La Sebastiana

"The books that help you the most are those which make you think the most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty." - Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda's "La Sebastiana" is a fusion of humility and elegance. Like a line of his poetry where the beautiful emerges from an overwhelming sadness, his home stands high above the dilapidated Valparaíso rooftops, howls of wild and hungry roaming dogs, the dirty streets. After spending time there on Sunday, I began to get a sense of the man Neruda was.

To me, Neruda was so honestly human he seemed to transcend the real, the physical. He wrote from a leather chair dubbed "The Cloud" while watching the lights appear on the coast. He hosted parties in disguise, often changing his disguise multiple times over the course of the evening. He was a man who designed his own fireplace, a man who thought big thoughts, but still relished small pleasures. He was a diplomat and a drinker, and always knew good whisky. He was the type of man who, while having his home searched at the behest of Augosto Pinochet, remarked, "Look around - there's only one thing of danger for you here - poetry."

The home is five floors total, and sprawls upward on thin spiraling staircases flanked by colorful tile mosaics or thick, dark French oils on canvas. Each step was my climbing an ivy vine, where the direction was certainly upward, but I wouldn't be surprised had I needed to quickly divert my path left or right. Every room was different, unexpected, and imperfect, as though Neruda wanted every object in his eclectic home to beg the question, "Why?".

Neruda's made me think of my own. It felt as though I take no ownership in the buildings I inhabit, a doorframe ignored, a lamp-shade unnoticed. Too many of my things are clean and in their place, too many walls are without art. I felt it briefly this summer when I had sanded the paint off a guitar, varnished the wood, and drew a design, but then never followed through.

Neruda's expanded me, made me see and notice things I hadn't seen and noticed before. Mostly, Neruda's made me feel artistic, and bold. I decided at "La Sebastiana" that I want to live in buildings and places that breathe on their own, that make me contemplate the beautiful, that make me ask, "Why?"

All in all, pass me the spackling.