The Human Race for Carnage and Competency

These everyday things,

But what are they exactly?

And why does an ode to mundane

Daily ritual dictate the

Small yet promising plot of life that

We are given to sow?

At what point do we acknowledge

The nine to five,

The eight to three,

The daily grind,

The demise of all that challenges

And further obliterates society’s four-cornered,

Premeditated sketch

Of existence?

Is it possible to have become so

Flush with constituents of orthodoxy

That we have been stripped of malleability

And intellectual vastness,

Left naked and embarrassed to exude

Any action other than conformity?

At what point do we deny

The audacious persistence

Of a continuous slaughter,

Execution,

And carnage of both

Earth and man?

We stand here,

With a pivot radius so

Squandered we cannot even

Flee our own minds,

And we dictate.

A dictation of both

Words and power,

Of both language and policy.

We emanate a superfluous

Air of superiority,

Our chests inflated.

Yet this Earth,

This world,

Does not belong to us.

We belong to it,

And as people we belong

To one another.

We have unimaginable

Potential,

Importance,

And influence,

But to which areas we allocate

Our meaningful impact

Is what is of significance.

At what point will things change?

If we do not redirect the flow

Of our modern dystopia,

Do we really want to be the

Ones who watch this story play out,

Who watch this story end?

Humanity is our story and

The landslide that we have been

Incessantly feeding will surely show

No mercy.

A Riddle of Time

To be on the road

Means life holds some essence of

Destination,

That life expects there to be

Movement

From within you,

A shift of time and matter

From present to future.

A travel,

A journey,

An experience,

Are all products of time;

Time as a composition of

Earthly and cosmic turns,

As an unattainable concept

That we strive to perfect.

So, if time is created by man,

Is socially constructed,

And is as abstract as abstract seems to get,

How does it seem to dictate

And shape

Every aspect of living?

Time is thrown away,

Laughed off,

Ostracized,

And shoved into the corner.

Simply taken advantage of.

Yet, time is an obsession,

A daily regiment,

The global dictator

Whose reign is adamant and always demanding.

It relays and regulates every millisecond of our

Every single day,

Yet we seem to be both

Over-aware and ignorant of its concept

And its ever-lurking presence.

It’s the elephant in the room

That many do not seem to accept

With full awareness and recognition.

We have a sense of living time,

Of human time,

Of constant earthly time,

Beating in

Seconds, minutes, hours,

Turning into

Days, months, years.

Yet every single one of these is limited.

Each one is both a miniscule and a grandiose representation

Of our tread upon earth,

Of the effective sinking of our footprints into the soil,

Whether it be in forward or backward motion.

We expectantly project into the future

And hesitantly reach deeply back into our past,

Believing both will help us in our

Current situation.

Yet we don’t seem to allow ourselves to focus

On the beating time

Occurring at the fleeting moment

Of our current situation.

If the Now is disregarded,

Neglected,

Simply overlooked,

Are we then solely living for the future,

Or simply living in our past?

What happens, then, when the Now is all we live for,

Is all we believe to be relevant?

In reverence to this,

September 24^th, 25^th, and 26^th

Were impeccable paradigms of

Moving simply and willingly

With the ebb and flow

Of life’s unpredictability

And passage of time.

It was three of us

Dropped on the side of a dirt road—

One with trickling traffic, mind you—

With hiking packs in tact and thumbs greeting

Passing cars in hopes of meeting

A willing soul.

After 22 minutes,

57 seconds,

And 15 cars,

A cloud of dust shrouded us

As a truck pulled off the road

And aided the first leg of our trek

Up the mountain.

We met willing souls for

Three days straight,

Riding in the beds of numerous pick-ups,

And hitchhiking our way

Up,

Down,

In,

And out

Of the national park.

We waded through glacier water,

Stumbled upon a rock beach island

Forward-facing a cascading waterfall,

Napping in the beating rays

With the cataract exploding at our toes.

We camped directly next to

The rushing river,

The sun setting low

On the rapids,

The sound of tires on gravel road,

The beam of intermittent headlights,

And the stars opening up the sky

Through the tree line profiles—

Like perforations in black paint—

Once nightfall hit.

We used discarded aluminum cans

To boil water for dinner

Over our campfire flames,

We snuggled up with

Hot stones in our sleeping bags

And tent,

And we continuously paused in awe

Over the idyllic spread of landscape

That was panned out

Before our very eyes.

No plan,

Just a leap of faith into the

Arms of time.

To truly make the most of

The time that is given unto us,

Do we simply find a balance between

Over-awareness and

Ignorance?

How is it that we can simply master an art of

Timely equilibrium?

cachai? me entiendes? got it? living life on chilean time.

Being abroad is a big, fat melting pot of every emotion you could ever imagine. From A-Z, this is an all-inclusive, anti-discriminatory category. Some days you feel so many differing emotions that you wonder if it is actually possible to feel so much yet fail to be cognizant of what you really just emotionally experienced. Language, accommodations, city, people, lifestyle, customs, and culture: all foreign to you, yet you’re the foreigner—a backwards and stomach-lurching feeling that is all too real. Ok, truth, but that is the thrilling excitement of existing in a place in which you’ve never been previously exposed to before. It challenges the mind to remember what independence and confidence is, making you realize that, oh yeah, I really can do more than I believed to be true, or even thought possible. Exiting the comfort zone only helps you grow from the inside out, and taking risks and seizing opportunities is only advantageous to you as a whole person.

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A month and a half after arriving in Santiago, Chile and I promise you that this metropolitan region has been navigated, cursed, loved, praised, and become a home to this first-time visitor. In this short chunk of life, I have hiked multiple hills, or ‘cerros’, that have allowed me to panoramically view the smog-ridden, yet still beautiful, city skyline; I have attended family barbeques, or ‘asados’, in my own backyard in which, I kid you not, I have not understood one word of the supposed Spanish that has been thrown around—Chilean colloquial Spanish, take mercy on my soul (and yes, I was just standing there like an awkward extranjero looking at my big brothers with doggy eyes of confusion until they explained things to me in what the rest of the world knows as actual Spanish). I have visited all three houses of the lovely poet and Nobel Prize of Literature awardee, Pablo Nerudo; I have eaten the best veggie burger my taste buds have ever encountered; I have attended a Santiago meet-up for locals and gringos alike, where I met two of my now good Chilean friends; I have skied the slopes of the Andes mountain range with a Reggaetone lovin’ crew; and I have danced the night away (eh, until 3am—early for these locals) at a Chilean wedding. I have watched the Chilean news and local Chilean soap operas (Teletrece, Sres. Papis, and Pobre Gallo, if anyone is interested) with my host brothers almost every night since being here; I have learned how to TRULY eat an artichoke; and I have tried these Chilean fried things called sopaipillas (street food: aka buy on the street…it’s called street food for a reason) and I haven’t turned back since. I have had a picnic in the park with friends and $1.50 wine to celebrate a 21^st birthday; I have been told to “Have a wonderful day” every morning by a jolly old man when on my daily commute to school; I have come to fit into all of my jeans much better (sorry USA, your food is toxic); and I have met students and friends from France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, Holland, Colombia, Mexico, Chile, etc. I have been off-road biking in the Chilean countryside, totaling anywhere between 25 to 35 kilometers; I have seen Saturn, Mars, the Milky Way, and a star cluster through a gigantic telescope at an observatory in Chile’s northern desert terrain; I have gone to a market where anything and everything was free, a true ‘take-only-what-you-need’ mentality; I have been jipped $11,000 Chilean pesos in change at a restaurant until it was kindly demanded back by us gringos J; I have attended a Chilean middle school fundraising Bingo night to watch my girl Ellie Kust do her thing and perform her musical talent on stage (yes, you are now highly encouraged to check her out on SoundCloud); I have been taught how to dance by a Chilean in a rooftop bar too small for dancing; and I have attended a Chilean vegan festival with a very, very happy heart (and a stomach full of mango juice, a sushi burrito, chocolate peanut butter cake, and an endless amount of samples).

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I can say that I’ve had my wallet stolen at a bus terminal only to have it returned by an anonymous and kind (or maybe just karma conscious) individual; I can say I lived with three amazing Chilean big brothers only to have them leave Chile for a big European trip; I can say that I’m one of the seemingly few vegans (I know, there’s gotta be more of them than I realize) living in this big city, yet my host family and like-minded restaurant owners have made this situation adaptable, comfortable, and easy to maintain; I can say that I’ve already experienced strep throat, yet my dentist host brother personally prescribed me antibiotics, saving me a trunk of Chilean pesos, an insurance headache, and a lot of my time; I can say that my computer completely died on me for 4 days straight (legit black screen of death), yet my REAL big brother who is 4,918 miles away magically fixed it for me; I can say that my local Jesuit university was seized and taken over by the reform-seeking students, yet through it I have thoroughly learned about Chile’s educational, social, and political history; and finally, I can say that I arrived at school for my first day of class only to find out that the class (and many others, mind you) didn’t actually exist, yet very patient advisors took the time to sit down with me and inform me of other similar courses that are available and, to my knowledge, existent.

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There are inevitable obstacles, challenges, highs, and lows to juggling life as an American and native English speaker in a South American city and Spanish-speaking community. What I have found, though, is that it is empowering. Figuring out how to survive life in a different hemisphere isn’t an easy task for everyone, and no matter who you are, I believe it comes with adjustment. Yet, with the city at your fingertips and a plethora of others who are along for the ride, navigating the world doesn’t seem like such a scary thing. I entered this country not knowing a soul, and I have already had the blessing of meeting remarkable humans from around the globe, all here on a similar journey. Many times since being here I have humbly paused upon the thought of how much different my life would be if I had never chosen to stress myself out in order to get processed and approved to enter this country. The experiences I have had, the humans I have met, the sights that I have seen…none of them would exist if I had never taken a leap of faith upon myself. And for that, cheers.