Happy Talk
Inti is shining, the sky is blue, strange birds sing, the curse is lifted. The middle-school kids in their blue-and-white striped futbol suits or below-the-knee gray uniform skirts or slacks flock by on the terrace above to the collegio past the cemetery - beyond that, the way turns to a cow path through the fields, then a river-stone trail that turns to an actual stream every now and then, past the cornfields to the ruins of Q'ellu Racay, the old emperor's river retreat. They go by in threes or fours, girl and girl and girl, boy and boy and boy, carrying soccer balls or book bags, or in twos or alone; sometimes boy and girl. All dark hair bronze skin, the boys with good hair, the girls with Inca noses and small chins. Laughing or head down. Just like us, I guess.
The curse is lifted - inexplicably, the Verizon customer service chat choices weren't grayed out today, and I got Amy, who informed me that I need to add a plus and a one to my international calls. I dwell in darkness. Then, for the first time, Capital One let me log in to my online banking. I swear every previous attempt failed, saying I couldn't do it from here. I paid Verizon. And the sun shines and the birds sing and children are still unknowing.
Oh don't be cynical. You can know and still be happy.
Maybe I'll take a 2.5 Sol bus to Yucay today, see what's left of Sayri Tupac's palace. The post title: Cusi = happy; Rimac = speaker. Happy talk.
Three of the interesting people I've encountered - all men about my age.
In Pisac, I admired the work of a jeweler in the artisan market, stuck my head in his shop to ask if any of it was his work, figuring he was selling various artists' pieces on consignment - there were hundreds of pieces in a variety of styles. Turns out it was all his.
He is the son of a Spanish ambassador to the US. They had a servant who worked in silver and stone, who told the five-year-old Ricci (Placido Quillo Zegarra), "I know you will be an intellectual, but you must learn to do something with your hands." Ricci learned from him, and from others, and though he graduated with an advanced degree in economics and practiced that profession in London, this is what he does.
In 1965 he and a Canadian friend bought motorcycles - his a BMW - and rode from New Mexico to Alaska. He passed through San Francisco in '66, grew his hair long, smoked pot. Hey, we were there then doing that...did we pass on the street? Probably.
He lists places he saw in the US - Massachusetts, Indianapolis, DC, New Orleans, LA - he liked John Dos Passos, Whitman, Joplin, Morrison...loves New York. When in London he roamed Europe. He's in Peru now because the economy tanked in Spain and the food's no good in Ecuador. He misses culture here, the people are illiterate and drunk.
His craftsmanship is superb and artistry beautiful and stylistically varied. He laughs a lot.
Now compare with Miguel Chavez of Urubamba.
Walking down the dirt road from my hostel to find some soup and from a side street comes an imposing figure, tall, in all black and red, with gray mustache and goatee, walking imperious; I give him a look, he returns a cold glance as I pass.
And yet; not ten steps past and he's at my elbow, asking where I’m from in Spanish. When I admit my nationality, he switches to accented English. He says he’s a pilot, I ask him what kind of plane, he takes out his wallet and shows me a photographs, a Cessna 120 and 160. I tell him I once flew to Ecuador in a Cessna 210. He invites me to sit in the square and talk, another old bored guy I think, he says he's about to participate in a hotel opening in Yucay, Hotel Sayri Tupac; I beg off, am searching for soup.
Half an hour later I haven’t found any soup so I think I’ll go the square and find that old guy, Miguel Chavez, but I run into him sooner, and he says we will now resolve all your problems. He fixes that one, anyway, he knows a place nearby where the senora will make you anything you want.
The man is a story teller; his life is like the guy in Gary Jenning's Aztec, a full life, except maybe more so. He went to Brooklyn at 16 to become, for his father, a Rockerfeller - instead he became a socialist. He didn't like the way certain people were treated. He heard being a pilot was hard but everybody respected a pilot and gave them money and sex, so he went to San Jose and learned to fly, working for a Del Monte cannery for $25/hour to do so. He piloted for a while. Then he heard that being an actor in Hollywood was hard and cool, so he went there, became an extra, hung out with guys like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and Anthony Quinn, who captained a collection of Spanish-speaking actors. Turns out Miguel looked like Sal Mineo (girls would want to stroke him on the street) so he got to be Sal Mineo’s double, did his death in Exodus.
Later there was a socialist coup in Peru so he joined it, and the government sent him to Prague to become an economist, but when he graduated there was a rightist government so he had to stay in Germany for 20 years, where he married and had two kids.
Okay, so both of these guys are educated as economists and did time in New York and California. Miguel, though, is traveling in more glamorous circles and getting mixed up in history. If he's fabricating, he's smooth and a quick thinker, because I am introducing the topics much of the time, and he's right on them. For instance, I bring up the Sendero Luminoso in Peru, and Tupamaru, two bothersome leftist guerrilla outfits. Without a pause, he tells me that while he is still in Germany, because of his weight as a socialist, Tupamaru wants him to join them; he has conditions, however, they can’t meet - for one, stop fighting with Sendero Luminoso. Sendero also wants him to join them, but again, he needs them to clean up their act a bit; none of this infighting. I've got this skeptical little grin but he's going blithely on; he doesn't miss anything, though; he's got a sharp eye.
Now, these days, besides being an advisor for this new hotel, he’s a prime mover in a project outside of Yucay and in the mountains above Ollantaytambo to bring spinning wheels to the indians. He’s got a whole stack of photos - he’d just picked them up when I encountered him - of him with inca women and drop spindles and new spinning wheels. He has just introduced the spinning wheel to the andes. A couple years ago he was watching women spin and decided it was an inefficient process, so he (keyboard finger action) checked around until he found some people who make spinning wheels in New Zealand. He negotiates, they’ll give him a deal, 15 of them for $20k. He sends proposals to the New Zealand government, and a couple years later they get back to him with yes, they’ll pay the tab. Then he finds spinning wheel teachers in Germany and gets them here. He is also getting woodworkers here to make them. He tells me to youtube “pisac textiles.” Sure enough, there are three videos, two of which have him, with longer hair and a bigger beard, but yeah, that's him, in 2008, the Cuyo Grande project.
As we eat - I add some breaded chicken to my soup, buy him a beer - we are talking a lot of topics, largely political, since we're in Peru and he has this history. Bringing spinning wheels and communist insurgents together, suddenly we're in Canada in the 70's.
Now, he says, in 1975 the Canadian indians got together and founded the Council of First Nations, with their own parliament, recognized by the canadian government and the UN. They then invited aborigines from all over the world to join them and after discussion they decided to make revolution without arms. This is what our socialist friend Miguel Chavez is doing with the spinning wheels (the class struggle in Peru now is between the mestizos and the indians); making unarmed revolution.
Well, that's not exactly how Wikipedia tells the story, but history looks different when you're in it - I've been in history and remembered it my own way.
Miguel's tales portray a man to whom other men come for his power. But then, he is impressive.
Still. Check out this story.There was a moment when Sendero was poised to take Lima by force, the rich oppressors in the center outnumbered by the poor on the edges, all waiting for sendero to send arms...I’ve seen that center and those barrios; that's how it is...and at the same time an election is coming up. One faction wants to take arms while the iron is hot, and another to see how the election works out. But both Sendero and Tupamaru are barred from running candidates in the election; so who do they call on to represent their cause? They call on Miguel, who is technically not a member, to stand. While they are still arguing (Miguel declined) El Chino, Fujimoto, gets elected and kills them all. Miguel says, “and I’m sitting here.”
Sitting pretty because when Germany reunited there weren’t enough jobs for the east german youth so germany offered pensions - at full wage - to some old guys to open up jobs for the poor. So Miguel is getting good pay for life for whatever work he was doing to support himself and his family in unified Germany.
Now all those historical figures begging Miguel to be their leader seems pretty far-fetched, but then, Miguel’s son just published a book, in German, which he wanted to show me, about the Sendero Luminoso. Got his PhD with it. I asked if he was in it, and he says, “a little bit.”
When I get back I'll watch Exodus - it's on my hard drive - to see Sal Mineo die.
One more story. I'm in Urubamba nosing around private lands to try to see where Wayna Capac's estate, Quispihuanca, used to lie - trespassing around the east side, clambering over a dip in a stone fence and through some little fields, to get a look at what I thought was the living area and the courtyard with the sacred white rock. Through the eucalyptus foliage I spy motion, a campesino there, little guy in dirty clothes doing something to a newly turned field, and I turn back, I don't want a conflict. Then I stop myself. Why not give it a try?
I approach slowly, not to spook him, and ask in Spanish if I can pass through his property to the ruins. He regards me suspiciously, leans on his digging tool, and begins a series of questions - where from, what state, what name, what living, what am I doing here, and as I answer, apparently to his satisfaction, he comes closer and begins to smile. Pretty soon he's giving me a thorough and informed tour of the site. I had been totally disoriented, what I thought was the front was the back. I would not have figured all that out for myself, or been sure I was right if I had theorized correctly. I left satisfied with the exploration; I even found the sacred white rock, in the other direction, west, preserved by a little white rope.
The man’s name is Julio Guevarra, inheritor of that property through many generations of Spaniards - it sounded like back to the conquistadores, but he’d be richer if it went that far. His daughter works the desk of my hostel (kind of a spoiled valley girl to my eye) and her fiance does the same for the morning shift. He is about my age, spry, climbs up over walls like a kid, in faded soiled peasant clothes, landowner and farmer, a friend to the stranger who has the cortesa to ask.
Okay. Thanks for listening. Permission to skip the boring parts is always yours. Life is improved with the lifting of the curse, whatever it consisted, of, so I think I'll put on some pants and see what's happening in the plaza. Get a strawberry jugo.
Inti is shining, the sky is blue, strange birds sing, the curse is lifted. The middle-school kids in their blue-and-white striped futbol suits or below-the-knee gray uniform skirts or slacks flock by on the terrace above to the collegio past the cemetery - beyond that, the way turns to a cow path through the fields, then a river-stone trail that turns to an actual stream every now and then, past the cornfields to the ruins of Q'ellu Racay, the old emperor's river retreat. They go by in threes or fours, girl and girl and girl, boy and boy and boy, carrying soccer balls or book bags, or in twos or alone; sometimes boy and girl. All dark hair bronze skin, the boys with good hair, the girls with Inca noses and small chins. Laughing or head down. Just like us, I guess.
The curse is lifted - inexplicably, the Verizon customer service chat choices weren't grayed out today, and I got Amy, who informed me that I need to add a plus and a one to my international calls. I dwell in darkness. Then, for the first time, Capital One let me log in to my online banking. I swear every previous attempt failed, saying I couldn't do it from here. I paid Verizon. And the sun shines and the birds sing and children are still unknowing.
Oh don't be cynical. You can know and still be happy.
Maybe I'll take a 2.5 Sol bus to Yucay today, see what's left of Sayri Tupac's palace. The post title: Cusi = happy; Rimac = speaker. Happy talk.
Three of the interesting people I've encountered - all men about my age.
In Pisac, I admired the work of a jeweler in the artisan market, stuck my head in his shop to ask if any of it was his work, figuring he was selling various artists' pieces on consignment - there were hundreds of pieces in a variety of styles. Turns out it was all his.
He is the son of a Spanish ambassador to the US. They had a servant who worked in silver and stone, who told the five-year-old Ricci (Placido Quillo Zegarra), "I know you will be an intellectual, but you must learn to do something with your hands." Ricci learned from him, and from others, and though he graduated with an advanced degree in economics and practiced that profession in London, this is what he does.
In 1965 he and a Canadian friend bought motorcycles - his a BMW - and rode from New Mexico to Alaska. He passed through San Francisco in '66, grew his hair long, smoked pot. Hey, we were there then doing that...did we pass on the street? Probably.
He lists places he saw in the US - Massachusetts, Indianapolis, DC, New Orleans, LA - he liked John Dos Passos, Whitman, Joplin, Morrison...loves New York. When in London he roamed Europe. He's in Peru now because the economy tanked in Spain and the food's no good in Ecuador. He misses culture here, the people are illiterate and drunk.
His craftsmanship is superb and artistry beautiful and stylistically varied. He laughs a lot.
Now compare with Miguel Chavez of Urubamba.
Walking down the dirt road from my hostel to find some soup and from a side street comes an imposing figure, tall, in all black and red, with gray mustache and goatee, walking imperious; I give him a look, he returns a cold glance as I pass.
And yet; not ten steps past and he's at my elbow, asking where I’m from in Spanish. When I admit my nationality, he switches to accented English. He says he’s a pilot, I ask him what kind of plane, he takes out his wallet and shows me a photographs, a Cessna 120 and 160. I tell him I once flew to Ecuador in a Cessna 210. He invites me to sit in the square and talk, another old bored guy I think, he says he's about to participate in a hotel opening in Yucay, Hotel Sayri Tupac; I beg off, am searching for soup.
Half an hour later I haven’t found any soup so I think I’ll go the square and find that old guy, Miguel Chavez, but I run into him sooner, and he says we will now resolve all your problems. He fixes that one, anyway, he knows a place nearby where the senora will make you anything you want.
The man is a story teller; his life is like the guy in Gary Jenning's Aztec, a full life, except maybe more so. He went to Brooklyn at 16 to become, for his father, a Rockerfeller - instead he became a socialist. He didn't like the way certain people were treated. He heard being a pilot was hard but everybody respected a pilot and gave them money and sex, so he went to San Jose and learned to fly, working for a Del Monte cannery for $25/hour to do so. He piloted for a while. Then he heard that being an actor in Hollywood was hard and cool, so he went there, became an extra, hung out with guys like Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra and Anthony Quinn, who captained a collection of Spanish-speaking actors. Turns out Miguel looked like Sal Mineo (girls would want to stroke him on the street) so he got to be Sal Mineo’s double, did his death in Exodus.
Later there was a socialist coup in Peru so he joined it, and the government sent him to Prague to become an economist, but when he graduated there was a rightist government so he had to stay in Germany for 20 years, where he married and had two kids.
Okay, so both of these guys are educated as economists and did time in New York and California. Miguel, though, is traveling in more glamorous circles and getting mixed up in history. If he's fabricating, he's smooth and a quick thinker, because I am introducing the topics much of the time, and he's right on them. For instance, I bring up the Sendero Luminoso in Peru, and Tupamaru, two bothersome leftist guerrilla outfits. Without a pause, he tells me that while he is still in Germany, because of his weight as a socialist, Tupamaru wants him to join them; he has conditions, however, they can’t meet - for one, stop fighting with Sendero Luminoso. Sendero also wants him to join them, but again, he needs them to clean up their act a bit; none of this infighting. I've got this skeptical little grin but he's going blithely on; he doesn't miss anything, though; he's got a sharp eye.
Now, these days, besides being an advisor for this new hotel, he’s a prime mover in a project outside of Yucay and in the mountains above Ollantaytambo to bring spinning wheels to the indians. He’s got a whole stack of photos - he’d just picked them up when I encountered him - of him with inca women and drop spindles and new spinning wheels. He has just introduced the spinning wheel to the andes. A couple years ago he was watching women spin and decided it was an inefficient process, so he (keyboard finger action) checked around until he found some people who make spinning wheels in New Zealand. He negotiates, they’ll give him a deal, 15 of them for $20k. He sends proposals to the New Zealand government, and a couple years later they get back to him with yes, they’ll pay the tab. Then he finds spinning wheel teachers in Germany and gets them here. He is also getting woodworkers here to make them. He tells me to youtube “pisac textiles.” Sure enough, there are three videos, two of which have him, with longer hair and a bigger beard, but yeah, that's him, in 2008, the Cuyo Grande project.
As we eat - I add some breaded chicken to my soup, buy him a beer - we are talking a lot of topics, largely political, since we're in Peru and he has this history. Bringing spinning wheels and communist insurgents together, suddenly we're in Canada in the 70's.
Now, he says, in 1975 the Canadian indians got together and founded the Council of First Nations, with their own parliament, recognized by the canadian government and the UN. They then invited aborigines from all over the world to join them and after discussion they decided to make revolution without arms. This is what our socialist friend Miguel Chavez is doing with the spinning wheels (the class struggle in Peru now is between the mestizos and the indians); making unarmed revolution.
Well, that's not exactly how Wikipedia tells the story, but history looks different when you're in it - I've been in history and remembered it my own way.
Miguel's tales portray a man to whom other men come for his power. But then, he is impressive.
Still. Check out this story.There was a moment when Sendero was poised to take Lima by force, the rich oppressors in the center outnumbered by the poor on the edges, all waiting for sendero to send arms...I’ve seen that center and those barrios; that's how it is...and at the same time an election is coming up. One faction wants to take arms while the iron is hot, and another to see how the election works out. But both Sendero and Tupamaru are barred from running candidates in the election; so who do they call on to represent their cause? They call on Miguel, who is technically not a member, to stand. While they are still arguing (Miguel declined) El Chino, Fujimoto, gets elected and kills them all. Miguel says, “and I’m sitting here.”
Sitting pretty because when Germany reunited there weren’t enough jobs for the east german youth so germany offered pensions - at full wage - to some old guys to open up jobs for the poor. So Miguel is getting good pay for life for whatever work he was doing to support himself and his family in unified Germany.
Now all those historical figures begging Miguel to be their leader seems pretty far-fetched, but then, Miguel’s son just published a book, in German, which he wanted to show me, about the Sendero Luminoso. Got his PhD with it. I asked if he was in it, and he says, “a little bit.”
When I get back I'll watch Exodus - it's on my hard drive - to see Sal Mineo die.
One more story. I'm in Urubamba nosing around private lands to try to see where Wayna Capac's estate, Quispihuanca, used to lie - trespassing around the east side, clambering over a dip in a stone fence and through some little fields, to get a look at what I thought was the living area and the courtyard with the sacred white rock. Through the eucalyptus foliage I spy motion, a campesino there, little guy in dirty clothes doing something to a newly turned field, and I turn back, I don't want a conflict. Then I stop myself. Why not give it a try?
I approach slowly, not to spook him, and ask in Spanish if I can pass through his property to the ruins. He regards me suspiciously, leans on his digging tool, and begins a series of questions - where from, what state, what name, what living, what am I doing here, and as I answer, apparently to his satisfaction, he comes closer and begins to smile. Pretty soon he's giving me a thorough and informed tour of the site. I had been totally disoriented, what I thought was the front was the back. I would not have figured all that out for myself, or been sure I was right if I had theorized correctly. I left satisfied with the exploration; I even found the sacred white rock, in the other direction, west, preserved by a little white rope.
The man’s name is Julio Guevarra, inheritor of that property through many generations of Spaniards - it sounded like back to the conquistadores, but he’d be richer if it went that far. His daughter works the desk of my hostel (kind of a spoiled valley girl to my eye) and her fiance does the same for the morning shift. He is about my age, spry, climbs up over walls like a kid, in faded soiled peasant clothes, landowner and farmer, a friend to the stranger who has the cortesa to ask.
Okay. Thanks for listening. Permission to skip the boring parts is always yours. Life is improved with the lifting of the curse, whatever it consisted, of, so I think I'll put on some pants and see what's happening in the plaza. Get a strawberry jugo.
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