I stared at the polished stale floor, three fuzzy white lights looking back at me. My eyes ached, my hair a greasy tangled mess, as it seemed to always be these days, my feet wiggling impatiently. I could feel my energy draining away. Too much concrete. It always seemed to be this way whenever I left my quite street near the lake to bus into the mangled skyline of the city. I often have heard people from New York, Los Angles, or San Francisco talking about how much they love their city. I never quite understood this. To me the city represents everything I try to forget about humanity, it brings my own hypocrisy to close to the forefront of my vision. Even short trips like these seemed to do lasting damage to my mind, to my happiness.
The minutes passed by, as the cold glass doors to the office opened and closed. I sat in one of the uncomfortable plastic black seats which were placed in a row at one end of the small well light room. A few others sat near me, all of us clutching different papers, all with the same tired look. The "oficina de extranjeros" was never an uplifting place. A small black half crescent desk was positioned a few feet from me, guarding the door to the plethora of offices on the second floor. A young receptionist sat controlling our comings and goings. She would have been pretty, beautiful even, but there was sadness about her that sucked away any hope of glamour from her look. It was as though this place would soon make her just as old and bitter as the others behind the glass door. It had been a half hour already, with a payment of three hundred dollars I would be legal. I would be able to work in Chile. I would for the next year be chained to my job. Paying the Chilean government which sold my rivers to private companies and oppresses the Mapuche was the last thing I wanted to do, but there are some bullets you must take to stay in the places you love.
Finally she called my name, and I headed down the hallway, the first door on the right. It was open as always and I sat down across from another tired looking person. A few papers were printed, my visa was paid, for now, and I left. I walked out, the small waiting room now empty, and headed down the gray stairs to the gray side walk, and noticed the gray sky. I had been here before with the sun, yet it still seemed gray. There was a lifelessness about this place. The people passed by me with the same dull accepting expression. Buses rushed to park next to me, as people scurried off and some scurried on all like frightened rabbits, before the bus would rush away. A few people walked slowly, their fingers locked in the hand of someone I assume they loved. I wondered if they were hoping that love would take them from this place, or maybe they didn't really know any better. Life in the city promises everything that we could ever want. Food, clothes, entertainment, work, but lacks what we need. The important places, mountains, rivers, and open spaces. Cities forget we are animals, and to cage and animal is a dangerous prospect.
I stood on the street corner, a throng of people clustered around me. We all looked up the street in expectation. We were all hoping to escape this place as soon as possible. The first time I ever came to this city I was a scared eighteen year old. I looked over my shoulder constantly, one hand deep in my pocket clutching my money, the other firmly locked on the strap of my back pack. I rushed in and out of the city as though a gang of "city slickers" would appear out of an alleyway and beat me senseless. I found the visa office I had now come to know too well for my liking, by pure accident. I struggled to understand Spanish, that now is feeling more normal than English. I went to the McDonald's I now find disgusting, and ate with a sense home in every fake bite. The bus swung to the side of the street and like rats escaping a flooding basement we clawed our way inside. There were no more seats left so I sat on the floor in the back, my head falling to my knees. Sleep soon found me, and in a couple hours I was back in the fresh air, and sleepy streets I called my home, Pucon.
The restaurant is closed. Quite indie music which I hate to admit I like, plays softly in the echo filled space. Tomorrow I will head to the river. One I know most likely, with people I like. Then I will come back and pace around the restaurant waiting for the few people who come looking for food on this part of town. My night will be filled with dreams that will make me wake in the morning more tired than when I laid down tossing and turning at three in the morning. My drinking is under control for the first time in months, but my mind is now wildly thrashing about.
No matter how happy I am, it seems there will always be a part of me that knows what I am doing is silly. My life is about as important as the decision of what channel to watch on the television. I believe it is important as I strut around Chile with my kayak in tow, doing what I love. However I know my time on the river no more than my own way of coping with mortality. My time in the city has taught me one thing. Our brains can not comprehend our own in-existence so we fill our lives with various important seeming work to pass the time between birth and death. For some people their jobs consume their lives and when death comes they barely noticed they were alive. For others it is pure survival and they know that if they don't sell enough fake CD's to passing tourists then they will starve, and death will come sooner then they would like. The rest find some way to justify their own selfish pursuit of happiness and die doing what they "love." In the end we all will die. At best, unless you are twelve or younger, we have forty years left. I once met an Argentinian man while hitchhiking. He told me he that all he has ever tried to do in life was go his entire life without harming anyone negatively. I found this to be a good mentality to take. But why not go one further, and try to affect someone's life positively?
What can you do with your life?
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