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Back to Chile
Photos
► city&harbor
► pablo neruda
► the mountains
► the river
► the sea
► the spa
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The City and the Harbor |
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The city in the valley, vital and fit, is a booming trench. Where ever you
look, old houses are tore down, new ‘departementos’ built. Needles, towers,
pointing fingers, flashes reach to the sky. Day and night work goes on,
cannot be stopped. The sound of ramming is on all sides, hoisting cranes
turn around, pulley-blocks come down, sounding hammers. The sound and the
fury of progress, expansion, growth and wealth being piled up. Echos all
over the place, intermingling and never dying echos. Silence is smothered in
sounds around the clock. Dust rises high up in the sky. And through its loud
beating heart winds the silent river, shimmer the sunny banks, pops up the
small park of sculptures. Small, white pebbles in the broad riverbed, maybe
small fishes between the blue shining stones. The bridge is a wide, modern
bridge, a show piece between sophisticated banks.
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Santiago, I walk your
streets in the shade of tall trees. The clean swept sidewalks I walk, along
the lawns around the appartment towers. The lawns with the sprinklers, the
rakes, the trash bags filled with autumnal leaves. And I see the old man in
his wheel chair, the gray haired woman on the bench, the tall man in the
opening of the door, who looks exactly like my best friend for years already
dead. He knods, I smile, he is my friend, again forever.
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Santiago, the capital. Flashes of the city on my retina. Fountain and
fashion. Mall and metro. Design and decolleté. Brasswire and brassiere.
Women made of wires. Dance and desire. Heat and fire. Love.
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It is early in the afternoon. Downtown, small streets and shops and all of a
sudden a square. The building from 1857 is (neo)classicistic. We climb the
steps. A lady hands out the tickets we buy and says ‘your Spanish is
excellent,’ and she looks proud, my daughter. That evening we attend the
opera Tosca of Puccini. The seats in the auditorium are covered with red
pluche, the balconies are carried by half naked goddesses. The people are
old and young and well dressed. My daughter a fragile flower. In the
interval the waiters in white dress have wings, serve coffee.
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Valparaiso, a drive of two
hours or more from Santiago. The commercial port of the country full of
warships and containers. A cool breeze and fresh air, people hanging around.
In a small alley uphill, in the English section a mural shows its bright
colors, two women, two ostriches. I love the colors, the colors painted on
the wall. A mural is not a woman, a woman is not an ostrich. I love the
colors and the women - not the ostriches. I love the eggs of the oistrich.
Sometimes a woman is an egg, a giant and vulnerable egg to love and
cherish.
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