An Illustrated Account of Torres de Paine

Torres de Paine, someone said it meant blue,

Seemed to mean a lot of other things too.

Like winds that wouldn't let you fall,

That held me like a kite, hair dragged back and gortex blustering,

45degrees to a rocky floor,

Eyes frozen open,
Cheeks pinned high in aerodynamic grin.

Winds that sucked snot from the nose,

Pulled at my rucksack, tripped feet and shoved me about like a ring of bullies.

Meant misjudging distances.

Peaks competing with clouds, getting closer, opening up and weeping into blue lakes. Really blue.

Startled hares, dead silver forests, wind blasted prairies along the way too.

Birds everywhere, gloomy light glimpse of fox and mountain cat.

Calm and eerie in the darkening woods, curious orange fungus Mario persuaded us to eat.

Walking into the 11 o clock sunset, somehow not there yet. Surely soon.

Pitching the tent in the dark, burning the pasta,

Pissed navy twats harmless enough, I look like their mate "Tooty". Corey's headtorch leads the way. Serious sleeping bag envy  - I swear I'll wear all my clothes tomorrow night.

Waking sore and unslept, into me the cold had crept,
But soon banished by porridge and thought of glaciars.
Bounding back to my Buck´s Mills days,
Agile boy with bendy bones, flying from boulder to boulder; rock to rockpool,

All buckets, nets and excitement.

Now feet flowing a flurry of anticipation,

Granite peninsular yielding further and further,

The onslaught of the copper sulfate cavalcade.

Scrambling up the final jagged incline,

Howling and hurling an armada of icy daggers that sting the skin and pin against stoic rock.

The marble beast is letting us know who´s boss.

Crushing down 60 kilometres, it snakes its way out of a veiled lair,

An artificial horizon hidden amid snowy sky. Inhospitable.

Some sort of calm as it draws breath, ready to begin another assault,

Each way of fury hitting harder than the last.

We get the message, and we´ve had our fun - we turn.

But Geordie stands transfixed, motions a don´t move finger
- Something is approaching, hurtling in off the wind, distant, distant, then suddenly pending and
Opening its wings like a parachute, stalls, hangs - Condor.
Condor at 2 metres no more!

Enormous bird with body like a beaver, legs like fat cigars, tucked up perfectly parallel,

Everything aligned and sleek - the bird that´s too cool to flap when it flies,

Cocks its vulture neck to check us out, check we´re not dead. I meet its crystal eye.
A suspended moment, lived in, atom bomb in the mind, instant blank, all thought ended.
Bird that looks down on the rest. Deity of the Moche, Chimor, Incas and many more.
Millennial  reverence imparted in a moment. A benediction.

With whooping disbelief we beat a defiant retreat from the half forgotten glaciar´s rage.

Looking down, then up, shaking our heads as we go.

Exchanging glances, trying to say something. Still dumbfounded - a satisfying feeling when shared.
The only thing that remains is to jump in amongst the icebergs and try to ride one.
See if we can´t win the glaciar´s respect too.
Condor circling loops of approval overhead, three pioneers slip into the murky blue, descending rapidly.
The shock is instant. I had not prepared for this.

Not for genital submergion. What about the boys?  How would they cope? How would I even get dry after?

I´m fully clothed before I´m back in the water again. Beginning to get warm, but the icerberg´s waiting.
Once in a lifetime opportunity I tell myself. The boys will be ok, they´ll have to be. "Ahhh fuck it!"
I hurriedly re-undress.

Stopping to chop up chorizo.
Propped up by my pack, a pleasure to throw down anywhere - waterproof trousers, never a wet arse.
Never questioning the walk ahead. Slipping into an easy rhythm. Up at the front, views opening out.
Idling between memories that no longer hurt,

Out at the front leaving tracks in the dirt.

Hurrying ahead to take a photo:
Colours that contrast; contours converging; frames that appear between water and sky, the trunks of trees, land and cloud, one mountain and the next,
And light, always light.
Torrential rain in the afternoon, trudging through the lowlands, letting it fall, no thought of shelter
- More variety and just wonderful.
Down by the lakes, little hills full of flowers: burning red, princess shoes and all sorts.
Tunnels of gorse and tiny leaved trees. Rain pooling in narrow muddy paths. Shoes saturated.

Wind picking up again. Swinging wooden bridge, one at a time, good fun.

Arriving under gloomy pines. Things falling thunderously far away.
Getting the food on with freezing fingers. Smell of sausage frying mingles with the damp.
A jumper thoughtfully lent.

   Hand slapping the tent, Jerome´s deep Dutch voice "C´mon guys." Horrified to be woken but glad to get going. Discovering how good granola goes with porridge. Packing up the tent in the cold and wet, a miserable chore - couldn´t feel my fingers at all. Up across the boulders and into the woods. Spine chortling with delight at walking without equipment. No backache, brownie in coat pocket.

  Stopping to watch a family of birds. Parents teaching the chicks grace and how to find food on greasy moss. Making a mockery of the rapids. Skimming across gushing ranges, alternately riding and defying startled currents that would knock a man down. We stand mesmerised and ignored by these stream street performers. Art has few natural predators.   Everything blends to grey around the mountain´s shoulders. Then comes the blizzard, and the mind goes with it. Blown down the disappearing valley, resting on leaves. Everything changes. A snow mood descends. The wind stops, the procession continues, filling footprints with fresh feet. Creeping. Crunching self consciously in the soft silence. Feeling of mystery and intrigue. Everything seen so far disappeared in white. Like falling through the wardrobe. Ocuppying the same space, we take a new route back. Crack, boom! Slithering slopes. Avalanches, that shake the leaves from branches, the thunder heard before. I taunt a lofty glaciar, looking for a rise. "I don´t believe that one could send us a block of ice crashing. Hasn´t got the volume, nor the know how. An adolescent glaciar that one, a little underwhelming and, sickly, yes somewhat sickly. Hardly a few metres thick I´ll warrant. No, certainly not capable of.."CREAK! THUD! Eyes race to the scene, only ever catching the sifting aftermath. We´ll call this one a draw.

  

Flying saucer clouds and other drifting shrouds,

Cast shadows on spectacular scenes.

Shifting from glassy lake to cragged rock,

Eclipsing thought, killing the clock,

Giving birth to new senses,

Rubbing dirt in camera lenses,

And chasing off things badly thought.

Sucking on a square of chocolate,

Resting malevolent blisters,

Long grass under the arse again.

Striping down a carrot with swiss army blade,

Munch another biscuit, cream cheese and crackers,

And up again, keen to beat the rain, arrive with daylight to spare,

Maybe David and Helen will be there.

Living out of bin liners -  the only insulation against daily seasons. Black bag next to black bag in a black bag. Can´t see where you´re going in there, all textures equal. Game of hunt the thing I need. Charity case to the Doc for things I didn´t bring. Things to fix my ruined feet, that slide and rub in boots bought on the cheap. Learnt a lot about how to walk. "There´s no bad weather, only bad clothes." Some savy norwegian. Smug and warm.

Tired, quiet and aware,

Pulling bits of twigs from my hair.

Fur in cuts on fingers and dirt under the nail,

Fanning the feeling that lingers,

Walking in the rain and hail.

Walking in the wind and sun,

Thinking without words,

None to self doubt or reprimand,
None to choke or shun.
None to write eulogies,
Retell tomfooleries.

None to sculpt identity,

Nor harness a moment´s intensity.

None to desrcibe images, explain the rule of thirds,

None to fall into verbal malaise,

Wandering with flowers and birds.

Tired, quiet and aware,

Letting my feet go where they dare,

Letting anything go,

Wishing you and many more were there:

Drinking from streams on all fours,

Leaping cross puddles.

Feeling boots drying for the first time in days,

Watching giants hover in the haze,

Reflected uneasily in thick blue waters,

Lakes of uncountable age.

Sitting at their edge throwing pebbles at a floating log.

Perched on a ledge, granite towers emerging through the fog,

Lit up red by the sun´s first rays,

Exalted and peerless,

Fearless in many ways.

Remember telling someone I loved a long time ago,

About climbing to the top of a mountain to let out a wild yolpe.

- Woke from frustrated dreams to this thought,

And told it to a sleepy ear,

One which knew I´d go looking, and didn´t need to hear.

That let me go looking: for forrests, lakes, dessert and ocean,

For fjords and condors.

The colourful and abundant, the desolate and featureless,

And for my mountains, at the top of which I find I´m speechless.

Lots more Snappy Snaps!

 

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The Naming of Species

Crossing over to the last bit of land,
The last inhabitable cluster before the pole.
Nothing north about this south.
Sun glaring on a featureless terrain,
Once lit by fires, huddled around by the fat greased eaters
of mussels and little else.
- The most primitive he´d ever seen - said Darwin.
The only able to survive down here too.
- More like animals than humans - he continues.
Unable to make such distinctions?
Maybe Darwin was right.
In the distance, the limit of vision,
Dark forms shiver out of the haze,
Arrousing suspicions in the mind´s gaze.
Causing the pupils to enlarge,
A chain reaction.
What giants hover in the mirage?

Clouds that have curdled in Fuegian skies turn petrol streak colours around the sun.
I develop an enraptured neck ache.
Seeing in impossible detail, I wonder, how much of these floating fjords have I imagined?
How much retina? How much mentality retiscent to leave it at that?
A mind desperate to recognise: stitch truth in lies; put name to form.
- Oh yes, its one of those! - A categorical relief.
Keeping moments of mystery brief.
Why such satisfaction, such mental peace?
In fixing forms in allegories. Substitutions.
For things felt and remembered.
The metaphysical, metamorphical, immeasurable mescallany of that self same mind.
Is it nature or culture? That needs certainty for security.
To navigate by join the dots,
By constellations of associations in a universe of words.
Strewn like litter from a car window,
The packages of every thought, sight and sensation consumed,
Utilities picked up, put down and resumed.
Uniting and dividing,
Through lines drawn across maps.
And between we call it and what it is.
Putting things in boxes to build a world:
Cathedrals and public toilets, factories and gardens,
Anything you like as long as its not already something.
Divide and conquer - thats the rule. Divide and shackle.
Create a meaning from a mistrust of plurality,
Undoubtedly real but not the same as reality.
A picture kills a thousand words,
A sound or sculpture a thousand more.
A phrase is a vulture, a paragraph a whore,
Picking over the carcass of intuition, and renting out ribs
to brandish in a war of understanding.
Solemnly, we play our parts in the pantomime.
Driven by love and compulsion,
Warped by greed and revulsion,
At difference and the unnameable, uncontainable, shameful instinct,
So difficult to shake.
"Prejudice: roundly condemned and wholly upheld - part of being a human"
The dictionary doesn´t read,
"Part of an intransient need, to know what is from what is not."
A flawed system but the best we´ve got.

Ooooh Empanada

Empanada Argentina, tan tierna y cariña,
Oh empanada, no mi dejes nada!
Sabrosa y crujiente, ha cautivado a mi mente.
Rellena de carne o queso. ¿Que quiero? Pues eso!
Rellena de tomate y cebollas, damé una, calientapollas!
Empanada la recién hecho, mas provocativa que expuesto pecho.
Empanada de éxtasis, voy a morir por ti,
Mi colestrol llenará muchos baños, mi quitas muchos años!
Pero no me importa, si mi vida sea corta,
Porque todo me apetece, es una empanada a que Argentina pertenece.

Doldrums

Got a negative mood on
Yeah, I got my brood on.
Bound to make mistakes,
Bound to find the pages bonded:
Some past neglect, resurrected
and thrown in my face,
Some lurking paralysis
that won´t give chase.

Carrying round a bad smell,
Like to set it down a spell.
Like to just say ´yes´ and do,
Be it saving lives or sniffing glue.
Abandoned my good plans all too easily,
Curiosity got the better of me.
Carrying round a bad smell,
Don´t sit close to me.

Breaking my own rules,
Making fast fools
of my own feet.
Footloose and fancy free,
Or so they ought to be.
But I got my negative mood on
Yeah, I got my brood on,
And I don´t know where to be.

Minds need making up,
Mine does - I´m waking up
Seeing things all too simultaneous,
Imagining many outcomes, many paths,
Many more than the one I´ll wear down,
Wearing my thorny frown,
Dragging my feet,
Dragging a bad smell,
Dragging friends down with me,
Plenty of room in this gloomy cell,
Plenty of possibilities,
Swollen with possible hostilities,
Though all imagined, few possible.

Escape is not an epiphany,
Nor a manual read from cover to cover.
Not a possibility: a job or a lover,
Just one foot in front of the other.

Parting Company: Part 9

Jane:



Jane: Thanks for coming with me.

Stella: Don´t worry about it - its horrible going to the hospital on your own. And i needed to get out of the hostel anyway, been going crazy couped up in there with all this rain. You still feeling the same? Hmmm, well if you´re going to be sick or anything like that just pick a target that isn´t me. Maybe that guy, he looks half dead already, maybe it´ll wake him up a bit.

Jane: You´d make a lovely nurse.

Stella: I wanted to be one once! Don´t think I´d have had the patience tho.

Jane: So what do you do?

Stella: Well, I was teaching in a primary school

Jane: Don´t you need a lot of patience for that?

Stella: Yeah, but you get to take your frustrations out on the naughty ones. Probably shouldn´t say that! Well, I dunno - when I started, obviously I knew they´d hve to fear you a bit when it came to discipline. I thought a strict policy of doing exactly what I said I would when it came to warnings and punishments would be enough. But after a while, with the persistent offenders, it only showed up how limited my options were for making life uncomfortable for them.  I know it sounds a bit, harsh, but without a system for discipline, none of them learn anything.

Jane: No, no, I agree, I spose. Well, I don´t know anything about it really. So are you a bit of a dragon then?

Stella: I am now, yeah - they buy into the pantomine of it more. I guess with kids, there´s more fear in uncertainty.

Jane: Not just kids.

Stella: Yeah. like old people being less scared of death. Aren´t we being profound!

Jane: Makes a change from asking someone where they´ve been travelling so far and then nodding and say "Oh, ok", "Yeah, someone told me it was really nice there."

Stella: Actually, I´m not sure that´s right - about the old people. So what about you, what do you do?

Jane: I´m a curator. Well, assistant curator.

Stella: Oh yeah? So you´re the one who decides which paintings go where and what to say about them?

Jane: Something like that. Although the temporary exhibitions often come with instructions from the lending gallery or museum. Lots artists insist on certain display conditions too. How did you know it was art?

Stella: I didn´t think about it. Although now I do I can definitely see you hanging paintings more than putting dinosaur bones together or something!

Jane: Yeah, I always hated puzzles and lego and things like that when I was a kid.

Stella: Oh my God, Lego was all my brother thought did or talked about for a few years. Poor little Kyle.

Jane: Why poor?

Stella: Its a long story.

Jane: Perfect for a hospital waiting room!

Stella: Ok, well once I caught him making, and forced to admit to making "a lady´s part". It was hideous. And I wouldn´t have know either - I thought he was doing the grand canyon or something, except that he was drawing the pubes on with a pen when I caught him - laughs- he went beetroot!

Jane: Oh no.

Stella: It gets worse. So, he slams his hands over it and squeals, "Its not a human´s!" - laughing- He was so embarressed, I´ve never seen someone look so desperate. He made me promise not to tell mum and dad. I didn´t tell, but I told my sister. She made him put it back together and said he had to make the male "compliment" and that he´d better do it more justice than he had done the female one or she would tell mum and dad.

Jane: Poor little guy!

Stella: I know. At the time tho, we just thought we had something we would always be able to use over him, that we´d be able to get our way in every argument. So anyway for a couple of weeks or so he´s secretly working away in his bedroom at night on this lego dick. We were terrible, we kept saying that if it wasn´t life like enough we´d tell. The pressure made him ill though. Mum an dad noticed how pale he´d gotten and he even got a day off school for it. So eventually he comes into our room one night and wakes us up to tell us, "Its finished." We jumped out of bed and we already pissing ourselves laughing as he shuffled us into his room, begging us to be quiet. But when we got in there, we were speechless. It was incredible!

Jane: How big was it? Oh, God, that was uncouth!

Stella: About this high. Definitely a scaled up model! But it was so detailed. He´d made like, little seams of different coloured bricks to give it veins and it had this kinda delicate foreskin and everything. We we dumbfounded - here was the finest lego penis ever created and we were the only people who would ever see it! I was sort of proud of him, and then felt really bad about making him do it. I mean, he must have got pictures or diagrams from somewhere. He couldn´t have done it from life - he was only 10 or so at the time. Imagine this terribly shy little boy going into the library to try and secretly photocopy the rude bits from a biology book or something. It must have nearly killed him.

Jane: Aww, you were horrible!

Stella: I know. When we saw how much work he´d put into it and how must distress it must have caused him, we both felt it too. He was crying, out of fear or relief, and we apologised there and then - which was something that almost never happens in our family. We helped him disassemble it. It was strange actually. A weird bonding moment. The three of us sitting there on the floor his bedroom, breaking up this incredible lego dick we´d made him build. Probably the only time I´ve really felt close to him.

Jane: Wow, that must have really given you a new perspective on lego!

Stella: Yeah it really did. I could actually see the point of it more. Like, if I´d made something like that I´d be really proud of it. And so when he made a boat or spaceship or something normal, I could understand the satisfaction he got out of it. And maybe a bit how making things out of lego kind of helped him understand the world, or process it or something. Why did you hate lego?

Jane: I´m not sure, I suppose it frustrated me that there was a perfectly good model all broken into little pieces, waiting to be put together again. I guess I don´t have much patience either.

Stella: Or you´re a perfectionist.

Jane: What makes you say that? I mean, I probably am, but

Stella: You said it frustrated you having a perfectly good thing broken up, altho, doesn´t lego give you the possibility of making something perfect?

Jane: Yeah, but I didn´t see the point when, at most, all it took was a long time to put it all back together again.

Stella: Or some patience.

Jane: Or some patience. And bearing in mind of course that I didn´t have a terrified little brother to make me a majestic penis to get me into it!

Stella: - Laughing - I´m so glad you weren´t in my class!

Jane: Oow, why?

Stella: You´re a questioner. Its a good thing - but you were probably one of those kids who needs a load of reasons for anything before you´ll get on with it.

Jane: I probably was a bit of a nightmare. I think I was quite stubborn. Definitely much more strong willed when I was at school, college even.

Stella: You don´t think you´re strong willed now?

Jane: I´m not sure. Sometimes I look back to when I was 17 or so and miss having, or well, being sassy.

Stella: - Laughs -

Jane: No I mean, confident, well no, sassy, why not! But I´m also embarressed of the way I acted sometimes. Unaware, y´know?

Stella: Yeah, but I think everyone looks back on themselves like that, in smiles and blushes.

Jane: No, you´re right. I spose I just feel disconnected from all that. Like, I still identify with that 17yr old completely, and see her as me. But I´m someone different now aswell and I wonder how that other person would do things differently if they were me now - if they´d let themselves get into situations or, be more proactive - sighs - I´m sorry I´m being pathetic

Stella: Don´t be silly, just sounds like you´ve got some regrets. Who doesn´t?

Jane: Not regrets exactly, it, it would be a long story too and I´m not even quite sure how it goes yet. Anyway, you said you were working in a primary school, how come you came out here?

Stella: Oh, well that would definitely count as pathetic - I broke up with my boyfriend, or well, he broke up with me.

Jane: What´s pathetc about that?

Stella: Well, its a bit cowardly isn´t it? I´ve run away, or at least that´s what my family thinks and its probably what people at work suspect.

Jane: Maybe you´ve run to something?

Stella: It would be nice to see it that way. But I never really had any desire to come here before, I´ve got no desire to find myself or anything like that. I was very happy with who I was and my situation at home. I just couldn´t bare the thought of having to bump into him or his family around town and hearing about him from mutual friends. I mainly came out here cos it was far away and there would be no associations with him here.

Jane: But you´ve come to a place where you don´t know anyone and don´t speak the language and that´s not cowardly.

Stella: Given how much I feared the alternative it was.

Jane: Well, even if you ran away, why is that bad?

Stella: Because I was happy with my life. Happy with my life outside of things with Carl and I did nothing to try and keep it. And it hasn´t worked anyway. Every new place I imagine what it would be like if he was there with me.. End up thinking about the past almost whenever I´m alone.

Jane: I know what you mean, but I suppose its just a habit and it will change.

Stella: Perhaps, but however hard I try to block him out he´s still there. I still think about what he´d like here and not. I can even recognise some of my attitudes or sort of things I say as his. Parts that are now me but came from him, I can´t imagine that going away.

Jane: ...

Stella: So you´ve had a break up recently too?

Jane: No, no I haven´t. I´m sorry, I suppose I don´t really know wat you´re going through at all. I just came away to, well to have some time away from him, but also from everything really.

Stella: So he´s waiting for you?

Jane: Yeah. There was nothing wrong between us. I just needed to feel in control things again, be my own person again.

Stella: I had that feeling too once. Used to get frustrated with Carl for it, or maybe more at myself, but it came his way. But in the end I realised that despite wanting things that I could have with a fairly settled life and despite having had plans that changed because of my situation, I was happy. Just realised that you can´t have it all. But I guess there´s no choice now.

Jane: Well then maybe you´re getting somethign back then. The opportunity for all the other stuff?

Stella: Yeah, I suppose. Sorry I´m being so negative.

Jane: Don´t worry about it. I´m not sure I´m doing a great job of being sensitive about it!

Stella: Its just good to feel ok talking about it. Feel quite embarresed about it all in general.

Jane: Why on earth would you feel embarressed about it?

Stella: You know, the whole pathetic jilted woman thing. Don´t want to put that on anyone.

Jane: Would it be any different if you were a man?? Look, these things happen - how can you be expected to feel one way or another? Of course it gonna hurt and, at least you´re doing something about it - what more can you do?

Stella: Dunno, something that seems to have an effect! 487, you´re next.

Even More Snappy Snaps!