By: Emma Bates
It’s April, and Spring is upon us- wait, no. It’s just starting to turn chilly during the day, teasing us with one or two last afternoons of warmth before the great gloom begins.
It sounds like hyperbole, but winter in Santiago has impressed me with its effect on people, me and others. The word “chilly” really describes the sense you get walking around: people are subdued, isolating themselves under absurd layers, meaner on the subway and on the street. In Boston during the winter, the community celebrated each step into a warm coffee shop, they were somehow more used to the depressive cold, and defiantly cheerful. Sure, it was cold, but it didn’t make you feel alone in a sea of grumps.
Maybe it’s a psychosomatic reaction, but the physical feeling that gets into your bones and makes you feel weak and useless seems different too. It doesn’t wake you up, or nip at your toes –it makes you so cold a down jacket can’t cut the bite. But the temperature isn’t low enough to explain that by itself –we’re permeated by some kind of seeping mist that knows no epidermal barriers, our defenses laid low by the social freeze. I will never forget this feeling as long as I live.
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