Across the Great Divide: Canciones de Amor

There is a great song called Canciones de Amor by a Mexican singer/songwriter named Julieta Venegas. I've recently been listening to nothing but her music in my ipod, causing me to now associate her lyrics with various places in Santiago that I might pass ("No seré una mujer perfecta" means Parque Balmaceda, for example). I was listening to Canciones de Amor during my train ride to Rancaugua this weekend, and it made me wistful and giggly. It doesn't have particularly uplifting lyrics (Estoy tan cansada de las canciones de amor/siempre hablan de un final feliz/pero sabemos que la vida nunca funcion asi***) but the bouncy guitar and somewhat optimistic tone offset the pessimism (and I believe, truth) of the lyrics. I am obsessed with this song.

I am that girl that girl who believes that love stories and love songs don't really happen, and that people make them up. Every relationship I've ever been in, or known of even, has ended with the destruction of one or both parties - no happy endings there. I don't know if that's just my generation, and if we aren't programmed for the long-term anymore, or that romance is dead...I have no idea. It's kind of amazing how many girls came down here thinking that they would meet some wonderful, romantic man...the kind of man they believe they can't meet in New York or San Francisco or Madison, WI. I didn't even have the optimism to hope that would happen to me; Santiago men proved to me in my first few days that they are not so unlike New York men. I will give them credit for having some wonderfully forthcoming pick-up lines, though.

I'm wrong about all of it. Something pretty amazing happened to me in the hot springs of Termas de Cauquenes. It was novella-worthy (and more than likely I'll go ahead and write a short-story about it). I met someone, we connected, I left....we'll probably never see each other again. But the whole thing was so hopeful and bizarre. There's so obviously no long-term relationship there, no happy ending in the traditional sense. But maybe that's what Julieta really means, that happy endings just aren't what they used to be. Because I'm certainly happy just having had the experience of living outside of my life for two days with someone new, who for some reason understood me as much as I understood him (in Spanish, to boot!). I'm happy that romance is alive and well and living outside of Rancaugua.

That's my happy ending.