So I went out into the street and breathed the air of Santiago with a vague conviction that I was living, if not in the best of worlds, at least in a possible world, a real world, and I published a book of poems that struck even me as odd, I mean it was odd that I should have written them, they were odd coming from me, but I published them in the name of freedom, my own and that of my readers, and then I went back to giving classes and lectures, and I published another book in Spain, in Pampola, and then it was my turn to frequent the airports of the world, mingling with elegant Europeans and serious (and weary-looking) North Americans, mingling with the best-dressed men of Italy, Germany, France and England, gentlemen whom it was a pleasure simply to behold, and there I was, with my cassock fluttering in the air-conditioned breeze or the gusts that issue from automatic doors when they open suddenly, for no logical reason, as if they had a presentiment of God’s presence, and, seeing my humble cassock flapping, people would say, There goes Fr Sebastian, there goes Fr Urrutia, that splendid Chilean, and then I returned to Chile, for I always return, how else would I merit the appellation splendid Chilean, and I went on writing reviews for the newspaper, and critical articles crying out for a different approach to culture, as even the most inattentive reader could hardly fail to notice if he scratched the surface a little, critical articles crying out, indeed begging, for a return to the Greek and Latin greats, to the Troubadours, to the dolce stil nuovo and the classics of Spain, France and England, more culture! more culture! read Whitman and Pound and Eliot, read Neruda and Borges and Vallejo, read Victor Hugo, for God’s sake, and Tolstoy, and proudly I cried myself hoarse in the desert, but my vociferations and on occasions my howling could only be heard by those who were able to scratch the surface of my writings with the nails of their index fingers, and they were not many, but enough for me, and life went on and on and on, like a necklace of rice grains, on each grain of which a landscape had been painted, tiny grains and microscopic landscapes, and I knew that everyone was putting that necklace on and wearing it, but no one had the patience or the strength or the courage to take it off and look at it closely and decipher each landscape grain by grain, partly because to do so required the vision of a lynx or an eagle, and partly because the landscapes usually turned out to contain unpleasant surprises like coffins, makeshift cemeteries, ghost towns, the void and the horror, the smallness of being and its ridiculous will, people watching television, people going to football matches, boredom navigating the Chilean imagination like an enormous aircraft carrier. And that’s the truth. We were bored.