Today I, along with 140 other people, was arrested in front of the White House. We were there to protest the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which, if constructed, would carry unrefined oil from the tar sands of Alberta, Canada, to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. You need only look at pictures of the tar sands to see evidence of a culture gone absolutely mad with avarice, with no sense of limits or decency or respect for the planet and the life it supports. We know that the oil will run out. We know that its extraction and refinement and consumption dump countless tons of carbon into the atmosphere, irrevocably altering the planet's climate. We know that the time to find sources of energy other than coal and oil has long since come. And yet our efforts to extract every last drop of oil from the planet persist, irrespective of the cost to indigenous communities, to the plant and animal life that has the misfortune of living on the ground under which the oil lies, and even to ourselves. Look at these pictures and see the face of a culture insane with desperation, in the midst of what amounts to a death spiral, and making no effort to right itself but rather steepening its own descent.
I want to write more about this soon, but I also want to share something that was very noticeable about the nature of this protest, from the training session last night to the actual arrest today. Last night, one of the organizers identified herself as part of the indigenous community of Canada. The area most impacted by the tar sands excavation is home to some indigenous communities, and it is, unsurprisingly, causing no small amount of devastation. The pollution is so awful and complete that in some areas it is possible to light the water on fire. Communities have been uprooted, their ties to the land severed. Adding to the sheer criminality of the excavation is the fact that it isn't even clear that the Canadian government has the right to grant access and ownership of the land to the oil companies involved. Treaties grant a great deal of control over the land to the indigenous communities. Given the history of treaties between the governments of the North American continent and indigenous peoples, their wholesale violation is unsurprising, but it should not fail to outrage.
We were asked as a group to think about what it meant to be in solidarity with the people who live near the tar sands excavation, to act to some extent in place and on behalf of them. And I was not quite prepared for this exercise. I came here largely because actively seeking new sources of oil, irrespective of the damage done, seems to me the height of insanity, and deserving of opposition. The planet as a whole simply can't take it. I have to admit I didn't give the communities there much thought. And even the pictures linked to above don't seem to show the direct cost to local communities.
And then today we hear of the effects of hurricane Irene. Some communities and cities in its path were spared catastrophe. But Vermont, where I lived for over a year, is almost literally underwater. When Bill McKibben, longtime environmentalist and one of the organizers of today's protest, spoke this morning, he described a brief telephone call he had with his wife, with whom he lives in Vermont. "It's all but washed away," he said. He was referring to the state. Covered bridges that have stood for over 200 years are gone, destroyed by rivers swollen to many, many times their usual size and strength. Entire towns are underwater, farms upon which and houses in which people have lived for generations are currently uninhabitable or just taken away by floodwaters. Many people are missing.
McKibben spoke of the people of Pakistan, many millions - millions - of whom were made homeless by torrential rains last year. He said that we, the protesters, were fortunate in comparison. We will be able to go home after our arrests.
Even though the rich and powerful will be able to protect themselves, for a while, from the worser effects of climate change, the unique thing about this planet-wide crisis is that there is ultimately no hiding from it. The people displaced in Pakistan, they are no different from you or me. It is only though a trick of fate, an accident of birth, that they live there and you live here. To think otherwise is delusion. And clearly we are not to be spared from the extremes of weather. The people of Vermont, well, probably a few of them chose to live there precisely because it is beyond the reach of tropical storms and hurricanes. That's certainly one of the many things I liked about it. But even that is no longer a guarantee.
And do you think that an oil company will hesitate before scraping your community off the face of the earth if tar sands are discovered there? What makes you so special? Do you think that the displaced and poisoned communities of Alberta, Canada, thought any differently than you? We are all at risk. Martin Luther King said that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Chief Seattle spoke of a great web of life. "All things are connected, like the blood that unites us all," he said. Do not be deceived into thinking that this is abstraction. Solidarity, for me, means recognizing these sayings, and countless others expressing the same idea, as truth.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Sunday, July 24, 2011
What's the French word for douchebag?
A few months ago, Aasif Mandvi did a bit on the Daily Show about Asbesto, Canada. The town, it seems, is trying to revitalize its economy by mining and selling its namesake to India, where it is not outlawed and where even minimal environmental and worker protections do not exist. Asbestos, of course, is known to increase the risk of mesothelioma, a very nasty and practically incurable form of lung cancer, many times over for those exposed to it. This is not secret knowledge. All the same, the people of Asbestos, Canada - or at least its civic leaders - seem not the least bit troubled by what they are doing.
At the end, Mandvi, through playing along, shows indignation. He asks of his interviewee, "What's the French word for douchebag?" Watch, it's funny:
I admit that I love that phrase, What's the French word for douchebag? Whenever I see someone pulling some kind of dick move - a politician, a celebrity, a pro athlete - it's usually the first thing that pops into my mind. What's the French word for douchebag? It's at least as deserving of an acronym as Oh My God, or What Would Jesus Do? WTFWFD? Although, just looking at it now, it's probably much more likely to be read as What the Fuck Would [name beginning with F] Do? than what it actually represents.
But it really should be used more specifically than even the way I use it. It applies best when used to refer to people who take actions that they know will lead to grave harm to other people or to other places, hiding serenely behind some kind of defense mechanism or another. Plausible deniability. Self defense. Economic necessity.
The problem is, of course, that even with that relatively exact definition, the sheer number of potential uses quickly becomes overwhelming.
Take the following. Several weeks ago I saw an ad similar to this in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
Canadian Oil: Fuel for the Heartland job engine
The ad advocates for the further development of the Alberta tar sands, and for the construction of a pipeline through Canada and the United States that would carry the oil found there. The group behind the ad is an oil industry group called the American Petroleum Institute. The oil industry, of course, is in general best thought of as a pack of ghouls and vampires whose sole purpose is to profit through theft of the planet's natural wealth. They're not unlike the aliens in Independence Day, although their ugliness is usually lurking just beneath the surface rather in plain sight. In fact, the aliens of Independence Day would've been wildly more successful had they just landed their spacecraft outside the corporate headquarters of BP, Exxon-Mobil, and other similarly-minded paragons of the energy industry, sold them their resource-extracting technology, in exchange for, say, 50% of the resources extracted, and instructed them to package the whole thing as a massive jobs program. It's likely that President Bill Pullman, rather than jumping into a fighter jet to join the final battle, would have been proposing tax breaks for the companies openly colluding with the invading creatures. There would have been no alien for Will Smith to punch, and if he'd gone after the executives of the oil companies in the same way, I imagine he wouldn't have gotten very far if he'd started dragging the unconscious body of, say, the CEO of Exxon-Mobil though the deserts of New Mexico to Area 51.
This is not hyperbole. The Alberta tar sands rest under a very unfortunate and expansive forest, one of the last great boreal forests on the planet. As implied by the name, the oil there is in a more solid state than that found in the oil fields in, say, Texas, and so "extraction," as the process is so blandly called, is much more destructive and energy intensive than in those oil fields (which are themselves hardly a model for environmental stewardship.) In fact, it involves what can best be described as flaying the skin off the earth, to get at the oil mixed with sand and soil underneath.
The process is so sickeningly destructive that it almost defies description, so here's a picture:
That was a forest, once upon a time.
And here is a lecture by Naomi Klein in which she talks about this complete monstrosity:
This has been on my mind for a while, because I think it reflects an unsettling sickness at the heart of this culture and this country. Someone created that ad above, someone decided to call this a jobs issue, and who can argue with jobs? Who can argue with the creation of however many jobs the American Petroleum Institute claims the Keystone pipeline will ultimately create? No doubt someone has done a cost-benefit analysis and decreed that development of the tar sands, and creation of the pipeline, are entirely worth it, just as drilling in an ice-free Arctic will be decreed worth it, just as drilling in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico was thought to be worth it. And still is, by people who make those decisions. Douchebags, in other words.
But this sort of thing is inevitable according to the logic of our economy, our way of life. This is what I'm getting at. We're all douchebags, when you come right down to it. The oil from the Alberta tar sands will power our cars, our planes, our lights, our heat, our air conditioners. It's found in our plastics, in just about every product we consume. It powers our agriculture and is found in our food. As production in already discovered oil fields diminishes, as it must, we will go looking for oil in much less accessible places. like the tar sands, like the Arctic. And even under the most favorable cost benefit analysis, that oil will run out, too, but only after the destruction of ecosystems and the poisoning of the water and the soil. And even if you only consider the inevitable human cost, wholesale destruction of environments releases toxins into the same air and water and soils, and those who live anywhere near the tar sands will ingest in one form or another, in one way or another, those toxins. And we all live downstream. So much human disease is caused by this relentless environmental assault that I think we tend to ignore it instinctively, but the illness and death caused by cancer and respiratory illnesses, just to name a few, are almost beyond reckoning, and it is occurring because of this culture's abuse of the planet. We're all complicit, not just the people of Asbestos, Canada.
If you're interested in taking some concrete action, visit tarsandsaction.org. I'm planning on going.
At the end, Mandvi, through playing along, shows indignation. He asks of his interviewee, "What's the French word for douchebag?" Watch, it's funny:
I admit that I love that phrase, What's the French word for douchebag? Whenever I see someone pulling some kind of dick move - a politician, a celebrity, a pro athlete - it's usually the first thing that pops into my mind. What's the French word for douchebag? It's at least as deserving of an acronym as Oh My God, or What Would Jesus Do? WTFWFD? Although, just looking at it now, it's probably much more likely to be read as What the Fuck Would [name beginning with F] Do? than what it actually represents.
But it really should be used more specifically than even the way I use it. It applies best when used to refer to people who take actions that they know will lead to grave harm to other people or to other places, hiding serenely behind some kind of defense mechanism or another. Plausible deniability. Self defense. Economic necessity.
The problem is, of course, that even with that relatively exact definition, the sheer number of potential uses quickly becomes overwhelming.
Take the following. Several weeks ago I saw an ad similar to this in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
Canadian Oil: Fuel for the Heartland job engine
The ad advocates for the further development of the Alberta tar sands, and for the construction of a pipeline through Canada and the United States that would carry the oil found there. The group behind the ad is an oil industry group called the American Petroleum Institute. The oil industry, of course, is in general best thought of as a pack of ghouls and vampires whose sole purpose is to profit through theft of the planet's natural wealth. They're not unlike the aliens in Independence Day, although their ugliness is usually lurking just beneath the surface rather in plain sight. In fact, the aliens of Independence Day would've been wildly more successful had they just landed their spacecraft outside the corporate headquarters of BP, Exxon-Mobil, and other similarly-minded paragons of the energy industry, sold them their resource-extracting technology, in exchange for, say, 50% of the resources extracted, and instructed them to package the whole thing as a massive jobs program. It's likely that President Bill Pullman, rather than jumping into a fighter jet to join the final battle, would have been proposing tax breaks for the companies openly colluding with the invading creatures. There would have been no alien for Will Smith to punch, and if he'd gone after the executives of the oil companies in the same way, I imagine he wouldn't have gotten very far if he'd started dragging the unconscious body of, say, the CEO of Exxon-Mobil though the deserts of New Mexico to Area 51.
This is not hyperbole. The Alberta tar sands rest under a very unfortunate and expansive forest, one of the last great boreal forests on the planet. As implied by the name, the oil there is in a more solid state than that found in the oil fields in, say, Texas, and so "extraction," as the process is so blandly called, is much more destructive and energy intensive than in those oil fields (which are themselves hardly a model for environmental stewardship.) In fact, it involves what can best be described as flaying the skin off the earth, to get at the oil mixed with sand and soil underneath.
The process is so sickeningly destructive that it almost defies description, so here's a picture:
And here is a lecture by Naomi Klein in which she talks about this complete monstrosity:
This has been on my mind for a while, because I think it reflects an unsettling sickness at the heart of this culture and this country. Someone created that ad above, someone decided to call this a jobs issue, and who can argue with jobs? Who can argue with the creation of however many jobs the American Petroleum Institute claims the Keystone pipeline will ultimately create? No doubt someone has done a cost-benefit analysis and decreed that development of the tar sands, and creation of the pipeline, are entirely worth it, just as drilling in an ice-free Arctic will be decreed worth it, just as drilling in the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico was thought to be worth it. And still is, by people who make those decisions. Douchebags, in other words.
But this sort of thing is inevitable according to the logic of our economy, our way of life. This is what I'm getting at. We're all douchebags, when you come right down to it. The oil from the Alberta tar sands will power our cars, our planes, our lights, our heat, our air conditioners. It's found in our plastics, in just about every product we consume. It powers our agriculture and is found in our food. As production in already discovered oil fields diminishes, as it must, we will go looking for oil in much less accessible places. like the tar sands, like the Arctic. And even under the most favorable cost benefit analysis, that oil will run out, too, but only after the destruction of ecosystems and the poisoning of the water and the soil. And even if you only consider the inevitable human cost, wholesale destruction of environments releases toxins into the same air and water and soils, and those who live anywhere near the tar sands will ingest in one form or another, in one way or another, those toxins. And we all live downstream. So much human disease is caused by this relentless environmental assault that I think we tend to ignore it instinctively, but the illness and death caused by cancer and respiratory illnesses, just to name a few, are almost beyond reckoning, and it is occurring because of this culture's abuse of the planet. We're all complicit, not just the people of Asbestos, Canada.
If you're interested in taking some concrete action, visit tarsandsaction.org. I'm planning on going.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Got an hour? Why not spend it loading your homepage?
Apologies to those to whom I send email relatively frequently. I am presently in Chachapoyas, a lovely little town in the northern highlands of Peru where time passes like a lazy river and the internet loads like another river that is in a slow and lazy competition with the first river and is winning hands down. Loading my email account takes a truly geological length of time, and the connection is frequently sketchy at best. As soon as I have access to a better connection, I should be able to do some catching up, email-wise.
Chachapoyas's main claim to fame is its proximity to Kuelap, a pre-Incan set of ruins dating back to the mid-first millenium of the common era. I'm beginning to think that much of Peru's pre-modern history can be understood as a series of efforts to build the most impressive cities possible on the highest mountains possible. Kuelap is in slightly worse shape than Machu Picchu, but is still amazing in its own right. It is, as I said, atop a fairly tall mountain, with correspondingly incredible views of the valleys below. It's surrounded by a wall of stone, with a narrow entrance on one side through which you walk to find a steep incline up to the main area of the city. A few of the stones on the walls on either side of the entryway have figures carved into them, including a cayman and a rather eerie human face. Most of the buildings had, understandably, crumbled either partly or fully in the many hundreds of years since the site was occupied, but what remained was still quite remarkable. In many of the circular dwellings were narrow corrals where people kept guinea pigs - the food, not the pet - and several had underground chambers with portals in the very center of the dwellings. These were apparently used as the resting places for the remains of family members (after about a year's worth of burial at another more distant site to allow decomposition to run its full course.) One large wall served as a mausoleum - through a small hole you could see the pelvis and femur of one of Kuelap's former inhabitants.
Tonight the tour group is heading out for dinner, and tomorrow I'm off to see some ancient sarcophagi and the third largest waterfall in the world. Seems like a reasonable way to end this trip. Thursday and Friday are essentially travel days.
Hope all is well at home. Looking forward to seeing you all again.
Chachapoyas's main claim to fame is its proximity to Kuelap, a pre-Incan set of ruins dating back to the mid-first millenium of the common era. I'm beginning to think that much of Peru's pre-modern history can be understood as a series of efforts to build the most impressive cities possible on the highest mountains possible. Kuelap is in slightly worse shape than Machu Picchu, but is still amazing in its own right. It is, as I said, atop a fairly tall mountain, with correspondingly incredible views of the valleys below. It's surrounded by a wall of stone, with a narrow entrance on one side through which you walk to find a steep incline up to the main area of the city. A few of the stones on the walls on either side of the entryway have figures carved into them, including a cayman and a rather eerie human face. Most of the buildings had, understandably, crumbled either partly or fully in the many hundreds of years since the site was occupied, but what remained was still quite remarkable. In many of the circular dwellings were narrow corrals where people kept guinea pigs - the food, not the pet - and several had underground chambers with portals in the very center of the dwellings. These were apparently used as the resting places for the remains of family members (after about a year's worth of burial at another more distant site to allow decomposition to run its full course.) One large wall served as a mausoleum - through a small hole you could see the pelvis and femur of one of Kuelap's former inhabitants.
Tonight the tour group is heading out for dinner, and tomorrow I'm off to see some ancient sarcophagi and the third largest waterfall in the world. Seems like a reasonable way to end this trip. Thursday and Friday are essentially travel days.
Hope all is well at home. Looking forward to seeing you all again.
Monday, March 21, 2011
On the bus
Overnight, I took an 11 hour bus ride from Chiclayo to Chachapoyas. Here's what it was like:
Actually, it wasn't like that in the slightest. There was music, but it was coming from the radio of a young man sitting near me, and instead of making me want to dance it made me want to curl up in a ball and cry.
Here's what it was actually like:
The ride and duration were actually similar. However, we lacked a Keanu Reeves figure to maintain order, and the driver wasn't nearly as hot as Sandra Bullock. He was more of a Paul Giamatti type. Try sleeping through this sort of thing, by the way.
After carefully considering the options, I think this reflects my general bus riding experience overnight:
In which I'm Steve Martin or Martin Short. I prefer Martin Short; Steve Martin is funny, don't get me wrong, but I find Martin Short to be a much more accessible comedian, even if he isn't quite as brilliant. But the bus was at least 10 or 15 degrees hotter on the inside than on the outside, on account of the fact that there were over 50 of us crammed together in seats that sort of reclined and without air conditioning or openable windows. Now, I paid about $11 for the bus ride, so I got exactly what I paid for. I did have water, thankfully, and lip balm, but I have since booked a return trip for tomorrow that should be much kinder.
Hope all is well at home.
Actually, it wasn't like that in the slightest. There was music, but it was coming from the radio of a young man sitting near me, and instead of making me want to dance it made me want to curl up in a ball and cry.
Here's what it was actually like:
The ride and duration were actually similar. However, we lacked a Keanu Reeves figure to maintain order, and the driver wasn't nearly as hot as Sandra Bullock. He was more of a Paul Giamatti type. Try sleeping through this sort of thing, by the way.
After carefully considering the options, I think this reflects my general bus riding experience overnight:
In which I'm Steve Martin or Martin Short. I prefer Martin Short; Steve Martin is funny, don't get me wrong, but I find Martin Short to be a much more accessible comedian, even if he isn't quite as brilliant. But the bus was at least 10 or 15 degrees hotter on the inside than on the outside, on account of the fact that there were over 50 of us crammed together in seats that sort of reclined and without air conditioning or openable windows. Now, I paid about $11 for the bus ride, so I got exactly what I paid for. I did have water, thankfully, and lip balm, but I have since booked a return trip for tomorrow that should be much kinder.
Hope all is well at home.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Premodern humans - what did they know?
Today I'm in a town called Chiclayo, along the north coast. Its main claim to fame is a nearby set of ruins of fantastic proportions, dating back to the early to mid-first millenium of the common era. The site - a cluster of tombs next to a set of pyramids, all still being excavated - was found in the late 80s, apparently after a nearby archeologist noticed a surge of unusual items on the black market. Graverobbers had apparently found and started raiding the site, followed by nearby inhabitants. The archeologist managed to stop the graverobbing partly by employing many of the locals as excavators, a brilliant bit of social engineering that would probably be called socialism by most of the political class in America.
Anyway, the most significant find at the site was the tomb of a man since dubbed the Lord of Sipan. He is thought to have been the ruler of his particular civilization, on account of the fact that he was adorned with and his tomb was stuffed with, among other things, elaborate necklaces, earrings, headgear, breastplates, staffs, pottery, his wife, his concubine, animal sacrifices, and one or two human sacrifices to top it all off. Interestingly, one of the human sacrifices - apparently meant to be his guardian in the underworld - had his feet lopped off. No word on whether this was done before or after he was himself sent on his way to the underworld, but the speculation is that this was done to discourage running away. I'm not sure how they know this, and I'm also not sure I like the explanation, as it seems a heavy handed, though admittedly practical, solution to the problem. I prefer to think that it pertains to the use, or lack thereof, of the feet in the afterlife, and it seems like it was a symbolic way of binding him to his master.
In any case, I took a tour today and visited the excavation site and the pyramids. There's also a very impressive museum which contains many of the artifacts recovered from the site. Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed within the museum, so the link is the best I can do. Suffice to say that the civilization of Sipan had craftsmen and women who I would bet lots of money on if there was such a thing as March Madness for the artisans of human civilizations in eras past. Granted, these were all made for the Big Kahuna, but still, the obvious creativity and intricacy of many of the artifacts was quite extraordinary to behold. Elaborate necklaces made of thousands upon thousands of beads, banners of copper plated with gold, sceptres adorned with miniatures of gods or temples or even the Lord of Sipan himself, very finely wrought lace, and even a necklace made of white shell inlaid with an intricate design of red shell. You can see that in the lower right hand corner of the linked page. More on that in a minute.
Like many premodern peoples, the people of Sipan drew their ideas of deities and the spiritual world from the animal kingdom. So if you look at the pictures you can see representations of a crab-god and an octopus-god, for example. And there were others, including, but not limited to, cat-gods, fox-gods, lizard-gods, spider-gods, and bat-gods. These deities - if that's even the right term - were incorporated into the vast majority of artifacts in one way or another, and the craftsmanship was uniformly painstaking. The idea that the natural world was also the world of the spirit was central to these people, as it was central to the Incans. It's just striking to me how, despite its dominance over the past two millenia, the idea of One God is an anomaly, in the long view of human history. One wonders if that's been such a good thing.
As a brief aside, I must commend to anyone reading this blog a book by Barry Lopez called Apologia. It's very short, illustrated by some evocative wood carvings. In it, Lopez describes a cross-country trip he takes, during which he makes a point of stopping whenever he sees roadkill, and trying to pay it the respect of dragging it off the road and giving it as proper a burial - or at least ceremony - as he can. He observes that, in indiginous cultures past, every single animal killed along the road had a spirit, or was a spirit. We, including I, often forget this in the name of progress and speed, but I imagine our slaughter of the animals that have the misfortune of wandering out in front of our cars and trucks would be regarded with no small amount of horror by even our own indiginous ancestors.
One of the artifacts in particular caught my attention: the shell necklace I referenced above. Our tour guide called our attention to it, making a point of observing that the design on it was not painted on, but rather was that of red shell inlaid into the dominant white shell. The picture gives you some idea. The small description accompanying the display (in Spanish) said that the design is meant to evoke the undulations of a swimming catfish, but a close look brought other things to my mind. I think you can see this in the picture, which is, again, at the very bottom right hand corner on the page. To me, it looks like the double helix of DNA.
No doubt this is nothing more than coincidence, but even if it is, I find it moving in an uncanny sort of way. There is, undoubtedly, a tendency amongst some Western folks like me to romanticize and idealize the lifeways of premodern humans, particularly their obvious and deeply intuitive connection with their natural surroundings. Life for the Sipan people was undoubtedly difficult in countless ways. Even the Lord of Sipan himself apparently died at age 45 of unclear causes, though his bones show evidence of osteoporosis. (The guide speculated that this was largely because the Lord of Sipan was carried everywhere by servants and slaves, who no doubt had excellent bone strength as a result.) And let's not forget the human sacrifices to appease some of these animal-gods I was raving about earlier.
But Western Civilization, in making the ideas of rationality and progress central to its identity, and in marginalizing ideas of intuition and spirituality, is missing something. By its nature it disassembles, breaks down, analyzes, demystifies, and in general operates on the belief that an understanding of all the parts of something will enable an understanding of the whole. Even though I'm a doctor in the tradition of Western medicine, I'm increasingly of the opinion that this belief is nothing short of sheer folly and arrogance. The belief that something can be completely understood - and, by implication, controlled - invariably leads to disaster. The recent oil spill in the Gulf and the nuclear crisis in Japan are just two obvious examples.
So if things cannot and can never be understood fully, what are we to do with the gap between our understanding and the myth of total understanding? I think that's a space best filled with things like reverence, awe, respect, humility, genuflection, ritual, story. I think that premodern humans, understanding (purely in a scientific sense) much less than us, needed those things in order to navigate their world in a way that we don't, exactly. But their closeness to the natural world, the immediacy and spirituality of that world for them, leads me to believe that it's not impossible for the structure of DNA to have made an appearance on a piece of jewelry almost 2000 years before its discovery by Watson and Crick. After all, it's an intricate part of almost all life on the planet.
Enough for now. Hope all is well at home.
Anyway, the most significant find at the site was the tomb of a man since dubbed the Lord of Sipan. He is thought to have been the ruler of his particular civilization, on account of the fact that he was adorned with and his tomb was stuffed with, among other things, elaborate necklaces, earrings, headgear, breastplates, staffs, pottery, his wife, his concubine, animal sacrifices, and one or two human sacrifices to top it all off. Interestingly, one of the human sacrifices - apparently meant to be his guardian in the underworld - had his feet lopped off. No word on whether this was done before or after he was himself sent on his way to the underworld, but the speculation is that this was done to discourage running away. I'm not sure how they know this, and I'm also not sure I like the explanation, as it seems a heavy handed, though admittedly practical, solution to the problem. I prefer to think that it pertains to the use, or lack thereof, of the feet in the afterlife, and it seems like it was a symbolic way of binding him to his master.
In any case, I took a tour today and visited the excavation site and the pyramids. There's also a very impressive museum which contains many of the artifacts recovered from the site. Unfortunately, pictures were not allowed within the museum, so the link is the best I can do. Suffice to say that the civilization of Sipan had craftsmen and women who I would bet lots of money on if there was such a thing as March Madness for the artisans of human civilizations in eras past. Granted, these were all made for the Big Kahuna, but still, the obvious creativity and intricacy of many of the artifacts was quite extraordinary to behold. Elaborate necklaces made of thousands upon thousands of beads, banners of copper plated with gold, sceptres adorned with miniatures of gods or temples or even the Lord of Sipan himself, very finely wrought lace, and even a necklace made of white shell inlaid with an intricate design of red shell. You can see that in the lower right hand corner of the linked page. More on that in a minute.
Like many premodern peoples, the people of Sipan drew their ideas of deities and the spiritual world from the animal kingdom. So if you look at the pictures you can see representations of a crab-god and an octopus-god, for example. And there were others, including, but not limited to, cat-gods, fox-gods, lizard-gods, spider-gods, and bat-gods. These deities - if that's even the right term - were incorporated into the vast majority of artifacts in one way or another, and the craftsmanship was uniformly painstaking. The idea that the natural world was also the world of the spirit was central to these people, as it was central to the Incans. It's just striking to me how, despite its dominance over the past two millenia, the idea of One God is an anomaly, in the long view of human history. One wonders if that's been such a good thing.
As a brief aside, I must commend to anyone reading this blog a book by Barry Lopez called Apologia. It's very short, illustrated by some evocative wood carvings. In it, Lopez describes a cross-country trip he takes, during which he makes a point of stopping whenever he sees roadkill, and trying to pay it the respect of dragging it off the road and giving it as proper a burial - or at least ceremony - as he can. He observes that, in indiginous cultures past, every single animal killed along the road had a spirit, or was a spirit. We, including I, often forget this in the name of progress and speed, but I imagine our slaughter of the animals that have the misfortune of wandering out in front of our cars and trucks would be regarded with no small amount of horror by even our own indiginous ancestors.
One of the artifacts in particular caught my attention: the shell necklace I referenced above. Our tour guide called our attention to it, making a point of observing that the design on it was not painted on, but rather was that of red shell inlaid into the dominant white shell. The picture gives you some idea. The small description accompanying the display (in Spanish) said that the design is meant to evoke the undulations of a swimming catfish, but a close look brought other things to my mind. I think you can see this in the picture, which is, again, at the very bottom right hand corner on the page. To me, it looks like the double helix of DNA.
No doubt this is nothing more than coincidence, but even if it is, I find it moving in an uncanny sort of way. There is, undoubtedly, a tendency amongst some Western folks like me to romanticize and idealize the lifeways of premodern humans, particularly their obvious and deeply intuitive connection with their natural surroundings. Life for the Sipan people was undoubtedly difficult in countless ways. Even the Lord of Sipan himself apparently died at age 45 of unclear causes, though his bones show evidence of osteoporosis. (The guide speculated that this was largely because the Lord of Sipan was carried everywhere by servants and slaves, who no doubt had excellent bone strength as a result.) And let's not forget the human sacrifices to appease some of these animal-gods I was raving about earlier.
But Western Civilization, in making the ideas of rationality and progress central to its identity, and in marginalizing ideas of intuition and spirituality, is missing something. By its nature it disassembles, breaks down, analyzes, demystifies, and in general operates on the belief that an understanding of all the parts of something will enable an understanding of the whole. Even though I'm a doctor in the tradition of Western medicine, I'm increasingly of the opinion that this belief is nothing short of sheer folly and arrogance. The belief that something can be completely understood - and, by implication, controlled - invariably leads to disaster. The recent oil spill in the Gulf and the nuclear crisis in Japan are just two obvious examples.
So if things cannot and can never be understood fully, what are we to do with the gap between our understanding and the myth of total understanding? I think that's a space best filled with things like reverence, awe, respect, humility, genuflection, ritual, story. I think that premodern humans, understanding (purely in a scientific sense) much less than us, needed those things in order to navigate their world in a way that we don't, exactly. But their closeness to the natural world, the immediacy and spirituality of that world for them, leads me to believe that it's not impossible for the structure of DNA to have made an appearance on a piece of jewelry almost 2000 years before its discovery by Watson and Crick. After all, it's an intricate part of almost all life on the planet.
Enough for now. Hope all is well at home.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
The thing about wetsuits
I learned something today about wetsuits. Wetsuits are meant to be put on, and little to no time is meant to pass between this and the time in which you enter the water. It's a basic law of wetsuits. If you happen to put on a wetsuit and then sit around on a patio for 15 minutes, while, say, your surfing instructor tries to corral a number of preadolescent boys into their wetsuits so they can go surfing, and is trying to locate his own wetsuit in the meantime, you and everyone else who walks by the patio will invariably be thinking, why are you sitting around on a patio in a wetsuit? You will start to feel like a second rate superhero who was in the midst of donning his costume to engage in some crime-fighting, when the entire Justice League of America decided to show up and clean house before you've even managed to get your boots on. Naturally, after having gone through all the trouble of putting on your spandex supersuit, you don't want to turn around and strip it off, so you decide to lounge around nonchalantly for at least a little while, as if you were going to hang out in spandex irrespective of whether or not those assholes in the Justice League swooped in from nowhere to steal your thunder. Again.
This, by the way, is why Superman and Batman and Spider Man and so on have secret identities. It doesn't have anything to do with anonymity, or with protecting the ones they love, or with avoiding the difficulty and pressure of being super all the time. It's because wearing spandex all the time makes you look like a jerk. It also has the potential to really mess with you.
Along these lines, I highly recommend the graphic novel The Watchmen. Look at Rorschach for an example of someone who decides to be his super self all the time.
This, by the way, is why Superman and Batman and Spider Man and so on have secret identities. It doesn't have anything to do with anonymity, or with protecting the ones they love, or with avoiding the difficulty and pressure of being super all the time. It's because wearing spandex all the time makes you look like a jerk. It also has the potential to really mess with you.
Along these lines, I highly recommend the graphic novel The Watchmen. Look at Rorschach for an example of someone who decides to be his super self all the time.
On the beach
Okay, so I´ve spent the past two days doing next to nothing at the beach in a little town called Huanchaco, about 9 hours north of Lima. Being on the beach and all, it´s been a fishing village for much longer than it´s been a tourist attraction for folks like me, but I think they´ve been surfing here for quite a while as well. The fishermen use these very interesting-looking boats made out of reeds. They are fat on one end - the end on which the fishermen sit, solo - and taper down from there. The thin end curls slightly, like an elf's shoe. The boats look like a new form of punctuation, basically.
So I haven't been doing nothing, strictly speaking. I took some surfing lessons, and managed to remain standing more often than not. I also spent some time watching some surfers, which was humbling. It´s always a treat to watch people do things well, no matter what those things are, you know? Otherwise, I´ve been reading and writing a fair amount. There´s something about the sound of the surf that makes such things easier.
The keys on this keyboard are sticky, so this will be a short post. Tentative plans for today are to go north to a town called Chiclayo, which has a witch doctors' market. After that, I may go to a town called Chachapoyas, which is further inland but which has, among other things, a pretty spectacular nearby waterfall and some ruins. After that, I may head back to the beach for the last day or so. The less time I spend in Lima, the better, as you may have gathered from the post below.
Hope all is well at home.
So I haven't been doing nothing, strictly speaking. I took some surfing lessons, and managed to remain standing more often than not. I also spent some time watching some surfers, which was humbling. It´s always a treat to watch people do things well, no matter what those things are, you know? Otherwise, I´ve been reading and writing a fair amount. There´s something about the sound of the surf that makes such things easier.
The keys on this keyboard are sticky, so this will be a short post. Tentative plans for today are to go north to a town called Chiclayo, which has a witch doctors' market. After that, I may go to a town called Chachapoyas, which is further inland but which has, among other things, a pretty spectacular nearby waterfall and some ruins. After that, I may head back to the beach for the last day or so. The less time I spend in Lima, the better, as you may have gathered from the post below.
Hope all is well at home.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Lima, city of Biblical traffic jams
So I'm in Lima, sitting in an overpriced internet cafe in a bus station. I'm heading north to a city called Trujillo overnight, and from there to a city called Huanchaco, on the ocean. Supposedly it's a good surfing site, with the downside being that everyone apparently knows this, meaning that I'm likely to be only one of many tourists there this time of year.
I flew from Cusco to Lima this morning. I was a little sad to say goodbye to Cusco, whose charm is all the more endearing after being subjected to a day's worth of Lima. Imagine Manhattan. Then quadruple the number of cars, and hold up the biggest funhouse mirror you can conceive of, so that the relatively tidy grid of streets is bent in all sorts of crazy directions. That's much of Lima. I walked part of the way to the bus station, and from a pedestrian overpass you could look up and down the expressway and not see the end of the line of cars, all honking impotently. It was like an automotive example of the vanishing point. It is, quite frankly, insane that anyone builds places like this. Unless, of course, your goal is to make the maximum number of people frustrated and unhappy.
Lima does sit right on the Pacific ocean, so I took a stroll there today. As I approached the beach, I was met by an older man who offered me a flyer and some surfing lessons. His name was Doc Ricardo Garcia, retired psychologist and now full time surfer. He was fun to talk to. A surfer for over fifty years, mostly self-taught but introduced to it by his aunt, he now gives lessons and hangs out on the beach. His sister, he said, studied in Raleigh, North Carolina, some years ago, and now works in Peru in the field of macroeconomics. She is, he said, "the white sheep of the family." The black sheep, of course, is him. He owns a number of 60s era cars, which he tinkers with and restores in his spare time. He knew seemingly everyone on the beach, and was a fine salesman of his services as an instructor, as well as those of his colleagues. The beginner's board, he said, is so easy "it's like driving an automatic car."
I regretted not being able to get some lessons from him.
So, soon off to Trujillo, a few days around there (with some sightseeing of some non-Incan ruins,) then off to either more sites in the north, or perhaps a quick doubling back to the south.
Hope all is well at home.
I flew from Cusco to Lima this morning. I was a little sad to say goodbye to Cusco, whose charm is all the more endearing after being subjected to a day's worth of Lima. Imagine Manhattan. Then quadruple the number of cars, and hold up the biggest funhouse mirror you can conceive of, so that the relatively tidy grid of streets is bent in all sorts of crazy directions. That's much of Lima. I walked part of the way to the bus station, and from a pedestrian overpass you could look up and down the expressway and not see the end of the line of cars, all honking impotently. It was like an automotive example of the vanishing point. It is, quite frankly, insane that anyone builds places like this. Unless, of course, your goal is to make the maximum number of people frustrated and unhappy.
Lima does sit right on the Pacific ocean, so I took a stroll there today. As I approached the beach, I was met by an older man who offered me a flyer and some surfing lessons. His name was Doc Ricardo Garcia, retired psychologist and now full time surfer. He was fun to talk to. A surfer for over fifty years, mostly self-taught but introduced to it by his aunt, he now gives lessons and hangs out on the beach. His sister, he said, studied in Raleigh, North Carolina, some years ago, and now works in Peru in the field of macroeconomics. She is, he said, "the white sheep of the family." The black sheep, of course, is him. He owns a number of 60s era cars, which he tinkers with and restores in his spare time. He knew seemingly everyone on the beach, and was a fine salesman of his services as an instructor, as well as those of his colleagues. The beginner's board, he said, is so easy "it's like driving an automatic car."
I regretted not being able to get some lessons from him.
So, soon off to Trujillo, a few days around there (with some sightseeing of some non-Incan ruins,) then off to either more sites in the north, or perhaps a quick doubling back to the south.
Hope all is well at home.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
This is why they call it the rainy season, Machu Picchu edition, continued, etc
Yesterday I made it back from the rainforest, and for all I would, in general circumstances, complain about the paving of America, smooth roads uncovered by landslides are an unrecognized luxury. More about that later.
Getting back to the Machu Picchu hike, on day two we awoke to an overcast sky but no rain. Unfortunately, this didn't last long. This was especially unfortunate, as day 2 of the trek is generally one of the most spectacular, in terms of views. We had about an hour of no rain and overcast but not befogged skies, but not long after our first rest stop the drizzle started. One of the things I learned pretty quickly is that, when you see the porters dropping their 50 kilogram packs from their backs and deploying their cheap but effective plastic ponchos, that's a sign that you should too. About midway up the day's ascent - to 4200 meters, the highest point on the trail - the porters en masse decided that things were going to get worse before they got better, and suddenly they all were wearing yellow plastic. I held out for a little while longer, but my shoes were getting somewhat soggy, as was my backpack, so I stopped and recognized the inevitable. By this time, the clouds had descended from the sky and enveloped the mountains, and visibility was woefully poor.
The climb was arduous, much of it along stone stairs, but making it to the peak did feel like something of an accomplishment, even if all I could see was gray and rain. I did get a good look at the sign saying that this was the highest point on the Inca Trail, so there is that.
The descent wasn't much better, though the clouds thinned out enough for us to get a nice view of one of the many impressive waterfalls along the way. It rained through lunch, despite everyone's fervent prayers to the contrary. Hiking after lunch took us by some Incan ruins, which were shrouded in fog and somewhat eerier for it. After several hours we made our campsite, assembled with amazing speed in a complete downpour by the porters. I climbed inside my tent, peeled off and squeezed out my socks, and picked out some drier clothes. As the afternoon wore on, the rain diminished, and we managed to get some decent views from the campsite. I got a chance to practice being a doctor as well - one of our guides had a minor plastic surgery to remove some ugly scar on the left side of his face only two days before we departed on the tour. The site was weeping a little, and he was nervous about it. Fortunately, it didn't look infected, wasn't the least bit tender, and he felt fine, so I gave him a small pat on the back, reassurance, and a bill for $120 for the consultation. Okay, one of those things isn't true. Also, as an aside, it's nice to feel useful.
During dinner our main guide, Freddy, told us some of the history of Machu Picchu as well as of the Incans. Pretty fascinating stuff, again made all the more impressive by the relatively short time the Incans were around as an organized civilization. What we call the Inca trail is actually just a fragment of a much more extensive system of roads reaching from Chile into (I think) Ecuador. They had no coherent system of written language, though they apparently did use written symbols, an early precursor. The Incans were conquerers, subjugating their neighbors with greater and greater ease as they grew stronger. The Spanish visited similar treatment upon them, I suppose; I despair a little at this phenomenon. Peoples and civilizations can coexist, but once one of them gets a taste of power and glory, conflict and conquest and savagery seem inevitable. (As an aside, my favorite author, David Mitchell, explores this idea in many of his books, including Cloud Atlas, my favorite.)
Day 3 was significantly better. The hike was shorter, the sun shone for at least part of the day, and we saw some impressive Incan ruins unimpeded by clouds. It did rain a little later in the day, but without the steadiness of the previous day. After reaching camp, we all availed ourselves of the "hot" showers available in the nearby restaurant - actually lukewarm, but still very pleasant. On the patio outside the showers, some of the porters played a game of futbol, which meant dodging the ancient and slightly flat futbol they were using after emerging from the showers. We passed part of the afternoon playing a card game introduced to the group by the Danish girls. It was a simple game, a little noisy, and involved trying to create four of a kind in your hand and avoiding being the last to grab a stone from the center of the table once someone had done so. Some of the porters even joined in.
After dinner we returned to the restaurant for beer and relaxation. Most of the hikers and many of the porters go to this restaurant on the third day, and it turns into a makeshift discotheque. I went with the intention of having one or two beers and calling it a night; we had to wake up at about 4:30am the following morning to make the Sun Gate looking over Machu Picchu by sunrise. Unfortunately, our guide, Freddy, asked if anyone wanted some rum, and things really went downhill from there. When your glass of rum and coke is constantly full, despite the fact that you seem to be drinking from it constantly, that should be taken as a warning that some unknown person or persons are maliciously refilling it. I did manage to awaken the next day as scheduled, but I felt exactly like you would expect after drinking too much rum and then getting up at 4:30 in the morning.
On day 4, it rained all morning, of course. The Sun Gate typically affords an impressive view of Machu Picchu, but the clouds were, as usual, formidable. The main event at the Sun Gate was not the view of Machu Picchu but witnessing one alpaca pursuing another up the trail, through the Sun Gate, then down the opposite side. The pursuer had romantic intentions; the pursuee, given her agitated bleating and heedless galloping (she nearly knocked over more than a few hikers on her ascent,) didn't seem to care for the attention.
As we got to Machu Picchu, the clouds started to thin out. It is, of course, much more impressive in person than in pictures. An ancient city of stones and terracing surrounded by impossibly tall mountain peaks. In its heyday, it apparently served as home for about 600 people, which seemed a small number to me. Interestingly, there were parts of it still under construction at the time it was abandoned. If I recall correctly, it was at least 60 years in the making. We toured the site for several hours, with the most magnificent views to be had from a sort of watchguard's post atop tens of rows of terracing. You couldn't help but imagine people living there 500 years ago. This was actually the most... well, perplexing part for me. The landscape in Peru is almost uniformly astonishing and awe-inspiring, and around Machu Picchu it's almost as if this aspect of Peru is distilled into its essence. Everything about it - the mountain peaks, the deep valleys, the distant rivers, the clouds, the sun casting mighty shadows against cliff faces - was humbling beyond description. It was almost a relief to leave after a few hours, because of this. That some people considered this home half a millenium ago is unsettling. How can people live amidst such impersonal beauty? What resources did they draw upon? What made their work worthy of the world in which they lived? They must have found ways to make their lives resonate with meaning that at least approached the grandeur of their surroundings, but it's hard for me to imagine the work that must have taken every single day. The midwest has its own singular beauty, but the scale seems more approachable. Maybe that's because it's nothing for us to get in our cars and drive for a few hours. Mastery - or at least the appearance of mastery - of our environment is mostly an American phenomenon, I think, but it is, of course, illusion. We'd probably do well to find ways of letting that illusion go.
All right, enough for now. Tomorrow I'm flying from Cusco to Lima, and heading up the coast in search of a reasonably comfortable beach. If I have a chance I'll sit down and write some more tomorrow, but Tuesday is a possibility as well.
I hope all is well at home. I returned to discover that the cabal of sociopaths now running Wisconsin finally dropped all pretense of concern for the state's budget and passed their odious union-busting legislation as a standalone bill. Fortunately, for most people the fight has just begun.
Getting back to the Machu Picchu hike, on day two we awoke to an overcast sky but no rain. Unfortunately, this didn't last long. This was especially unfortunate, as day 2 of the trek is generally one of the most spectacular, in terms of views. We had about an hour of no rain and overcast but not befogged skies, but not long after our first rest stop the drizzle started. One of the things I learned pretty quickly is that, when you see the porters dropping their 50 kilogram packs from their backs and deploying their cheap but effective plastic ponchos, that's a sign that you should too. About midway up the day's ascent - to 4200 meters, the highest point on the trail - the porters en masse decided that things were going to get worse before they got better, and suddenly they all were wearing yellow plastic. I held out for a little while longer, but my shoes were getting somewhat soggy, as was my backpack, so I stopped and recognized the inevitable. By this time, the clouds had descended from the sky and enveloped the mountains, and visibility was woefully poor.
The climb was arduous, much of it along stone stairs, but making it to the peak did feel like something of an accomplishment, even if all I could see was gray and rain. I did get a good look at the sign saying that this was the highest point on the Inca Trail, so there is that.
The descent wasn't much better, though the clouds thinned out enough for us to get a nice view of one of the many impressive waterfalls along the way. It rained through lunch, despite everyone's fervent prayers to the contrary. Hiking after lunch took us by some Incan ruins, which were shrouded in fog and somewhat eerier for it. After several hours we made our campsite, assembled with amazing speed in a complete downpour by the porters. I climbed inside my tent, peeled off and squeezed out my socks, and picked out some drier clothes. As the afternoon wore on, the rain diminished, and we managed to get some decent views from the campsite. I got a chance to practice being a doctor as well - one of our guides had a minor plastic surgery to remove some ugly scar on the left side of his face only two days before we departed on the tour. The site was weeping a little, and he was nervous about it. Fortunately, it didn't look infected, wasn't the least bit tender, and he felt fine, so I gave him a small pat on the back, reassurance, and a bill for $120 for the consultation. Okay, one of those things isn't true. Also, as an aside, it's nice to feel useful.
During dinner our main guide, Freddy, told us some of the history of Machu Picchu as well as of the Incans. Pretty fascinating stuff, again made all the more impressive by the relatively short time the Incans were around as an organized civilization. What we call the Inca trail is actually just a fragment of a much more extensive system of roads reaching from Chile into (I think) Ecuador. They had no coherent system of written language, though they apparently did use written symbols, an early precursor. The Incans were conquerers, subjugating their neighbors with greater and greater ease as they grew stronger. The Spanish visited similar treatment upon them, I suppose; I despair a little at this phenomenon. Peoples and civilizations can coexist, but once one of them gets a taste of power and glory, conflict and conquest and savagery seem inevitable. (As an aside, my favorite author, David Mitchell, explores this idea in many of his books, including Cloud Atlas, my favorite.)
Day 3 was significantly better. The hike was shorter, the sun shone for at least part of the day, and we saw some impressive Incan ruins unimpeded by clouds. It did rain a little later in the day, but without the steadiness of the previous day. After reaching camp, we all availed ourselves of the "hot" showers available in the nearby restaurant - actually lukewarm, but still very pleasant. On the patio outside the showers, some of the porters played a game of futbol, which meant dodging the ancient and slightly flat futbol they were using after emerging from the showers. We passed part of the afternoon playing a card game introduced to the group by the Danish girls. It was a simple game, a little noisy, and involved trying to create four of a kind in your hand and avoiding being the last to grab a stone from the center of the table once someone had done so. Some of the porters even joined in.
After dinner we returned to the restaurant for beer and relaxation. Most of the hikers and many of the porters go to this restaurant on the third day, and it turns into a makeshift discotheque. I went with the intention of having one or two beers and calling it a night; we had to wake up at about 4:30am the following morning to make the Sun Gate looking over Machu Picchu by sunrise. Unfortunately, our guide, Freddy, asked if anyone wanted some rum, and things really went downhill from there. When your glass of rum and coke is constantly full, despite the fact that you seem to be drinking from it constantly, that should be taken as a warning that some unknown person or persons are maliciously refilling it. I did manage to awaken the next day as scheduled, but I felt exactly like you would expect after drinking too much rum and then getting up at 4:30 in the morning.
On day 4, it rained all morning, of course. The Sun Gate typically affords an impressive view of Machu Picchu, but the clouds were, as usual, formidable. The main event at the Sun Gate was not the view of Machu Picchu but witnessing one alpaca pursuing another up the trail, through the Sun Gate, then down the opposite side. The pursuer had romantic intentions; the pursuee, given her agitated bleating and heedless galloping (she nearly knocked over more than a few hikers on her ascent,) didn't seem to care for the attention.
As we got to Machu Picchu, the clouds started to thin out. It is, of course, much more impressive in person than in pictures. An ancient city of stones and terracing surrounded by impossibly tall mountain peaks. In its heyday, it apparently served as home for about 600 people, which seemed a small number to me. Interestingly, there were parts of it still under construction at the time it was abandoned. If I recall correctly, it was at least 60 years in the making. We toured the site for several hours, with the most magnificent views to be had from a sort of watchguard's post atop tens of rows of terracing. You couldn't help but imagine people living there 500 years ago. This was actually the most... well, perplexing part for me. The landscape in Peru is almost uniformly astonishing and awe-inspiring, and around Machu Picchu it's almost as if this aspect of Peru is distilled into its essence. Everything about it - the mountain peaks, the deep valleys, the distant rivers, the clouds, the sun casting mighty shadows against cliff faces - was humbling beyond description. It was almost a relief to leave after a few hours, because of this. That some people considered this home half a millenium ago is unsettling. How can people live amidst such impersonal beauty? What resources did they draw upon? What made their work worthy of the world in which they lived? They must have found ways to make their lives resonate with meaning that at least approached the grandeur of their surroundings, but it's hard for me to imagine the work that must have taken every single day. The midwest has its own singular beauty, but the scale seems more approachable. Maybe that's because it's nothing for us to get in our cars and drive for a few hours. Mastery - or at least the appearance of mastery - of our environment is mostly an American phenomenon, I think, but it is, of course, illusion. We'd probably do well to find ways of letting that illusion go.
All right, enough for now. Tomorrow I'm flying from Cusco to Lima, and heading up the coast in search of a reasonably comfortable beach. If I have a chance I'll sit down and write some more tomorrow, but Tuesday is a possibility as well.
I hope all is well at home. I returned to discover that the cabal of sociopaths now running Wisconsin finally dropped all pretense of concern for the state's budget and passed their odious union-busting legislation as a standalone bill. Fortunately, for most people the fight has just begun.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
More light posting
So, on short notice I booked a trip to the rainforest, leaving tomorrow, returning next Saturday. After that, all blogging, all the time.
So this is why they call it the rainy season: Machu Picchu edition
I survived the four day trek to Machu Picchu, with several layers of sunblock and insect repellent, as well as my own version of a 5 o'clock shadow (times four days) to show for it.
On day 1, I awoke at about 4:30am, and immediately heard the sound of rain outside my window. The hostel in which I stayed has a courtyard covered by a hard plastic roof, and it sounded like a downpour of biblical proportions. It ended up being not so bad, more a gentle rain than anything else. The tour bus came by a little after 5am; I was the last of the group to be collected. There were 11 of us total: four Australians, two Danes, two Germans, and two Argentinians. With two tour guides, we made for a cozy little group.
The bus trip was, for the most part, relaxing, though matters got more interesting near the beginning of the trail (known as the 82nd kilometer.) Every rainy season I expect there are occasional difficulties with mudslides and such. We fortunately didn't encounter any such problems; however, at one point, just above the Urubamba river (which looked to me like a long series of really-pissed-off-River-God level rapids,) the left lane of the road had actually washed away, leaving a single lane over which our driver expertly drove our bus.
A few words about the bus driver. Near the end of the drive, we actually cruise along some narrow and somewhat rough roads, as you might expect for rural and relatively underdeveloped Peru. For longish stretches of this road, it is impossible for more than one vehicle to pass, which required occasional backing up and seemingly physically impossible squeezing of one large vehicle by another. At one point we were facing a truck, and for about four minutes there was a lot of gesticulating and rapid jabbering in Spanish, before our driver finally gave in and backed up our good-sized tourist bus perhaps a tenth of a mile before the truck was able to pass us. After that, he took off at rather astonishing speed down this bumpy, narrow back-country Peruvian road, driving in such a way as to suggest that going backward again was not even really an option. When the next truck coming straight at us inevitably appeared, I think our driver actually accelerated. The truck helpfully flashed its lights at us, which our driver just took as a sign of weakness. He had remarkable faith in the braking system of our bus, which indeed did not fail when he decided to use them about ten feet away from the bumper of the other truck. As you might expect, the truck was the one who ended up backing up.
Day 1 of the hike was probably the best, in terms of weather. The rain stopped, the sun came out, and the clouds cleared for most of the day. I put up a scant few pictures on my flickr account, and in one of them you can see the peak of a mountain off in the distance. Pretty stunning. The one downside to the day - to the whole hike, actually - was that I was apparently the only one who had to haul just about all of his belongings himself. Nearly everyone else carried day packs, as they had hired porters ahead of time. The option of hiring a porter was not one offered to me by the company through which I booked the trip, and I get the sense that a great deal does depend on which agency you choose.
But the views were amazing, and while the hike was pretty rigorous on the first day, it was manageable. We stopped around 1pm for lunch, which, in a pattern that was to be repeated for the next few days, was better than just about anything I've eaten for weeks here. And not just because I was hungry. The rain started up again around lunch time, then slacked off immediately after - the timing couldn't have been much better.
We reached the campsite about three or four hours after lunch. The nights get pretty cold here, but my sleeping bag was up to it. The night sky was mind-blowing, as there was no artificial light for miles around. The Milky Way looked like very finely spread dust; it was possible to pick out even the dimmest stars within it.
I'm going to cut this short for the moment. More later, probably - the music in this internet cafe is getting to be a bit much.
On day 1, I awoke at about 4:30am, and immediately heard the sound of rain outside my window. The hostel in which I stayed has a courtyard covered by a hard plastic roof, and it sounded like a downpour of biblical proportions. It ended up being not so bad, more a gentle rain than anything else. The tour bus came by a little after 5am; I was the last of the group to be collected. There were 11 of us total: four Australians, two Danes, two Germans, and two Argentinians. With two tour guides, we made for a cozy little group.
The bus trip was, for the most part, relaxing, though matters got more interesting near the beginning of the trail (known as the 82nd kilometer.) Every rainy season I expect there are occasional difficulties with mudslides and such. We fortunately didn't encounter any such problems; however, at one point, just above the Urubamba river (which looked to me like a long series of really-pissed-off-River-God level rapids,) the left lane of the road had actually washed away, leaving a single lane over which our driver expertly drove our bus.
A few words about the bus driver. Near the end of the drive, we actually cruise along some narrow and somewhat rough roads, as you might expect for rural and relatively underdeveloped Peru. For longish stretches of this road, it is impossible for more than one vehicle to pass, which required occasional backing up and seemingly physically impossible squeezing of one large vehicle by another. At one point we were facing a truck, and for about four minutes there was a lot of gesticulating and rapid jabbering in Spanish, before our driver finally gave in and backed up our good-sized tourist bus perhaps a tenth of a mile before the truck was able to pass us. After that, he took off at rather astonishing speed down this bumpy, narrow back-country Peruvian road, driving in such a way as to suggest that going backward again was not even really an option. When the next truck coming straight at us inevitably appeared, I think our driver actually accelerated. The truck helpfully flashed its lights at us, which our driver just took as a sign of weakness. He had remarkable faith in the braking system of our bus, which indeed did not fail when he decided to use them about ten feet away from the bumper of the other truck. As you might expect, the truck was the one who ended up backing up.
Day 1 of the hike was probably the best, in terms of weather. The rain stopped, the sun came out, and the clouds cleared for most of the day. I put up a scant few pictures on my flickr account, and in one of them you can see the peak of a mountain off in the distance. Pretty stunning. The one downside to the day - to the whole hike, actually - was that I was apparently the only one who had to haul just about all of his belongings himself. Nearly everyone else carried day packs, as they had hired porters ahead of time. The option of hiring a porter was not one offered to me by the company through which I booked the trip, and I get the sense that a great deal does depend on which agency you choose.
But the views were amazing, and while the hike was pretty rigorous on the first day, it was manageable. We stopped around 1pm for lunch, which, in a pattern that was to be repeated for the next few days, was better than just about anything I've eaten for weeks here. And not just because I was hungry. The rain started up again around lunch time, then slacked off immediately after - the timing couldn't have been much better.
We reached the campsite about three or four hours after lunch. The nights get pretty cold here, but my sleeping bag was up to it. The night sky was mind-blowing, as there was no artificial light for miles around. The Milky Way looked like very finely spread dust; it was possible to pick out even the dimmest stars within it.
I'm going to cut this short for the moment. More later, probably - the music in this internet cafe is getting to be a bit much.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Light posting
Apologies for the lack of content in the blog over the past few days. Unfortunately, this state of affairs will continue at least until this coming weekend, as I head off to Macchu Picchu tomorrow, most likely in the rain. Hopefully it'll build character, or something.
Be well, everyone.
Be well, everyone.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Futbol sunday
Unsurprisingly, there is a Peruvian soccer league, and Cusco has a team. Today, they played a team called the "Sports Boys," which is their first problem right there. I went with a couple of Quebecois folks, just in from Bolivia. They seemed skeptical at the invite, but, in the spirit of traveling, were really up for anything.
The stadium is basically a huge slab of concrete, the middle of which has been hollowed out, with a less-than-impressive futbol pitch placed smack in the middle. Seats were basically just concrete stairs, which weren't terribly comfortable, but which made entering and exiting much easier than at your typical American sports arena. Unusually, the sun was shining today, which was delightful but which also made the three layers of clothing I had on more than a little uncomfortable. I managed to strip off the alpaca sweater, which lowered my core body temperature by a few degrees.
There was no clock - time was kept on the field, though they started promptly at 3pm, which made guessing the time remaining relatively easy. Nor was there a jumbotron, which on balance was probably a good thing. The crowd disagreed with just about every single call against the Cusqueñans, and replaying some of them over and over would probably have prompted some direct spectator involvement. As it was, there were about 20 or 30 uniformed riot police, complete with shields, stationed at points around the field, in case anyone got any ideas. No one did, and their main function turned out to be forming a human tunnel with their shields to protect the visiting team from the water balloons that several people had apparently carried in with the sole purpose of throwing them at the Sports Boys at halftime. A good use for riot gear, in my estimation.
The most vocal section of fans was behind one of the goals, and it stretched from the bottom of the stands to the top. They waved, inexplicably, a flag with a picture of Che on it, and sang and jumped the entire game. Every now and then someone in their midst would set off a cherry bomb, for which the section would obligingly give room. After the explosion, the people in the group would flow back together as if by collective magnetism, and resume jumping and singing.
The game itself was enjoyable, though the second half was a little punchless. The Cusqueñans really overmatched the Sports Boys, and they scored their first goal, a not strongly but accurately struck ball from about 25 yards out that swerved into the goal to the keeper's right. Not long after that, the Sports Boys had a man sent off for violent conduct. Then, early in the second half, another Sports Boy was sent off for his second cardable offense, and that was pretty much the game. Cusco scored again not long after that, a chip shot from about 18 yards out that caught the keeper off his line. Until about the 89th minute, Cusco squandered the few chances they managed to create, and the crowd began to give them a little grief. For most of the second half, the crowd's main amusement was in watching the somewhat hapless and poorly supported striker for the Sports Boys, who, by about the 70th minute, was itching to call a taxi. But in the 89th minute Cusco scored again, a well-struck ball from the left of the arc that squibbed into the goal, just inside the far post. So that made everyone happy.
This Wednesday I start the hike to Macchu Picchu. Most equipment still requires purchasing/renting, which I will probably do tomorrow. If I'm efficient, I might be able to sneak in a city tour in the afternoon, to see more ruins. I have to admit that I'm getting a bit stir-crazy/homesick, and really can't wait to get on with the second half of my trip.
Also, interesting developments in Madison. Looks like, for now at least, protesters are holding the Capitol building, with the approval of the police. I hope, for the sake of the state and its workers, that Walker and the Republicans lose this.
Be well, everyone.
The stadium is basically a huge slab of concrete, the middle of which has been hollowed out, with a less-than-impressive futbol pitch placed smack in the middle. Seats were basically just concrete stairs, which weren't terribly comfortable, but which made entering and exiting much easier than at your typical American sports arena. Unusually, the sun was shining today, which was delightful but which also made the three layers of clothing I had on more than a little uncomfortable. I managed to strip off the alpaca sweater, which lowered my core body temperature by a few degrees.
There was no clock - time was kept on the field, though they started promptly at 3pm, which made guessing the time remaining relatively easy. Nor was there a jumbotron, which on balance was probably a good thing. The crowd disagreed with just about every single call against the Cusqueñans, and replaying some of them over and over would probably have prompted some direct spectator involvement. As it was, there were about 20 or 30 uniformed riot police, complete with shields, stationed at points around the field, in case anyone got any ideas. No one did, and their main function turned out to be forming a human tunnel with their shields to protect the visiting team from the water balloons that several people had apparently carried in with the sole purpose of throwing them at the Sports Boys at halftime. A good use for riot gear, in my estimation.
The most vocal section of fans was behind one of the goals, and it stretched from the bottom of the stands to the top. They waved, inexplicably, a flag with a picture of Che on it, and sang and jumped the entire game. Every now and then someone in their midst would set off a cherry bomb, for which the section would obligingly give room. After the explosion, the people in the group would flow back together as if by collective magnetism, and resume jumping and singing.
The game itself was enjoyable, though the second half was a little punchless. The Cusqueñans really overmatched the Sports Boys, and they scored their first goal, a not strongly but accurately struck ball from about 25 yards out that swerved into the goal to the keeper's right. Not long after that, the Sports Boys had a man sent off for violent conduct. Then, early in the second half, another Sports Boy was sent off for his second cardable offense, and that was pretty much the game. Cusco scored again not long after that, a chip shot from about 18 yards out that caught the keeper off his line. Until about the 89th minute, Cusco squandered the few chances they managed to create, and the crowd began to give them a little grief. For most of the second half, the crowd's main amusement was in watching the somewhat hapless and poorly supported striker for the Sports Boys, who, by about the 70th minute, was itching to call a taxi. But in the 89th minute Cusco scored again, a well-struck ball from the left of the arc that squibbed into the goal, just inside the far post. So that made everyone happy.
This Wednesday I start the hike to Macchu Picchu. Most equipment still requires purchasing/renting, which I will probably do tomorrow. If I'm efficient, I might be able to sneak in a city tour in the afternoon, to see more ruins. I have to admit that I'm getting a bit stir-crazy/homesick, and really can't wait to get on with the second half of my trip.
Also, interesting developments in Madison. Looks like, for now at least, protesters are holding the Capitol building, with the approval of the police. I hope, for the sake of the state and its workers, that Walker and the Republicans lose this.
Be well, everyone.
Dear Wisconsin...
The next time you decide to erupt in massive and sustained civil action and protest, please provide one to two months' of advance notice, so I can plan to be there. Thank you.
Saturday, February 26, 2011
The importance of music
Okay, so the radio in the home of my host family is tuned to 98.7 FM, otherwise known as "Ritmo Romantico," which they are fond of advertising every three or four minutes and which probably needs no translation from me. Mainstream romantic music in Peru, I have found, makes me want to buy an extra large bag of cotton balls and to spend the rest of the day stuffing its contents into my ears. It's somehow refreshing to me that this also true of mainstream romantic music in the States. I'm not referring to all romantic music, don't get me wrong, just the stuff that sounds like someone invented a device capable of taking cotton candy and rendering it into sound.
The radio tends to be on a lot, because the housekeeper enjoys listening to it during the day. It's also the soundtrack to lunch and dinner, and occasionally to breakfast. It doesn't help that a surprising number of the songs are probably or definitely remakes of romantic songs in America, circa 1990. The other day I heard "It Must Have Been Love," by Roxette, which, okay, strictly speaking is not an American group, but which fits nicely with the Ritmo Romantico theme. I guess Roxette recorded a Spanish version in the mid-90s, for which I will never forgive them.
Last night I went to see some live music. This was by sheer happenstance. Initially I went to a local pub at about 10:30pm to wait for Jesus, the director of the language school. Since yesterday was my last day, we were meant to head out for some drinks. However, he was a bit late, and after a little while I ended up chatting with a couple of folks from the UK. Nice conversation, mostly about the differences between meeting people while traveling and meeting people at home, and how the former seems to somehow be easier than the latter. After about half an hour, Jesus arrived and informed me that he and his friends would be at Mushrooms, which is a nearby club. He bustled off, and I stayed to chat and to finish my beer for another 20 minutes or so. And off I went to Mushrooms.
I learned last night that finding someone in a club is literally impossible. The FBI should know this; it would cut the costs of their witness protection programs by many percentage points. Just take your high-level mob informant, walk him into the nearest discotheque, and plant him in a booth or on the dance floor. The moment you turn your back he will instantly melt into the crowd, disappearing into anonymity more certainly than if the best plastic surgeon in the world had all the time and resources to work on him. For this reason, he needs a tracking collar or beacon of some kind, because you, FBI, are not exempt from the truly wonderous anonymity-producing effects of the discotheque.
So I couldn't find Jesus. I tried calling a couple of times, but calling someone in a discotheque is equally as fruitless as looking for them, unless his or her ringtone is set to jet-engine levels of loudness. Which some of them are.
Just down the street from Mushrooms was another establishment, the Lek, in which there was actual live music. From the street, it sounded like astonishingly good live music. Having nothing better to do, and disinterested in scouring other discotheques for evidence of Jesus, I went in, ordered a drink, and listened. The band - called Phuno, if I understood the bouncer correctly - was composed of a diminutive lead singer with an amazing baritone (I think) voice, a lead guitarist who must have been playing since he was in the womb, a bass guitarist who looked like a Peruvian version of U2's The Edge, an amazingly versatile and creative saxophonist, and a slightly portly drummer with a nearly flawless sense of rhythm. Boy, were they good. Of course, it was made all the more enjoyable and stunning by the fact that the only Peruvian music I had heard up until that point involved the profligate, one might say excessive, use of pan flutes and synthesized drums. This was, frankly, a vast improvement. I freely admit that this is a matter of taste. But, for my money, you really can't beat the experience of suddenly realizing that the vaguely familiar song the Peruvian rock/blues band in front of you is playing is a brilliant cover of the Doors' "Light My Fire." They also played "No Yo Se Mañana," which I think is originally by Julio Iglesias; most of their songs I didn't recognize, of course, but they were all masterful.
Naturally, the experience made me miss my guitar. I made a cursory effort to find them on the web, but video and audio streaming is a bit sluggish here. Perhaps after returning to the states...
Today I move on to a hostal. Back to dorm-style living for a little while, probably for the last time in my life. Next week, March 2nd, I leave for Macchu Picchu. The weeks after that will be given over to a rainforest excursion of undetermined length, and some traveling around southern Peru, before I make my way back to Lima a day or two before my flight on March 25th.
Hope all is well at home. I am missing friends and family greatly. Keep up the fight, Wisconsin!
The radio tends to be on a lot, because the housekeeper enjoys listening to it during the day. It's also the soundtrack to lunch and dinner, and occasionally to breakfast. It doesn't help that a surprising number of the songs are probably or definitely remakes of romantic songs in America, circa 1990. The other day I heard "It Must Have Been Love," by Roxette, which, okay, strictly speaking is not an American group, but which fits nicely with the Ritmo Romantico theme. I guess Roxette recorded a Spanish version in the mid-90s, for which I will never forgive them.
Last night I went to see some live music. This was by sheer happenstance. Initially I went to a local pub at about 10:30pm to wait for Jesus, the director of the language school. Since yesterday was my last day, we were meant to head out for some drinks. However, he was a bit late, and after a little while I ended up chatting with a couple of folks from the UK. Nice conversation, mostly about the differences between meeting people while traveling and meeting people at home, and how the former seems to somehow be easier than the latter. After about half an hour, Jesus arrived and informed me that he and his friends would be at Mushrooms, which is a nearby club. He bustled off, and I stayed to chat and to finish my beer for another 20 minutes or so. And off I went to Mushrooms.
I learned last night that finding someone in a club is literally impossible. The FBI should know this; it would cut the costs of their witness protection programs by many percentage points. Just take your high-level mob informant, walk him into the nearest discotheque, and plant him in a booth or on the dance floor. The moment you turn your back he will instantly melt into the crowd, disappearing into anonymity more certainly than if the best plastic surgeon in the world had all the time and resources to work on him. For this reason, he needs a tracking collar or beacon of some kind, because you, FBI, are not exempt from the truly wonderous anonymity-producing effects of the discotheque.
So I couldn't find Jesus. I tried calling a couple of times, but calling someone in a discotheque is equally as fruitless as looking for them, unless his or her ringtone is set to jet-engine levels of loudness. Which some of them are.
Just down the street from Mushrooms was another establishment, the Lek, in which there was actual live music. From the street, it sounded like astonishingly good live music. Having nothing better to do, and disinterested in scouring other discotheques for evidence of Jesus, I went in, ordered a drink, and listened. The band - called Phuno, if I understood the bouncer correctly - was composed of a diminutive lead singer with an amazing baritone (I think) voice, a lead guitarist who must have been playing since he was in the womb, a bass guitarist who looked like a Peruvian version of U2's The Edge, an amazingly versatile and creative saxophonist, and a slightly portly drummer with a nearly flawless sense of rhythm. Boy, were they good. Of course, it was made all the more enjoyable and stunning by the fact that the only Peruvian music I had heard up until that point involved the profligate, one might say excessive, use of pan flutes and synthesized drums. This was, frankly, a vast improvement. I freely admit that this is a matter of taste. But, for my money, you really can't beat the experience of suddenly realizing that the vaguely familiar song the Peruvian rock/blues band in front of you is playing is a brilliant cover of the Doors' "Light My Fire." They also played "No Yo Se Mañana," which I think is originally by Julio Iglesias; most of their songs I didn't recognize, of course, but they were all masterful.
Naturally, the experience made me miss my guitar. I made a cursory effort to find them on the web, but video and audio streaming is a bit sluggish here. Perhaps after returning to the states...
Today I move on to a hostal. Back to dorm-style living for a little while, probably for the last time in my life. Next week, March 2nd, I leave for Macchu Picchu. The weeks after that will be given over to a rainforest excursion of undetermined length, and some traveling around southern Peru, before I make my way back to Lima a day or two before my flight on March 25th.
Hope all is well at home. I am missing friends and family greatly. Keep up the fight, Wisconsin!
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
The wrong way to do laundry
Words of the day
lavandería: laundromat
ropa limpia: clean clothes
esperar: to wait
Last Friday, I went in search of a lavandería. As you might expect, in Peru they're not exactly akin to laundromats in the USA. Here, they're more like dry cleaners. You drop off your clothes, come back a little later, pick them up and pay by the kilogram. In most lavanderias, they have washers and dryers on site, so clothes-washing-and-drying is, by and large, a predictable process. I did not choose such an establishment.
No, the one I chose is also a peluquería, more commonly known as a hair salon. What possessed me to do so remains a mystery to me. Mostly, I think I just wanted my clothes washed, and anyone willing to do so on short notice was fine by me. However, the young woman who took my bag of clothes informed me that it would be two days before my clothes were ready, and this after her partner had made off with to find change for my 50 sole note. I did a quick calculation in my head: yes, I did have clothes enough to last me for two more days, but really no more, absent some significant recycling. Sadly, the obvious didn't occur to me until the launderer/hairdresser had handed off my bag of clothes to someone I assume was her daughter, who didn't seem at all thrilled to be a designated courier of someone else's dirty clothes. The obvious is that two days was the estimated drying time, because she, like most people in Peru, does not own a dryer.
It rained all weekend, with rare moments of respite, and even fewer moments of sunshine. So, when I showed up on Sunday, both of the proprietors of the lavandería, occupied with fairly extensive hairdressing projects, looked at me like I was asking them to conjure up magical laundry-drying fairies out of the hairspray-scented air. Which I effectively was. Come back Monday, they said.
I did as I was told, stewing a little in my own juices, and wearing clothing rapidly approaching it's expiration date. Fortunately, Monday morning was warm and sunny for about 5 hours. That afternoon I again showed my face at the lavandería, and was greeted with similar bemusement. Come back at 7pm. After all, both of them had been there working all day, and my clothes were likely at the younger one's home, still hanging on the line. So I came back at 7, and of course my clothes were not there. However, neither was the one charged with doing my laundry, who had just left to retrieve it. About an hour and one or two hairstylings later, she rounded the corner carrying my bag of clothing. During that hour I had been nurturing a growing anger - this wasn't exactly what I had paid for, and the last thing I wanted to be doing in Peru is stand around staring into space wearing musty clothes. But when I saw this woman rounding the corner with my bag, I realized that she had left work to walk home to retrieve my clothes, then walked back carrying a 7 kilogram weight over her shoulder. This after probably being on her feet all day. So I walked home, still feeling slightly angry, carrying my bag of still-damp clothing and a healthy dose of perspective as well. Still, that's the last time I walk into a hair salon and ask them to do my laundry. That's solid advice for everyone, by the way.
Less sightseeing the past few days. Lots of rain, some studying, some preparation for the coming weeks. My last week of language school! My proficiency has improved, but I find that with every day comes new rules, new verb forms, new words, and it's all congealed together in my brain into a nearly formless mass. Hopefully given a little time and practice it'll become a little more defined.
Be well, everyone!
lavandería: laundromat
ropa limpia: clean clothes
esperar: to wait
Last Friday, I went in search of a lavandería. As you might expect, in Peru they're not exactly akin to laundromats in the USA. Here, they're more like dry cleaners. You drop off your clothes, come back a little later, pick them up and pay by the kilogram. In most lavanderias, they have washers and dryers on site, so clothes-washing-and-drying is, by and large, a predictable process. I did not choose such an establishment.
No, the one I chose is also a peluquería, more commonly known as a hair salon. What possessed me to do so remains a mystery to me. Mostly, I think I just wanted my clothes washed, and anyone willing to do so on short notice was fine by me. However, the young woman who took my bag of clothes informed me that it would be two days before my clothes were ready, and this after her partner had made off with to find change for my 50 sole note. I did a quick calculation in my head: yes, I did have clothes enough to last me for two more days, but really no more, absent some significant recycling. Sadly, the obvious didn't occur to me until the launderer/hairdresser had handed off my bag of clothes to someone I assume was her daughter, who didn't seem at all thrilled to be a designated courier of someone else's dirty clothes. The obvious is that two days was the estimated drying time, because she, like most people in Peru, does not own a dryer.
It rained all weekend, with rare moments of respite, and even fewer moments of sunshine. So, when I showed up on Sunday, both of the proprietors of the lavandería, occupied with fairly extensive hairdressing projects, looked at me like I was asking them to conjure up magical laundry-drying fairies out of the hairspray-scented air. Which I effectively was. Come back Monday, they said.
I did as I was told, stewing a little in my own juices, and wearing clothing rapidly approaching it's expiration date. Fortunately, Monday morning was warm and sunny for about 5 hours. That afternoon I again showed my face at the lavandería, and was greeted with similar bemusement. Come back at 7pm. After all, both of them had been there working all day, and my clothes were likely at the younger one's home, still hanging on the line. So I came back at 7, and of course my clothes were not there. However, neither was the one charged with doing my laundry, who had just left to retrieve it. About an hour and one or two hairstylings later, she rounded the corner carrying my bag of clothing. During that hour I had been nurturing a growing anger - this wasn't exactly what I had paid for, and the last thing I wanted to be doing in Peru is stand around staring into space wearing musty clothes. But when I saw this woman rounding the corner with my bag, I realized that she had left work to walk home to retrieve my clothes, then walked back carrying a 7 kilogram weight over her shoulder. This after probably being on her feet all day. So I walked home, still feeling slightly angry, carrying my bag of still-damp clothing and a healthy dose of perspective as well. Still, that's the last time I walk into a hair salon and ask them to do my laundry. That's solid advice for everyone, by the way.
Less sightseeing the past few days. Lots of rain, some studying, some preparation for the coming weeks. My last week of language school! My proficiency has improved, but I find that with every day comes new rules, new verb forms, new words, and it's all congealed together in my brain into a nearly formless mass. Hopefully given a little time and practice it'll become a little more defined.
Be well, everyone!
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Ruins were built to last
The Incans, a people and culture that extended from about the 13th century to the early-to-mid 1500s, built things that have survived earthquakes, mudslides, and the yearly three month period from January to March in which the chance of precipitation on any given day is 100%. They did so with extensive slave labor, of course, but also with a sort of ingenuity and precision that is really awe-inspiring. What they built was designed to last, and no doubt much of what they constructed would still be standing today had the Spanish not disassembled much of it to build their churches.
Yesterday, I went to a set of ruins called Qorikancha, which is Quechua (the most predominant native language in Peru) for "Golden Courtyard." It was a temple devoted to worship of, primarily, the sun, though within the temple are rooms dedicated to the moon and the stars. Apparently much of it was actually plated in gold and silver, which was mostly melted down by the Spanish. It was supposedly the wealthiest temple in all of the Incan empire, and every June 24th it's one of the sites in Cusco where a massive solstice festival takes place. True to form, the Spanish built a church on top of it, but fortunately they left many of the structures within alone. I guess even they knew good work when they saw it.
As predictably happens at every Incan site, as soon as you walk through the front door you're set upon by tour guides hawking their tour-guiding skills, informing you that if you walk through the site uninformed by them, you're missing about 90% of what is important and that you will alwaysalwaysalways regret it. Which is probably true. This time I shelled out the 20 soles asked by one of the guides, and it was probably worth it. Within the site are several small structures, most of them with three doors of entrance. The stones used to build these structures are huge, but are fitted together with astonishing precision. In one room you can stand on a small stone pedistal and look through a window, beyond which are windows into other structures that are shaped identically and are in fact perfectly symmetrical within the frame of the first window. At some point soon I'll put up a picture on flickr.
At one point during the tour the guide showed me some stone blocks with small protuberances set in a wall. They seemed to be clustered together in one spot. He said that the shadows cast by the protuberances during each solstice cover perfectly protuberances in stones lower down in the wall, and that the wall is essentially a huge sundial. It's not known for sure if this is the purpose of the protuberances, but it seems a good theory.
This puts me in mind of a trip I took with the Sierra Club several years ago to the American southwest. There I was involved as a volunteer with the excavation of an archeological site once occupied by Native Americans. The site was bordered on one side by the face of a small cliff, and on this cliff were inscriptions, drawings, hieroglyphics, and engravings. Interestingly, an outcropping of stone high up in the wall cast a shadow against the wall that covered certain markings perfectly during each solstice. Awareness of nature's intrinsic rhythms is a common feature of preindustrial and aboriginal peoples. This is, of course, not new, and not unknown.
I spend a little time dwelling on this because it resonates a little with what I've been reading lately. The author I've been reading, a Jungian psychologist named Robert A Johnson, writes extensively about the unconscious as a source of creativity and energy. In fact, he suggests, the unconscious is THE source of creativity and energy, and finding ways of healthily accessing, encountering, living with, drawing energy and wholeness from the unconscious is essential to living as a healthy and intrinsically whole human being. If you don't, if you neglect the hidden forces within you that nevertheless shape who you are, you are almost certain to live unhappy and disconnected, or at least with the pervasive sense that something is missing. He broadly terms the work of discovering and healthily integrating your unconscious self, "inner work." Inner work takes a multiplicity of forms, including ritual, dream interpretation, spiritual journeys, and the like.
His mentor, Carl Jung, apparently spent a great deal of time with aboriginal peoples. He makes the observation that many such peoples spend much of their waking life - and their dreaming life, for that matter - engaged in inner work of one form or another. The days, the seasons, the years all had intrinsic rhythms to which they were attuned, and rituals of one form or another were common. Dreams were felt to be important and were openly discussed, and the unseen world of the spirit was felt to be close at hand, and was sought out and directly interacted with.
It's easy to reflexively believe that because aboriginal people were "closer" to nature that they were intrinsically better or happier people than us modernites. I don't want to make that claim. Like I said, the Incans built their amazing temples on the backs of countless slaves. But I do think that there are reasons that prehistoric people, those who lived lives not unlike the very first humans, invested so much time and energy in things like ritual and other sorts of access to the unseen world. One gets the sense that such things were not done apart from everyday life, but rather were directly integrated into everyday life. How many of the ills of Western modernity, both individual and collective - the depression, the anxiety, the alienation - have arisen because we have devalued and ignored as unimportant or without scientific validation things we cannot see but know intuitively are there?
Enough for now. Hope all is well at home. Scott Walker is, it turns out, a bigger tool than anyone anticipated, and with any luck he'll be recalled next January. Wish I was there to join the fight. This is actually not a bad website for on-the-ground updates.
By the way, here's my flickr photostream.
Be well, everyone.
Yesterday, I went to a set of ruins called Qorikancha, which is Quechua (the most predominant native language in Peru) for "Golden Courtyard." It was a temple devoted to worship of, primarily, the sun, though within the temple are rooms dedicated to the moon and the stars. Apparently much of it was actually plated in gold and silver, which was mostly melted down by the Spanish. It was supposedly the wealthiest temple in all of the Incan empire, and every June 24th it's one of the sites in Cusco where a massive solstice festival takes place. True to form, the Spanish built a church on top of it, but fortunately they left many of the structures within alone. I guess even they knew good work when they saw it.
As predictably happens at every Incan site, as soon as you walk through the front door you're set upon by tour guides hawking their tour-guiding skills, informing you that if you walk through the site uninformed by them, you're missing about 90% of what is important and that you will alwaysalwaysalways regret it. Which is probably true. This time I shelled out the 20 soles asked by one of the guides, and it was probably worth it. Within the site are several small structures, most of them with three doors of entrance. The stones used to build these structures are huge, but are fitted together with astonishing precision. In one room you can stand on a small stone pedistal and look through a window, beyond which are windows into other structures that are shaped identically and are in fact perfectly symmetrical within the frame of the first window. At some point soon I'll put up a picture on flickr.
At one point during the tour the guide showed me some stone blocks with small protuberances set in a wall. They seemed to be clustered together in one spot. He said that the shadows cast by the protuberances during each solstice cover perfectly protuberances in stones lower down in the wall, and that the wall is essentially a huge sundial. It's not known for sure if this is the purpose of the protuberances, but it seems a good theory.
This puts me in mind of a trip I took with the Sierra Club several years ago to the American southwest. There I was involved as a volunteer with the excavation of an archeological site once occupied by Native Americans. The site was bordered on one side by the face of a small cliff, and on this cliff were inscriptions, drawings, hieroglyphics, and engravings. Interestingly, an outcropping of stone high up in the wall cast a shadow against the wall that covered certain markings perfectly during each solstice. Awareness of nature's intrinsic rhythms is a common feature of preindustrial and aboriginal peoples. This is, of course, not new, and not unknown.
I spend a little time dwelling on this because it resonates a little with what I've been reading lately. The author I've been reading, a Jungian psychologist named Robert A Johnson, writes extensively about the unconscious as a source of creativity and energy. In fact, he suggests, the unconscious is THE source of creativity and energy, and finding ways of healthily accessing, encountering, living with, drawing energy and wholeness from the unconscious is essential to living as a healthy and intrinsically whole human being. If you don't, if you neglect the hidden forces within you that nevertheless shape who you are, you are almost certain to live unhappy and disconnected, or at least with the pervasive sense that something is missing. He broadly terms the work of discovering and healthily integrating your unconscious self, "inner work." Inner work takes a multiplicity of forms, including ritual, dream interpretation, spiritual journeys, and the like.
His mentor, Carl Jung, apparently spent a great deal of time with aboriginal peoples. He makes the observation that many such peoples spend much of their waking life - and their dreaming life, for that matter - engaged in inner work of one form or another. The days, the seasons, the years all had intrinsic rhythms to which they were attuned, and rituals of one form or another were common. Dreams were felt to be important and were openly discussed, and the unseen world of the spirit was felt to be close at hand, and was sought out and directly interacted with.
It's easy to reflexively believe that because aboriginal people were "closer" to nature that they were intrinsically better or happier people than us modernites. I don't want to make that claim. Like I said, the Incans built their amazing temples on the backs of countless slaves. But I do think that there are reasons that prehistoric people, those who lived lives not unlike the very first humans, invested so much time and energy in things like ritual and other sorts of access to the unseen world. One gets the sense that such things were not done apart from everyday life, but rather were directly integrated into everyday life. How many of the ills of Western modernity, both individual and collective - the depression, the anxiety, the alienation - have arisen because we have devalued and ignored as unimportant or without scientific validation things we cannot see but know intuitively are there?
Enough for now. Hope all is well at home. Scott Walker is, it turns out, a bigger tool than anyone anticipated, and with any luck he'll be recalled next January. Wish I was there to join the fight. This is actually not a bad website for on-the-ground updates.
By the way, here's my flickr photostream.
Be well, everyone.
Friday, February 18, 2011
Cooking and dancing
I'm sitting in a ridiculously loud internet café at the moment, courtesy of three Playstation-ready televisions and the Peruvian youth occupying them, so I anticipate this will be a relatively short post.
Yesterday I attended a cooking class, where the chef, speaking only Spanish, made a very good dish called lomo saltado. Potatoes (which practically everything in Peru contains), onions, tomatoes, beef, garlic, and a truly impressive amount of soy sauce, all stir-fried together in oceanic quantities of vegetable oil, and served with rice. Very good, and about as salty as seafood. Most of the other people in the small class spoke at least some English, and I got to chat briefly with a woman from New Jersey, mainly about the shady mechanic she was trying to prevent her father from taking her car to back home.
After the class last night, I wandered around the Plaza and the surrounding streets, waiting for my instructor, Sandra, with whom I later went out to have a drink. There's a small street off the plaza well-known as a tourist hot-spot. It's sort of like Waikiki on a small scale, with some other subtle differences. Anyway, it's also known as a place where drugs are frequently sold and where people in the employ of the police frequently set up sting operations to catch careless tourists and locals. I decided to walk down it and see how long it took before someone offered me drugs. Two seconds in, I got my first offer. Four seconds in, my second. Six seconds in, my third. There's so much marijuana in this particular street that you could probably just walk up and down it for a while and get high.
A little later I met Sandra, my instructor. She speaks more English than I speak Spanish, but there was still an impressive language barrier, which we manage to haltingly overcome. We first went to Paddy's, self-described as the highest Irish owned pub in the world. Afterwards we headed to one of the local clubs, where people were salsa-ing as effortlessly as most people walk. And I don't think this particular club was exceptional in that respect. Among my favorite moments of the evening was when the entire dance floor broke into what can only be described as a Salsa line dance. I could be wrong, but I think the line dance is an American export, which can be added to rock and roll and the national park system as good American inventions. A distant third, granted, but still, a good American invention.
And Playstations? On the whole, a bad Japanese invention. The number one cause of headache in me right now. Hope all is well, everyone. Glad to be in Peru, but I miss people back home.
Yesterday I attended a cooking class, where the chef, speaking only Spanish, made a very good dish called lomo saltado. Potatoes (which practically everything in Peru contains), onions, tomatoes, beef, garlic, and a truly impressive amount of soy sauce, all stir-fried together in oceanic quantities of vegetable oil, and served with rice. Very good, and about as salty as seafood. Most of the other people in the small class spoke at least some English, and I got to chat briefly with a woman from New Jersey, mainly about the shady mechanic she was trying to prevent her father from taking her car to back home.
After the class last night, I wandered around the Plaza and the surrounding streets, waiting for my instructor, Sandra, with whom I later went out to have a drink. There's a small street off the plaza well-known as a tourist hot-spot. It's sort of like Waikiki on a small scale, with some other subtle differences. Anyway, it's also known as a place where drugs are frequently sold and where people in the employ of the police frequently set up sting operations to catch careless tourists and locals. I decided to walk down it and see how long it took before someone offered me drugs. Two seconds in, I got my first offer. Four seconds in, my second. Six seconds in, my third. There's so much marijuana in this particular street that you could probably just walk up and down it for a while and get high.
A little later I met Sandra, my instructor. She speaks more English than I speak Spanish, but there was still an impressive language barrier, which we manage to haltingly overcome. We first went to Paddy's, self-described as the highest Irish owned pub in the world. Afterwards we headed to one of the local clubs, where people were salsa-ing as effortlessly as most people walk. And I don't think this particular club was exceptional in that respect. Among my favorite moments of the evening was when the entire dance floor broke into what can only be described as a Salsa line dance. I could be wrong, but I think the line dance is an American export, which can be added to rock and roll and the national park system as good American inventions. A distant third, granted, but still, a good American invention.
And Playstations? On the whole, a bad Japanese invention. The number one cause of headache in me right now. Hope all is well, everyone. Glad to be in Peru, but I miss people back home.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Continued...
Words of the day are on holiday, and will return shortly
Shortly after eating lunch at Pisac last Sunday, with my nausea under somewhat better control after swallowing some magic anti-nausea tablet generously donated by Catherine, we caught a taxi for the ruins of Pisac. The ruins lie far above the town of Pisac. It is theoretically possible to walk up a long, long, long path of inclined earth and stairs to get there, but if the arduousness of the descent was any indication, climbing would probably take ultramarathon levels of fitness. In my youth!
The taxi cost 25 soles, which is fairly pricy for a taxi in Peru. An error in translation lead us to believe that the trip would be 15 soles. "Veintecinco," or 25, was the driver's initial offer. Game, we replied "cincuenta," which we transiently believed to be 15, but which in actuality means 50. Naturally, finding himself to be among seasoned and hard-nosed hagglers, the driver grudgingly accepted our offer. Funnily enough, expert traveler Daniel wanted to move on initially, believing we could get a better price than 15. I think one of the markers of the professional nomad is an instinctive objection to paying more for something than one otherwise needs to. Fortunately, when we reached the top of the long, long, long and winding road that leads to the ruins of Pisac, the driver held us to 25 soles rather than our offered 50.
Like the ruins of Sacsaywaman, the ruins of Pisac rely bely description. They're built almost into the face of the mountain; also like the ruins of Sacsaywaman, one can't help but be amazed by the sheer manpower that must have been necessary to build such structures in pre-crane and pre-bulldozer times. There were many things of note at the site, and I have some pictures up on my flickr page. Two things to remark upon: first, the Incan inhabitants of the site buried at least some of their dead in the face of the mountain wall. After the Spanish arrived, a large number of these graves were plundered, leaving the mountain wall with an almost honeycomb appearance. Second, the Incans are well known for their ingenuity at terracing, in order to facilitate different sorts of agriculture in what is otherwise a less-than-forgiving climate. Pisac had amazing terracing, extending up and down the slanted earth on either side and beneath the ruins. A book I brought along suggests that, taken together, the shape of the ruins and the terracing, when seen from afar, is reminiscent of a condor. I'm unsure if I buy it, but the Incans are also known for building settlements and other sorts of structures in the shapes of significant animals, so I wouldn't put it past them. The terracing looks like massive sets of stairs, and they have held up extraordinarily well over the last 500 years, especially given the amount of rain this part of Peru gets in certain parts of the year.
We spent three or four hours wandering the ruins, at least an hour of which was spent slowly making our way down. It's amazing to me, the various lifeways people have adopted over the centuries. I could never live on the side of a mountain, I think, especially one as steep as the one the Pisac ruins lay upon. But people did it, for hundreds of years.
At the end of the day we sat on a second story balcony overlooking the market at Pisac. After that, we made our way back to Cusco; the return ride was much more forgiving than the ride there, for some reason.
Regarding Daniel's philosophy in the previous post, I definitely agree that many careers exist that are generally in line with the personalities and values of those who pursue them, and which require minimal to no compromise by those personalities and in those values. I guess what I found most compelling and, for me, relevant, is the fact that, particularly in the developed world, there aren't really any viable ideas or paths children and adolescents are encouraged to pursue other than that of a career. It's just sort of assumed and expected that you will pursue a career of some sort as a means to success or happiness. It's not so much that the idea is wrong for everyone, or even wrong for most people; rather, it's presented as this sort of self-evident path to follow. You aren't really encouraged to examine it, or even to ask for whom or for what you're pursuing a particular career.
If you're fortunate and mindful, and you spend time working out what you want to do and achieve and see and experience, and, for that matter, who you want to meet and know and learn from, you're likely to find yourself on a path that suits and satisfies and invigorates you. However, I suspect there are a significant number of people out there who never had the chance to really look deeply at those sorts of questions, or who were never encouraged to do so by those who had influence over them. And I think in a lot of ways the system as a whole does not encourage that sort of questioning.
In any case, thanks for reading. I have a flickr account for those who are interested, and I'll post the website as soon as I can log in to it, which flickr is not letting me do at the moment.
Be well, everyone!
Shortly after eating lunch at Pisac last Sunday, with my nausea under somewhat better control after swallowing some magic anti-nausea tablet generously donated by Catherine, we caught a taxi for the ruins of Pisac. The ruins lie far above the town of Pisac. It is theoretically possible to walk up a long, long, long path of inclined earth and stairs to get there, but if the arduousness of the descent was any indication, climbing would probably take ultramarathon levels of fitness. In my youth!
The taxi cost 25 soles, which is fairly pricy for a taxi in Peru. An error in translation lead us to believe that the trip would be 15 soles. "Veintecinco," or 25, was the driver's initial offer. Game, we replied "cincuenta," which we transiently believed to be 15, but which in actuality means 50. Naturally, finding himself to be among seasoned and hard-nosed hagglers, the driver grudgingly accepted our offer. Funnily enough, expert traveler Daniel wanted to move on initially, believing we could get a better price than 15. I think one of the markers of the professional nomad is an instinctive objection to paying more for something than one otherwise needs to. Fortunately, when we reached the top of the long, long, long and winding road that leads to the ruins of Pisac, the driver held us to 25 soles rather than our offered 50.
Like the ruins of Sacsaywaman, the ruins of Pisac rely bely description. They're built almost into the face of the mountain; also like the ruins of Sacsaywaman, one can't help but be amazed by the sheer manpower that must have been necessary to build such structures in pre-crane and pre-bulldozer times. There were many things of note at the site, and I have some pictures up on my flickr page. Two things to remark upon: first, the Incan inhabitants of the site buried at least some of their dead in the face of the mountain wall. After the Spanish arrived, a large number of these graves were plundered, leaving the mountain wall with an almost honeycomb appearance. Second, the Incans are well known for their ingenuity at terracing, in order to facilitate different sorts of agriculture in what is otherwise a less-than-forgiving climate. Pisac had amazing terracing, extending up and down the slanted earth on either side and beneath the ruins. A book I brought along suggests that, taken together, the shape of the ruins and the terracing, when seen from afar, is reminiscent of a condor. I'm unsure if I buy it, but the Incans are also known for building settlements and other sorts of structures in the shapes of significant animals, so I wouldn't put it past them. The terracing looks like massive sets of stairs, and they have held up extraordinarily well over the last 500 years, especially given the amount of rain this part of Peru gets in certain parts of the year.
We spent three or four hours wandering the ruins, at least an hour of which was spent slowly making our way down. It's amazing to me, the various lifeways people have adopted over the centuries. I could never live on the side of a mountain, I think, especially one as steep as the one the Pisac ruins lay upon. But people did it, for hundreds of years.
At the end of the day we sat on a second story balcony overlooking the market at Pisac. After that, we made our way back to Cusco; the return ride was much more forgiving than the ride there, for some reason.
Regarding Daniel's philosophy in the previous post, I definitely agree that many careers exist that are generally in line with the personalities and values of those who pursue them, and which require minimal to no compromise by those personalities and in those values. I guess what I found most compelling and, for me, relevant, is the fact that, particularly in the developed world, there aren't really any viable ideas or paths children and adolescents are encouraged to pursue other than that of a career. It's just sort of assumed and expected that you will pursue a career of some sort as a means to success or happiness. It's not so much that the idea is wrong for everyone, or even wrong for most people; rather, it's presented as this sort of self-evident path to follow. You aren't really encouraged to examine it, or even to ask for whom or for what you're pursuing a particular career.
If you're fortunate and mindful, and you spend time working out what you want to do and achieve and see and experience, and, for that matter, who you want to meet and know and learn from, you're likely to find yourself on a path that suits and satisfies and invigorates you. However, I suspect there are a significant number of people out there who never had the chance to really look deeply at those sorts of questions, or who were never encouraged to do so by those who had influence over them. And I think in a lot of ways the system as a whole does not encourage that sort of questioning.
In any case, thanks for reading. I have a flickr account for those who are interested, and I'll post the website as soon as I can log in to it, which flickr is not letting me do at the moment.
Be well, everyone!
Monday, February 14, 2011
Over the weekend
Words of the day:
serpenteante: winding
regatear: to haggle
quemadura del sol: sunburn
Over the weekend, I visited two sets of Incan ruins. On Saturday, I walked up to Sacsaywamán, a set of ruins overlooking Cusco. The word sounds a lot like "sexy woman," but it's false advertising. The ruins were used by the Incans to lay siege to Cusco after the Spanish came and took it over. In 1536 the Spanish, who I guess were strugging mightily to hold Cusco while being under constant attack from the forces of Manco Inca, managed to capture Sacsawamán with a cavalry of 50 men. Apparently thousands of Incan dead littered the site after the defeat, and the Cusco coat of arms includes eight condors in a kind of grotesque commemoration of all the carrion-eating birds who came for the dead.
The walk was a bit rough, mostly uphill, made somehow worse by the fact that Saturday was the first consistently sunny day in Cusco since I´ve been here. Black rain jackets absorb and conserve heat amazingly well, I found. Beyond the entrance to the ruins, there is a long and somewhat steeply climbing road, down which flew three teenagers on bicycles when I was about halfway up. I also was intercepted on my way up by a young man from Cusco who seemed very friendly and of course tried to sell his services as a guide once we got to the top, for 40 soles, which in Cusco is ridiculously expensive.
The ruins were, of course, astonishing, and no description or even pictures can really do it justice. A lot of the stones that comprised the old fortress were pilfered after Incan times and used to build churches and other structures in Cusco. But a not insignificant portion of the ruins remains, and many of the stones are astonishingly huge and correspondingly heavy, and were presumably carried somehow to the site by the Incans. And after that, they had to be shaped so they could fit together and not fall down whenever some Incan, exhausted from hauling several multi-ton stones up the hill, leaned against one for a rest. What used to be the fortress looks out over Cusco, and on the day I was there you could see for miles. Behind the fortress is a wide green pasture, upon which grazed a few alpacas. Behind that were the foundations of what are thought to be large towers and other structures, used in Incan times for shelter, and storage of food and water. I walked around for an hour and a half or so, then trekked back down. At the bottom of the aforementioned road I bought some orange juice squeezed right in front of me from one of several vendors selling the exact same thing. I got back to my host family´s home in time for lunch, with newly tired legs and, sadly and foolishly, a healthy sunburn.
Sunday was probably my most interesting day here so far. I spent the day at Pisac, the name of a town and of the ruins that overlook it from a mountain far, far overhead. I went with Catherine, who I think I've mentioned before as one of the other students in the Amigos language school, and one of her friends from the hostel in which she is staying, an extremely well-traveled New Zealander by the name of Daniel.
To get to Pisac from Cusco by road, you typically take un collectivo, which is basically a van driven with reckless abandon by a Cusqueño. After searching for about 45 minutes for the departure point, we sat in the back of the van and took off for Pisac, with, of all things, "Love Shack" playing on the radio. By and large, automobiles in Cusco have comparatively few frills, and one of the things typically done without is a healthy set of shocks. So it is literally possible to feel every single imperfection in the road, of which there are many. Between that, and the fact that in this extremely mountainous area of Peru most roads outside of town are switchbacks writ large, I rather quickly developed rather persistent nausea. Fortunately, I sat next to an open window; the fresh air was a good soporific. The driver rather fearlessly passed more than a few vehicles while heading straight into blind turns. In one case he passed a bus despite the presence of a large and uncomfortably close oncoming truck. In addition to healthy shocks, Cusqueñian vehicles lack what in America would be called "pick-up," and the oncoming truck flashed its lights at us for what seemed like several minutes before we pulled back into our lane. In general, whenever I ride in a taxi or a collectivo, I try to take comfort in the fact that every driver in Cusco seems to have a shared understanding that there are few, if any, rules of the road, and is able to switch from offensive to defensive driving seemingly without thinking.
Pisac is known for its massive outdoor market, and Sundays are typically the busiest days. After we arrived we wandered the market, and I purchased a rather nice handmade bag in which I placed several subsequently purchased souvenirs. Being from America it's a major switch to encounter merchandise without a price tag on it. It's expected that you will haggle, just like in The Life of Brian. For example, one merchant tried to sell me a very nice alpaca shawl. His initial price was 300 soles, which is around $125 dollars, give or take. Just by my trying to walk away from the guy he dropped the price to 100 soles. I probably could have gotten it for less, but my new bag was already a little heavy, and hiking the Pisac ruins lay ahead.
We ate lunch at a little restaurant owned and operated by a woman from Colorado. She sold healthy, vegetarian fare, and on a lark I ordered some kambucha, which is fermented tea, and in no way uniquely Peruvian. It actually tasted quite good, a little like cider, and it supposedly has any number of excellent health properties. So I'm not sure whether to blame it and the live bacterial cultures it contained for the return of my nausea, or just poor luck. Ultimately I ate very little lunch, and wasn´t able to participate that much in the very interesting conversation about career and personality types and success and the nature of happiness that Daniel and Catherine were having.
Let me say a little about this chap Daniel. He's a few years younger than me, intelligent, loquatious beyond belief, and a born traveler. He's from New Zealand, but has spent time in, among other places, the UK, Albania, and Thailand, and along the way has developed a coherent and detailed philosophy about his way of life (as your more committed and inquisitive wanderers tend to do, I imagine.) In part, he has a healthy and almost absolutist skepticism about the whole idea of "career," or a job to which you commit yourself over time, partly in hopes of advancement or the achievement of status. For him, the desirability of a career is an idea that is, in ways both explicit and implicit, taught to us from a very young age. It is taught even though having a career isn't necessarily appropriate for all people, or a sure or even likely way to fulfillment or happiness, and even though the idea may serve the system more than the people within the system. For him, the primary purpose of a career is the achievement of status, and status, for him, is empty, an accumulation of power and prestige and outward signs of success and wealth that ultimately doesn´t contribute to your happiness or to your development as a person. Better to avoid arrangements that limit your freedom of movement and choice, or that ask you to conform to particular expectations that may be inconsistent with who you are as a person. I actually think this last idea is probably what he was mostly driving at in the various conversations that the three of us had during the day. The idea of "playing the game" in order to secure some sort of advancement, even if doing so is somehow in contradiction with your own nature and your own desires, was, I think, the most offensive to him. I think I'm doing him justice, though he would probably quibble with a number of details, and would offer any number of qualifications and discursions.
I'm not going to get into what I think about all this, because I'm actually still thinking about it and working it out. Feel free to comment, though.
At this point, I'm going to break off. This post is already too ridiculously long. More later today or tomorrow!
serpenteante: winding
regatear: to haggle
quemadura del sol: sunburn
Over the weekend, I visited two sets of Incan ruins. On Saturday, I walked up to Sacsaywamán, a set of ruins overlooking Cusco. The word sounds a lot like "sexy woman," but it's false advertising. The ruins were used by the Incans to lay siege to Cusco after the Spanish came and took it over. In 1536 the Spanish, who I guess were strugging mightily to hold Cusco while being under constant attack from the forces of Manco Inca, managed to capture Sacsawamán with a cavalry of 50 men. Apparently thousands of Incan dead littered the site after the defeat, and the Cusco coat of arms includes eight condors in a kind of grotesque commemoration of all the carrion-eating birds who came for the dead.
The walk was a bit rough, mostly uphill, made somehow worse by the fact that Saturday was the first consistently sunny day in Cusco since I´ve been here. Black rain jackets absorb and conserve heat amazingly well, I found. Beyond the entrance to the ruins, there is a long and somewhat steeply climbing road, down which flew three teenagers on bicycles when I was about halfway up. I also was intercepted on my way up by a young man from Cusco who seemed very friendly and of course tried to sell his services as a guide once we got to the top, for 40 soles, which in Cusco is ridiculously expensive.
The ruins were, of course, astonishing, and no description or even pictures can really do it justice. A lot of the stones that comprised the old fortress were pilfered after Incan times and used to build churches and other structures in Cusco. But a not insignificant portion of the ruins remains, and many of the stones are astonishingly huge and correspondingly heavy, and were presumably carried somehow to the site by the Incans. And after that, they had to be shaped so they could fit together and not fall down whenever some Incan, exhausted from hauling several multi-ton stones up the hill, leaned against one for a rest. What used to be the fortress looks out over Cusco, and on the day I was there you could see for miles. Behind the fortress is a wide green pasture, upon which grazed a few alpacas. Behind that were the foundations of what are thought to be large towers and other structures, used in Incan times for shelter, and storage of food and water. I walked around for an hour and a half or so, then trekked back down. At the bottom of the aforementioned road I bought some orange juice squeezed right in front of me from one of several vendors selling the exact same thing. I got back to my host family´s home in time for lunch, with newly tired legs and, sadly and foolishly, a healthy sunburn.
Sunday was probably my most interesting day here so far. I spent the day at Pisac, the name of a town and of the ruins that overlook it from a mountain far, far overhead. I went with Catherine, who I think I've mentioned before as one of the other students in the Amigos language school, and one of her friends from the hostel in which she is staying, an extremely well-traveled New Zealander by the name of Daniel.
To get to Pisac from Cusco by road, you typically take un collectivo, which is basically a van driven with reckless abandon by a Cusqueño. After searching for about 45 minutes for the departure point, we sat in the back of the van and took off for Pisac, with, of all things, "Love Shack" playing on the radio. By and large, automobiles in Cusco have comparatively few frills, and one of the things typically done without is a healthy set of shocks. So it is literally possible to feel every single imperfection in the road, of which there are many. Between that, and the fact that in this extremely mountainous area of Peru most roads outside of town are switchbacks writ large, I rather quickly developed rather persistent nausea. Fortunately, I sat next to an open window; the fresh air was a good soporific. The driver rather fearlessly passed more than a few vehicles while heading straight into blind turns. In one case he passed a bus despite the presence of a large and uncomfortably close oncoming truck. In addition to healthy shocks, Cusqueñian vehicles lack what in America would be called "pick-up," and the oncoming truck flashed its lights at us for what seemed like several minutes before we pulled back into our lane. In general, whenever I ride in a taxi or a collectivo, I try to take comfort in the fact that every driver in Cusco seems to have a shared understanding that there are few, if any, rules of the road, and is able to switch from offensive to defensive driving seemingly without thinking.
Pisac is known for its massive outdoor market, and Sundays are typically the busiest days. After we arrived we wandered the market, and I purchased a rather nice handmade bag in which I placed several subsequently purchased souvenirs. Being from America it's a major switch to encounter merchandise without a price tag on it. It's expected that you will haggle, just like in The Life of Brian. For example, one merchant tried to sell me a very nice alpaca shawl. His initial price was 300 soles, which is around $125 dollars, give or take. Just by my trying to walk away from the guy he dropped the price to 100 soles. I probably could have gotten it for less, but my new bag was already a little heavy, and hiking the Pisac ruins lay ahead.
We ate lunch at a little restaurant owned and operated by a woman from Colorado. She sold healthy, vegetarian fare, and on a lark I ordered some kambucha, which is fermented tea, and in no way uniquely Peruvian. It actually tasted quite good, a little like cider, and it supposedly has any number of excellent health properties. So I'm not sure whether to blame it and the live bacterial cultures it contained for the return of my nausea, or just poor luck. Ultimately I ate very little lunch, and wasn´t able to participate that much in the very interesting conversation about career and personality types and success and the nature of happiness that Daniel and Catherine were having.
Let me say a little about this chap Daniel. He's a few years younger than me, intelligent, loquatious beyond belief, and a born traveler. He's from New Zealand, but has spent time in, among other places, the UK, Albania, and Thailand, and along the way has developed a coherent and detailed philosophy about his way of life (as your more committed and inquisitive wanderers tend to do, I imagine.) In part, he has a healthy and almost absolutist skepticism about the whole idea of "career," or a job to which you commit yourself over time, partly in hopes of advancement or the achievement of status. For him, the desirability of a career is an idea that is, in ways both explicit and implicit, taught to us from a very young age. It is taught even though having a career isn't necessarily appropriate for all people, or a sure or even likely way to fulfillment or happiness, and even though the idea may serve the system more than the people within the system. For him, the primary purpose of a career is the achievement of status, and status, for him, is empty, an accumulation of power and prestige and outward signs of success and wealth that ultimately doesn´t contribute to your happiness or to your development as a person. Better to avoid arrangements that limit your freedom of movement and choice, or that ask you to conform to particular expectations that may be inconsistent with who you are as a person. I actually think this last idea is probably what he was mostly driving at in the various conversations that the three of us had during the day. The idea of "playing the game" in order to secure some sort of advancement, even if doing so is somehow in contradiction with your own nature and your own desires, was, I think, the most offensive to him. I think I'm doing him justice, though he would probably quibble with a number of details, and would offer any number of qualifications and discursions.
I'm not going to get into what I think about all this, because I'm actually still thinking about it and working it out. Feel free to comment, though.
At this point, I'm going to break off. This post is already too ridiculously long. More later today or tomorrow!
Friday, February 11, 2011
The successful purchase of nail clippers
Words of the day:
cortauñas: fingernail clippers
memorizar: to memorize
acento: accent
It´s cliché, but you don´t quite appreciate all the little things you use from day to day until you go without them. Today I walked, in the rain, to the local market in search of fingernail clippers. I left the house without knowing what the word for "fingernail clippers" was, but it seemed like one of those objects for which the pantomime is probably close to universal. Fortunately, the market contained a little stall in which fingernail clippers were prominently displayed behind some plexiglass, so all I ultimately had to do was point. Probably the most exciting part of this little excursion is that, apart from the fingernail clippers (which I will now be able to name with confidence), I knew the words for every object I wanted to buy. Toothpaste, toothbrush, bag. Okay, the list isn´t very impressive, but I managed to ask for them all in complete sentences, and to understand the total cost as spoken by the shopkeeper, a girl probably no older than 13. A rousing success, I think, even if it doesn´t make for a very compelling blog post.
Last night I went out for drinks with one of the other students in the language school, who was staying with my host family before and briefly with me. We met some very nice Irish people, on the road for about three months now. At several points during the evening I found myself wishing, not for the first time and probably not for the last time, that I was Irish. Among other reasons, they are almost invariably warm and welcoming people, and they have the best accent in the world. The word "film," for example, has two syllables in Irish-accented English. Fil-um. Say it fast. See? Don't you suddenly feel like having a pint of Guinness?
As a consequence of being out carousing, or at least what passes for carousing with me, last night, I utterly failed to memorize the long, long list of Spanish words my instructor gave me yesterday morning. I therefore failed to shine in the daily quiz she gives me. However, I recovered a little by displaying a solid understanding of many irregular verbs. A solid C on the day, I think.
Tonight I´m going with my family to their daughter´s home for dinner, possibly followed by more carousing. This weekend I´m planning on joining a tour group out to some nearby Incan ruins, so I´m pretty excited about that.
Hope all is well back home!
cortauñas: fingernail clippers
memorizar: to memorize
acento: accent
It´s cliché, but you don´t quite appreciate all the little things you use from day to day until you go without them. Today I walked, in the rain, to the local market in search of fingernail clippers. I left the house without knowing what the word for "fingernail clippers" was, but it seemed like one of those objects for which the pantomime is probably close to universal. Fortunately, the market contained a little stall in which fingernail clippers were prominently displayed behind some plexiglass, so all I ultimately had to do was point. Probably the most exciting part of this little excursion is that, apart from the fingernail clippers (which I will now be able to name with confidence), I knew the words for every object I wanted to buy. Toothpaste, toothbrush, bag. Okay, the list isn´t very impressive, but I managed to ask for them all in complete sentences, and to understand the total cost as spoken by the shopkeeper, a girl probably no older than 13. A rousing success, I think, even if it doesn´t make for a very compelling blog post.
Last night I went out for drinks with one of the other students in the language school, who was staying with my host family before and briefly with me. We met some very nice Irish people, on the road for about three months now. At several points during the evening I found myself wishing, not for the first time and probably not for the last time, that I was Irish. Among other reasons, they are almost invariably warm and welcoming people, and they have the best accent in the world. The word "film," for example, has two syllables in Irish-accented English. Fil-um. Say it fast. See? Don't you suddenly feel like having a pint of Guinness?
As a consequence of being out carousing, or at least what passes for carousing with me, last night, I utterly failed to memorize the long, long list of Spanish words my instructor gave me yesterday morning. I therefore failed to shine in the daily quiz she gives me. However, I recovered a little by displaying a solid understanding of many irregular verbs. A solid C on the day, I think.
Tonight I´m going with my family to their daughter´s home for dinner, possibly followed by more carousing. This weekend I´m planning on joining a tour group out to some nearby Incan ruins, so I´m pretty excited about that.
Hope all is well back home!
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Things that seem true
Phrase of the day:
"La alma es un verbo. No es un sustantivo."
or
"The soul is a verb. Not a noun."
... from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell
David Mitchell is absolutely my favorite author right now, introduced to me a year or two ago by a good friend. He´s a brilliant writer, and has this extraordinary knack for coining pithy and memorable phrases that sound true, or at least point at truth. Or at the very least are provocative.
The phrase above (hopefully somewhat accurately translated to Spanish) is spoken by a doctor, in response to an age-old question posed by the book´s protagonist: Where is the soul? The answer is definitely a rationalist's hedge; the soul is not something that the scientific method is going to locate and quantify any time soon, and no doubt early anatomists looked long and hard for it in their autopsies. I think the pineal gland was thought to be the seat of the soul for a long time, but I don´t remember that being taught in neuroanatomy. In any case, even if you believe in the soul, I imagine that you don't conceive of it as glandular, exactly.
But I like the answer, and it seems to me to be more than a rationalist's hedge in a lot of respects. Mostly, I like it because it implies that the soul exists but is changeable. We have care of it; we have responsibility for it. What we do, what we learn, what we strive for, what we devote ourselves to, how we behave towards and with others - it seems that these are born of and in turn shape the soul. At least if it´s true that the soul is a verb, rather than a noun.
Sorry this post is in something of a speculative vein. Mostly, I just liked the phrase and wanted to share it. Discuss amongst yourselves!
Briefly, in other news, I booked my Macchu Picchu hiking excursion today, with a departure date of March 2nd. I also spent about 20 minutes in a shop here that sells classical guitars, and came close to buying one. Most of the time I spent under the somewhat skeptical eye of the shopkeeper, trying unsuccessfully to tune a classical guitar against the background hustle and bustle of the streets of Cusco. It´s hard, you should try it sometime. I decided against purchasing one, since I have no idea how to string a classical guitar, and truthfully have enough to occupy my time otherwise. However, I miss playing, more than I expected.
Be well, everyone!
"La alma es un verbo. No es un sustantivo."
or
"The soul is a verb. Not a noun."
... from The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, by David Mitchell
David Mitchell is absolutely my favorite author right now, introduced to me a year or two ago by a good friend. He´s a brilliant writer, and has this extraordinary knack for coining pithy and memorable phrases that sound true, or at least point at truth. Or at the very least are provocative.
The phrase above (hopefully somewhat accurately translated to Spanish) is spoken by a doctor, in response to an age-old question posed by the book´s protagonist: Where is the soul? The answer is definitely a rationalist's hedge; the soul is not something that the scientific method is going to locate and quantify any time soon, and no doubt early anatomists looked long and hard for it in their autopsies. I think the pineal gland was thought to be the seat of the soul for a long time, but I don´t remember that being taught in neuroanatomy. In any case, even if you believe in the soul, I imagine that you don't conceive of it as glandular, exactly.
But I like the answer, and it seems to me to be more than a rationalist's hedge in a lot of respects. Mostly, I like it because it implies that the soul exists but is changeable. We have care of it; we have responsibility for it. What we do, what we learn, what we strive for, what we devote ourselves to, how we behave towards and with others - it seems that these are born of and in turn shape the soul. At least if it´s true that the soul is a verb, rather than a noun.
Sorry this post is in something of a speculative vein. Mostly, I just liked the phrase and wanted to share it. Discuss amongst yourselves!
Briefly, in other news, I booked my Macchu Picchu hiking excursion today, with a departure date of March 2nd. I also spent about 20 minutes in a shop here that sells classical guitars, and came close to buying one. Most of the time I spent under the somewhat skeptical eye of the shopkeeper, trying unsuccessfully to tune a classical guitar against the background hustle and bustle of the streets of Cusco. It´s hard, you should try it sometime. I decided against purchasing one, since I have no idea how to string a classical guitar, and truthfully have enough to occupy my time otherwise. However, I miss playing, more than I expected.
Be well, everyone!
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Hot showers all day
Words of the day:
ducha: shower
contexto: context
In Cusco there´s this huge open air market, the Mercado San Pedro, where practically every type of food that one could possibly buy in Peru is available, sometimes with the heads still attached. It´s a true festival of sights and smells, and, as I spent only about 20 minutes there, I´m definitely planning on heading back. Fruits, vegetables, textiles, shoes, jewelry, clothing, and trinkets of various kinds are to be had for only a few soles. It´s kind of like a Super Walmart without the surveillance cameras and air conditioning and blue vests and greeters and OSHA inspectors and a bunch of other things, but with much more charm and probably much less exploitation of the workers. I´ll get pictures the next time I go. Anyway, I mention it partly because it also had a public bath, proudly advertising ¨Duches calientes todo el día," or, of course, hot showers all day. Hot showers are not so easy to come by here, at least if you´re a native. The hostels all advertise the availability of hot showers to potential guests. My host family has an electric water heater, that heats the water enough to provide about one hot shower per day. I know it's electric because this evening, when I touched the metal framing of the faucet, I felt a sudden and unpleasant buzzing in my finger. Then I thought to myself, so THAT´s why they have masking tape wrapped around the faucet itself.
I also managed to find a tourist agency today that made some tantalizing promises about hiking the Inca trail to Macchu Picchu. The government issues a set number of individual permits for the Inca trail, 500 per day I think, and they tend to go fast as various travel agencies sweep them up. They issue them at least a month or two in advance. Then, of course, would-be hikers fill the available slots pretty quickly. The fellow I talked to at the travel agency compared it to black Friday in America, which I thought was pretty astute, though if one had to hike four days in order to get your hands on the newest flat screen at Best Buy, black Friday would probably be less successful. At any rate, there seems to be a lot of availability in early March, so that´s what I´m planning on signing up for. They needed my passport ID number before they could book me, and of course I didn´t have it, so back I go tomorrow, when there will hopefully be at least one slot left.
One of my favorite things about Cusco so far is the random appropriation of celebrity images and insignia and other cultural artifacts of America. For example, today I saw Barney on a street corner, entertaining some kids. I´m sure he or she was trying to sell something, but I was too distracted to identify exactly what. Also, it is profoundly disconcerting to see things like a North Face store - there is one here - established inside a building that most likely easily exceeds two hundred years of age. Of course it has to be that way - razing the Spanish architecture to the ground to build a brand-spanking new building is not feasible, for lots of reasons. But I guess I´m just so used to the ultra-modern and somewhat sterile newness of things in America that doing it any other way is ultra-striking. Travel is broadening, I guess:)
Be well, everyone.
ducha: shower
contexto: context
In Cusco there´s this huge open air market, the Mercado San Pedro, where practically every type of food that one could possibly buy in Peru is available, sometimes with the heads still attached. It´s a true festival of sights and smells, and, as I spent only about 20 minutes there, I´m definitely planning on heading back. Fruits, vegetables, textiles, shoes, jewelry, clothing, and trinkets of various kinds are to be had for only a few soles. It´s kind of like a Super Walmart without the surveillance cameras and air conditioning and blue vests and greeters and OSHA inspectors and a bunch of other things, but with much more charm and probably much less exploitation of the workers. I´ll get pictures the next time I go. Anyway, I mention it partly because it also had a public bath, proudly advertising ¨Duches calientes todo el día," or, of course, hot showers all day. Hot showers are not so easy to come by here, at least if you´re a native. The hostels all advertise the availability of hot showers to potential guests. My host family has an electric water heater, that heats the water enough to provide about one hot shower per day. I know it's electric because this evening, when I touched the metal framing of the faucet, I felt a sudden and unpleasant buzzing in my finger. Then I thought to myself, so THAT´s why they have masking tape wrapped around the faucet itself.
I also managed to find a tourist agency today that made some tantalizing promises about hiking the Inca trail to Macchu Picchu. The government issues a set number of individual permits for the Inca trail, 500 per day I think, and they tend to go fast as various travel agencies sweep them up. They issue them at least a month or two in advance. Then, of course, would-be hikers fill the available slots pretty quickly. The fellow I talked to at the travel agency compared it to black Friday in America, which I thought was pretty astute, though if one had to hike four days in order to get your hands on the newest flat screen at Best Buy, black Friday would probably be less successful. At any rate, there seems to be a lot of availability in early March, so that´s what I´m planning on signing up for. They needed my passport ID number before they could book me, and of course I didn´t have it, so back I go tomorrow, when there will hopefully be at least one slot left.
One of my favorite things about Cusco so far is the random appropriation of celebrity images and insignia and other cultural artifacts of America. For example, today I saw Barney on a street corner, entertaining some kids. I´m sure he or she was trying to sell something, but I was too distracted to identify exactly what. Also, it is profoundly disconcerting to see things like a North Face store - there is one here - established inside a building that most likely easily exceeds two hundred years of age. Of course it has to be that way - razing the Spanish architecture to the ground to build a brand-spanking new building is not feasible, for lots of reasons. But I guess I´m just so used to the ultra-modern and somewhat sterile newness of things in America that doing it any other way is ultra-striking. Travel is broadening, I guess:)
Be well, everyone.
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Dreams
Word of the day:
soñar: to dream
This won´t be so much about Peru as about some overnight experiences and thoughts. I don´t know if anyone else has had this experience, but have you ever awoken from a dream and, though you don´t remember the details, found that your feelings and thoughts seem to have a sort of continuity with the dream itself? You can´t quite articulate why or how. All you know is that, immediately upon coming to consciousness, you find yourself feeling a certain way and thinking about certain things, feelings and thoughts that, for all the world, must have been there before you were even aware of them.
Last night I awoke at about 2am, and immediately I was thinking about friends. I was thinking about current friends, and past friends, many of whom I´ve let drift away. I felt sadness and longing and regret for the friends I´ve lost - too, too many - and gratitude and longing for the friends I have. Perhaps all of this came about because last night and today were the first times since I´ve been here that I´ve felt a great deal of frustration at not being able to communicate with most folks, at not being able to share jokes or stories, at not being able to sit down to watch a movie with someone or to share a passage in a book. It is, of course, a temporary condition, and part of the point of the trip, in a way. Many of you know, I´m sure, that I´m far too reserved and self-conscious for my own good, and this trip represents a sort of immersion, both in terms of language and in terms of compelling me to be more social if I´m to meet people at all. It´s an unusual strategy, I´ll admit, but on an intuitive level it makes some sense to me. I hope it doesn´t sound completely off.
This is a little personal, I suppose, but until this blog goes into wider readership it seems safe to post it. More about Peru and language lessons tomorrow, hopefully. And hopefully I´ll have some additional travel plans to share before the end of this week.
Be well, everyone.
soñar: to dream
This won´t be so much about Peru as about some overnight experiences and thoughts. I don´t know if anyone else has had this experience, but have you ever awoken from a dream and, though you don´t remember the details, found that your feelings and thoughts seem to have a sort of continuity with the dream itself? You can´t quite articulate why or how. All you know is that, immediately upon coming to consciousness, you find yourself feeling a certain way and thinking about certain things, feelings and thoughts that, for all the world, must have been there before you were even aware of them.
Last night I awoke at about 2am, and immediately I was thinking about friends. I was thinking about current friends, and past friends, many of whom I´ve let drift away. I felt sadness and longing and regret for the friends I´ve lost - too, too many - and gratitude and longing for the friends I have. Perhaps all of this came about because last night and today were the first times since I´ve been here that I´ve felt a great deal of frustration at not being able to communicate with most folks, at not being able to share jokes or stories, at not being able to sit down to watch a movie with someone or to share a passage in a book. It is, of course, a temporary condition, and part of the point of the trip, in a way. Many of you know, I´m sure, that I´m far too reserved and self-conscious for my own good, and this trip represents a sort of immersion, both in terms of language and in terms of compelling me to be more social if I´m to meet people at all. It´s an unusual strategy, I´ll admit, but on an intuitive level it makes some sense to me. I hope it doesn´t sound completely off.
This is a little personal, I suppose, but until this blog goes into wider readership it seems safe to post it. More about Peru and language lessons tomorrow, hopefully. And hopefully I´ll have some additional travel plans to share before the end of this week.
Be well, everyone.
Monday, February 7, 2011
This is why they call it ¨the rainy season¨
Words of the day:
lluvia: rain
estar empapado: to be drenched
paraguas: umbrella
Two things happen in Cusco when it starts raining. First, the wide variety of taxis from which you can usually choose suddenly become the hottest items in the city. They´re like cabbage patch dolls circa 1985. You have to be ruthless to get your hands on one. Second, young women hawking cheap umbrellas and raincoats materialize out of thin air. It was almost magic to witness.
It started pouring at about 5pm this evening, around the time I was planning on catching a taxi back to my host family´s home for dinner. I was in the Plaza de Armas, and the ominous looking clouds that had been gathering for about the last half hour made lived up to their appearance. I actually had the initial good fortune to get a taxi, but the driver didn´t know the address and I didn´t quite trust my own sense of direction, so out I went again. That was the last taxi I would even come close to getting into for the rest of the evening. (Note to self: ¨Puedo indicar usted¨ seems a close approximation to "I can show you", and should be used in such situations from now on.) For a while I sought shelter under various eaves and awnings, but it became apparent very rapidly that the rain wasn´t going to stop anytime soon and that walking seemed to be in my future. So I purchased a cheap umbrella - cost S10, or about $3 - and off I went down the badly-named-for-today Avenue del Sol. The streets were almost rivers. I again found my way home after a little trial and error.
In other news, today was my first language lesson. The instructor is named Sandra, and seems as though she´ll be a good teacher. She told me a brief story about how, in Lima, where she is from, all the high school students visit Macchu Picchu during their last year in school. It´s like a Peruvian field trip. I thought to myself, well, we had the Lincoln home and Lincoln´s tomb. That´s kind of the same thing. At any rate, I think it was Socrates who said something about the only true knowledge being that you know nothing, and that sums it up nicely. I might have learned that from Bill and Ted, though.
Be well, everyone!
lluvia: rain
estar empapado: to be drenched
paraguas: umbrella
Two things happen in Cusco when it starts raining. First, the wide variety of taxis from which you can usually choose suddenly become the hottest items in the city. They´re like cabbage patch dolls circa 1985. You have to be ruthless to get your hands on one. Second, young women hawking cheap umbrellas and raincoats materialize out of thin air. It was almost magic to witness.
It started pouring at about 5pm this evening, around the time I was planning on catching a taxi back to my host family´s home for dinner. I was in the Plaza de Armas, and the ominous looking clouds that had been gathering for about the last half hour made lived up to their appearance. I actually had the initial good fortune to get a taxi, but the driver didn´t know the address and I didn´t quite trust my own sense of direction, so out I went again. That was the last taxi I would even come close to getting into for the rest of the evening. (Note to self: ¨Puedo indicar usted¨ seems a close approximation to "I can show you", and should be used in such situations from now on.) For a while I sought shelter under various eaves and awnings, but it became apparent very rapidly that the rain wasn´t going to stop anytime soon and that walking seemed to be in my future. So I purchased a cheap umbrella - cost S10, or about $3 - and off I went down the badly-named-for-today Avenue del Sol. The streets were almost rivers. I again found my way home after a little trial and error.
In other news, today was my first language lesson. The instructor is named Sandra, and seems as though she´ll be a good teacher. She told me a brief story about how, in Lima, where she is from, all the high school students visit Macchu Picchu during their last year in school. It´s like a Peruvian field trip. I thought to myself, well, we had the Lincoln home and Lincoln´s tomb. That´s kind of the same thing. At any rate, I think it was Socrates who said something about the only true knowledge being that you know nothing, and that sums it up nicely. I might have learned that from Bill and Ted, though.
Be well, everyone!
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Super bowl Sunday in Peru
Words of the day:
cebolla: onion
palta: avocado (in Peru)
tocar el claxon: to honk the horn
por ejemplo: for example
First, a manilla folder update. It somehow managed to find its way into my checked baggage, meaning that I must have put it there after I picked my baggage up from the carousel. I´m a bit relieved that I wasn´t so despistado as to leave it on the plane. However, it´s unsettling to find that I was able to completely forget that I had put it there within the space of twenty minutes.
Anyway, today is much better from a fatigue/altitude sickness standpoint. Going up the stairs is still a bit exhausting, but my head no longer feels like someone is tapping on it gently but repeatedly with a ball-peen hammer.
Today I ventured out to la Plaza de Armas, which is the city center. In theory it´s a roughly half an hour walk from my host family´s home to la Plaza, but after a few blocks it seemed a better idea to get a taxi, as I was getting a bit short of breath. It´s uphill, you know. To get a taxi in Cusco, all you really have to do is look like you might want to go somewhere other than where you´re standing or walking. Sometimes you don´t even need to do that. Taxis are literally everywhere; they seem to be a main form of transportation for natives and tourists alike. To assess your desire for a taxi, the taxi driver will typically slow down a little bit, and honk his horn. If you make eye contact and give a nod after that, the taxi´s yours. Get in, say ¨Por favor, lleveme a la Plaza de Armas,¨and you´re off.
I spent only an hour or so wandering around la Plaza and the surrounding streets, so I think I should dedicate another post to it, after I´ve spent a little more time there, and seen the sights in a little more dedicated fashion.
This afternoon my host family´s daughter, son-in-law, three grandchildren, and son-in-law´s father came over for lunch. This made me quite happy, as it gave me a chance to give away the children´s toys I brought with me. These included two canisters of modular plastic pieces that you could snap together and apart to make different shapes and such, as well as what seemed like a baseball with a long vinyl tail sewn into it. It looks a little like a comet, except with a rainbow tail. Anyway, the toys seemed to be a hit with the grandchildren, the youngest of whom were ages two and four. The ball was in clamshell packaging, and as I watched the children´s father try to wrestle the thing open I thought for sure I was going to be directly responsible for the first clamshell packaging injury in Cusco. But it worked out okay.
I helped slice some avocadoes, and tried to learn the words for the different foods being prepared, with mixed success. The lunch itself was very good, with potatoes and beef slices and avocado salad and excellent soup that was at least partly made out of a squash. Following the conversation was essentially impossible for me, which is terribly unfortunate, because from about the 5% I was able to understand it seemed the topic of conversation was the global economy and how it affects Peru. There was also a hint of a discussion about water rights, which I believe is an issue in Peru in general and in Cusco in particular. The son-in-law seemed very knowledgeable and opinionated on matters; his frequent use of the phrase ¨por ejemplo¨ enhanced his credibility with me, anyway, even though I was generally pretty lost after that. I´ll get better!
As an aside, I´ve discovered that one of the most frustrating things about barely speaking the language of the country you´re in is the fact that you just can´t ask questions of any real depth or complexity. Similarly, you can´t answer questions with any depth or complexity. You´re limited to saying, por ejemplo, that it snows in Wisconsin. One experiences the culture just by being there, of course, but so much of culture is language and what is expressed in language that one invariably misses a lot. It makes me think that I´ll have to come back when my language skills have improved.
So at least one hostel in Cusco is showing the Super Bowl, so I guess I´m going to watch it with a bunch of drunk Americans after all. And me without my cheesehead.
Be well, everyone!
cebolla: onion
palta: avocado (in Peru)
tocar el claxon: to honk the horn
por ejemplo: for example
First, a manilla folder update. It somehow managed to find its way into my checked baggage, meaning that I must have put it there after I picked my baggage up from the carousel. I´m a bit relieved that I wasn´t so despistado as to leave it on the plane. However, it´s unsettling to find that I was able to completely forget that I had put it there within the space of twenty minutes.
Anyway, today is much better from a fatigue/altitude sickness standpoint. Going up the stairs is still a bit exhausting, but my head no longer feels like someone is tapping on it gently but repeatedly with a ball-peen hammer.
Today I ventured out to la Plaza de Armas, which is the city center. In theory it´s a roughly half an hour walk from my host family´s home to la Plaza, but after a few blocks it seemed a better idea to get a taxi, as I was getting a bit short of breath. It´s uphill, you know. To get a taxi in Cusco, all you really have to do is look like you might want to go somewhere other than where you´re standing or walking. Sometimes you don´t even need to do that. Taxis are literally everywhere; they seem to be a main form of transportation for natives and tourists alike. To assess your desire for a taxi, the taxi driver will typically slow down a little bit, and honk his horn. If you make eye contact and give a nod after that, the taxi´s yours. Get in, say ¨Por favor, lleveme a la Plaza de Armas,¨and you´re off.
I spent only an hour or so wandering around la Plaza and the surrounding streets, so I think I should dedicate another post to it, after I´ve spent a little more time there, and seen the sights in a little more dedicated fashion.
This afternoon my host family´s daughter, son-in-law, three grandchildren, and son-in-law´s father came over for lunch. This made me quite happy, as it gave me a chance to give away the children´s toys I brought with me. These included two canisters of modular plastic pieces that you could snap together and apart to make different shapes and such, as well as what seemed like a baseball with a long vinyl tail sewn into it. It looks a little like a comet, except with a rainbow tail. Anyway, the toys seemed to be a hit with the grandchildren, the youngest of whom were ages two and four. The ball was in clamshell packaging, and as I watched the children´s father try to wrestle the thing open I thought for sure I was going to be directly responsible for the first clamshell packaging injury in Cusco. But it worked out okay.
I helped slice some avocadoes, and tried to learn the words for the different foods being prepared, with mixed success. The lunch itself was very good, with potatoes and beef slices and avocado salad and excellent soup that was at least partly made out of a squash. Following the conversation was essentially impossible for me, which is terribly unfortunate, because from about the 5% I was able to understand it seemed the topic of conversation was the global economy and how it affects Peru. There was also a hint of a discussion about water rights, which I believe is an issue in Peru in general and in Cusco in particular. The son-in-law seemed very knowledgeable and opinionated on matters; his frequent use of the phrase ¨por ejemplo¨ enhanced his credibility with me, anyway, even though I was generally pretty lost after that. I´ll get better!
As an aside, I´ve discovered that one of the most frustrating things about barely speaking the language of the country you´re in is the fact that you just can´t ask questions of any real depth or complexity. Similarly, you can´t answer questions with any depth or complexity. You´re limited to saying, por ejemplo, that it snows in Wisconsin. One experiences the culture just by being there, of course, but so much of culture is language and what is expressed in language that one invariably misses a lot. It makes me think that I´ll have to come back when my language skills have improved.
So at least one hostel in Cusco is showing the Super Bowl, so I guess I´m going to watch it with a bunch of drunk Americans after all. And me without my cheesehead.
Be well, everyone!
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