit of falling in love with mangy street dogs in the early morning hours. I’m fond of dingy bars where you have to make an effort to get a server’s attention. I prefer public over private transportation. I’ve had a falling out with big cups of coffee and fallen in with inexcessively small ones. I like small living spaces. I underpack when I travel. I buy grilled and deep fried food stuffs off dirty carts on the street. And I like it. I don’t respect your time; I’m sorry; it’s not personal. I don’t think “15 minutes” was ever meant to be taken literally. I look forward to disagreeing with people. I read several books at once—which could mean that I’m very intelligent, or that I’m very unwilling to commit. I don’t make commitments. (That may help you divine an answer to the previous conundrum.) I make friends anywhere but at work. And I stay up late on school nights. Dangerous. But now I've come clean. Now you know. And if I turn around and flee things like over-sized cups of coffee and quiet city streets, I hope you'll understand.

*

"I'm not going to be an Englich teacher much longer if I start talking like that."

An interesting note (I think it's interesting, anyway--does that even need to be said? Obvious I'm the one who finds it interesting if I say "An interesting note"....right? Enough redundancies.) An interesting note. On Chilean English. It's Englich. Do you speak Englich?

Shhhhhhh.

It's English.

Yes, Englich.

I'm teaching English in Shile.


It's CHile.

Yes, in SHile.

It's flaite to pronounce any word with "shh" in Chilean Spanish. Which means, it's bad. The poor people use "Shhh" in their speech. Outside of the dregs of society, DON'T SAY SH. It's CH CH CH CH CHile.

And so, it's also EngliCH CH CH CH.

Interesting? I thought so.

pretend i had an internet connection and posted this last thursday

I woke up this morning wondering if it was actually raining – it isn’t. But the weight in the clouds and the chill in the wind are deceiving. A nice treat from the powers that be on this fourth Thursday in November.

It’s still not the same.

The same as what?

(Forgive the externalization of what should be an internal monologue.

Please.)

Thanksgiving is never the same. Was never the same. Always is never the same. So what’s not the same? It is the same. It’s as the same as it always never has been.

What’s different this year—different from any other fourth Thursday of November that I’ve experienced—is that it’s not a holiday. No one is thankful. For nothing. No one is thankful for nothing. Dear god. I’m not going to be teaching Englich* much longer if I start talking like that.

I worked this morning[when I should have been sleeping because it’s a holiday where I’m a citizen]. But I should clarify, because these things are relative. When I say “I worked,” I mean I got up and, half asleep, found my way to the army’s headquarters where I have class. I arrived about 10 minutes late, because the students are prohibited (by their better judgement) from showing up less than 15 minutes late. So I settled in, made myself a coffee, and broke open my latest lost cause, La Insoportable Levedad de Ser. I don’t mind it. At about half past, my squarest student scuttled in, set himself down in the chair next to me, issued his greetings, collected a practice test to do for homework, and left.

Excuse me please. I was reading.

At about 8:45, Cristian. Long time no see!! Where have you been? What have you been up to? Care for some coffee?

And we so it went—and so it always goes, just not usually on the fourth Thursday in November.

And later, I think I’ll re-mend a bed that breaks quite often. And stroke a feisty cat that sometimes draws my affection, and sometimes draws my blood. Then I’ll try cook something that won’t turn out the way it would if Dad were making it. And then I’ll go bed with “same as it always isn’t” memories of Thanksgiving 2008.

Medical Update:

My throat is sore and it makes me want to die every time I swallow. Maybe, if I can avoid eating food for long enough, things will all go to plan.

If I never see you again, I love you! Thank you for being so great.

I spent the weekend in Mendoza, Argentina.

I love Argentina. Argentina has been a viable option, and will probably return to be a very viable option one day in the future, after I get some things sorted out.

I went to Mendoza with a friend and we did nothing, and that was lovely. We walked [a lot] from plaza to plaza, and back through the same plazas again and again. We tried to see a classical music concert, and spent half an hour talking to a sweet and semi-crazy old lady in line, only to hear that the pianist was ill in the hospital. We thought about searching out the thermal baths that are in the mountains close by, but in 90 degree heat, that starts sounding less appealing. And so we walked. I bought some apricots, and when the man didn't have change, I got LOTS of apricots. We ate apricots. And drank coffee and ate ice cream and sat on the steps of beatiful buildings. We made street-dog friends on every block. Took some photos, read some articles, laid in some parks and got bug-bitten, oh well.

Argentina is a peach.

Time is running out!

We all know that Sara doesn't like "time" and schedules and all that business about being "on-time" places. Time is just a medium we're in and there's nothing you can do about it. ... I have never felt the press of time more than right now. There are a million and seven things I want to do, people I want to spend time with, hours I want to spend sleeping ... and there isn't enough time to do it all. I find myself choosing between sleep and seeing friends. And the choice is clear, to me. And every week I'm finding myself feeling more and more tired.
Saying good bye is wearing me out.

Mowgli goes to the coast...

I have to say

I'm glad I don't get excited about things like the terrace that the posh café down the block is building. I have nothing against terraces. I don't have much against posh cafés, either. It's just that you have to be really comfortable in a place to get excited about something like that. It seems that, after a while, any change in scenery calls your attention in disproportionate ways.

Calls your attention? ... Can I say that in English?

I get abnormally excited about things in disproportionate ways, too. For example, I made friends with a street dog the other night. She was nice. Hungry. A little timid. But nice. I got pretty excited about her. But when a puppy (One of hers? I think so. It seemed so at the time.) came wriggling through a gate and bumbled around the sidewalk in that puppy "I'm so lost and happy" sort of way -- Oh, I lost it. I lost it without warning, without excuse, without recovery. (You see--I'm still thinking about it. I'm still wishing I had brought him home with me.) He would have fit in my purse, but I had enough sense to suffice myself with picking him up and pretending he were mine for just a minute. I get excited about things like that.

But terraces? And concrete slabs of to-be-malls? ... Chucha. Me aburre pensar que podría pasar a mi algun día.

For the Image-Deprived: El Canelo

Oye. Quiero compartir contigo muchas experiencias. Pero me cuesta poner en frases comprensibles mis pensamientos, mis ideas, mis observaciones sobre Stgo, sobre el fuerte olor de orina que pica las calles, sobre la carnicería grotesca de polillas debajo cada farol que encuentro al caminar por Parque Bustamante en la mañana, sobre la sangre Chilena. Sabes? Pero -- te cuento esto:

I was in class this evening, and my funny bone was tickled. But not just tickled: Sprained. And when a tickle becomes an injury, there's no apologizing. Which is trouble.

The class, honestly, was boring me to tears. We're talking phrasal verbs and car vocabulary. Wow. And I was just starting to get annoyed with the bird twirpedly chirping away outside. "He's awfully loud," I though to myself. "He's awfully loud." But I maintained my concentration... tailgate, rear end, fender bender, yield, pick up, drop off, buckle up ... And just then, here comes his sing-song voice, in full stereo, belligerently interjecting his Ode to Spring into the classroom.

"HE'S AWFULLY LOUD,"

I thought, loudly, back. I couldn't help but glare at the window-- not out the window, but at the window morbidly covered in half-broken blinds that are only half-broken enough to be ugly, yet still functional enough to continue blocking out the glory of daylight. Irritated by defeat, fueled by paranoia, I glowered at those ugly blinds, half full of annoyance--at ugly blinds, at little birds, at boring books, at phrasal verbs--and half empty of the beautiful sunshine our little friend was so vocally enjoying. When I absently tried to bring my attention back to the class, and they all started laughing, I realized -- That little bastard. He did that on purpose! He's just rubbing it in! And I wasn't the only one who noticed! ... That's not nice. At the very least, my classmates joined me in the oddity of the moment. But it tickled my funny bone in a way that was irreparable. Which is trouble.

Later, everything was funny:

Focus. This is the seventh time I've heard it in a week. No-- it's FO-CUS. Do not say "Fuk-use" or I'll take offense.

"Jump out" isn't a phrasal verb. ... Wait. Yes. Yes it is, because you can jump out of a cake, or a closet. But this is weird for visual learners.

What does "get off" mean? ... Emmmmmmmm. ... Opposite of get on.

And then, on a "How Good of a Driver Are You" quiz, I definitely scored the lowest. And when they asked if it was easy to get a driver's license in the U.S. (obviously, it must be), all I could think about was how I smacked the tester when I put the car in reverse. It was an accident.

Me complicas, pájarito. Me complicas. That was difficult.