CHILE 2002 - DAY ONE: Woke up dreaming I was going to die...

Chile, 2002 - coastline

Eleven years ago I undertook my first solo trip into the Atacama Desert. The sense of space, separateness, and closeness to the will of the cosmos struck me deeply. I am sure it is that feeling solo travelers feel no matter where they are in the world.

The images here are from my first night's campsite, somewhere north of Antofagasta, a city on the north coast of Chile. This coastline is strewn with ghost towns, mining ports, casino towns, but mostly desert and the blank spaces of sea, sky, and being totally unplugged.

Today, I am recovering from my heart by-pass surgery. FIVE PLUS and still going. I can say with certitude that I would rather be on the beach in Chile than laying in a hospital in Boston...now home for recovery. The sad wrecks we become are pitiful and my irreverent personality masks my truly deep sorrow at the folks suffering life changes events over which they exercise no control. 

Really.

Some of this shit we can't control. Especially the older we get. The only hope is that while we are laying there waiting for the next alien invasion of our body is that the memories we have already logged can help us keep perspective on what next will happen: make us one of the Cabbage Patch kids, flush out our brains of clots and thoughts, or keep us medicated until the end comes.

Walking the halls is depressing because the poor souls laying there have no way to convey the hallucinatory sleep of lives lived and dreams of the big dark ahead.

Starfish, Chile 2002

Years ago, while I lay in my tent listening to the ocean pound out the heartbeat of nature's pulse on the rocks, I found it hard to sleep. I was alone in the world and nobody knew where I was. I had found a secreted trail from the highway down to the beach, and besides the seabirds, some starfish, and the great ocean in front, I was alone on the beach, protected in my mind from night bandits lurking in my imagination.

There were none.

I lay there listening to life, my breathe, and the surf. I recalled these memories last week as the dull buzz, beep, and faint intonation of some machine having more power in my life's progress than I, and thought, "sometimes it is just good to have done shit than not to have done shit."