The city is never quiet. Windows thrown open to counteract overzealous radiators let in incessant noise, the slap-slap of joggers, the grumble of wheezing trucks, the shriek of distant sirens wending through traffic, the caterwaul of vagrants bemoaning fate—all adding a throbbing life to the heavy atmosphere. Caves of steel and brick and concrete, lurking hulks feeding on tears and joy, on beating hearts and humming minds, vicarious testament to the need to live forever.
A gust of wind billows a curtain; a moth flutters toward the light, the one irresistible mainstay in its tumultuous life, a promise of…something unfathomable. A dozen tea kettles scream. A hundred babies wail. A thousand night-shift alarm clocks wait in silence. It’s the gloaming, a time of magic for some, work for others, and just another hour ticking by for most.
There’s no way to know the approach of a life-changing moment. No way to calculate a point of no return. There is no white light, no paragraph break, no director’s cut. Nothing but a constant medias res, as we go dancing, shuffling, running, tiptoeing, and stumbling blindly through an existence which makes sense only because our scattered neurons follow the paths of habit, laid out because, without a pattern, without our self-scripted ego dreams, there is nothing—only the chaos of everything. No beginning, no end, and barely a middle.
From the window, the chirp of a sparrow, triumphant in the discovery of a morsel, the shaky promise of another day or two. The whistle of wind through an alley. The rustle of today’s newspaper, archived and forgotten.
Footsteps on the sidewalk, the drone of a hybrid engine. A cough. The friction scuff of tires locking over pavement, a sharp hiss of drawn-in breath. (…!...) The slow-motion curl of a wood shaving, tumbling free of the stick and falling toward the fire. Asphalt and rubber, molecules scrambling together, daring to resist. (No—!) A streak of black on white crosswalk paint, just slightly smoother than blacktop. A chain of reactions. The window lets in the night, a multitude of stories, sounds, smells. (Oh god, please don’t––!) shhtKRCK!
Sound amplified by savage significance, a nightmare crunch rooted in memory and not-quite-captured by movie soundtracks or jumbled letters. (Oh my GOD! Please no…) From behind screen windows, hearts pound, stomachs fall. Trembling lips parted. A dozen breaths bated. A hundred ears strained. A thousand years crawling by (Oh my baby! Oh god no…) a car door opens (What did you do? God what did you DO!) frantic strangled apology and a little girl crying (Oh my GOD my BABY!) delirious 911 call, street names and a little girl crying (Please, please, hurry, my daughter’s been hit…) flashing lights, uncountable heart-choked necks craning toward windows and a little girl crying (We were in the CROSSwalk you fucking asshole!) (What happened!?) I’m sorry I’m so sorry I’m sorry so so sorry please I’m sorry (Where does it hurt baby? Oh my GOD!) blue lights skitter against brick walls, reflecting willy nilly off glass windows and a little girl crying. Her hysterical mother, stomping around, arms in the air, screaming and cursing, and her little girl crying, traumatized and needing calm, safety, love, a sturdy embrace, sitting on a cold stone stoop without her mother’s arms to keep out the chill, a little girl crying who needs to be told It’ll Be Okay, Baby, You’ll Be Fine, Love, swathed instead by an infectious litany of panic and fear.
Windows stealthily slish shut, closing off the scene, private now and none of our business. Blue lights bathe family rooms, kitchens, dens, hallways, but can’t compete with televisions. Can’t compete with post-climax voyeuristic embarrassment. Can’t compete with It’ll Never Happen To Me, fading already into memory and vague silent promises to be more careful. Even for those three, mother, daughter, driver, the moment will deteriorate, filed away as a Count Your Lucky Stars, joining the infinite stored experiences that mold and define and lead to…what?
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Friday, November 13, 2009
"Hey, I'm looking for S.J. Is he here?"
I can't hear a goddamn thing over the thumping speakers. A platinum blonde bumps me hard, apologizing with a smirk and glancing at her overflowing cleavage. If I'd been carrying a drink, she'd have spilled it. I shake my head, and she frowns quizzically. Fuck off.
I tap a man on the shoulder. It's busier than I'd have expected for a Wednesday, but he turns away from the bar.
"Are you S.J.?"
"Nuh uh," he grunts, pointing. "That's him."
I push toward an enormous white striped shirt wrapped around a jiggling man with a jolly cast to his rosy cheeks. He's waving his hands telling a story to a small fellow with salt-and-pepper hair perched next to him.
"S.J.?"
His brows knit as I extend my hand.
"I'm Paul, from the bartender website."
He hesitates..."Oh! Hey, how are you? Come on, let's go back here."
Hoisting himself down from the barstool, he leaves his story hanging and leads me to an unoccupied table near the back of the room. Various patrons reach out as we pass, and he applies high-fives, nods, and words of encouragement where appropriate. A slim brunette in fishnets and a shredded wife beater blows him a kiss from behind the bar.
We chat for a few minutes about home and how the bar became the Michigan spot in Boston. He's owned The Place for a while, though it only recently joined the ranks of maize and blue, and he hates Ohio State already after only a brief time as a proximal fan.
"You'll start as a bouncer," he says, waving a meaty palm, "and a barback, before moving to the prime spot. It gets pretty crazy here, so you learn the ropes first."
"Cool," I say, struggling to stay nonchalant.
"We like Michigan alum here. You'll love it. Excuse me."
He heaves away, and I sit stunned for a second. I get up and make my way toward a tub filled with beers and ice, tended by yet another fox.
"S.J. told me I should come grab a beer."
"Sure," she chirps, and cracks a Corona. S.J. comes back with a few sheets of paper and has me fill them out.
"Shifts are nine to two," he says. "Can you come in on Saturday?"
"Absolutely. I'll be here in the afternoon anyway, drowning my football sorrows."
"Good. See you then."
He disappears into the main room, leaving me to fend for myself amid the pixies.
I can't hear a goddamn thing over the thumping speakers. A platinum blonde bumps me hard, apologizing with a smirk and glancing at her overflowing cleavage. If I'd been carrying a drink, she'd have spilled it. I shake my head, and she frowns quizzically. Fuck off.
I tap a man on the shoulder. It's busier than I'd have expected for a Wednesday, but he turns away from the bar.
"Are you S.J.?"
"Nuh uh," he grunts, pointing. "That's him."
I push toward an enormous white striped shirt wrapped around a jiggling man with a jolly cast to his rosy cheeks. He's waving his hands telling a story to a small fellow with salt-and-pepper hair perched next to him.
"S.J.?"
His brows knit as I extend my hand.
"I'm Paul, from the bartender website."
He hesitates..."Oh! Hey, how are you? Come on, let's go back here."
Hoisting himself down from the barstool, he leaves his story hanging and leads me to an unoccupied table near the back of the room. Various patrons reach out as we pass, and he applies high-fives, nods, and words of encouragement where appropriate. A slim brunette in fishnets and a shredded wife beater blows him a kiss from behind the bar.
We chat for a few minutes about home and how the bar became the Michigan spot in Boston. He's owned The Place for a while, though it only recently joined the ranks of maize and blue, and he hates Ohio State already after only a brief time as a proximal fan.
"You'll start as a bouncer," he says, waving a meaty palm, "and a barback, before moving to the prime spot. It gets pretty crazy here, so you learn the ropes first."
"Cool," I say, struggling to stay nonchalant.
"We like Michigan alum here. You'll love it. Excuse me."
He heaves away, and I sit stunned for a second. I get up and make my way toward a tub filled with beers and ice, tended by yet another fox.
"S.J. told me I should come grab a beer."
"Sure," she chirps, and cracks a Corona. S.J. comes back with a few sheets of paper and has me fill them out.
"Shifts are nine to two," he says. "Can you come in on Saturday?"
"Absolutely. I'll be here in the afternoon anyway, drowning my football sorrows."
"Good. See you then."
He disappears into the main room, leaving me to fend for myself amid the pixies.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
It starts with a slight tremor. Across the street a pedestrian sign chirps, "walkwalk...walkwalk..." A man stoops under the weight of a shabby army retail jacket, singing a ditty and shaking a Dunkin Donuts cup of change. I'm right with you, buddy, though the change I collect is of a different mint. The plate-glass window of a burlesque bar reflects my jaunty grin which parallels the brim of my hat. A cycling student--Harvard--weaves in and out of traffic, white iPod headphones streaming out behind. He turns a corner sharply, stabilizing with a scruffy Chuck Taylor on the pavement and narrowly missing an old lady leaning on a Red-Sox stickered walker.
The tremor builds to a rumble, the rumble to a roar, until the sidewalk seems ready to buckle. Sunlight glitters on the Charles, interrupted by a pair of rowers skimming the surface. A gull swoops in for a closer inspection of a bit of flotsam on the bank.
Then like a healthy nor'easter, the noise dwindles as quickly as it arose. The following stillness disgorges a score of bag-toting commuters, spilling out of the sidewalk like ants in the wake of a lawnmower. A little boy looks around in wonder, right arm stuck straight up over his head secure in his mother's gloved hand.
The streetlight flicks green again, and people hustle across as cabbies suck their teeth impatiently. A girl in a red skirt over black leggings catches my eye, tugging at her London Fog and smiling demurely at her shoes. I swallow a few words and walk on, still swelling with confidence with a delightful phrase ringing in my ears. Well I'd like to offer you a job...
Someone waves a pamphlet in my face, and I hold up a hand. No, thanks. This is something I've become an expert at over the years, dodging and skirting the multitude of do-gooder interested parties.
"Hey nice hat, man!" someone calls.
"Thanks," I tell the world.
The tremor builds to a rumble, the rumble to a roar, until the sidewalk seems ready to buckle. Sunlight glitters on the Charles, interrupted by a pair of rowers skimming the surface. A gull swoops in for a closer inspection of a bit of flotsam on the bank.
Then like a healthy nor'easter, the noise dwindles as quickly as it arose. The following stillness disgorges a score of bag-toting commuters, spilling out of the sidewalk like ants in the wake of a lawnmower. A little boy looks around in wonder, right arm stuck straight up over his head secure in his mother's gloved hand.
The streetlight flicks green again, and people hustle across as cabbies suck their teeth impatiently. A girl in a red skirt over black leggings catches my eye, tugging at her London Fog and smiling demurely at her shoes. I swallow a few words and walk on, still swelling with confidence with a delightful phrase ringing in my ears. Well I'd like to offer you a job...
Someone waves a pamphlet in my face, and I hold up a hand. No, thanks. This is something I've become an expert at over the years, dodging and skirting the multitude of do-gooder interested parties.
"Hey nice hat, man!" someone calls.
"Thanks," I tell the world.
Friday, October 9, 2009
This is wonderful! Color swims before my eyes, a spiraling never-ending swath of change. A groan of tedium escapes me, lost forever in the ether as I giggle and slap on some more paint. Giddy, excited, thrilled that I'm finally going to capture this project I've been thinking about for ages and bring it from an uncertain sketch on gridpaper into a fullfledged magnificent wall-embracing landscape of delight and suffering and loss and gain and past present future, deep, flat, infinite, infinitesimal, concrete mortared with whimsy.
But alas, Blue bailed and left me awash in insufficient-black and rubbish-purple. So it's suspended one more day, and I turn, tail between my legs, to another creative project. Sigh.
Sometimes I think I understand how my snake feels when he's about to peel out of his skin.
Everything wavers and shimmys, dancing jive in the heavy warm atmosphere, this cave, this shelter, this haven. And now replete with totemic jabberings, layers of mistakes folded and folded and folded until it resembles the picture we seek. If I were a cave-dweller, I'd simply run outside and collect some more berries to crush into dyes. Sadly my commerce is confined by convention and dictum, for the benefit of us all.
Enchanting. The room breathes around me, murmuring in time with the music and the cadence of my typewriter--somehow still going while my fingers flit across these electronic and far less satisfying--though immensely more roguish and complex keys.
The last few cherished drops of Glenlivet tremble goldenly in a rocks glass, as I fight to maintain control through the silly vibrations. Absurd, absolutely. Tides crash and recede, blending with the scotch and the music and overall incomprehensibility of everything. A crescendo--my god, I think spellcheck's up and bailed--of inspiration and unsatisfied creativity, I'm positively trembling as if I were cold or excited--I can't tell which. I could explode or shrivel, and it wouldn't make a lick of difference to the universe, which is why I love the thing so much.
My own words here, represented out of the 001010000110101011 randomness, blinking and wondering what's going on, and what all these silly preconceived patterns mean. Maybe the programmers have an idea of what it's all about, the Matrix of life on a molecular (or smaller) level, bewildering, inspiring, frightening, confusing, enlightening--and all so deliciously mundane. Just a hodgepodge, an endless supply of information drenching me at all times, sifted and sorted by the bureaucracy of my being into neat little pigeonholes whose meanings and connections I keep in line.
The wall giggles with its spirals of black and white, swathed over with an ugly purple, and suddenly I long to throw myself at it, to smear and lavish paint upon it with reckless and hopeful abandon. I need blue! Bring me blue!
Purple, I have enough of.
I try not to ascribe to favorites, but I'm rather inclined to agree with myself that Glenlivet is my favorite label. It's a classy heavy-green bottle, a pasted-on label whose script and color make it seem two-hundred years old, and a signature to boot. I bow to the marketing gods who've created this one. It appeals to me in a way that old Johnny Walker never could, no matter the color of his boots. Just so happens the product they're selling is also damned decent. Phew
Rosetta dances at my touch, shining and bright with our mutual red excitement, though she sometimes gets out of hand and skitters across the desk--get back here, sweet thang, let's make words. And the little red Buddha laughs on and on, knowing far more than anyone gives him credit for. Words topple and jostle, pause and linger.
I want something that's my own. Something not borrowed. Temporary as I want it to be, fleeting as it probably is, but in the moment, just as solidly mine, my own, as any dream.
Someone wrote about a dream machine. Plug it in and go for a whirl. Plug in the coordinates, chart the stars. Delight in it, spin in it--but don't bother trying to understand it. When you press its magic, try to conquer its secrets, it's gone. Suddenly, as if it never existed. Did it?
Ask Ray Bradbury.
But damn if anything mapped doesn't lose its mystique, its charm. It joins the mundane, relegates itself to the dusty shelves of what has been.
Is that how I would turn out if I became what I dream to become? Nonsense. Drollery is as part of me as my red blood cells. I could never turn it loose, no matter the weather.
The dimensions of my mind are so hard to capture, so hard to turn concrete, so hard to share. It's immensely frustrating, and though I profess a certain ability with the language, I sometimes find myself so incapable of producing, of expressing what I actually wish to say. Sometimes I wonder if language itself is to blame, if interaction has become too defined, too clearcut, too free of the raw, the purity of connection.
Or maybe I'm just being silly.
I'm entirely dissatisfied with the mechanics of this dancing typewriter! How can I fix it in its place so it stops scattering papers and ideas all willynilly into the abyss? Would fixing it halt its mystique? Would Rosetta stop flourishing if I tied her arms to the bedposts? Bosh!
But it is obnoxious that it won't stay in one spot.
I'm churning through typewriter paper at an alarming rate, an unprecidented rate (on this desk at least), and I can only hope it's the shadow at the entrance to the tunnel (which eventually leads to a Light, even if that's just a freight train coming your way).
Glenlivet's dry now, and nary a trace of relenting in the upsy downsy vibrations of the eve--hedging towards morning now. The verdant bottle saved for just such a moment, any in a multitude of millions, the cascading joy of recognition that this second, this instant is precious. This...this...consciousness, this present is as holy or unholy, as mundane or sacrosanct as every similar and infinite Here and Now.
Ellusive. Ignored. Forgotten in the helterskelter rush of life.
'Stop and smell the roses' doesn't mean pause and place your nose to a flower, though it does mean that, it means take each moment as its own, apart and independent from the rest, though coinciding and flowing in some kind of crazy pattern to which we all ascribe.
Everything's so visceral. So real and unreal, so unceasingly weird.
Grant me a studio. An untouchable sacristy for an outlet, a place where I can really just be and be and be and unfold.
Sometimes perfect phrases suddenly burble out, as if a stack of moments connived to bring it forth. I love this language.
My god, it's going to feel so lonely and new and incomprehensible and unreachable and remote and infinite and impossible and scary. I'm so excited I can scarcely contain myself!
And yet, of course, I must be humble and ever mindful of the delicate processes that brought me to this point. And every subsequent and preceeding point, tipping or otherwise.
Oh glorious! When fatigue overtakes me, i'll simply click Post, without even scrolling up to see what I've done. Incapturable and intransigent, unrepeating and forever lost...
So many tools I yearn to capture for writing. Colors. I long for a better vocabulary of color! Hindered by the power of suggestion of colorblindness (or maybe the verisimilitude) but suspecting that an inordinate amount of color names are merely poetic descriptions of the same, I've not embarked upon a journey to discover just what is meant by mauve or eggshell or offwhite or any other term.
So strange how everything sort of settles back into normalcy, comfortable and cozy. And yet the spirals and paths ignited will continue to burn, until I'm done with them. Just as I've always done.
But alas, Blue bailed and left me awash in insufficient-black and rubbish-purple. So it's suspended one more day, and I turn, tail between my legs, to another creative project. Sigh.
Sometimes I think I understand how my snake feels when he's about to peel out of his skin.
Everything wavers and shimmys, dancing jive in the heavy warm atmosphere, this cave, this shelter, this haven. And now replete with totemic jabberings, layers of mistakes folded and folded and folded until it resembles the picture we seek. If I were a cave-dweller, I'd simply run outside and collect some more berries to crush into dyes. Sadly my commerce is confined by convention and dictum, for the benefit of us all.
Enchanting. The room breathes around me, murmuring in time with the music and the cadence of my typewriter--somehow still going while my fingers flit across these electronic and far less satisfying--though immensely more roguish and complex keys.
The last few cherished drops of Glenlivet tremble goldenly in a rocks glass, as I fight to maintain control through the silly vibrations. Absurd, absolutely. Tides crash and recede, blending with the scotch and the music and overall incomprehensibility of everything. A crescendo--my god, I think spellcheck's up and bailed--of inspiration and unsatisfied creativity, I'm positively trembling as if I were cold or excited--I can't tell which. I could explode or shrivel, and it wouldn't make a lick of difference to the universe, which is why I love the thing so much.
My own words here, represented out of the 001010000110101011 randomness, blinking and wondering what's going on, and what all these silly preconceived patterns mean. Maybe the programmers have an idea of what it's all about, the Matrix of life on a molecular (or smaller) level, bewildering, inspiring, frightening, confusing, enlightening--and all so deliciously mundane. Just a hodgepodge, an endless supply of information drenching me at all times, sifted and sorted by the bureaucracy of my being into neat little pigeonholes whose meanings and connections I keep in line.
The wall giggles with its spirals of black and white, swathed over with an ugly purple, and suddenly I long to throw myself at it, to smear and lavish paint upon it with reckless and hopeful abandon. I need blue! Bring me blue!
Purple, I have enough of.
I try not to ascribe to favorites, but I'm rather inclined to agree with myself that Glenlivet is my favorite label. It's a classy heavy-green bottle, a pasted-on label whose script and color make it seem two-hundred years old, and a signature to boot. I bow to the marketing gods who've created this one. It appeals to me in a way that old Johnny Walker never could, no matter the color of his boots. Just so happens the product they're selling is also damned decent. Phew
Rosetta dances at my touch, shining and bright with our mutual red excitement, though she sometimes gets out of hand and skitters across the desk--get back here, sweet thang, let's make words. And the little red Buddha laughs on and on, knowing far more than anyone gives him credit for. Words topple and jostle, pause and linger.
I want something that's my own. Something not borrowed. Temporary as I want it to be, fleeting as it probably is, but in the moment, just as solidly mine, my own, as any dream.
Someone wrote about a dream machine. Plug it in and go for a whirl. Plug in the coordinates, chart the stars. Delight in it, spin in it--but don't bother trying to understand it. When you press its magic, try to conquer its secrets, it's gone. Suddenly, as if it never existed. Did it?
Ask Ray Bradbury.
But damn if anything mapped doesn't lose its mystique, its charm. It joins the mundane, relegates itself to the dusty shelves of what has been.
Is that how I would turn out if I became what I dream to become? Nonsense. Drollery is as part of me as my red blood cells. I could never turn it loose, no matter the weather.
The dimensions of my mind are so hard to capture, so hard to turn concrete, so hard to share. It's immensely frustrating, and though I profess a certain ability with the language, I sometimes find myself so incapable of producing, of expressing what I actually wish to say. Sometimes I wonder if language itself is to blame, if interaction has become too defined, too clearcut, too free of the raw, the purity of connection.
Or maybe I'm just being silly.
I'm entirely dissatisfied with the mechanics of this dancing typewriter! How can I fix it in its place so it stops scattering papers and ideas all willynilly into the abyss? Would fixing it halt its mystique? Would Rosetta stop flourishing if I tied her arms to the bedposts? Bosh!
But it is obnoxious that it won't stay in one spot.
I'm churning through typewriter paper at an alarming rate, an unprecidented rate (on this desk at least), and I can only hope it's the shadow at the entrance to the tunnel (which eventually leads to a Light, even if that's just a freight train coming your way).
Glenlivet's dry now, and nary a trace of relenting in the upsy downsy vibrations of the eve--hedging towards morning now. The verdant bottle saved for just such a moment, any in a multitude of millions, the cascading joy of recognition that this second, this instant is precious. This...this...consciousness, this present is as holy or unholy, as mundane or sacrosanct as every similar and infinite Here and Now.
Ellusive. Ignored. Forgotten in the helterskelter rush of life.
'Stop and smell the roses' doesn't mean pause and place your nose to a flower, though it does mean that, it means take each moment as its own, apart and independent from the rest, though coinciding and flowing in some kind of crazy pattern to which we all ascribe.
Everything's so visceral. So real and unreal, so unceasingly weird.
Grant me a studio. An untouchable sacristy for an outlet, a place where I can really just be and be and be and unfold.
Sometimes perfect phrases suddenly burble out, as if a stack of moments connived to bring it forth. I love this language.
My god, it's going to feel so lonely and new and incomprehensible and unreachable and remote and infinite and impossible and scary. I'm so excited I can scarcely contain myself!
And yet, of course, I must be humble and ever mindful of the delicate processes that brought me to this point. And every subsequent and preceeding point, tipping or otherwise.
Oh glorious! When fatigue overtakes me, i'll simply click Post, without even scrolling up to see what I've done. Incapturable and intransigent, unrepeating and forever lost...
So many tools I yearn to capture for writing. Colors. I long for a better vocabulary of color! Hindered by the power of suggestion of colorblindness (or maybe the verisimilitude) but suspecting that an inordinate amount of color names are merely poetic descriptions of the same, I've not embarked upon a journey to discover just what is meant by mauve or eggshell or offwhite or any other term.
So strange how everything sort of settles back into normalcy, comfortable and cozy. And yet the spirals and paths ignited will continue to burn, until I'm done with them. Just as I've always done.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Crawl
Hot. So hot. The very air presses down, stifling lungs and crushing spirit. Tiny arm hairs shrivel away from the glare, melting and abandoning skin to fend for itself. Pores ache to release moisture, open and gasping. Perspiration escapes as pure vapor, not even bothering to hang around long enough to cool. What are you doing here?
Blistering sand shifts underfoot, and there's no way to tell what progress you have made. It's all the same, stretching and blurring, on and on. Endless waves of tan, lapping in a slow undertow, heaving with the rise and fall of ragged breath. Nostrils crackle, and lips split. Tongue feels big and important, swelling in self-satisfied ignorance of its dire predicament.
Sky so blue, searing like a butane flame, pinpointed at the white-hot sun.
And endless thoughts of water. Lakes and rivers, streams, springs--drops of rain...puddles...condensation on a glass of iced tea...
A rivulet of sweat. A tear.
Stop!
Walk and walk, keep the sun behind and hope ahead. But the sun seems everywhere. You're inside the sun. Walk and walk? More like slide and slide, shoes filled with sand, toes scuffed and blistered. Turn and scope the progress, a shallow wrinkle stretching as far back as the eye can see, fading with a whisper as wind sifts sand to erase the path as if you'd never been. And maybe you haven't. How long for skin flesh and bone to crumble and become uncountable grains of dust? What is time out here?
And to think just hours ago you were on top of the world. Suits. Bottled water. Airplanes. Air conditioning.
How did you get here? Well. That's a long story for another time. Besides, why bother? All there is is shifting sand, blistered feet, lips, eyes. Any words would come out as a croak of desperation. Why not just give up and lie down to sleep?
And then there she is, right there! Or just over the next rise...? Smooth bronze skin, thin fingers wrapped around a clay jar overflowing with clear cool water. Taste it. Feel its salvation spreading through every inch, every cell. At last. Take it slow, no sense in wasting it trickling down your chin. Savor it and respect its elemental necessity. Seventy percent. Replenish and swallow, swallow, swallow.
But then you blink, and throat's dry as ever. The lady has vanished in all her glorious perfection. Vanished with her earthen jar. Vanished with her water. What would possess her to appear so, just in the nick of time, holding forth deliverance only to withdraw it at the very last moment?
Don't...collapse. Don't...give up. Hope...lives. No. So hot. So dry. There must be a trickle somewhere. There? Here? Anywhere...?
Blistering sand shifts underfoot, and there's no way to tell what progress you have made. It's all the same, stretching and blurring, on and on. Endless waves of tan, lapping in a slow undertow, heaving with the rise and fall of ragged breath. Nostrils crackle, and lips split. Tongue feels big and important, swelling in self-satisfied ignorance of its dire predicament.
Sky so blue, searing like a butane flame, pinpointed at the white-hot sun.
And endless thoughts of water. Lakes and rivers, streams, springs--drops of rain...puddles...condensation on a glass of iced tea...
A rivulet of sweat. A tear.
Stop!
Walk and walk, keep the sun behind and hope ahead. But the sun seems everywhere. You're inside the sun. Walk and walk? More like slide and slide, shoes filled with sand, toes scuffed and blistered. Turn and scope the progress, a shallow wrinkle stretching as far back as the eye can see, fading with a whisper as wind sifts sand to erase the path as if you'd never been. And maybe you haven't. How long for skin flesh and bone to crumble and become uncountable grains of dust? What is time out here?
And to think just hours ago you were on top of the world. Suits. Bottled water. Airplanes. Air conditioning.
How did you get here? Well. That's a long story for another time. Besides, why bother? All there is is shifting sand, blistered feet, lips, eyes. Any words would come out as a croak of desperation. Why not just give up and lie down to sleep?
And then there she is, right there! Or just over the next rise...? Smooth bronze skin, thin fingers wrapped around a clay jar overflowing with clear cool water. Taste it. Feel its salvation spreading through every inch, every cell. At last. Take it slow, no sense in wasting it trickling down your chin. Savor it and respect its elemental necessity. Seventy percent. Replenish and swallow, swallow, swallow.
But then you blink, and throat's dry as ever. The lady has vanished in all her glorious perfection. Vanished with her earthen jar. Vanished with her water. What would possess her to appear so, just in the nick of time, holding forth deliverance only to withdraw it at the very last moment?
Don't...collapse. Don't...give up. Hope...lives. No. So hot. So dry. There must be a trickle somewhere. There? Here? Anywhere...?
Sunday, September 20, 2009
*Sigh*
A groan of tedium escapes me. The Road is calling my name already. Just six weeks back home and I'm already scratching my veins yearning for a fix. Wanderlust. A funny term we came up with (or at least proliferated) years back while roaming the nice quiet boundaries of the suburban golf course under the stars.
You stand up on the hill and gaze out picturing a pack of savage dogs bounding near, thrilling on the rush of adrenaline as your muddled mind perfectly conjures the feeling of the chase. But alas, the illusion is easy to break when you remember there's leftover pizza in the fridge just a few steps away from the TV.
Adventure in a neat little paper package.
I experienced a real adventure this summer, and there are so many reasons to jump out again and get dirty. A million little reasons to go, and only a handful keeping me back. Maybe some fear, maybe some loathing, but mostly i'm all caught up in this whole owing-money thing.
My thumbs itch, and my imagination soars, while my mouth yaks and spins, and the red ledger slowly ticks back up to zero with the sweat of my brow and the blister-juice of my hands.
Soon...
What I need is a good sidekick (or partner in crime) to complement my angle. Someone to argue with; someone who disagrees with me regularly.
You stand up on the hill and gaze out picturing a pack of savage dogs bounding near, thrilling on the rush of adrenaline as your muddled mind perfectly conjures the feeling of the chase. But alas, the illusion is easy to break when you remember there's leftover pizza in the fridge just a few steps away from the TV.
Adventure in a neat little paper package.
I experienced a real adventure this summer, and there are so many reasons to jump out again and get dirty. A million little reasons to go, and only a handful keeping me back. Maybe some fear, maybe some loathing, but mostly i'm all caught up in this whole owing-money thing.
My thumbs itch, and my imagination soars, while my mouth yaks and spins, and the red ledger slowly ticks back up to zero with the sweat of my brow and the blister-juice of my hands.
Soon...
What I need is a good sidekick (or partner in crime) to complement my angle. Someone to argue with; someone who disagrees with me regularly.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
A Swift Farewell?
28/July/2009 9PM
Finally back in Bogota! The 20-hour trip extended seemingly indefinitely. As I stood on the bus to disembark, a young fellow said, "Follow me, I'll show you which bus to catch to Candelaria," without me even begging for directions. The Transmileno seems pretty efficient, run like a subway with tickets and turnstiles at the entrance, rather than on board in a frenetic pocket-searching melee amid all the other passengers. The buses even look like subways, molded-plastic seats lining the walls, broad tinted windows, two segments separated by a plastic accordian lined with metal surrounding a circular pivot in floor and celing. The line map even resembles the one in New York.
We chat for a while on the bus. He's on summer break from college in Amsterdam, vising his family, the coast, and the jungle before returning to his studies.
I tell him I'm an English major, which narrows nothing down as far as my job-market choices. Teach English, he says, or translate. How's your SPanish?
Indeed, how is my Spanish? Seems alright. Could use some improvement...but can't we all?
I should have steered our conversation towards an invitation to crash on his parents' couch, but i missed the opportunity, and as he got up to get off, he took my email and said, "If I ever get down to Brazil to open my bar, I will give you an email."
"Yeah," I retort, "and maybe by that time I'll be teaching English down there and I'll help you find a place."
Now I'm back in the Platypus awaiting five AM. Another traveler is heading to the airport in the morning, and we've agreed to share a taxi. I don't have enough cash left for my own. I'd have had to go out in the dodgy small hours to catch a bus. This way I'll arrive two extra hours early. Christ.
It seems appropriate to be sitting at this table which bears my initials carved in three months ago. Sometimes it seems like a long time, and sometimes but a flash. Looking back I wish I'd been better about keeping notes, since everything not tied down will be lost overboard. Oh well, next time. I guess I can keep an appendix for retrograde remembrances.
Little ants trotting across the page following the scent of dulce-de-leche crumbs. The clock ticks on the wall next to the big hand-drawn map of Bogota. Which someone spent an inordinate amount of time on. The kitchen is locked, and I'm denied the coffee which made this country famous. This cookie is dry in my mouth, and I desperately wish for something hot to drink. I'm alone in the hours between the civilized bedtime of those with something scheduled tomorrow and the return of those out partying. At the moment I'm not yet tired. Time will soon begin its slow decline to standstill while my eyes droop and the words of my book melt together and mingle with the roman numerals passing in the distance.
I hear nothing except the ticking clock, the faint murmur of nightduty Spanish, and my slow-thumping heart. My eyelids feel heavy, like pillows. Similes come slowly to my weary mind. My skin feels greasy, and I can slmost still smell the grit of travel under my fingernails. Hair clings to my head or stands up crazily. Glasses slide interminably down my nose. I regard the clock through the small lenses. Three more hours. A book lies finished on the table before me. Another one sits in my bag waiting. I'm suddenly no longer very tired. I just want to shower, to change my clothes. In flipflops, my toes are cold and slightly sticky. How long can I spend in the shoer? Depends how hot it is...
A hot shower rejuvenates me, gives me a second wind. I have the hot water tanks all to myself, and take full advantage until my fingertips turn to blanched prunes and my toes regain sensation. Returning to the common room to start a new book, I stumble upon a group of three returned from the bar, nursing Aguila beers.
One fellow from Philidelphia--or was it Pittsburg? I said the wrong one before and he took offense--one bloke from northern London, and a girl from Switzerland on her way to study in Barcelona after B.A. The usual assortment.
They were in the middle of arguing about football--both kinds at once; that was the argument--when I walked in with my Michigan Football T-shirt, prompting the American to proclaim his alma-mater allegiance in red and white. I tell him that while the Badgers have done alright against us in the past couple seasons, we're still overall better in football, academics, and intangibles. He retorted something about cheese and beer. I said nothing, only chuckled and daydreamed of a nice Bell's Porter.
As I watch the minute hand crawl around the American's watch, I realize I'm not at all tired. He stands me a couple of beers as five o'clock (am) rolls around. The guy from San Francisco I'd agreed to share a taxi with steps in groggily. How fitting that I began my journey with someone from California in this hostel, and I'm leaving the same sorta way. He pays for my half of the taxi, leaving me enough cash for a coffee and empanada at the airport.
I'm offered an exit row, and I accept, picturing my heroics in the event of a crash...or at least first one out the door. However that goes. Fighting down the prickly feeling of a bad omen--so far the night has gone rather too splendidly after t he late arrival of my bus--I wait for the counter to print my ticket. Oops, she says, looks like it's already been taken. Fine by me. I prefer to be crushed up against my tray table anyway.
The staffat the airport seem eager to try their English, while I desperately cling to Spanish, feeling my vocabulary already slipping away like grains in a glass.
Tick tock tick tock: the digital clock on my phone makes no noise, as surreal seconds slip silently toward takeoff, passing unnoticed like so many stories and memories. This whole trip already come and gone like a flash in a pan; I close my eyes and the purple stain dances across the backs of my eyelids, brilliant but transient and already fading. Can I capture its essence like a few photographs valued at a few thousand words? Or is it already too late...?
At the gate they turn me away. Too early. I sit across the way on a stiff woven-orange chair and rest my eyes. My heart pounds rapidly, sending extra oxygen to my overwrought brain. Soon it will start trying to dream, deprived of sensory-organization down-time for...who knows how long. At least 24 hours since my last snooze. And then just a catnap.
As soon as they open the gate for my flight, I stand and shuffle to the desk.
"Listen," I say to the pretty girl with more eye makeup than she needs. She blinks and smiles. "I'm recovering from malaria, and I desperately need rest." I smile back, wanly, exhaustedly, expectantly.
"Of course," she says, checking my ticket. "Go on ahead. Have a nice flight."
"Thanks," I yawn, and head down the tunnel and up the aisle, collapsing gratefully into my seat. Some minutes later a very attractive girl sits next to me, but my headphones are already on, and I probably won't bother trying to talk to her. The sirens of sleep already have me in their grasp.
We fly through some billowy stacks of clouds, approaching Orlando. Cuba lies well astern. The plane trembles as the windows are obscured by milky vapor, and in clear patches, I can see a rainbow far below, a streak of color across the pale green land.
Houses arranged in subdivisions; lakes glittering; a grouping of baseball diamond, softball diamond, football field, and track: a high school. America looks gorgeous, and I am looking forward to arriving at home for some well deserved rest before launching into the Next Thing--this time with some income!
But I will miss South America and all the adventures I've had, the lessons I've learned, the people I've met, regrets and triumphs: everything.
It just gets better. Weather over New York decided to shit on my homecoming parade, keeping the plane on the ground in Orlando until it was far too late to make my connecting flight to Chicago. We finally land at JFK at about the time I was supposed to land in CHicago. Grateful for cell phones. Thanks for the smooth welcome!
At customs, an older fellow greeted me, flipped through my passport a bit, and said, "Welcome home."
"Goddamn," I grinned, "I like the sound of that." And so here I am.
And that was supposed to be a nice Greek circle, closed and neat. But it's starting to look more like a spiral as I sit crosslegged in the JFK airport about to board a hop to Boston and catch an am flight to Chi-town.
I make contact with Erik and stifle my surprise when he eagerly agrees to meet me at the airport...if I ever get there. I'm losing track of my space/time orientation, sleep starved and weary. But Boston will be fun...if I ever get there.
Porr David has to get up at 4 to drive out to pick my ass up. Just think of it as a wake-and-bake adventure, I tell him. My ankles itch maddeningly, and I wonder if I'm bed-bug bit. Fucking hostels.
I'm having a bit of difficulty with English, expecting all the time to have to negotiate travel difficulties beginningwith "Hola, buenas, tengo un problema..." but everyone here speaks English, and it's hard to get used to.
To top it all off, my dying phone, battered and abused by travel, has very little charge left, and I'm constantly fighting to keep from smashing it with a well-placed elbow, since it barely works anymore. What luck.
I hate the woman sitting next to me chatting hoarsely into her rhinestone-encrusted cell phone. Her blonde hair is piled on top of her head like straw as she whines about the recent rain ruining her do.
She has the voice and tone of a 19-year-old sorority girl, but she's about twice that age. Blah blah blah, she says, spewing gossip and filling the air wiht idiocy. The PA interrupts to announce the arrival of our plane, and people all around me start stirring. Oh my god, she just said "whatev." I want to throw my phone at her temple.
Everything feels a bit surreal.
My feet fall asleep, and I relish the anthill rush of prickly awakening. Time to walk.
The Boston airport is closed. I stay alive with single-serving snack packs and caffeine. I yield to the surreality of the predawn airport where everything is in stasis and a ghostly pallor illuminates the lost souls wandering in search of connecting flights.
I keep seeing people I know, and watch as they turn to strangers, unuttered greetings dying softly on my lips.
A security guard strolls past, impossible chin protruding past his blue smokey-the-bear hat. He disappears as scrolling marquees catch my eye. Pretty colors.
Janitors whistle as they push mops and buff floor tiles, Red Sox caps pulled low in the chilly sterile air.
My teeth feel mossy, and my breath tastes foul. The guy next to me on the plane smelled like a freshman. I briefly consider killing the taste with vodka, but opt for toothpaste instead. THe bars are all closed.
My body feels the pull of acceleration as the plane roars down the runway, but then I jolt awake and realize I'm sitting in the lobby in an uncomfortable chair, trying unsuccessfully to fade into sleep. I start to wonder when I'll meet Tyler Durden.
Trying to tally the hours, I realize it's July 30th, and I should be home in bed. Best estimate: 50h interspersed with less-than-adequate catnaps.
I wonder if I could leap behind the Dunkin Donuts counter and start the coffee brewing. Would they mind?
I also briefly consider riding around in a wheelchair, but abandon the idea to laziness.
Daylight, and the airport awakens to swelling swarms of people. I stir myslf and join the correct flow, finding my gate. The metal curve of the bombilla mate straw in my backpack causes a brief panic among the redeye security team, but we sort things out, and the heavy-lidded surge continues.
I locate and drink a large coffee, chasing it with some oatmeal before sitting to wait at the gate. Time flickers past, and I find myself in my window seat, twitching awake to stare out at the looming jet engine as the flight attendant passes out soda and coffee. I turn to my seatmate and ask the time. One hour to go. Barring, of course, any unforseen snafus.
The morning sun shines a brilliant blue, and Tyra Banks smiles her famous grimace on the TV in front of my face, talking to an absurdly pale zombie-flesh woman with sunken eyes and lank brown hair. Tyra, wearing a ring the size of a pizza, appears to be saying something rather droll and witty. I switch the channel to football reruns.
Finally back in Bogota! The 20-hour trip extended seemingly indefinitely. As I stood on the bus to disembark, a young fellow said, "Follow me, I'll show you which bus to catch to Candelaria," without me even begging for directions. The Transmileno seems pretty efficient, run like a subway with tickets and turnstiles at the entrance, rather than on board in a frenetic pocket-searching melee amid all the other passengers. The buses even look like subways, molded-plastic seats lining the walls, broad tinted windows, two segments separated by a plastic accordian lined with metal surrounding a circular pivot in floor and celing. The line map even resembles the one in New York.
We chat for a while on the bus. He's on summer break from college in Amsterdam, vising his family, the coast, and the jungle before returning to his studies.
I tell him I'm an English major, which narrows nothing down as far as my job-market choices. Teach English, he says, or translate. How's your SPanish?
Indeed, how is my Spanish? Seems alright. Could use some improvement...but can't we all?
I should have steered our conversation towards an invitation to crash on his parents' couch, but i missed the opportunity, and as he got up to get off, he took my email and said, "If I ever get down to Brazil to open my bar, I will give you an email."
"Yeah," I retort, "and maybe by that time I'll be teaching English down there and I'll help you find a place."
Now I'm back in the Platypus awaiting five AM. Another traveler is heading to the airport in the morning, and we've agreed to share a taxi. I don't have enough cash left for my own. I'd have had to go out in the dodgy small hours to catch a bus. This way I'll arrive two extra hours early. Christ.
It seems appropriate to be sitting at this table which bears my initials carved in three months ago. Sometimes it seems like a long time, and sometimes but a flash. Looking back I wish I'd been better about keeping notes, since everything not tied down will be lost overboard. Oh well, next time. I guess I can keep an appendix for retrograde remembrances.
Little ants trotting across the page following the scent of dulce-de-leche crumbs. The clock ticks on the wall next to the big hand-drawn map of Bogota. Which someone spent an inordinate amount of time on. The kitchen is locked, and I'm denied the coffee which made this country famous. This cookie is dry in my mouth, and I desperately wish for something hot to drink. I'm alone in the hours between the civilized bedtime of those with something scheduled tomorrow and the return of those out partying. At the moment I'm not yet tired. Time will soon begin its slow decline to standstill while my eyes droop and the words of my book melt together and mingle with the roman numerals passing in the distance.
I hear nothing except the ticking clock, the faint murmur of nightduty Spanish, and my slow-thumping heart. My eyelids feel heavy, like pillows. Similes come slowly to my weary mind. My skin feels greasy, and I can slmost still smell the grit of travel under my fingernails. Hair clings to my head or stands up crazily. Glasses slide interminably down my nose. I regard the clock through the small lenses. Three more hours. A book lies finished on the table before me. Another one sits in my bag waiting. I'm suddenly no longer very tired. I just want to shower, to change my clothes. In flipflops, my toes are cold and slightly sticky. How long can I spend in the shoer? Depends how hot it is...
A hot shower rejuvenates me, gives me a second wind. I have the hot water tanks all to myself, and take full advantage until my fingertips turn to blanched prunes and my toes regain sensation. Returning to the common room to start a new book, I stumble upon a group of three returned from the bar, nursing Aguila beers.
One fellow from Philidelphia--or was it Pittsburg? I said the wrong one before and he took offense--one bloke from northern London, and a girl from Switzerland on her way to study in Barcelona after B.A. The usual assortment.
They were in the middle of arguing about football--both kinds at once; that was the argument--when I walked in with my Michigan Football T-shirt, prompting the American to proclaim his alma-mater allegiance in red and white. I tell him that while the Badgers have done alright against us in the past couple seasons, we're still overall better in football, academics, and intangibles. He retorted something about cheese and beer. I said nothing, only chuckled and daydreamed of a nice Bell's Porter.
As I watch the minute hand crawl around the American's watch, I realize I'm not at all tired. He stands me a couple of beers as five o'clock (am) rolls around. The guy from San Francisco I'd agreed to share a taxi with steps in groggily. How fitting that I began my journey with someone from California in this hostel, and I'm leaving the same sorta way. He pays for my half of the taxi, leaving me enough cash for a coffee and empanada at the airport.
I'm offered an exit row, and I accept, picturing my heroics in the event of a crash...or at least first one out the door. However that goes. Fighting down the prickly feeling of a bad omen--so far the night has gone rather too splendidly after t he late arrival of my bus--I wait for the counter to print my ticket. Oops, she says, looks like it's already been taken. Fine by me. I prefer to be crushed up against my tray table anyway.
The staffat the airport seem eager to try their English, while I desperately cling to Spanish, feeling my vocabulary already slipping away like grains in a glass.
Tick tock tick tock: the digital clock on my phone makes no noise, as surreal seconds slip silently toward takeoff, passing unnoticed like so many stories and memories. This whole trip already come and gone like a flash in a pan; I close my eyes and the purple stain dances across the backs of my eyelids, brilliant but transient and already fading. Can I capture its essence like a few photographs valued at a few thousand words? Or is it already too late...?
At the gate they turn me away. Too early. I sit across the way on a stiff woven-orange chair and rest my eyes. My heart pounds rapidly, sending extra oxygen to my overwrought brain. Soon it will start trying to dream, deprived of sensory-organization down-time for...who knows how long. At least 24 hours since my last snooze. And then just a catnap.
As soon as they open the gate for my flight, I stand and shuffle to the desk.
"Listen," I say to the pretty girl with more eye makeup than she needs. She blinks and smiles. "I'm recovering from malaria, and I desperately need rest." I smile back, wanly, exhaustedly, expectantly.
"Of course," she says, checking my ticket. "Go on ahead. Have a nice flight."
"Thanks," I yawn, and head down the tunnel and up the aisle, collapsing gratefully into my seat. Some minutes later a very attractive girl sits next to me, but my headphones are already on, and I probably won't bother trying to talk to her. The sirens of sleep already have me in their grasp.
We fly through some billowy stacks of clouds, approaching Orlando. Cuba lies well astern. The plane trembles as the windows are obscured by milky vapor, and in clear patches, I can see a rainbow far below, a streak of color across the pale green land.
Houses arranged in subdivisions; lakes glittering; a grouping of baseball diamond, softball diamond, football field, and track: a high school. America looks gorgeous, and I am looking forward to arriving at home for some well deserved rest before launching into the Next Thing--this time with some income!
But I will miss South America and all the adventures I've had, the lessons I've learned, the people I've met, regrets and triumphs: everything.
It just gets better. Weather over New York decided to shit on my homecoming parade, keeping the plane on the ground in Orlando until it was far too late to make my connecting flight to Chicago. We finally land at JFK at about the time I was supposed to land in CHicago. Grateful for cell phones. Thanks for the smooth welcome!
At customs, an older fellow greeted me, flipped through my passport a bit, and said, "Welcome home."
"Goddamn," I grinned, "I like the sound of that." And so here I am.
And that was supposed to be a nice Greek circle, closed and neat. But it's starting to look more like a spiral as I sit crosslegged in the JFK airport about to board a hop to Boston and catch an am flight to Chi-town.
I make contact with Erik and stifle my surprise when he eagerly agrees to meet me at the airport...if I ever get there. I'm losing track of my space/time orientation, sleep starved and weary. But Boston will be fun...if I ever get there.
Porr David has to get up at 4 to drive out to pick my ass up. Just think of it as a wake-and-bake adventure, I tell him. My ankles itch maddeningly, and I wonder if I'm bed-bug bit. Fucking hostels.
I'm having a bit of difficulty with English, expecting all the time to have to negotiate travel difficulties beginningwith "Hola, buenas, tengo un problema..." but everyone here speaks English, and it's hard to get used to.
To top it all off, my dying phone, battered and abused by travel, has very little charge left, and I'm constantly fighting to keep from smashing it with a well-placed elbow, since it barely works anymore. What luck.
I hate the woman sitting next to me chatting hoarsely into her rhinestone-encrusted cell phone. Her blonde hair is piled on top of her head like straw as she whines about the recent rain ruining her do.
She has the voice and tone of a 19-year-old sorority girl, but she's about twice that age. Blah blah blah, she says, spewing gossip and filling the air wiht idiocy. The PA interrupts to announce the arrival of our plane, and people all around me start stirring. Oh my god, she just said "whatev." I want to throw my phone at her temple.
Everything feels a bit surreal.
My feet fall asleep, and I relish the anthill rush of prickly awakening. Time to walk.
The Boston airport is closed. I stay alive with single-serving snack packs and caffeine. I yield to the surreality of the predawn airport where everything is in stasis and a ghostly pallor illuminates the lost souls wandering in search of connecting flights.
I keep seeing people I know, and watch as they turn to strangers, unuttered greetings dying softly on my lips.
A security guard strolls past, impossible chin protruding past his blue smokey-the-bear hat. He disappears as scrolling marquees catch my eye. Pretty colors.
Janitors whistle as they push mops and buff floor tiles, Red Sox caps pulled low in the chilly sterile air.
My teeth feel mossy, and my breath tastes foul. The guy next to me on the plane smelled like a freshman. I briefly consider killing the taste with vodka, but opt for toothpaste instead. THe bars are all closed.
My body feels the pull of acceleration as the plane roars down the runway, but then I jolt awake and realize I'm sitting in the lobby in an uncomfortable chair, trying unsuccessfully to fade into sleep. I start to wonder when I'll meet Tyler Durden.
Trying to tally the hours, I realize it's July 30th, and I should be home in bed. Best estimate: 50h interspersed with less-than-adequate catnaps.
I wonder if I could leap behind the Dunkin Donuts counter and start the coffee brewing. Would they mind?
I also briefly consider riding around in a wheelchair, but abandon the idea to laziness.
Daylight, and the airport awakens to swelling swarms of people. I stir myslf and join the correct flow, finding my gate. The metal curve of the bombilla mate straw in my backpack causes a brief panic among the redeye security team, but we sort things out, and the heavy-lidded surge continues.
I locate and drink a large coffee, chasing it with some oatmeal before sitting to wait at the gate. Time flickers past, and I find myself in my window seat, twitching awake to stare out at the looming jet engine as the flight attendant passes out soda and coffee. I turn to my seatmate and ask the time. One hour to go. Barring, of course, any unforseen snafus.
The morning sun shines a brilliant blue, and Tyra Banks smiles her famous grimace on the TV in front of my face, talking to an absurdly pale zombie-flesh woman with sunken eyes and lank brown hair. Tyra, wearing a ring the size of a pizza, appears to be saying something rather droll and witty. I switch the channel to football reruns.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Last look at the land
How fitting that I'm spending 20 of my last 36 hours on a bus. A bit of a shame, but what can you do? That's travel departure. It tends to be rushed and tense, exhausting and infuriating, and mostly rather dull except in moments of frenzy. At the moment I'm just glad to be under airconditioning. By this time in my journey I've been having to carefully weigh and craftily justify every penny spent.
On long busrides you go to sleep with music in your ears and wake up sometime later in eerie silence cushioned by the rumble of the road and the occasional snore from other passengers folded into nearby seats. Choose another album and drift off again, waking up later remembering only a song or two. This repeats indefinitely.
The AC gets cold as time wears on, so you put on a jacket and roll down your pantlegs, hugging yourself with clammy arms trying to get your head comfortable. Now and then you wake up and the bus is stopped, letting folks on or off, filling up the tanks, opening doors to policemen for inspections.
In typical South American efficiency, the bus has broken down, and we're stranded sans spare a few hours from Bogota. I'm feverishly glad I decided to give myself plenty of leeway between busride and flight home. Bored, the men outside rock the bus like a cradle and piss on the tires. I guess they don't make the connection that they'd have to handle those tires in the event of a flat.
On his belly beside and under the back of the bus, a man fiddles with tools and lugnuts while the driver kneels alongside shouting instructions. An ambulance shrieks past. We're also stuck in a long line of vehicles, presumably an accident-caused logjam. Salesfolk dart hither and thither, taking full advantage. Here it's food vendors. At home: lawyers. Even if they get the repairs done, we still aren't going anywhere.
I fill my pipe with the last of my tobacco and sit outside on the hill, puffing fragrant smoke and watching the fellows under the bus. In front of me a boy breaks a twig into increasingly smaller fragments.
The side of the bus is decorated horribly ironically; a picture of a supersonic airplane superimposed over the globe. The name "Concorde" in dashing red letters over a swath of green. Now being passed and left behind as traffic picks up once again. The vendors tramp off, chuckling and joking. And here we sit.
Someone once asked me do I liken myself a Tom or a Huck. I was stricken by the question as deeply philosophical and a bit mind boggling. After forming my own guess, I asked what she thought. She told me I was born a Tom but on my way to becoming Huck, a dreamer trying to put some plans to action.
Tom's a bright sumbitch, but gets caught up in his schemes and grand plans at the expense of others, while Huck is more simple and just ups and goes, taking adventure in stride. Tom is more wont to build an adventure, beginning to end, wrapping the whole blasted thing in neat little bows and ribbons. He, like I, has a swollen sense of drama.
As I sit here scratching away, I reckon she's right. But then the question arrises: whom do I want to be?
Another Concorde bus finally swoops by, and we continue on our way to Bogota. The countryside rolls by, rocky hills, patchwork fields, jungle slopes--and I realize with each passing fern and banana tree that these sights are my last. I simply cannot believe I'm going home tomorrow. The realization twists me up. I will miss this place, this pace. I'm ready for home...sometimes.
Clouds hang low over the valley, slinking over peaks and gulleys. I don't want to deal with the waiting--waiting for morning, waiting in a taxi, waiting in the airport, on the tarmac, for my connecting flight. Travel itself, point A to B is a bit of a void wherein time disappears and nothing quite happens. Even the world outside the vehicle seems frozen or at least unreal, like the movie playing out on the screen above the aisle.
Premature nostalgia
27/Jul/2009
I suddenly realize, with morbid regret, that no matter how I try, I'll lose so many stories, anything I've not written down. I'm truly amazed by my poor notetaking skills, both in general and on this daring jaunt which, I vividly discover every so often each day with pounding nostalgia, HAS HAPPENED and I'm about to be going home. It's rubbish. Absolute rubbish.
I'm reminded of the mortality of this trip just now and my note-taking by a story being told to my right about a guy being rolled on the street before arriving at his hostel to sit on the toilet shitting out his guts and puking in the nearby shower. How many times have I heard a similar story and feared the worst every time I shat a little loosely? No one wants the Screaming Eagle, but we're all aware of its hovering existence.
Stories circulate through the Culture of Travelers, making the rounds with quiet changes and subtle cultural tweaking across borders, through translations, and over time. Remarkable the stories one could collect given time enough and diligence to observe by first-hand gonzo experience. The Culture of Travelers is a remarkably vibrant entity, existing just beyond the awareness of those who've never been, like the world's biggest mushroom, growing just below the surface.
You hear the stories and nod, learning the lessons and vowing never to get into such an imbecilic situation, until you find yourself the victim of a brilliant scheme by the universe designed to test your sense of humor, aplomb, and grit. Everything balances itself out if one's focus isn't chokingly tight. We're all a sort of quivering mass in the personified muddle of space, time, life, economic cycles, ideas, and miscellaneous extras. I haven't quite figured it all out yet, but I will someday, even if that day is after my strings have been assimilated into the twisting chaos of the particulate realm of the subatomic.
Confront the Fear
One evening as we sat on the beach sipping rum, we saw a boy standing at the lapping edge of the water, crying and tiptoeing onto the damp sand, but turning back at the first touch of water. A plastic bag thrown in by an older person, presumably a father, sank, shining faintly white under the dark water.
I turn to my British mates, one a junior highschool chemistry teacher and the other a sardonic computer guy who used to rock dreads, and wonder what's going on over there. The boy's plaintive cries reach our ears, and I stand up, resolute to sate my curiosity.
"I'm going to help him," I say, draining my dixie cup. I roll up my pant cuffs and saunter over.
The boy stands barechested wearing boardshorts past his knees. His belly bulges slightly, unaware yet of the idea of the sixpack.
"Qué pasó? Qué pasó, chico?" I call.
"La bolsa," he blubbers, tear-streaked cheeks glinting in the moonlight as he points at the bag. "I need to get it. Swim to get it."
"Porqué?" I ask.
"Mi padre...la bolsa...pescados...enojado!" he wails, little-kid Spanish fading into incomprehensibility.
"Tranquilo, chico," I urge, biting back laughter. We'd speculated this was some sort of rite of passage or cajolery by his dad to get him past a fear of water.
"Hay aguas malas y no puedo nadar," he whimpers. Bad scary water lay just a few feet past the submerged bag, surface hidden by shadows from shore.
"Tienes miedo?" I know how to deal with kids' fear. He nods dramatically, clasping his hands in front of himself after flapping them once in consternation.
"You can do it," I say, stepping into the surf. "Mira, I am going to come in with you. Then you can go?" He nods again, venturing into the gently curling water. By this time, the bag has drifted deeper, lulled by a riptide.
"No tenemos mucho tiempo," I warn; better get it now. I know he wants me to reach in and get it for him, but I think we both know that could never happen. Prime Directive sort of ideal. Minimize direct influence. I coax him in further, water lapping up my rolled pantlegs (These good old pants! I shall miss their constant greasy company!) He comes within a finger's breadth of snagging the prize, earning steep praise from his father, the gruff sort of approval boys live and die for.
"Ah, very close." He backs off, and looks up at me dolefully. "Try another time." You can do it, you are strong. Mira, your arms. Flex. Musculos. I pop my biceps and he grins, pointing at his own wiry upper arm. But mine's soft, he whines. My god, how to explain the mechanics of muscle movement to a little Colombian niño, barely old enough to blow his own nose? I get the point across, and he concedes that he is big and strong.
"I will be right here," I promise, "if anything mal happens."
He ventures forth again. Shit, the bag's drifted much more. He's in gentle high-tide swells up to his armpits. At this point, he might not get the bag. But gah! so close. Come on, little man, you can do this. Be strong. Quick! I send mental blasts of telegrams, but my accuracy is off, and he backs off again, pulling at my arm.
"Por favor!" he cries, "won't you get it señor?" I realize with amusement that he's calling me usted. It sounds different, more genuine from a boy of five than from an ingratiating street vendor. Alas, I cannot. If this is a test from your pops and I ruin it, I'd never forgive myself for contributing among other things to the pussification of the next generation. My friend, I tell him silently, if you can't get it now, you will next time.
He gives up, and we turn back. The older guy who'd thrown the bag in turns out to be the waiter/owner of the restaurant where we'd just eaten pizza, and in fact is the boy's father.
"Muy cerca," I shrug. He almost had it.
"Ge got closer when you were there than before," he smiles, "He has made progress with your help."
I laugh at the praise, embarrassed. "I remember when I was five, how scary the world was."
"Si," he nods.
"Proxima vez," I suggest. Next time. They both agree, and Papi scoops up the shivering boy in a towl and bears him toward the house and an awaiting bowl of soup.
Queen's English and Caribbean Air
26 July 2009
Oso perezoso (lazy bear) is what the Spaniards called the sloths they found in the jungles. WHen I first arrived at the so-named hostel, I thought it referred to the middle-age-girthed Canadian who was sitting at a table near the kitchen. His green checkered short-sleeved button-up contrasted wildly with the fuschia flowers on his board shorts. Over his head, woven palm fronds formed a roof alongside the platform where the hammocks hung. A few scattered tables and chairs stood between pots of potato plants, ferns, a rose bush, and what looked like a maple sprout but couldn't be.
Below the concrete floor of this open-air bar and lounge are guest rooms, but I've opted for the cheaper, less stuffy hammocks. After all, it's the Carribean. On this floor is a shower with three walls, open to the town and the hostel owner bustling about checking on her laundry (this is how we met). A black plastic reservoir perches above, but water pressure is a trickle. The bar of soap has turned to lava soap by virtue of the grit in the cinderblock on which it sits.
The owners' baby plays with trucks on the floor while a puppy and kitten tussle, and Roberto the parrot looks on burbling encouragement. To my right the bay sparkles, opening out on the broad sea. The construction near the beach is invisible past the trees.
In the office, a remarkable collection of books for trade including Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, Animal Farm, and many others, a far cry from the usual hostel book exchange selection featuring Agatha Christie and other simpleminded dreck.
It's about quite exactly what you'd expect of a small Caribbean town tasting tourism and loving it. Doubling in size every year or so, its unchecked growth means the loss of whatever quaintness it is that makes them locals. But ask them how they feel about the rapid ingress of foreigners, and they'll beam and say, "Tank you for coming to my country. You welcome here," a gleam of white teeth in bronze skin adding, "Buy a bracelet?" For them, globalisation spells money and infrastructure and eager ever-changing flocks of customers.
On the other side of town my British friends are staying in a different hostel. They've been quite good motivators when I vacillate because of financial reasons. I can't really say 'no' to $75 scuba lessons, can I? And I'm already in debt, aren't I? My parents won't exactly begrudge me a few more quid, will they?
I find myself picking up Britishisms, renewing my old Anglophilic passions. I'll go there someday.
But here I am in the balmy Caribbean eve--and it is balmy: there is no other more accurate word...except sometimes "sultry"--scratching away and wondering, not about anything useful, but instead about whether i'll be able to fill this notebook up to the last page by the time I land in the States. I simply cannot believe I've less than a handful of days left in this arduous and enlightening vacation. Unreal.
I've been enjoying the company of these Limeys a great deal. Their humor is delightfully droll, compounded by their funny accents. They argue about their alma maters, one having gone to Cambridge and one having gone to Oxford. Neil, the long-haired computer guy, is surprisingly a vegetarian, though his gauntish sprawling limbs attest to it. His skin is pale--whether from lack of quality food out here or just out of Britishness is anyone's guess. His narrow face draws into a wry grimace at the thought of...most things. I'm surprised to discover that he's actually pretty good with women, despite his gawky hacker hands. Maybe it's because he's a bit of a tit. A nerd who decided to say "fuck it" and brave the awesome menace of the female human.
He woke up late this morning for SCUBA diving, nursing a headache and complaining of female-friend interference.
"She wanted very much to come back with me, but her friend was very keen on going home."
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Flying and football
22/Jul/09
The Hostel Macando in San Gil offers outdoorsy tours of all kinds ranging from abseiling down a waterfall to whitewater kayaking and rafting, to paintball, hiking, biking, and paragliding.
My British chums, Neil and Richard and I chose the latter. We spent the morning lazing around, reading, using the internet, relaxing in the heat. At noon we boarded the van to take us up the hill.
After the guide wrestled the side door shut, we rumbled and rattled up a steep road which turned into a cobbled two-track passing through tobacco and corn fields, drying huts, barns, convenience stores, and the necessary coffee plantations shaded by banana trees.
At the top of the hill we parked in the shade of an enormous leanto under which hung hundreds of tobacco leaves in various stages of dryness, and unloaded gear from the van's roof rack. We hiiked briefly between rows of tobacco plants which are a sort of sickly pale green when growing, and came out on the cleared hilltop where the guides began laying out harnesses and parachutes.
The wind gusts pretty strong at the top of the hill. Condors sail on the breeze, and in the distance a few wing-shaped parachutes indicate another company's earlier start. A few shrieks of excitement drift over carried by the wind.
We go by weight, so Richard straps in first. As his parachute inflates, controlled by the pilot attached to his back, it sings like a flute, and then he's lifted up and out of sight. Shading my eyes, I watch until my guide beckons me over, and I hoist the backpack/cushion seat over my shoulders, and the pilot buckles us together. he turns to make some final adjustments--or so I presume for a split second until the nylon billows up and uplls us forward to the edge of the hill.
"Corre!" he says, and I take a few stumbling strides until my feet leave the ground and I stop pumping the air, feeling foolish. We soar up into the air, catching currents and zooming around a bit. I can feel innumerable minute adjustments as the pilot uses hands and feet and body tension to control the wing. We swoop over treetops, grazing so close I consider reaching a toe out to kick at a clump of leaves before Manuel flicks his wrist, and we catch an updraft, climbing so high so fast that I blink, and the forest looks like a thick carpet of various greens far below alongside patchwork fields of tobacco, corn, and coffee, and water reservoirs resemble teacups.
A young condor below us shows off his nature-endowed ability which we've had to manufacture through dextrous ingenuity. He tucks his wings and spins into a dive, leveling out and swinging up on a thermal, soon disappearing from sight above the parachute.
Manuel takes us for a couple of dips and turns before swirling up the same thermal. The distant canyon cuts across the land like a crack in the sidewalk, and Manuel says something.
"Que?" I shout, wind whistling through my ears.
"Spinning?" He repeats. It take me a moment to realize he spoke in English and was asking if I'd like to spiral down.
"Si, claro!"
He chuckles and twists us into an experimental circle pattern, checking the draft. Then suddenly I'm flung outwards, pinched by my harness, G-forces sucking at my stomach as we pivot around the parachute. Wind roars, tearing water from my eyes as the centripetal force strains the straps. I shriek in delight, changing quickly to a manly rebel yell as we circle down down down, leveling out over our takeoff hill and landing with a cushioned thud on the dry grass.
A bit dizzy, I nevertheless consider getting a solo certification at some point in the dreamy future. What a job these guys have: get paid to float on the breeze to the delight of the inexperienced.
Later that night we played soccer with some other guests at the hostel and a bunch of local kids. Five-on-five king-of-the-court with changeover after two goals. Reminded me of bball at the CCRB, and I shot a few hoops with the soccerball before and after the games. My team won nary a game, losing several times to the dynastic Other Gringos, or the second-best team comprised of Colombian youths. Soccer was fun, and I'd very much like to get better at it, but I must admit I was longing for some basketball.
The pitch was concrete, lit by stadium lights, all of which sponsored by the government which maintains soccer arenas in every neighborhood. This strikes me as delightfully civilized and conscious of the People.
I can't believe this is the first time I've played--or even watched live--soccer in South America. A week left and only now do I realize I could have been honing my skills all along if I'd given thought to the matter. Oh well; next time.
The Hostel Macando in San Gil offers outdoorsy tours of all kinds ranging from abseiling down a waterfall to whitewater kayaking and rafting, to paintball, hiking, biking, and paragliding.
My British chums, Neil and Richard and I chose the latter. We spent the morning lazing around, reading, using the internet, relaxing in the heat. At noon we boarded the van to take us up the hill.
After the guide wrestled the side door shut, we rumbled and rattled up a steep road which turned into a cobbled two-track passing through tobacco and corn fields, drying huts, barns, convenience stores, and the necessary coffee plantations shaded by banana trees.
At the top of the hill we parked in the shade of an enormous leanto under which hung hundreds of tobacco leaves in various stages of dryness, and unloaded gear from the van's roof rack. We hiiked briefly between rows of tobacco plants which are a sort of sickly pale green when growing, and came out on the cleared hilltop where the guides began laying out harnesses and parachutes.
The wind gusts pretty strong at the top of the hill. Condors sail on the breeze, and in the distance a few wing-shaped parachutes indicate another company's earlier start. A few shrieks of excitement drift over carried by the wind.
We go by weight, so Richard straps in first. As his parachute inflates, controlled by the pilot attached to his back, it sings like a flute, and then he's lifted up and out of sight. Shading my eyes, I watch until my guide beckons me over, and I hoist the backpack/cushion seat over my shoulders, and the pilot buckles us together. he turns to make some final adjustments--or so I presume for a split second until the nylon billows up and uplls us forward to the edge of the hill.
"Corre!" he says, and I take a few stumbling strides until my feet leave the ground and I stop pumping the air, feeling foolish. We soar up into the air, catching currents and zooming around a bit. I can feel innumerable minute adjustments as the pilot uses hands and feet and body tension to control the wing. We swoop over treetops, grazing so close I consider reaching a toe out to kick at a clump of leaves before Manuel flicks his wrist, and we catch an updraft, climbing so high so fast that I blink, and the forest looks like a thick carpet of various greens far below alongside patchwork fields of tobacco, corn, and coffee, and water reservoirs resemble teacups.
A young condor below us shows off his nature-endowed ability which we've had to manufacture through dextrous ingenuity. He tucks his wings and spins into a dive, leveling out and swinging up on a thermal, soon disappearing from sight above the parachute.
Manuel takes us for a couple of dips and turns before swirling up the same thermal. The distant canyon cuts across the land like a crack in the sidewalk, and Manuel says something.
"Que?" I shout, wind whistling through my ears.
"Spinning?" He repeats. It take me a moment to realize he spoke in English and was asking if I'd like to spiral down.
"Si, claro!"
He chuckles and twists us into an experimental circle pattern, checking the draft. Then suddenly I'm flung outwards, pinched by my harness, G-forces sucking at my stomach as we pivot around the parachute. Wind roars, tearing water from my eyes as the centripetal force strains the straps. I shriek in delight, changing quickly to a manly rebel yell as we circle down down down, leveling out over our takeoff hill and landing with a cushioned thud on the dry grass.
A bit dizzy, I nevertheless consider getting a solo certification at some point in the dreamy future. What a job these guys have: get paid to float on the breeze to the delight of the inexperienced.
Later that night we played soccer with some other guests at the hostel and a bunch of local kids. Five-on-five king-of-the-court with changeover after two goals. Reminded me of bball at the CCRB, and I shot a few hoops with the soccerball before and after the games. My team won nary a game, losing several times to the dynastic Other Gringos, or the second-best team comprised of Colombian youths. Soccer was fun, and I'd very much like to get better at it, but I must admit I was longing for some basketball.
The pitch was concrete, lit by stadium lights, all of which sponsored by the government which maintains soccer arenas in every neighborhood. This strikes me as delightfully civilized and conscious of the People.
I can't believe this is the first time I've played--or even watched live--soccer in South America. A week left and only now do I realize I could have been honing my skills all along if I'd given thought to the matter. Oh well; next time.
Viva la independencia!
20/Jul/2009, Colombian Independence Day
A cloudy sky and brusque breeze keep the streets cool as people mill about enjoying the spectacles. Vendors are out in force, chanting out their wares for anyone nearby: fresh fruit! chorizos! sandwiches! fried platanos! arroz con leche! aromaticas! face paints!
Red, yellow, and blue Colombian flags abound. Some clutched in children's sticky hands alongside foam cut-out pets-on-wires; some worn as garments; some flying overhead the capitol building; some lying castoff in the street amid fruit rinds, sandwich wrappers, cigarette butts, empty styfofoam cups, and other miscellaneous detritus of festivities.
Metallically-dressed performers move like robots when children fill their chest boxes wiht coins, and stray dogs trot around happily gnawing on edible remnants. Near the square, a circle of people gather around a pair of keyboards upon which a young lad lavishes national tunes while a man in a white linen suit sings into a microphone. Behind them an old veteran shuffles a dance and flaps his jaw in time with the words, a vacant grin spread through his white beard. His old blue Navy jacket with its sickle-and-hammer shoulder patch and furry collar stands in grim contrast to the stiff green fatigues of the National Soldiers standing guard around the plaza with assault rifles and pimple-pocked cheeks. The veteran hitches up his patched and discolored trousers, already perched up near his ribs, and adjusts the red fez on his head wiht a gangly nd gnarled hand. A medal pinned to the jacket indicates a fierce pride in his past, outweighing his need to pawn it for food or drink. Someone in the crowd offers him a cigarette, and he gratefully accepts, bowing stiffly before resuming his jig.
Near the Presidential Palace, a crowd gathers, restrained by police--distinguishable from the Army only by the words--and portable crowd-control fences. The people hold signs demanding justice, asking for peace, deploring the lies, and condemning the FARC. Based on that last, and their overall content attitude, I'd guess these folk support Uribe but want even more persecution of the rogue terrorist forces who no longer have any value or goal other than continuing to exist in indiscriminant violence. But some disagree.
A man pushes a wheelchair in which sits a mannikin dressed in a white tunic with a scale in one hand and a rusty machete in the other, an oxygen mask over her face.
Across the street another circcle gathers. People place coins on numbered upsidedown buckets, wagering on which one the trained guinea pigs will run to after their street-suave owner releases them. Children rush to deposit coins as the man goads the crowd with a microphone headset. All I can think of is the cuy I ate in Peru.
A grizzled fellow approaches as I sit on a bench. he greets me respectfully, talking about literature and how he saw me writing.
"I also write," he says.
"Si?" I reply incredulously, "Por un periodico o que?"
No, he says, just for pleasure. He writes about the government, the streets, the people. We lapse into the informal as he presses a dogeared and discolored half-width legal pad into my hands indicating his address scrawled on the cardboard back.
"Guardalo," he says, asking me--if I've understood correctly--to write his life and send it to him. I hide my initial excitement saying, "Yeah, okay. I will." We shake hands, and he leaves. If I can make anything out of the spidery Spanish writing, perhaps I can actually get something done. If not: I'll use the encounter as inspiration and make up the rest. Sure...
The crowd around me thins out as the smoke from a nearby chorizo grill wafts past. I look up nad stare into the eyes of Simón Bolivar as the man carrying the enormous oil painting walks in front of my bench. Slightly spooked, I decide it's time to stroll a bit.
Two guys kneel on the sidewalk in front of a display of landscapes amid an array of spray paints and splotches of color. Their hands, coated in so many hues mingled to dark brown, dab at swaths of color, and spray circles and slashes to produce sunscapes and twilit forests for the amusement and purchase of passersby. Hunched over like that, they must be zoned on fumes: they wear nothing over their faces, though many in their audience hid behind surgical masks in fear of the Flu.
A family of dirty children sprawl in the alcove of a closed bank, forlorn mother (or grandmother) watching with wizened eyes. I hand her my baggie of sausage and fried banana, and she accepts it with mumbled thanks.
"Hey buddy, where you from?" A man in a greasy tweed coat sticks his hand out. He's balding and tall for a Colombian.
"The States," I respond by rote.
"Really? Whereabouts? I'm from New York." I take his hand before kneeling down to appraise a machete as a gift for my brother. He mentions something about calling his sister as I answer "Detroit." If this man thinks I'll just hand him my cell phone...
"What brings you to Colombia?"
Just visiting. What brings you to Colombia? His English is damned good.
"I got in a cab in the city and it turned out the fuckin' thing had bad breaklights, and when a cop pulled us over he found narcotics under the seat so they deported me." Sob.
I tell him I didn't have anything with me--no, not even enough to buy you a coffee--except my books. Lo siento, buddy. He finally walks away, leaving me in peace.
I spend another hour or so reading in the park as the anticlimactic independence day festivities wane toward twilight and bedtime.
A cloudy sky and brusque breeze keep the streets cool as people mill about enjoying the spectacles. Vendors are out in force, chanting out their wares for anyone nearby: fresh fruit! chorizos! sandwiches! fried platanos! arroz con leche! aromaticas! face paints!
Red, yellow, and blue Colombian flags abound. Some clutched in children's sticky hands alongside foam cut-out pets-on-wires; some worn as garments; some flying overhead the capitol building; some lying castoff in the street amid fruit rinds, sandwich wrappers, cigarette butts, empty styfofoam cups, and other miscellaneous detritus of festivities.
Metallically-dressed performers move like robots when children fill their chest boxes wiht coins, and stray dogs trot around happily gnawing on edible remnants. Near the square, a circle of people gather around a pair of keyboards upon which a young lad lavishes national tunes while a man in a white linen suit sings into a microphone. Behind them an old veteran shuffles a dance and flaps his jaw in time with the words, a vacant grin spread through his white beard. His old blue Navy jacket with its sickle-and-hammer shoulder patch and furry collar stands in grim contrast to the stiff green fatigues of the National Soldiers standing guard around the plaza with assault rifles and pimple-pocked cheeks. The veteran hitches up his patched and discolored trousers, already perched up near his ribs, and adjusts the red fez on his head wiht a gangly nd gnarled hand. A medal pinned to the jacket indicates a fierce pride in his past, outweighing his need to pawn it for food or drink. Someone in the crowd offers him a cigarette, and he gratefully accepts, bowing stiffly before resuming his jig.
Near the Presidential Palace, a crowd gathers, restrained by police--distinguishable from the Army only by the words--and portable crowd-control fences. The people hold signs demanding justice, asking for peace, deploring the lies, and condemning the FARC. Based on that last, and their overall content attitude, I'd guess these folk support Uribe but want even more persecution of the rogue terrorist forces who no longer have any value or goal other than continuing to exist in indiscriminant violence. But some disagree.
A man pushes a wheelchair in which sits a mannikin dressed in a white tunic with a scale in one hand and a rusty machete in the other, an oxygen mask over her face.
Across the street another circcle gathers. People place coins on numbered upsidedown buckets, wagering on which one the trained guinea pigs will run to after their street-suave owner releases them. Children rush to deposit coins as the man goads the crowd with a microphone headset. All I can think of is the cuy I ate in Peru.
A grizzled fellow approaches as I sit on a bench. he greets me respectfully, talking about literature and how he saw me writing.
"I also write," he says.
"Si?" I reply incredulously, "Por un periodico o que?"
No, he says, just for pleasure. He writes about the government, the streets, the people. We lapse into the informal as he presses a dogeared and discolored half-width legal pad into my hands indicating his address scrawled on the cardboard back.
"Guardalo," he says, asking me--if I've understood correctly--to write his life and send it to him. I hide my initial excitement saying, "Yeah, okay. I will." We shake hands, and he leaves. If I can make anything out of the spidery Spanish writing, perhaps I can actually get something done. If not: I'll use the encounter as inspiration and make up the rest. Sure...
The crowd around me thins out as the smoke from a nearby chorizo grill wafts past. I look up nad stare into the eyes of Simón Bolivar as the man carrying the enormous oil painting walks in front of my bench. Slightly spooked, I decide it's time to stroll a bit.
Two guys kneel on the sidewalk in front of a display of landscapes amid an array of spray paints and splotches of color. Their hands, coated in so many hues mingled to dark brown, dab at swaths of color, and spray circles and slashes to produce sunscapes and twilit forests for the amusement and purchase of passersby. Hunched over like that, they must be zoned on fumes: they wear nothing over their faces, though many in their audience hid behind surgical masks in fear of the Flu.
A family of dirty children sprawl in the alcove of a closed bank, forlorn mother (or grandmother) watching with wizened eyes. I hand her my baggie of sausage and fried banana, and she accepts it with mumbled thanks.
"Hey buddy, where you from?" A man in a greasy tweed coat sticks his hand out. He's balding and tall for a Colombian.
"The States," I respond by rote.
"Really? Whereabouts? I'm from New York." I take his hand before kneeling down to appraise a machete as a gift for my brother. He mentions something about calling his sister as I answer "Detroit." If this man thinks I'll just hand him my cell phone...
"What brings you to Colombia?"
Just visiting. What brings you to Colombia? His English is damned good.
"I got in a cab in the city and it turned out the fuckin' thing had bad breaklights, and when a cop pulled us over he found narcotics under the seat so they deported me." Sob.
I tell him I didn't have anything with me--no, not even enough to buy you a coffee--except my books. Lo siento, buddy. He finally walks away, leaving me in peace.
I spend another hour or so reading in the park as the anticlimactic independence day festivities wane toward twilight and bedtime.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
·sigh·
And so here I am in Valparaiso on a leather chair in a bar with a tall glass of scotch and a brand-new used copy of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. I want to go explore the pier, but something tells me that´s best done by day--so maybe tomorrow eve I´ll head that way. This town certainly has character: an old grizzled sailor could stump around here on a wooden leg with a salty pipe clamped in his teeth and fit right in.
If I had more time, I would stay here and see about securing a position down at the wharf. God but I dream!
The buildings of Valpo are weatherworn and well-used, all stacked up on each other like building blocks in a toddler´s playroom. Cobbled streets show under patchwork asphault repairs, and here and there people add fresh coats of paint to ironwork pitted by salt air.
A stray dog paces at my feet as I sit in a plaza watching the goings-on, offering protection from roving canine gangs in exchange for a morsel of tribute. When he understands that I´m about as poor as he is, he trots off, sniffing at and then pissing on the base of a statue of a sailor with a spyglass.
From behind a semitruck a man whistles with a strong vibrato as he loads crates and other vague cargo. His sweater drapes comfortably over his broad shoulders and a worn spitfire cap perches atop his salt-and-pepper hair. He pauses to rub his whiskers and change his tune before returning to work with vigor.
Up the hill overlooking Valparaiso and the ocean sits Pablo Neruda´s house. Inside is a collage of homey comfort which still looks more like a house than a museum despite innumerable placards and signs saying "Do not sit," "Do not touch," "Do not take photos," and the like. The walls are festooned with paintings, including one of a duchess-type with a neckruff who´s facing a portrait of a man in similar garb. Neruda positioned them that way to make sure neither was lonely.
The study is on top of the house, with big bay windows. Around the desk are various odds and ends collected over years including some petrified wood, a small sculpture from Easter Island, a photo of Walt Whitman, and shelves of books; all bits of material to prompt and inspire, and play with during writer´s block (or so I assume from personal experience).
I forcefully ignore the docents guarding every room, and my fingers itch to touch everything(which I guess is precisely why they´re there), especially the typewriter. This house makes me nearly desperate to build and fill my own, and I dream of a study overlooking the ocean or maybe one of the Great Lakes.
Downstairs is a cozy bar with various fascinating decorations like a framed 19thC patent document, a winekey in the shape of a naked boy (screw this cork, I´m out!), scotch whiskey advertisements, a bathroom with a door made of a sideways stair balustrade (very private!), and a sign that says "Don Pablo est ici." I wish I'd known this guy. Neruda's signature drink was a cocktail of equal parts champagne and cognac plus a splash each of Cointreau and orange juice.
He named his leather armchair (a staple in any man's home) El Nube. It sits beside a window, and I can easily imagine deep musings while gazing over the sparkling harbor as helicopters land on big grey navy vessels, and fishing boats dart hither and thither. I resolve to visit the Great Lakes more, and perhaps see about catching some work out there and eventually purchasing an old lighthouse.
Egad, what a dreamer I am! If I accomplish a mere fraction of the things my head cooks up, I'll lead a very interesting life indeed.
If I had more time, I would stay here and see about securing a position down at the wharf. God but I dream!
The buildings of Valpo are weatherworn and well-used, all stacked up on each other like building blocks in a toddler´s playroom. Cobbled streets show under patchwork asphault repairs, and here and there people add fresh coats of paint to ironwork pitted by salt air.
A stray dog paces at my feet as I sit in a plaza watching the goings-on, offering protection from roving canine gangs in exchange for a morsel of tribute. When he understands that I´m about as poor as he is, he trots off, sniffing at and then pissing on the base of a statue of a sailor with a spyglass.
From behind a semitruck a man whistles with a strong vibrato as he loads crates and other vague cargo. His sweater drapes comfortably over his broad shoulders and a worn spitfire cap perches atop his salt-and-pepper hair. He pauses to rub his whiskers and change his tune before returning to work with vigor.
Up the hill overlooking Valparaiso and the ocean sits Pablo Neruda´s house. Inside is a collage of homey comfort which still looks more like a house than a museum despite innumerable placards and signs saying "Do not sit," "Do not touch," "Do not take photos," and the like. The walls are festooned with paintings, including one of a duchess-type with a neckruff who´s facing a portrait of a man in similar garb. Neruda positioned them that way to make sure neither was lonely.
The study is on top of the house, with big bay windows. Around the desk are various odds and ends collected over years including some petrified wood, a small sculpture from Easter Island, a photo of Walt Whitman, and shelves of books; all bits of material to prompt and inspire, and play with during writer´s block (or so I assume from personal experience).
I forcefully ignore the docents guarding every room, and my fingers itch to touch everything(which I guess is precisely why they´re there), especially the typewriter. This house makes me nearly desperate to build and fill my own, and I dream of a study overlooking the ocean or maybe one of the Great Lakes.
Downstairs is a cozy bar with various fascinating decorations like a framed 19thC patent document, a winekey in the shape of a naked boy (screw this cork, I´m out!), scotch whiskey advertisements, a bathroom with a door made of a sideways stair balustrade (very private!), and a sign that says "Don Pablo est ici." I wish I'd known this guy. Neruda's signature drink was a cocktail of equal parts champagne and cognac plus a splash each of Cointreau and orange juice.
He named his leather armchair (a staple in any man's home) El Nube. It sits beside a window, and I can easily imagine deep musings while gazing over the sparkling harbor as helicopters land on big grey navy vessels, and fishing boats dart hither and thither. I resolve to visit the Great Lakes more, and perhaps see about catching some work out there and eventually purchasing an old lighthouse.
Egad, what a dreamer I am! If I accomplish a mere fraction of the things my head cooks up, I'll lead a very interesting life indeed.
Monday, July 6, 2009
Supper with a local; a funny story recounted
28 Jun 2009
Later in the evening after showering and watching Wall-E, Gero, the trip organizer, picks us up and takes us to his home for supper. Delicious dinner cooked by his lovely pregnant wife. Gero and I chat casually about training me for service as a river guide. As he drives us back to the hostel, he says,
"Today I find out if I am a patient man: I test my limits."
Earlier that afternoon he'd driven four Americans to the Manaus Stadium to see a football game.
"I drop them off, I figure; I leave my car open because it's a short distance."
Two cops saw and suggested he lock his car.
"'No, it's okay,' I tell them, 'There is nothing in there to rob.' Of course I forget my CD player," he laments, pointing to the now-empty stereo display. He came back and drove home before noticing the absence of the removable unit.
"I think, 'Maybe I left it at home or something.'"
When he couldn't find it, he drove back and confronted the police.
'"You didn't see someone steal my CD player? You are bad cops,' I told them, 'What are you doing wearing this uniform?' I tell them those four Americans were coming to see Manaus, to see if it's safe for World Cup. Playing psychological games with their heads," he chuckles remembering. He asked them their full names, to which they replied, "We are the police: we ask you your name. What are you doing turning it around on us?"
"I say to them, 'You think you are the only police in Manaus?' We have local, city, state, federal...They get worried and start looking at each other. I tell them they are going to be in all the newspapers, and they get really worried, begging me, saying they were not looking at my car. 'I am going to fill out a report,' I told them. But I didn't: I went straight home. After all, they had told me, 'Lock your car,' and I said, 'It's okay.' What was I thinking, It's Okay? I learn my lesson."
When we got back to the hostel, we found out Michael Jackson had died while we were on the river. And Billy Mays. What's the world coming to?
Later in the evening after showering and watching Wall-E, Gero, the trip organizer, picks us up and takes us to his home for supper. Delicious dinner cooked by his lovely pregnant wife. Gero and I chat casually about training me for service as a river guide. As he drives us back to the hostel, he says,
"Today I find out if I am a patient man: I test my limits."
Earlier that afternoon he'd driven four Americans to the Manaus Stadium to see a football game.
"I drop them off, I figure; I leave my car open because it's a short distance."
Two cops saw and suggested he lock his car.
"'No, it's okay,' I tell them, 'There is nothing in there to rob.' Of course I forget my CD player," he laments, pointing to the now-empty stereo display. He came back and drove home before noticing the absence of the removable unit.
"I think, 'Maybe I left it at home or something.'"
When he couldn't find it, he drove back and confronted the police.
'"You didn't see someone steal my CD player? You are bad cops,' I told them, 'What are you doing wearing this uniform?' I tell them those four Americans were coming to see Manaus, to see if it's safe for World Cup. Playing psychological games with their heads," he chuckles remembering. He asked them their full names, to which they replied, "We are the police: we ask you your name. What are you doing turning it around on us?"
"I say to them, 'You think you are the only police in Manaus?' We have local, city, state, federal...They get worried and start looking at each other. I tell them they are going to be in all the newspapers, and they get really worried, begging me, saying they were not looking at my car. 'I am going to fill out a report,' I told them. But I didn't: I went straight home. After all, they had told me, 'Lock your car,' and I said, 'It's okay.' What was I thinking, It's Okay? I learn my lesson."
When we got back to the hostel, we found out Michael Jackson had died while we were on the river. And Billy Mays. What's the world coming to?
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
River Trip (far too short); Mosquito massacre; Tarzan in pirate garb; rice beans salad and meat; a sloth
25-28 Jun 2009
Day One
Day One
The boat rumbles to life and chugs toward the center current. We've been lounging in hammocks waiting for the crew to finish loading, enjoying the breezy upper deck and the leisure of passage. No hurries here. I pack a pipe of strong cavendish and strike a dashing pose, head pirate-wrapped in a red and white scarf; trousers rolled to the knees; sunglasses donned; shirt long since shucked.
Lunch consists of rice and beans and a stew of the largest fish in the Amazon (whose Portugese moniker eludes me [ed. note: pirarucu]) followed by pineapple slices. Delicious fare.
We cruise along the river for a while, passing numerous nameless (for me) flora. Later when we stop, I change to a swimsuit and leap overboard to escape the stifling noon humidity. Sweat has been dripping through my eyebrows, pooling on my chest as I languished in the hammock trying to read, wishing we could move on if simply to catch some breeze as the crew played dominoes down below, murmuring lyrically in Portugese.
Our guide Tariq wakes us from the sodden slumber of our noon nap saying, "We go in my canoe. Bring bug spray, sandals, camera, water. Ready? Okay."
Paddling stirs my spirit: the sound of blades slicing in and out of calm water mingles with the buzz of the jungle as we float among trees and vines. It becomes a mosquito massacre as they deftly ignore bugspray and crowd each other for sucking space on our feet ankles elbows calves necks knuckles. My head is protected by a pirate bandana, and I soon capitulate and shrug into my T-shirt.
"Can climb," says Tariq, indicating a thick tri-twisted vine stretching from the water into the canopy. "Strangler fig vines."
I've heard about the devious buggers: their seedlings catch in the branches of trees and then extend downward, eventually growing to form a fence around the existing trunk. The fence closes in until it forms a wall of vines, becoming a hollow trunk around the original tree which withers and dies. Creepy. Naturally I leap at the chance, and hand-over-hand my way up, enjoying the view.
A readheaded woodpecker works at a tree, chipping away chunks and dropping them into the water. I'm reminded of Bernard Mickey Wrangle, and fall into some pensive musing about literary inspirations in the most mundane of experiences. The connections...
Many of the trees bear boles, which gets me to thinking about the mythical horrors of bugs who lay eggs subcutaneously. Bastards.
An enormous spider about 3-4 inches across scuttles over the bark of a rubber tree.
"Look," I tell Jessica, "a huge spider." It disappears, but just as she glances over, a leaf falls on her leg, causing her to jump and squeal, and me to die of laughter.
As we ease through a cloud of dragonflies, thankfully assuming they'd replaced a cloud of mosquitoes, we approach a tree in which a male sloth casually climbs, slipping effortlessly from limb to limb. You can tell it's a male, Tariq explains, by the yellow markings on his back. The nearby female--possibly pregnant--has a solid brown coloration.
An iguana sunbathes on a treelimb until we float close, when he suddenly tumbles down into the water and zips away, revealing also the source of the occasional mysterious splashes we've been hearing and guessing were monkeys.
We cut through some undergrowth beneath a bower of orchids, and come out on a lake. We motor across and rendezvous with the main boat to greet a family of Norweigians come to share our adventure. Jess and I swagger aboard like seasoned sailors and question these white folks' preparedness for the rigors of the jungle. They join us in the canoe after a brief restroom break and some introductions, and we set off again.
As we paddle through myriad white egrets, the hump of some leviathon slithers past breaking the surface of the water in a manner oddly similar to the creature on Dagobah just before it eats R2D2.
"Must be one of those fresh-water dolphins," Jess assures. I'm not convinced...
The egrets are joined by blackfaced herons and enormous storks. All around us, the voices of the rainforest have gotten louder and thicker. It's a bit spooky with the approach of twilight, as the Amazon inhabitants hoot, whistle, buzz, howl, sing, and click to welcome the approaching night.
A tiger heron swoops past, followed by a toucan with its absurdly proportioned bill. In a nearby tree, a hawk stirs, perhaps tempted by a goofy jackana. Ants brushed off from passing trees sting my arm as we motor back to the main river branch alongside a pastel sunset.
On the boat, the crew prepares dinner as we wait for dusk to deepen before setting out again in canoes in search of caimans. My stomach grumbles about leaving again before eating, but the prospect of seeing gators offsets the hunger.
As the stars come out, we muck around in an eerie swamp where Tariq scans the shore with his headlamp. The Southern Cross faces off with the Big Dipper, watched over by the broadly grinning dim sphere of the moon.
Suddenly Tariq lunges over the side, coming up with a two-foot juvenile caiman. A second later, he catches another baby, this one just under a foot. He hands the smaller one to me, and we head back to the main boat to play and photo. They're downright adorable, and surprisingly strong strugglers.
We toss them back to freedom and sit down for supper. What a day. I hope to hell our mosquito-netting-draped hammocks keep the bugs out. I optimistically look forward to sleeping afloat.
Day Two
After a delightful sleep in the breezy mosquito-netted hammock, lulled by a symphony of frogs and crickets harmonizing with the baritone throb of the engine, we awake at sunrise to a breakfast of bread, fried eggs, roasted platano, fried banana, papaya, and cheese. I could live like this!
Tying on closed-toe shoes and unrolling pantlegs, we set off into the forest. I once again applaud my choice in footwear, as we hop over creeks and step around muck.
Tariq points out various trees and plants used by the indians. One has a sticky mint-scented resin used for fires.
"Don't slap leaves like this," he warns, "because sometimes bees sit underneath." And don't bump into the trees with spiky bark.
Following the path created by his machete, we move deeper into the jungle, swatting mosquitoes and trying to avoid tripwire vines while taking in the innumerable sights.
"This one here is for water." He shaves off some bark of a thigh-thick vine. "For emergencies if you are lost in the jungle."
Another tree oozes sap which can be collected and boiled like maple syrup, but with analgesic properties. We avoid trees crawling with ants--the tiny critters do not take kindly to trespassers, and are well-equipped to deal with the invasion.
Tariq digs his machete into a mound of earth taller than I am and pulls out some fat termites.
"If you go into houses of the indians, they will have a bowl of these for eating. To say no is considered very rude," he grins. I briefly consider grabbing the sucker and crunching it, but it's still covered in dirt. I decide to wait until I'm offered a clean bowl.
We slog on past armadillo dens and lumber sites until we stop again, and Tariq hacks at a tree, peeling a long strip of fibrous bark. Fighting mosquitoes, we watch as he twists up bracelets for each of us, and then ties a thick belt-sized loop which he carries enigmatically for a while.
Then we stop beside a tall palm-like tree and he says, "Okay, monkey boy, climb," and hands me the belt. He shows me how to wrap it around my shoes while explaining about the tasty bunch of fruit at the top, 70 feet up. After a few embarrassing attempts, I embrace the technique and shimmy up the trunk like a native. Prudence dictates I don't go all the way up to the fruit, though I'd like to, and I slide down after 20 feet, pride-puffed and filthy.
On the ground nearby, Tariq points out a baby jararaca snake, saying our boots protect our feet because if he sensed the body heat, he'd strike. I glance down at the thin canvas of my Chucks, and attribute my safety to luck.
"The babies are more dangerous because they pump all their poison in one strike, since they don't yet know any better." How long would I have to seek help? About ten minutes.
Our shirts cling to our sopping skin in the heavy humidity, but it's not as oppressively hot as the open water. Suddenly I discover the hard way one of the bees we'd been warned about.
Tariq stops in front of a hole at the base of a tree and rustles around the opening with a long blade of grass. I squat beside him, looking for a lizard or snake or some kind of weasel. For a while nothing happens. Then something furry emerges...it's...a huge tarantula! It attacks the grass, clinging with pinky-sized mandibles. I want to pick it up, but it's skittish, and retreats into the hole. Spectacular.
When we finally get back to the canoe, tired and hungry, one more creature makes an appearance. Startled, the Jesus lizard skips across the surface of the creek and disappears behind a stump. What a day.
On the way back to the boat, we see pink dolphins breaking the surface, which discovers the identity of the earlier leviathon (which I'd hoped was an anaconda). After a refreshing swim and dinner, bats come out at dusk, and I reflect on the day with some cavendish and a few chapters of my book. Tomorrow, Tariq says, weather depending, we'll visit a family of locals--as long as they're home and not out visiting for religious festivals. I can already tell this trip will be several lifetimes too short.
Day Three
Pedro Mendes' house is usually invisible from the water. Now, though, the level of the river has brought it to the edge of the bank, drowning the trees whose foliage served as a screen. A sunken canoe sits at the edge with an air of waiting; waiting for repairs or waiting for rot or waiting to be chopped to firewood.
He greets us with a gap-toothed grin and a wave, once-taut chest sagging slightly with age like time-softened leather. We hop out of our canoe and mill about awkwardly for a moment before he extends a bony hand.
"Bom dia," he says in a gruff sawmill voice. He escorts us to a workshop area under a roof of palm fronds where a series of machinery is used to make a rice-like staple from the cassava root. In the corner is a press into which he spears a section of sugar cane and directs me to turn the crank. I oblige with gusto. The juice is sweet and refreshing, like Down South iced tea. I could drink it all day.
Pedro and Tariq lead us through the farm under clotheslines flying various sizes of flowery panties; past a pig pen featuring a sprawling sow; around a tree bearing the crown and horns of a goat with bits of flesh and fur filled with flies, and shows us banana trees and cassava plants. Then Tariq cracks open a Brazil nut with his machete and cleans off the sweet white meat which tastes much better fresh than salted and dried. Almost like a macademia.
Tariq explains that most men living out here are fishermen who are subsidized for the four-month off-season. The government also pays for the kids to go to school I picture a big black-and-yellow-painted riverboat.
Afterward we putter away in our canoe into a side channel where we spend some time fishing for piranha. After gradually becoming certain that my poor angling skills would leave me as the only unsuccessful one, I finally feel a tug and yank my line viciously, pulling out a red wriggling piranha hooked through the eye but still chomping at the chunk of raw beef.
Back on the boat, the ladies of the crew gossip and brush each other's hair while the men play dominoes in the bow and I blow my nose noisily. Everyone glances up at the sporadic lightning crackling out from an enormous anvil of a cloud, harmonizing oohs and ahhs. The lightbulbs become an entemologist's dream as we wait for supper to be ready.
Day Four
Can't believe the trip is almost over. We steam steadily toward our origin, keeping to the main branch with time for reading, relaxing, and ruminating. The adventure, as is usually the case, has skipped right on by leaving in its wake a sparkly montage of memories glowing with the ephemeral intensity of the meteor tail I saw last night after waking up to pee over the railing.
Now and then we slow or stop to watch monkeys swinging in the trees, or to swim. The breeze awakened by our quick upriver progress is delightful.
I will miss this crew of seven: the three chattering ladies who cook and clean and smile at my attempts to mingle Portugese and Spanish, and the four men who tend the engine and the wheelhouse, and guide us through side trips when not stretched out on the sunny deck playing dominoes.
The decks and trimmings are all painted green, contrasting nicely with the dirty white walls and beams. Sheltered by the roof, our hammocks are strung on the upper deck beside the cabin which the Norweigians inhabit. Below is the main deck with the dining table, galley, head, and cockpit. A hatch leads down to the engineroom.
At night, the lower deck is crisscrossed with the crew's hammocks, while a myriad bugs flock to every light. At the stern, a faded Brazilian flag flaps in the wind, leading the two canoes towed abaft. Under the clotheslines, unprotected by shade, the upper deck gets scorching hot, which at noon forces a mad hopping dash from ship's ladder to awning shade.
At sunsets, we make our berths tied off to treebranches on floating islands while a holographic picture of the Last Supper tacked to the cabin wall glows under a fluorescent bulb.
The decks are fiberglass; the railings and beams are wood; the coffee carafes are always full. Four old tires dangle from the gunwales as bumpers, and as far as I can see, the boat hs no name--but it must have one, since we've had pretty spectacular luck.
Suddenly we come about, swinging a full 180. It appears one of our canoes slipped its cable to settle and drift in peace for a bit. Everybody laughs; a new rope is rustled up; and we again continue headlong against the current.
I strip down to my knickers and sunglasses, leaning back in a deck chair with my feet up and my pipe clamped in my teeth, enjoying the sun, the breeze, and the scratching of my pen. A water buffalo watches our progress from the shore, lazily chewing his cud. Puffy cumulus clouds pepper the sapphire sky, and all is well.
The boat, I find out, is named Nomura by her Japanese owner. Immediately I begin wondering what it would cost to own such a boat, and a whole web of fantasy weaves itself in my idle mind.
Sunrise this morning was spectacular. We paddled out on a glass-smooth surface broken only by the dorsals of a pair of pink dolphins as the eastern horizon glowed green. Blazing like a matchhead, the sun ignited the billowy clouds as it peeked over the verdant horizon, heralding also our final breakfast on the Amazon. I took full advantage, scarfing eggs, coffeecake, roasted platanos, tapioca pancakes, and washing it down with cups of steaming coffee.
Now sweat streams down every angled surface of my body, pooling on every level plane, but I resolve to stay in the sun as long as I can bear until our lunch-stop swim time. It's a beautiful day.
My mind and pen settle into a mystical groove as I skip around pages jotting notes and musings for my future masterpiece. Based on the tone, you'd never guess it's simply tobacco burning in this pipe.
We pass by a pod of pink dolphins playing, and I long to dive in with them. Later I see a little clearing on the shore stuffed full of crosses and memorials. Personally I'd prefer a weighted sack cast into the center current rather than that sun-baked eternal beach...but to each, his own.
Just as I'm beginning to swelter, Tariq comes up and says, "We go for a boat ride" while lunch is prepared. In the canoe we mosey among the rubber trees and vines which dangle into the water like straws from the canopy.
Tariq spots a sloth up in a tree, and we tie off to the trunk while he climbs up nimbly. Then he drops one end of a string to which our other guide ties a machete. Tariq hacks at the sloth's perch until he falls off, catching himself on a lower limb. Tariq climbs down to try to grab the slow animal which tumbles into the water, and the other guide scoops him up.
The sloth feels like a robot covered in fur, moving slowly and mechanically in search of a branch. He cranes his neck and stares into my eyes with wonder and confusion about this moving tree holding him around the torso out of reach of his three-inch claws. He doesn't fight, and barely squirms more than to reach for the nearby tree. When I let him go, he pulls himself up the trunk nonchalantly but decidedly, heading for safety.
On the boat before lunch, I finally worked up the courage to backflip off the roof, some 20ft above the water. Then we ate one final meal of rice, beans, salad, and meet--this time beef and fried fish--before cruising on toward our dock. I took the opportunity to lounge in the prow, filled with a twinge of regret every time a building hove in sight, each time expecting the end.
Our guide Tariq wakes us from the sodden slumber of our noon nap saying, "We go in my canoe. Bring bug spray, sandals, camera, water. Ready? Okay."
Paddling stirs my spirit: the sound of blades slicing in and out of calm water mingles with the buzz of the jungle as we float among trees and vines. It becomes a mosquito massacre as they deftly ignore bugspray and crowd each other for sucking space on our feet ankles elbows calves necks knuckles. My head is protected by a pirate bandana, and I soon capitulate and shrug into my T-shirt.
"Can climb," says Tariq, indicating a thick tri-twisted vine stretching from the water into the canopy. "Strangler fig vines."
I've heard about the devious buggers: their seedlings catch in the branches of trees and then extend downward, eventually growing to form a fence around the existing trunk. The fence closes in until it forms a wall of vines, becoming a hollow trunk around the original tree which withers and dies. Creepy. Naturally I leap at the chance, and hand-over-hand my way up, enjoying the view.
A readheaded woodpecker works at a tree, chipping away chunks and dropping them into the water. I'm reminded of Bernard Mickey Wrangle, and fall into some pensive musing about literary inspirations in the most mundane of experiences. The connections...
Many of the trees bear boles, which gets me to thinking about the mythical horrors of bugs who lay eggs subcutaneously. Bastards.
An enormous spider about 3-4 inches across scuttles over the bark of a rubber tree.
"Look," I tell Jessica, "a huge spider." It disappears, but just as she glances over, a leaf falls on her leg, causing her to jump and squeal, and me to die of laughter.
As we ease through a cloud of dragonflies, thankfully assuming they'd replaced a cloud of mosquitoes, we approach a tree in which a male sloth casually climbs, slipping effortlessly from limb to limb. You can tell it's a male, Tariq explains, by the yellow markings on his back. The nearby female--possibly pregnant--has a solid brown coloration.
An iguana sunbathes on a treelimb until we float close, when he suddenly tumbles down into the water and zips away, revealing also the source of the occasional mysterious splashes we've been hearing and guessing were monkeys.
We cut through some undergrowth beneath a bower of orchids, and come out on a lake. We motor across and rendezvous with the main boat to greet a family of Norweigians come to share our adventure. Jess and I swagger aboard like seasoned sailors and question these white folks' preparedness for the rigors of the jungle. They join us in the canoe after a brief restroom break and some introductions, and we set off again.
As we paddle through myriad white egrets, the hump of some leviathon slithers past breaking the surface of the water in a manner oddly similar to the creature on Dagobah just before it eats R2D2.
"Must be one of those fresh-water dolphins," Jess assures. I'm not convinced...
The egrets are joined by blackfaced herons and enormous storks. All around us, the voices of the rainforest have gotten louder and thicker. It's a bit spooky with the approach of twilight, as the Amazon inhabitants hoot, whistle, buzz, howl, sing, and click to welcome the approaching night.
A tiger heron swoops past, followed by a toucan with its absurdly proportioned bill. In a nearby tree, a hawk stirs, perhaps tempted by a goofy jackana. Ants brushed off from passing trees sting my arm as we motor back to the main river branch alongside a pastel sunset.
On the boat, the crew prepares dinner as we wait for dusk to deepen before setting out again in canoes in search of caimans. My stomach grumbles about leaving again before eating, but the prospect of seeing gators offsets the hunger.
As the stars come out, we muck around in an eerie swamp where Tariq scans the shore with his headlamp. The Southern Cross faces off with the Big Dipper, watched over by the broadly grinning dim sphere of the moon.
Suddenly Tariq lunges over the side, coming up with a two-foot juvenile caiman. A second later, he catches another baby, this one just under a foot. He hands the smaller one to me, and we head back to the main boat to play and photo. They're downright adorable, and surprisingly strong strugglers.
We toss them back to freedom and sit down for supper. What a day. I hope to hell our mosquito-netting-draped hammocks keep the bugs out. I optimistically look forward to sleeping afloat.
Day Two
After a delightful sleep in the breezy mosquito-netted hammock, lulled by a symphony of frogs and crickets harmonizing with the baritone throb of the engine, we awake at sunrise to a breakfast of bread, fried eggs, roasted platano, fried banana, papaya, and cheese. I could live like this!
Tying on closed-toe shoes and unrolling pantlegs, we set off into the forest. I once again applaud my choice in footwear, as we hop over creeks and step around muck.
Tariq points out various trees and plants used by the indians. One has a sticky mint-scented resin used for fires.
"Don't slap leaves like this," he warns, "because sometimes bees sit underneath." And don't bump into the trees with spiky bark.
Following the path created by his machete, we move deeper into the jungle, swatting mosquitoes and trying to avoid tripwire vines while taking in the innumerable sights.
"This one here is for water." He shaves off some bark of a thigh-thick vine. "For emergencies if you are lost in the jungle."
Another tree oozes sap which can be collected and boiled like maple syrup, but with analgesic properties. We avoid trees crawling with ants--the tiny critters do not take kindly to trespassers, and are well-equipped to deal with the invasion.
Tariq digs his machete into a mound of earth taller than I am and pulls out some fat termites.
"If you go into houses of the indians, they will have a bowl of these for eating. To say no is considered very rude," he grins. I briefly consider grabbing the sucker and crunching it, but it's still covered in dirt. I decide to wait until I'm offered a clean bowl.
We slog on past armadillo dens and lumber sites until we stop again, and Tariq hacks at a tree, peeling a long strip of fibrous bark. Fighting mosquitoes, we watch as he twists up bracelets for each of us, and then ties a thick belt-sized loop which he carries enigmatically for a while.
Then we stop beside a tall palm-like tree and he says, "Okay, monkey boy, climb," and hands me the belt. He shows me how to wrap it around my shoes while explaining about the tasty bunch of fruit at the top, 70 feet up. After a few embarrassing attempts, I embrace the technique and shimmy up the trunk like a native. Prudence dictates I don't go all the way up to the fruit, though I'd like to, and I slide down after 20 feet, pride-puffed and filthy.
On the ground nearby, Tariq points out a baby jararaca snake, saying our boots protect our feet because if he sensed the body heat, he'd strike. I glance down at the thin canvas of my Chucks, and attribute my safety to luck.
"The babies are more dangerous because they pump all their poison in one strike, since they don't yet know any better." How long would I have to seek help? About ten minutes.
Our shirts cling to our sopping skin in the heavy humidity, but it's not as oppressively hot as the open water. Suddenly I discover the hard way one of the bees we'd been warned about.
Tariq stops in front of a hole at the base of a tree and rustles around the opening with a long blade of grass. I squat beside him, looking for a lizard or snake or some kind of weasel. For a while nothing happens. Then something furry emerges...it's...a huge tarantula! It attacks the grass, clinging with pinky-sized mandibles. I want to pick it up, but it's skittish, and retreats into the hole. Spectacular.
When we finally get back to the canoe, tired and hungry, one more creature makes an appearance. Startled, the Jesus lizard skips across the surface of the creek and disappears behind a stump. What a day.
On the way back to the boat, we see pink dolphins breaking the surface, which discovers the identity of the earlier leviathon (which I'd hoped was an anaconda). After a refreshing swim and dinner, bats come out at dusk, and I reflect on the day with some cavendish and a few chapters of my book. Tomorrow, Tariq says, weather depending, we'll visit a family of locals--as long as they're home and not out visiting for religious festivals. I can already tell this trip will be several lifetimes too short.
Day Three
Pedro Mendes' house is usually invisible from the water. Now, though, the level of the river has brought it to the edge of the bank, drowning the trees whose foliage served as a screen. A sunken canoe sits at the edge with an air of waiting; waiting for repairs or waiting for rot or waiting to be chopped to firewood.
He greets us with a gap-toothed grin and a wave, once-taut chest sagging slightly with age like time-softened leather. We hop out of our canoe and mill about awkwardly for a moment before he extends a bony hand.
"Bom dia," he says in a gruff sawmill voice. He escorts us to a workshop area under a roof of palm fronds where a series of machinery is used to make a rice-like staple from the cassava root. In the corner is a press into which he spears a section of sugar cane and directs me to turn the crank. I oblige with gusto. The juice is sweet and refreshing, like Down South iced tea. I could drink it all day.
Pedro and Tariq lead us through the farm under clotheslines flying various sizes of flowery panties; past a pig pen featuring a sprawling sow; around a tree bearing the crown and horns of a goat with bits of flesh and fur filled with flies, and shows us banana trees and cassava plants. Then Tariq cracks open a Brazil nut with his machete and cleans off the sweet white meat which tastes much better fresh than salted and dried. Almost like a macademia.
Tariq explains that most men living out here are fishermen who are subsidized for the four-month off-season. The government also pays for the kids to go to school I picture a big black-and-yellow-painted riverboat.
Afterward we putter away in our canoe into a side channel where we spend some time fishing for piranha. After gradually becoming certain that my poor angling skills would leave me as the only unsuccessful one, I finally feel a tug and yank my line viciously, pulling out a red wriggling piranha hooked through the eye but still chomping at the chunk of raw beef.
Back on the boat, the ladies of the crew gossip and brush each other's hair while the men play dominoes in the bow and I blow my nose noisily. Everyone glances up at the sporadic lightning crackling out from an enormous anvil of a cloud, harmonizing oohs and ahhs. The lightbulbs become an entemologist's dream as we wait for supper to be ready.
Day Four
Can't believe the trip is almost over. We steam steadily toward our origin, keeping to the main branch with time for reading, relaxing, and ruminating. The adventure, as is usually the case, has skipped right on by leaving in its wake a sparkly montage of memories glowing with the ephemeral intensity of the meteor tail I saw last night after waking up to pee over the railing.
Now and then we slow or stop to watch monkeys swinging in the trees, or to swim. The breeze awakened by our quick upriver progress is delightful.
I will miss this crew of seven: the three chattering ladies who cook and clean and smile at my attempts to mingle Portugese and Spanish, and the four men who tend the engine and the wheelhouse, and guide us through side trips when not stretched out on the sunny deck playing dominoes.
The decks and trimmings are all painted green, contrasting nicely with the dirty white walls and beams. Sheltered by the roof, our hammocks are strung on the upper deck beside the cabin which the Norweigians inhabit. Below is the main deck with the dining table, galley, head, and cockpit. A hatch leads down to the engineroom.
At night, the lower deck is crisscrossed with the crew's hammocks, while a myriad bugs flock to every light. At the stern, a faded Brazilian flag flaps in the wind, leading the two canoes towed abaft. Under the clotheslines, unprotected by shade, the upper deck gets scorching hot, which at noon forces a mad hopping dash from ship's ladder to awning shade.
At sunsets, we make our berths tied off to treebranches on floating islands while a holographic picture of the Last Supper tacked to the cabin wall glows under a fluorescent bulb.
The decks are fiberglass; the railings and beams are wood; the coffee carafes are always full. Four old tires dangle from the gunwales as bumpers, and as far as I can see, the boat hs no name--but it must have one, since we've had pretty spectacular luck.
Suddenly we come about, swinging a full 180. It appears one of our canoes slipped its cable to settle and drift in peace for a bit. Everybody laughs; a new rope is rustled up; and we again continue headlong against the current.
I strip down to my knickers and sunglasses, leaning back in a deck chair with my feet up and my pipe clamped in my teeth, enjoying the sun, the breeze, and the scratching of my pen. A water buffalo watches our progress from the shore, lazily chewing his cud. Puffy cumulus clouds pepper the sapphire sky, and all is well.
The boat, I find out, is named Nomura by her Japanese owner. Immediately I begin wondering what it would cost to own such a boat, and a whole web of fantasy weaves itself in my idle mind.
Sunrise this morning was spectacular. We paddled out on a glass-smooth surface broken only by the dorsals of a pair of pink dolphins as the eastern horizon glowed green. Blazing like a matchhead, the sun ignited the billowy clouds as it peeked over the verdant horizon, heralding also our final breakfast on the Amazon. I took full advantage, scarfing eggs, coffeecake, roasted platanos, tapioca pancakes, and washing it down with cups of steaming coffee.
Now sweat streams down every angled surface of my body, pooling on every level plane, but I resolve to stay in the sun as long as I can bear until our lunch-stop swim time. It's a beautiful day.
My mind and pen settle into a mystical groove as I skip around pages jotting notes and musings for my future masterpiece. Based on the tone, you'd never guess it's simply tobacco burning in this pipe.
We pass by a pod of pink dolphins playing, and I long to dive in with them. Later I see a little clearing on the shore stuffed full of crosses and memorials. Personally I'd prefer a weighted sack cast into the center current rather than that sun-baked eternal beach...but to each, his own.
Just as I'm beginning to swelter, Tariq comes up and says, "We go for a boat ride" while lunch is prepared. In the canoe we mosey among the rubber trees and vines which dangle into the water like straws from the canopy.
Tariq spots a sloth up in a tree, and we tie off to the trunk while he climbs up nimbly. Then he drops one end of a string to which our other guide ties a machete. Tariq hacks at the sloth's perch until he falls off, catching himself on a lower limb. Tariq climbs down to try to grab the slow animal which tumbles into the water, and the other guide scoops him up.
The sloth feels like a robot covered in fur, moving slowly and mechanically in search of a branch. He cranes his neck and stares into my eyes with wonder and confusion about this moving tree holding him around the torso out of reach of his three-inch claws. He doesn't fight, and barely squirms more than to reach for the nearby tree. When I let him go, he pulls himself up the trunk nonchalantly but decidedly, heading for safety.
On the boat before lunch, I finally worked up the courage to backflip off the roof, some 20ft above the water. Then we ate one final meal of rice, beans, salad, and meet--this time beef and fried fish--before cruising on toward our dock. I took the opportunity to lounge in the prow, filled with a twinge of regret every time a building hove in sight, each time expecting the end.
Amazon approach: River notes
25 Jun 2009
At the juncture of the Rio Negro and Rio Branco they're building a market to organize and make permanent the stalls that cluster clutter the main ingress for goods from the river. The dark water of the Rio Negro meets the yellowish slower water of the Rio Branco in a confluence which, according to legend, never truly mixes. Boats crowd the dock, and we hop aboard a 25ft barebones aluminum craft with a sunroof stuffed with lifevests. It bounces over the surface, crossing from clear dark water to vegetation-floating sediment-filled Rio Branco as we head toward a village across the way.
We get in a van which takes us to our riverboat on another branch somewhere. I'm seized with an immediate need to jot notes:
Big black birds hunch in trees like enormous fruits of the papaya family. The air is thick and heavy, and the sun is strong.
A heron stands out stark white against the green.
Fishermen in long flat boats patrol their aequeous farmland.
The river lifestyle is another version of existence that appeals to me, and I renew my interest in checking out the Mississippi or Missouri rivers for a period of work (and adventure!) Mark Twain style.
The van splashes through segments of river that felt no reason to cow to the might of the road, instead flowing directly over the asphault in a shallow tumult.
Staring fixedly out my window, I wonder how different the view is on the other side of the van. Let's switch sides for the ride back, so I can see your experience! Immediate realization: if we switched sides and directions, I'd see the same thing as before. Lesson learned: unthinking desire to see the other angle forcing experience can merely enforce bias and same-old-lens-looking.
In a field of grass and water, cows pepper the dry spots amid scattered palm trees, ruminating the spongy tufts. How do they not sink on their spindly legs?
A vulture sits on every fencepost idly watching passing traffic. The living scarcely interest them.
Every building has a natural moat. This road is remarkably smooth and well maintained, which makes sense if one considers the amount of shipping coming through here.
Fences, barns, gates all reminiscent of any ranchland, except stuck firmly amid fields of water. A palomino horse grazes on an island of grass beside a big willow. Three boys in a skiff pick fruit with a long pole.
When we pull off the paved road onto a dirt path, the wind stops blowing on my face, and sweat immediately prickles my skin. I want to be barechested with a machete slung over my shoulder and a floppy hat drooping over my ears.
At the juncture of the Rio Negro and Rio Branco they're building a market to organize and make permanent the stalls that cluster clutter the main ingress for goods from the river. The dark water of the Rio Negro meets the yellowish slower water of the Rio Branco in a confluence which, according to legend, never truly mixes. Boats crowd the dock, and we hop aboard a 25ft barebones aluminum craft with a sunroof stuffed with lifevests. It bounces over the surface, crossing from clear dark water to vegetation-floating sediment-filled Rio Branco as we head toward a village across the way.
We get in a van which takes us to our riverboat on another branch somewhere. I'm seized with an immediate need to jot notes:
Big black birds hunch in trees like enormous fruits of the papaya family. The air is thick and heavy, and the sun is strong.
A heron stands out stark white against the green.
Fishermen in long flat boats patrol their aequeous farmland.
The river lifestyle is another version of existence that appeals to me, and I renew my interest in checking out the Mississippi or Missouri rivers for a period of work (and adventure!) Mark Twain style.
The van splashes through segments of river that felt no reason to cow to the might of the road, instead flowing directly over the asphault in a shallow tumult.
Staring fixedly out my window, I wonder how different the view is on the other side of the van. Let's switch sides for the ride back, so I can see your experience! Immediate realization: if we switched sides and directions, I'd see the same thing as before. Lesson learned: unthinking desire to see the other angle forcing experience can merely enforce bias and same-old-lens-looking.
In a field of grass and water, cows pepper the dry spots amid scattered palm trees, ruminating the spongy tufts. How do they not sink on their spindly legs?
A vulture sits on every fencepost idly watching passing traffic. The living scarcely interest them.
Every building has a natural moat. This road is remarkably smooth and well maintained, which makes sense if one considers the amount of shipping coming through here.
Fences, barns, gates all reminiscent of any ranchland, except stuck firmly amid fields of water. A palomino horse grazes on an island of grass beside a big willow. Three boys in a skiff pick fruit with a long pole.
When we pull off the paved road onto a dirt path, the wind stops blowing on my face, and sweat immediately prickles my skin. I want to be barechested with a machete slung over my shoulder and a floppy hat drooping over my ears.
Bom dias; piles of food; danger waves
22-24 Jun 2009
Sucked down the vortex of transit, we've finally arrived in a comfortable spot in Rio. The pounding surf sooths feet and ears, both weary from extended travel. The sea breeze is cool and refreshing, and the lights of the city twinkle on as a few final stragglers finish evening jogs and thought-clearing strolls.
To the north, island mountains resist the tide, majestic and aloof. A freighter skirts a reef, aided by a lighthouse. Far out an oil rig glitters to life, marking the horizon with the glow of industry.
The ocean calls to me; beckons and heralds adventure. More and more my resolve thickens to join a maritime crew for an era. Who knows if I'll ever follow through?
After a night spent on the uncomfortable confines of hard plastic chairs in the terminal--a power-tripping security guard felt the need to wake me up off the floor to enforce his rules--we finally figured out the Portugese cash machines and found a bus to Rio de Janeiro. Portugese is a gorgeous language, mixing the flowers of French with the rigor of Spanish, some Italian charm, a dash of German and the shh of something ancient.
Darkness falls over Copacabana beach backlit by streetlights, and night awakens in Rio. There's a life and vibrancy about port towns that appeals to me, perhaps in a similar vein as the amorphous zeal of academia: the ocean does not allow stagnation. I'm beginning to fall in love with Brazil...
The graceful bulk of Christ the Redeemer statue rises up over Rio with arms extended in welcome. Enormous in proximity, it's an imposing feature atop a sheer hill in the middle of the city. Overlooking the busy beaches and bustling Rues, it's the center of a thriving tourist industry with 30-degree train tracks chugging up through jungle verdure.
Old and young crowd together for a multitude of reasons from pure curiosity to deep religious devotion, and the outspread arms of Jesus envelope all with (we hope) no predispositions. The wind buffets this exposed peak, and far below, Rio spreads peacefully.
It's a city I could grow to adore, with beautiful beaches, gorgeous women, and a lovely language, organized well and lacking much of the hopelessness of many South American cities. People work here; salesfolk let their wares sell themselves; and a greater variety of goods abounds.
Of course, there is still crime, and we were accosted on the beach in the evening by a "jogger" who turned out to be strapped. Fortunately we had been wise enough to bring only flipflops and books, neither of which hold much appeal for such slimy limbless leeches.
If I could find a source of income, I could easily pass many happy days here. I wonder how many times I've written a variation of that sentence in this book.
We head to an all-you-can-eat spot for dinner with some folk from the hostel, which proves to be my best meal yet in SA. Waiters scoot around with skewered meats, stopping by to carve slices. Beef, elk, chicken hearts, sausage, lamb, and various others vie for space with creamy vegetable dishes, cheesy rice, sushi rolls, okra, eggplant, marinated hard-boiled eggs, stews, fried bananas, and more. My mouth waters thinking about the gluttony-appeasing spread, and I long to overindulge myself once again.
On Copacabana beach, Marco of Sweden and I try body-surfing on the large waves until the roiling breakwater deposits me face-first into the hard sand. It looks like I've been punched by a south-paw, and Jess promptly makes fun of me for mirroring BMock. While I stifle a headache, we stroll along toward Ipanema beach, which is not as nice because the buildings are closer to the water.
Marco has a conversation with an Argentinian expat who no longer speaks much Spanish and very little English about buying a sailboat to sail across back to Europe. Rune of Norway talks about finding an apartment in Rio on his next vacation from his job as a money transporter. His charges have self-destructed twice during his career. He's now on his way to a Magic: the Gathering tournament, which after his description sounds like something I should check out again.
Marco convinces me to look into teaching English in South Korea, which he did for four months (and not even a native speaker!). He's perhaps served my salvation from languishing at home either broke or as a waiter, both tail-tucked capitulations. Eff that!
Sucked down the vortex of transit, we've finally arrived in a comfortable spot in Rio. The pounding surf sooths feet and ears, both weary from extended travel. The sea breeze is cool and refreshing, and the lights of the city twinkle on as a few final stragglers finish evening jogs and thought-clearing strolls.
To the north, island mountains resist the tide, majestic and aloof. A freighter skirts a reef, aided by a lighthouse. Far out an oil rig glitters to life, marking the horizon with the glow of industry.
The ocean calls to me; beckons and heralds adventure. More and more my resolve thickens to join a maritime crew for an era. Who knows if I'll ever follow through?
After a night spent on the uncomfortable confines of hard plastic chairs in the terminal--a power-tripping security guard felt the need to wake me up off the floor to enforce his rules--we finally figured out the Portugese cash machines and found a bus to Rio de Janeiro. Portugese is a gorgeous language, mixing the flowers of French with the rigor of Spanish, some Italian charm, a dash of German and the shh of something ancient.
Darkness falls over Copacabana beach backlit by streetlights, and night awakens in Rio. There's a life and vibrancy about port towns that appeals to me, perhaps in a similar vein as the amorphous zeal of academia: the ocean does not allow stagnation. I'm beginning to fall in love with Brazil...
The graceful bulk of Christ the Redeemer statue rises up over Rio with arms extended in welcome. Enormous in proximity, it's an imposing feature atop a sheer hill in the middle of the city. Overlooking the busy beaches and bustling Rues, it's the center of a thriving tourist industry with 30-degree train tracks chugging up through jungle verdure.
Old and young crowd together for a multitude of reasons from pure curiosity to deep religious devotion, and the outspread arms of Jesus envelope all with (we hope) no predispositions. The wind buffets this exposed peak, and far below, Rio spreads peacefully.
It's a city I could grow to adore, with beautiful beaches, gorgeous women, and a lovely language, organized well and lacking much of the hopelessness of many South American cities. People work here; salesfolk let their wares sell themselves; and a greater variety of goods abounds.
Of course, there is still crime, and we were accosted on the beach in the evening by a "jogger" who turned out to be strapped. Fortunately we had been wise enough to bring only flipflops and books, neither of which hold much appeal for such slimy limbless leeches.
If I could find a source of income, I could easily pass many happy days here. I wonder how many times I've written a variation of that sentence in this book.
We head to an all-you-can-eat spot for dinner with some folk from the hostel, which proves to be my best meal yet in SA. Waiters scoot around with skewered meats, stopping by to carve slices. Beef, elk, chicken hearts, sausage, lamb, and various others vie for space with creamy vegetable dishes, cheesy rice, sushi rolls, okra, eggplant, marinated hard-boiled eggs, stews, fried bananas, and more. My mouth waters thinking about the gluttony-appeasing spread, and I long to overindulge myself once again.
On Copacabana beach, Marco of Sweden and I try body-surfing on the large waves until the roiling breakwater deposits me face-first into the hard sand. It looks like I've been punched by a south-paw, and Jess promptly makes fun of me for mirroring BMock. While I stifle a headache, we stroll along toward Ipanema beach, which is not as nice because the buildings are closer to the water.
Marco has a conversation with an Argentinian expat who no longer speaks much Spanish and very little English about buying a sailboat to sail across back to Europe. Rune of Norway talks about finding an apartment in Rio on his next vacation from his job as a money transporter. His charges have self-destructed twice during his career. He's now on his way to a Magic: the Gathering tournament, which after his description sounds like something I should check out again.
Marco convinces me to look into teaching English in South Korea, which he did for four months (and not even a native speaker!). He's perhaps served my salvation from languishing at home either broke or as a waiter, both tail-tucked capitulations. Eff that!
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Arrival in Santiago; dazed and confused; big-city splendor
The city bustles at an unimaginable pace after the languor of a day's worth of hours on a bus. Add to that the fact that I've been in the desert or camping in mountains for the past two weeks, far from the anonymous frenzy of metros and traffic and heads-down hive-dwellers hurrying hither and thither, and you have a pretty good picture of me standing still as the world vibrates around me, trying to read the signs on the wall.
A crumpled slip of note paper serves as my map, and the thin canvas of my Chuck Taylors is already soaking up rainwater. Through glasses spattered with drizzle, I spot the metro line designated as mine, and shuffle toward it. My face feels greasy, and my clothes are dirty. I am well aware of how much I stick out, a grungy nomadic alien in this land of ties and blouses and closet space. And yet nobody looks my way as I penguin-walk in line up to the ticket window and gesture, "Uno." The girl behind the glass makes my change and shoves my ticket through the partition by pure rote, bored numb and longing for the magic hour to strike home.
Over-conscious of my shabby condition, I try to stand with my chest out, confident and proud to be here, though mostly lost and suddenly homesick for a ragged hostel somewhere on the fringe of civilization.
The train lurches, and I double-check the station. Three stops. Hanging from a handle in the ceiling, I catch my reflection in the window. Not too bad after all: just another body in this flood of individuals. At each stop, people get on and off, trading places for a flash in time.
It strikes me that I could be anyone or no one here. Big cities have that quality, blank slates for me to fill in with whatever chalk I choose. With time and inclination and wherewithal, I could thrive in such a place. Thrive, that is, until time gets the best of me, and my heart yearns for flight.
The train is ramarkably smooth and fast, and in a trice, its doors hiss open, and I see on the wall Republica in big bold red letters. I hop to and step onto the tiles as the train zips away behind me down its tunnel. My head on a swivel, I follow the general flow, looking for the proper exit. Another traveler, who I'd mistaken as a local, now seems as lost as I, and I feel a warmth of momentary kinship: I'm not the only one.
Ah, there it is. Into the wet night air, mumuring with honking horns and splashing tires, buzzing neon and muted speech, sirens wailing, dogs barking, doors slamming, songs singing food frying steps falling...all the sounds of humanity echoing in one cacophonic hum; the voice of the city. Mezmerized, I continue walking down the wring street until I recognize my error with a dearth of surprise. Wandering lost without knowing it is, i've come to find, my wont, and I duck into the nearest open store to ask for directions.
Ten minutes later, a newly bought bottle of wine tucked under my arm for my hostess, I'm once again on the right track, and now it's time to wait.
A crumpled slip of note paper serves as my map, and the thin canvas of my Chuck Taylors is already soaking up rainwater. Through glasses spattered with drizzle, I spot the metro line designated as mine, and shuffle toward it. My face feels greasy, and my clothes are dirty. I am well aware of how much I stick out, a grungy nomadic alien in this land of ties and blouses and closet space. And yet nobody looks my way as I penguin-walk in line up to the ticket window and gesture, "Uno." The girl behind the glass makes my change and shoves my ticket through the partition by pure rote, bored numb and longing for the magic hour to strike home.
Over-conscious of my shabby condition, I try to stand with my chest out, confident and proud to be here, though mostly lost and suddenly homesick for a ragged hostel somewhere on the fringe of civilization.
The train lurches, and I double-check the station. Three stops. Hanging from a handle in the ceiling, I catch my reflection in the window. Not too bad after all: just another body in this flood of individuals. At each stop, people get on and off, trading places for a flash in time.
It strikes me that I could be anyone or no one here. Big cities have that quality, blank slates for me to fill in with whatever chalk I choose. With time and inclination and wherewithal, I could thrive in such a place. Thrive, that is, until time gets the best of me, and my heart yearns for flight.
The train is ramarkably smooth and fast, and in a trice, its doors hiss open, and I see on the wall Republica in big bold red letters. I hop to and step onto the tiles as the train zips away behind me down its tunnel. My head on a swivel, I follow the general flow, looking for the proper exit. Another traveler, who I'd mistaken as a local, now seems as lost as I, and I feel a warmth of momentary kinship: I'm not the only one.
Ah, there it is. Into the wet night air, mumuring with honking horns and splashing tires, buzzing neon and muted speech, sirens wailing, dogs barking, doors slamming, songs singing food frying steps falling...all the sounds of humanity echoing in one cacophonic hum; the voice of the city. Mezmerized, I continue walking down the wring street until I recognize my error with a dearth of surprise. Wandering lost without knowing it is, i've come to find, my wont, and I duck into the nearest open store to ask for directions.
Ten minutes later, a newly bought bottle of wine tucked under my arm for my hostess, I'm once again on the right track, and now it's time to wait.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Chile crossing; a friend; bucked by bureaucracy; parting ways
16/6/09 Halfway Day
On the bus internacional at 4am, I saw a kid about my age in whom I recognized the same lost look I expect my own face reveals on a regular basis. Though I did not initially make contact, preferring to stew alone in my border-crossing self-pity, I eventually asked him the date while filling out my immigration card. He told me it was the fifteenth, which he later corrected.
After the bus filled up with women loaded with cartons of cigarettes, we both discovered we´d forgotten to pay the terminal tax. He took my money and ran off to the office to make the purchase, which allowed me to avoid squeezing past the corpulant woman sharing my tiny bus row. He returned with my change and tax ticket.
The cross-border ride was a demonstration of sidestepping bureaucracy. The women handed out cartons of cigarettes to other travelers, since each migrant can only bring two. For some reason the bus waited at the border for at least a half hour while empanada vendors vied for space with people selling sodas and other treats. Finally we made it through to Arica, after I passed through customs with nary a question apart from, "American? What´s up dood?"
In the terminal, I decided to purchase a ticket for San Pedro de Atacama instead of straight to Santiago. Promised mountain biking trails might´ve had something to do with my decision. Lonely Planet helped me figure out what to do in Arica while waiting ten hours for the next (only) available ride to San Pedro, and I strode into the morning sun to look for a coffee house.
At the colectivo busstop, I saw the kid also waiting, so I decided to make more friendly contact.
"Is this where we catch the bus to the plaza?" I asked in Spanish, hoping he knew more than I did.
"No se," he replied, "soy extranjero tambien."
I asked where he was from.
"Peru."
Turned out he had been in Baghdad for two years with the Peruvian marines whose job was security at the embassy and for checkpoints. My curiosity took over as we boarded the colectivo headed for the center of town, and I grilled him about the experience.
"What are you doing in Chile?"
"Looking for work. Any work."
After Iraq, he´d quickly blown his savings in Lima, and now he was on his own. Peru cannot afford pensions. We wandered around town, settling in a likely cafe where I ordered espresso and cake. Luis ordered tea. He told stories of mortars and IEDs, including one US soldier who didn´t hear the warning sirens and took a lethal load of shrapnel because of a pair of little white earbuds.
At his checkpoint post, he worked on his English. He knows Stallone, Schwartzenegger, Segal, and CSI. He told a different version of the Blackwater fiasco which made much more sense than our media-washed drek. Apparently the convoy had been approached from four directions by "civilian" cars, one of which lobbed a grenade under the client's vehicle, while other Iraqis opened up with RPGs, bringing down a Blackwater chopper, killing four.
Now, when he hears a car backfire or a siren sound, he instinctively ducks for cover and laments the loss of comforting weight around his chest and at his hip. He was a pretty good shot, he said, though they only practiced every few weeks. The protein-heavy American food helped him put on muscle--which has since shrunken again to standard Peruvian girth, he laments with a grin. Plus all that equipment was like lifting weights nonstop.
We talked of lost loves and future plans and gorgeous passersby as the bustle on the street increased toward midday. In Peru, he said, it´s common for friends to steal novias during tours of duty. Goddamn leeches, we both agreed. I taught him the word "cunt."
The Peruvian military, I was surprised to learn, also has obligatory post-combat psychological counseling. Luis said he no longer has trouble sleeping. I couldn´t help but wonder if he told the truth.
When he asked what my parents did, I responded with my usual line, but with a heavy twinge of guilt. My mom´s a--como se dice?--a nurse, and my dad is a carpentero. His eyes lit up.
"Maybe someday, if I can save some money, your father can have some work for me in the States?"
"Si, claro," I nodded.
We paid our cafe bill and strode off toward an enormous outcrop of brown rock--El Morro de Arica--where, Luis told me, a famous battle took place in 1880 between Chile and Peru. Apparently a foolhardy Chilean officer rode his horse directly off the cliff while charging a group of Peruvian footsoldiers. We stood at the top overlooking the pier, talking about travel and maritime affairs and the smell of the sea. A small war museum featuring several Maxim machineguns and a few dioramas amid musket displays led to historical topics and more war discussion as the sun began to beat down.
Vultures soared past lazily as we watched boats maneuvering into port so far below they looked like bathtub toys. I expressed my longing to join a crew for a while: an adventure! Then I briefly felt guilty for talking of adventure when most would be eternally grateful for a chance to work. He chuckled politely, and we made our way back down.
"Let´s walk around and see if any stores are hiring," I suggested. We talked about futbol and swimming on the way down.
The first place we checked had a sign asking for guardias. Hell, I figured, he´d been a guard in one of the worst places on Earth. They´d be bound to hire him.
Nope. Need to be bureaucratically licensed.
How much for the classes?
40,000 pesos and two weeks.
Luis shook his head. He couldn´t possibly afford certification. Oh shit, I realized, his purchase at the cafe, though frugal, was probably astronomically frivolous. I briefly imagined fronting his tuition--but I cannot. Instead, I resolved to treat him to dinner at the end of our search.
We checked in at an employment office located on the second floor of a shady building. Closed.
A construction site seemed a likely bet. We sauntered up to the entrance, just beginning to feel the heat and lengthy walk. They sent us to another site, some dusty blocks away. There they told us he´d have trouble as a non-citizen, and he´d have better luck going to the immigration office first.
To give our feet a rest, we rode a colectivo. Then began a wild-goose chase over a span of several back-and-forth kilometers, dozens of directions asked, another taxi ride, misdirection by a lad who mistook "inmigracion" for "investigacion," and more blocks walking on exhausted and famished feet, finally ending up at the local government building only to be told the blasted bureaucracy was closed and he´d have to wait til tomorrow at 8. Meanwhile, Luis couldn´t afford a room, and I was due to depart the city on an evening bus.
"Listen, amigo," I said, "Let´s go eat something--my treat--and then we´ll part ways."
He hesitated.
"Permiteme comprarlo. Next time you´ll be the one with dinero, and I´ll be the one with nothing. Then you can buy me dinner. Bien?"
He laughed and nodded, knowing as well as I did it would never happen. Pay it forward, I said, though I´m not sure his grasp of English was sufficient for the message. We exchanged emails after dinner, and shook hands, promising to write. I caught a taxi and rode off, as he sat on a park bench with his dun-colored backpack.
Buena suerte, amigo. Good luck. It´s a rough world, but you seem to me the sort who can make it. I hate to picture you as one of those fallen characters pasted to a sidewalk squar, hands outstretched with a quiet look of lost longing.
So I won´t.
On the bus internacional at 4am, I saw a kid about my age in whom I recognized the same lost look I expect my own face reveals on a regular basis. Though I did not initially make contact, preferring to stew alone in my border-crossing self-pity, I eventually asked him the date while filling out my immigration card. He told me it was the fifteenth, which he later corrected.
After the bus filled up with women loaded with cartons of cigarettes, we both discovered we´d forgotten to pay the terminal tax. He took my money and ran off to the office to make the purchase, which allowed me to avoid squeezing past the corpulant woman sharing my tiny bus row. He returned with my change and tax ticket.
The cross-border ride was a demonstration of sidestepping bureaucracy. The women handed out cartons of cigarettes to other travelers, since each migrant can only bring two. For some reason the bus waited at the border for at least a half hour while empanada vendors vied for space with people selling sodas and other treats. Finally we made it through to Arica, after I passed through customs with nary a question apart from, "American? What´s up dood?"
In the terminal, I decided to purchase a ticket for San Pedro de Atacama instead of straight to Santiago. Promised mountain biking trails might´ve had something to do with my decision. Lonely Planet helped me figure out what to do in Arica while waiting ten hours for the next (only) available ride to San Pedro, and I strode into the morning sun to look for a coffee house.
At the colectivo busstop, I saw the kid also waiting, so I decided to make more friendly contact.
"Is this where we catch the bus to the plaza?" I asked in Spanish, hoping he knew more than I did.
"No se," he replied, "soy extranjero tambien."
I asked where he was from.
"Peru."
Turned out he had been in Baghdad for two years with the Peruvian marines whose job was security at the embassy and for checkpoints. My curiosity took over as we boarded the colectivo headed for the center of town, and I grilled him about the experience.
"What are you doing in Chile?"
"Looking for work. Any work."
After Iraq, he´d quickly blown his savings in Lima, and now he was on his own. Peru cannot afford pensions. We wandered around town, settling in a likely cafe where I ordered espresso and cake. Luis ordered tea. He told stories of mortars and IEDs, including one US soldier who didn´t hear the warning sirens and took a lethal load of shrapnel because of a pair of little white earbuds.
At his checkpoint post, he worked on his English. He knows Stallone, Schwartzenegger, Segal, and CSI. He told a different version of the Blackwater fiasco which made much more sense than our media-washed drek. Apparently the convoy had been approached from four directions by "civilian" cars, one of which lobbed a grenade under the client's vehicle, while other Iraqis opened up with RPGs, bringing down a Blackwater chopper, killing four.
Now, when he hears a car backfire or a siren sound, he instinctively ducks for cover and laments the loss of comforting weight around his chest and at his hip. He was a pretty good shot, he said, though they only practiced every few weeks. The protein-heavy American food helped him put on muscle--which has since shrunken again to standard Peruvian girth, he laments with a grin. Plus all that equipment was like lifting weights nonstop.
We talked of lost loves and future plans and gorgeous passersby as the bustle on the street increased toward midday. In Peru, he said, it´s common for friends to steal novias during tours of duty. Goddamn leeches, we both agreed. I taught him the word "cunt."
The Peruvian military, I was surprised to learn, also has obligatory post-combat psychological counseling. Luis said he no longer has trouble sleeping. I couldn´t help but wonder if he told the truth.
When he asked what my parents did, I responded with my usual line, but with a heavy twinge of guilt. My mom´s a--como se dice?--a nurse, and my dad is a carpentero. His eyes lit up.
"Maybe someday, if I can save some money, your father can have some work for me in the States?"
"Si, claro," I nodded.
We paid our cafe bill and strode off toward an enormous outcrop of brown rock--El Morro de Arica--where, Luis told me, a famous battle took place in 1880 between Chile and Peru. Apparently a foolhardy Chilean officer rode his horse directly off the cliff while charging a group of Peruvian footsoldiers. We stood at the top overlooking the pier, talking about travel and maritime affairs and the smell of the sea. A small war museum featuring several Maxim machineguns and a few dioramas amid musket displays led to historical topics and more war discussion as the sun began to beat down.
Vultures soared past lazily as we watched boats maneuvering into port so far below they looked like bathtub toys. I expressed my longing to join a crew for a while: an adventure! Then I briefly felt guilty for talking of adventure when most would be eternally grateful for a chance to work. He chuckled politely, and we made our way back down.
"Let´s walk around and see if any stores are hiring," I suggested. We talked about futbol and swimming on the way down.
The first place we checked had a sign asking for guardias. Hell, I figured, he´d been a guard in one of the worst places on Earth. They´d be bound to hire him.
Nope. Need to be bureaucratically licensed.
How much for the classes?
40,000 pesos and two weeks.
Luis shook his head. He couldn´t possibly afford certification. Oh shit, I realized, his purchase at the cafe, though frugal, was probably astronomically frivolous. I briefly imagined fronting his tuition--but I cannot. Instead, I resolved to treat him to dinner at the end of our search.
We checked in at an employment office located on the second floor of a shady building. Closed.
A construction site seemed a likely bet. We sauntered up to the entrance, just beginning to feel the heat and lengthy walk. They sent us to another site, some dusty blocks away. There they told us he´d have trouble as a non-citizen, and he´d have better luck going to the immigration office first.
To give our feet a rest, we rode a colectivo. Then began a wild-goose chase over a span of several back-and-forth kilometers, dozens of directions asked, another taxi ride, misdirection by a lad who mistook "inmigracion" for "investigacion," and more blocks walking on exhausted and famished feet, finally ending up at the local government building only to be told the blasted bureaucracy was closed and he´d have to wait til tomorrow at 8. Meanwhile, Luis couldn´t afford a room, and I was due to depart the city on an evening bus.
"Listen, amigo," I said, "Let´s go eat something--my treat--and then we´ll part ways."
He hesitated.
"Permiteme comprarlo. Next time you´ll be the one with dinero, and I´ll be the one with nothing. Then you can buy me dinner. Bien?"
He laughed and nodded, knowing as well as I did it would never happen. Pay it forward, I said, though I´m not sure his grasp of English was sufficient for the message. We exchanged emails after dinner, and shook hands, promising to write. I caught a taxi and rode off, as he sat on a park bench with his dun-colored backpack.
Buena suerte, amigo. Good luck. It´s a rough world, but you seem to me the sort who can make it. I hate to picture you as one of those fallen characters pasted to a sidewalk squar, hands outstretched with a quiet look of lost longing.
So I won´t.
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