Walking to meet Kristina and Panda at the highly recommended Piojera on my last evening in Santiago was delighted by the flower-like pattern the street lamps light and shadow cast on the ground, so added a few digital brush strokes, and here you have the flower lampposts of Santiago!
This seeing forms in objects makes me of cloud spotting and the way that each of us can look at the same thing and see very distinct images, hence the personality tests based on ink blob interpretation. This seems a pretty apt illustration then for a conversation that Denise's brother Christian and I had about the different ways we see the cities of London. Born and bred in Santiago, Christian like his sister Denise, has also lived in London, and where I was pointing out similarities between Santiago and London, he observed that for him arriving into London he only noticed the differences, perhaps because that was the change he was looking for in moving away, whereas perhaps I see the similarities because I am looking to feel comfortable and fit in.
I would say I notice the same thing about my approach to appearances. I tend to notice similarities between people and have a tendency I need to be wary of, of ignoring the signals people deliberately use in their dress and style to invite interpretation of their personality and tastes. My theory is that I do so because I am trying so firmly not to make judgements about people, but this can be detrimental if it means I then miss useful clues. Hannah was the one to first really make me aware of this when she suggested I use the clues of how my students at Kids Company dressed to give me an idea of their tastes so that I could tailor our animation workshop content towards them. Seemed so obvious as soon as it was said, and it was hugely useful in practice.
These thoughts are particularly in my mind at the moment because I keep feeling surprised at how quickly people know that I am a foreigner, even before I speak and have a different accent. The reasoning I get when I inquire is that I am so white, but that confuses me still, as it did when Ilze said I had a "European face" on the second day of the residency, because so many Chileans are so very pale and have what I would consider similar bone structure to Europeans. My theory on this is that having lived for so many years in London, where it is impossible to know where someone is from based on their skin, hair or eye colour, that I am just not used to using someone's physical appearance to make judgements. Whereas the Chileans are accustmed to making jusgements based on skin colour, coming from a past history, Chiristian tells me, of indigenous people with darker skin being from lower classes and haveing less opportunities in education and work. Happily this is not so much so the case now, apparently, but perhaps the Chilean eye is still highly tuned to see colour difference whereas perhaps ours are not anymore, being so many generations into racial equality (at least legally, if not always socially).
This will be an interesting area to be aware of as I move on through the other countries of South America.
As Rachel said when we were talking about this at the weekend, the priviledges that skin colour gave some people is in part why she and I now as British women, can travel so far and freely in the world whereas for others there remain far more restrictions. Our conclusion was that rather than feel guilty about having some kind of unfair advantage we should be above all grateful do our best to make the most of these opportunities of travel to share in whatever way we can some of what were are privileged to have.
Peace :-)
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