2.

1. I do not understand the logic behind hitting a child or an animal and saying, ¨TRANQUILO!!¨ (i.e. Settle down! Calm down! Hold still! Shhhhh!) ... If one day you and I are together and I get a bit anxious or unsettled, I'll let you know in advance that your hitting me and saying, ¨TRANQUILA!¨won't pacify me.

2. I hate travelling. Mira. I don't hate travelling. I hate being a tourist. The travelling that entails extended months and years in a place--I like that. But being a tourist is about the most boring thing I can put my mind to.
I thought I would be taking advantage of being in Chile if I took a couple weeks to travel. So on Tuesday I headed down to the island of Chiloé. Everybody goes on about Chiloé--the magic of Chiloé! It's beautiful. It's haunting. It's the Puget Sound.
It's a terrible way to think about things, but ... Punta Arenas, Alaska. San Pedro de Atacama, Mojave Desert. The central region, Napa Valley. The Chilean coast, the California coast. My Appreciation of The New has been spoiled by fresh snow in the Sierra Nevadas and sleeping under brilliant stars in Death Valley, by burning my feet on the Great Sand Dunes. I've been ruined by peering over the cliffs of the Grand Canyon and nestling into the porch to watch the afternoon thunderstorms rip across the plains of the San Luis Valley. If I had never touched the ice at Mendenhall Glacier or explored the Puget Sound, maybe I would be enchanted.
Instead I'm bored. Bored and lonely. Yesterday I left my friend Brittany in Chiloé while I continued on to Valdivia--a small town with a lot of German influence. I arrived, bored, in the afternoon after 6 hours of a day-wasting bus ride. Needing to escape my stuffy and overpriced hostal room without windows, I went walking and began ruminating my situation. Do I call it a day and head back to Santiago? When I walk around Santiago, I run into people I know. When I go out in Santiago, I know where I'm going. When I'm in Santiago, I'm not lost. And I'm not a tourist.
With those thoughts weighing my gaze down to the ground, I suddenly noticed a man behaving very strangely--sort of jumping around like a monkey in front of me. And then I realized that he was a poet friend of mine from Santiago, attending a literary conference in Valdivia this weekend. We stopped and talked for a while and then he went his way and I went the other. But it was enough to convince me that travelling alone doesn't have to be lonely if I don't want it to be.

And that's where I have to stop and get out of this underground internet café because there's life out there but not in here. Chau.