Wasiy

It is August of 2014, and I have a house in Ollantaytambo.The lease is a year. I have a Peruvian cell phone and internet carrier, Claro, and have met a bunch of people, one two of whom have the potential to become actual friends. The place envelopes me, it is interesting, impressive, beautiful - screw looking up synonyms - and the people are kind. The basic food is  quinoa soup, chicken, rice, potato. There are variations, and it's all fine with me, I can happily live on this, interleaved with this and that now and then. I breakfast on bread rolls and "fresh milk" that comes in a box. I like it. 

My house (wasiy) is a little over a click from the center of town, has two floors, two bedrooms, two baths, a kitchen, a dining room, and a big covered deck, a balcón. It runs $250 US per month. The hot shower isn't so hot so far and may never be, but heck, we're not in Vacaville anymore, Toto. It has electricity and fast internet. A mountain river runs by across the camino.

About three years back in Berkeley I composed a desiderata of what I wanted in a place to live; true dark, silence, living water, stars, and a dirt road to run on. Now I have them all. And Inkas, Inkas up the waz, Jack.

I checked out of Hotel California and of US. Maybe to return, but not for a while; not until I know what it's like to be planted somewhere else. I did it. 

I'm not bored, I'm not angry, I'm not afraid, not of much; I look forward to every morning. 

I've outlived most of my enemies

I've outrun much of my misery

I've outgrown some of my stupidity

Mary you should'a stayed

That's a song  that came to me a few months ago, came to stay.

That peak in the pic is Pinkyulluna; the locals call it Apu Pinkyulluna; Apu means Lord. The photo is taken from Apu Bandolista, on which the main ruins reside, Temple Hill. I met a man who has worked twenty years "restoring" Inka sites for the National Institute of Culture, or Instituto de Cultura Nacional, or INC, pronounced as E-NSA. He says there are, I think, 28 official Archeological Zones in Ollantaytambo, more than two hundred separate sites. He has a daughter who is an accredited archaeologist, also working for the INC. They offer to squire me around some of these places, show me what's real and what's not. I think I'll take them up on it when they finish working on their new apartment building in a couple weeks. I'd sure like to know.

The escarpment to the right is three distinct Apus along its length. It took me ten days and a few interrogations to find them out and verify, but I did. 

Now I know I'm not all that likable past a point, being a know-it-all, showoff, elitist, egoist, and whatever you're thinking that I don't know about, but I know some Quechua (Runasimi) words and I really like the Incas, and people around here appreciate that, so my long isolation has melted away somewhat. Here people live mostly in houses sharing walls on both sides, in extended families, and in a town of 2000, know one another at least by sight, so one of the first things they ask is, do you have a wife? Kids? Family? And when they find out I don't, it fascinates them. They call it "solito," and they use the word a lot around me. A day or two ago I was in a room with three women none of whom gave the impression of being especially literate, so when they asked me yet again if I was really single, I said, "Soy más solito que Gabriel Marquez." More alone than Gabriel Marquez. They all laughed, no pause. He wrote A Hundred Years of Solitude."

It's Sunday. The landlady, Ricardina, invited me to lunch today with some of her amigas, girlfriends. I thought maybe she was matchmaking, but no, it was a family/good friends get-together to which I was courteously invited. There was a lot of food. I shouldn't have had that second bowl of soup, I didn't know there was so much more coming, but I did my plate fair justice. Sure won't go out for Cena tonight though.

Now they are downstairs being fairly loud - it's only 5:52 so I'm not worried, they'll pipe down by eight - and playing Andean music, pitched so high it seems almost Chinese. They are good people. One, the patriarch of the gathering, is a Quechua first-language native of many generations; I asked, six centuries? Which would take you back to founding of this town by Pachacuti Inka, the most awesome of all the Inkas - don't laugh, he'd make you piss your pants with a glance - and he said, possibly. And it is possible. Not a hair on his chin, he's all indio.

He gave to me an Inka greeting which I'd once heard but failed to record, it goes:

Ama suhua
Ama llulla
Ama quellu
Jinullutag Q'ampus

I won't rob you
I won't lie to you
I won't be lazy
You do the same

And you know what? The way the Inkas lived, they could do it.

Someday maybe I'll tell you about Katty, KAH-tee. She runs the hostal, Chaska Wasi, at which I landed, and finessed me into this house; many expats have left this town unable to find a place to set up. And she won't lie to you (though things'll take a little longer than her optimism allows), she won't rob you (no qualification), she won't be lazy (no qualification). You...well, do what you want to do.

I'm the highest red roof in the left center. That's Apu Pinkyulluna behind.