AS FAR AS I´VE HEARD...
The hurricane devastation is horrific. A lot of people have asked if everyone I know is okay and if my family has been impacted. Luckily, as far as I know, everyone is doing alright. It´s a major event down here.

I hope some of my photo friends made it south. I almost wish I could be at home to go and document some of this. MSN has some great slide shows. But I won´t bother any more aobut that because I´m sure everyone up north has stronger sentiments about Katrina.

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DALÍ Y CINE

I had quite the art-filled day Thursday. After a few classes I joined another class in heading to a Salvador Dalí exhibit. It was in the Centro Cultural Estación Mapocho, or one of the former train stations in the norhtern part of the city. The building is fantastic: huge vaulted roof, amazing passageways. The building alone was good enough for the trip. It had been restored/sustained beautifully. Now it is used for a variety of things: exhibits, parties, conferences like the childhood education one that was taking place in the majority of the area.

And if that wasn´t enough, the Dalí exhibit was phenomenal. The collection covered a vast spectrum of works and styles. I think the majority of the sculptures were from the Clot Collection, which Dalí did all around the same time when he lived with Gala. They were all bronze and breathtaking.

I have zero art vocabulary...for example - The majority of the paintings were specific groupings of collections. So 10 paintings inspired by hippies, another 5 from Mao poems. Stuff like that. Probably the most impressive were the over 100 paintings of the Holy Bible - La Sagrada Biblia. Dalí started with the Torah and then decided to do the entire Bible, or at least up through the Gospels. Pretty much every major Bible story was there. It was beyond any words I have. I was thrilled to see so many pieces that were completely new to me. I recognized less than 5 pieces out of several hundred . It was also amazing to see how aspects of Surrealism came in and out. The styles varied dramatically. So in short, it was freaking awesome.

So being exhausted from picture-looking, I hopped the Metro home and caught a quick bite to eat.

Then I ran back into town to head the the WORLD TOUR of the Banff Mountain Film Festival. It´s a 3-day festival highlighting extreme sports/circumstances/situations films. I was meeting Anne Claire and Gina, both from my group. However, they got lost, even though it was really freaking easy to find. So I went solo after waiting for quite some time.

The films were great. One about rock climbing in Spain, another about Base jumping in Mexico, stuff like that. The best by far was by John Muir, called Alone Across Australia. This Australian is crazy. In 2001 he was the first to complete a solo trip across Australia...the entire continent. It took him over 4 months and it was only him, his dog, and a cart with supplies for the 1,600 + mile trip. He would film himself every now and then until his camera equipment finally quit on day 122. It´s outrageous that a person could pull that off. Eating from whatever he could find along the way - a personal favorite of mine was when he sliced up some streaks from a bloated bovine! The carcass made a weaving noise as he cut it. It was disgusting.
And dammit, the whole place was crying when his dog died. The dog had eaten a poison pellet that people leave for Dingos. Muir filmed himself weeping as he holds the dead terrier.
Watching the emotions and gradual change over the course of those months was astounding. It included the fact that he found out about the 9/11 attacks months after it had happened.

Oh, and he walked to the North Pole 4 months after he was done with Australia.

To deal with all the emotions of the day I joined several others and went out to a few bars until about 4 this morning. Everything is so late here...it´s lovely. Actually, I got home at 4. I left the bar around 3, finally got a bus, and then had a huge walk when it changed course before the driver said it would. So I walked for about 20 or 30 minutes to get home then. Not as bad as some of the guys who ran out of money at the bars the other night and walked over 2 hours to get back to their apartment building. The sun was coming up when they finally got back. I laughed my ass off at them.