Valparaíso – you are not my lover, nor are you my dearest friend. You have not held my hand through my first heartbreak, and you have not kept the rebellious secrets of my youth. You have not held me in a warm embrace after a long day’s journey, nor have you heard me sing into the morning’s light. At best, we are nodding acquaintances, acknowledging each other’s presence through the prolonged stares of people passing in the streets.
You open like a book – your buildings popping up, dotting the pages with palettes that only an artist could admire, and yet… I have yet to discover the secrets of the cryptic language that you are written in. The many folds of your city remain a mystery to me, even as I sit in the midst of them, overlooking your people, your sea.
Valparaíso, you must understand – it’s nothing personal. For long, I have admired your will to stay true to yourself, your colours bleeding through your walls. But I must confess: I can only admire you from afar. I may sit in your benches, your tables, your streets, but I will never know you as the place I call “home.” I will never know the sound you make when tragedy strikes, nor will I discover the feeling you give through the open windows of a hot, summer morning. You’ll never see me run home to my mother after a particularly difficult day, and you’ll never hear my sister’s laughter as I crack horrible jokes in the privacy of our own home. You are as foreign to me, as I am to you.
What does it mean to get to know someone? If you read about someone in a magazine, do you know the creases that form on his face as he laughs? After watching an interview, do you know her favourite nighttime ritual before she slumbers off to sleep? Does watching a documentary or film reveal the innermost intricacies of someone’s daily life – their hardships, their struggles, their celebrations? A narrator may tell me all about you, Valparaíso, but I will never personally know you.
And you, Valparaíso, will never personally know me. I may wander through your streets, but you’ll never know the wanderings of my thoughts. I may sit in the sun by the tree growing amidst the cobble, but you’ll never sit by me in my cloudiest of days. I may smile at your beautiful mess of a landscape, but you’ll never know the laughter of my heart. I am as unknown to you, as your highest hill is to me.
Don’t worry – I don’t resent you for it. In fact, it adds a layer of intimacy that only a pair of acquaintances can share. It takes distance to appreciate someone from afar, to see their glowing beauty from the top of a winding hill, to be dumbstruck by the sound of their roaring sea for the first time. Valparaíso, you fill me with wonderment every time I set foot into the boundaries of your city, giving me the experience of discovering someone’s exquisiteness for the first time once again. But as with every case of lust, it can only go skin deep.
Valparaíso, you are beautiful, but your mystery will forever prevent me from opening up my heart to you. Every time that I begin to think that I know a little part of you, I meet another side of you that is so completely contradictory, I start to wonder whether I knew anything about you at all. With the clearest view of the ocean comes a complicated labyrinth of cobble and metal. With the unmistakable smell of salt comes the grit and dust of your stairways. In the confines of your city, you can meet the rudest of friends, or the friendliest of foes. You confuse me, shock me, and yet… In spite of this, you amaze me. But it is for this reason that I cannot hope to ever understand you.
I may study you for years, looking through the rattling windows of your micros, ascending planes, or rushing taxis, but I can never fully grasp the intricacies of your streets, your people. For every passionate man making alfajores in a little shop, for every artist displaying their life work in the streets, for every waiter desperately trying to explain what a menu item is, I will never get the chance to know the woman living down the street from me, or the experience of learning about your history in your classrooms. Getting to know one person is difficult enough, but a city with thousands of people? Now, that may just be impossible.
It is for this reason that I can say that I love you, Valparaíso, not for who you are, but for what you represent. You showed me what it was like to have child-like curiosity, and taught me to question the nature of what it means to be from somewhere. You may not be my lover, Valparaíso, but you are the closest acquaintance that I have.
