1 month on earth – part 1
It is Monday the 26th of February, the beginning of the week following the presentation on the 22nd. Claudia is already in Vienna on her way to Salzburg. I’m about to fly off to Brazil. And Amanda and Daniel spent the night last night in a half abandoned public hospital in San José de Maipo after Amanda was stung by a bee at an asado and had to be rushed there when she couldn’t breathe anymore. They gave her a shot of adrenaline, which did the trick, but also made her think she was having a heart attack. They kept her there overnight for observation in case she had a relapse. So Daniel and Marta (Amanda’s mom) were given their own beds for the night to keep Amanda company while I had to find my way back to Santiago along with Gerardo and Claudia from Sevilla. Car, Metro, Bus and Taxi. After several hours we made our way home, cooked a Spanish Omelet and Humitas. Drank wine, told jokes and went to bed.
Somehow I see this bee-sting incident as part of the whole process of ON EARTH. It’s not just that our running tag line is that anything that happens to us in these days is part of the project. I think there is something more trenchant in the whole thing. Something about how rapidly things shifted from general well being, fun and relaxation to a life threatening situation which changed all of our plans and we unexpectedly found ourselves in strange places and strange situations which required quick thinking and all of our mental and physical resources to deal with it all. One minute we are eating a barbeque, people playing ping pong, listening to music, talking, jumping around a field covered with women’s underwear that the wind had blown off of a clothes line, dog barking at a stick she wants someone to throw, people sitting in the sun. A free Sunday after weeks of intense work, after visiting family friends who have a pet puma that they saved and who lives in a cage with three dogs. After climbing up a mountain side and bathing beneath a waterfall. After talking intermittently through the day about the project and what happened and how we plan to continue. Then our plans for the evening, coming back to Santiago to have dinner with Anne, to enjoy our last evening together in Chile before we all flew off in different directions. And after all of this, enjoying, relaxing, reflecting, talking, planning, such a tiny thing as a misstep without shoes in a field of grass covered in women’s underwear and we find ourselves scurrying around our own mortality.
Somehow a large part of the project so far seems to be about unexpected changes of plans. About placing our wills against forces of nature and chance only to realize that we are so much smaller and more insignificant than the environments that we inhabit and which move us. And it seems that one of the great tasks within it all is to be flexible enough not to be broken or killed and to try to enjoy the trip. To find the moments of joy and brilliance and then to try to figure out a way to tell the story. To tie it together in some way that it makes sense, and can be put in your pocket and taken with you and shared.
So February 22nd 2007 is a case in point perhaps of this nascent philosophy of ON EARTH. In the next entry, I will try to explain what happened. Both what we planned and then how it actually turned out. The day took some last minute unexpected twists and turns. Look for “1 month on earth – part 2″
Leave a Reply