Entry VIII
We came to visit a poet Juan Cameron.
After winding our way up switchback like roads, we parked on the sidewalk, the norm here, and walked down 30 hand made steps, each its own unique architecture of shapes and angles combining into a Rube Goldberg descent into a house with unfinished walls covered with prints by his artist-wife that combine her images and his poems. He is a blonde pale skin descendent of Scots and Jews. She is dark skinned with native features.
He greets me in Hungarian.
He gives us a tour, the basement is filled with books and a huge printmaking press. There is much art here. It’s part of the foundation.
From the balcony I see other precariously placed houses and the bay and mountains.
There is no visit in Chile that does not include drinks and plates of food and serious conversation.
Juan is a highly respected blacklisted poet because of his outspoken criticism about the current government and because of his poetry, I am told, is unemployable and ungrantable. But he does not seem bitter. He laughs easily. It seems to be a national trait the loud, belly deep, at a drop-of-a-hat laughter.
He is to introduce us at the University of Valparaiso.
It’s a beautiful campus looking out on the Pacific, It’s a beautiful place. It looks more like a Caribbean resort with palm frond umbrellas and beer logoed canvas lounge chairs. The terrace overlooks the velodrome and soccer stadium that was used by the army as a concentration camp during the coup d’etat.
It was another beautiful day with a slight breeze off the Pacific. The lecture hall was cool and modern with good acoustics and empty.
Because of national municipal elections, all posters for any activity were banned for the last week and so they, the posters, were only put up about an hour ago.
Also because of some sort of Fascist action by the administration, students called for a symbolic protest. The various organizers debated the importance of reading to an empty hall as proof of our solidarity with the students.
And while this dialectic was going on, I sat in a canvas chair, mute and ignorant and faced the 20 degrees Celsius, cloudless November heat.
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Entry VII
Notes toward, during and after
The role of the poet in the world
This topic is a difficult one for me because in Canada everything is perfect. The government is perfect, the economy is perfect, the social system is perfect, the justice system is perfect; in Canada everybody and everything is perfect.
I am jealous of the poets who come from systems that have dictatorships. Poets who live under tyranny have a sense of their role, they have an identity because they have visible targets. They themselves are also targets. At least those who oppose tyranny.
In Chile, the important question being asked and unasked is “what did you do during the dictatorship”?
In Canada, no important question is being asked nor unasked. So the poets must ask the questions themselves. How do we see our roles and ourselves in our society.
We are in many ways invisible.
A.M. Klein, Canadian poet wrote in his poem “The portrait of the poet as landscape”
We are sure only that from our real society
He has disappeared: he simply does not count,
Except in the pullulation of vital statistics—
Somebody’s vote, perhaps, an anonymous taunt
Of the Gallup Poll, a dot in a government table—
But not felt, and certainly far from eminent—
In a shouting mob, somebody’s sigh.
We are a non-issue.
Yes we have a poet laureate but who knows who it is and who cares.
At this celebration of Neruda’s 100th birthday, I have heard farmers, miners, expectant mothers, and high school students read their poems about the disappeared mothers, husbands and children.
Disappeared. Like a bad magic trick, usually at night, a door broken down, not even a knock, no abracadabra, and no gasp at the reappearance. No reappearance. Disappeared. That’s the trick.
Poetry is the highest form of language.
It makes us conscious by using language the same way we use air.
Both are part of our breath: the imperceptible necessary fuel of life.
Poems distill, clarify the daily routine of life that most of us live.
Poems are living creatures that create environments, in which we can see ourselves, hear ourselves, be the selves that we can be-conscious.
I wanted to go see Neruda’s home.
But it was closed on account of it being the day of the dead
I had to settle for his poetry.
“Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a bunch of flowers, every day, between my hands
You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.
Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off here clothes.
The birds go by, fleeing.
The wind. The wind.
I alone can contend against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
And turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.
You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Curl around me as though you were frightened.
Even so, a strange shadow once ran through your eyes.
Now, now too, little one, you bring me honey suckle,
And even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.
How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
My savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning stare burn, kissing our eyes,
And over our heads the grey light unwind in turning fans.
My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
Until I even believe that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountain,
bluebells, dark hazels and rustic baskets of kisses.
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.”
We were on our way to Talca to read at a public high school. All I remember of the ride is that we partied until three the night before and had to get up at five to make it to Talca for 12:30. All I remember is being asleep, uncomfortably, for most of the way.
Elias had invited a local poet (Moises Castillo) to join us in Talca. He was Cesar’s father’s cousin. He had published a book of poems that the Pinochet government disapproved of. He wouldn’t recant. He ended up hiding in the mountains for over a year.
The school looked and felt familiar. I remember going to a similar one in Hajdunanas Hungary. It was a large eighteen-hundreds Austro-Hungarian Empire pastel stucco walls. It had a castle size door that was kept by an elderly gatekeeper in a workman’s blue jacket.
I remember reciting poems in grade one in such a school.
I remember being called to the front as if to recite a poem and then being called by my teacher a “dirty Jew” and told to go home. It was during the 1956 uprising for democracy.
We were greeted by the Director of Discipline. She was tall, proud and assured dark haired woman with a stern look. After formal handshakes of welcome she led us into an auditorium of well worn, hard seats, a high ceiling and a rostrum with 5 chairs and a table.
I felt strange not being one of the students entering the auditorium. I felt strange being the adult.
Class by class, students were led in by teachers wearing white lab coats. It didn’t matter if they were a physics or literature teachers they wore white lab coats. The students were typical teenagers in blue and grey school uniforms.
One of them with his headphones on and a discman in his hands came up to me and asked me to listen to his rap poem.
He asked me how could become a better rapper?
“Read” was all I could say.
Before we were introduced our host announced that there would be some music in our honour. A group of native students played traditional music.
Then each of us, Alfredo Lavergne, Cesar Castillo, Elias Letelier, after we were introduced stood and saluted Moise Castillo. Then we read.
And when I read, remembered a child in front the class reciting a poem.
After the reading we were dined in the faculty dining room. A high ceilinged room with humidity splotches on the stuccoed wall. A long antique table was covered with white linen and silverware and fine red wine. And we were served a three course meal.
The conversation was of poetry and politics. I was surprised to find the conservatively dressed Director and the formal Director of Discipline talking like socialists.
And after a few glasses of wine, I was told that the dining room was to be named after me.
We were ready to leave when Alfredo discovered that his briefcase was missing. He thought he left it in the auditorium. We searched the dining room. And the bathroom. Nada.
The Director and the Mistress of Discipline were beside themselves with shame. We spent at least a half hour going over every possible place.
Nada.
We had to leave and as we were standing around the car in a hurry waiting, Elias remembered a man in the audience who was not associated with the school. He had come up afterwards to the table and milled among the crowd of students. Elias was convinced that he was a government agent and had taken the briefcase. Everyone accepted this as a very plausible scenario.
We left.
And perhaps in some secret government building they are poring over Alfredo’s poetry looking to decode some secret message.
Shakespeare reached for the stars before rocket ships
Dante went to Hell and back
Klein went insane
Neruda lived love
Poets are legislators and cockroaches
Poets need to change the chessboard so the pawns are not sacrifices.
Poets need to go down into the mines in images, in person, with language, with sounds, with rhythms and labour to give birth to joy
And live life and live death
This is how we make art visible and relevant.
And of course a liberated self is a liberated society.
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Entry VI
Went to bed early, around 2:00am to the sounds of laughter that came from the belly. They laugh so heartily. It’s their military that defends them against the constant force that is squeezing them. Their laughter and their songs stand guard. I fall asleep to the Internationale.
Woke early, 7:30 to an already beating sun. I went to the balcony where last night I saw the southern constalations for the first time. Although I’m no astronomer, I did notice different alignments. But it was the same moon and the same sun I saw back in Montreal but differently. How zen?
I did Tai Chi in Chile
Alone on the roof top doing the dance of a warrior.
I went for a walk in Mr C’s garden. He saw me and joined me, took me on a tour of his graden, like adam naming the fruits, herbs, and his bees that feed on his flowers he planted for them.
He is a man I met in Montréal where he fled to with his family after the coup d’etat. I met him via Elias who was adopted by the C’s. Mr. C, a dedicated lifelong communist, who named his kids after Boshovik heroes; ordinary Russians who rose up against tyranny.
He came back in a heartbeat after Pinochet was gone and grew this lush garden.
The man of the earth guides me through his garden.
The tastes, the smells are ripe.
This is where the revolution begins.
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Entry V
The day of the dead
“I want to do to you what spring does to Cherry trees” Pablo Neruda
It is spring here and I am the Gringo in sun rays of laughter that beats down on the exposed flesh, and blesses the fruits we pick for breakfast:grapefruit, oranges, cactus pears, apricots and others I have no name for except their tastes spills secrets on the tongue; give up their flavours the way you give yourself to me, so ripe, so willing so wanting to be in me, to taste my teeth on the plum of your lips, sucking on your flesh
squeezing your juices, licking my sweet fingers.
It is spring here.in the land of sere lushness. I am welcomed onto the terrace of the stars
by your absence that shines in the sky. Here they call it the 3 Marias. I stare at its mad brightness, pagan in its glow wild in its call; the way you spread across mountains
Aching in pleasure as the peaks and ridges of this land rip into you like a lover’s claws.
You glow with spasms.It is spring here lust in every sense.
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Entry IV
We turn off the main road and quickly enter a dusty labyrinth of small streets busy with mama y papa “depanneurs”, shoemakers, beauty parlors, vulcanizers and a million other things. They are holes in the wall, one room of their homes. They serve as little economic engines.
They serve as social centers where news is shared and discussed.
They all sell wine. They are in endangered species.
We arrive at a metal gated dead end. The garden is a feast for the senses
We drive into an organic garage and park under a canopy of grapevines.
It’s another world, a jungle of lush abundance of fruit trees, aromatic herbs, brilliant coloured flowers.
And the Castillo family greets us as warmly as the noonday sun.
On the walls, decorative plates of Neruda and Che. The living room-dining room, one room with the tv, (on) sofa and the dining room table is now laden with h’ors d’ouevres. They urge me to try the “choros”, a swirl of egg-mayonnaise mixture-texture on the tip of which is a small darkish scallop. This on premium crackers.
After sampling it and finding it delicious, my guide tells me that “choros” is also the word for pussy. No political correctness here. So I tell them that I am glad that the first morsel of food that I had the pleasure to taste in Chile is pussy.
I meet the rest of the family, Miriam, Victor’s wife, Micarella, their 6 year old daughter and her giant stuffed baboon Pinky and Victor’s cousin Patrice. We salute each other with Pisco Sours.
Now for the main course. In the summer kitchen, an open enclosure, over an open fire, Senora Castillo, deep fries (a la fish n chips) big portions of a kind of light white fish that no one knows a French or English equivalent for. On one of the walls hangs a banner with a poem by Neruda.
We put a piquant sauce of chili, garlic, cilantro sauce over it and squeeze garden grown lemon over it. And of course wine.
After an hour and still food on the table, Senor Castillo, Victor and Miriam are off to be scrutineers at the local voting station. “We must ensure honesty and democracy” Victor tells me.
Elias & I go for a siesta in the room assigned to us. We both wake at various times because the other’s snoring makes sleep difficult. This could be the beginning of a friendship’s ending.
After the siesta, Micarel, Victor’s 6 year old daughter takes a shine to me and starts to teach me to count to 10. She is full of spunk and the fact that I do not understand Spanish does not deter her from talking to me as she would to anybody else. Maybe she doesn’t understand not understanding yet.
Caesar and I talk. Actually he talks and I listen. He talks of the people’s pain in this beautiful country. He talks of the privatizing of his country. In Argentina Mastercard has bought the street signs and they now all brandish Mastercard logos. He sees this coming. There are more Coca Cola flags flying than Chilean. Santiago is the world leader in the number of people being treated for psychiatric disorder. And those are stats of people who sought help. It’s not unusual for people to have no jobs or two. Elias, you’re beautiful country is not so beautiful.
Senor Castillo & Victor return and sit in front of the TV to watch the results come in from across the country.
People start to arrive around midnight. From one moment to the next, there are about 25 people. It’s as if they appeared out of the night out of nowhere. The day, the vote, the results are smoked and drunk in. There is joy here. There are people here who belonged to the communist party when it was illegal, when they met in the dark and were chased and sometimes caught. A woman who has heard me read a poem about the tortured and disappeared comes up to me and tells me that the poem was important for her because her daughter and husband disappeared.
Tomorrow is the day of the dead.
November
Is the kindest month
When flowers first open up shyly
Under the welcoming sun
Their colours paint the quotidien
bold pastels
Nov. 3, 2004
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Entry III
Haloween, 2004
Going to Chile, I am dressed as a gringo. I wear the mask of knowledge. I looked at an atlas before my 18 hour flight.
You know, Chile looks like it is the spine of South America. I know that the Rockies turn into the Andes around there. I know of Salvadore Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile assassinated during the coup d’etat headed by Augusto Pinochet and the United States.
I take along a bilingual edition of Pablo Neruda’s Selected. I know of Gabriel Mistral but I haven’t read her poetry. Unlike Dan Quayle I know that they don’t speak Latin in Latin America.
I don’t know how to speak Spanish. I think they have Llamas there but maybe that’s only in Columbia. I know of injustices and the disappeared through my friend Elias.
I know Caesar (Igor) Castillo, a Chilean born poet and physicist, who fled the coup with his parents and came to Montreal and now lives here while his parents and brother Victor went back after 14 years, as soon as Pinochet was out of power.
I know that one Yankee dollar will buy you 600 pesos. I know that there is no comfortable position in a tourist class seat on a 12 hour flight to Santiago.
My first glimpse of Chile is from 37000 feet up; a finger peninsula jutting into the Pacific, coppery and sere. It has a dull shimmer, feels hammered; beaten into dents and dimples, pre historic.
Chile is a country parenthesized between mountain ranges.
Landing in Santiago, we are greeted by the Chilean poet Hans Schuster. Not quite the first name I expected to hear in Spanish Chile.
I am surprised by the non-presence of police and military. I am surprised by the lack of obvious machine guns slung over shoulders. The airport is very modern, clean and efficient. I am surprised by the quiet tone of conversations. When one talks, others listen.
We sit in the airport café, drinking coffee and everyone, beneath the no smoking sign, smoking. In Chile, when there are five people in a room, six are smoking. They hold their cigarettes in a very Germanic way.
I step out into the 25 Celsius spring. It is November. It is spring here. That will take getting used to. I may never see November in the same light.
The first sign to greet me is an in-English billboard.
WELCOME TO CHILE
GENERAL MOTORS,
CHEVROLET
THE OFFICIAL CAR OF APEC.
It seems ironically appropriate that a general would be welcoming me to Chile. I had forgotten that the APEC conference is being held here in a couple of weeks. In a couple of weeks Chile will be hosting the Asian/Pacific free traders festival. They will be wanting in on those outsourced jobs that actually lower their average salaries. These mega-free trade-travelling-sweat shops wipe out the locals and so have monopoly on the market and the work force. So I am told by Victor, Caesar’s brother and our designated driver for the next week. He is also out of work.
“Cutbacks he says, “and being over thirty five in Chile, makes you too old, even for someone with training and expertise in mechanical engineering.”
The Communist Party is now legal in Chile. Tomorrow in their national municipal election, Nov 2nd. they will win 4 mayoralty races and 90 councilors seats. They will get 10% of the national vote, up from 5% the last time. Victor sees this as just the tip of the iceberg.
We drive to Villa Alemana (German City) on their version of the TransCanada. Two-lane highway is in excellent shape. It also offers free towing. The other difference is that their highway is private. Every couple of hundred kilometers, we pay between 1500 and 2000 pesos, depending on distance.
Along the highway, between the road and the start of mountains, shanties and lush vineyards alternate with road side discos and motels. I don’t see too many people about. Might be noon time heat and siesta time. However, siestas are no longer possible with the new economy I am informed. The average working day, if you have a job, is between 10-12 hours and most people work between 5 ½ to 6 days a week.
We exit the toll road and begin to travel on public, less well kept and winding road. It starts to get greener and fuller. A strong fragrance of Eucalyptus seeps into the car, cleans the nostril of dust. At the top of the hill, Victor cuts the engine and we coast in neutral. “With the cost of gas being so high, many do this”.
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