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The things we leave behind
The things we leave behind, or set apart, are usually left behind or set apart because they serve a purpose different from the one we have currently in mind. A walk around Santiago’s La Vega and...
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The art of kissing
Portada – El desayuno del vagabundo The principal purpose of this trip – to Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile – is to attend the launches in those two cities of The Vagabond’s Breakfast in Spanish....
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A short walk in Valparaíso
Neruda’s house, ‘La Sebastiana’. I first came across the name Valparaíso via Neruda’s poem dedicated to Don Asterio Alarcón, the clockmaker of that city, many years ago. Neruda’s house is a fabulous...
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At the bottom of all this sleeps a horse
At the bottom of all this sleeps a horse by Gonzalo Rojas (1917-2011) At the bottom of all this sleeps a white horse, an old horse long in the ear, lacking in brainpower, worried by the situation,...
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Life as an act of translation
Many and varied are the approaches to translation, and numerous its unsought consequences. There are those who become obsessed by the process even at the cost of progressing to the end of a piece of...
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Caca de Duende
On Sunday we visit Los Colmillos de Chaihuín, which contain, among other trees, canelo, alerce (larch) and eucalyptus. The first two are indigenous, the last a moisture-hogging outsider, the villain...
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More notes on being a foreigner (II)
“Anonymity is peculiarly appealing to a foreigner: he is always trying to live in a nowhere, in the complex of his present.” With this thought in mind I come to the end of re-reading Alastair Reid’s...
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More notes on being a foreigner (III)
Valparaíso skyline More translation – literary and the other, everyday kind – and more thoughts on being a foreigner: “Foreigners are, if you like, curable romantics” writes Alastair Reid. “The...
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Far South, foul weather
In the south of Chile, early September means late winter, and the weather is cold and damp. This comes as a shock to the system, if your body still thinks it’s summer. Driving from the airport into...
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Poems for staying at home (Day 7)
Today’s house is a childhood home in Santiago de Chile, revisited by the poet Verónica Zondek after years in exile, following the Pinochet dictatorship. The poem burrows and weaves its way through...
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