Jason at Large

abroad again

2011-09-01T12:28:00.000-07:00

i'm heading to paris in five days, so i think it's a good time to start up this blog again. it's been a year since my last post.

in preparation for my next year abroad, i decided i'd go ahead and look into this whole french culture thing...

as a first step, i googled "moving to paris don't speak french" and found this really funny and informative blog by an american in paris. his first post: DON'T BERET. which has me really bummed because prior to last week i would never have dreamt of owning a beret, much less wearing one. much less wearing one in paris. except someone gave me a beret last week as a kind of joke going away present and... well, it looks pretty good on me.

so i think my plan may have to be: DO BERET, but do it in a conspicuous section of the city while wearing a boat neck shirt and a scowl. DO BERET while laughing a la Gerard Depardieu. DO NOT MIME in beret, but DO ACCEPT COINS AND BILLS into beret from passersby.

as i said, i'm new to this whole french culture thing. but from what i have found out so far, this is exactly the kind of thing that they go for.

Apropos: Head East

2010-08-22T20:41:00.000-07:00

i found Head East on my ipod tonight and put it on: instant nostalgia.

growing up we awoke early morning Saturdays with the sounds of my dad's childhood booming through our bedroom doors . i hated it then but it sure feels like Home twenty years later. called my dad to tell him I was thinking of him. life can be so good at the oddest, most unexpected times.

the second home of my own childhood will be sold within the month. so many years of my life within those walls where my sister and I spent weekends or weeks, walls that wear the names of my dad and his brothers in decades-old pencil, walls that I patched and repainted after my grandfather died and before my grandmother moved out. i may never stand in that place again, but I have within me the ghosts of my childhood— my grandfather whose best years are all I ever knew, my own father as he was a dozen years ago, my aunts and uncles and cousins eating lunch then playing 42 at two tables, before and after divorces, fighting over politics or just horsing around. you would think that i could keep them fixed there, but they are changing, aging as i age, becoming more mature as i mature and consider the motives of their lives. already they are not the same as they were before.

i can't wait be back home with my family again and stand within other walls with them. i will try harder this time to fix them there.

my new reality

2010-06-03T09:41:00.001-07:00

i've made a major discovery. having woken up yesterday with flu-like symptoms, major sinus pressure and a grapefruit-sized nuclear warhead gone critical having replaced my brain, I called in, took the day off.

half-formed dream images of lounging on the couch watching bad movies, drinking thera-flu and being coddled by an attentive wife kept me in bed until 1 pm when i finally made my way downstairs to find my new reality.

and it's this: dads aren't allowed to be sick.

my daughter still expects to be entertained whenever anyone is in eyeshot. her toy box of words has ultimate potential; a zero-word vocabulary means my whispered plea of headache! fails to implicate the least subjugation. there are dishes to wash and if i am too feeble to wash them, they will be washed by an unimpressed wife to the further clattering abuse of my miserable head. neighbors will drop by, expected but forgotten, to drop off yet more children to be entertained.

i called in sick today before i went to bed last night. to serve me right, my daughter is now refusing to eat or sleep, even to be held by me when her mom is in the room, and i am certain that this is final punishment for all the wrong i have done in my three decades on earth.

today is crystal's long day, meaning she is out of the house for much of it, and with term ending soon, she needs time to write when she is in it. tomorrow will be the same and this weekend she is in LA training for the SAT tutoring summer job she's taken. what that means is i have a major daddy/daughter marathon coming up and about 24 hours to feel better.

wish me luck. . .

things i love

2010-04-12T19:28:00.000-07:00

1. david bowie's the man who stole the world, whose weird, ratchety intro reminds me of will farrell and christopher walken's hilarious SNL cowbell skit

2. the way my daughter (who can't crawl yet) can cross a room to meet a new toy before it even vaguely resembles something she might be able to play with

3. two photos i took of the bathroom in puno where i spent a miserable two days after i got food poisoning while crossing the border from bolivia into perú

baño, puno de perú, 2009

birthdays and unfinished poems, part II

2010-04-02T16:52:00.001-07:00

1 april 2010

Before Elle Sleeps

While I rock you
asleep
your body becomes a(live)
wire
anatomical event
until our navels alone touch

I will only mention:
we are joined umbilically

Your timidly oblong head resists
the welcoming slope of my neck
finds my clavicle,
bites down
you say to me

In hummingbird recitative
more than anything else I am part of you

For no one else
within earshot
can stomach
the wailful fifteen minutes
before you're off

birthdays and unfinished poems, part I

2010-04-02T16:06:00.000-07:00

30 march 2010

Changeling Face

Your changeling face
is overlaid
not by scaffolding
or any fixed frame
but a witch's brew vapor though
by physics of the eye, you are transformed
and i see you through that haze

mostly as you were

also as you will be

You are not now anything
more than these two things to me
Have you heard? you can be . . .

I am Three Oh today
and you are not-quite-five
months alive

In that same dizzying way
you have your great grandmother in you
but don't ask me where exactly she resides
it is a secret
like Wendy's mother's kiss
and impossible to find

elle is five months old on tuesday. my parents are 50 and i just turned 30. life is so strange.

you know what else is strange? i don't feel old. i don't consider my parents old. but my five-month old daughter? she's old. way too old. elle, please, baby girl, stop growing.

hiatus

2009-11-17T10:38:00.000-08:00

my life has seen a lot of changes since I last posted. the biggest of course being the birth of a beautiful, healthy baby girl, my Elle Simone.

wow, i have so many good girls in my life now. elle was born a week and a half ago on Nov. 6, 2009 weighing 8.5 lbs and measuring 22 inches long. we had her right here at home and she burst into the world screaming with one eye open, then nursed immediately. she quickly took over the place and even has her daddy in bed before midnight. she is the most perfect angel. welcome to the world, baby girl.

Elle at 4 Days Old

i'm not really sure what to do with this blog now that i'm no longer "at large." will it become a daddy blog? will it focus on my photography which has taken a serious hiatus since moving to Irvine almost 2 months ago? will i drop it altogether? not sure, but for now we'll start [again] with this. we'll call it Family 2.1:

oh, and a big "thanks" to my mom who came to stay with us the week after Elle's birth. she played photographer and filled my hard drive with photos and videos, made us her famous mexican casserole, and never once took charge or told us we were doing it wrong. like i said, so many good girls in my life. . .

crystal at 18 weeks

2009-06-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

i was going to write another ranty post about how economists' and business types' obsession with growth ignores the fact that all systems decline eventually and hurts people (e.g. GM bancruptcy), but i've decided i'm going to try to be a little bit happier, so i'm posting this instead.

i finally got crystal to pose for some photos this week. as she just finished week 18, she feels much bigger than she actually looks at this point (click for larger size).

isn't she beautiful? i think so.

in case you're wondering, according to an online pregnancy guide, our little frogger is now about 5½ inches long from head to butt, or about the size of crystal's hand wide open. and according to this page, week 19 is a crucial time for brain and sensory devolopment, so i plan to scream the answers to flash cards into crystal's navel every evening this week. you can never start too early. . .

irrationality and terrorism

2009-06-02T15:04:00.000-07:00

this week's image of the week is a new diptych from my abstract autumn series, which i think i'm calling "autumn on the southern continent." enjoy!

i don't normally plug products on this blog but i'm currently enjoying the audiobook version of Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational. Ariely is an MIT professor among other things, and in the book he asks some interesting questions about what makes people act so, well, predictably irrational. if you're curious about human behavior or watch programs like the discovery channel regularly, i'm sure you will like this. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

while i'm down this road, i'll go a bit further. i recently read Your Pregnancy Week by Week by Glade Curtis, MD, OB/GYN. go ahead, click the link, i'll wait. you see that woman on the front cover? she may look serene but she's really sitting there wondering if hers is a molar pregnancy. she's terrified, and for good reason. this book is little more than medical terrorism, and here's why. dr. curtis spends about 2/3 of this "guide to pregnancy" describing in detail what could go wrong and what tests are used to find out if they are going wrong. no kidding, this thing could have been called 26 Ways to Test for Down's Syndrome. these words are printed in the book in this order: "If a miscarriage occurs after this point, it may be possible to tell if it is a male or a female." what!?

according to curtis' own research, only about 10% of pregnancies exhibit any problems whatsoever. so why he spends such a large part of his book describing the most unpleasant parts of pregnancy in the most unpleasant way is beyond me. and anyway, i learned more about pregnancy in one evening with Google than i learned by reading this 350 page "guide." dr. curtis isn't just a terrorist, he's obsolete. NOT RECOMMENDED.

n.b., i've linked to audible.com above but i only recommend their site if you use an apple ipod as their downloads didn't work at all with my previous cheap-o mp3 player.

what recession? we're already poor

2009-05-29T09:03:00.000-07:00

npr.org (my favorite infotainment website) reported today that as they don't make any money, poets can't really be miffed about the recession. i love this attitude. it applies to lots of other people as well: like unemployed photographers.

in that vein, here are the newest from my abstract autumn series (click to enlarge):

Autumn Cactus 1, Santiago, Chile

Autumn Cactus 3, Santiago, Chile

Autumn Cactus 2, Santiago, Chile

Enjoy!

abstract autumn

2009-05-28T12:01:00.000-07:00

more from the abstract autumn series. . . (click to enlarge)

Autumn Limbs 3, Santiago, Chile

Autumn Limbs 2, Santiago, Chile

Autumn Limbs 1, Santiago, Chile

Enjoy!

just this

2009-05-25T16:43:00.000-07:00

this week's image of the week is an abstract sunset shot from my balcony here in providencia, santiago, chile. more like this to come. . .

in other news, my inti-illimani histórico review has been published here. also, i resigned my photo editing gig with Revolver. i am a freelancer once more.

crystal and i took a quick trip to argentina this past weekend. i had to renew my visa, which is free if you actually cross the border, so we spent a couple days shopping for maternity clothes for crystal in mendoza. we also had some good argentinian steak and wine. i'm not sure how we got out of the country without a bottle of malbec but it slipped our mind.

on the way home, we were held up at the border for almost two hours when a flu-ish person admitted that yes indeed, he did in fact have, the flu. and border patrol immediately sank into hysteria. my roommate actually called us as we crossed into chile to tell us he had heard that someone with swine flu had been found crossing the border at mendoza. was he on OUR bus?!?, he wanted to know. calm down, folks. it's going to be All Right. seriously. it's going to be O.K.

happy holidays from chile!

2009-05-06T13:32:00.000-07:00

this past week in santiago has turned chilly (and i've got the cold to prove it). i'm sitting inside my apartment in long, warm pants and a sweatshirt, drinking my third pot of hot tea of the day, but i'm thinking about wrapping a blanket around my shoulders. it seems a little premature as the leaves haven't finished falling from the trees, but i have to say, i'm really looking forward to the holiday season!

except, it's may not november. our autumn easter just flew by along with the birthdays of just about every person in my family and my sister just had a summer baby. it seems like i'm missing a lot and i'm starting to feel it. every day i think just a couple more months and it will be christmas with family. the songs on my current iTunes playlist are making me nostalgic for the christmas i spent in namibia with crystal eating spaghetti on the kitchen floor with the back door open for a breeze.

i wonder when my brain is going to listen to what i keep telling myself. that night i spent in the cementerio general a couple weeks ago was for a story on night tours in santiago, not halloween. there is no thanksgiving turkey in my immediate future. there is no christmas around the corner.

in fact, just about the time it is proper winter here, we'll be heading "home" to the second half of summer in the states. you would think after how much we have travelled in the last few years, missed holidays and truncated seasons would become the norm, but it's just getting harder. it probably didn't help that we spent the greater part of our summer in south america on the frozen bolivian altiplano.

i'm not feeling so much homesick (yet) as i am looking forward to seeing everyone again come july. i'll try to hide my disappointment when i step off the plane and hear no holiday music in the airport, but i can't guarantee you all won't be receiving a christmas card in the mail come, oh, say june. . .

inti-histórico photo gallery on Revolver

2009-05-05T15:12:00.001-07:00

as i mentioned a couple of weeks ago, i'm now editing the photography side of your favorite chilean entertainment magazine, Revolver. it's a lot of work, but it's mostly of the fun kind. playing with photos, laying out articles for publication, breaking photographer's hearts while passing out assignments, etc.

this past week i shot an inti-illimani histórico concert (see current image of the week). the concert was great. if you don't know inti-illimani, they are probably The most famous chilean band of all time. their musical style is folklorico (south american folk). you know: pan pipes, andean beats and that little funny guitar, the churango.

to secure my position as photographer for this event (i know i'm the photo editor, but i try to be fair) i volunteered to write a review of the concert for the magazine. as writer, i got to meet the band and interview one of its members after the show. as photographer, i had an extra ticket to the show and crystal go to come with me.

the article is done and should be published on the site in the next couple of weeks. i'll let you know when it's up. until then, you can view the photos from that night, which are already published in a gallery here.

i don't usually mention it here, but i usually have at least one article or photo gallery published at Revolver every week. so check there if you can't get enough of me here. . .

babies, babies, babies!

2009-04-30T06:50:00.000-07:00

i'm an uncle today! here is my sister, jennifer, proving she can still look amazing after 24 hours of labor:

congratulations to my beautiful sister and her beautiful baby girl (and my namesake), cory marie hickerson.

jen, you are going to be a wonderful mother.

the big news you already know

2009-04-27T18:42:00.000-07:00

i'm going to be a daddy!

the doctor tells us crystal is about 13 weeks along and she's already showing just a bit. we're going to do some actual photos this week, but until then, there's this (crystal is on the right):

crystal will be right at 6 months when we get home to the states in mid july. we're really excited. time is flying! we were even able to see an ultrasound of our little frogger on our first visit to the doctor. he/she is an active little guy/gal.

seems just like yesterday we were in our private jungle— i guess that cabana was a bit more expensive than we thought. . .

where i answer the age old question: what is life?

2009-04-24T17:58:00.000-07:00

17 march 2009

Lately I have feared the miscarriage of us, meaning
the miscarriage of my life. But now I face that possibility
for something much more real—Quiet goes the crowd—
as I realize that what we call our lives isn’t Life but something
else we use to fill it.

And I can’t see this as you see it, or at all. Is it irony or something else
that it doesn’t seem real— or should i say less real than the big item
on my christmas wish-list? Certainly less real than the fearful, anxious
relief-terror of school-is-done and I am thinking for the first time
whathow? will happen with this life just beginning, here, now?

it has been a while since i've updated. i've been busy this past week. i recently started my new position of Photo Editor at the magazine i shoot for, Revolver, and it's a lot of work. i've got the promotion without the raise thing down, though, which will be helpful later if i ever have to get a real job. plus, it's great experience.

work on eljason.com took a brief hiatus while i contemplated my life before writing the about page. i think i've figured me out now, though, so hopefully work will resume this weekend. in other news, there are two photographers here in santiago that are interested in me "being present" in the studio for upcoming jobs. whether that means assisting in a formal fashion permanently or something less delimited is as yet unknown.

for those that don't know, it is final. crystal has accepted a PhD candidacy from the Univ. of California at Irvine, where she will be finishing her studies in comparative literature, so we will be moving to LA when we return to the states in about three months. that gives me very little time to get my act together if i'm going to make the big splash i have planned for the LA art scene, but i'm sure i'll be famous before any of you know it.

OH, and one last thing: cha, where is my widget?

pope kills thousands in africa

2009-03-25T07:58:00.000-07:00

i don't usually expound politically on this blog. but according to NRP, this past week after stepping off the plane on his first-ever visit to the African continent, Pope Benedict XVI announced that "condoms increase the problem" of HIV/AIDS.

now, i'm no expert. but i'll venture to say that i'm more qualified than the pope on matters regarding africa as i happen to have lived in Namibia for 19 months working as an aid volunteer in rural okalongo as opposed to his two weeks spent largely in a bulletproof hearse. during that time i met a lot of people, a quarter of whom were likey infected with the disease (HIV rates in namibia, like many african nations, constantly hover just below 25%), including one woman who told me this: men in africa are rarely monogamous, catholic or not, married or not. there is a culture of polygamy in most parts of africa not long abandoned. in namibia, it is not a source of shame or embarrassment for a man to have multiple mistresses, but one of pride. women in africa, the wives and girlfriends of these men, are not empowered. they've yet to burn their bras. most are little educated. they are unable to say NO to a sexual encounter with their men. they are just as likely to contract HIV from their husbands as from sex with boyfriends, extra-marital affairs, or rape.

i won't argue that condoms are the whole answer. give a woman a condom in much of africa and she is powerless to use it, not being able to insist her partner wear it. even without the pope's help, there is a stigma against condom usage. this is why, when crystal and i were teaching classes in HIV/AIDS awareness, we focused primarily on just getting condoms in kid's hands, making them take the condom out of its package, touch it, let others see them touching it; let their girlfriends see them touching it.

we taught co-ed, bilingual classes in condom use with an advanced student on hand to emphasize words like penis, vagina, sex, and sperm in the most vulgar of nouns available in multiple bantu dialects to get the point across. we had heard horror stories from past volunteers, one of whom, after teaching similar classes, had been approached by a crying student. she had become pregnant and wanted to know why the condom didn't work. turns out, they were putting condoms on broomsticks to demonstrate the technique in class. this she did, unwrapped the condom, rolled it onto the broomstick, and proceeded to have sex with her boyfriend now "protected." unbelievable but true, we tried to avoid this by having our learners apply condoms to bananas while chanting (in oshikwanyama, the Bantu dialect of our village, "this is not a banana, this is a penis." the kids, aged 14-28, laughed, goofed, blushed, and even cried from embarrassment, but i think, i hope, that we got through to a few of them. specifically, i hope it got through to the boys. the girls we gave femidoms (female condoms) and suggested they wear them whenever there was a chance they may encounter a sexual situation—meaning, constantly.

i would have done almost anything to keep one of my learners from having unprotected sex, risking the chance of pregnancy or infection. i think the pope feels similarly about the idea of africans having any sex whatsoever, outside of christian marriage. well, i won't argue with his ideals. what angers me so much is this irony: an african woman may be christian, devoutly catholic, monogamous, pious. she may obey her god, her pope, and her husband in all things, as the church demands. good for the pope, bad for the woman: it's likely to kill her.

the bottom line is this. by making such a ridiculously false statement suggesting condom usage increases HIV rates, the pope likely brought thousands of believing africans to their deaths and undid years of work from people like me who worked hard to break the stigma of safe sex in africa. what is needed in africa is education to fight the stigma, for men and for women, about this disease and all possible options for avoiding it. surely there is room for the condom in the believing heart where innocents are at stake? or put this way: what believing father would knowingly send his daughter into a room where he knew she was going to be raped or otherwise coerced into sex with an HIV-positive man unprotected? This is the reality of life for many african women every day.

and it was night the day

2009-03-20T09:28:00.000-07:00

14 September 2008

and it was night the day
they stole all your things
and i was culpable
in the street
they seemed to
“eek out the music
as if their instruments
would rather be mute”

and it was the night
of rectangular windows shining by
the elevator light
having burnt itself out
left us alone in the dark
for the first time
again
and you, embarrassed, were afraid

it was the night
of muted streets and chinese lanterns
the restaurant
where they bring the drink so strongly
of aníse, after the fact
barred its windows
unlit the path

and we went out for sushi
and stole back
what had been handed over
before

sitting hearts beating
on a park bench
when it was not night, and still
the sun did not shine on us
for days

i've found a new source of inspiration in scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy, whose powerfully beautiful poem, "Small Female Skull" can be seen here. unlike a lot of poets today, miss duffy isn't trying to confuse anybody, but rather to communicate something. if you enjoy poetry, or beautiful things, please take a look.

in other news, e l j a s o n . c o m is coming along nicely. we are looking at a go-live date of april 5.

new series: one day, potosí

2009-03-14T20:44:00.000-07:00

i have been back in santiago for almost three weeks now and i've spent most of that time sorting through the large number of photographs i took while we travelled through the north of chile, bolivia and perú. as of yesterday, i'm now finished sorting and am starting to actually get some real work done on these images. but since the day we arrived, i have been absorbed with (which is maybe why it took me so long to sort the rest) the photographs i took in potosí, bolivia.

potosí was by far my favorite place of all the towns and cities we visited on our trip, even outshining—for me—the beautiful salt plains of uyuni. on december 30 (almost three months ago now) i spent an entire day from sunrise to sunset photographing this amazing and photogenic city and its amazing and photogenic people. i think i have never had such a productive day in my life—so much so that i will have a series of 15 portfolio-worthy images all captured on this one day when i'm finished with the editing.

i'm calling this new series, what else, One Day, Potosí, and i'm really excited about it. i've been working so constantly on it that there is a good chance i will have the entire series finished in time for the launching of e-l-j-a-s-o-n-.-c-o-m when it goes live around the end of this month.

this week's featured image, as yet untitled, is one from the new series. i've also posted a couple of images from One Day, Potosí over at my flickr page, so check there too (link at right under more me).

my photos at matador nights magazine

2009-03-08T07:13:00.001-07:00

i got word today that one of my photos is being used for a feature article at the Matador Network, the self-proclaimed world's largest travel magazine's night life rag, Matador Nights. the photo is one i did for Revolver Magazine of a santiago-based band called The Banda Conmoción. it's the feature photo there now if you hurry, or see the article itself with another photo by me, What People Are Listening to in Chile.

more of my night life photography can be seen in Revolver Magazine (just type my name in the search bar) or on their photo galleries webpage. another of the banda conmoción images, not published in the matador network article:

the banda conmoción at club kubix, santiago de chile

new look, updates and— do you like me?

2009-03-05T08:53:00.000-08:00

4 March 2009

Things As They Are

there was a shooting star just now

while you were looking at your cuticle

on your right hand it passed the silent blaze silencing me

and me too struck to point it out and you will never see it

meaning: you will never see it were we to try again for years

can you imagine trying for years, wanting only this one thing

for years doing nothing but this, say, for six years, trying and

------wanting to reclaim

one moment of all the moments in which we failed so completely to see

a thing together for what it was: a lonely piece of rock

and will never be loved by anyone

Jason At Large has a new look, updates and, um, consistent posting for the moment. among the additions are most prominently, a banner photograph, which i will be changing regularly. info about the current image can be found at the bottom of this page. and if you prefer images to words, you can see more of my photographic work by clicking on the links to the right in the More Me section. also, now that i'm back from my travels, i'll be updating previous posts here with images as appropriate. so if that interests you, check back tomorrow.

on the topic of new things, i've been assured that the upcoming e-l-j-a-s-o-n-.-c-o-m -website will be up and running in about one month. el jason will be my official photography website and will have four rotating galleries of my current and recent work updated regularly. so keep an eye on that page.

and lastly, if you are following this blog and like what you read, don't forget to comment! also, you can now make it official by signing up to Follow Me, and then recommend that other people do the same. i did it and it was quick and painless (sign up by clicking the button on the right).

home quiet home (or: sacrilege and erotic me)

2009-03-04T07:04:00.000-08:00

27 Feb 2009

they are stomping down the halls

as if the anger is contagious

that traps, then jolts, then concusses

in spurts of footfalls that bondage

situated beneath the rib, bright red

like a valentine and pulsing madly, brutally

beating the man-skin drum of my life

into a pulp-

------------------------ and now the tightening of the screws

of the windows along the walls in the back claps a promise of

i’ll keep ---it ---in ---while on the other side, pushing through this

latched door is the off-kilter slapping of the panes of the syncopated

back-beat rim-shots of my day-to-day being played by a master

not unlike a god: not a man but a devil with her pitch-fork in hand

come harvest time, they say, this one will

reap my blood-

---------------------------------------------and someone’s fucking

in the next room like stomping angry footfalls in crashes

down the halls as if the passion is contagious spurts

of pulsing brutal man-skin drumming devils with

pitch-forks harvesting by hand, turning screws

as if the passion is anger-contagion beating lovers

like valentines trying to eat my pain but there is

just too much

we've been back in santiago almost a week now. two days ago we found an apartment and as of this morning, we are officially moved in. the place is great and the owners, ivan and paula, seem great too. we're in providencia, a slightly more upscale barrio than the urban downtown, and among other things, we've got a small private park off our balcony where we had a major boulevard before and we've cut our flatmate count from six to two. also: the place is beautiful and spacious and quiet, so hopefully we'll be sleeping better (see sleeplessnight-inspired rant above, and you'll know how important this is to me).

i'm taking the rest of this week off (because vacations are so tiring) and then i'll be back at the santiago times and revolver magazine shooting, part-time this go-round, and looking for some kind of commercial studio work, hopefully paid. and then, i've got a photo series project in mind, sort of sacrilege meets erotic me. we'll see. . .

a lot of the people i knew before we went traveling are now gone, which makes me sad, and more are leaving this week. at least i will get to see this last group one last time before saying goodbye-for-now. for those of you who are already gone, i curse you already, and now i have to find other reasons for enduring the skin-coating grime of this city for another five months. i better get to work.

for my grandfather

2009-02-28T02:41:00.000-08:00

27 Feb 2009

When a young boy falls asleep

in a home-away in the country

the stars appear and funnel into

a spinning pin-wheel, landing there

upon his lashes, where his dreams live

This is natural, as is his sleeping-between

the two grand-parents: the old woman

takes walks collects rocks by day;

by night the old man prowls the house

undershirt underwear flashlight in hand

As is that he is taught to drive by the old man

in the pasture, a mile from the house where the

pavement ends in dust, then on side roads on sick days:

5-speeds and moo-cow, sunset yellow and rust

see that barn on the hill, now watch it disappear

And that there is tickle-leaf growing, funny stuff

that the old woman shows him to put on his tongue

under the larger of the two old trees

where the swing was swung before the limb broke

and the horseshoes are hung

Or that he dreams of this home-away in far-away years

by day or by night, or whenever he falls asleep

or the stars appear and funnel into

a spinning pin-wheel, landing there

upon his lashes, where his dreams live

(from left) my mom, my aunt cha, and me at my grandparents "farm"

heading "home"

2009-02-23T13:56:00.000-08:00

23 Feb 2008

There must be a woman

for every man, or boy—

or however manifests the dream

need not be attainable

nor existing, only visible

so that he may find it.

catedral santo domingo, cusco de perú

we´re in arequipa de perú and heading out tonight. we should be at the border by morning and then, hopefully, we can make santiago in one last too-long bus ride down the south pacific coast. we´ll see come morning if we can afford it. . .

i expect the city to welcome me back into its cradle with open arms, and perhaps some sushi, gratis. i´ll be offline until it does.

for Crystal on her birthday

2009-02-18T09:51:00.000-08:00

18 Feb 2009

What is a man?

Just look at the word itself;

all grown up he is but peaks and valleys,

with an end.

He is the arc of a trajectory,

shot from birth with fire at his heels,

and does not sputter before reaching the crown

but must fall where the wind blows.

He is the rebelyouth and the dociledoe;

he grew too tall, a freak among his playmates,

but remembers how to play: chutes and ladders tag and war.

He is a beast: meaning the tenderest of mothers.

He hates with a passion that is love;

he is a lover of women, men, boys;

he knows his place above all, causing

pain and joy in equal part, and sometimes

in a blinding flash of lightening courage

echoed by the thunderous clapping hand of terror,

he thinks about the difference, and in his wisdom,

chooses, at last, to choose.

He is some things more than others;

he is prose more than poetry;

except before death, or having seen god´s face,

he is rabid, maddening poetry,

causing his fellows to shut their eyes hard

and cover their faces with fierceness

and hold the last breath they pulled from air

weeping tears that scald cheeks scourging old dirt

in rivulets of fire-water before the dragon-breath reek

of the bright life of his momentary living—

And what is woman?

All these things: and ovaries too.

i´m in cusco de perú, at the foot of machu picchu, once capital to the incan empire, and later, to the spanish colonies of south america. sick in turns since the day we arrived in perú, crystal and i are taking it easy in this most touristic of south american cities. it´s a good place to relax, too. the historical section of the city is wonderfully beautiful, with grandeous colonial churches lining plazas, their domes numerous and countable from any vantage in the surrounding tall streets overlooking the valley. at crystal´s urging we are touring the churches here, and it is fascinating. i find myself enchanted by the history and excess of these near-ancient works of art, long representing for me something spiteful and unnecessary: the colonial roman catholic church.

catedral de cusco on a rainy day

of interest: the largest and most beautiful of the cathedrals here is the catedral de cusco, which was built over the then-existing incan palace. to bring in the peasantry to the spanish national institution of faith, aside from building catholic sacred buildings over incan ones, church officials incorporated pre-hispanic cultural ideals and details into the paintings, architecture, and decoration of the churches. for example, in the (can i overuse the word beautiful here?) choir of this cathedral, carved into the intricate detailing on the arms of the choir chairs, exists, pacha mama, the goddess mother earth still worshipped by the quechua and aymara peoples in this part of the world. pacha mama, generally is represented as the true emblem of motherdom, with large, nurturing breasts displayed, as well as bulbous, fruitful vagina. i sneaked a shot to illustrate:

click to enlarge in full vaginal glory

who said the catholic church was monotheistic?

other than perusing the churches of cusco, i´ve mainly been sitting in various cafés in the city, writing and reading. at one particular café on the hill near our hostal, i was reading D.H. Lawrence´s largely autobiographical Sons and Lovers and thinking about what my own story would look like set to type. i was being served a ´normal´ coffee -a cup full of hot water with a serving of potent coffee concentrate alongside, you add the ristretto to the hot water, as much as you like according to how strong you prefer your coffee; a nice idea, but for me at least, it is never strong enough, even after pouring off half my water, and no matter how much you stir, there is always a layer of coffee at the bottom of the cup that i wish had made it to my tongue- and it occured to me, that my life is not less interesting than Lawrence´s was, nor is it less developed (Lawrence was 25 when he wrote his fourth novel, this, and i am 28 having written none), and so the magic of writing a story must be, as crystal reminded me this morning, ´in the telling.´ so, i think i might write my own story, not autobiographical, probably a short story to start. and if i do, maybe i will post part of it here.

we´ve one week to go until we are back in santiago, back to our ´normal´ lives. the travelling has been wonderful, but i must admit that i am ready to get back, to settle down a little once again. i think i´ve found a nice apartment there to spend the remaining 5 months of our current adventure, a shared place with a seemingly nice chilean couple our age interested in improving their english. hopefully it will work out so we don´t have to spend too much time in hotels. we are well past half way through our year here, then back to. . . well, we don´t know yet. but acceptance letters are starting to trickle in for crystal´s last push towards the phd, so we may know soon. congratulations, sweetie, and happy birthday!

crystal presenting the catedral de compañia de jesus

of words and wailing poetry. . .

2009-02-03T15:02:00.000-08:00

3 Feb 2009

i once knew the stories, Part III:

"song of the yungas"

we will call it

the summer

of private jungles.

they will say we stole it, but

say the word, again, say it

thick and wet

like tongues lapping lips mouth

the word, give its name

like canyons from rivers

the very continents took their names

from the very world

we took their names, and we

are there

we will call it

our place

of jaguar shark moth gardens

and super suns, can there be two?

like lovers at war

who will lick the darkness

and falling leaves

until we are-

like moths at flight

with yellow probosci

pretending to be leaves

(let us say we found it!)

-at rest

we will call it

Our place There.

it could have been anywhere

month´s end, where to. . .

2009-02-03T14:46:00.000-08:00

wow, this month has flown by.

i haven´t posted in a while, but to be honest, there just isn´t much going on in our private jungle, coroico. crystal and i are tying up our month at "the resort," as someone called it recently, this coming weekend. it´s bittersweet. i am definitely going to miss the hot/wet sun, the beautiful views, the bird calls, the endless time for reading, thinking, writing. but, i have to admit i´m ready for an end to the mosquitoes and other biting things i miss my laptop, the ability to work on my photos or watch a movie when the mood strikes. . .

we´re heading out this saturday for la paz. the plan was to head to rurrenebaque about sixteen hours north and into the rainforest, but there has been an outbreak of dengue (malaria, over 4000 cases of it santa cruz a bit south of here, and quite a few cases of the hemorraghic variety, too) and we´re not going to chance it. so, we´re heading back to la paz for a few days, then into peru. after that, who knows, we have three weeks before we have to be back in santiago.

con un poco de suerte, as soon as we are on the road again, i´ll have more photos and more things to say, so check back next week.

spent the day writing, more to come. . .

2009-01-21T14:00:00.000-08:00

21 Jan 2009

i once knew the stories, Part I

i once knew the stories word-for-word

but now? it seems now, the puzzle- just

never again dare to make the claim

know the pieces were never counted!

hold them at arms-length and look upon them

with shrunken shoulders of the wise ones

and yet it goes that once upon a time

of Lovers, and there were two

when they spoke only with friends

hoping only that they weren´t false,

it seems it was a place where

all things were Machines- as if

it was a simple, slow, single gear, that life

they spent at war, fulfilling prophecies

with words and wailing poetry.

falls photos as promised

2009-01-18T13:22:00.000-08:00

15 Jan 2008

on the way to the falls, we saw a rainstorm over coroico.

the third waterfall we saw was the most impressive. it was too late (and cold) to swim when we finally got there, but next time we will definately climb up and sit in the pool in the middle of this photo. for scale, there is a girl in a red shirt climbing down the falls on the left hand side.

crystal with one of our "cabana dogs," mister.

and me with, well, the rest of them.

and by special request, here are crystal and me in the same photo . i am thin as a rail and still i manage to look like a fat ass in this photo.

enough for today, i´ll have more soon. . .

for j. (who i think about every day)

2009-01-15T14:24:00.000-08:00

15 Jan 2008

we once had a ghost

we once had a ghost together
and he was supposed to protect you,
and me-
Remember?

but he abandoned us
after a while i felt
his absence
i think you did too

so now we must find other ways to protect us
like turning on all the lights in a dark room
or holding each other
when we need to

crystal and i hiked to the waterfalls yesterday, 5 hours round trip. we took our "cabana dogs" with us and it was quite an adventure. at one point we lost the trail and our dogs proved themselves males guías so we followed a water pipe. after about twenty minutes the pipe went off into landless sky and we were left on a precipice. instead of going back to find another way across to the falls, we decided to go down. two argentinians had been following us down the "path" and foolishly decided that we knew what we were doing and went with us. i had a machete with me (left on our doorstop that morning by our groundskeeper, leonardo, who perhaps foresaw our predicament) which came in handy as the path we forged quickly turned to thickest jungle. the last twenty or so meters were so dense that we could not see three feet in front of us. i am cut on every part of my body and sore from chopping, but upon arriving on that path, i would not have exchanged the experience for anything. we faced down the mountain and we- well, we didn´t win but we only got our asses kicked a little bit.

the internet connection is too slow again today to post photos, but i´ll post some of the falls, which were gigiantic and beautiful, when the connection is faster. the last fall we came to had a group of fifty or so young boys, just out of school for the day, jumping and swimming in it´s base. definately worth the hike (though my back disagrees). . . i think we´ll take a taxi there and hike back next time so we have time to swim. . .

coroico

2009-01-10T12:59:00.000-08:00

10 Jan 2008

ok, some quick snaps. . . forgive my dust spots, that trip down the mines in potosí seriously insulted my camera and i have no way to clean these up until i get back to santiago. anyway, you get the idea. . .

we were able to negotiate a one-month stay here in coroico for a cool $130, all included. the guy that runs the place, leonardo, is a great guy, super friendly and helpful. the owners are away on vacation at the moment, so it´s pretty quiet here, too. every day we wake up to the sounds of water trickling down the mountain (we´ve got a tiny waterfall to our left and a tiny stream to the right) and exotic birds calling in the trees. there are bananas, avocados, coffee, and cocoa growing wild all over the place here. in short, it´s just about paradise here. . . but enough talk, here are some pics (as many as my internet connection will allow):

view from our patio

mountain view (seriously)

tight squeeze on the way to our cabana

growing wild

ok, all i have time for. until next time. . .

sucre and beyond

2009-01-08T09:04:00.000-08:00

5 Jan 2009

we arrived in sucre de bolivia at around 9:30pm three nights ago. as the bus drove through town, the view of the city became grander with every street. it is obvious that sucre is a richer city than any we have visited so far on this trip since leaving santiago. the streets are lined with beautiful old buildings; three of the monstrous and newly restored edifices lining the main plaza have second empire roofs much more elaborate and beautiful than our house in buffalo, the best of which is almost nautical in its curvature. so it was that as we approached the bus terminal we had high hopes- unfortunately we had already experienced the whole of sucre´s beauty.
the people of sucre (at least the ones we encountered in our three days there in the city´s center) were rude, money-grabbing whiners. it was a place i would not recommend you visit unless you enjoy someone attempting to cheat you for any petty amount every time you buy or even look at something on the street or like to have a constant, claw-like hand begging for your last peso at every turn. in fact, i wish we had skipped sucre altogether as it soiled my opinion of bolivia for a short time.

but none of that matters now because after a long, back-aching night bus to La Paz and a short and beautifully scenic flota down the mountain, we´ve just landed ourselves in the bolivian yungas, a near-tropical jungle just a few hours drive from the amazon rainforest. in fact, it´s so jaw-droppingly beautiful here, and we negotiated such a great deal for one month´s rent in a sweet little two-floor cabana, we´ve decided to stay a month in lieu of traveling peru. photos to come. . .

bolivian skies, sucre de bolivia

2009-01-05T11:44:00.000-08:00

the view from our hostel last night, 4 Dec 2008

and from this morning, 5 Dec 2008

potosí y las minas

2009-01-05T10:13:00.000-08:00

5 Dec 2008

potosí is incredible. a bit reminiscent of chile´s valparaíso without the beach and the colorful houses. the city has narrow, steep streets lined with decayed and defunct colonial masterpieces of old buildings, most of which are in various states of reconstruction, that zig-zag its length from valley (where lie the railroad track and station and the foot of the city´s claim to historical significance, Cerro Rico) to hilltop. clinging snugly to the land, potosí claims the title for the world´s highest city at just over 4,000 meters (13,420 feet) of elevation, but there is no indication of this great elevation in sight, no craggy peaks or snow-capped mountaintops, and only a breathless walk up any block deceives its height.
after reading that this once-booming mining town was south america´s largest city during colonial times, i was expecting to find a great metropolis on par with santiago or bigger. instead, potosí is a small, rambling, hillside town of 15,000, spread over a number of gentle hillsides facing Cerro Rico (the Rich Hill), or Cerro de Plata (the Hill of Silver).
once the world´s most productive source of silver, cerro rico is all but tapped out, now serving as a source of zinc and tin for the locals that still mine it even after bolivia closed down operations there, halting public services to its workers, and UNESCO named it a World Heritage Site, meaning that modern methods of extraction such as strip-mining are not allowed. the handful of miners still working there today do it the old-fashioned way, with hand picks and small, handmade explosives made from dynamite and coke bottles. the miners we talked to decried UNESCO´s interference, citing that other mines in the area operated by international corporations are much more profitable, but this seems short-sighted. were cerro rico strip-mined or otherwise truly exhausted, the town´s identity would be lost, along with its draw for tourists, and likely potosí itself would all but disappear.
crystal and i took a tour of one of the mines, the only such tour we plan to take on this trip, and saw how the miners work. to say it´s hard work would be an understatement. the miners spend 6-8 hours per day extracting the stuff from tunnels 30-200 meters underground where it is difficult to breath standing still, and much more so while lifting huge buckets of ore. on the tour, we did not go deeper than 30 meters, and likely only half that, before crystal became sick to the point of feinting and nausea from oxygen depravation and had to retreat to higher ground. the miners that endure this daily forego masks or other respiratory protections and cope instead by chewing massive, bulging cheekfulls of coca leaves and potato ash (an ancient remedy born in this part of the world with far-reaching effects - coca was the basis for the original Coca-Cola (forget Classic), and more recently, of drugs like cocaine) drinking a combination of soda and 96% alcohol, and offering gifts of the same to a man-sized, blood red effigy of the devil perched deep underground. we passed on the coca, having tried it before and which leaves a sickly taste in the mouth for up to a full day, but we did try the miner´s drink of choice, which aside from tasting and smelling like rubbing alcohol, burns the throat and stomach for full minutes.
if i haven´t been clear enough so far, these guys lead hard lives. aside from disasters like cave-ins and badly done explosions, the miners working cerro rico consign themselves to an early death due to breathing in the noxious fumes and pulverized rock released by explosions. on average, the miners last 30 years underground, but death by silicosis pneumonia (mineral deposits in the lungs) can happen as early as 10 years after work begins. as a testament to this, after just two hours in the mines, crystal and i blew dark gray ash and dust from our noses for two days. it´s striking and, for someone who doesn´t have to make these kinds of decisions normally, terrifying that these men choose to do this type of work, especially now that bolivia offers no health care and enforces no safety guidelines on miners. what kind of life would lead a person to this for a meager BP$70 (US$10) per day?

yesterday was crystal´s and my 6th! year anniversary. in a way that sounds right, but it also seems unbelievable. crystal bought me a silver wedding ring for the equivalent of US$6 to replace the one i lost to the mighty Kunene on the border of namibia and zambia years ago. it is interesting to have been inside the very tunnels where my ring was mined (we even took a photo of my hand against the grimy wall as un recuerdo), but the irony that i am writing this while wearing a spoil of the very mines that have led so many men to their deaths is not lost on me. . . how we can ethically navigate our needs/wants is an old, old question, but apparently one we still struggle with every day.

on the bus from potosí to sucre, where i am writing this now, we are watching the sun set over the most beautiful landscape i have ever seen. . . the mountains are incredibly varied, some steeply of rock as painted green by rain, others forested or sweeping like low-lying hills that could be anywhere, and the clouds ,which we are actually driving through, trail off into a sky so cobalt that it appears from our vantage that the land ends at the edge of the altiplano and the world is all ocean beyond the nearest andean peak. it seems for a moment that my life is a movie set in far-off, yet unknown china, and the brown water coursing a thousand racing rivulets like thunderbolts through the wide riverbed below is racing us down, down. . .
and even here, as we drive darker into the night, veins of zink are visible running bold stripes down the mountainside, in line with the course of the andes, leading us north like sparkling black arrows.

to potosí

2008-12-30T17:25:00.000-08:00

sometime early morning, 30 Dec

To Potosí

It rained all day until
The bus arrived and the sun revealed
A sky that inspired god to Create
Whole worlds of box skirts and bowler hats,
Munchers like grazers of coca leaves.

But it shone down on a garbage heap
Miles of plastic bags clinging to desert scrub
Not to keep the birds in flight, this time
But to tie us down
To the earth

So never again must we fear
They will not know our names

tonight as we boarded the bus from uyuni, the rain stopped and the sun broke through the clouds for the first time all day, making a giant rainbow arc across the sky. it was the most powerful sky i have seen in years save that unique texas orange light that sometimes happens just before dusk. and as we turned the corner out of town the view changed from run-down, dusty border town to city dump. the people of uyuni discad their trash (tens of millions of plastic bags blown by the wind and caught on scrub brush) in a communal dump that begins almost before the town ends. the contrast was extreme and unsettling and somehow strangely beautiful - an unendingly variable sky of a dozen or more different cloud patterns and shades of pink and orange and blue shining down on kilometers upon kilometers of human waste.
night fell just minutes after i witnessed this scene and hours have passed since, but still i am left melancholy and contemplative. the bus ride was uncomfortable and my body aches from it. uyuni is a tourist town but there were only four gringos on the bus, crystal and i and one other couple some years younger than us. the rest of the passengers were every bit bolivian - dressed traditionally, the men in slacks and layers of heavy coats, the women in their oddly square, knee-length skirts, leggings and bowler hats - and the bus smelled strongly of body odor and the gamey llama meat they had eaten their entire lives and of the coca leaves the men chew, bits clinging to lips while hands rip stems in preparation for the next, grassy mouthful. i have not been reminded of namibia so much since i left that country.
i left my camera in it´s bag; my words will have to suffice.

uyuni, day two

2008-12-29T12:52:00.000-08:00

29 December 2008

it´s monday afternoon and we´re sitting in what is probably the only café in uyuni de bolivia that serves real coffee (well, you know, it´s kinda turkish but i taste a bean in there somewhere), blowing through our entire day´s food budget in one sitting. that´s what we get for eating in the plaza. we just stocked up on llama and alpahaca knit socks and caps, too. it´s cold here, and raining. i was not prepared for the drastic change 2,000 meters of elevation has on the weather. over the last few days i have been sunburnt in weather almost too hot for shorts, frozen by weather too cold for my warmest coat and pants, and blown over by wind that left red chapped rings around my eyes - a revolving pattern of weather-hell that starts over fresh every day.

we arrived yesterday around noon and waited all day for the immigration office to open. it never did, so that was our first stop this morning. apparently north americans are the only people in the world that need a visa to travel through bolivia. when we crossed the border from chile a four days ago, our passports were taken from us, sealed in a brown envelope clearly marked estadosunidenses (U.S. citizens), and given to our tour guide who was to escort us to immigration upon reaching uyuni. luckily our guide gave them back to us when we were out of sight of the border guards and instructed us to go to the office and get the visas on our first opportunity. a canadian travelling with us had an easier time - for a small fee (bribe), he was given his visa stamp upon crossing. it may be a surprise to many americans who don´t travel outside the US, but we are not well-liked in many parts of the world, especially since the current president bush took office eight years ago. and we´ve been on the bolivian shit-list ever since the ´war on drugs´ started and made life even harder on millions of impoverished bolivianos. apparently, since then, failed attempts to quash coca production has increased production more than four times over (owing largely to an initiative that paid coca farmers for every acre burned - what the architects of this plan didn´t foresee was that for every acre burned, two would be planted) to the point where farmers were plowing under food crops, which were less profitable per acre than burnt coca, to plant still more coca, leaving most bolivianos not just poor but starving.
as we entered the one-room, two-desk oficina de imigración this morning, it became clear that the it exists solely to exact a steep reciprocation fee on every american entering the country. oh, the fee for a bolivian visa for US citizens - US$135 plus a BV$50 (US$7.50) fee for waving the yellow fever vaccination. no one else in the world pays this, and to put it into some perspective, the visa alone cost me more than crystal and i paid for the last four days of food, lodging, and guided transportation from san pedro to uyuni.
but now that we´re here, i´ll say a bit about the trip itself. almost a week ago (what day is this?) we joined about 15 other travelers from all over the world and set out into the atacama desert by bus. upon crossing into bolivia, we swithced to 4WD vehicles and groups of six and proceeded to drive across almost a thousand kilometers of sand, gravel and rock. we saw no roads of any kind the first two days save the faint tire tracks left by the last convoy to pass that way. about half the people in our group were sick the first day and even more the second, due to a combination of altitude sickness (at our highest, we reached over 4,500 meters) and untreated water which had many crippled over with diarrhea and vomiting. amazingly, i felt, and feel, great save the bloody, clogged nose i´ve had since san pedro.
along the way we saw so many beautiful and amazing things, but my favorites were the Termas del Altiplano (a hot water spring where we bathed overlooking kilometers of earth bubbling with steaming ground water), Laguna Colorado (a salt water lake where a great expanse of violent red algae colors the water in ribbons of deep maroon), and the Salar de Uyuni (the largest salt flat in the world with 12,000 square kilometers of blindingly white salt 6-7 meters deep) with its Isla de Pescado (the Island of Fish), once known as Inca'ca (Home of the Incas), a coral island covered in thousands of giant cacti, the oldest of which was dated at 900 years, rising from its bed of salt where it was left stranded thousands of years ago when the the ocean that once covered this entire region dried up. i can´t wait to see the photos from this trip on the computer and start working and posting them. even on the camera lcd, they are really terrific.

we leave tonight at 7pm for potosí, an old silver-mining city that was once south america´s largest. we should arrive around 2am assuming the bus holds up (and the road doesn´t wash away, a common occurence in bolivia´s rainy season). luckily, the bus company said they will allow us to sleep on the bus after arrival until 7am as every hostal and hotel will be closed. why not just depart at 11pm and arrive at a decent hour when it´s safe to walk the streets? no idea. welcome to bolivia!

san pedro de atacama

2008-12-25T16:20:00.000-08:00

25 Dec 2008

¡feliz navidad! it´s christmas day in san pedro de atacama. yes, we´re still here. i had hoped to skip right past san pedro on the way to bolivia to avoid the tourist atmostphere and prices but a friend of crystal´s called us en route and suggested that we stay with a guy she knows here, miguel. we checked it out and aside from seeming like a really nice guy, he gave us a room at a terrific rate and offered to guide us around the area, so we ended up staying a couple of extra days.
san pedro is dry. as dry as a place should ever be. a thousand locals live here in the village and another four thousand people visit every day from other parts of chile and the world. the village itself is not much to look at - dust, curio shops, and travel agencies at every turn. but aside from this and a couple of gripes (the dry air has, i think, canceled my plans to breath through my nose this trip and our host, miguel, smokes way too much hierba and does quirky things like call us to lunch from outside our open bedroom window as we lie half-naked in siesta during the hottest part of the day), i´m having a great time.
yesterday we rented bikes and miguel guided us to the nearby ruins of the ancient fortress of quitor, then on to an archeological dig site of the trader´s market of what has been described to us as an "inca-like people." afterwards, we visited the Loa river, which is just a four-foot-wide stream this time of year at midday when we visited. the mud of the Loa is claimed to have healing powers, so much so that a three star hotel has recently been built on its bank where the wealthy of the world plop themselves in the stuff up to three times per day for a meager fee of US$1,000 per night. miguel tells us that there was once a group of people who lived along the edge of this river who, much like the Himba of Namibia, covered themselves daily with mud to protect their skin from the sun and insects. though it was baking hot, we were cold as we sat naked in the shallow river slathering ouselves with the soft brown handfuls of earth. afterwards we sat on the bank eating pears and fresh pan amasado (kneaded bread) and smoked a pica as the sun turned us into an extension of the withered landscape.
after our outing, miguel invited us to enjoy dinner in celebration of la vispera de la navidad (christmas eve) with him, his abuelita (little granny) and his neighbor omar. we had pisco sours and, in traditional chilean style, an asado of assorted meats in three courses with potatoes and salsa. we ate until stuffed; no one could attempt the third offering of meat that omar pulled off the grill at 2 in the morning.
crystal and i woke up this morning to open presents under a makeshift christmas tree rigged up the night before (my lime green towel hung over a chair and decorated with assorted earings and scarves in lieu of ornaments). too exhausted to do anything, sunburnt and half-sick from our bike ride and gorging the day before, we emerged from our bedroom only once to share a traditional chilean soup made from the left-overs of the previous night´s feast before setting out to make plans for leaving san pedro. it´s time to say goodbye to miguel, abuelita, and la casa de los musicos, but i´m anything but sad.
our first stop in town was at Turismo Colque where we arranged to take a three-day tour through the salt flats of bolivia to uyuni. along the way we will visit lagoons of every color, bathe in thermal springs, see great plains and mountains of salt as well as geysers, and know only pueblos where hot water and electricity are unheard of. it may be a week or more before i have internet access again. in the meantime, keep up the emails. the next time i write i´ll be a thousand kilometers into bolivia.

¡feliz navidad! espero que la estan compartiendo ustedes con amigos y familia. ¡me extraño todos de ustedes mucho y se quiero todos tambien!

calama en camino

2008-12-25T16:03:00.000-08:00

19 Dec 2008

it´s 2pm and hot. we are in a small, crumbling, seaside town called calama in the far north of chile. we arrived here an hour ago after an 18 hour bus ride. i woke up this morning to a view of the sun rising over the desert. it was nice but these buses don´t stop and the best i could do for photos was a couple of quick snaps of a copper- and dust- covered refinery through the dirty bus window. sometime after, we dropped off the majority of the passengers in Antofagasta and the bus attendent asked us to move to VIP seating while he cleaned the top floor of the bus. the last four hours of the trip found us in big, comfy leather seats like recliners where we watched Kung Fu Panda with spanish voiceovers, twice. i was surprised to understand almost everything that was said the second time around.
while we are sitting here at a two-table cafe outside the bus terminal, three women dressed like gypsies come up to us and offer to read our palms and tarots. it is impossible to understand their spanish and they will not take no for an answer. one of the three keeps asking crystal to bring a coin out of her purse and hold it in her hand. "no te preocupas- no es para mi (don´t worry- it´s not for me)," she keeps repeating. and just as i start to worry about the state of our valuables in backpacks and pockets they move on, although it seems that the CP$0.50 crystal has handed over was para ella after all.
finally our bus arrives and we get on. it should be only one and a half hours to san pedro de atacama, assuming this old, beaten bus can still make the trip. it seems we will be spending the night there. i don´t want to do this as san pedro is known for being overpriced and filled with tourists but at least we´ll have a chance to visit the thermal springs and perhaps bike out to the ruins of Quitor nearby.
and then. . . bolivia.

vicuña, day two

2008-12-21T19:14:00.000-08:00

just a quick update. . .

we arrived in vicuña, chile yesterday intending to take a quick trip to the mamalluca observatory for some star-gazing (which was really great but a bit long), then head back to la serena the next morning. but we found this cute little hostal with a pool and a great group of people and decided to stay another night.
vicuña is amazing. there is nothing to do here and the people are incredibly nice. crystal wanted ice cream earlier today, so we went to this little shop in the plaza de armas. after we ordered our ice cream, the old woman serving it up stopped and said, "mira, no es hecho por machina, es hecho por mano. (look, this isn´t made by a machine, it´s made by hand.)" and showed us her own, rather withered hands. oh, and did i mention that i think santa claus in in the next room?
tomorrow we are headed back to la serena to catch a bus north to san pedro de atacama. from there we´ll head into bolivia to see the salt flats and try to make our way to la paz.
and now i´m off to get one last look at the stars before we´re off for good. i think i´ll do it from the pool.

la serena, day one

2008-12-19T15:53:00.000-08:00

wow, 24 hours since my last post and 1 comment. i´m on a roll.

i´m sitting in the bus terminal at la serena, a town about half way up the chile coast, drinking nescafe expresso while the sun rises. it´s 6:30am and we just arrived on the first stop of our trip. i´ve been here before. two weeks after coming to chile, i came here with my roomate Daniel and two french girls named Clara and Anais on our way to pisco elqui. And of course this reminds me of that trip. sitting in a booth at the opposite end of this same cafe, i had my first full-blown spanish-speaking experience. and while Daniel will remember speaking english primarily on that trip, i hardly understood a word the entire week.. a lot has changed since then - four months later and i feel a different person. still not fluent - not by a long stretch - i am at least reasonably confident that i know what is going on in most situations now.
we are sitting next to a green plastic christmas tree, easily the best decorated tree i´ve seen here in chile. and with the cold morning air coming in through the open doors, it kind of feels like christmas at home. i can picture myself standing on the porch of my parent´s house drinking coffee with my dad or doing the same at my grandma´s farm. i wonder where i will be on christmas day this year. it seems like years since i spent it with family. perhaps watching the sun rise from the top of a sand dune in valle de luna? on the salt plains of bolivia? and what exactly does santa claus wear in the minds of the children of the atacama?
i´m guessing layers in coca cola red.

preparation and reflection

2008-12-17T18:15:00.000-08:00

sunday at Cafe Literaria, Parque Bustamante.

i've been reading a spanish translation of Bocaccio for language study for a couple of hours. the jugo natural is really good here, a huge glass of some tropical fruit of which i can't remember the name, and decent coffee, too. there is a wading pool here, knee-deep, and it seems that it was built for actual wading, unlike those in the US which are for eyes only. the park benches are concrete and face into the water so that the feet must go in. but i haven't seen anyone do this. people sit on the backs of the benches with their feet on the seats. there are families here, lots of them, with kids and dogs running around everywhere. the younger boys are taking full advantage of the relaxed climate: it's hot today and many have stripped down to underwear and are swimming in the wading pool.

mondrian rooftops, santiago de chile

for their ages, 8-14 years, they are quite comfortable splashing around, playing a variant of marco-polo, mostly undressed in front of a dozen onlookers of all ages and sexes, quite different from how their American counterparts would act - what if a girl friend from school were to see? it seems to me that children in the states are expected to grow up faster and protect their innocence (and the sight of their innocence) more, a true contradiction.

a man is sitting nearby, helping his two-year-old daughter touch the water. he holds her gently as she tips forward to grasp the liquid as if she could lift a solid piece from the pool, then failing that, paddle its surface. she doesn't know that the balance necessary for this exploration is his. there are remote-control boats on the water now, too, and the operators of these toys are not boys but older men. the boats are perhaps hand-built; they vary in shape, size, color, type, and craftsmanship, but their owners look equally proud. it is indeed easier to be young in Chile.

my feet are in the pool now. the water is warm, easily body temperature. the Cortone motors by, its bright paint is like a child's toy block, and I become a Brobdingnagian. another boat, some unnamed tug, comes by and sprays me with water. i don't see it coming and the boys laugh. they begin to towel off with their shirts and redress, preparing to leave this place, and it occurs to me that i am about to do the same. i am going to miss santiago in the coming months.

daniel y yo, compartando una cerveca a una fiesta de sombreros

crystal and i are leaving for a nearly three-month long vacation tomorrow. we have big plans to see most of northern chile, peru, bolivia, and ecuador before heading to buenos aires and finally settling in montevideo, uruguay for the remainder of summer. as they say here in chile, a ver. . . in any case, we should be back in santiago around march 1st.

i plan to update this blog more while i'm away, but i will not have computer access most of the time and will not be available via skype during that time. since i'm not taking my laptop on this trip, it will be at least february before i am able to update my flickr page with new photos. i will be checking email occasionally, though, and will be reachable by phone if you're willing to pay for the call at +56 8 757 2089.

there isn't any way that I can tell (who has time to figure this stuff out?) for me to see how many people actually read this blog. so if you want me to update more, leave a comment, yeah?

my flickr photostream

new stuff at revista Revolver (search my name)

jasonchickerson@gmail.com

mil tambores / critical mass

2008-10-10T04:40:00.000-07:00

as many of you already know, i'm now shooting reportage for Santiago's only english-language newspaper, The Santiago Times. i was in Valparaíso this past weekend shooting the mil tambores (thousand drummers) festival, a yearly shabang that benefits education in Chile. it was tons of fun- Valparaíso is an amazing city. a photo gallery of my work from mil tambores can be seen here.

also, Santiago has adopted the pro-bicyclist movement known in the states as Critical Mass. a photo gallery containing a number of my images and a short article about the movement can be found here (bottom of the page).

i will be updating my Flickr page in the next couple of days as well, so keep an eye out.

from redneck to beatnick

2008-08-17T20:02:00.001-07:00

ok, so sometimes i write poetry. not often, because I am lazy, but i do write occasionally. since i haven't posted in a while, i'll summarize my experiences of the last week or so with this little work-in-progess-

Wetting Feet

Surrounded by vast beaches

And deserts beyond, hot

And dry like desert vines

We must drink of each other

Or wither -

Not one other

Like us

In all this land

We bend our backs and take it in

Terns

Lend shade, give umbrage

Broad arms drag arcs toward the sand where

Leaning against the wind

We make our hold

But not so far off

There is an even greater body!

And one can hear it call, shhh-

Listen only to the air

Sweep the sand from our feet

Particles scrape against each other and Everything

Covering Everything

Coloring Every Thing, even me

And you

Move

Everything

Toward that great expanse

Wet

Swollen lips lap our skin

Leave us breath less, yes

We have come this far, but now she comes

To you and me

And will not stop

The Earth shifts and we

Sink

A little

Into Everything

The sand underfoot

Dissolves with the tide

Thigh-high

(we haven’t moved for days)

And the terns have nested, there

By the shore, this close to our dissolving

Selves

So I touch your swollen lips

With my broad hand, and find

You are

Already

Wet

new photos here and more to come . . .

now a word from our sponsors

2008-08-07T07:37:00.000-07:00

i just got word from my good friend Anna at Righteous Babe Records that another of my Ani DiFranco photos has been published. see it here.

in case you don't know me well, i spent two very wonderful years at RBR, and i miss my fellow Righteous Babes greatly. if you're interested, you can learn more about Ani at RighteousBabe.com.

you can also click the Store link in the top right corner of that page and see more of my photography presently gracing the home page there.

Porn Producers

2008-08-04T16:56:00.000-07:00

ok. . . it's been a few days since i've posted and i never got around to writing the second part of our pisco elqui trip. a lot has happened since then, though. most notably, we went to a 60's, 70's and 80's costume party a couple nights ago. that's right - choose your decade, baby. daniel and i decided to let our true personalities shine and went as porn producers. we haven't actually shot a film yet but we've definitely got the look down.

i've also added quite a few more images to my flickr page, so check those out as well.

the elqui valley - part I

2008-07-30T07:42:00.000-07:00

we arrived back from our trip to the elqui valley in the north of chile on sunday night. i had meant to make a post about the trip on monday, then tuesday, but i wanted to have some photos to share with you before i did and somehow the moments fled and here it is wednesday already. anyway. . .

the trip was a lot of fun and a lot of work, too. i'll lay it out like this.

day 1:

i left santiago with our flatmate daniel on thursday night late and headed to the bus station to get tickets. crystal wasn't able to leave until the next night as she had an interview on friday afternoon. on the way, we met up with a couple daniel's friends currently on loan from france, anais, who is working for the french embassy, and clara, who is an exchange student at one of the universities in santiago.

i have to say i don't see how i could have managed finding the station, buying the tickets and finding my bus if not for daniel's help. the language needed to navigate the endeavor are simply beyond me still. luckily, there were tickets available and we managed to catch the 11:30pm bus to La Serena. the bus was nearly empty and we were able to sleep through the night, though my language skills must have been as frustrating for the bus attendant as they were for me as he failed to wake me in the morning for tea and crackers, amusing daniel greatly.

day 2:

we arrived in la serena early morning around 6am, drank a cup of nestle's flagship powdered coffee, nescafé - which is hugely popular here in chile and most of the rest of the world and which clara described as, "not great, but good," though she detests what she called "american coffee" - then switched buses and headed for Vicuña. vicuña is a small town that is home to the mamalluca observatory, supposed to be one of the best, if not the best, places in the world to look at the stars. this is in part because, being situated in the little-populated north of chile, there is very little light pollution, and in part because vicuña enjoys 300 days of clear skies and temperate weather per year.

after arriving in vicuña, we quickly decided that we should head on to pisco elqui, our ultimate destination. apparently there isn't much to do or see in vicuña other than the observatory. when i say "we decided," i mean, of course, that everyone else decided in some language foreign to me and then told me later that we would be taking some sort of hand craft to pisco elqui. though this was explained to me in english, my brain was so fried after just an hour of listening to spanish and french that i mistakenly thought we were going to ride some sort of hand craft to pisco elqui, when in fact, the girls were interested in seeing much lamer handicrafts.

we finally got to pisco elqui at around 10:30am. the elqui valley looks very much like west texas - lots of scrub and small trees. the major difference, of course, being that the snow-capped andes don't loom over the plains of texas. even in winter, flowers and trees were in bloom or bearing fruit. dogwood wound up the narrow bricked roads and the air smelled fresh and crisp. having speant the last two years in buffalo meant that i was able to enjoy the "crisp" part better than anyone else in our group. it was quite beautiful in winter and i think it must be breathtaking in spring and summer.

after finding a hostel and dropping off some bags, we rented bicycles from a guy named pépe and coasted down the mountainside. the view was great, but the sky was overcast so i didn't shoot much. it took us about thirty minutes to ride three villages down the hill, at which point the plan was to ride back up. fortunately for daniel, his bike broke at the opportune moment and he and anais took a bus back to the top. clara, and stupidly, i, headed back up. about five minutes in, i got dizzy with what I'm guessing was altitude sickness. i ended up walking my bike about half the way back, unable to ride. the whole time, clara, who was not affected and is in much better shape that me, kept looking back over her shoulder from a distance that made me squint, shouting "don't leave me. don't leave me." well, the only way i was leaving her at that point was to fall off the cliff's edge, and i might have considered doing it to avoid pedaling the rest of the way up had i had enough oxygen in my brain to think clearly at that point. we finally did arrive back, though i collapsed against the wall of pépe's house shortly after while daniel argued with pépe about the broken bike and whether he was going to pay. anais brought me water and then pépe brought me some gatorade, and eventually i regained my composure. i actually didn't feel that sick but apparently i looked worse than i felt because every time i tried to stand, i was pushed back down and told, "don't get up - you have a bad face."

after biking, we found a juicery, bought some bread and cheese for dinner, then headed to the one bar in town. it was freezing inside and yet our pisco sours arrived blended with ice. after a while, two more friends arrived, elaine, a californian currently doing an internship at the santiago times, and laure, who is currently interning for a french ngo in santiago. we eventually headed down to the local indoor football (that's soccer, folks) game and ate deliciously fried empanadas and sopapillas and completas, which are hot dogs covered in avocado, then headed once again to the bar where we drank a round of vino caliente, which tastes like hot sangria, and headed back to the hostel.

part II coming soon . . . in the meantime, i've posted new photos from the trip on my flickr page here.

pisco elqui

2008-07-24T17:35:00.000-07:00

i'm heading out tonight (if there are bus tickets available) for Pisco Elqui with one of our flatmates and a couple of his friends. notable for being the birthplace of Chile's national drink, the pisco sour, Pisco Elqui is nestled in the andes, so hopefully there will be plenty of photo opportunities. i'll be offline until we return monday morning.

until then, enjoy the view (from our balcony last night) . . . bigger size available here.

barrio bellavista

2008-07-22T14:38:00.000-07:00

this morning i explored part of the Bellavista barrio. first impression:

mucho color.

Bellavista is where a lot of the trendy night clubs, bars and restaurants are located in the city. i left early this morning before most of the shops opened, people just starting to trickle into the streets, and it felt a bit like sneaking into a theme park before opening time.

i managed to catch this guy (above) sharing my appreciation for this bright scene. all in all, a good day. i even managed to buy a newspaper sin problemas.

i've updated my flickr photostream with a few more images from this morning, so check 'em out and let me know what you think.

art and entertainment

2008-07-20T17:31:00.000-07:00

tonight we went to the museo Mavi to view the Matta exhibition on show there. some pretty cool stuff and the museum itself has way cool cubist architecture.

sin título, 1966

óleo sobre tela

after the museum, we went for chinese just down the street. the whole time we were eating, some kid's channel was blaring from a tv in the corner. a game show was on and it went like this.

contestants: two 15-16 year old kids, one boy, one girl

setup: the boy is blindfolded, the girl eats some mystery fruit

the goal: for the boy to correctly identify the fruit the girl has eaten

you see where this is going, right? the kids start kissing, the camera frenetically zooming and panning around their mouthes and tongues. neither looks to be much good at it but neither seems to care. then, about 15 seconds in, the girl gets embarrassed and pulls away. hilariously, this disqualifies them both because . . . even though, in the end, the boy does correctly identify the fruit, they didn't go for the entire allotted time of 30 seconds, doh!

as we were leaving the restaurant, the host looked at the kids apologetically and said, "sorry, those are the rules." tough game.

el primer post

2008-07-18T17:47:00.000-07:00

ok. it's already been a week and I haven't written a single post. oh well, no apologies - let's just get started.

we arrived in santiago this monday morning. which means we've been here a whopping five days already, though it feels like we just arrived. the city is beautiful, as you'll see in a minute, and we are having a great time so far. of course, the language thing is the biggest obstacle. no surprise there, but i have to admit the only thing i heard from anyone's mouth for the first four days was "gibberish gibberish gibberish." seriously, i've carried on long "conversations" with numerous people and walked away unable even to identify one syllable of what was said, much less actually understand any words or sentences. of course, crystal is doing fine, and was much better prepared having taken a couple of classes en español at UB in past semesters. today was much better for me too, though, and i know it will improve.

ok, enough of that for now. i'm boring but the city is not, so here are some snaps to tide you over until i actually get to work shooting:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/27649354@N03/sets/72157606245228982/