Archive for the ‘South America’ Category
I don’t know if you’ve been buzzed by
a Mercedes at the dawn’s
early light to spot the first fingers
of morning tucking in the day but
this is Sunday, suicidal Sunday.
First I’m going to pull out all my brushes, take a good look at them, and then throw ‘em overboard. Next, I’m going to open the paint cans, shove my hands in to get warmed up, and then I´m going to Jackson Pollock all over the place. So if I lose you along the way, that’s okay, because I’ve lost myself as well; just look out for the big picture and try to avoid the hammocks…
As she was talking, I couldn’t help but drift to the plastic features that had puffed her lips, made her face saran-wrap-tight, and crafted a nose in the muse of MJ. Her personality was lovely: sweet, caring, and concerned, but tragically lost…
We talked for another half an hour and Jesus explained that he was mixed blood (half Native American and half Inca) and that he came from a long line of shamans. ´´You know, I only spend 15 days here and then I go into the jungle to help people. I´m a tough guy to get a hold of, you’re lucky.´´
Behind its walls lie rapists, murders, drug traffickers, and thieves of varying degrees. From the outside, the prison looks like nothing special: tall concrete walls with guard towers perched at its four corners. But San Pedro’s notoriety doesn’t come from its appearance, its starts with the two South Africans that approach as you walk around the park directly across from the prison….
It’s as if a magnet is spinning my needle in circles and I don’t know if I should begin with the 100 grams of dynamite that was sitting 4 inches from my heart, or if I should start with the llama blood bleached red into my hands…
For the next 20 minutes we just talked. She explained that she had severe depression and had not slept in 5 days. She continued to tell me that she had had brain surgery for a tumor that needed to be removed (which turned out to be benign) and then took my hand and ran it along the ridge line of her scar tissue. I told her what I was capable of doing, and she looked in my eyes and asked me if I believed in god. I did.
She was a fiery Colombian who insisted I couldn’t handle her heat, couldn’t handle her passion, and couldn’t handle the dragon that was crudely tattooed on her upper left shoulder. And honestly, I was miffed. I remember thinking (commence inside your head voice), are you fucking kidding me?
I have relatives who love farts, fart jokes, are proud of their smell…the power of their smell. I even have relatives who have books about shit, human shit, animal shit, and the types of food that lead to smelly shit. In keeping true to my noble family lineage, I have a book on bullshit, not the actual shit, but…
The past two weeks I have been traveling northward, at first through the fjords of Chile (glacially created channels), on a small cargo ship that also takes passengers. The weather was generally cloudy and occasionally harsh which = much time staring out the window and thinking. As it turns out, I was surprised where my mind wandered ….
While this is beautiful in some respects (i.e. exposing the world to itself from its nose to its toes), it has also become a powerful system of alienation. Which is to say, traveling itself has become a product of kitsch consumer culture, where all you have to do is open a book, choose a pre-organized activity, and never think about/interact/explore all the people/places/processes that allowed the existence of the activity in the first place.
Why anybody, voluntarily, would carry food for 8 days and walk 90 miles with a 45pound pack, I’m still trying to figure out….Before I make you feel that I am depressed (which is not true), overly enlightened (which is also not true), or too self indulgent (which may be true), I shall just say one last thing…
He continued to share a story about an experience he had with a UFO (“And I saw the cone and stopped my car. I blinked and it was gone.”) and then dropped us off in his home town of Tolhuin, still 200 kilometers from our destination. Thank you Alberto.
But I soon began to feel heavy, heavy with the weight of responsibility that I wasn´t just walking through a candy sweet photograph in an L.L. Bean magazine, but that I was walking through a harsh geological memory….
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