Resident of Nowhere...

Sitting in the shade of a large tree in the river park near Santiago´s Bicentennial Monument, a gentle breeze shifted through the leaves, ruffling the green manicured lawn of the park and carrying away the subtle heat of the day. Modern, well cared for cars hummed along Avenida Andres Bellow, the busy throughfare seperating the park from the river. On the other side of the park, across Avenida 11 de septiembre, a tall, elegant and modernly designed building reached up toward the sky. A group of Chileans rode through the park on mountain bikes, kicking up a small, faint cloud of dust from the well cared for dirt path which meanders through the park. The spotty white clouds shimmed in contrast to the brilliantly blue sky. In the distance, the magnificent peaks of the Andes jut up into the atmosphere, and for the first time evidence of a city became appearant. Through the distance between the well manicured park and the dramatic crags of rock in the distance, brown polluted air came into view. Not in an overwhelming and disgusting way, but slightly and almost unnoticable, the air was not quite as clear as it had previously seemed.

It seems that the long, winding road through the high clear air of the Andes plucked me up out of the foriegn land through which I had been traveling, and deliverd me to the familiar. The bus had wound along through air so clear it seemed the road didn´t go towards the sky, but actually up into and perhaps past it. The immense power of a force capable of pushing solid rock that far up into the sky seemed certain to seperate the world I had left from the one I was headed towards. It seemed impossible that where I was going would be like where I had been. How could any similarity cross through that immense wall of rock?

When the road dropped down into the lush green valleys full of vinyards and fields of waving crop it seemed true, this new land was different than the one I had left hours earlier. It seemed much more familiar, much more natural. It seemed more like home.
As I sat in the manicured park, enjoying the gentle breeze and the lazy shade of that big tree, I began to wonder, had I come home? Was this new place like where I was from?

The next day I explored the central Plaza de Armas in downtown Santiago. Sculptures, street painters, vendors and beggars occupied the plaza´s cobblestone surface. There were no trees and the heat of the day beat down from above. Colonial style governerment buildings and ancient cathedrals made up the unbroken edges of the square. Businessmen bustled about, disabled street people sat pathetically on the steps of the cathedral with hands extended. Unmuffled motor scooters could be heard on neighboring streets, women yelled for taxis and powerful engines of busses excelerated, spueing black smoke into the air. This place, it seemed, was much like where I had been on the other side of that monstrous range of rock.

In an instant I remembered the cool, calm park on the other side of town where I had sat peacefully the day before. The place that had made me think I was back at home. And as I moved through the chaos of Plaza de Armas, the "foreign" things that made it up did not bother me. I did little more than notice the beggars, vendors and masses of people moving through the square. My body moved with the ebb and flow of the plaza as if it were another molecule in the muscle of the city. In a way, I felt as at home in this plaza as I had in the park the day earlier.

So then, which was it? Did that majestic winding road through the mountains deliver me back home, to a familiar place which in reality bore similarities to my own land? Or have I been gone too long? Perhaps I have become so comfortable with what before was the unknown and strange, that it is now familiar. Maybe what was previously my home, my level of comfort and my security has been forgotten or replaced by this new reality, this new tempo and surrounding. So that road through the sky did not deliver me from a foriegn place to a new location like my previous home, but in reality, I never left and what was at first uncomfortable and different now feels like home.

- AC