10/28/2002, Santiago de Chile

dear jer,

am once again at one of these edges, staring out at blue sea. all places are the ends of the world, all things in the blood-lit world themselves their own purpose. all things except men, all things except I, the I, the unsatisfied I…

caught a plane here several weeks and have just come down from the mountains. there is little i want to say about them except that you are never alone until it seems like you may die.

and within three hours was found by Tadeo, here on vacation from Fortaleza. An friend from my days in Manaus counting beetles and fish and so on, still after that doctorate, still leaving a thick wake at that strange surface between men and women. forgive me my metaphors: he truly astounds me. as some ancient fertility god would, but so lightly, lightly, that a girl in love at sixteen seems jaded.

of course i was always terribly jealous of him. but now even though he has turned even lighter, even more godlike than the last time, I have since learned that the gods do not have any dasein. you know german: no being there. no instants of poignancy, no saudades (in spite of his language)…perhaps it’s bad faith to impose my germanic constructions on another hemisphere, on the South, land of magic and mystery, unfinished in its difficult creation. Like Fitzcarraldo playing opera in the jungle (you absolutely must see that movie if you have not), attempting to find tragedy in a continent undesigned for it.

nonetheless seeing him has cured me of some of my great fears; has set me free from the old life which I still in some ways hung to and at the same time reminded me of myself, so that it is fairly unimportant whether I remain with this name or another.

someone is playing music in the distance: i reminded of a dark hot night in Bahia with this same music, just drunk enough on wine, just drunk enough on the admissions of a woman, certain that among all the meanings of the world these would never fail me…

they have not.

in a week or so i continue on, with tadeo. to, yes, Salvador da Bahia. i cannot stay long, and will not. in fact i hope to be in Portland by Thanksgiving. I am out of money and there are some things i left in storage there that I can sell, and…well, i feel myself to be on an edge here: i may leave the US for good, and I would like to say goodbye to people who are unlikely to visit me. and to insist on it from those who will. this includes you. then to San Francisco to wrap things up there; to resume myself or not. Plans are indeterminate but Tadeo and I may open up a nightclub.