The City

"...You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.

This city will always pursue you.

You’ll walk the same streets, grow old

in the same neighborhoods, turn gray in these same houses.

You’ll always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:

there’s no ship for you, there’s no road.

Now that you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,

you’ve destroyed it everywhere in the world."

C. Cavafy - The City

Write about Santiago is write about a particular history, my history, but also is write about everyone's history, everyone who live here. When you live in a big city, you can feel identify with your neighbourhood or your commune, but Santiago is more than just a couple of communes. There are differents worlds here, someones says that Santiago is Chile, maybe is more than Chile, it's Southamerica and a history of a "farewell waltz", about emigrate to another country, for better days.

Santiago is "interaction" and you're in or you're out. Your social and geographic position determine big part of your social life, this city include and exclude. And exclusion is first geographical, if you live in periphery you must to cross the city to find almost everything, and the distances become huge.This idea could seems that it's a bad thing about this city, distances and exclusion, but over this i see the good thing about this city. In every travel across this city, i leave a part of me, of my history. When i walk for these differents streets, neighbourhoods, communes, i feel part of this city, i feel that i'm Santiago.

This city will be a better place when people feels like their own history, childhood and future, is this city, because you can't leave the city, the city is not just the gray walls, it's also the people. The city is in everyone's mind.

A message for a visitor could be know the people, share with them. You can know tourist places, but the real city is in the people, in the hide places, the pheriphery. There is a world hide in the city, that you can find, if you know where look for.