Neruda. Te Amo.

So on our last day in Valpo we made a quick stop at the number one place I wanted to go in the city: Pablo Neruda's house.

Yeah, of course I reserved an entire post for this. I'm spreading the Gospel of Neruda!

I didn't make it to all three of his houses in Chile like I originally hoped (although Jeremy Green did, the lucky bastard), but the opportunity to even see one was absolutely amazing. You can really tell that Neruda built it with love, and each piece of furniture and little knick-knack was picked carefully. The house is full of hundreds of odds and ends, from colonial-era maps of Chile and Japanese screens to a stuffed baby penguin chilling out behind the bar.

Unfortunately, I couldn't take any pictures of the inside of La Sebastiana (which is eclectic and super-stunning), but here are a few of the outside:

The view from the patio. Not bad.

Me trying to look "contemplative" on a bench carved with Neruda's silhouette.

The house itself, which is now a museum.

Also, here is a poem Neruda wrote about La Sebastiana, which ironically I read for the first time the morning we went. It just made me love the house even more, made me more excited to see what this magnificent poem describes. And after visiting, I can say that this poem definitely captures the crazy, romantic, eclectic vibe the house radiates in every board and nail.

This is translated from it's original Spanish. No, I didn't do the translating :(

To "La Sebastiana"

I built the house.

I made it first out of air.
Later I raised its flag into the air
and left it draped
from the firmament, from the stars, from
clear light and darkness.

It was a fable
of cement, iron, glass
more valuable than wheat, like gold--
I had to go searching and selling,
and so a truck arrived.
They unloaded sacks
and more sacks.
The tower took anchor in the hard ground--
but that's not enough, said the Builder,
there's still cement, glass, iron, doors--
and I didn't sleep at night.

But it kept growing.
The windows grew,
and with a little more,
with sticking to plans and working,
and digging in with knee and shoulder,
it went on growing into existence,
to where you could look through a window,
and it seemed that with so many sacks
it might have a roof and might rise
and finally take firm hold of the flag
which still festooned the sky with its colors.

I gave myself over to the cheapest doors,
doors which had died
and had been pitched out of their houses,
doors without walls, broken,
piled on scrap heaps,
doors with no memory by now,
no trace of a key,
and I said, "Come
to me, abandoned doors.
I'll give you a house and a wall
and a fist to knock on you.
You will swing again as the soul opens,
you will guard the sleep of Matilde
with your wings that worked so much."

Then, too, came the paint,
licking away at the walls;
it dressed them in sky blue and pink
so that they might begin to dance.
So the tower dances,
the doors and the staircases sing,
the house rises till it touches its crown,
but money is short--
nails are short,
door knockers, locks, marble.
Nevertheless, the house
keeps on rising
and something happens, a beat
starts up in its arteries.
Perhaps it is a saw, seething
like a fish in the water of dreams,
or a hammer which taps
like a tricky condor carpenter
at the pine planks we will be walking on.

Something goes and living continues.

The house grows and speaks,
stands on its own feet,
has clothes wrapped around its skeleton,
and as from seaward the spring,
swimming like a water nymph,
kisses the sand of Valparaiso.

now we can stop thinking. This is the house.

Now all that's missing will be blue.

All it needs now is to bloom.

And that is work for the spring.