We arrived there at night. Too dark to figure out the lay of things. “Any idea where we could pitch up a tent?”
The guy who brought us there was a professional in layouts – he was measuring geological factors for mines. On the way he showed us one beautiful tiny bay on the ocean, he was working there for a while measuring. All is fine and suitable, so soon there will be another port for the mine stuff. He lit a cigarette, Liviana went to pee and I looked up at the moon and if not the social situation requiring to be polite and respectful, I would have hauled at it like a wild dog, that I certainly was in one of my past lives. As if covering up my sadness, I arrange my scarf around myself. And then let myself being hypnotized by the red light of the cigarette in almost complete darkness accompanied by the sound of quite waves of the ocean – now I just observe silently my sadness from the far distance. “Look at this naive never grown up, why is she suffering for all this shit? This will not change anything anyway. And in the end, in its smallest particles, what is the difference between a tree and an asphalt road, milk and cyanide, whale and not whale, pristine bay and exploited bay?”. My observer has a point.
“There is a small artificial beach, you might want to camp there for the night”, he tells us. We approach a dark landscape of concrete illuminated by cold energy saving lights. Few youngsters drinking beer. We thank politely for the ride, look at each other and without words we know what we think – it is one of the most unsuitable places to spend the night. So, we depart and walk into the night.
We are both experienced travelers and we both don’t do things like that – to look for a place to camp in the outskirts of the city that we have no idea about and this in the middle of the night. But here we are. Chile is almost surreal in its size and form, it is incredibly long, so risks like these seem to be a price to cross it in certain time – Liviana is in a hurry to reach Rio before carnaval.
From the spots of the landscape illuminated by street lights I try to figure out what is this place like. I can feel the frustration coming up, like a dog trying to figure out things with a nose sprayed with detergent. It’s simply impossible to understand this place. Like so many parts in Chile if feels somewhat claustrophobic – locked in between mountains of some sort on one side and the ocean on the other, plus a highway between of the two. We agree to go on the safer side of things and walk up to the highway police cabin on the side of the road. “Sure,” – in Chile people seem to be always ‘buena onda’ and we can camp next to their cabin on the slope.
Liviana arranges her tent in the few flat square meters of the slope. Since recently I just use a piece of tent cloth to cover myself and sleep under the bare sky. But here it feels strange. I lie down and realize that there is no way for me to sleep here. Like a dog I walk with my headlamp around the what one should probably call beach, since it is next to the ocean, trying to figure out where else I could sleep. The earth has a strange texture everywhere, I cannot figure out what is wrong with it, what is it with this landscape, so strange. Finally I find two square meters that seem to be alright. I lay down and realize the huge electric lines above myself. No way, I cannot sleep here neither. It is not difficult to develop an obsessive compulsive disorder in this over civilized world, were you can hardly find an ‘untouched’ place by the progress, I think to myself. In the end I come back to the cabin. There is an awful smell of the canalization, but I cover my eyes, plug my ears and mobilize all my mental resources to reestablish equanimity and fall asleep.
Once in a while I can hear carabineros talking about us, cars passing by and stopping at the post. Until the point that I definitely wake up. It is still dark, I am still very tired but all at a sudden I feel the irresistable urge to leave this place. So I pack almost like mad, mumble something to Liviana that I am going, and set off.
While I walk, the dawn slowly reveals the truth around me. It looks as if some higher power would take all ingredients of the natural landscape with a tiny old colonialist town, shake them all together, put in a blender and pour back on this spot of the planet. It is difficult the only way I can describe the reason of the ugliness – all natural connections between things seem to have gone lost. I walk in this early morning and feels almost like a strange dream – I am still the only living being in this landscape. An accumulation of small shacks, garages or people live there? Small child pants. I walk along the road squeezed in between some rocks. At some point it becomes impassable and obvious that pedestrian has been forgotten in the planning of this bit. Old church, the trash around it witnesses that it has been very long time it was used for the last time. A wall with a painting saying “stop contamination”. Curve and all at a sudden there are people. It is all busy. Factory? Early morning, tired faces, no smiles, scarce joy. I probably have not seen any less human urban landscape. Enter the town. Coca-cola advertisement on every door. I ask for a coffee. Get one in a Nescafe cup. People seem to be very serious here. The old building witness of some already incomprehensible joy and ease in the past- there must have been children eating ice cream on Sundays, there must have been smell of fish coming from the kitchen windows in some days of glory of this town.
I hitchhike away from this strange place that invokes just sadness and endless melancholy in me. The driver – as so often in Chile – a kindest person. Tells me that the factory is a plant producing energy for all the mines around here in the desert. There is so much money that comes around from this business of mines, but none of that is being invested or comes back to the place where it all comes from. This city could be one of the wealthiest, but the logic of exploitation makes it to one of poorest, ugliest and the most lead contaminated towns in Chile.
We pass by a dead city in the middle of the desert, Maria Elena. The mountains of sand remaining from the mining seem like arms of the monster embracing the empty dead settlement. Miners cities are more impermanent as any other ones.
After crossing several hundreds of kilometers of this most inhospitable and most exploited desert I landed in an oasis – a farm surrounded by green, new age-ish folks, fireplace, music, as if all around would be just a bad dream. In the bathroom an excellent collection of books. I pick up one of Alejandro Jodorowsky “The Way of Tarot”. I am not into tarot, but his “Psychomagic” was accompanying and inspiring me for quite a while last years, so as the personality of Alejandro himself. I was curious to read the introduction, in which he speaks about his childhood. And there I read – Alejandro Jodorowsky was born 17th of February, 1929 in Tocopilla. Somehow blown away by the synchronicity of things I almost could not believe my eyes, how strange. But well, as they say – most beautiful lotus flowers grow in a worst mud, don’t they?
Tocopilla certainly was not like this as it is now. They are all pretty much gone now from Tocopilla - firemen, ice cream, Sundays, poetry, a Lithuanian Jewish neighbor and Jodorowsky himself. All ingredients have passed through the blender of the mining industry and dictatorship. Some have been chopped into pieces, some thrown out completely.
I guess that is alright. Just contemplating permanent impermanence. And after all, if you chop the reality in its smallest particles – what is the difference between the lead in the air and ice cream in your mouth?
(p.s. Found out that maestro Jodorowsky is about to make a film about this town. More: http://www.ladanza.cl/en. Here are some pictures of Tocopilla back then: http://www.ladanza.cl/en/gallery)
