Anne Dalke's blog

"Rhetoric is the attempt of the will to do the work of the imagination." (W.B. Yeats, via James Tiptree....)

We have been spending the past few days in "Hotel Paris," in a barrio in Santiago known as "Paris Londres." It is a lovely area, filled with winding cobble-stoned streets and cafes. After our jaunt into rural areas far to the south, it is wonderful to start each morning with fresh squeezed raspberry juice, real coffee, and a newspaper. I am very much

"You can understand why a system would seek information -- but why in hell does it offer information? Why do we strive to be understood? Why is a refusal to accept communication so painful?" (James Tiptree, Jr.)

"Cien veces la miraste, ninguna vez la viste."
(Gabriela Mistral)

I´ve always had ambivalent feelings about holidays: on the one hand, I love nothing more than a houseful of the people I care for most, eating food I´ve made, and singing together the songs we all know ... on the other, decades of being the goose who lays the golden egg (that is, the mother who prepares the feast and tries to make sure everyone is happy) have taken their toll. So...

this very different Christmas, spent this year in Chile, has been

According to a 19th century Argentine visitor, Valparaíso was “the Europe that had just landed and thrown herself disheveled onto the beach.” According to a contemporary writer, Valparaíso will always border on “magic realism.” You only get there “with dream logic.”

When we flew into Chile, over those Andes, I felt as though I had finally arrived SOMEwhere. The trip out of the Santiago airport was like nothing I´ve ever experienced before: the snow-capped mountains appeared above the clouds in such a way that we couldn´t tell what was cloud, what was snow, what was mountain, what was sky. Even more incredible was the appearance, halfway into the drive, of another very dark bank—of mountains?