Creative Endeavors - My Biography...

I’ve told you my mother’s virtues. I see pictures of her from then, beautiful, long, straight brown hair. Bell bottoms. A sight to behold. Full of life and energy and a smile. That being said, there was always a strong depressive streak in my mother’s side of the family. Genetics, culture or both, you decide, but the stories of old about my grandfather and grandmother, stories that began to emerge about my uncles and cousins over the years, it would seem that many of us would find our ways to great struggles with mental health. My mother was no different, if I understand correctly. Postpartum depression certainly took its toll on her after my birth (per her admission) and over the years she continually struggled with depression. Anxiety, low self-esteem, body image issues, all of these are themes that appeared in her life as a child and which my siblings and I carried on, to varying extents. Most of my family members and many extended family members finally just started a life long treatment of antidepressants and other such drugs. I eventually found my way to psychedelics and marijuana, but that is certainly getting far too ahead of the story. 

One time in an Ayahuasca ceremony, I asked Madre Ayahuasca (the Spirit of the Plant, Guarding of its teachings, Protector of the Jungle) to show me the lineage of my own anxiety and depression over the years. She took me back, step by step, revisiting backwards over the years all these major events that formed a line through time, each step further consolidating and further deepening the tendencies. She took me back and back and back until finally I found myself suckling at my mother’s breast. At that moment I was both watching myself suckling and I was, once again, myself suckling at the breast. There in the milk, mixed with nutrition and love and warmth and protection, was hidden a thread of anxiety, sadness, confusion and depression. I looked at my mother’s eyes and could see the worry on her face, the feeling of being alone.

It can’t have been easy for her. She was young, barely spoke English, moved to another country to follow her husband to whatever he chose (she had been vehement that she did not want him to become a diplomat), had no friends, far from her family and life of forever, in a strange land. Anybody could have buckled under those circumstances. There was no internet then, no cheap flights, no cheap phone calls even. She worked during those years at Firestone (I think) as a secretary, or something of the sort. This would be a pattern for her. Every country we moved to over the years she would start at a new job, always starting at the bottom, as a secretary or assistant. By the time we had left the country she had always managed to rise through the ranks and move to a position of more responsibility. This would then be cut short and she would have to start over in another place, this time with a beefier resume. This would be a pattern for all of us, really. Start something, make friends, learn an instrument, take a class. Leave the country, leave it all behind, new friends, new instrument, etc.

I don’t remember anything about Canada. When we left in early 1980 I was just three and half years old. All I remember is what I know from photographs. A cute, chubby cheeked toddler. Knee high socks for all the kids. Mom and Dad sporting huge sunglasses. Another diplomat family from Chile that we hung out with. Gorgeous summer days. Me in a full-body snowsuit walking in the snow for the first time in my Dad’s old 8mm reels. Stories that my brother and sister tell, about the time my brother left a paper plate covered in swear words on a neighbors door. She wasn’t very nice apparently, but he made the mistake of writing his name and where he could be found on the paper plate. Oh well, he was never cut out to be an outlaw. For the best, I assume. We were a new family and the world was fucked up but innocent. Or maybe we were just innocent. All we knew was traditional Chilean values. Family, church, white heteronormative normalcy and all that good stuff. My father was strict and my mother had no say in it, really. But those were good years for the family. We were financially limited because my father had to prepare for the years when we would live back in Chile, but we were certainly not poor or even close. Our needs were met and there was an entire road ahead of us. 

I don’t remember anything about Canada, but I have a fond feeling about those years and that place in the center of my heart. Years later I would revisit Ottawa and be impressed by how much it retained that same clean, sunny feeling that I had in my heart and was afraid had been an illusion. I imagine it’s a good city to live in these days. Also years later I met a friend who, “coincidentally” had also been born in Ottawa just a year earlier in the same hospital. He was the son of Colombian parents, so I imagine maybe the nurses compared these two brown haired babies that had been born over the course of a year. Maybe not. But life is full of funny coincidences and stranger things have happened. That’s for sure. 

All this would make for the first curious contradiction of my life. In early 1980 my family moved back to Chile. I just moved, not moved back, having never lived there before. From the clean, sunny democratic joy of Canada we screamed down to dictatorship, garbage in the streets, ugly grey cement buildings and machine-gunned military looking cops all over the place. Welcome to Santiago, Chile in 1980.

Hey everyone, thanks so much for the feedback. I really, genuinely appreciate it. Alan, please, by all means feel free to illustrate the story or add whatever touches you feel are necessary. It's a free zone, right? :)

Dave, I totally got ya'. I laughed when I read your post and didn't think of it as negative not even for a second - the nature of it was clear: friendly and kind. Thank you.

Mike, your feedback is tremendous, thank you so much. You pointed out something that really truly is ironic and very perceptive. How we make sense and meaning of the world....that's beautiful and really profound. I've been exploring that idea a lot in the past year but hadn't really thought of it in that way. I've just been learning more and more about the lives of authors, the stories behind the stories, and the way that their literature (fiction is what I've been looking at mostly) is a reflection of who they are and how they understand the world. It may sound funny, but this concept really found about when I learned about the backstory behind The BFG by Roald Dahl. It's this beautiful metaphor about his daughter, measles (which killed his daughter) and he, the BFG himself, would spin the yarns that his daughter loved to hear every night. And like the BFG would fight against the man-eating giants, he, Roald Dahl, fought against measles by advocating for vaccination and promoting it actively. 20 years after his daughter's death he was able to transform her passing into this incredibly touching and beautiful story. He made sense and meaning of the world, somehow. A lot to think about there.

Thanks again, y'all. I'll try to tickle the clouds and make the lightning strike* again soon.  *metaphor stolen

Kesey B, what are you writing these days? Care to share? I'd love it to read it if you would. :)

And Alan, I kinda feel like a Bryen biography could be sort of fascinating in a Manson family, impending doom sort of way. The transition from whatever his childhood was, to one of the true and only 200 or so core of JGB followers right on through to ardent Trump supporter, I mean, there is definitely a story to tell there...

Thanks, Surf, appreciate it. :)

Chapter 02 - Chile, 1980-1982

Chile. 1980. My family. Ok, backstory first:

Quickly: In the late 1960’s the Chilean center-left Christan Democrats and the left-wing politicians in general began and implemented a policy of agrarian reform under president Eduardo Frei Montalva (also a Christian Democrat). There was a lot of radical change happening; it was the 60’s, after all. Riding this wave, the Socialist candidate Salvador Allende won the 1970 presidential election, leading Chile into three very dark years, followed by even more dark years. There are many threads that are invoked to explain the downfall of Salvador Allende, depending on which political agenda you choose to believe. They all have some validity to the objective observer. Political incompetence, sabotage by the Chilean ruling oligarchy, American Cold War interventionism. The end result was General Augusto Pinochet at the head of the armed forces, bombing La Moneda (the presidential palace) and taking over the command of Chile for the next 17 years. Some might say he took over the presidency. I’ll stick with ‘command’. Pinochet’s dictatorship was bloody and cruel and could be discussed in depth from many angles...but, for our purposes, two things matter: 

First, it was in the context of this dictatorship that my father became a diplomat. Not because he was a sympathizer of the dictatorship, but because diplomacy was a family tradition. His father was still at that time a Chilean diplomat as well. If memory serves, he was the Chilean Consul General in Los Angeles, California in 1970 and ‘71. Further, my father’s grandfather, my great-grandfather, was also a diplomat. He served in the early 1900s. He was the first Chilean ambassador to Bolivia after the War of the Pacific, an event which cooled Chilean-Bolivian relations to a near freeze until today. In those days diplomats wore great plumed helmets and a sword by the side of their uniform, when in dress uniform, of course. It was a big deal, I guess. The sword remains in my family today having graced my grandfather’s wall first, now my father’s wall, and my elder brother’s wall awaits it patiently for a day we all hope is still as far as can be. 

Diplomacy is just a part of the legacy of my patriline. The fathers of my fathers have incredibly colorful backstories, and ultimately the legacy of diplomacy for three generations locks into that pattern in ways that would shape my life and play an enormous role in my development as an individual. My first know patriline ancestors arrived into what would later become the United States of America, probably around the late 1600s. Likely a German immigrant, he found his way to Pennsylvania for reasons unknown. Pennsylvania at this time had an interesting mix of German, Irish and Scottish immigrants and all three of those lines would mingle in my family via the multiple lines of ancestry. From Pennsylvania my ancestors would eventually meander down to Tennessee sometime around the late 1700s, early 1800’s, I reckon. Next, they moved to the small town of Westport, Missouri in the mid-1800s. My Great, Great, Great (possibly missing one more ‘Great’) Grandfather built, owned, and operated a Tavern at what was then the frontier to the great open plains of the American West. He sold whiskey and bacon and other such goods and planted an oak tree. He raised a family and his daughter was allegedly the first white woman ever born in the area. Lore would have it that he scrapped with the local branch of the McCoys but hey, who didn’t, right? The oak tree is really the important character here. It stood until the 1970s when it died of a blight of some sort. But he knew. All my ancestors have known about the oak tree. It stands tall in the middle of our family name, hard to ignore, yet surely a 'coincidence', and yet, he planted that oak tree. More on oak trees later. 

His son somehow got the idea into his head to go make a fortune in silver mining in Bolivia and proceeded to do so. The details are hazy, but apparently he made a good little chunk of money for himself in the silver mining business while in Bolivia and while mining for silver, also took a detour into the mining of either the President of Bolivia’s wife or daughter. Like I said: the details aren’t clear. Either way, the result was that he high-tailed it down to Chile and set up camp. So, um, my family name was established in Chile because we had to scram or be scrambled. History is funny sometimes. He got married, had kids and then his son (or grandson?) was my Great Grandfather (the ambassador in Bolivia). 

What’s the connection between all of them? Movement. Why? Why did this line of descent begin to move in the mid 1600s, continue to move until the end of the 1800s, and then produce three generations of diplomats who spent their entire lives moving? Why? Would you ask yourself this question if you were me? It crossed my head a lot over the years. I asked myself if maybe I was just designed to be a roamer, a traveler, a knower of places but a settler of none. I thought, maybe there’s something wrong with us, or maybe we just aren’t good people and aren’t wanted anywhere, or maybe...Well. You get the point. There was a lot of questioning. 

I don’t think my father questioned it in quite the same way. To him being a diplomat was tradition, what would make his father most proud and he did it. Military school in High School, Catholic University business degree (unfinished, baby surprise), and then a career as a diplomat. He chased it down, hounded it. My Dad worked a couple of other jobs during the Allende years, companies that went under in the collapsing economy. Then in the early Pinochet years he had good steady employment at a fish products company, which, it turns out, became one of the largest corporations in Chile years later. It would have been a lucrative career to follow, but destiny had other plans. My father had wanted to be a diplomat all along. I think he had even tried to take the admissions test and had failed it twice. Then one day…

Dad was walking down the street somewhere. You can imagine a cold, grey street, 1974 in Santiago, one year after the military coup d’etat. Everyone was afraid, uncertain, scared. Pinochet still had great support as in the public opinion he had saved the country from a corrupt and decayed government that destroyed the nation. At that point, most people were optimistic that he would leave within a year or so. You know, like he had said he was going to do. So my dad runs into a family friend of his dad’s, who then tells him something like:

“Hey, because Pinochet took the government by force he’s not particularly excited about all the old commie diplomats working in the foreign service and he’s called all those back home. So there are all these openings, and they’re hiring people to take the test, and then immediately go work overseas.”

My dad must have been beside himself. Tail a wagging full throttle. If he could just pass the test this time, he would be launched into a career of diplomacy on the fast-track. Normally at that time, people had to take the test and then serve several years in country before going overseas. Maybe it was luck, maybe it was destiny, maybe he studied really hard for the test, but that was how my dad started his career as a diplomat: first stop, Canada in early 1975. Next stop, Chile, 1980. 

So back to Chile, 1980. What do you want from me? I was young, my memories begin here but they are hazy. I have no real parameter of comparison between that time and Canada, again, because of my age. But I remember a few things from Chile. I remember my uncle joking around with me because I couldn’t speak Spanish. Ok, maybe I remember my uncle telling me that story. I have this strange, almost mythical memory of my first years of school. I went to an American school. I remember clearly my dad dropping me off at school on my 5th birthday, July 8th, 1981. He was giving a colleague a lift, and his colleague made the classic dad joke about how old I was and how maybe he would give me a cane for a birthday present. Now, you need to know that my father is completely neurotic about punctuality, a trait which I joyously share and enforce upon my students today, a trait which everyone in my family shares and which has often made us look like very strange people in our Latin American society. In Chile, an invitation for 8:00 pm, really means you arrive around 9:00 or 9:30. Not us. Long story short, my dad always dropped me off VERY early at school my entire life, meaning I was always either the first or one of the first kids of my class to arrive. And in Chile, when I would arrive at my kindergarten classroom in the mornings, my memory has me walking down a barely lit hallway, dim morning light entering through short but long windows lining one wall. I walk down the hall and arrive at my classroom where every day a beautiful red-headed girl is waiting for me. I know, very Charlie Brown of me, but this is the way I remember it. She was beautiful. Was she real? Who knows.

Everything else I could tell you about Chile at that time would be a piecemeal of other peoples’ stories and photographs I’ve seen. There are some important details in there to understand. My mother’s father was a farmer. Very Catholic, very conservative farmer. He married my grandmother, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, and his wife with a Belgian last name. She was also very conservative and at the end of her days, she would always keep on her nightstand an image of Jesus, another of the Virgin Mary (rosary wrapped over the frame), and a picture of my cousin sitting with Pinochet, each embracing the other. Needless to say that my cousin being in the picture was pure gravy. The meat of the matter was Pinochet and in all honesty: I don’t know which of the three images on her nightstand was the most important to her.

My father’s father was more of a thinker, an action-man, a believer in democracy, and a liberal (for the times, you see). His wife, my grandmother, was a beautiful and gentle soul who would most often keep her opinions to herself. I would get to know both my grandmothers later on in life but I did not know either of my grandfathers well, as they both passed away before I moved back to Chile at age 30. But family is at the heart of every Latin American endeavor, and Chile has always been where my parents could melt into their families and feel at home. Christmas, national holidays, religious celebrations of all kinds, birthday, weekend get-togethers, barbecues at the farm, these things form the skeleton of the Chilean family and I’m certain my parents must have felt blessed to see their families again, after 5 long years in Canada. Sure, after time maybe some people get used to being away from their families, but for most Latin Americans that’s not an option. Blood is thicker than water, they say here. 

In late 1981 my father was assigned to a new post, so in early 1982 we packed up our bags and moved again. This time, my father had hit the big leagues: he was assigned to the Chilean mission before the United Nations in New York City. We would spend the next chapter of our lives living in a gorgeous suburb in Connecticut while dad would take the morning train and 9 to 5 his way back home again to find us all waiting for him every day. 

Thanks everyone for your input and feedback, it's really nice to hear from everyone and their perspective. 

JohhnyD thanks for sharing about the memories of your mother and father. It sounds like they lead pretty interesting lives and those audio tapes must be a real trip to listen to. I wonder if some of those might even be of interest to historical societies. I imagine the Cesar Chavez one would be, at least. Very cool stuff! :)

Thanks very kindly, Judit! 

6, thank you, and I'm heading over there next. 

BK, that's crazy. I don't know if Old Greenwich and Greenwich are the same thing, but I lived in Greenwich, CT for all of 82 and 83 and left in early 84. Apparently it's like one of the richest places in the US, or something like that. We lived in a nice but not huge house at the end of a cul-de-sac. Very cool and beautiful place. How long did you live there? Why were you in Sydney before and how old were you when you changed? Crazy stuff, thanks for sharing! 

Alan, haha, you're a trip, brother, I love it. I'm guessing you created that hoodie image, which is totally awesome; you really know how to work the digital imaging, something I would really like to learn.

Thanks, Jaz, and gracias, LLOLLO!

Rereading this part I notice some narrative flaws, and some continuity issues which I'm trying to address as I move forward writing. I only have vacation for one more week, but I'm going to try to get one or two more chapters out. Thanks again everyone! 

Craziness, huh? As you start telling these stories unexpected connections pop up. Where in Europe did you live, Joy?

Turtle, I think your comment applies to both mine and BK's posts potentially, but either way, thanks man! :)

Joy, that's really cool, thanks for sharing. I did not try any of that Thai weed, but in my defense, I was in kindergarten. It would've been weird if I had, hahah ;) I agree that there was a time when metal was good and I've always found the heavy metal / Grateful Dead crossover to be really interesting. I think more than a few Deadheads were Metalheads first and found their way over for whatever reasons. 

BK, thanks so much for sharing those tales. I didn't realize you had such an international upbringing, that's nuts. I love the story about the homophones in Australia, that's fucking hysterical. I've been trying to say it in my head just to see how an Australian would say it and just cracking up. That's crazy about your Grandfather, the communist in London! Can you imagine, being a flat-out declared communist in, what? The 1930s? 40s? One of my Great-Great Grandfathers was a radical politician in Argentina who was exiled from the country twice for his views, haha. It's crazy to me to think about how hard it is for people in general to stand up for beliefs that are out of the norm today, and then think about what it must have been like to do so a hundred or more years ago. 

Thank you also for sharing about how your parents led you and your brother to learn about inequality and differences in the world and about your voting over the years. Politics are politics, man. I'm usually a dick when discussing them, or, at least on the Zone. No, in real life, too, but on the Zone sometimes conversations get out of hand and it turns into a semi-funny, semi-intellectual brawl. But you and a handful of other people on here are the ones I know I can always get legitimate and well thought-out points of view, which I appreciate greatly.

BK, those are very cool stories about your Grandpa and family. Thanks again for sharing them. I didn't know the story about your grandparents and the Woodstock hippies, that's totally wild!

Judah, despite you obviously just wanting to troll and be a dick, I'll take a moment to explain to you that my father was part of a tradition of a family that served in the foreign service for over a century. My father served under Pinochet, it's true, and later on in life would be essentially exiled to Siberia (along with me and our family) for being part of a vocal group of diplomats who openly stated that they represented the country Chile, not it's government. My father would later serve under center left, further left and center right governments, being named ambassador twice, once by a president from the Socialist party, and once by a President from a right wing party. 

Does that answer your question you lame, trustafarian generic I-tal internet tough guy?

Oooh, the Conquering Kitten of Judah is feeling frisky on a Friday! Fun times!

You don't strike any nerve, you've just shown the level of dialogue that you're capable of, so I can meet you there. It's the zone, after all. 

All you do is troll and toss shit around but never actually say anything, but that's ok. You do you.

Does Chile have the right to exist? That's a strange question. Define 'right' and then define what gives any nation/state the right to exist. We had this conversation with Duke back on the old zone, and he was one sharp dude. He pointed out (and it's always stuck in my mind) that no nation/state really has the right to exist. They were pretty much all founded on violence and bloodshed. Chile is no different. Founded by plundering Spaniards and a European oligarchy that destroyed and brutalized the local indigenous populace only to steal all the wealth and govern for their own. Not that different than any American nation. 

So if you ask me do I think that morally or ethically does Chile have the right to exist, my answer to you would be no, and nor does any nation/state that was founded on violence and the violent displacement of the people who lived there. Can you think of any other examples founded by people who displaced other people that lived there?

And if you want to talk about Chilean support for Nazis, L oh fucking L. Your former President's father did business with them. The Nazi's entire eugenics program was modelled after American concepts of racial purity. The Hitler Youth were modelled after the Boy Scouts. I mean, LOL. You're American, right? Is this the part where we play the guilt by national association game?