A place

What defines a place? Things? Objects? Light? Walls? Sun? Darkness? Sounds? Scents? Foods? Tastes? A dog crossing the street among many cars? A bottle of wine on a table while pies are eaten? Churches, many, built a long long time ago with a lot of sacrifice by some for the forgotten glory of only a few? A street filled with flowers and colors and shops and people? People, that's it, people, that's exactly what defines a place. I arrived and saw nothing but a small house painted white, I had no idea what it was. "Let's get inside", I was told. We did. We all got inside and what I saw had nothing to do with the outside. This place, a place, had a bit of everything, records, plates, bicycles, mannequins, other dolls, little light, tables, a lot of music, old clothes, little light, people, chatter, people, smiles, people... Friends. A place is only a place, what makes it unique is who we meet while there.


Cordoba, Argentina, July 2009

Le Tour of red

As soon as we arrived I jumped on top of my bike. My companions have no idea that for me this is much more than a simple ride, that each time I sit behind the handlebars I am preparing for a race. Ah Ah!! The Mendoza wines' tour transforms into Tour de France, Giro de Italia and Volta a Portugal inside my legs. We take off and from the start I take the head of the group, dictating the pace. I will not be surprised, must be aware of anyone trying to escape this group of seven. In the middle of all this I look over my shoulder to control the distance and check my competitors' faces and, all of a sudden, I start to hear a whistling music that I know from long ago. As if by magic, instead of an Armstrong or Agostinho I start to feel now like the Piraña from Verano Azul (Blue Summer), followed by his friends in this case, the opposite of what usually happened in that Southern Spain TV show. My heart calms down, as well as my legs, I start to look around and to enjoy the scenery and the wind that blows lightly against my face. Winery number 1, the visit gets started, that's how we make it, that's how we keep it, that's how we drink it, and the little Indurain that was left inside me starts to transform himself at the pace that Bacchus takes over my body and inebriates this tour. 'Bodega' 2, one more Malbec, 'Bodega' 3, a Torrontez, 'Bodega' 4, InduWho? Piraña, that's who I am now, cycling lazily, but without the usual ice-cream in his hand, whistling in my head that music while the wheel keeps going, more or less straight, on its way to one more 'Bodega'...








Chacras de Coria - Mendoza, Argentina, July 2009

p.s: for those who forgot about it or for those who do not know yet this jewel of Spanish TV from the 80s, please follow the link to the intro video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epgyu_2QieE

Neruda's windows

Pablo Neurda, the great Chilean poet, the great writer of global literature... Neruda a poet... Hell no! I also thought that, how innocent was I?, but now that I saw where he lived I know he was not a poet, neither a writer. He was probably a hand, a huge hand, a human pen that wrote endlessly. Now that I saw, felt, smelled, listened, tasted the windows where he lived I know Neruda was not a poet but a translator, a mere and simple scrivener of that immense sea, of the colors that pile up in the hills shaped as houses, of the smell of fresh fish and maybe warm bread, of the blue sky and the birds that fly around, of the people who walk hidden in the steep streets of this paradisiacal valley that embraces the sea, of the boats that undulate on it, of the mountains that contemplate it from a distance. He was a vehicle, a medium, a being through whom words drained to the paper, those words that entered through his eyes, through his nose, through each pore of his skin, through each wave of the restless billowy sea splashing strongly against the rocks, through each sunset he admired from his static boat in his black Isla, through each shell he collected, through his mouth, thought everywhere. Neruda could even be lazy if he wanted, as he woke up every day inside a painting painted by divine beings, not having to do anything, as the whole world entered through his bed in a heartbeat, in the form of a readymade poem. A hand he was! Pablo Neruda a poet... Neruda was not a poet, he was a poem, the poem of the windows in which he lived...













Valparaiso/Isla Negra, Chile, June 2009

Gosh, how I miss the sea... It has been too long since I last heard it, felt its salty smell, squeezed wet sand in my hands, looked at its floating horizon. I can't be too long away from the sea and it's been more than a month already... But I can almost feel it already. I left Valdivia a while ago, this road's relic has been moaning for too long, we must be arriving to the beach... It stopped. I get off the bus. There it is, the sea. Hmmmmm, what a wonderful smell. I stop by the cliff and hear nothing but the waves splashing against the many rocks that abound in the little bay, which today is grey. The wind blows strongly, bringing little water sprinkles that refresh my heart, he who is missing Portugal. I go down to the sand. A friend sees me from the distance, comes closer, little by little, curious about me, looking at me, questioning me, wondering who I am, this person that just invaded his deserted beach. But he doesn't mean me no harm, he does not even want to expel me from his beach, instead he stops by my side and gazes at the sea together with me. He also likes to watch and feel the sea water, feel the wet sand, be here listening to Neptune playing with the rocks. Suddenly a group a seagulls flies by and he leaves running like a rocket, jumping around, trying to catch them without success. I run with him, why not?, after all the beach is ours, deserted of people but with plenty of sea to enjoy. I stop, he continues. He comes back, once more he stops by my side looking at me. And this time it's me who decides to start running like crazy. He follows me, jumping after me this time, being more successful in catching me than the seagulls, as I only fly in the wings of the wind and the waves. I stop, it's time to go back. He stops as well, looking at me once more, as I do to him. We chat a little while, I turn back and start going up the ramp. He looks at me, gazes at the sea, the seagulls pass by once more and there he goes again... I keep going up. A friend, one more friend that I leave along the way, who will stay in my memory, as I will most certainly stay in his. And we'll both follow our paths, each one his own, happy for having met and richer for having lived this brief moment together. From up the cliff I look at the sea one last time and see him in the sand, ruling happily in his own kingdom, looking at me one last time as well, waving his tale. He was a dog, I was a man, it could have been the other way around, who cares... What matters is that we both watched the sea together, without expecting anything else from each other, just enjoying the beach, sharing this moment, simply living. And wouldn't it be beautiful if it was like this always? We have so much to learn from the animals...





Niebla beach - Valdivia, Chile, June 2009

1004

I'm living in a postcard. The corners of my existence are not bound by the margins of any piece of cardboard but by the ones of the lake that fills my view. In this dynamic postcard in constant mutation the sun sets and rises up again, over and over, reflecting itself in this immense mirror of cold and crystalline water, which alternates between calm and revolting, as if it was a miniature sea, an ocean confined within mountains, of which I have a complete view, as if I was a giant who calmly observes the world. The postcard moves, falls asleep, wakes up, constantly in the same place, while everything around changes. This sort of frozen image contains in itself many people, moving very fast, as ants, although passing through very slowly. Its only the optical illusion caused by the slow pace at which everything moves inside this postcard, making that everything else seems disproportionately fast. I feeling good being here, while watching a movie which I direct, the movie that runs slowly on this postcard of a land that, despite not being my own, will always belong to me. I command the movie as its director, but I'm only the director of random events that occur all around me and to which outcomes I am complete stranger. Still, I feel like if I was seated in a chair, coordinating the movements of those who come and go, arriving and departing, without ever noticing that arrival and departure are nothing but a continuous movement, perpetual, a constant trip in which arrival and departure are only an illusion made up by us, equivalent to the illusion of memory or that of the future, the projected ideal of what will never happen. I live in a postcard, illustrated with colors, sounds, wonderful moments, people, friends, diverse flavors, places that exist here but belong somewhere else, to an old Europe that is on the other side of the ocean. I live in a postcard that contains a world hanging by its feet, or maybe the world on its feet in a planet itself upside down. I live. The postcard stays here, chained to this immense freedom it exhales. I do not stay here, instead I keep moving, free, chained to this place, but moving again, filled with the immense freedom that being here gives me. I will be back one day, and every day, even after leaving I will never move from here again...




Hostel 1004 - San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, June 2009

Ice, a whole lot of ice...

I should have listened to the guide... He told us specifically not to taste the glacier! Ice, cold, tongue, wet... Stubborn as I am I stuck my tongue in the glacier anyway and now I'm glued to it, freezing my ass off while hanging by my tongue... And I didn't have to fly so close to the glacier, couldn't I just have seen it from a distance? Now this living mountain of moaning frozen water pushes me down as well, taking me with it at the pace of millenniums, while slowly descending towards the margin where it will lean on some day. I look at the white and blue sky, so I don't feel the vertigo of the long distance that separates me from the water below my feet, which awaits for me patiently. Every now and then I feel the vibration that anticipates the deafening noise the breaking ice makes when falling heavily in the water. But I'm not afraid, instead I wait patiently for my turn, hanging by my tongue, closing my eyes so I can feel part of this mass that both freezes and fascinates me. And, suddenly... I feel the vibration close to me, ear the noise, and there I go, falling down helplessly, in slow motion, till I dive in the cold water. I was lucky, it could have taken longer... Now I just have to let the water sail me lazily down the lake and wait for the sun to melt the ice so I can have my tongue back. And in the end all this for nothing. After all the glacier tastes, who could imagine!?, like ice...









Perito Moreno glacier - El Calafate, Argentina, May 2009

Strait

I look at the Strait. I'm imagining Magalhães with its beard flying with the Strait's strong wind while he looks at it, as I do now, with a curious look in his face, the curious look of the Portuguese of those times, who fearlessly sailed around the World. Looking for what? Fortune? Fame? Purely to overcome their own limits? I think they simply came because they had to. Magalhães came because he had a vision, because his instinct told him to come. And I think this especially because he refused to give up when the Portuguese King closed his doors to his ideas. Instead Magalhães looked for alternatives, knocking at the doors of his Spanish neighbors. He came because he had to. He didn't care about being mistaken, he knew being wrong was part of life, the act of living. And he came to give his name to the World, spoken nowadays in diverse ways and with pronunciations distinct from the correct Portuguese one, where difficult ães, ãos and ões abound, those sounds which non-Portuguese speaking noses can't pronounce properly. And he had to really want to come here... If it is difficult to be here today looking at the Strait in its cold wind, inside warm clothes of synthetic cloths that didn't exist back then, meters away from a warm and comfortable café... I imagine how much more difficult it was back then, with years spent on a boat too small for what it had inside and for the vastness of the sea outside its thin wooden walls, while meeting foreign and distant lands, with unknown climates, people, animals, plants. Death was the only certainty and glory nothing but a mere and distant possibility. But they came anyway, him, others, so many, discovering a World which had always existed but which they connected to the rest. I look at the rough Strait and ask myself where all the courage of those Portuguese has gone... Not the courage of conquering land, that doesn't matter, but the courage of conquering different worlds, those of their own fears, breaking their own barriers, overcoming the inertia so they can fight for their dreams. I look at the Strait and can't see that courage anymore... But I can see Magalhães and his courage makes me want to be like him. I look at the Strait and, gosh!, look how beautiful it is...











Punta Arenas, Chile, May 2009

Behold the end of the World!

The skies do not open so that flaming fires fall of off them. There are no dragons flying around either, spitting the fire that Magellan saw one day in the distance. Infinity does not open in deep cracks and craters in the ground, ready to swallow us, and the sound of strident trumpets does not echo in the skies to warn us the end is near. I cannot even see people running around, scared, terrified, lost or found. From the sky little white snowflakes is the only thing that falls and the white dragons I can see are indifferently pecking the water. The fire, long ago extinguished by greedy conquerors, exists only in the name of this land and in the memory of the indigenous that once lived here. Instead of deep craters huge mountains elevate in the skies, making us feel small, swallowed by its beauty. And the calm sound of the Earth rotating around its own axis and around the sun is all but deafening. My calm steps follow those of who surrounds me, showing the Apocalypse did not arrive yet, or just that the end of the World is all but ugly, being wonderfully beautiful instead. But, just in case, I grab myself, turn around, and continue. It may even be the end of the World, but it is not the end of my journey just yet. There's still a lot of ground to cover, I just need to turn around and go.









Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, April 2009

Southbound Patagonia

My head is trembling against the window, while my eyes follow this continuous straight line that points to infinity, the infinite way South I can see in the horizon. Tomorrow arrives equal to the present, arid, flat, of all shades of yellow and brown, resembling a calm sea this boat with wheels sails while gently undulating. Only the sky cuts through this pastel polychromy, a sky of an intense blue where white clouds show up once in a while, frosting the sky with a low-hanging cotton candy, low enough to be reached by a small jump or by a children's dream. This monotony of an intense and flat beauty is broken here and there by a small elevation, by little houses that show up timidly, by an abrupt sea view that reminds us the one we are sailing is fake. Along the way I stop many times, for days, weeks, hours, slowly, in the laziness of being here. I stop in Viedma, doorway to this vastness, as well as Las Grutas, deserted beach of a summertime which has already ended. I take my time in Puerto Madryn, where the sea watches me, where animals come on vacation, where I know the last two penguins out of the hundreds that have already headed somewhere else, where the whales will arrive very soon. I fly through Comodoro, the place where all the winds meet in their way to the end of the World, where they will turn back to blow again throughout the Earth. My head trembles against the window. I see the sun go down, falling asleep, disappearing lazily, shutting my eyes together with his. I have no idea if the line will be there when I open them again, continuing straight and endless. Maybe a new horizon will arrive, but who cares anyway... I only know the line will continue, more or less straight, and I'll continue with it.















Somewhere in Patagonia, RN3, Argentina, April 2009