To My Girlfriends With Love

Thanks to a truly stunning article on The Rumpus, “Transformation and Transcendence: The Power of Female Friendship,” which one of my best girlfriends passed on to me, I’m compelled to pay tribute in turn to the incredible quality, nature, and loyalty of my female friendships. Here is a little love letter to all those with whom I’ve laughed until we lost it, cried when it wasn’t the most opportune time to, danced with long straws, gotten lost or found at all corners of NY or SF or anywhere else our lives have intersected over the past fifteen years. While you didn’t all move to Santiago with me, I have found ways to make sure you all feel just as present in my life, as I hope I do in yours.

There were first friends. I’ll always remember that as children we played and chased and dressed up and imagined entire worlds within the confines of our backyards. Our adult lives may have led us afar, but the ways our childhoods overlapped will always mean ever so much to me, Sara and Suzy and Kim and Kelley and Rebecca and Shannon.

Many of my dearest go back to high school, an all girl’s school in Northern California, where I was a transfer student and could have perished from loneliness. But thankfully friends who had already forged friendships going back to middle school let me in on the fierce bonds that can form while we were writing essays and competing at our chosen sports and telling each other every thought, dream, and hope we had for what our future college lives and careers would be like. Boys weren’t really in the picture yet. Or, they were passing fixations. (That is except for not one, but TWO high school girlfriends who married their junior year Winter Formal dates and are having baby girls back-to-back. I told you, the Casti bonds run deep.)

But for a few years we were each other’s most important relationships, safely cocooned around the circle, wearing our uniforms, participating in the daily chaos and charm that is a teenage girl’s life, saying the silly things we still repeat to each other to this day, and thankfully commemorating many of these moments on real, deal film. This means you, Laura and Kendra and Katie and Kimmy and Jess and Keri and Lanli and Lindsay and Lynsey and Lauren. And, of course, Sara. And before the Casti girls, I had Whit and Kor and this means you girls, too.


When I moved to Boston for college, I might have taken the close-knit support system I stumbled upon in high school for granted. It wasn’t as easy to find ten people who understood me. I made a few close friends who grew up far from the place I did. I also learned the hard way that loyalty could easily turn on a misunderstanding, especially when you didn’t have years of history to substantiate who you really were. Thankfully, your true friends are the ones still standing when the confusion clears. That means you, Yabome and Lia and Jane and sweet Tor.

After Boston, I moved to New York to make my way in magazine publishing and figure out what life would be like now that it was finally starting in the place I’d dreamed it would since I was fifteen. My mom (who always modeled what female friendship could mean) took me to Manhattan with my cousin, Anne, who counts as the girlfriend I’ve known the longest (from Maryland to California to Brooklyn to Memphis to New Jersey to Italy), and I still remember that as we walked those streets, I looked up more than I ever had and marveled at all the life going on up there and how I wanted to join those heights.

When I was finally ensconced in high-rise apartments and offices and street-level night life, life started all right, and seemed to stall and then accelerate and then surprise in the ways only an energy like New York’s can. But I have a strong suspicion even a place as magical as Manhattan would have fallen flat if it hadn’t been for you, VF best bud Lindsay and bestie Yabome (again, thank G), and fellow seeker of adventure, Whitney.

When it was time to head back to the comforts of California and the new sides of her I would soon meet in San Francisco, I had a serious partner for all of it. That means you, Becky. For two years, we traveled to and from each other’s first and second SF apartments and wherever else our mid-twenties curiosities took us.

Along the way, we gathered such an incredible troop (occasionally frequented by the other Bucha with the mostest) that I knew lightning was striking again. I had another support system.

That means you, Angie and Mullen (and all the Jens) and Laura Lee and Yabome (again) and Lindsey and Gina and Sky and Jocelyn and Liz. And Cindy and Myryah, a duo of support and love all their own. And Tiffany and Ana and Emily B. and Courtney, too.

And Suzy/Suzer/Snoozer, my roommate of three years and generator of one of the longest list of laughs ever committed to print.

Over my seven years in San Francisco, I also realized that my cousins were just as much my girlfriends as anyone else. Plus, we all look uncannily alike, the majority of us share a last name, and we made it a priority to plan cousin nights for ’90s dance parties, dinners out, and many a birthday celebration. That, of course, means you, Christina and Angela and Ginger!!! And I’ve got to give an East Coast cousin shout out to Rachel and Edelen and Christine and Anne again, too.

Meanwhile, I got to work at a magazine with incredible women who were not only friends but writers and lunch dates and confidantes and carpoolers and saviors–and are to this day. That means you, Emily and Lindsay (you are truly the sisters I never had). And I learned from all of you, Courtney and Jess and Jessica and Stefanie and Elsie and Lisa and Lena.

As I did from many a PR girl date with Jilliann and Katya and Danielle.

And then there’s Jaime, in a class all her own because we survived together. She is my role model for writing, for motherhood, and for sticking up for yourself. (As is Jane.)

For a little while, I cheated on San Francisco with Oakland, driving back and forth every day in order to earn my Master’s degree. While I didn’t have as much time to nurture those friendships, I feel lucky that so many took root and have continued to delight as we all move on in the world, writing our way. That means you, Mary and Honora and Elsa and Jackie and Lauren and Lisen and Michelle and Shay and Zoe.

Now, I live in Santiago. All of these incredible women are many thousands of miles away. But thanks to technology, that doesn’t mean I can’t see their beautiful faces when we chat live or watch their babies grow up or reach out over chat or email when the distance feels particularly far (as I did with Laura and Kendra this week) and hear about the ways life is treating so many of my dear ones so well. Then I got the always lovely surprise of a penpal letter from Laura Lee and real snail mail from Emily! And last night, I had a skype date. My girlfriend Angie was celebrating her birthday in style and agreed to post her laptop on the bar, so that I could say hey to all of our incredible friends back in San Francisco. But technology, as we know, is not fool proof. One of the microphones didn’t work, leaving them a mute mass of smiles. At least I still got to see her face and wave hello and her boyfriend put in so much effort to make it happen that I still felt loved and missed as much as I love and miss them. These moments of connection, even when they don’t necessarily succeed, all still count, especially from very far away.

Thankfully, when I power down the computer, I am fortunate to have new girlfriends right here in my new city. Santiago wouldn’t have been nearly as soft a place to land if it weren’t for you, Amanda and Kylie and Ashley and Kirsten and Lydia and Heather and Marie and Emily and Kyle and Julie and Eileen and Sarah.

Thank you, ladies, one and all. Life wouldn’t be nearly as wonderful without each and every one of you impressing me every day with your sensational personalities and awe-inspiring talents and generous spirits. If I am anything, I am always a friend to you.

Mirror, Mirror

So, I’ve been reading about mirror neurons. I know, I know, exciting stuff. For me, it is because it’s part of the medical (and EMT and legal and law enforcement and accident and laws of Physics) research I’ve been doing for my novel in progress. The novel chart’s the female protagonist’s year of emotional and physical recovery following a debilitating accident, of which she is the sole survivor. In order to understand the tenor and depth and detail of her survival, I’ve been doing this research, thinking about how fast the makeup of our lives can change and how long it might take for our minds and bodies to catch up.

Publisher: Random House

In reading The Body Has a Mind of Its Own by Sandra Blakeslee and Matthew Blakeslee, I’m learning how it is that our brain and body function and interact day to day. Take learning a foreign language and those mirror neurons I mentioned earlier:

“Mirror neurons make these complex cells look like nincompoops. They seem uncannily smart in the way they link perception, action, and intention. Say you are trying to learn French. You can hear the sounds but you don’t know how to repeat them accurately. Somehow you have to form your mouth into the right shape and right nasal resonance to produce those new sounds. You need to bring two complex properties together: sensory detection and motor planning. This is exactly what mirror neurons do. When you learn French or any new language, they map sounds and, using the same circuitry, produce those sounds” (168).

Ah, so that’s how we do it. Honestly, this makes me doubt my mirror neurons a little bit. Sure, I’ve learned nouns and verbs and I can speak in the present (and occasionally the future) tense about a handful of scenarios that usually involve the grocery store, the post office, my line of work, where I live, or what my family is like. But thus far, my “motor planning” definitely has not caught up with my “sensory detection.” I.e., I understand more of what’s input than what I can, in turn, output.

This is a normal part of language acquisition.

Still, it’s easy to be hard on myself. I’ve clocked seven or so months in country, I’m taking a Spanish lesson once a week, mimicking what Paolo and Cha Cha have to say to one another in some amazing video footage from the early ’90s, and opportunities to practice abound just beyond the door. But… I teach English, my home life is conducted in English, and I’m writing this novel in English. I like that I can deflect a bit to my mirror neurons, even just for today. Oh, it’s just my brain! Sure, I dole out flashcards and do my Spanish homework, and feel that exhaustion that comes at the end of a 90-minute session of bringing those “two complex properties together: sensory detection and motor planning.”

That exhaustion certainly helps me empathize with the plight of my students, when they’re simply lost amongst the new words, or not exactly lost, but so mentally drained that being asked to make one more connection seems downright impossible. (In my case, it’s usually when I simply have no idea what Paolo just said to Cha Cha, no matter how many times I listen.) When I’m teaching, that’s usually the point where we take a break, talk about the weekend or favorite places to travel or pets or anything that doesn’t require reaching for new vocabulary or grammatical structures. We can give our mirror neurons a little rest, then resume. This kind of thing happens naturally in a language class when you decide to travel down an unexpected detour in the lesson plan. But now I understand the corresponding brain chemistry behind it a bit better.

I suppose the point of all this is to say I’m learning Spanish, writing a book in English, and teaching English. Sometimes these pursuits seem to have little if anything to do with one another. But on other days, they seem perfectly linked–all loops in a chain that connects the body to the mind, humanity to humanity, and language to language, interior and exterior communication if you will. Today, they all seem to say something about how we survive in and adapt to new landscapes, how we learn from each other, and how it can all come down to the mirror neurons. Or, make that las neuronas espejo.

Make that the “Austral” Hemisphere

I learned a new word today and it wasn’t in Spanish: austral. One of my intermediate English students taught it to me. I’m sure many of you know this word, but I’m also willing to bet there is at least one other reader out there who wasn’t familiar with it until today. Or, maybe it’s just me.

The map is open to oh-so-many places to see. I.e. Pucón

As an ESL teacher, I’m used to my students using the “wrong” words. I hesitate to say “wrong,” as sometimes the words they choose, while not the most common iteration, are nonetheless interesting, unique, and even poetic. Still, it’s my job to lead them to the word they intended, to tell them if I (and by extension most English speakers) would most likely say it differently. The student I mention here is the general manager of his company’s operations in Chile; he and his presentations are important. It won’t necessarily do him any good if I let him err on the side of poetry (as much as my creative writing soul wants him to).

Rapa Nui/Isla de Pascua/Easer Island

As for austral, it’s an adjective that more or less means “southern.” One of its many definitions states “of or relating to southern regions of the globe,” which certainly piqued my interest, as I sit here in “the most austral country in the world,” as my student put it. (For the record, Antartica is a continent within which various countries claim territories, but it is not itself an independent country.)

Now that I’m aware of it, I’m learning that there are Austral Islands in French Polynesia, Air Austral in Argentina, and Austral Bricks (the largest manufacturer of its kind in, where else, Australia), among various other austral-related enterprises.

Isla Grande de Chiloé/Chiloé Island

For me, the moral of the story is that language can surprise you, especially when a “wrong” word not only turns out to be right, but also leads you to an interesting revelation about your own position in the world and creative space within it.

So, I sit here in the austral hemisphere, looking up at you, writing away. But there are 15 Regions of Chile that more or less ascend Roman-numerically as you descend the country geographically (don’t ask me why Regions I and XV are at the top… a territorial dispute with Perú perhaps?). Santiago is wedged between Regions V and VI (and not included in a region per se, but known as RM, for Región Metropolitana de Santiago). In other words, there is much of “the south,” as they call it here, to see: Chilean Patagonia being at the top of the list. In fact, when I look up “Chilean Patagonia” on Wikipedia, what do I find but “See also: Zona Austral.” Once you learn the word, you see it everywhere, right?

“Austral” Fjords

I would love to see Pucón‘s lake and volcano as well as those frozen fjords that scatter along the south and where, if you look on a map, the land literally looks like it’s simply crumbled like a cookie. There’s even a preserved penguin colony down on Magdalena Island in Punta Arenas (the island is in the Straights of Magellan no less). Imagine seeing hundreds of thousands austral dwellers! We also have friends staying in a cottage on Chiloé Island, the largest in its archipelago of the same name. How could we not answer these calls to adventure?

But let’s not discriminate. To the west across the Pacific is Easter Island. To the north is San Pedro and Iquique. This map holds so much. Appropriately, my travel list gets longer the more we learn about just how much there is to explore along this skinny country. There are also places to see that are still only names to me, such as Puerto Montt and Torres del Paine, the national park that I sadly know more about because of the devastating forest fires that recently swept through.

Torres del Paine

Let’s not forget that Chile is nearly 2,900 miles long and only 265 miles wide at most. To see its austral regions will require some combination of airplanes, boats, rented automobiles, and bicycles. Fortunately, we have time to try to see it all, but with competing trips home and limited vacation time, it might be an impossible “to travel” list. No matter where we live, there are places we wished we had experienced before moving on. I can think of the Statue of Liberty in New York and a run around Lake Merced in San Francisco. But I return to those places with semi-regular frequency. Once we leave Chile, who knows how we might wend our way back.

At least for right now, the map is still wide open.

A Simple Life

One of the perks of living abroad is that you can develop some pretty amazing pen-pal-ships with friends back home. My first “pen pal” continues to be wonderful with her correspondence from home. We are writerly types to begin with, so we keep each other honest with our consistent and lengthy and empathetic exchanges. They are true letters. It’s also been an added treat to get to know her on the page as much as I have walking home to our old Russian Hill apartments, in the audience at shows, and around many a dinner table.

I have another dear friend who has reached out from afar to share her life and to really inquire into our lives here, which means so much since it isn’t always easy for others to visualize. Recently, she asked me what “little revelations” I have now that Ryan and I are one year into marriage. She wanted to know if my life felt like a dream. If anything was ever challenging. Or if it was all “just perfect fun and book-binding adventures.”

“Little Revelations” :
Finding the end of the road can look like the beginning,
Punta de Lobos, 2010/11

Her questions were straightforward and also indicative of real curiosity, a curiosity I appreciated because I knew she was looking for real answers. And I provided them, telling her what I had learned, where it was challenging, and where the fun and adventures fit in. While I won’t share on the blog exactly what I told her in our correspondence, I think it’s important to summarize my answer: we live a simple life here in Santiago. And I like it that way.

I don’t mean simple in any sort of dull sense. I just mean that we have streamlined our lives down to some rewarding basics. We might spend all weekend hanging out at home, side by side yet respectively consumed by music (Ryan) or writing/reading (me). Then we might rejoin, make dinner, have a long conversation about something I never could have predicted when we sat down, and call it a great day. I’m sure most of you have similar ways to rest from the workweek and recharge. But the simplicity feels like more than rest.

Remember you’re a team.

I’ve spoken to a few other expats about this simple Santiago life. It doesn’t mean we don’t work (we do), it doesn’t mean we don’t travel (we do), and it doesn’t mean we don’t have families to take care of or copious amounts of bureaucratic paper work to sort out along with the various emotions that arise when you live so far from your family, your confidantes, your language. We have all of that in varying degrees. But overall, it’s easy to live simply here. The social commitments are fewer for us newbies, the sense of adventure can be born of what would otherwise be a mundane trip to the post office, and we aren’t in a rush to see all of South America with every long weekend that comes around. We are taking our time because we have the time. We live here; we aren’t just visiting. I haven’t overextended myself… yet.

I realize many of these new habits are due to our age and place in life and our great fortune to be able to  live comfortably and to want for little. But our livelihood here is still very grounded in the simple realities of documentation and making dinner and organizing parallel lives and minding the details; it’s not an untethered dream. In past posts, I may have chalked these realities up to “challenges,” but now, seven months in, I also see them for their fundamental necessity to the stability of our lives abroad.

Keep chasing your own passions.

As for what all of this means for our first year of marriage, our cohabitating simple life is also one I only really know in Chile, which will make this place special no matter where else we go. Besides our actual wedding and our recent trip home, I technically don’t “know” our marriage in California, which is funny for two native Northern Californians. We were raised there, we met there, the state and its beauty and temperament are forever part of our respective characters, but we technically never lived there together. So that is something in our future that I look forward to discovering. That is the part I “dream” about per se.

The “right now” feels very real, even though “being a newlywed in Chile” certainly never factored into the the 10- or five-year plan when I was living in NY or SF. Occasionally, I’d write a travel article or plan a trip and wonder about what it would be like to pick up and move. But how rarely in our real adult lives do we get the opportunity to do so? But now, “life in Chile” is very real, as is our commitment no matter where in the world we live, as is our rented furnished apartment five stories up on the eastern side of Santiago, where I sit writing this while Ryan plays his guitar.

And whatever you do, keep finding ways to laugh.

But it wouldn’t be nearly as calm or simple or worth it if I didn’t know I had friends like my pen pals to reach out to and count on… if I couldn’t express a thought and know you all might read it and relate to it and therefore be able to better visualize what exactly it is we’re doing way down at the bottom of the globe.

Any one else have “little revelations” to share about their commitments? To people? To work? To different parts of the world? I’d love to hear!

Between Two Endpapers

You know what they say about the couple that binds books together, right? Yeah, I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one either, but I’ll go ahead and say they “stick” together.

Just a little Sunday bookbinding to keep things interesting.

Okay, cheesy lines aside, Ryan did get it right when, in honor of our first “paper” anniversary, he gifted me bookbinding materials from Paper Source in San Francisco! (As irony would have it, I too sought out Paper Source for one of his gifts–a calendar of vintage world maps. I suppose it makes it easy when there’s an entire store dedicated to the theme!)

Paper Source has the works when it comes to bookbinding.

I’d be content to accept a paper gift every year as I think we all know I’m a big fan. I’ve already written an ode to my paper planner, wherein I also opined over the reader’s adjustment from paper books to an e-reader (I’m quickly learning to love both.) And I told you all about the paper notecards I’ve grown addicted to fabricating and sending out across the ocean.

Including some beautiful fabric and paper bookcloth.

Well, it was high time to get crafty again and get going on some homemade bookbinding! My creative writing program back at Mills boasts one of the most respected book arts programs in the country, but between thesisizing and teaching and all that reading, I never got around to taking a class, which I definitely regret. Fortunately, my husband had all the confidence that we could cook up some books of our very own. So, come Sunday morning, we fortified ourselves with coffee and breakfast burritos and got to work!

It never hurts to consult an online tutorial.

First things first, we hunted down a decent YouTube “how-to” video so we would have some idea of what to do with the bookboard, bookcloth, PVA glue, paste brushes, bone folder (yes, bone folder), etc. The one above, excerpted from a four-step tutorial on how to make “Your Very Own Hard Cover Journal,” was a helpful start, especially when it came time to glue in the endpapers (more on that later).

Lining up the bookboard.

It didn’t take me long to realize Ryan’s the patient one in this (bookbinding) relationship. He was meticulous when it came to measuring, glue rationing, you name it. So meticulous in fact, that when I got a most unattractive blotch of glue on our first attempt at the cover, he stepped in and added a second layer. I have to say this was a happy accident, as the extra layer of fabric added a nice density and strength to the finished product, especially along the spine.

And this would be the bone folder.

I wasn’t totally helpless though. We also realized quickly how other household tools came in handy: pencils, scissors, rulers, a calculator, an exacto knife, and spare cardboard.

Sizing, then glueing the black base fabric.

But then it was back over to Ryan…

Time for the black-and-white-checkered overlay!

This may or may not have been when I did some laundry, wrote some notecards, and documented the process.

I’m hungry for pages!

Then it was time to adhere the grey endpapers, found in miraculously the perfect size at a local stationary store (Chile, sometimes you really come through.) This proved to be one of the more precision-demanding steps. But as long as you do it in stages in order to let the glue dry and set the whole thing under a pile of books for a good 15 minutes or so each time, all should turn out fine.

This is just to show measure.
You’ll want to glue the endpapers to the bound pages first.

After cleaning up the paper scraps, capping the glue, and drying the brushes, we lifted the pile and realized we, er Ryan, had made an awesome homemade book! With blank pages galore to fill! Ryan keeps asking what I plan to write in this book. He gave me two sets after all, this one and a larger one we haven’t attempted yet. For this, I’m thinking travel journal; for the other, more of a scrapbook. But both will no doubt bear witness to our lives as abroadians, as travelers, as seekers not only of the bookboards themselves, but of all the adventures we can fit between.

Voila!

What do you all think? Any bookbinding tales of your own to share? I’ll be sure to follow up when we complete the scrapbook. (Ryan says I’m on my own with that one.)