Head in the clouds

On grey days in Valparaiso, the city disappears. From my windows, there is only a palm tree, and the jumbled roofs between my spot on the hill and the sea. The lights of the boats in the nearby port are diffused in fog; the coast stretching east and north is only a mental concept. A dim light in the distance could be the other towns which are normally sitting on the horizon above the bay, or they could be ships, but for my mind filling in the blanks like the missed words in a cell phone conversation.

The color closes around the city like a blanket, softly wiping away colors, blurring the eyes of the people walking in their zigzags, irresolutely. It makes my wet hair and my makeup-less face feel at home, born from the same lethargy and lack of edges. I view the polished-dull cerros and the bumbling smoke of traffic with sleepy eyes while waiting endlessly for the micro that doesn't come. We are the same in this moment, the city and I: attractiveness washed away by tiredness, lack of care, a tousled head and a crooked outfit. Perhaps in other moments we can pull off a sort of over-punctuated, hapless kind of beauty, but when the damper is on all that remains is the awkwardness of poor planning.

And so when I wake up in Valparaiso and look out my window to see gray sky, something in me softens, and I know that my city sister and I will have a day of calm. When Valparaiso decides once again to be bright, and laughing, to love the ones that love her and ignore those who don't, I will continue my far less successful efforts to be the same. For today, though, I know that she will not judge me in my last pair of clean socks, with my chapped lips sitting amongst scattered papers. She won't bedgrudge me the slow way I edit my latest project, or the time I spend wandering in the street staring around without conviction. She will allow me to choose the slowest micro I can so that I can listen to music and stare out at the storefronts for longer. She will look on with understanding as I put off til tomorrow what can be done today and instead take refuge under lamplight, out of the cold of the fog that sedates us.