Here's the teaser. Since my last post, Caitlin and I have mixed a lot of cement, seen some of the most beautiful sunsets of our lives, jumped off of 30+ foot cliffs, rappelled down a waterfall , cooked in a restaurant, and touched more snails than we care to remember. We have also posed the question of life the universe and everything, asserting the unlikely existence of an all understanding yet uncommunicative sentient giant mollusc sitting at the center of the ocean. In short, we have lived for a couple of weeks. If you want to know more, read ahead. If not, I won't be insulted, this will be a long one.
This chapter in our trip is probably best described as the Time of the Mollusc. Although the word first entered our daily vocabulary in Valdivia after an important conversation I will eventually relate, albeit in brief, we have now been forced to live the mollusc in more ways than one. But I get ahead of myself.
Let us start in Chiloe where we arrived a little over a week ago. This island is one of the continent's largest, second only to Tierra Del Fuego, less than 1000 miles to the south. It was the last hold out of the Spanish during the Chilean war for independence (1826), which along with its general isolation makes for interesting architecture exemplified by odd shingles and houses on stilts. I am in Ancud, or really in a small town one hour north of Ancud called Caulin. It lies on a beach with some of the highest concentrations of Black Necked Swans in the world. Along with the penguins (see pictures) it makes Chiloe one of the coolest bird places for the non-appreciator of birds. It's like they follow us, and we have no choice but to take pictures of them.
Caulin, and in particular the Caulin Lodge where we are working, is a place of molluscs. Ines, the owner sells mostly clam dishes in her restaurant, and also runs a snail based cosmetics company from her farm/restaurant/hotel. We help with everything of course. Never had I imagined I would be touching over a thousand snails (some smelly) and opening oysters, much less doing them both in a 24 hour period. All this of course for free. Which brings me to a brief rant about labor, if you would prefer to skip this next paragraph I don't blame you.
Work is hard. It lasts all day and sometimes all night. Salaries can be a means of exploiting labor, because long hours are paid the same as short ones. Furthermore, new employees are taken advantage of by a system they don't understand. Flexible work schedules can be great, but can also be exploitative, as workers may be asked to get up unreasonably early or stay at work unreasonably late. When as Ines says, “we live our work” what are in one's eyes exploitative practices are in another's love of life, “it's boring to do nothing, so you might as well work.” Which is of course what she does, just behind a desk and at her own leisure. Nevertheless she's right to a certain extent, if you've got nothing better to do, you might as well work, which is our attitude of course. Anyhow, work is hard, and if work is life, by syllogism … life is hard.
Ok, back to the story. When we left off our heroes were in the belly of the beast. . . or rather, they were massaging the bellies of snails, and killing oysters. So molluscs. As it happens working with molluscs is not so taxing on the brain as it is on the nose and hands (which by the way is a great way to get over being grossed out). We have had a lot of time to talk about life. Yet somehow without trying even as we have myriad conversations about what we think are different things we always come back to the hypothetical mollusc. Unlike our very real and squishy friends we have come to know quite well, this being we posit exists well out of the reach of our hands and high powered cleaning hoses. This creature understands all and may or may not be god, yet has no way of communicating or even desire to do so. The problem in short is, could this creature exist, and if so, does it matter. Caitlin says yes, and in the end I say no. . . usually. Well, she usually says it might exist and it matters, and I say that it usually doesn't exist and if it did it doesn't matter, and we should just get on with our lives. It turns out that every conversation of substance can (although probably shouldn't) be reduced to this dilemma. Yet with our seemingly inexhaustible time and willingness to speak, we very well might prove this hypothesis by trial and error.
Some of you reading this, if you've made it this far through my blabber would probably have noted the influence of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the radio version of which I am currently listening to. I have decided that Douglas Adams might just be one of the greatest geniuses since Steinbeck. . . which along with Camus' Myth of Sisyphus (which my brother should be happy to know I am reading) makes for a very interesting set of thoughts and conversations. The world is pretty Absurd, and no one is really ever going to understand it, so we might as well forget about the damned mollusc.
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