Esperando para mi vuelo

Wouldn’t you know it, my flight was cancelled, so I’ve got another day to kill, and then I leave at 2 in the morning. If you ever make plans to fly down to South America with Lan Peru, be aware if you buy your tickets in advance that Lan Peru changes their flights constantly (my flight to Perù was also changed), and you might not find out because they don’t apparently maintain much contact with travel agencies or other international airlines. Annoying as hell, it’s a good thing I planned my return with a bit of leeway before I need to get back to cleaning toilets.
So I’ve returned to Miraflores to kill some time and enjoy some more Peruvian food before I leave for good.

Coming Home

Tonight’s my last night in Perú. I’m trying to get the few people I know here in Lima together for one last meal at Pardo’s Chicken. I’m sure as hell gonna miss the food here, not to mention the beautiful women, the discotecas, the exchange rate, the fruit, the jugos frescos, the warm weather, the cold showers, the pisco sours, the ever-present cheap taxis, the drivers with a death wish. . .Well, the latter one I won’t miss so much.
However, I do admit to looking forward to going back to the culture I know so well and usually dislike. I’m looking forward to eating a phatty burrito and throwing some hot sauce on that shit. I’m looking forward to not having diarrhea for an extended period of time. I’m looking forward to a dark, heavy, bittersweet microbrew. I’m looking forward to articulating myself in English using big, complicated words. I’m looking forward to being able to throw my toilet paper into the toilet. Yes, all of these things. But most importantly, I am looking forward to seeing YOU–my family and my friends–again and sharing what I have been through with you and seeing your beautiful faces again and drinking some wine, or whisky, or Chartreuse with you. Oh, and yes, I have tons of pictures that I am going to make you suffer through as I describe each and every one in excruciating detail. Look forward to seeing you soon.

Jungle Bites

I was just on Google looking to see if I could find out what kind of insect bite I’ve got on my arm–it itches like beejesus and trails down the length of my arm, ending in a sizeable bite that seems to be steadily increasing in size. I didn’t find anything on the web about it, but I did find this cool BBC site with lots of interesting facts about the jungle.

Un Beso No Es Solo Un Beso

Un beso no es solo un beso para eses personas con consiensia de la luz; un beso es lleno de sentimiento, es una extensión del corazon, una forma de algo no puede definir. Porque amor esta afuera todo, esta dentro de todo, esta incontenible, movimiento a través de todo, afuera palabras, se bastado solo con manos, con contacto de cascaras–palabras se amoldado de bocas sino allende de sonidos. Amor es un creacion de la luz buscando sí mismo. En aquel momento de unidad, no es nada sino una fuerza fuerte penetrando todo, desterrando el oscuridad. Por supuesto, el oscuridad volverá, cubriendo los espacios lejos del corazon. Necesite crear amor incesantemente para su vida, para que el corazon puede recordar por que se existar, se existar solo para amor, para respirando la luz afuera sí mismo al dentro del mundo. ¡Mantena su respirando, divida la luz! ¿Que mas es en vida que cual esta dentro de su corazon?

Summation

I’m back in Lima once again, four more days until I’m home, this is the homestretch. I ate my last bit of home-cooked jungle food, cecina, platanos fritos, arroz and ensalada de cebolla, palta, y tomate, con jugo de papaya, with Rosa and then hopped onto my plane, saying goodbye for now to humidity, charapitas, and mosquitos. Iquitos was like a kind of wonderful summation of my trip to Perú–love, food, exotic drinks, and dancing. The night before I left Rosa’s sister took me around the town on her moto. The wind in my face, gripping the back handles, half-assedly trying to understand the things she was saying, I felt a kind of peace settle over me as I thought about my experiences here. This trip has turned into everything that I would have wanted it to be had I scripted it out. The fact that I didn’t at all makes it all the better. Without any kind of direction, it has evolved into a very balanced and full experience–I spent a good chunk of time in three very distinct and different places in Perú, representative of the 3 main types of climates here: the mountains (las sierras), the coast (la costa), and the jungle (la selva). I met incredibly hospitable people and tried all kinds of different foods typical of each region. I danced frequently and drank little (comparative to my normal alcohol intake). I gained a functional ability in the usage of Castellano. And ten million other little things that make up the stars in the sky. Because these memories will light up whatever darkness of solitude I may suffer in the year to come. Did I say memories? It doesn’t seem like the right term. Memories are something in the past. I feel like there are things on this journey that I picked up that I will carry with me for the rest of my life, that will grow inside of my heart because they dug out a little space for themselves there. Anyone who can burrow their way into love will stay there forever if this is where they would like to be. The doors are open and here wine is served 24 hours. Why go home again when you can be drunk all the time with the friend?

Salsa de Cocona

I think I’m starting to get the hang of the salsa beat, a little bit at least. You’ve got to get one cheek of the buttock swinging forward on the cusp of that double conga swat as you move the foot up, then conversely step back and hit the next conga swat with the other buttock. Of course, I might be totally wrong on that one, but it felt a lot better for me, as if my ass was finally starting to make it’s first forays into a fuller understanding of the rhythm. I just went out for what may prove to be my last dancing stint in Iquitos, I’m really going to miss these damn discotecas here with their live orchestral groups. I’m so fond of the local music, in fact, that I’m going to see about getting me a disco compacto of some of that shit. Once you’ve got you’re ass shaking to it, you forgive a lot of whatever aspects of cheesiness there may be to it’s little jumpy synthesizer licks.
I discovered that cocona not only refers to the fruit, which is delicious, but also to a certain female body part. When I was in the jungle, the 70 year old cook (who made some great basic typical foods (always with the required side dish of platanos fritos of course)) was asking me if I liked cocona, when I had said that I had tried jugo de cocona, and I didn’t understand why they all started laughing when I avidly replied “¡sì, mucho!”
I also learned from my guide the meaning of rompecalzon, one of the tragos (local drinks mixed with aguardiente that double as aphrodesiacs). It refers to the forceful removal of underwear, suggesting that to drink of this potent elixir is to be infused with sudden and intense sexual energy. I don’t know about that, it is possible it has that effect, although I just thought it was the hot women and the extreme humidity. I just kind of like the taste. It’s funny though because I’d been ordering this drink for a while here without knowing the meaning. Now I feel a little weird when I order it, like I’m asking for a viagra or something.
Just one more night and day to enjoy this little slice of jungle life and then it’s back to the big city.

The Promise

Laying in my hammock in the jungle, listening to the gallìnas crow and the insects whirring and feeling my blood slowly draining through the continuous multiple straw sucks of the mosquitoes, I began to think of my journeys in Perù and of how these experiences have changed me. I really do not feel like the same person that I was when I came here. The windows opened to the vistas of a new world have shed light onto another person dwelling inside of me–there all along, of course. Once I return to the habits and customs of my nation of birth, I wonder how long these changes can persist. But that is perhaps not so important. What is important is that I have seen these new horizons at all and that I know now that they can exist.
I have been so blessed on these travels, given so much by so many people, that it would be impossible for me not to be changed. When one’s life has been filled with blessings, there is nothing to do but try to find some way to fufill the promise and opportunity these blessings have bestowed. Because I know that there has to be some kind of karmic payment for all of this wonderfulness. Maybe some of this debt has already been payed and this is the reward, I don’t really know, but what I do know is that I am humbled in the face of gifts that are beyond anything that I could have expected. All I can do is try to find a way to give this love back to other people and spread the light around.

Amor Como el Ocèano

Love is like an ocean, somehow keeping you afloat in the midst of continuous swelling and ebbing change. Like an ocean, it accepts everything, the only rejection coming from the mind that fears the heart that is opening to suffering like a flower. Yes, love comes from all places and goes in all directions, dependant solely on the circumstance of placement, the happening of a moment in time when skin contacts skin and knows again the truth that it is one, has always been one, and with this can be prepared to break again in two. Breaking breaking to know the source.
The mind always strives for eternity, to make this thing last forever. The heart knows that tomorrow isn’t really all that important, not when the beloved is right here next to you and inside of your heart. Tomorrow, yes, of course, will be full of suffering. But what would be the point in attainment of ecstasy if it could be retained? Simply hollow echoes resounding without resolution. You reach a point where you are outside of yourself, watching yourself become what you are, a piece of human history reenacting the drama of life.
Dive in headfirst, because then at least when the cold hits you it will be complete, without fear, and met with grace.

Back in the Rubber Boom Town

In the jungle, during the night (well, all the time, actually, but it’s more prominent in the night-time) the insects weave patterns and textures of sound so sinuous, repetitive, and geometric that it’s almost visible to the eye, these frequencies crafted of the wing. The air is so dank it’s hard to breathe, and you feel as if you are in the midst of a dream as you walk through the dense growth of neon green trees ripe with bananas, anonas, pijuayos. Apparently I have sangre dulce (sweet blood), because I was needled into by so many mosquitos that my feet look like they’ve broken out in hives and my arms look like the tracked up veins of a junkie. Of course, this is what occurs when you are not from the jungle and you do not slobber on repellent. Yes, I elected to forgo the repellent, mainly because the one time I did try putting it on it had no effect whatsoever, probably because I sweat it right back off. I figured that I needed to put these anti-malarial pills to work anyway, and the bites aren’t so terrible as long as you don’t scratch them (impossible, unfortunately, with the feet, which are rubbed constantly by my sandals as I walk). So at the lodge I stayed at, I basically laid around in my hammock sweating and eating different jungle fruits while watching mosquitos draw pints from my blood like it was happy hour.
Some new vocab for ya: Caimito–a yellow/green fruit with very sweet, refreshing, and extremely sticky fruit. After you eat it, your fingers and your lips almost stick together. Mamey–actually a pomerosa, but called Mamey anyway, this tree bears these shockingly pink spinal flores that scatter in a heap beneath it, providing a stark and beautiful contrast with its green surroundings. Maracuya–another fruit, somewhat like my beloved granadilla–I tried some of its juice, very refreshing on a hot sunny day en la selva. Anona–green in appearance until it is ripe, when it turns slightly yellow, this fruit looks exotic with little tendril hooks curling from its rubber-like surface, and it tastes like pudding. In fact, the taste and texture and seeds of the fruit of the anona is very similar to that of the chirimoya, another of my favorites. I ate like 10 of these things while at the albergue. It’s like dessert. Mata-mata–a prehistoric jungle turtle, it’s head looks like a hammerhead shark and it’s got a very long neck. Pijuayo–a tree growing in the jungle that bears two wonderful gifts–chonta–the heart of its trunk–is delicious and served commonly in salads with limòn and salt, and it’s fruits–also called pijuayos–are like little tiny sweet potatoes ready to eat–you pry them open and then dab a little cocona salsa on them. Tasty.
Like I said, this place is paradise as far as I’m concerned. Now that I’ve made a few friends I’m going to stick it out for another 5 days, giving me only 3 days more in Lima before I head back home.

Un Otro dìa en Paraiso

Another day in paradise. Today I met up with my friend Rosa and she and her friend Judy cooked me up some pescado with aji and arroz, with cocona salsa and platanos fritos, served with some jugo de cocona as a refresco. There’s nothing quite like getting comida tipica cooked fresh for you by beautiful women. Then Rosa took me to Lake Quistacocha, a beautiful laguna a little ways outside of town, where they’ve got all sorts of various jungle animals such as pumas and monkeys stuffed into tiny little cages. I felt sorry for the animals, but it was nice to see them since it’s pretty rare to see much in the jungle unless you spend over a week venturing deep into the heart of it. So tomorrow I’m off to la selva–you won’t hear from me in four days.
The jungle term for hot peppers is charapitas. This term could also be used to denote the Iquiteñas. It also refers to small turtles.
Last night again I went out to dance, apparently in Iquitos there are a couple of big orchestral groups that play mostly the same songs, and they’ve got their own large dancehalls as well. The first group I saw was called Kaliente; last night the group was Explosiòn. Both groups have a trio of dancers up on stage wearing next to nothing and swinging their asses as if they’ve got prehensile buttocks. Last night I was too tired to really shake anything too much, however. I was feeling heavy and 100% gringo as I feebly tried to step in the appropriate time signature to salsa music.

Letting yourself go makes everyone happy

Wow, tonight has to have been one of the most interesting booty shaking experiences I’ve had in Perù thus far, mainly due to the fact that in the midst of a crowd of Iquiteños I was the only gringo in sight, and I was dancing my little white ass off. This girl Lorena and her little sister took me out to a local joint where there was a local group playing live cumbía, merengue, salsa, chincha, etc. I love it when Peruvians look kind of dumbfounded when they realize that I can shake my hips like there’s no tomorrow to musica latina.
I’m impressed with the people in general here in Iquitos, they are amazingly laid-back and accepting. In other places that I’ve been to sometimes I get the “what’s the gringo doing here?” kind of vibe (to other places’ credit, not very much of this) but in Iquitos, I just get hot eyes from a few of the chicas and smiles and maybe just a little bit of query in some looks but not in an unfriendly way. People here don’t seem to have many hang-ups other than driving their mototaxis like they think they’re in Ben-Hur. It’s got to be the year-round heat that makes people so laid back. Iquitos really is another world apart from the rest of Peru, which is not all that surprising I guess since it’s only accessible by boat or by airplane. And did I mention that the women are phenomenally beautiful here? It’s almost obscene. It’s somewhat perturbing because many of these Iquiteñas seem to be deliberately looking to bag themselves a gringo husband. There seems to be a kind of expat Texan scene for that kind of thing–you know, get yourself a hot young Amazonian wife and buy a restaurant and drink cervezas all day.
So it’s 1:30 in the morning now and I guess about time for me to head back to the hostal. Man, I love shaking the booty, I always feel so damn good afterwards, like I just wrote a cohesive thesis on the half-lives of diaphanous insects or something. It’s just one of those pure expressions of being, of being alive, of being filled with the light, of passing and sharing this light with everyone around you. What I love most about it is how you can almost visually watch the dynamic of the whole crowd change with the influx of positive vibes from an individual dancer who is letting loose. Letting yourself go makes everyone happy.

Belen

Booze, Aphrodesiacs, and Intellectual Conversation

Yesterday I took a boat out to a butterfly farm, where they also had a bunch of rescued jungle animals such as a jaguar, giant rats, a tapir, a manitee, an anteater, and several monkeys–one of whom, Tommy, kept jumping onto our shoulders and licking the sweat off our necks. I met some guys from New York at the farm, they work in the independent film industry. We ended up running into each other again later at a bar, where I was trying all the different types of jungle concoctions that double both as alcholic beverages and aphrodesiacs. There´s uño de gato, rompecalzones, uva-chado, 7 raices, 21 raices, and chuchuhuasi, all rather medicinal but interesting tasting drinks that consist of aguardiente, a potent rum made from sugarcane, mixed with different types of roots or bark or whatever, depending on the drink. It definitely gave me a little heat on the inside, coupled with my already sun reddened face. Unfortunately my malaria pills make me even more sensitive to the sun than my pale skin of scandinavian heritage already curses me with, and it’s basically pointless to use sunscreen because I’ll just sweat it off within 5 minutes.
Anyway, so we met up with a friend of the New Yorkers who has been living in Iquitos for 6 months and doing medical work, and we made our way over to another bar that he knew about that was right over the water in a little jungle shack kind of structure–perfect for boozing it up in the midst of shirt drenching humidity. I think it was last night when it really began to dawn on me that I may be in some kind of paradise here.
Of course, being with New Yorkers, we had to have involved conversations about things like David Bowie, films, relationships and DP, and other random tidbits of intellectual cultural topics, the sort of which I hadn’t had in quite some time–let alone any extended conversations in English. We got pretty good and smashed. We ended up returning to the first bar where I talked until 1 in the morning with the bartendress. You know, I had been thinking that my spanish was getting fairly good, just moving past the ‘hablo un poco’ level, but now that I’m in a new place, my ability again has gone back to the ‘hablo muy poquito’ level because they speak differently here–much faster without anunciation, usually while some kind of radio music is blasting in the background.
I just scheduled this morning to stay for 4 days in a lodge in the Amazon. I’m going to head out on Sunday, I wanted to give myself the weekend to go out and shake the booty.

Jungle Juice

Iquitos is definitely a different world than the Perù that I’ve seen thus far. It is much more laid-back here, and the tourist feeding industry is not quite as rampant and savage as it was in Qosqo, maybe because it is a dead season for tourism here right now. The only other English speaking tourist that I’ve seen thus far was a girl from Wales who cornered me when I got off the plane to take a taxi with her into town. I accompanied her to her backpackers hostal to see if I wanted to stay there too, took one look at the room, and peaced out. Why would you pay 17 soles per night for a room with ten other people when you can pay 20 soles per night for a room and a bathroom to yourself?
People warned me about the women in Iquitos before I came here. Yeah, they are kind of aggressive. I go to eat lunch and the waitresses will linger next to my table making small talk and then try to set appointments to meet later on. I don’t mind the attention though.
These malaria pills are kind of zoning me out when mixed with cervezas. I’m contemplating terminating the pills, because there’s not really any mosquitos in Iquitos. I suppose it will come in handy when I venture into the jungle. I was just talking to a lady (who seemed to be quite honest because I talked with her for an hour) about staying in her lodge in the Amazon for 20 dollars a night. Seems like a pretty good price to me.
The interesting thing about Iquitos is that it still kind of retains that feeling of the rubber boom era, I feel like I’m in a Joseph Conrad book when I walk around here, other than for the everpresent roar of motorcycles and mototaxis through the streets.
I just went walking around looking for a bar to sit and quaff a few at, and found a little joint playing some of that sad kind of romantic music that Cesaria Evora sings. I ordered me a siete raices, an alcoholic beverage made with 7 roots that I believe also serves as an aphrodesiac, and that tastes like the wilder, stronger cousin of a bloody mary. Some older ladies came and sat at my table. This one lady kept saying slurred things to me in Spanish that I couldn’t understand, and then she was trying to get me to dance with her. Did I say the women are aggressive here? This old fat lady with missing teeth was tugging on my arm, not to be denied. But I had to turn her down, even with the siete raices coursing through my system.

Thoughts in a Small Humid Hotel Room

Contained within our minds lies the key that would unveil all mysteries. But to open this door would be akin to opening the pressurized door of a flying airplane–all of what we are would be sucked out into the vacuum and there would be nothing left but space, another mystery to those who came later. Which is as much to say that we are made as much of what we don’t know as of what we know–that in fact it is not a matter of knowing at all, but a matter of accepting that one must look in a certain direction in order to see, and that what will be seen will be what lies before the path of vision. How many worlds there are beyond where you may happen to look! Can you sense these worlds without looking? Learn to listen. You can hear much more than the sound of your breathing when you are alone in your room, much more than the sounds of the outside world filtering through. You can hear the sound of something inside of you that does not belong to you. It is not important what this force is or even why it is there–what matters is that it is there at all, and that you can feel it. The feeling–what could be more important then this? This is a knowledge much deeper than whatever straightforward paths your logic can define.

En la Selva

So I am now stationed in Iquitos, the gateway to Peru´s northern Amazon. It´s 80 degrees and motorbikes and motortaxis zip about like bionic fireflies through the humid evening streets. I didn’t purchase a return flight, so I have as much time or as little as I desire here.
I am feeling the looming date of my departure to the states approaching, and to be perfectly honest, I am right now just about ready to leave. I think this is due in no small part to the fact that I am drained right now after 4 or so days of having the little food that I eat run straight through me with the swiftness that I used to forget a lecture as an undergrad.
It´s amazing to me the amount of travellers that I meet who are in South America for something like 8 months. Where the hell do they get the money for that kind of trip? Of course from their parents, considering that these people are usually in their early twenties. I don’t know if I could handle travelling for that long without some kind of a job to keep me occupied and a place to call my home. I’m pretty bored frequently, I’m used to working, and now with all this free time to do whatever I want–I don’t know what to do with myself, so why, I babble my inane world outlooks onto this blog, of course.
I had been considering working on an organic farm for a spell on my trip, but the fact is that there really aren’t many in Perù–I would had to have gone to Bolivia or Chile. So perhaps in the future.
Sorry, I´m going to whine a bit here for a minute, ignore this paragraph of weakness if you will: I am still increasingly feeling homesick. For what exactly I am missing it would be hard for me to define, all I know is that I feel a kind of weariness with being a constant foreigner and with being continuously reliant on either the beneficence of strangers or dios to draw me into commonality beyond appearances and circumstances. Yes, so I am missing the habits and comforts of what I am trained to be accustomed to, yes.

Movimiento adelante

It’s interesting how one’s perspectives shift. Originally Lima had been for me a large dirty noisy city. As time passes and it feels more like home, things that before seemed disorderly or dirty now appear full of life. The buildings are colorful and everywhere is bustling with the daily haphazard fiesta of movement. I stroll across 6 lanes of busy traffic like frogger without a thought.
What is most interesting is that it has become strange for me to speak solely in English, as I realized last night when I went out with some nice folks from my hostal and spoke in English all night. We went to Calle de las Pizzas in Miraflores and drank a bunch of cervezas. The goal had originally been to go out dancing, but we somehow ended up in a karaoke bar first, and when we finally made it to a little joint with some musica latina, right at the very moment when I stood up to commence shaking my booty, they lowered the volume severely because at 2 o’clock pizza street shuts itself down volume-wise.
I found myself tending to speak very simple English, with a Spanish accent. This is probably something I would snap out of after a few days of speaking English again, but I thought it was kind of weird.
Miriam, a gal from the Netherlands, and I ended up having a wonderful profound discussion regarding life, travels, gifts, tragedies, and blessings until 4 in the morning. Miriam and Frank, my guide for my trek in Huaraz, went out to get more beers but it turns out the stores stop selling them in the wee morning hours–which is probably for the best given the feeling I’ve got in mi cabeza right now. The stomach dragons have been tearing a hole in my stomach with their restlessness, you can hear the rapid liquid fire burbling of my stomach like it’s a hollow sink drain.
Anyway, so I’m off to Iquitos tomorrow. I’ll start taking my anti-malarial pills today.

Aventuras con Religión

Hot and sunny in Lima todos los días. Day before yesterday I wandered around the sun-baked streets of Miraflores until I found Huaca Pucllana, a very large pre-Incan mound. That’s really all it is, a mound, but it was nice to have found it anyway without consulting anything except my confidence that I would run into it through the grace of dios. Speaking of the latter, I had an interesting adventure yesterday with religion. A friend of a friend of mine, Roxanna, who I had chatted with most of the night a few nights ago, took me 2 hours outside of the city today, to Ventanilla, to her church to get me converted. Now, let me tell you first of all that I had no idea where she and her friend Manuel were taking me. We had agreed to meet up this morning, and I had some vague idea that we were going to go out dancing somewhere eventually. We get on this old reconverted school bus and drive through the heat of the early afternoon out to where the sand dunes are. We finally get off the bus and step into a church. I’m thinking, ok, I’m going into a church, this is kind of weird, I thought we were going to the beach or something. Some biblical looking Peruanos in white button down shirts led me upstairs and sat me down at a table in a room filled with ladies in nun-outfits. Then another biblical looking dude in a beige tunic sat down and began speaking to me, solely in rapid-fire Spanish of course (translated at times by Roxanna in slightly less rapid-fire Spanish (it was rather touching to see that she thought this might help)), about his beliefs in God. Thus commenced an hour-long kind-of dialogue in Spanish regarding his beliefs and mine.
It was actually quite intriguing, he was telling me about how his church believes that the Incans knew of the Ten Commandments before the conquistadores ever trampled Incan turf bearing the ‘good news’ and greed for gold, that in fact in Isaiah 2 there is a reference to Macchu Piccu. Which couples with another interesting facet of religion here in general: the Catholicism is mixed overtly with the native religion of the Incas, and there is not seen to be a contradiction in this, which is refreshing.
Anyway, so we had a pretty deep talk about God and stuff while I ate some good lomo saltado cooked by a matronly looking lady in a nun outfit and drank Inca Kola. I told the biblical looking dude in the beige tunic that I believe that god is in everyone and to know of this god is ultimately a solitary internal affair, a matter of cultivating consciousness so to speak, beyond laws and language and logical comprehension. We agreed pretty much on matters of the spirit, but then it always came down to their ten laws that they have based on the old testament (including maintenance of the Sabbath on Saturday), and how it was only through following these commandments that one could be one with santos. I was given a copy of said commandments and told that I held promise as a minister or prophet of “el señor.” Then we went downstairs to the church which was now in session. I was introduced in front of the congregation, and then they played some Andino music about Jesus, which was actually quite beautiful, and some ladies in nun outfits danced around with the spirit.
Yes, I call the kind of tourism that I undergo the tourism of the happenstance. Events sprung from the unknown are what I have come to see.

Ceramica Erotica

Yesterday I went to a couple of museos and looked at some more ceramicas and earrings and rocks and stuff. At the Museo Larco (the museum from whose collection was drawn my favorite museo en Qosqo, el Museo Pre-Colombino there is a collection of erotic ceramics; it was quite delightful I must say, they’ve got water carriers with people, skeletons, and animals going at it in all positions. They’ve even got some with people with venereal diseases putting medicine on their diseased parts. Makes you realize just how important a form of expression these water carriers and pots and cups were for ancient peoples. Which isn’t all that surprising considering that water is the substance prior to gold which held the most value, and will probably be the premier substance in the end after gold and oil have lost their value over human life again.
The stomach dragons have re-emerged from their slumber after a long period of inactivity. It’s going to be one of those days.

Sacrifice Yourself for Your Life

Because you know that everything good that comes to you comes because there was something before that you gave away, or that you will need to give away in the future. Blessings never come without pain. And so every benediction of love that comes your way is edged with the awareness of suffering, because you know that behind every joy lies an incredible sadness, behind every connection lays emptiness. Without the oscillation of emotions, you can look out of a spaceship into the night of a half of the globe’s cities and view the connective star hustled patterns of human life and know of it’s beauty, and know the distance which gave to it form.
You can stand in the night of your particular backyard and look up at the indifferently humming stars and know of their intimate relation to you and all of your mundane personal intricacies.
Because you can not transcend, let’s set the romantics straight. But you can grasp the totality of what you are in any given moment. So strength, you see, is not achieving some climactic pinnacle of divinity in your life from which all other points thereafter and before will refer. Strength is the steady patient nurturing of every moment in your life, the bending, flowing, expanding strength of roots, the strength you find in plants when you can bend them endlessly but never break them. Sacrifice your desires, your expectations, every dream and ambition that you ever had for this person that you thought you knew so intimately. Sacrifice yourself so that you may live.

Adventures in Affluency

Last night Karina and her friend Monica took me to Jockey Plaza , yes, el centro comercial más grande del Perú. It is basically exactly the same as a mall in the US, including about 75% of the stores, such as Ecco, Tommy Hilfiger, Starbucks, etc. What’s amusing to me is the transmutation that some of the US restaurants have undergone in their transplantation aquì–por ejemplo, Pizza Hut here is a luxurious dining experience, 50 wooden tables with cloth napkins, and the pizza actually looked kind of good. McDonald´s, as another example, are not the tiny little freeway stop-offs that we’ve all gained a few extra pounds from on roadtrips–they are gigantic 3-story edifices here. Although junk food is junk food by any other appearance.
After eating some Italian food, we decided to go to el cine, the favorite past-time of young Limeños. We watched La Mujer De Mi Hermano which was of course entirely in Spanish, meaning that I understood nothing except what I could gather from the on-screen visuals. It basically was a slow-moving plot about this hot chick who is married to a gay man, and has an affair with his brother to break the boredom of her marriage. This is what I gathered from what I could see. It made me realize how far I am from being anywhere near conversant in Spanish. Karina would ask me if I understood, and I would of course say no, and then she would proceed to tell me what was going on in Spanish, which didn’t really help me all that much. Oftentimes Peruvians, once they have established that I can speak rudimentary Spanish, will proceed to talk to me as if I am a native speaker, which is flattering, but then I am forced to pretend that I understand everything they say and inevitably feel a bit embarassed when I have to remind them that I didn’t really understand much of their extensive monologue directed at me.

Translation

Every new love is a fruit borne by the gift of water sought by subterranean ascetic roots.
Love is a symptom, an outgrowth, a sign of a life much deeper. Our minds and bodies a hollow bone for the fluxing uncontainable marrow of the divine.
The passing of one love is the inevitability of the gravity of a force much greater than ourselves, the falling of fecundity, the gift of death bearing the encapsulation of the future, ripened for foreign palates.
The source remains forever below what can be seen. The sun comes and goes, the seasons circumambulate. Our roots, our beginnings, our formative grasps of the infinite beyond ourselves–these are what give us the promise of our eternal future.
Love is a passageway, not a room with a key, never what it was before, twisting and turning but always moving forward.
Why turn and look backward when everything that came before already lies ahead?

Traducción

Cada amor nuevo es una fruta había producido del regalo de agua buscaba de raizes subterraneos.
Amor es el crecimiento mas profundo de la vida. Nuestras mentes y nuestros cuerpos son huesos huecos por el incontenible de la medula de la divinidad.
El pasado de un amor es inevitable de la gravedad de una fuerza mas grande que nosotros mismos, cayendo de plenitud, el regalo de la muerte esta lleviendo de semillas del futuro, madura para paladares extranjeros.
El nacimiento se queda para siempre debajo del poder vista. El sol venir y salir, los estaciones divulgar. Nuestros origenes, nuestros comienzos, nuestros agarres formativos del infinito fuera de nosotros mismos–estos esta que nos damos la promesa de nuestro futuro eterno.
Amor es un pasillo, no es un cuarto con una clave, no que nunca estuvo antes, esta girando y dando las vueltas sino siempre movimiento delante.
¿Por que se dar la vuelta y ver hacia atras cuando todos los partes que a venido antes ya se echar en el futuro?

He vuelto a Lima

After another 20 hour bus ride, I am back in Lima. It was a bit harder this time around because the bus had some kind of problem so the driver kept stopping and getting out. There were also random rocks scattered about on the road due to mudslides from the heavy rains. After 20 hours of sitting in recycled air you want to scream, especially because a little girl puked a bunch of times in the very beginning so you could smell the acrid puke smell the whole time mixed in with the inevitable multitudinous farts (pedos) and the greasy recycled-air-smell of packed-in human beings. Luckily I had the seat next to me unused, although later in the journey a cute chica moved to sit there, which was fine by me.
It is now officially summer in Lima, and it feels great to be back here after the constant rain and cold in Qosqo. It feels a bit like coming home, I’m back in the same hostal that I was in before, and I just ate some tasty pescado in my favorite little restaurant in Miraflores.
Yesterday I got my first major dose of home-sickness, I think mainly because I was talking with Danitza about my favorite liquors such as Chartreuse or a good Scotch or Rye, and I began thinking about imbibing said liquors in my cabina with some amigos and listening to some sweet R&B on my Bose system. I miss the pine trees, I miss my drums. Well, only a little less than 1 month left here, and then I will return home so that I can begin getting Peru-sickness and wishing that I was back here.
I met back up today with Karina, a girl I had met in a disco in Huaraz earlier in my journeys in Peru. Ella conoce muchos lugares buenos en Lima. So I will probably hang out here for another week or so with her and Natalia and get some good booty shaking in some more discos, and then probably voy a Iquitos, because I want to see la selva before I leave.

Details of the Journey

It all began at 5 o’clock. We met at the shop and then took a taxi up into the hills. El maestro led us into the ruins and into a cave, where he set up some seats. He then gave us our prepared concoctions. We were also given some wooden staffs which seemed to serve some kind of protective purpose. The San Pedro was thick and almost gelatinous in texture, and the taste wasn’t all that great, but I didn’t think it was very bad either. Almost a bitter kind of green tea-herby kind of flavor. Paloma had a hard time getting it down, however, nearly retching after every sip. We then sat for a time and watched a small fire of sacred wood burning. El maestro then began to shake a rattle, and eventually he started up on a little song, beginning with whistling and then moving onto lyrics. After a while of this he led us through the cave and outside and around, and when we got back into the cave he had us dance for a time. Once this first hour had passed, it was time to separate from each other outside of the cave and enter into our own personal journeys. It is difficult to recount all that passed in my mind during this time, because many things I couldn’t fully understand, and much of the time I was preoccupied with my thoughts and with being extremely cold. When I sat for a while with my eyes closed I began to see lights, and I sensed that these lights were the energy of my fellow travelers. However, the maestro also said that I could have been seeing the residual energies of the ancients who most likely practiced much the same kind of rites on the same grounds in those same caves. In any case, that was when I began to see glimpses of another world using my ‘clairvoyant‘ senses. At this point I became aware of a specific entity of light which apparently was attempting to show me things. At first this entity seemed to be a kind of feminine gentle energy, and I thought that maybe I was sensing the anima of the San Pedro. Later this entity seemed to morph into the white bull creature with many eyes. The maestro told me today that the bull creature was in fact myself, which didn’t actually surprise me, because I sensed that at some point in the journey. However, it was a different me, a spirit me in another time and world. The bull was playful, I remember thinking of the word ‘payaso’ (clown) frequently in conjunction with its image. It seemed to be trying to lead me certain places and show me certain things, many of which I couldn’t understand or didn’t have the concentration to follow. The things which I did understand were: that in the context of this kind of journey, perceiving things through a veil of religious or preconceived spiritual philosophies would be detrimental to learning, because many of the things seen would appear to be daemonic or even evil. But none of those things, including my frightening bull self, were evil at all, simply forms of another world which possibly contain much power. I also understood that there are capabilities within our minds for much more sentience than we allow ourselves to believe, and that we very frequently receive input from these faculties and deny or ignore them. I also learned that to give energy to another is almost always something from which you will expand, and that the only thing that really sucks out your energy is the attempt to hold onto things. There are other things I think I learned but it is hard to separate much in my recollection. We sat in the ruins until around 11, and then we took off for the road. A taxi was supposed to meet us there but it didn’t show up, so we ended up walking in hard rain for a half hour. Then I headed back to my hostal and spent the night and morning tossing and turning with the lasting effects. There’s a kind of vibration that the cactus gives you, my muscles would oscillate sometimes with it, and towards the end of the morning it turned into kind of tremors, as if my body was attempting to shake it off. I am still feeling the effects right now, mainly because I’m kind of fried with lack of sleep. But don’t think for a second that that will prevent me from going out tonight and shaking my booty all night long and getting tanked.

Aventuras De San Pedro

Wow, I don’t quite know how to put into words exactly what occurred last night. Suffice to say that it was indeed an adventure. The ceremony took place amongst the upper ruins of Sacsayhuaman, a place filled with fog shrouded tunnels still retaining the spiritual imprint of the priests of the Incan times. The dogs throughout all of the hills in Qosqo were yapping frenziedly at the spirits wandering in the full moon. San Pedro apparently opens up the mind to pyschic dimensions, where you can sense things using your 6th sense so to speak. I had a little creature that was trying to show me things, he/she was some kind of white bull, minotaur-like creature with multiple eyes, it looked like something out of a Picasso painting. It taught me, first and foremost, that the things that I am frightened of, things within the spirit world that would seem to be daemonic, are simply pieces of the light just like everything else, that in fact everything is of the light and that there is nothing to fear. The creature itself would normally have been an object of fear, an archetypal Incan incarnation of San Pedro perhaps, but he was for me playful, continually trying to show me things, such as how they put the rocks together in Sacsayhuaman, which I couldn’t understand of course. It was very hard for me to concentrate, my thoughts kept getting in the way, and it was extremely cold as well. But I never felt fear, it felt really good, although at times this morning it was difficult (San Pedro lasts a long time, roughly 10-20 hours). I’m still feeling quite funny right now and I am very sensitive to the light. What is interesting about San Pedro is that while it is of course quite intense and transports you to the threshold of other dimensions, you can open your eyes and walk around (albeit rather clumsily) and feel quite normal. It is only when you close your eyes that the effects really begin to make themselves known. I could sense the psychic manifestations of the rest of the group–Mike, a Brazileno who imbibed Ayahuasca that night, Juan Vargas, the shaman, and Paloma, a pretty Argentinan who was trying San Pedro for the magazine that she writes for in Argentina. We were all off by ourselves, but I found Paloma again later because she was frightened and was not having a positive experience. We stayed together for the rest of the night and this morning, and in some ways I felt like it limited my ability to fully immerse myself in the San Pedro, but in other ways it was wonderful because I felt like we were creating the ultimate light of all–love–and the ultimate point of any spiritual journey is thus.
It is hard to recount all of what transpired within my journey last night, many things that I just couldn’t fully understand, although I could sense that I was being taught many things, or at the very least, the creature was trying it’s best to guide me. I apologized to it for my turbulent obstructive mind, but it had much patience. It seemed quite frankly happy to have someone to play with and show around the ruins.
Ok, this is the fuzz brained morning after account, I’ll transcribe some more perspectives of the night mas tarde. At 4 this afternoon I’m returning to the shaman to discuss the things I saw and to have him explain some of these things.

Revving the Engines

Today I ate tons of food, not exactly purposefully, the chicas took me to probar adobo and I didn’t realize it would be a whole nother meal after I already had lunch, and then I got hungry again later at a disco, so today I have eaten a total of 4 phatty meals, but I suppose that it is for the best since I will eat nothing mañana. I learned some great phrases from my spanish teacher today, such as “¡andate a la mierda!” (fuck off–or more literally, walk yourself to the shit), and “tetas” (titties). I took a salsa lesson today, it was pretty basic but how much can you learn in an hour anyway? The chicas took me to a nice disco with mostly latina musica, and I will most likely return there after this message for some musica de salsa en vivo and to practice my few little basic steps. I don’t feel all that bad about my dancing abilities because a lot of Peruvians also don’t know much more than I do when it comes to fancy salsa moves. It’s perfectly acceptable to dance by yourself and just shake your ass around to it. It’s really damn hard not being able to drink anything. Saturday, despues my spiritual adventures tomorrow, will be the grand fiesta para mi, I will drink and dance my ass off, and most likely head my ass straight on back to Lima on Sunday. The time has definitively come for me to leave, as much as I love the rain every single damn day. I’ve got to get my ass into some new places before I get settled down and have kids.

Travel

You go there because there is nothing there to remind you of yourself. Who are you here? There are no predefinitions of what you are supposed to be, no established perceptions limiting the scope of your ability to change like the wind over the grass. The only thing that you are is what you yourself have held onto and retained imprinted throughout your thoughts and subsequently, your actions. You hold over your own head your limitations now, no one else can see anything but what you give to them. And you find that you are the same person that you always were, when you suckled on the back of your hand all day long, when you fell on the rocks and scraped up your legs, when you experimented with being self-destructive, when you first opened up your heart to another–what is it that has changed? What has changed and what will continue to change are the new worlds that you can perceive within yourself. The world sees what you have seen within yourself, even the dim lit crevices you pushed away in fear. What you have embraced the world must embrace in turn, because every portal opened within an individual is the creation of a new world upon the world that we thought we once knew. And we all must grapple together with what each person’s tormential beauty has unleashed upon us.

Cusco Living

Today I found a real shaman off the beaten path in a little tiny shop and sat with him for a few hours listening to him talk with a lady from California about the differences in philosophies between real shamans and other forms of mystical understanding. He was saying that there are four levels of shamans, and only 7 in the whole world are on the first level. Of course he was one of them. I don’t know about any of that, but he does seem to be a legitimate ceremonial guide as compared to the other expensive gringo ´esoteric tours´ that lead thousand dollar ayahuasca journeys in jungle lodges. He was also talking about the restriction that philosophies have on the paths of many spiritual seekers, limiting their ability to expand their minds into other universes; also he was saying that he doesn’t agree with many “gurus” who lock themselves away on a mountaintop and don’t pass their teachings on to anyone. He saw no problem in utilizing modern technology such as internet and cell-phones. I’m going to try San Pedro, a type of cactus that, when imbibed in a prepared concoction, allows a bit of spiritual dimensional traversal, on Friday. He recommended that I try San Pedro first as opposed to ayahuasca, because ayahuasca is extremely potent and requires some amount of spiritual, physical, and mental preparation. On Friday I will not eat anything and only drink water until 3 hours before the ceremony. I also can’t drink any liquor before then. Should be interesting.
Tomorrow I am going to take some salsa lessons as well. I really need to get out of Qosqo but it’s proving to be difficult. I’m shooting for the 15th right now, but who knows. I’ve got slightly less than a month left now in Perù. Everyone keeps asking me if I’m going to other countries and this and that, and I’m starting to feel bad for being in one place for so long. Yes, I would love to see all of South America, I want to see Venezuela, I want to visit my cousin David in Colombia, I want to see Bolivia, I want to see Uruguay (my Uruguayan friends got me hyped to see this lesser-visited country), I want to dance to samba in Brazil, I want to drink wine and dance all night in Argentina and eat good beef, I want to drink wine in Chile and see Patagonia. But this trip I am concentrating upon one country. There is much to see here, let alone in all of South America. My next trip–and yes, there will have to be another one because I love it down here–I will be better prepared with a greater understanding of castellano under my belt, and perhaps then I will visit some more countries in one go.
But I do like getting to feel like I am at home here. I have a few friends and I know where to go to eat and I know where the good places to dance are. Not to say that I really know it any better than any other gringo might, everyone will have their own unique personal experience in this crazy place.
I’m a gringo, no getting around that one here. As soon as I show my pale face in the Plaza de Armas the shoeshine kids scramble to bid for a chance at scrubbing my 6 year old dancing shoes, the cigarrillo sellers wave packs in my face(their strong selling point apparently is that they have “Che Guevara” cigarrettes–whenever you shake your head the first time, they pull out the pack of Che’s and say, “Che cigarros,” as if that’s suddenly going to invest you with the desire to pollute your lungs with the vestiges of whatever revolutionary spirit the name invokes in you), the old women on the side of the curb angle their weathered palms into my path, little girls waggle finger puppets at me, the taxi drivers honk as they wheel speedily past, cute Cuzqueñas press flyers for massages or free pisco sours at the latest disco into my hand, and at night, seedy looking men standing next to the pillars along the square murmur “amigo, you like cocaine, marijuana, amigo?” out the sides of their mouths as I stride by. Ah yes, Babilonia.

Mis Primeras Escrituras en Español

En el comienzo, no habìa nada sino alma, un corazon sin interior ni exterior, extendiendose para siempre sin temor a parar. Pero entonces, habìa aquel momento cuando el alma sintìo deseo por màs, y subsiguiente rompìa en un millòn de piezas diferentes, y el corazon serìa uno tomò el primer aliento en dos millònes pulmones. Por primera vez, había temor en el mundó; pero habìa mas–habìa èxtasis, habìa sufrimiento, habìa belleza, habìa conciencia de vida. Eso fue el nacimiento de amor.
——————

No quiero salir, jamàs. Pero el tiempo ha venido. Debo de irme. Dejo atras una pieza de mi corazon, en todas partes voy esparciendo piezas de mi vida atràs, para que la luz pueda crecer en el espacio dentro de mì mismo. Compartimos para que perdamos nos mismo, amamos para que conozcamos nosotros mismos, vivimos y sufrimos. Moveremos al futuro con claridad, con valor, con temor, con deseo insaciable, con todo lo quese mueve con el rìo de vida.

(¡con un poco correcciòn de mi profesora, por supuesto!)

Hyper Latent

You may or may not have noticed that I am attempting to interject more hyperlinks in my posts (I have retroactively scattered links throughout my former posts, many of them referencing past writings, because I often have reoccurring themes). I realized that I might as well utilize this cyberspatial interstitial forum and expand beyond the simple postance of escritura. Maybe I should start thinking about creating a whole Manderson themed on-line universe, replete with ads for logo´d undies and bubble bath sud friendly action figures. I could design hoodies, cars, tattoos with those weird alien faces that I like to draw. Ah yes, the possibilities are endless. Veniendo pronto a una pagina de web cerca de ti!
I have been reading 100 Years of Solitude, Cien Años de Soledad, in both English and Spanish. When I first tried reading it in Spanish a month ago, I could understand maybe a few words per page. It’s extremely satisfying as throughout the learning process I recognize a little bit more each time I try. Now I recognize different past tense conjugations, more words, and more of the connecting pieces like “como,” “le, lo, la, se” “èl mismo,” etc. It still takes me a half hour to slug through a page, but I’m beginning to get that feeling like when I used to try to read “Green Eggs and Ham,” and it was always impossible, until one day I picked it up and read it aloud to mi tìa and it was easy! It will be a while ’til I get anywhere near the “easy” point with Cien Años de Soledad, however.

In Limbo

I got up today and went and got a massage for my tired limbs. Less than 20 bucks. They cost like 70 or 80 bucks in the states. I am trying to decide today where to go next. Either La Paz, or the jungle near Cuzco–Manu, Puerto Maldonado–or back to Lima and then to Iquitos. We’ll see. I’m going to give myself a few days to put my finger in the air and test which way the wind is blowing. I’m a bit tired of the Qosqo scene, the constant stranger on the street’s “amigo” this, “amigo” that, but I do know that I would miss what I do have here. I’m going to take some more private classes for Español, except this time it is the much more reasonable 10 soles per hour instead of 8 dollars like it was last time, and the lady will come to my hostal for my lessons. I went into some “shaman” shop today to find out about imbibing ayahuasca, but they quoted me 60 bucks for a ceremony. I know that for locals it’s something like less than 10 soles, so I peaced out on that one. I guess I’ll have to do without hallucinogenic substances for this journey.
This afternoon I met up with Danitza and Julie and they took me out to Saylla where we were going to visit Tipon, but it began dumping rain, so we ducked into a chicharronería instead, where they serve chicharròn de cerdo, a dish very typical of Cusco. Chicharròn de cerdo is basically fried pork, but as is always with the meat dishes here, the taste is different than in the states (almost always better, truth be told). One thing about Peruvìan food that is interesting is that a lot of their dishes are without any kind of sauce, except for dishes like Ajì de Gallìna or Papa a la Huancaìna. This always kinds of disconcerts me, because I’m definitely a sauce kind of man, I like to have something to dip my greasy food items into, I like to hold a bottle of something in my hand and splatter it all over my food as I am eating. I guess it makes me feel like I’ve got my own personal input into my food. I love hot sauce, let it be known, I put that shit all over all of my food. I feel like I’m making it better, enhancing the food. This is why I hold a special place in my heart for burritos, because after every bite you are given the chance to dunk into it some more hot sauce and salsa. Here I can’t really enjoy that kind of eating experience often. They have a kind of sauce made from ajì, Peruvian chiles, but it really isn’t that spicy, and the sauce is generally kind of weird tasting and detracts from the food rather than adding to it, although I still of course continue to dunk each papa frita into it as a matter of course.
I also tried some pasteles tonight after we returned. I tried conito (a cone shaped pastry with chocolate filling), lengua de suegra (which means “tongue of mother-in-law”, so called I think not because of it’s sweetness but because of it’s length), alfajo (like a giant cookie with sweetness in the middle), and a pye de manzana (apple pie). I have to say I’m not so impressed with these pasteles. Seth, you could kick all of these pastries’ asses with your hands tied behind your back. They’re for the most part just kind of flaky things that get your hands and pants all messy. Tomorrow wait for the update on the tortas, I’ll get my hands on a few different cakes and give them a test run.
Anteayer with Danitza and the Uruguaynos, Nacho and Mary, I tried a few new fruits, as well as enjoyed some more granadillas. We tried tumbos, which are these little football shaped fruits that contain tons of orange colored seeds that you suckle upon and taste kind of like mandarinas. We couldn’t find any more chirimoyas, since it is not their season, but we found something similar, albeit much larger, called Guanabana, which unlike its much tastier counterpart was chewy and kind of weird tasting, although it was kind of interesting. Yo probè un Pomelo, cual es igual de “grapefruit,” yo pienso. Also a Pepino, which is a kind of melon except lacking in any kind of flavor. Capulis were pretty good, they looked like cherries but didn’t have that kind of sharp cherry taste. Today I also tried ciruelos, which are like little miniature plums, which of course I liked because I love me my plums, yo.

The Blessing (Finding Measures of Peace)

The night before I left for el camino del Inca I had a dream in which Toby appeared. He was just the way I knew him, he was alive, he was smiling in that gruff yet child-like manner that he had, and I woke up because I realized in the dream that he really was gone. When I woke up his spirit was there with me, just like the first time when I dreamed of him a while ago, except this time he was close and I was not afraid. I was not afraid because I knew I was not imagining things. It was very real and very powerful and I went back to sleep almost immediately afterwards, at peace. For those of you who do not believe in spirits, wait until you are visited by the spirit of one whose death was close enough to you that you cannot push them away. I realized at that moment in the night that I had been visited before, because I knew the feeling well. But this time I was finally without fear for the first time. It felt like a blessing, and in fact throughout el camino del Inca I felt like I was carrying him with me.
A feeling I have had throughout this journey is that many things happening to me, the people I have met and the experiences that I have had, have been meant to happen. This is a feeling I’ve felt before my travels, but it’s an awareness that’s intensified in this kind of setting, where my spacial dynamics and language and social environment are constantly shifting. I feel like the more that I open myself to what is meant to happen, the fuller and more meaningful these experiences are when they occur. Por ejemplo, when I meet someone new, if I am in the kind of mindset where I am willing to suspend my expectations and am not delimiting who they can potentially be in my mind, then they open up in the immediate future with life affirming gifts of knowledge and love for me. And it is then that I sense that this person was meant to be there in that path in time just as I was meant to be. Gifts invisible at every turn, just when you gave it all away. I don’t mean any of that in the sense of predetermination. I mean that there is a potentiality in everyone for god. And when you catch a glimmer in someone else you catch a glimmer in yourself, and it is then that you know and you believe and you are strong, for an instant, for a moment, and there is nothing but one blood flowing through the limbs of one tree. Then you disintegrate back into yourself and them and you move on into tomorrow with one more piece of the light shot through you.

En Qosqo Una Vez Màs

 

I’m back in Qosqo! La noche antes de irme para camino Inca, estaba caminando en la lluvìa demasiado tiempo, y estuve demasiado mojado, y despues, por supuesto, yo me resfriè. Por todo el camino estaba lloviendo y entonces yo estuve mojado y constantemente frìo. El resfriado estuvo dentro de mis pulmones, finalmente. Ahora todovia tengo mucha congestiòn en mi nariz y mis pulmones. ¡Puta madre! Me molesta mucho. Pero, a pesar de la lluvìa y enfermedad, tuve un muy buen tiempo en el camino Inca. El grupo para la caminata fue muy interesante con muchos diferentes tipos de personas–hubo una pareja de Suecia, hubo una pareja de Uruguay, una pareja de Canada, y cinco muchachos de Argentina. Nostros tuvimos muchos conversacciònes muy interesantes.
It rained the whole time on the Inca trail of course, although luckily it was perfect for the last day at Machu Picchu. The trail was harder than I expected, given the sheer volume of tourists that traverse it each day of the year except Febrero, when it’s closed for maintenance. I was doing great on the trail until the third day, which was mostly all downhill on these extremely steep steps, during which an old injury in my knee reappeared, and I limped like a dog hit by a car for the rest of the way. But other than being sick for the whole time and the constant everpresent rain, it was actually a wonderful experience. I was surprised, actually, because after the first day I thought it was some easy gringo bullshit with tiendas all along the way selling Snickers and Gatorade. It is still some gringo bullshit, let’s be honest, you get to eat phatty meals all along the way and most of your shit is carried by porters, but it is quite a difficult trail if you are attacking it without taking breaks every five minutes. My group was a wonderful mix of nationalities, work experiences, and personalities. There was a couple from Uruguay, a couple from Sweden, a group of rugby player chicos from Argentina, and a couple from Quebec. We had some great conversations sitting around in the food tent drinking coca tea. One of the Argentinos worked in Lake Tahoe and has family from my hometown of La Jolla. Un poco mundo.
Spanish speakers are extremely supportive of my attempts to learn and speak Español, I am constantly receiving the compliment that my Spanish is really good, although I don’t understand how this can be so when I am expressing myself on the level of a kindergartner. I think they are simply happy to see the stray foreigner making an attempt to learn the language out of the hordes of foreigners that come through speaking nada–in any case, it’s certainly nice to receive constant encouragement.
There is much to tell from the trek that is all kind of jumbled up in my brain right now. I think more will become extricated as I unwind in Qosqo. I took tons of pictures of steps made from rocks and of clouds. Muchas ruinas, por supuesto. The more I learn of the Incan culture, the more impressed I am by their organizational coherence and governmental oversight. They achieved remarkable heights of culture, art, and architecture, they manifested herculuean feats of organized manuel labor, and they did not use slaves, and they respected la Pachamama in everything they did. There is a habit of the Andinos passed down from the Incas in which whenever they drink chicha or chew coca, they give a little piece of it back to la tierra. The Incas molded their towns to the landscapes in which they harmonized their lives. Their structures carved patiently from stone still stand in the cloud forest although their lives are long gone, their legacy decimated by the conquistadores. In our culture ahora we take and we take and what do we give back to that from which we are taking?
More mundane details of the journey to come!

Viajando a Machu Picchu

Getting ready to go to Machu Picchu mañana, I hope all that cigarette smoking won’t kill me on the passes. So it will be four days until you hear from me again. Feel free to leave comments. They make me feel read and loved. Leave more of em, dammit. Or post a link to your favorite website or your favorite topless picture of Britney Spears. Speaking of which, the other night I went to a local disco called Muki’s where it was 90% Peruanos, which is the way I like it, and they played merengue, salsa, and, of course, a little reggaeton. What was funny, though, was that on a big video screen alongside the dance floor was projected some VH1 special on Britney Spears. So while you’re dancing to salsa you look over and see Britney doing choreographed dances with that everpresent entourage of dancers lined up behind her doing a much better job of dancing. It’s kind of funny, those dancers, because you know that they’ve worked their asses off trying to make a career out of dancing and their big come-up is being one of those pieces of fleshy music video scenery that you don’t even really notice except as a backdrop behind Britney Spears. Have you noticed how intent those dancers always look? It’s like that must be part of how you get to be in that prime of a position as a dancer–by looking really really intense as you dance. Then maybe you get a five second window of you dancing from behind Britney Spear’s ass. You’re lucky if your face gets shown on the video at all.
Anyway, that was kind of a tangent. My damn right ear is really hurting from that fucking pyrotecnico that went off right in front of me the other night.
I’m beginning to get sick, just in time for Machu Picchu, great. I walked around in the rain for too long yesterday. The sleeping bag that my Inca Trail agency gave me is like a summer sleeping bag. So if you don’t hear from me in five days I’m probably frozen to death somewhere in the mountains.

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

¡Feliz año nuevo todo el mundo! Yo esperanzo un prospero año para todos mis amigos. I hope everyone had a great time for your New Year’s celebration, wherever you happened to be. New Year’s in the Plaza de Armas was a raucous affair, of course involving thousands of sparklers, bottlerockets, and m-80s as every fiesta here seems to do. My ears are still hurting because an m-80 went off 2 feet in front of me. It’s a little bit dangerous, actually. Some of those bottlerockets nearly took out a few ojos.
I finally met back up with my french amigos. We drank Anis and cervezas at their hostal before heading out and had some great conversations in mixed Spanish, French, and English.
Unfortunately a good portion of my night was spent attempting to meet with some of my Peruvian friends. From what I’ve gathered so far, Peruvians are not very punctual; in fact, they seem to tend to be kind of flaky. Add to that a plaza filled to the brim with revelers and explosions and it’s kind of hard to organize things or find people. Once I finally got done with trying to meet various people at various times I finally got some ass shaking in there until 3 or 4 in the morning, I think it must have been late because I didn’t get out of bed until 1:30 this afternoon.
All in all, Qosqo is a pretty fun place to be for New Year’s.

Another year has come upon us. What does a new year signify, exactly? At it’s most elemental level, it represents the cyclical, spiralling nature of the seasons, the regress and return of things that have passed into new, yet familiar forms. It represents the continuance of the dance of life and death. We celebrate because we are still living and because we have hope that in the coming spiral of this next year that we will live yet better, yet deeper, yet fuller than ever before. That the unknown will manifest itself in a blessing. We celebrate too the things that have passed in the years before, the relationships that have sustained us to this point, the loves that have opened our hearts into the awareness of our beauty. We celebrate because we do not know what is to come and because what we have known has given us hope. It is a celebration edged of course with elements of despair and darkness and excessive drunkenness, because not all of what came before was good, and we are not sure that what is to come will be any better. But we celebrate, yes, even out of desperation, because we need to believe, we need to hope, we need to release our fears and dance without self-consciousness and enjoy this moment that we have right now. Because whatever is to come, at the very least we will be able to say that we have enjoyed what we had.

Las Frutas de Vida

It’s going to be a good new year, I can feel it in me bones, which are ready for some jaggling.
To chew and spit the coca leaves is referred to as chacchar in Quechua. Alternatively, there’s a darker substance made with maìze and coca called llicta that is also chewed and that is referred to as picchar, although the two chewing terms are interchangeable. I have taken a liking to chacchar, it does give you a little bit of a kick and kind of tingles the tongue.
I tried two new frutas today, granadilla and chirimoya. The granadilla was pretty trippy. It looks like an orange but when you crack open the outer peel contained therein is some kind of seedy gloop that looks and feels like alien sex nectar. I was chewing it and my Peruvian friend was laughing at me. Apparently you are supposed to swallow the gloop whole, seeds and all. It was actually kind of a sensual experience because you either slurp it up with your tongue or suck it out of the rind.
The chirimoya was also good. It is green and kind of misshapen, and the treasure within is a kind of custardy white filling dotted with large black seeds. ¡Que rico!

Rompiendo

Illusions built within the mind swaying, lulling ourselves into an incurable belief in infinity. There is within us an amazing capacity for suffering, for love. Intricately linked, there is no excluding either Huascarán or las pampas. It is not either one or the other. It is not life or death. It is all, every little thing carved from the void, separately pieced into a spiral necklace of the earth.
In our shame we are naked before the judgment of a god, the dreams covering our eyes lifted to reveal solely vulnerable soft skin, nothing more, nothing less. We are pathetically beautiful. When the illusions inevitably crumple the world sweeps within to pick apart the ruins of our hearts. We follow our inner narratives to the end, until we fall from beyond the edges of what we allow ourselves to imagine and inevitably hit the ground to return to the earth. Each time that we are broken a piece of light shines out from the space where we once were. How many times must we be broken before there is nothing left to break? You must be broken from your blindness to see. Broken again, again and again until there is nothing left of yourself to be taken or to be held. The world will carry away your pieces to build other dreams no longer yours.
What is it to dream? What is it to be awoken to another world in which the dream has no application?
What is it to love with one’s eyes wide open?
To live is to suffer. Anything else would be an illusion.

Mundanity

As you can see, I post here pretty frequently. When I get bored I hop into an internet joint and pop out whatever happens to be on my mind, sorry if it tends to be randomized drivel. I’ve been taking some private spanish classes for the mornings, they definitely help out a little bit, and en la tarde I’ve been meeting up with Danitza and her friends, where once again I am speaking in castellano–although mostly just listening, let’s be honest. Every single day the past 5 days it has rained quite heavily for most of the afternoon. I have a traditional woven red poncho, although I always feel kind of funny wearing it because no one except the Andinos wear those kinds of ponchos, everyone else is wearing jackets or the plastic ponchos, and here I am with mi pelo rubio and a beautiful traditional poncho. The guidebooks were not lying when they called this the rainy season in the sierras. I’m hoping it’s not going to do that the whole time I’m on el camino del Incas. The French lads arrived today, so I’ll have some more people to hang out with in Qosqo. Last night I got some musica tipica to bring back with me to the states. CD venders on the street sell copies of CDs for 3 soles each. I bought 4 for 10 soles. I need to buy a new bag to carry all the damn regalos I’ve purchased.
La familìas Peruana are pretty conservative. The Cusqueñas that I’ve talked to are in their mid-twenties, but their mothers have a stranglehold on their lives. They have curfews, they talk to their mothers every single day when they are out of the city, and of course they live with their parents and aunts and uncles. In Perù the structura de familìa is definitely different, comprared to what I am used to anyway. Singles live with their family until they are married, which can be into their thirties. Families are much closer, of course. I was laughing at the idea of having a curfew, I couldn’t even imagine such a thing anymore, not at 27.

The Rain Falls On Every One

Mucha mucha mucha lluvìa. I’m starting to regret only bringing a pair of sandalìas and zapatos de bailar. My poncho and baby alpaca chompa keep me fairly warm otherwise though.
I ate alpaca meat today for lunch. It was tough and gamey but kind of tasty. I found this restaurant that’s a real gem. It’s a fairly reasonably priced 8 soles for el menù ejecutivo, considering it’s right near the plaza de armas, nestled amongst very expensive tourist trap eateries. You get a pisco sour as an aperitif, un sopa o ensalada, el plato principal, y un postre. And the quality of the food is the best for comida tipica I’ve had so far for that price. And even better, there’s never anyone there, so I can sit and study whilst engorging myself.

Who are you and why are you here?
I do not feel as though I do not belong. What is necessary is the faith that one is here for a reason, a purpose, an underlying meaning which gives context and strength to one’s actions. I am beginning to feel that I am approaching the reason why I ever came here in the first place. I came here to find myself. I find myself in the Andinos en el campo. I find myself in the children selling finger puppets. I find myself in the disco dancing to reggaeton. I find myself in the mountains tearing through the everpresent clouds. I find myself in all of the locals who are patient enough to converse with me on what for them must be the level of a 5 year old. I find myself in the differences that lie between what I know and what I feel. I find myself in the ties that lie between thou and I. I find myself so that I can know what it is that I must give away. I find myself so that I can feel what is this gem that I hold deep within me, never to be polished. I find myself, my friends, so that I can find you, so that I can find the world and know firmly, simply,
that there is nowhere else that I need to go.

I’m going to go know and meet up with a friend. Hasta pronto.

Globalization with the intent of nurture, not necrophilia

Something kind of clicked in my mind last night while smoking un cigarro and watching the rain. I realized that here in Perù the contrast between modernity and tradition are rather stark. The people that are truly poor are mainly the indigenous Andinos. They are the ones begging, sitting in doorways on the street. They wear the native garb, the women with faces like leather and rather dapper looking hats, colorful but worn ponchos, a woven sack slung over their shoulders. The affluent Peruanos wear gortex jackets, not alpaca. And this contrast is something which all of the world is undergoing–it’s simply more apparent in “developing” nations.
Tourists flock to this country and other latin american countries because here there remains still the burning embers of a living past. But in many ways the very fact that people of the world come here with their cameras to snap pictures and reimagine the Incan empire seems to speak of the slow but steady ebbing of the living existence of these traditions. People come here because everywhere the cultural heritage of our ancestors is suffocating or has already long since passed. Much is still active here. But how much of it is truly active and how much is generated by the providence of rich tourists coming for las fiestas and dropping cash about them like turds? Sometimes watching traditional dances reenacted for commerce seems to me like visiting a museum. It has become sterilized by a growing awareness of itself that suppresses the meaning which once lay behind its archetypal subconscious narrations.
The chimera we face in these days and times is the ever certain prospect that our current mode of living is completely unsustainable. It seems to me that if our past cannot be reconciled with our future, if the campesinos cannot even eke out at least a decent lifestyle and are destroyed by global commerce and urbanization, then the human race doesn’t stand a chance.
We can never go back home again, of course. But we are certainly capable of pulling our heads from the sand of inertia and considering what we can do to incorporate greater consciousness of time and space and alternative lifestyles into our daily lives.
In my mind the worldwide movement of organics has demonstrated quite clearly that there is a profitable market for locally and consciously produced products that are of higher and distinctive individual quality. The agri-business corporations and their minions in DC continually make statements about the need for greater control over nature (i.e. genetically modified patented seeds) so that they can conquer world hunger. To quote William S Burroughs: “Beware of whores who say they don’t want money; what they mean is they want more money, much more.”
Solving world hunger would involve fostering communities that are not completely junkie dependent upon robber baron businesses and bureacracies and aristocracies outside of themselves. The more self-reliant a community could be, the less poverty and hunger there would within that community. The small time farmers all around the world are suffering terribly because they have no choice but to accept sub-standard payment for their goods. I know that the concept of “globalization” is a complicated and intricate affair–but in a very generalized and simplistic nutshell, it looks to me like what it generally entails is rape and pillage of developing nations. So called “free” trade in other words, refers to privateering, not libertad. Just in the same way Republicans continuously say things about diminishing “big government.” What they really mean is they want corporations to have free and untrammelled access to our anuses.
I am by no means advocating the regression to city-states. There is no going back. But there is time for pause and consideration rather than blind plunging into a bleak and faceless future. It is possible to have a level of maturity and responsibility and accountability in our actions. If we want to survive as individuals, then we have to begin thinking about other people in our community. If we want to survive as a nation than we have to begin thinking in terms of the globe. Currently our nation acts just like a self-destructive adolescent, reckless and blind with desperate selfishness.
Heritage. Meaning as imbued by tradition and specific locality rather than homogenized mass consumption.
Again, we cannot go back.
But cannot we find a way to incorporate what is passing into what has yet to come?
Otherwise, what will be left to feed the future with except hollow images we never really knew?

Mas fotos

I have once again posthumously cargè mis fotos aquì, so go ahead and scroll downwards a ver los nuevos fotos.

Qosqo is growing on me, I think mainly because now I’ve got local people (aka bonitas chicas) to hang out with and show me around. I am going to take algunos clases de español privado starting tomorrow until I leave for Macchu Pichu on the 3rd of enero. Then regreso aça and study some more and maybe take some salsa classes. I think I could get into living a while here. Esta mejor que Lima, esto es verdad.

Mis amigos de Francia llegando mañana. Para el año nuevo . . .no se, quìzas saliamos para Urabamba, esta un pueblo cerca de Qosqo.

Stuff

If you happen to be a dwarf, you probably wish that you lived in ancient Egypt. Turns out they were very accepting–even revering–of dwarves. Click here for the full story.

Yesterday I took a tour of Sacsayhuaman with my personal guìa. The name is amusing because when you say it aloud, it sounds exactly like “sexy woman” en ingles. Apparently the name means “satisfied falcon” or something. Other people have told me the name signifies the head of the puma, since Qosqo is supposed to have been shaped in the form of a puma, and Sacsayhuaman stands at where the head should be. The architecture of the Incas is quite structurally sound, they formed all of their windows and doors in a trapezoidal shape, which have proved to be extremely resistant to terremotos, or earthquakes.

It can be quite frustrating for me when conversing in spanish because of my lack of vocabulary. When I am listening to someone talk to me, I can pick up a few words here and there, and I might think that I understand, but usually I’m forming my own story based on selected words. Progress is slow, but I am progressing I think, considering I spent most of the day yesterday only speaking in spanish with Danitza, the cute cuzqueña I met in the disco. I’m considering taking some more spanish classes while in Qosqo, because I’m getting frustrated with not being able to express myself or to converse much beyond the level of “¿Te gusta . . .?”, “Me gusta . .”
There are some things about spanish which are growing on me. Por ejemplo, I like the way the language distinguishes very specifically between masculino y feminino and between subjects. The conjugations of the verbs make it very clear about when and whom you are referencing. English is general and abstract in comparison.

Christina, if you’re reading this, you will be happy to know that I’ve shown almost everyone in Perù pictures of Bjorn, mi sobrino. ¡Que lindo!, they respond. Èl es muy grande, no?, I say.

Anybody know of a good way to prevent sandals from being stinky? Mis sandalias uele muy mal. I try spraying deodorant on em but to no avail. I can smell the odor wafting up at this very moment.

Shaking the Touchous

Last night I went out to some discos and shook the touchous gloriously. The same Marco Roberto that you thought you once knew was up on stage freaking chicas. The same Robertito who disavows any and all freaking for all time was cutting loose. I don’t know what got into me, if twas the altitudo or cause it was Christmas, but I shook it into the wee hours de la madruga. I danced most of the night with a cute cuzqueña who I will be meeting up with again later today. I took her and her friend back to my hostal at 4 in the morning for an informative conversation in Castellano regarding the politics in Qosqo and Perù. Yes, it was a good night. There was only one catch. As soon as I saw the chicas out the door my ass exploded once again. Yes, the stomach dragons have awoken from their temporary slumber with the wrath of divine vengeance. I think it was that damn jugo de naranja I indulged in at one of the ruinas from a street vendor. Or if it was the stringent meat I ate for almuerzo. No se. Oh well, I need to lose some more kilos anyway. Hasta pronto.

Feliz Navidad

I was a tourist today through and through. I got onto a big bus that stopped off at local markets where I bought items and stopped at Incan ruins where I took pictures. Ah yes, to be one with cattle. However, something much more important beyond the commercialism of my soul took place today. I met a beautiful woman and had some great conversations. Last night I had been feeling lonely–as you can see from the prior entry–but feeling the ultimate necessity for integrity and personal space. Last night I went to sleep with a good feeling in my belly. Today this feeling was validated. What was validated was the fact that the more centered within myself I am, the more receptive I am to the confluence of beneficial occurences. Not even to say that I am creating them, because I rarely go out of my way to make things happen, more to say that they have more of a tendency to occur.
At lunch the bus stopped off at some place where they were charging 15 soles for almuerzo. First of all, I was beginning to get spiteful about being part of a herd of cattle; second of all, I didn’t want to be forced to pay 15 soles for the meal. So I went across the street to where it was the more civilized 6 soles for a full meal (for the record, by the way, you can get a full meal in local food joints off the beaten path for 2 soles. That’s about 59 cents in US dolares folks.) I was sitting at my table and drinking my Inca Kola, and I was actually thinking that it would have been nice if I had made an attempt to talk to this woman, because I had noticed her earlier at the ruins. But true to my nature, I did nothing. And then she walks in and ends up sitting down at my table. And we have a little small talk and change seats to sit next to each other when we get back on the bus to talk more. During the next set of ruins we visited, it began pouring rain (it’s the rainy season in the mountains right now) and so we went into a local restaurant to get out the rain, wherein we drank a couple of Cusqueñas and talked about Sufiism. To me this was a much more satisfying than looking at broken rocks.
And of course, as is always the case whenever I meet a cool person, she left for Bolivia tonight. But what is most important to me is that I met her at all, and not just that I met her–that I know that I was meant to meet her. And I don’t mean that in the sense of stars aligning, etc. I mean that as in I needed to meet her today for myself, I needed the space within me reconfirmed, because sometimes when you get lonely you begin to question yourself and what you believe in. The reconfirmation of what I believe and know to be true is what occurred for me today. I may never see her again. But that´s ok. There are connections much deeper that are formed in the spirit even in chance one time encounters. Because ultimately, we are all the same person, no? And getting that momentary glimpse of the window to the divine in another and seeing yourself . . . This is what it is to live. This is why I am here.

El espacio de soledad

I am sitting in yet another Irish pub, drinking chilcano con pisco (way too sour for me) and feeling the space of solitude about me. It is something that I have grown accustomed to and even grown to cherish in a certain way, even though it can be difficult at times. Something about my pride prevents me from sucking it up and forcing myself to befriend all of the Irish and Kiwis, etc, that surround me in these kinds of gringo hang-outs. It is linked in some way to my distaste for being an outright tourist. It is too easy, perhaps, to give in and just converse with other similar young travelers on the circuit and get wasted. This space of solitude, for me, is equated in my mind with the maintanence of integrity. If someone is capable and willing to traverse the space required to get close to my heart, then I know for certain that they are true. And I will be true to them for life in return.

El mercado y la chicha de jora

Hoy estuve un dìa interesante. The plaza de armas was packed with people selling textiles, pipes, food, you name it. It’s really annoying because as soon as you whip out your camera, some of the Andean families will approach you and try to get money from you to take their picture. Since when is there a charge to take a photograph of people? I refused to pay, mainly because I didn’t have any money at the time. Later the little girl found me anyway and I gave her 10 centimos.
Last night when walking along the street one of the restaurant hawkers, Alex, engaged me in conversation, and he offered me free mate de coca, so we chatted a bit and we agreed to meet up again today so he could lead me to some chicha de jora, a beer made from fermented maìze. We went down some side streets and into a little hole in the wall picantería, replete with old locals sitting there alone getting tanked. Chicha de jora posseses an interesting taste, not for the faint of bladder. According to Alex, it’s good for your prostrate. I’m feeling kind of funny right now and my saliva is kind of thick.
Anoche yo fuì a un disco. Some locals put on a little salsa demonstration before the reggaeton and North American booty music came on. They were amazingly good. Afterwards, I demonstrated my own skills to the Black Eyed Peas.
I’ve been smoking way too many cigarros. It’s just one of those things that seems appropriate to do here, like eating tons of red meat and not wearing seatbelts.
Today I booked my Inca trail trek, it was pretty damn cheap. I’m going to go despues el año nuevo. I’m kind of itching to get out of Qosqo right now, but I want to stick it out for the new year, because the french dudes and some other amigos will be here, and I figure I’d rather spend it getting tanked with friends.
Para la navidad yo ire a la valle sagrado.

Disclaimer for the faithful

DISCLAIMER: some of my entries below can be construed as being overtly anti-religious in sentiment, and I apologize to any readers who might take mild offense. I don’t intend any of those statements as being negative towards the Christian/Catholic religion as whole, or to reflect upon the spirituality and beliefs therein, rather they were directed towards the socio-economic-political aspect of colonization, in which missionary conversion was a key factor in domination and subjegation.

The gathering of the light to fall in streaks

I think I’m about all museumed out for the rest of my trip after today. I saw enough paintings of spiritual figures in various states of supplication and/or bloody duress to last me a lifetime. Man, Catholicism is kind of depressing. Today I attempted to come to terms with the fact that yes, ok, the Christian religion was stuffed down the throats of the Incas and the indigenous tribes, but whether for better or for worse, it became an intrical part of their culture and belief systems and still continues to exert powerful influence over the whole country to this day. So I was trying to view stuff today in the light of that it was just a much a part of Peruvian history as the Incan and Chavín and Chimú eras and not to hate it. I saw some contemporary art today at least, weird trippy political stuff, and nativity scenes where the characters are indigenous for example, and that was refreshing to see some distinctly Amerindian faces after a day of walking past paintings of pasty double-chinned white folk.
Qosqo is beginning to grow on me, I had two of the best meals I’ve had in a while today. For lunch I had a Pisco Sour followed by an amazing ensalada–which I generally shy away from–and then the traditional dish of Lomo Saltado, which was the best form of it I’ve had as of yet. It’s amazing how much better papas fritas are here. For cena I went to a pub and ate an Indian curry. It was damn good curry too, better than a lot that I’ve had in the states. Now I’m bumming around and waiting until it gets later so that I can go shake my booty in some disco. People don’t really go out until 11 or so in Peru, which is kind of annoying to me because I start getting tired at 10. But I need to get some ass shaking in there tonight because I’m starting to get lonely and a little bit bored.
Tomorrow is Santuranticuy, a festival in the Plaza de Armaz, the central square in Qosqo (aka Gringoland), in which the people of the Sacred Valley tender their Christmas wares. I’m sure I’ll find a couple of good cheap regalos mañana. Already the streets are closed off and the Andean folk are gathering, it’s pretty crowded. It was erie walking around there tonight because there was a bunch of lightning in the sky but no rain, as of yet anyway.

Here in this place of history and historias–
the stones of another age and time still perfectly wed
along the narrow cobblestoned streets–
the travelers come with their hunger to escape themselves
and lose nothing.
The people’s lives here have changed irrevocably to accomodate
needs that they can not understand.
And I am searching for a form of myself
that can be known anywhere, anytime,
but most critically,
here and now.

Descanso en Qosqo

It was really getting to me today all of the people that come up to you to try to get the spare sol from you, for chicle, for postales–I even had a lady try to get money from me for taking a picture of her goddam llama. I pretended that I didn’t understand what she was saying. In Qosqo you have to be on your toes as a tourist, because along with the influx of tourism here has arisen the culture of feeding off of the tourists’ spare soles. You will be sitting in a restaurant eating your cena and these guys selling I don’t what the hell what will pop in the door and whistle and dice “amigo, amigo.”
At night you have to be a bit more aware of your surroundings because there is the occasional “strangle mugging.” At every moment I’m ready to start pulling some Bruce Lee matrix shit out if needed. Of course what the rateros specialize in is getting you when one guy has your attention focused and some one else grabs your stuff.
Today I walked pretty far away from the plaza de armas to where I was the only gringo in sight. Conversely, I actually felt more comfortable in that kind of area, because when people stare at you it’s generally out of curiosity rather than how-can-I-sucker-this-bitch kind of thing. I was trying to find this pizza place I’d heard of, which turned out to be ridiculously far, and then when I finally found it, the damn thing was cerrado anyways. Walked back and took a siesta. I went to some museums and iglesias today. I’ve decided that I have no interest in colonial iglesias. The elaborate gold work and sculpture of the altars struck me as wasteful and indulgent, not as spiritual.
I also went and saw some traditional dancing tonight, which was kind of weirdly sensual in a vague and traditional kind of way. Probably because the girls wore these skirts that would swing out completely horizontally each time they swung their hips. The native costumes of Peru really make use of cool hats.

Ceramic Arts

I just drank algunas Cusqueñas maltas and ate a club sandwich (yeah, I’m getting a little less adventurous these days with my eating habits) and watched some futbol in an Irish pub. Yes, an Irish pub. Then I went to look for another bar and got a little lost, so I swung into an internet place instead. I’m definitely feeling the altitude a bit, it really tires you out until you acclimate. Today I went to a museum of Pre-Columbian art, pots and bowls and stuff, it was actually a very intelligent exhibit providing interesting insight into space and meaning as denoted by inscriptions on ancient water carriers. Some of the pottery is pretty intricate and trippy, there’s this one that looks like the maker was on san pedro or ayahuasca, there’s all these kind of contorted half-formed faces and animals bubbling out of it. It was funny because the rooms progressed in terms of chronology, and after the Incan room there was a last little footnote of a room with Spanish paintings from the following era of colonization, all of them depressing depictions of Christ. There were no insightful labels next to these paintings. In a way, it very distinctly said, “and look at what the conquistador fuckers did to our art with their tasteless religious crap.” Here they were making these beautifully intricate bowls and cups and gigantic earrings, and then suddenly. . . pictures of a pale half-naked white man dying. Gold and silver lost their symbolic stature and became mere coinage, items used solely in commerce and no longer in rituals and ceremonies. The imposition of monetary value on things which once held much deeper signification.

Llego en Qosqo

Yo estoy en Qosqo ahora, despues veinte horas en el bus. The bus stopped twice the whole time and you’d run out to pee and the bus would be pulling away as you were waggling your peni. I listened to my Creative Zen the whole time, I’m glad I brought the thing. Qosqo is very pretty and much more affluent than what I’ve seen in Peru thus far due to the fervent tourism. Yes, there are gringos everywhere. Which means there’s vegetarian restaurants everywhere, an anamoly elsewhere in Peru. I just ate some estofado de soya, it was pretty disgusting. I’m going to stick to the traditional comida Peruana now that I’ve warmed my ass up to it. There’s a lot of museo type stuff to see around here, catedrals, inca oro, etc, so I’ll probably go do a little bit of that for the afternoon. I haven’t actually popped my head into a museum yet in Peru. In the night there’s tons of live music so I’ll go tipple a bit tonight perhaps to help myself acclimitize to the altitude. I’m quite confident that anywhere I go here there will be a contingent of brazen Kiwis or French backpackers already there getting tanked. There’s an Irish bar right next to my hospedaje.

political stuff

Para la Navidad, Peruanos comen Panetón, pan dulce de frutas secas. ¡Que rico! Esta noche compro algo panetón y la cerveza Pilsen grande y dividir con mis amigos aca. Mañana salgo para Cuzco. Veinte horas en un bus. Ay!

If you keep up with international news, you know that Evo Morales just swept into power in Bolivia. Morales is an Indian and a strong supporter of native farmer rights to grow coca. He desires to strengthen government control of hydrocarbons and wrest the power back nationally from international investors. With Venezuela’s example, it certainly seems possible without destabilizing Bolivia’s economy. Interesting turn of events, to be sure. Peru is also having elections fairly soon next year. El último presidente, antes Toledo, was Alan Garcia, who also was an Indian and came from humble beginnings. However, he turned out to be a disappointment. I hope Peru can find someone with some integrity.
There is a growing contingent of fairly radical left-leaning politics in South America, and I’m sure the US administration is gathering in clandestine meetings to grumble and shift their haunches menacingly. The exponentially growing market in China for hydrocarbons means that no longer can the US turn the screw and expect the poor oil-rich nations to tremble in supplication. It’s the dawn of a new century in global politics, and it certainly doesn’t look like the US can possibly maintain the kind of dominance it once had at the cusp of the cold war. There’s the EU, China, and rebellious developing nations to deal with, not to mention an ongoing pointless war in Iraq (remember that one?) that I don’t think even Cheney really has the palate for anymore. Believe it or not, the US may at some point in the near future have to actually exercise real diplomacy as opposed to strong-arm thuggery, world bank bullying, and other subtler forms of terrorism such as Hollywood. Imagine that!

Thoughts

For those of you who happen to be reading this blog & have read my writings in the past, I’m sure you’ve noted a discrepancy in style and content. I am well aware that this blog has turned from introspection outward to a diary style superficial action oriented narrative. This is the unfortunate by-product of the lack of either the means, space, or time for me to fully digest the experiences I am currently undergoing, and thus, I am unable to write any more eloquently or profoundly about them. So please take all of this with a grain of salt and understand that this is me largely unfiltered, in a foreign land alone attempting to come to grips with who I think I am and what I think of other people. I write and keep writing here in this forum because this is really my only link to the world from which I came, my link to those I love, and I hope that you will read this and continue to read this and understand why I write.
There are of course many things that have been going on in my head that I haven’t been articulating thus far. I’ve been thinking about the hordes of those living in poverty here and elsewhere. I´ve been confronting some of my perceptions of the “other” and about what I think I can do and about what I want to do to change my own life and perceptions. These are ideas in the making, that I don’t have the space right now to form.
On another level, I’ve still been processing Toby’s suicide. It’s something that comes back to me almost every day at seemingly random times. I kind of push it away mentally because I really don’t know what there is to think about it anymore. I had thought originally that I would find some kind of peace with it but that doesn’t seem possible to me anymore. Peace really only comes with time, there isn’t anything I can do or say that will make it better. It’s not something that hurts so much anymore as just kind of throbs in the background, and I feel a kind of deep-seated confusion and frustration about it, like when there’s an itch that you can’t possibly reach, and even if you could, scratching it would only make it worse.
I’ve been learning how to deal with expectations, as in not having any. Expectations only serve to create disappointment. I build up these castles of illusion and then when the sea of life comes to sweep me away into change then its disillusionment time again. I guess that’s part of being human. As long as I am building these castles with the full awareness that they are meant to be destroyed, then it’s alright I suppose.

More weird nights in Lima

Anteanoche yo fuì a un bar de Jazz. There was a bassist, pianist, and a vocalist that sounded like a cross between Willie Nelson and Neil Young. Some chicks came up to sing as well with strange hats on and they covered such hits as Georgia On My Mind and Hit The Road Jack. I drank Frangelico and tried to look like how I would imagine Miles Davis would look if he were sitting in a Jazz bar in Peru listening to Somewhere Over the Rainbow and drinking Frangelico. I saw the French chicos off yesterday, and will meet back up with them in Cuzco shortly for una fiesta grande. Speaking of French, there’s really quite a bit of French people traveling in Peru. There’s a mix of everyone, of course (except estadounidenses), but the majority lately have been French. I’m beginning to realize that I will have to explain my position re: US politics very frequently.
Last night I met up with Alicia and her boyfriend and extended family. We ate anticuchos (I had mollejitas, very tasty. I don’t even try to avoid red meat here. I’m going native, when in Rome. . .) and walked around Barranco a little bit and then played pool and drank muchas cervezas and some wine which apparently this guy Santini had fermenting in his bathtub. They brought some of it out early for me. It tasted like sparkling grape juice. They did some karaoke and I beatboxed a little bit. Santini’s apartment was in La Victoria, far from Miraflores, so I got to see quite a bit of Lima as we drove through it. It’s an interesting city. The overt commercialism combined with obvious and apparent poverty provides constant contrast. In the parts of the city closer to Centro de Lima, the very architecture is basic and often incomplete–brick or concrete block buildings erected hastily without even an attempt at craftsmanship. The buildings are very utilitarian. You don’t see ‘modern’ looking structures until approaching richer areas.

Fotos

As you can see I finally posted a few photographs. If you go back to the earlier posts you will see some more.
I am planning on leaving Lima soon for Cuzco, where I will spend la Navidad y el año nuevo. It’s something like a 20 hour bus ride, I believe. I decided to forgo swinging through Chincha and Ica and Arequipa for right now because of the proximity to Christmas. Yes, indeed, I am heading to the Gringo Capital of Peru! But the allure of all the things it has to offer was just too great for me to resist. The main draw was that some of the friends I’ve met recently will be there for Christmas. The other thing is that I want more and more to explore the jungle, and the Manu Biosphere Reserve and other areas are nearby. And of course, the requisite trek to Macchu Piccu.

Anoche

Went out to a hip disco in San Isidro with the French guys and some chicas. We got in free and the drinks were gratis tambien. Shook the toucous hasta tres en la madruga. What is interesting about Peruvian discos is the mix of music they play. There’s merengue, a tidbit of salsa, some reggaeton, and then the rest of the night straight 80s music. Dancing to Guns n Roses and INXS with a bunch of Peruvians was fun, they really get down to esa mierda. What is also interesting is that it seems that at the popular discos there is always some kind of promotional thing going on–for example, this night happened to be “Nokia night”, so there was a demonstration of a new waterproof Nokia phone and some hot girls in tight nokia outfits handed out keychains in the shape of a Nokia cellular phone. Yes, this was capitalism at its finest my friends. This disco was kind of like going out in LA except that people didn’t seem to have the I’m-totally-not-interested-in-you-because-you’re-not-famous attitude thing down yet.
Having a lower body to fat ratio now is kind of good in a way, all I have to do is drink a cerveza and I’m tanked. Good times.

Meandering Message

It would appear that the dragons in mi anos are getting slayed.
Jovenes aquí love the internet. There’s these lugares called cabinas de internet on every block. It’s always full of youths chatting or playing video games. Chatting on the internet seems to be the thing to do. There’s also a lot of television watching going on. As to why I can’t fathom, because all that is ever on are soap operas, and they are horrible. They do have some pretty steamy love scenes though.
All I’ve eaten today is an anti-biotic, a multi-vitamin, and a piece of bread.
I am going to out to a Peña later tonight and will hopefully not drink more than 2 cervezas and dance some salsa.
I’ve figured out that there is indeed a USB connection I can use on the computer at my hostal, so a few pictures will be probably be forthcoming in a day or two.
I’m a little bit scared to eat because I think that as soon as I eat the dragons will return. So this time when I do eat, I will not consume the 2 cosas that I did before: 1) foul-smelling mariscos o 2) pizza. I will eat sopa and bread. I swear. I think I’ve learned my lesson. It’s unfortunate, because I think from now on I will be hesitant to try anything new ever again after smelling comida Peruana coming out of my ass for 2 weeks. All I want to eat now are familiar things, safe things. Things like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Jello. Bottled fruit juice. Maybe some dark chocolate . . .
I apologize for my negative statements ayer. It’s just kind of depressing how dirty things are here and how hopelessly corrupt the government is. The Peruanos themselves don’t generally speak of the government, but when they do there’s a kind of patient sadness in their acknowledgment of its negligence. It’s a way of life, these are people who not so long ago were oppressed by dictatorship, I believe, and there’s perhaps at least a kind of freedom to be found in the laxity of authority ahora.
I guess the trade off for the tourist who complains of filth and corruption is that it is cheap, no? If I wanted picturesque harmony of people and governing systems then I should have gone to Finland. If I wanted mindless hand-led tourism I should have gone to . . .I don’t know, Disneyland in Tokyo or something. I am here and my purpose is not to cast judgement on the way things or people are here. My purpose is to discover the purpose and meaning which the people give to their lives here and to share my own with them. Ok!

The Stomach Dragon Rant

I think maybe I have giardiasis, because I remember someone telling me you have a bunch of sulpherous belches with giardia, and I’ve been venting these swampy, fermented foul smelling burps all day. Yep, still fighting the stomach dragons. I’ve been really stupid with what I’ve been eating, I know I should be eating sopa and bland foods, and of course hoy I go and eat pizza for almuerzo. My body is starting to really get run down, so I finally gave in and began taking anti-biotics today and then slept most of the day. If I do have giardiasis, then it probably won’t help anyway. So I’m in a really bad mood today and I feel like right now I hate this city. It’s filthy and hopeless and depressing, let’s be honest. And while I’m talking about dirty, let me tell you about the mountains in Peru. Yeah, they are big and ominous and gorgeous and all that. They are also scattered everywhere with shit and garbage. Hiking in these mountains was the first time that I felt homesick, because at least there is some semblance of “leave no trace” ethics in my beloved Desolation Wildreness. People in Peru don’t even understand the concept of garbage, I don’t think. It seems that they think plastics will simply become one with the foliage and earth. It’s depressing. Alright, sorry I am being negative, just had to vent a little. I can’t wait to get out of this city. I am right now trying to decide whether I should go to northern Peru or southern. To the north lies the beaches of Mancora wherein two of mi amigos de los estados unidos reside, and which is furthermore cerca de Colombia, wherein lives my cousin, the platanos and cafè farmer. To the south lies all of the new friends I’ve encountered along the way, and una fiesta por la Navidad en Cuzco. So I’ve got to make my decision at the end of this week and then hop on another bus. Did I say that I hate buses? The bus drivers here drive a doubledecker bus as if it were a sportster, you can feel the top of the bus careening to the side as they take turns at maximum speed . . . You know, the whole disregard for human life thing. . .

Idiomas

Learning a new language is teaching me about the importance not simply of words, but the connections which bind them together and imbue them with immediate and specific meaning. The words themselves are only meaningful within a context, a framework, a sea of personal signification. Because words express feelings, they express a flow of thought, the spitfire sparks of synapses in response to stimuli. They are cars transporting desire and love and life and death.
The hardest part for me in learning a new language is trying to force myself to accept irregularities within the language that don’t make any logical sense. I have to just accept that I have to memorize this shit and live with it and learn to use it. Another hard thing for me is that when studying, I will think that I understand and remember what I am studying–and when I sit down with a piece of paper I do remember it–but in actual application in real life I won’t be able to use it.
A language is not academic–it must be utilized, because it is not through memory or understanding of grammatical laws alone that it is learned–it is learned by the slow and stubborn process of opening one’s perceptions to a new way of being, of seeing, forging new connections in the mind between visualizations and words. You have to learn how to think in a new way, and this is why my mind rebels–it wants to figure shit out based on my prior understanding. Just got to jump in and start swimming

Back from the Trek

Hola amigos, I’m waiting on the 7 hour bus ride back to Lima. I returned from the trek in the Cordillera Blancas yesterday, hung out with the girls that I hiked with and some French dudes that were also trekking in the same direction and ate some cuy (guinea pig) which seemed to me not worth the trouble for the little meat there was on it. We went out and drank some coca sours and cervezas, and then I could feel mi estomago burbling and I went to the bathroom and projectile shat all over the servicio higìenico. I subsequently spent one of the worst nights of my life shitting and vomiting all night long, not even able to hold down agua. The reason for this was that we were drinking el agua de los rios en las montañas, which are full of vaca mierda.
I’m doing a little better this morning, hopefully I will not shit all over the bus on the way back to Lima.
The trek was great, at one point at Punto Union we were at around 15,000 feet. Acclimitizing to the altitude was difficult but not too bad. I was hiking with Franck and Carlos, the trek guides, and two Peruvian girls, Patti and Sandra, and a girl from Quebec, Katri. There was a lot of French and Español spoken.
For my birthday, the girls and the French guys sang happy birthday in French and Spanish to me. I was embarassed and very pleased.
The French guys, who I originally disliked, have proved to be some of those irreplaceable beneficiaries in my life. Last night when I was sick they took me back to their hostal and gave me medicine and advice (banana and a Coca Cola with the gas removed). Their kindness in that kind of situation was invaluable to me, and I will be sure to return the favor when I see them in Lima or Cuzco. One of them, Mattieu, is really into hip-hop, so he will share his French hip-hop with me and I will share my American hip-hop. I also had a great political conversation in broken English and Spanish and French with Alejandro y I don’t remember his name because it was too French, in which I set the record straight about America not being led by George Bush in thinking that France sucks and that we need to call French Fries Freedom Fries.
The night before I went on the trek I went out to a disco and had a great night drinking coca sours, chewing coca leaves, and dancing salsa y merengue. I met a nice girl from Huaraz, Karina, and hopefully I will see her again in Lima. She teaches children with disabilities. I also met a dude from Spain and a dude from Brazil and we will probably meet up again en la futura. Making these random friends who you can barely even communicate with is really fulfilling. It’s like you’re realizing a basis of rapport beyond language. My spanish is getting better but mi vocabulario es muy poquito. I am returning to Lima for una semana mas of studying and then I will begin the real journey.
Alright, it’s time for me to go to the bus station and get out of this wonderful pueblo and return to la ciudad grande y sucía. Thank you to all of you for wishing me a Happy Birthday, and I wish everyone I knew was here. Hasta luego!

Huaraz

Ok, I just finally figured out after my internet session closed on me the last two times after I’d already typed a whole friggin message that this particular internet place has a filter on it which does not allow you to type in the word “c.o.c.k.” As in the fowl. Ok, so I’ll retype this for the third time now and try to remember not to type anything about fowl, which I should have called by it’s Spanish name anyway, gallína.
I arrived this morning in Huaraz after a 8 hour bus ride that ascended something like 10,000 feet. Huaraz is nestled in between the Cordillera Blancas y Negras, and it is very beautiful. I took el combi up to the mountainside today and looked at some stone ruins that weren’t very exciting and then walked around the countryside, which would have reminded me of Italy if I had ever been there. It is extremely refreshing to get out of Lima, and now that I am out I am hesitant to go back, although I kind of have to to finish up my Spanish classes. The people here are friendly and colorful and they wear cool hats. There are pigs and . . .gallínas and cows and sheep and little dogs wandering about and tons of eucalyptus trees for some reason.
Tomorrow I will begin a four day trekking trip. I don’t think it’s going to be very difficult, but it should provide some good scenery. It is my birthday on Sunday, and I will be out camping by a fire somewhere around 5,000 metres above sea level drinking chicha de jora, a beer made from fermented maíze, so think of me and send me some good drunken thoughts. Next time you hear from me I will be back in Lima. Hasta luego

Hoy

10: The water here is different. I don’t mean just in like the way you can’t drink it from the tap. Like the water feels different when you take a shower, it doesn’t run off of your body, it kind of sticks to it, which makes soaping up difficult because you never seem to have enough water. It just doesn’t flow like the water I’m accustomed to. It has a kind of grittiness and substance to it.
11: When you greet a woman, you kiss her on her right cheek.

Tonight I am taking a bus to Huaraz, and from there I will take a four day trekking journey through the Cordillera Blanca. I decided to suspend my Spanish classes for this week to go on this trip, and then renew them again next week. I am going with my friend Frank who works at my hostal and a group of Peruvian and Canadian chicas. Muy bueno. I will hopefully get some good pictures finally of some mountains and such. I haven’t been taking very many pictures in Lima because it’s just cars and buildings and I don’t like looking like a tourist in the middle of a city. I haven’t been able to upload any of my pictures yet, you may have to wait until I return to los Estados Unidos, lo siento!

Dammit, the diarrhea has come again. It never really left, to be honest, but now it’s come back in full vengeance. I really need to be more careful with the water or what I eat or something.

Vida

What is life? What is it to live? We travel to lands where even the sky speaks in different languages, we look into plated museum displays of ancient mystery–mysterious because of its ultimate uknowability. What is to be found beyond the established habitual confines of what is daily taken for granted? Only new forms to be learned, new boundaries, new vistas, new habits. But this shock of the new also jolts us into wonder. Wonder that we are alive, wonder that such temporal forms exist. Life is here, within us, even when the world has changed all around us, we are still what we were–an accumulation of things that could not be taken away or let go, the residual impressions of the river of life passing through us, the endless movement of fragments yearning for their source. Whether molded to cookie-cutter standards or strangled to the point of suffocation or wild like horses on the plains, it is life. Life flows ever onward beyond the grasp of conscious perception. We can get used to anything.

Money stuff

I’m learning the value in pretending that I understand when people are spitting out machine gun syllabic Spanish at me–there is a lot to be understood simply by letting people talk. You just nod your head and smile and then you usually can figure out what they mean by the signifying gestures of their body and hands and eyes. It helps if they are animated speakers. If you can figure out when to express laughter, or when to look mysterious and profound, you can fare quite well on a drunken night with only Spanish speakers.
I’ve met some extremely hospìtable and generous Peruanos, and I met a few of the other kind last night, the kind who expect you to pay for their beers because you are a tourist. I guess that’s what they are thinking, I don’t really get it. At the end of the night I was kind of pissed about it, but then I realized that the whole night I´d spent what in the equilavent in US dollars is around 15 dollars for the whole night, which translated into several rounds of Cusquéñas. I’m so used to thinking in terms of neuvos soles now that when I spend 50 soles in a night I think its muy caro. The one big meal I have each day is generally around 6 or 7 soles, which is like 2 bucks. Yeah, guess I can’t really complain, huh?

I thought of another quirk of Lima to add to my list:

9: No stores or restaurants other than tourist based or higher end carry mucho dinero, so if you’ve got bills larger than 20 soles, you’re gonna have trouble buying stuff. You’ve got to break down your 50 or 100 sole bills at banks or when you make a large purchase (even banks seem to have trouble breaking down 100 sole bills sometimes!) so that you can carry around the 1, 2, or 5 sole coins which will get you all of your daily needs.

I’m a bit hung-over today, I think ahora tomo una siesta. Chao!

Cosas diferente aquí

1: You don’t put TP in the toilet. You put it in the trash. The TP has some kind of perfumey stuff on it so it doesn’t really smell too bad, it just smells like perfumey stuff. I have to flush the toilet and close the lid before I wipe so that I don’t toss it in there without thinking.
2: The waiters don’t bring the bill until you call for it.
3: Taxis are literally everywhere, I think because unemployment is high, so anyone with a car looking to get some cash puts a sign on it and it’s a taxi. Thus, there’s also no meter. So basically, at any moment on almost any street, if you step out and wave your hand, a taxi is there. Then you tell them where you want to go and ask how much it costs. If you don’t like the price, then you walk a few steps away and there’s another taxi. There will be a whole line of taxis waiting for your business. They also honk at you when they drive by to let you know they are there.
4: Which leads me to my next one, which is that cars honk like birds chirp. They honk not only to express the urge to keep traffic moving, but also when crossing intersections to let oncoming traffic know they are coming, since no one stops except at stop lights. Basically, there’s a lot of honking going on. It’s so ubiquitious that you don’t really notice it, it’s like people talking in a cafe, a necessary ambient noise. It makes me laugh to think of how people would react in the United States if you honked like that. I’ve observed many drivers in the US who won’t even honk when a car has cut them off because they are afraid of expressing themselves in the form of such a loud noise.
5: When telling people where you are from, you do not say, “Soy Americano.” As mi Profesora politely reminded me, people from Latin America also live in America. You say “Soy estadosunidense” (Los Estados Unidos is the United States).
6: The Peruanos are very proud of their culture. When you tell them that the food they cooked for you is very good, they will say something like “You will miss Peruvian food a lot when you return home, won’t you?” not knowing the multiplicity of fine dining that the metropolitan United States can provide outside of fast food. Tell them that their food is the best food in the world. And yes, I will miss it.
7: The chicas all wear form fitting jeans. Which is a wonderful thing.
8: Smoking prolifically and drinking and driving are apparently not something that culture or parents here consider to be a bad thing. I do not know if this is because people are just more comfortable with the idea of death here or what. There are a lot of people in this city.

There’s a lot more things that I can’t think of right now; I’ll update as they come to me.

Solo Marco

I think that I feel a certain kind of shame in being a tourist–a shame that comes from things beyond my control, such as the differences in exchange rates, the millions of families living in poverty due in no small part to my own country´s overconsumption of the world´s resources, the undeniable privilige I have to be white, oblivious to this country´s language and heritage, that I am able to be here at all, snapping pictures and eating food. All of these things, and everything that accompanies them, gives me this feeling of nakedness, a sense of original sin, a shame for things that at some level I realize are not my fault. I try to atone for these things by attempting to learn the language and customs and not being a conspicuously asinine tourist. Really, it is kind of ridiculous to have these feelings, considering that I should be getting ridiculously drunk every night instead of being stressed out about being foreign. I think some of these feelings extend beyond simply Peru, I think some of it comes from ingrained inclinations to avoid relying on the kindness or similarity of others.
That said, I´ve settled into a semblance of daily life in Miraflores. I get up and go to mi escuela de español, which happens to be right next door to my hostal, then I walk around and find a nice cheap little Peruvian food joint to eat my lunch–they always have a kind of menú de el día, which consists of an entrada, un plato principál, refresco, y un postre. Despues tomo una siesta (I take a nap), and then the rest of la tarde y la noche is open for whatever, which lately hasn´t been too very much, I´ve done a few touristy things like gone to Centro de Lima and a giant marketplace and read some of Cien Años de Soledad and been studying my spanish, and then usualmente I am muy cansado a la 10 en la noche and I go to bed.
I went to a salsa class this afternoon and it´s weird how salsa always seems to be different each time, the salsa that the masses dance apparently is much more informal than what I learned in the US, the man and woman just kind of hold hands–instead of the ballroom type holding. It´s still kind of hard to perform for this gringo. I kind of like the meringue though, you can do pretty much anything.
I realized today that I shouldn´t have judged Peruano dancing ability by the one bar that I went to that played mainly western booty drivel and Latin pop mierda–there´s apparently an abundance of these places called Peñas where they dance only to Criollo (local) music and do the salsa y merengue all night. I´m a little scared to go by myself but hopefully I can dig up somebody to accompany me.
Nothing too exciting in my travels as of yet unfortunately, I´m kind of buckling down right now and trying to string some kind of castellano ability together. I don´t know how much one can really get from 2 weeks, but I do feel like every day I gain a little bit more knowledge of the language, which is of course at an extremely elementary level, like learning to say,¨there are 4 chairs in the room,¨or ¨my butt hurts¨. Got to start somewhere though.

Fed up with the tourist train

I was feeling a bit lonely last night. My friends have finals for the next few days so I was feeling the full weight of being alone in a foreign city. I went to the muy touristico Calle de Pizza en Parque Kennedy for pizza, hoping to calm my troubled estomago con queso. There’s lots of pretty chicas circumambulating around that area, but I’m sick of hustlers coming up to me and acting like they are mi amigo simply because yo soy de Estadaounidense. These guys always happen to be from East LA or Nueva York and they’ve got kids to feed and they work at a tattoo parlor and they can get you some weed or cocaine, and it’s like I’m supposed to be all thrilled because they hablas ingles? I’ve been avoiding other foreigners like the plague. I deliberately took un hostal lejos de Parque Kennedy because that’s where all the backpackers congregate en Miraflores. This hostal is only 7 dollars a day–can’t really argue with that–I am staying en la dormatario, but there is no one else here. El único problema is that there are no towels, so I have to use mis pantalones to dry myself off despues uso la ducha.

Enfermo en Lima

So all yesterday afternoon and last night I paid for the excess of comida Peruana that I ate. Man, when the shit hits you like that, it´s just like vomiting out your ass. My stomach is still burbling as I write this. I slept most of the afternoon yesterday and then watched Touching the Void, which is a pretty crazy flick about the worst possible shit that could happen to you climbing, I recommend it if you haven´t seen it or read it. It takes place in the Andes in Peru.
The way people drive in Lima is interesting, it´s pretty much lawless as far as I can tell, yet everything seems to flow pretty well, people seem much more skillful in their driving ability than people in the US, who freeze up if their car comes closer than several inches to an object. You have to drive super aggressive if you want to get anywhere here–basically do what you need to do to get where you want, even if that means crossing over two lanes in front of other speeding cars–and disregard the horns of the cars around you. Because traffic here will not stop for you unless you force it to. No one will slow down and give you a nice little space to back into.
My friends here in Peru and their families have shown me incredible hospitality. I don´t think I would do anything here at all if I didn´t know them. So far, Miraflores is pretty damn boring, I still haven´t gone anywhere to do touristy things yet. I admit that I´m not very driven to go to museums. The weather here is very sunny and warm during the day, then it gets colder at night due to the moisture in the air. Where I am is very similar to La Jolla in many ways.
The traces of money here is immediately evident, like a streambed crafted from water. The houses are all surrounded by iron gates, so before you can enter the courtyard you need to enter the gate. Security guards stand before most apartment complexes and nice houses. The people living in poverty in Peru is something like 50 to 60 percent of the population. Lima is surrounded everywhere by settlements of squatters.
Alright, now I need to go get a Spanish dictionary and do my homework.

Tranqui con La Policia

I spent all day yesterday drinking Pisco Sours y Algarobilla y Cristal y Cusqueñas at a club for La Policia. My friend Reynato´s padre es en La Policia. He is the head of his graduating class, the group we were hanging out with, and also the captain of his futbol team, which has been in the top of their league in Lima for the past 5 years. These people know how to drink and hang out. I sat with them and drank and ate ceviche y mariscos and listened to them talk en Castellano all night. I also smoked enough cigarrettes that day to last me a lifetime. They just sat there drinking and smoking and telling funny stories. Then we went out to a disco, where I came to the sorry realization that Peruvian people can´t really dance any better than Americans, at least not at the place I was at last night. There was some good merengue music at first, and then all of a sudden the DJ started playing these Latin pop hits that everyone in the club knew every single word to and sang along with at the top of their lungs. They would cut the music every couple of seconds and people would sing the rest of the chorus. It kind of weirded me out. Then the DJ started spinning your typical American club booty music, as well as that reggae-ton stuff.
Today I ate some home-made ceviche that Reynato`s padre made. Es muy buena comida. I ate so much the food is almost coming out of my ears. Then we drank some more Pisco Sours and watched futbol. Now I’m extremely tired.
Tomorrow my Spanish classes begin, which is good because my Spanish really sucks. The conversations I have with people who can’t speak any English, as you can imagine, are rather limited, although I can understand some things by listening and by context.

Another day, another sol

So the guys hanging out the sides of buses shouting and gesticulating wildly are in fact employees of the bus–they are like conductors in a way. I took a bus home last night after visiting mi amiga Natalia y ella mama. It was interesting talking to her mom, who spoke no Ingles, because I would say something and then Natalia would translate, and then her mom would say something and Natalia would translate. Natalia can´t speak great Ingles either, which made it yet more interesante. Her mom gave me a shot of Pisco, which reminded me somewhat of grappa and brandy–it was very strong. Taking the bus is kind of how I imagine Toad´s Wild Ride would be from the Wind in the Willows. The bus careens wildly through the streets, stopping for noone except those who stand on a corner and hail it desperately. There´s the conductor dude, who stands holding the door of the bus (more accurately, a tiny minivan) by a string, shouting out the stops and negotiating whether a person standing on the corner wishes to be picked up or not. I remember thinking that this is the way a bus should be. It is only 1 sol to take the bus, as compared to 4 or 5 soles for the taxi. Unfortunately I got lost afterward for a while trying to find my way back to my hotel.
Anyway, so it´s kinda weird being here, and mi muy poquito Castellano seems to get yet smaller with each day. I´m enrolling in 2 weeks of intensive Spanish courses, so I´m going to stick it out in Lima for a while longer and see what the nightlife is all about.
I saw my Peruvian ex-girlfriend last night also. I hadn´t expected to see her, and I´m not quite sure what she´s thinking, she would only speak in Spanish to me. I think she was mad at me because I didn´t express enough joy and delight upon seeing her and Natalia, which is due more to my natural reticence than any lack of joy.
I just ate a dish of ceviche, which was good, quite strong on the lemon however, but with the onions it seemed to balance out nicely. I´m in the process of getting my laundry done and finding a place to stay where I can come in late at night if I´ve been out shaking mi culo, because I just found out the place I got right now doesn´t let you come in past 11. No bueno.
I haven´t really taken any pictures yet, so hopefully some will be forthcoming. I´m not quite sure yet if I can upload them to these computers, but I´m sure I can find one where I can if I put some effort into it, considering that there´s an internet cafe on every street.

Helo from the Southern Hemisphere

Ive arrived in Lima, which thus far appears to be a strange blend of Las Vegas, Tijuana, and La Jolla. My minimal amount of Spanish is coming into good use. The car drivers here apparently do not stop for pedestrians, as I just learned the hard way. I went ahead and splurged on a nice hotel room for my first two nights in order to get settled in and figure a few things out. I get the feeling that this is an off season for tourism, due to lowered prices.
Simply being on a plane with mainly Peruano and Argentinean passengers already kind of inducted me into the feeling of being an alien. They seem mildly curious in a friendly but reserved kind of way, which is fine with me.
The little buses that rip around here always have a man hanging out of the side window and gesticulating and shouting things to passerbys, especially girls. I think this is some form of accepted bus behavioral pasttime.
My city experience has fortunately prepared me well to walk around here and pretend to fit right in even though my albino shaved head sticks out like a sore thumb.
Alright, Im going to go find a nice little food joint to have lunch in. More to come.

Further thoughts on the purpose of travel

Some more thoughts re: expectations of journey. I wish to travel in a manner beyond visiting beautific sites and snapping pictures in order to show that I was there. I wish to become somewhat immersed in the lifestyle there, to gain a new perspective on life as a greater whole by being able to place myself into another self there and seeing everything new again from that perspective. To access, in other words, new areas yet untravelled within myself. To be snapped out of habitual expectation and brought into fresh vision through the induction of cultural and social alienation. There are many things to see there, and to be sure, I wish to see these things, such as Machu Piccu. But what I am most looking forward to meeting are the people who live in these places.

Getting Ready

Who are we and why do we live there? Always gathered into journeyed pools of light, the human being falls down stream to find itself already defined. I’m learning the value in preparing oneself for the unknown. It seems there are constantly arising these complete voids between now and then, and if you don’t have some kind of a map or a gameplan, then there is nothing but anxiety. I’m not talking about itineraries and erecting barriers of scheduled safety necessarily, more along the lines of developing a purpose and direction in my drifting. What exactly is it that I wish to gain from visiting this foreign country for an extended period of time? I will tell you, in brief, my goals: to drink beer made from maize, to hear some live local music, to dance Peruano style, to learn the language as best I can, and to eat some good seafood.
I’ve spent the last week shaking my booty in San Francisco, and now that I’ve warmed it up a little, I’m ready to get out of this country and shake it somewhere else. Two more days, and I’m there.