woke up around 9. made coffee. put on deerhunter playlist. washed dishes. thought about how deerhunter was from marietta. felt like i wasn’t fully awake. worked on the computer some. remembered lau told me to wake her up at 9:15. went to wake her up and saw her in bed nursing layla. went back to the kitchen and started toasting bread. looked at the computer. looked outside. felt like i wasn’t ‘anywhere.’ talked to lau about the visitors that were supposed to come over. told her i’d set up the tent in the backyard for the kids to play in but i needed to find a stick for it. went outside wearing flip flops and carrying a machete. walked down the road towards our land. looked at the ridgeline and felt like i was ‘walking on the earth.’ nodded to a gaucho driving a tractor. passed a place where the tractor had just mowed. looked at the roads cut into the valley and thought ‘i hate how cities are formed.’ picked up a willow branch that had been trimmed under the power lines. hacked off the knots and extra branches with the machete and started walking back. stopped at the field and looked at hawks waiting for mice and thought different things. started walking again. thought about an email conversation i had with a friend from high school and how we were both from marietta but now i was in argentina and he was in uganda. went back down our street and saw our neighbor’s dog sam had come home. listened to lau talk about how an earthquake had hit last night and sam had come back just after the earthquake. thought ‘how could we have slept through it?’ remembered then how i’d had strange dreams.
I was out working on the land.
A middle aged man rode up on a 4-wheeler.
He was looking for horses that had gotten loose.
“Do you ever see horses out here?” he asked.
“Yes, but I haven’t seen them out here in a week.”
The man nodded. He was standing up on the footpegs of his 4-wheeler and looking around.
“There’s a paisano that keeps his horses out here,” I said. “But I haven’t seen him in a week.”
The man said gracias and then rode off.
Afterward I thought about how I said these things in Spanish.
Hay un paisano que tiene caballos aqui.
I thought about the word paisano.
I thought about how I could say this word in Spanish and it had these different connotations that were somewhat but not exactly like “peasant” or “farmer,” and that there was nothing derogatory about these connotations, but instead they seemed to exist outside of positivity or negativity as if when you said paisano it was just like saying “a man” or “a tree.”
Un paisano.
I thought about how words in English seem “infected” by connotations and associations.
I think of certain things beyond just “white” and “man” when I hear or read or say “white man.”
I think of certain things beyond just “black and “man” when I hear or read or say “black man.”
Describing someone by his or her physical features is culturally accepted in Latin America. You can call someone “gordo” or “flaco” (which is how I’m often addressed by someone who doesn’t know me, “che, flaco” or “che, loco”) or “negro” or “moreno.”
None of this is insulting.
In Spanish you can totally say “hey, did you see a big fat black dude a couple minutes ago?”
You can “see you later fatty,” to your wife, in public, without it sounding negative.
As I went back to work on the land I kept thinking about how this is a more natural and freer way to think and talk.
And I kept thinking how there must be (or have been) even more natural and freer ways to think and talk that either exist or have existed someplace and in some point in time.
walked to the land with layla.
set up mid.
put blanket in the shade.
hung out with layla in the shade looking at view of piltriquitrón.
photo by laura bernhein
started digging postholes.
looked at position of sun.
took off shirt.
kept digging then rested
photo by laura bernhein
looked back at layla sitting on the blanket by the mid and felt and thought and visualized several things at once including this scene in mexico when lau and i had just met:
photo by laura bernhein
repeated loudly: ‘the mid has been deployed!’ until i heard layla shout: ‘middipoy!’
photo by laura bernhein
just received an email saying one of my poems, ‘memories of the wailing wall’ is going to be anthologized in a book with the working title before god closes his hand: poets respond to the holy land ‘situation.’
We moved to Patagonia because we thought we could raise our daughter here in a culture and in a way that didn’t exist back in the US.
That doesn’t mean that we “like it better” necessarily.
There are things I like about here more than I like there.
There are things I like about there more than I like here.
When I say “we live in Patagonia” people form certain images in their minds.
Before we moved here, whenever I thought “damn, we’re moving to Patagonia,” I formed certain images in my mind.
The images I formed were mostly wrong.
I believe the images that people form are mostly wrong.
A couple days ago a TV producer described me as “being down in Patagonia in your bliss.”
I feel like this is wrong.
But I feel like this is so common.
People don’t want the truth, they just want the particular concept or brand you represent that they can “resonate with.”
I’ve written a lot about the Colque family that lives next door.
Layla and I were just walking around with two of the little girls, Fatima and Abril, and one of the little boys, Anton.
We were out by the road picking apples. On the other side of the fence, the older Colque kids were playing soccer with a half-deflated basketball. One of them dribbled it around the side of the house and then another one was screaming “Faggot, faggot” (Maricon).
Over the last couple of days someone has dumped a bunch of trash on the sandpile where the kids play. Today I pulled out a board with this gnarly nail stuck through it. I showed it to them, more as a way of saying ‘watch out’ than ‘throwing trash is wrong.’
The truth is that people throw trash on top of kids’ sandpiles here.
the truth is that the kids chase each other screaming “faggot!”
This is the truth about Patagonia.
There’s no “bliss.”
And that truth is stronger than any “message” I might try to give them about trash or their language.
Any “message” I might deliver is equivalent to that TV producer’s concept of this place being my “bliss.”
It may exist as a concept in my mind, but it has no truth at ground level.
And thus to try and “apply it” is a way of reducing or obscuring truth instead of recognizing it.
But I believe this–trying to apply concepts–is the way most people think.
And it is always the way thinking is “attributed to” more than one person, say a group or party or organization.
The packages and categories allow one (or many) to add or subtract things to truth and thus “use it for their own purpose.”
They use it to gain power over others.
They use it to lie to themselves as a way of justifying things.
They use it because “hey, it’s business, not personal.”
They use it because it’s “company policy.”
They use it because “this is how it’s done.”
They use it because it’s a “commandment.”
They use it because it’s “in the bylaws.”
They use it because it’s “marketable.”
They use it because it’s “hip.”
They use it because it’s “moral.”
They use it because they’re afraid.
There are things I can do though.
I can pick up the trash.
I can stay at ground level.
I can tell my story.