An accidental afternoon

Today I went on a mission to the Cemetary (No. 2--I do not know where No. 1 is). It's been tempting me. It is on top of the hill next to mine, and so all these little houses of the dead are just perched up there above the living city. But wouldn't you know it, today we had company so lunch was quite the affair, and I showed up at 5 to 5. Gates close at 5. So that will have to wait for another day.

Wandering away from the cemetary, looking for an alternate route back to my hill, I stumbled into Ex-Carcel. It is a large, fortified building that stands built into the top of the hill opposite the cemetary. It used to be a prison, and I believe before that a fort, although I had some trouble deciphering the sign. Now it is an open public space and an art exhibition area.

Today is Sunday, which means the city is unnaturally quiet and empty. I saw no one outside the walls. Once I entered, I saw a couple walking around, sight-seeing like myself. But they weren't speaking, only looking, and they were far off at the other side of the yard. They were walking around behind a wall with some collapsed sections. Every few minutes my eye would catch just the shape of a person as they passed by an opening in the wall, and then they would be gone. The light took on that color that it only really has in the late afternoon in autumn--bright but somehow muted, yellow. There was a strong wind blowing, lifting dust off of the central yard and making me wrap my scarf up tightly.

All around me, outside the walls, I could see Valparaiso as I have come to know it...the water, the buildings, the hills and the plan. And I had somehow wandered into this empty prison yard with a hundred blank and broken windows looking down on me. Yet there was art: murals all over everything, sculptures of heads growing out of the ground and torsos leaning on trees. There was a playground. Two high school students walked in, smirked at me, and then disappeared into the collapsed walls and courtyards. Empty space, muted light, and the wind shutting out any sound other than itself. Traces of intention left behind by absent hands. I felt like I had walked into a party hours after everyone had left or gone to sleep, to find all the empty bottles and half-eaten dips. Or something more unsettling. An empty house after a kidnapping.





I will go back there to take a better look sometime soon. Today though I just stood in the yard a bit stunned, staring around me at this strange unexpected space, and then I fairly scampered back down into the streets with the other walkers.