Ode to Solitude

Okay so this happened a month ago and I didn’t have time to put it up, so here’s my journal entry from Wed. March 5th 2014:

... After a big lunch we all decided to go into town to see the football game between Chilé and Germany. Mimi (another volunteer) is German. We went to a restaurant/pub where the game was playing and we drank beer. Germany won 1-0, and Mimi smiled, the only celebration she allowed herself in a bar full of Chileans. Peter and Hugo went to have a smoke while they grumbled about the game and I went outside to join them. A short, thin, 40-something year-old woman with long, black hair and a certain timid, rat-like quality came out of the bar- or she was walking down the street holding a small bag of flour when she stopped by our table hesitantly. There was an energy about her that I was wary of, so I didn’t make eye contact. 

“Holaaaa” said Hugo and the woman smiled and walked over to him and took the cigarette he offered her. After lighting it and inhaling she said,

“Soy Soledad y estoy sola.” (“My name is Solitude and I am alone.”)  I asked her where she was from and she said Pucón, the neighboring city. After a few minutes, Peter and Hugo went into the pub and left me and Soledad alone at the table outside. She sat across from me and held out her hand and flashed a rodent-like smile. I didn’t know if she wanted money or what, but she asked me where I was from and kept her hand out-stretched. So I told her New York and hesitantly gave her my hand. She held it firmly. Peter and Hugo started wheeling Guayo out of the pub towards the car. 

“¿Te vas?” (“You’re leaving?”) asked Soledad. I looked at Hugo and told her yes, it seemed so, and her grip on my hand tightened. “Llevame.” (“Take me.”) she said and looked at me with a lifetime full of lonely, heartbroken eyes. 

“A donde?” (“Where?”) I asked. 

“A... ¿Pucón?” she replied as if she were trying to guess the right answer.

“Perdona, señora, pero no vamos a Pucón. Suerte.” (“Sorry miss, but we aren’t going to Pucón. Good luck.”) I said and gently tried to wrestle my hand away. Peter and Hugo began to tie Guayo's wheelchair to the roof. Soledad let go of my hand and quickly got up to help the guys, giggling as they threw the ropes from one side of the car to the other. When it was done, she smiled and held her hand out to Peter. [Quick note about Peter: He is Hugo’s father and his name is also Hugo, but he is called Peter because when he was younger he wore a medallion and had long hair. People said he looked just like Peter Frampton.] Peter took her hand and she looked at him with those same eyes. 

“¿Te vas?” she asked, and I saw him look down at the hand she held hostage. When he let go there were tears in her eyes. She looked at me again, and as a final attempt she put the bag of flour in my hands without a word and waited, staring at me. Mimi emerged from the bar and looked at me like “who the hell is this chick?” then she saw the flour in my hands. I returned the bag to Soledad and said thank you, we have enough, but it's been a pleasure. Tears ran down her cheeks as we piled into the car. We drove off and Peter and I stared at Solitude as she got smaller and smaller, crying on the curb with a bag of flour as her only company. I tried to shake off the darkness hanging over my chest, so I put on my headphones and put my music on shuffle. Eleanor Rigby came on and I listened to it all the way through and thought about how plagued this woman was by her name. All the lonely people, where do they all come from? All the lonely people, where do they all belong? 

 Soledad carries her name like a cross on her back, walking through life with an aching abandoned heart. Grasping on to any kind of companionship she sees, she watches love slip through her fingers yet again, and leaves heavier each time with a loneliness that I may never be able to comprehend. 

The circle of life

        It’s amazing being self sustaining. It is how we are meant to live. I helped make adobe today. Mixing straw, dirt and water I made rectangular bricks that, once hardened, will be used to make a wall. The sheep and llamas are sheared every year and their wool is used to make yarn. I went to the garden, pulled a carrot from the ground, washed it and ate it and something about that felt so right. It makes me think about all the baby carrots sitting in plastic bags at the grocery store. Where did they come from? Were they shipped by plane or train or truck? Who pulled them from the dirt? How did they end up at this Winn-Dixie?  I know that the food we eat comes from the earth one way or another, yet a simple little fact like that is easy to forget when you’ve spent the past 13 years living in New York City where it’s so easy to consume. There I can go to a deli and pay $12 for a handful of lettuce with nuts, eggs, raisins already chopped up and served in a plastic container that I carelessly throw away in the nearest trash, strutting away in an outfit, shoes and make-up that were made from materials that have some forgotten origin, delivered to me in a bag with a pricetag made of paper from some tree that disappeared and was never mourned. 

         Humankind has done some very destructive things. I took a hike the other day through a national park right outside of Santiago. From the top of the cordillera you could see a thick layer of gray smog just sitting on top of Santiago, an unmoving cloud of pollution. Climate change and global warming is a real threat. There are too many signs and too many warnings for us to say “We had no idea” when shit hits the fan. There are too many good people in this world that sit by and do nothing. But then again, humans are extraordinary. We’ve found ways of cultivating the earth, we live on land but we fly through the skies and we sail on the seas. We have so much intelligence, so much technology and resources and the power of knowledge. So isn’t it so backwards that there are sick, hungry people? How did we become so detached from the earth? How did we get to a point where one could live in over-abundance while others right next door struggle to survive? 

        I have spent my life receiving gifts that I’ve been too blind to appreciate. I’ve never gone hungry, I’ve always had a roof over my head, I’ve had access to education, I’m intelligent, I have big bright future ahead of me, and I have a great family that is ready to pick me up whenever I fall. I am extremely privileged in many ways. I never did anything to deserve it, and I get such a guilty feeling when I look into the hungry eyes of a homeless man sitting on the curb. I think: here I am, ripping my hair out over which college to go to, and this man doesn’t know where he’ll find his next meal. I’m no better than this guy, why do I get to choose my future when he is left with no choice? Maybe life isn’t fair, and we just live. But I was born with some sense of justice, or maybe I learned it, somehow I know everything happens for a reason and what goes around comes around. The universe is showering me with gifts now and that just means I will spend my whole life finding ways of giving back.