el fondo - the background

ok, time to get nostalgic.

this morning, desperate for some music to offer inspiration, relaxation, and productivity, i decided to type in the radio station of my teenage years to google, just to see what would happen. sometime during college, i can't remember when exactly, this particular station went off the air and became a hi-def only station (ie inaccessible to me in my car) - but it was my station for a long time before that. oh, 99x, how i've missed you.

so it turns out that now my beloved station is back on the air at 97.9 instead of it's previous 99.7 (how's that for dyslexia?) ... and completly streamable (is that a word?) from its website! so after my 3 or 4 yr hiatus, ironically enough, i am again enjoying 99x, but this time from my living room in santiago, chile :)

i know you probably don't care too much about my radio station, or the one of my adolesence, as it was, but finding me has made me soooooo nostalgic. they even play a lot of the same mid-90's alternative songs that i grew up with, just like they've been stuck in a limbo this entire time. of course there's lots of new stuff mixed in too now that i don't recognize, but wow. nothing like a radio station, preserved in time, to bring you right back to it all, not just atlanta, but fayetteville.

i was one of the lucky/blessed ones that got a car shortly after my 16th birthday. my black 1998 honda accord that my sister now drives, on the road to atlanta for a concert in the summer - me and my friends blasting the radio while dyeing our hair pink, purple, blue, green, etc. in the kitchen sink at my house - the radio somewhere in the background at the neighborhood pool in the summers before work and international traveling took over - the radio blasting constantly from my room at home as i doused myself in body splash and put on mascara for some of my first dates (this is how i still get ready for dates, ha ha ha) - inspiration for my journal-writing in high school - nights spent exploring parks and sitting in the car talking forever - the drive home during christmas breaks during college after seeing friends from high school - nights spent finishing art projects and sewing projects - lazy afternoons with boyfriends - etc.

i never took the time to notice how omnipresent it was, this piece of my adolesence, as it was always in the background. but now, it's all too obvious. how much do you take for granted every day, things that you don't notice but are always there? and how much are they really shaping your reality in ways you can't even imagine?

i love the mountains outside my window here. i'm now accustomed to the sway of the metro and the weight of the air. reggaeton brings me right into a club, smoke hanging in the air, trying to mouth lyrics to a song that i really don't know. i crave the round, warm bread from the oven of the supermarket downstairs at the end of the workday. fracs and coffee are must-haves after lunch. sometimes nothing will do except an empanada de choclo y jamón. i love the view from the 23rd floor of my building after running like a maniac up the stairs. i love the view from cerro san cristobal at the end of the day. i love the chilean accent and words like flaite, lata, palta, weón, wea, cachai. this is what i live now, and i know it's something that will stay with me always, small as it is. and i know that be it chile, atlanta, new york, whatever, it's not the place that i think of when i reminisce - it's where i was in my life, what i was doing, what i was feeling, who i was with, what it was like to be there. this is nostalgia, saudades, extrañar algo, not my room. not my radio station.

you will always miss something, no matter where you end up. but not a place, not an object - everything together, that special combination that makes an experience what it is.

so take in everything - every smell, every texture, every taste, every sensation - and let that combination move you. you won't remember them individually later, but that combination - that's where the impression lies.