Backpacks, bursitis and buoyancy

It is about 5 years since I unwittingly made a decision that was going to affect me for 5 more years to come. I had decided that if I was going to travel around Europe, I would have to take a backpack with me so that the future me could tell people I went backpacking around Europe. I spent no time wondering if my shoulders were going to be strong enough to serve the arduous task they were going to be assigned. While I remember coming back and writing a post about how happily smitten I was with the experience, I didn't speak of the mindnumbing pain I experienced in my shoulders every night. I do believe that the pain that stuck with me since then did germinate in those majestic train rides and walks across the Old Continent.

What followed were sporadic visits to multiple orthopaedists to explain my nightly shoulder pains and several  X-rays of my shoulders from what seemed to be very contorted angles. This was typically followed by the doctors finding absolutely nothing and telling me to refrain from straining my shoulders.

It took me an alarming pain in my finger joints one morning to visit an orthopaedist in Chile for the first time. While that turned out to be a side-effect of a few swigs of a beer I didn't like from the previous night, I also hesitantly mentioned to the doctor my little problem with the shoulders in my imperfect Spanish, even as I had expected to live with that pain caused by the 24 year old me for the rest of my life. If you have made it to the grimy details till this point, you would guess that a lazy blogger will probably not dedicate a post to a futile visit to a doctor's clinic. And that's right, please imagine trumpets and drumroll as I say this - I was diagnosed with bursitis. How I have waited to be diagnosed and not made to feel like I had imaginary pains emanating from wholly normal shoulders! It turned out there was a tiny sac of fat that was formed on a tendon in my shoulder, just the kind of thing that cannot be found in X-rays and one of reasons we have more advanced technology in medical diagnosis today.

I was fascinated by the discovery, to know that there was a real physical cause meant that there was something that could be done about it. This aforementioned (I lived in England for 2 years, of course I am allowed to use the word) orthopaedist saw my reports and told me that he would have to inject a liquid straight into the structure, there were going to be no pills and no casts. And he also said, that he would have to do it, "ahora", which meant I had no time to prepare myself for enduring a needle through a bony shoulder.

That was three days ago and I am now back from a swimming lesson this morning, feeling smug about how I managed to finish a few laps and use my arms now that I have been nearly rid of the bursitis. There was the minor issue with me gulping down too much water and believing I was going to die for those few seconds today, but that is just small talk in the larger context of being identified with and relieved of bursitis.

 The sun is shining, I can see the gorgeous Pacific Ocean from where I type this. It is unbelievable how far I can look out into the ocean today. My parents are visiting and I can freely throw my hands up in the air to celebrate the filter coffee my mum is going to make now.

¡Hasta luego y que tengan un muy buen fin de semana!   

A veces me encanta la tranquilidad

It is just over one year since we started living in Chile. Even though we landed here for the first time in May of last year, we left almost immediately to spend three months in the United States and returned just in time for the annual nationwide party that occurs during Independence Day in September. This post is going to be about Chile and my admiration for this landmass that has only been growing since that day one year ago.

More specifically, this post is for the Chilean Pacific Ocean, for its prussian blue lakes and rivers and for the infinite pod of tranquility they are suspended within. We came back last week from a trip to Valdivia and it was like the soul-massage in the same way our other trips to the Chilean south have been. There was that ferry ride over the part of Rio Valdivia where it joins the Pacific Ocean and from the choppy waters, it was hard to tell if we were sailing on the river or on the ocean. Then there was that drive across the coast to the Reserva Costanera Valdiviana during which we had to stop at several points to look to our right and widen our eyes at the kaleidoscopic colours of the ocean and to take in the full breadth of the view we were privileged to find.

The next day, we drove down to Lago Ranco to rediscover the sense of calm we had experienced near Lago Titicaca in Bolivia and to varying degrees near all the many lakes around Pucon. The lakes in this region are giant mirrors with the kind of placid waters of lakes we read about in hackneyed religious/spiritual quotes.

Each of our travels here have brought us to places where I have been able to immerse myself in vistas to the extent of being conscious of only a sense of sight and nothing beyond, no mind to process thoughts, no skin, no ears, nothing else. This brings me to another related subject that strikes me everytime I return from these trips to magical places. I have spent many more years of my life than I would have liked listening to a lot of babble about what the religion I was born into means. That religion, which people have used as an excuse to pollute the most majestic rivers and lakes in the name of worship. I know there will be people who will be quick to talk about what the original scriptures meant in their purest form and how what is practiced today does not conform to what was meant to be. I find it pointless to talk about it in its purest form if it has degenerated into what it is today and if its current form has such big implications on the physical world around us. I will also not say anything about it being used as a whip to break spirits (for the most part, that of women) with except for stating that it is so used.

It took me a year in Chile to know surely that my idea of a Creator is reinforced in unpolluted crystal clear waters, in clean air and in mountains, that even today look just like they probably did when they were formed millions of years ago.

I know I have digressed but this is a rant that was long overdue. This is still, in fact a prosaic ode to Chile's natural beauty. I am just only also saying that apart from giving me something to feast my eyes upon, these landscapes have given me something much more weighty, they also gently reinstated my belief.