Valparaíso

Valparaíso is an abandoned beach house.  A deserted mansion inhabited by young, bohemian squatters.

A late nineteenth century creation, haphazardly constructed, as if several architects had been fired in the process of its erection, the building is hexagonal, with varying angles and side lengths.  The numerous stairwells crisscross each other like a Escher painting; the hallways, varying innumerably in width, zigzag around the many floors, leading to other meandering passageways, or to endless stairwells that, like water wells, fade into darkness;  the antique elevators (the ones with the metal doors that open and close manually like an accordion), long ago out-of-service, at one time rose to unknown heights at a snail’s pace.  Pipes are always bursting, ceilings collapsing at the slightest tremor, and fires are constantly being sparked and charring entire wings.  But the building remains.

The squatters have given the building their personal flavor.  The hallways and stairwells are covered in elaborate street art, stencils, and graffiti.  There are hookah-smoking rooms, cafes, music rooms, bars, arts and crafts rooms.  Downstairs there is a projection screen that plays old Godard and Antonioni films.  The corridors are littered with book stacks.  Dogs roam free, and on some floors outnumber their human companions.

Shanghai

Land of cranes and jackhammers.  Of chain-smokers, and taxi drivers that spend ten minutes snorting, and hocking before spitting out the window a baseball-sized accumulation of black phlegm.  A land of curious onlookers, who will gather to watch two men fight awkwardly in front of a mall.  Of boutiques and black markets.  Of chaotic freedom.

One morning, I awoke to the vibrations of jackhammers drilling into concrete, like the sound of God’s teeth chattering.  On television, a former high-ranking official who had been purged politically due to his support of the Tiananmen Square protesters, had died of pneumonia, and CNN International had made the story one of its top news items for the day.  I went about my morning routine, leaving CNN International on, like I did most mornings.  As I was brushing my teeth I overheard the anchorwoman giving a teaser to the story on the former Chinese politician; the story would air right after a short commercial break, she said.  Then came the commercials, mostly self-promotional advertisements for other CNN International programs, with the occasional spot reserved for companies that catered to the upper-class traveling businessman that CNN International attracts (commercials for investment banks, phones, computers, and airlines).  Then, the CNN logo and the little CNN jingle, signaling the end of the commercial break; the camera zooming in to the anchorwoman at her unnecessarily gargantuan news desk.  And then…static.  I flipped through the channels to see if I had lost the signal to all the channels on cable, but CNN International was the only one.  All the other channels were fine.

I didn’t think much of it; losing the signal to a channel happened from time to time, who knows why.  Maybe there was a technical failure at the offices of the local provider, or maybe there was a problem at the headquarters of CNN International.  I simply changed the channel, and waited for CNN International to come back on.  It didn’t take long for the signal to return.  When I lost the signal a second time, again after the teaser for the story on the purged Chinese official, I started to get suspicious.  By the third time (if there is one thing cable news is good at its repeating stories ad nausea), I was pretty sure somebody was deliberately disrupting the signal to censor the broadcasting of the story.

Mexico City

They picked us up near the transparent square-foot glass tile that revealed the underground remains of Tenochtitlan.  The central cathedral stood a few steps in front, and I imagined some random door inside it with stone steps that would lead you down to the canals of the manmade Aztec island metropolitan.  Alas, instead of streaming down a canal in a canoe, my friend’s friends arrived in a four-door Ford sedan.

Inside the car we were greeted by Elena, and her tall forehead, long smile, and magnetic green eyes; reminiscent of an Aztec princess. (She wasn’t Mexican, but of mixed descent; part Philippine I believe.  Anyway, I promise not to overdo the Aztec references.) It didn’t take long for me to see that she was the kind of girl that broke hearts.  Her smile had a way of making your stomach sink.  Her effortless charm could be confused for affection, her affection for attraction, and her attraction for love; and one could see how a man could be lead down this self-destructive path, a path that would always lead back to that same stomach sinking smile; that smile that at times seemed flirtatious and at other times distant, when really all along it was just her way of smiling.  The innocent smile of a beautiful girl. (That’s one argument, at least.)

Her most recent victim was sitting in the driver’s seat.  I later learned that after the inevitable estrangement, she had called him up when she learned we would be in town, because he owned a car and could drive us around. (That kind of puts a dent in the innocent smile theory.)

Marseille

Marseille tiene olor a puerto loco.

I walk past a woman in a head-to-toe veil: a strange purple blob, like a cartoon ameba.  Behind her, three gorgeous twenty-something-year-old women straight out of the pages of Vogue, their stiletto heels marking each step they take in unison.  Entering a small grocery store, I encounter the most beautiful check-out woman I have ever seen.  When it’s my turn to pay for my items, my heart starts to race and my palms sweat.  She is wearing a vintage Rolling Stones t-shirt, with a wide collar that reveals one of her shoulders.  I pay and run out as fast as I can without saying anything.  Across the street, I see the most beautiful street sweeper I have ever seen.  As I start walking back home I realize I forgot my change, I turn around, I got back into the store, and she’s waiting for me holding out the coins in her hands.  Reaching my house, I pass the prostitute who has been standing on the corner half-a-block from my apartment since nine o’clock in the morning.  I don’t look at her, and she doesn’t bother me.  The only unattractive women in Marseille seem to be the prostitutes.

Before going out, we stop by the a nearby fast-food kebab joint.  We head for his friend’s place.  The streets are narrow, the apartment buildings tower over us on both sides, the orange streetlights dimly flicker above; it feels like walking along the narrow hallways of a medieval castle.  His friend’s flat is bright and modern, with a bar, a spiraling staircase to his bedroom, and uncomfortable furniture.  His friends try excitedly to talk to me in their broken English.  One of them tells me (without hostility or resentment, seeking only to say something unique), “In Marseille they are building the largest mosque in Europe.”

Managua

Managua is a filthy avenue of tree stumps, dirt clouds, and plastic trash.  The streets are the color of dusty feet in bright green shower flip flops.  Managua is the mammoth Sandinista billboards that rise from the ash and trash of the ground, and feature the smiling president waving to (seemingly) another billboard of the president smiling and waving.  (Daniel waving to himself.)  Managua is the huge roundabouts with abandoned parks in the middle featuring the skeleton of a christmas tree whose christmas lights continue to blink on the hottest of days of July. ("Here in Managua, it's Christmas year around," goes the saying.)  A city of cars, where the only people walking are the menacing and miserable faces of poverty; shoeless and shirtless, their dark skin glistening like a lake, selling small bags of water and candy.  The men, in camo pants or cargo shorts, intimidating and unapproachable, moving their shoulders purposefully as they walk like a puma pacing in its cage.  Managua is the suffocating heat, and the nauseous humidity of a packed school bus with all the windows closed.

Managua is also the air-conditioned malls, fast food chains, and five-star hotels, that people get to in their air-conditioned cars, after leaving their air-conditioned gated community mansions.  The people who live in these air-conditioned bubbles, traveling from one air-conditioned oasis to the next, sit at the American-style food courts and eat nutella flavored gelato ice-cream, they go to European-style discotecs, and Japanese-style karaokes, they watch the newest 3-D films at the mall cinema, and reflect on their lives in coffee shops.  These reflections are made in phony valley-girl accents, (movies having mislead them into believing the California valley-girl culture is the ultimate representation of modern-day "high society") which include English words and sayings like: "Oh my God!," "nice," "fancy," "cute," and "cherry." ("Cherry" being synonymous with "fancy.")

And so, these two Managuas co-exist, and are only forced to clash when those street kids jump on your new Lexus and start rubbing window-cleaner on the windshield as you yell and sign, "No!" But they don't seem to listen or understand you.