Toes hurt. It is misleading to say Baquedano station takes you to this place. Lost in the translation are the long, summer streets of kissing school girls and boys with cold, oversized Escudo cervezas just right for the piss of mountain horses.
I have come here to Neruda’s blue wall along “Constitution” – what a name for the street on which he lived and wrote of rules to break under the heaving weight of love.
Mikhail on my mind as I pass the hippie murals. A “crapaud foot”, upper case tribute to the 35th year since the poet’s passing and a red stony climb to the blue wall.
I had realised two streets before, near the drunken guy with the credit card thingy in his loose hand, that the hapless, tag-along Nikon over my shoulder was as cardless as the endangered thingy.
Hearts do stop and start again … faster.
Shit.
Here I was at the shrine. It is important that you not only touch and feel and smell, but capture with both hearts and take with you a piece of this place. Hold like arms to a newborn.
So, back again I go. Tomorrow, if it ever comes.
