Rikurisun, Tawintinsuyu

Adios, see you later, Land of the Incas. 

Lauren at the top of a six-hour climb to Intipunku, the Gate of the Sun, above Ollantaytambo

Not quite, but soon. December 8 I fly out, to get the annuity set up, see people, and do the annual meeting of the Institute of Andean Studies. From there, to Asia, I guess. You know all this, insofar as you want to. 

I put down a thousand US to hold a room here for nine months. I've made arrangements for the Barriga-Terans to care for the three remaining cats. Two others, Foo Fighter and Sniffles Leapy Outercat, died. Feline leukemia, Fabrizio the vet thinks. I hope the survivors are here when I come back.

So I plan to come back here. Who knows what one will feel after travel to other faraway places, or returning to one's native land? Maybe this place will lose its allure. But I've been happy here, and learned here that the world isn't all the same everywhere, nor are people. 

What is "home?" What does that word mean? If I could get a residency visa, this could be home. Maybe I'll make a serious try when I come back in six or eight months, if they let me back in. I think they will. A failed attempt could, as I mentioned, get me barred forever due to my FBI record. But I'll take that risk.

Man, I've liked this place. It is changing fast, growing fast, but the ground itself, the ancient spirit, will stay, and the old ways of the people will outlast my remaining ten or twenty years, before it goes all Abercrombie and Fitch. No use to cling to anything anyway. Shakespeare's bookstore shut their doors, that was the cue I was waiting for to know the old Berkeley is well and truly dead, although, really, it died in the late 70's with the onset of that hideous concept, "politically correct." Now what's left of the Left repudiates the term, claims they never really meant it; but they did. 

So yeah, things change. Dust in the wind. And what does any of it ever matter anyway? It means what it means to us as long as we are what we are, and then, whatever there is if there is anything, and I suspect there's not even nothing, is what it is or isn't what it isn't. But now there is you, and I, and the cats, and people of Ollantaytambo, Peru. I'll go out and look at them in a few minutes. And Marie, the nineteen-year-old German couchsurfer in the next room, another creature whose being puzzles me, breathes. I can be confident of that. Her placid character, sure of the world, I don't know quite what to make of it. Is that "innocence?" But she's funny. "Dooonald! Do it for me!" (re: Melania wanting a war.) She's staying an extra couple days, which pleases me. I like it when people dig being in the this town, the way you enjoy meeting people who like your favorite obscure band or book or creed or whatever you relate to. We like to share our favorite illusions in an illusory world. That makes them real.

I guess I'll never learn. I'm trying to know that what's real is what's now, and it has no definition, no beginning, no end, no name, no center. Just two cats back-to-back on the windowsill in the morning sun. The quiet, distant voices, birdsong, a rooster across two fields. Clouds lit and shadowed caught on the mountainside. There is no sentiment in any of it. That is good. I'll get dressed now.

Leonard Cohen isn't gone. He is singing to us sweetly from a window in the tower of song.  

Johanna and Tanja, inspired by the photo of upsidedown Lauren

Saturday, December 3, 2016

I hiked to Machu Picchu a few days ago, 28 kilometers, 17.4 miles. It was a pretty good trail. A remote drive crashed and took a lot of photo records with it, so I went there to replace some of them. Got some good shots, too. Saw more of the ruin than I had the two times before. 

Often had to wait until the tourists cleared out to get a clean view - thousands of people taking tens of thousands of selfies, all day long. I fear for how the place will look in ten years, though I have to say that the place itself seems well preserved, checking my photos against those taken by Hiram Bingham in 1912, and Martin Chambi in the 1920's. I'm suspicious, though, of the "restoration" done by the Ministry of Culture in some of the more decayed sections.

I leave here early Monday morning, doing a couple days in Cusco before flights. Hope I don't forget anything important. Hope I make that flight from Lima, the schedule cuts a little close and I've got to go through Migración.

Hope I didn't gush too much writing this record. What Jack Aubrey calls "mere enthusiasm." I don't mind embarrassing myself, but I'd rather not do it at your expense.

If I luck into a good place to rent in Port Angeles for a couple of months, I'm inclined to come down to the Bay Area in early January after all. The Institute of Andean Studies annual meeting takes place in Berkeley on the 6th and 7th, and I'd like to see if any of the authors of the books here next to my bed (or on the Kindle) will be there. Reading the titles of the papers and posters to be given there serves to show how little I know of this field, after dabbling in it since 1958. So, here this stops. If I come back, it'll just be more of the same.

See ya around, maybe.

I'm Not Really Learning Quechua

I'm not really learning Quechua. I have all the books and often use a web dictionary to look up words, but somewhere months back I lost momentum and stopped any actual study toward learning to converse. 

Partly, I guess, because it is taking so long to learn Spanish. I thought I'd be fluent a year ago, but now when I'm invited to eat at a family table I still can't follow the conversations. Better, but not good enough. So why put effort into learning a truly alien language, when mastery seems so unlikely? 

I've done pretty much everything on my list here, and the few things I haven't done don't sing to me that sweetly. I've walked these hills so often that the only way I can get interested in a brisk hike is to take a couple tokes of the local dope, or to accompany some couchsurfer up the trail and get a spark off their enjoyment. 

I spend more and more time lying around my room on the PC, watching pirated videos and playing Civ V.

And I can't leave here and come back again at will, which makes me claustrophobic.

Canada rejected my two-year campaign to be "criminally rehabilitated" for the three convictions that show up on my FBI record; trespassing, 1967,  Destruction of Evidence, 1968, Resisting Arrest, 1969. These were, Morningstar commune; Sonoma County busted us for refusing to leave after they shut us down for health code violations. Destruction of Evidence, 1968 - Cops were shaking down a couple hitchhikers, so the kids threw their stash onto Ashby Ave; I snatched it up, ran into the Co-op and threw it behind the doughnut counter; an off-duty cop at the lunch counter nabbed me. (Doughnut counter! Lunch counter! Them was the days!). And People's Park, see illustration.

No regrets

Turns out that if I even apply for a resident visa here in Peru it will trigger an issue of that FBI report; if Canada kicked me out for that, it's a good guess that Peru will too; forever. And I want to be able to come back. 

I'm already way over the 181 days per year Peru Immigration allows US Citizens, which means that if I leave, I'll have to, legally, stay out for at least six months. And the border trolls might decide that I've overstayed my allotment by too much (they're generally pretty liberal about that, they just charge you $1.00 per day upon exiting) and ban me for good. But let's say I can come back in six.

There's a thing or two I want to do in the Untied Snakes because they can't be done offshore. And the feeling that I am here because I can't afford to leave is offensive to my sense of sovereignty, and saps my love for being here.

So I'm thinking, I'll hang out here until after what looks to be the most surreal (Trump v. Sanders) or distasteful (Trump v. Clinton) election of our lifetime, then check out to the Olympic Peninsula (where my stuff is stored) long enough to take care of business, then take half a year or more off to travel.

Asia is the plan. Malaysia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Goa, Thailand, somewhere - a warm water beach with broadband.

The bitch is deciding whether to pay for storage here for all that time, or take everything I can with me and abandon the rest. That, and leaving the cats. Their lives will take a turn down a harder road.

That's it and that's all. Except:

Did you notice that Trump's ascendency is the first incidence of true democracy in the US in our lifetimes? The People spoke! They dumped the "two-party system" and picked their own candidate. When has that ever happened? The fact that they have exposed us as a nation of Walmartians, of mean-spirited, racist, uninformed, easily manipulated, belly-slapping dorks, doesn't change that. Wouldn't you know it? The people rose up to claim their own, and their man is a balls-out guffawing demagogue who revels in taking no position he won't openly drop on a dime, and they love it. The Slack-Jawed Yokels. If only the other end of spectrum could have the same power to buck the system and get Bernie on the ballot. There would be your Salvador Dali battle of the DC Comics titans.

As for my buzzards coming home to roost (We told you to mind your P's and Q's!) with that FBI I report - well, once in the 80's I was being quizzed by a detective and he asked about that Destruction of Evidence charge; I told him the story, he said, "Well, it gives you something to regret." I looked to my left and then to my right and then at him and said, "I don't regret that."

Far from it. Them was the days.

So adios Tawantinsuyu, Land of the Incas. Hope I can come back someday. If not, hey, life is change, and there never has been anything to grab onto. 

Ciao this, couchsurfers and all

Sumac Allpa

Beautiful Ground

Out my back window

I mourn the loss of the fields where I grew up, running free through the goldenrod and queen ann's lace, climbing the dust-green shivering poplars, turtle hunting in the county ditches. But I wish I'd grown up here. What a place to roam. What unending splendor and fascination. An order of magnitude richer in detail. 

Urubamba River Runs Through It

I walked seven klicks along the river yesterday to a town I saw on satellite view, Sillqui (pron. Silky); three hours of country and was passed by two cars total. 

It took me down dusty gravel roads, along grassy tracks beside narrow irrigation canals (acequias), between fields cultivated by bronze-age technology, along shaded woodland paths flanked by running water and ancient stone terrace walls, desert-like stretches of cactus and tough dry-country brush under towering red-rock peaks, with the glacial pinnacle of Veronica passing in and out of view under great ships of cloud, and the whole country was almost all mine. 

Path down to the river road by the old Inca causeway

Once in a while I'd pass a mud-brick household with family in the yard, maybe hand-washing clothes in the running water (that lady was still at it when I walked back, four hours later). 

Corn Woman carries a load of maise husks so big she looks like a walking corn shock

Fancy houses (who lives there?), ruined estancias, a tourist campground of corregated metal sheds that looked like a prisoner of war hutment. I shared the path with one couple, a granma in her thick skirt, manta-shawl, and fedora, carrying a bucket of berries, walking with a young girl in her white satin and lace church-going dress. No one else. Coming and going, I passed four young guys loading pasto, feed-grass, onto a flatbed truck. When the green trail walked by the old woman and young girl came down onto the gravel road, the crop truck, finally full, picked them up for the ride into the market. 

These guys asked if I wanted to work with the chain saw; I said I had, when young, but never one that big. They liked that.

I mean, I could go on about that hike for another two thousand words; and the day before, the stroll through the ever-changing fields just past the Inca causeway - beautiful megalithic stonework - well, that may have been better yet. 

Inka Pintay

And all around this place, 360 degrees, these fields, hills, peaks, rivulets, ruins, old, interesting, architecture, resonant people.

Sundown from Intiwatana

And that's the other thing - although they are really just one continuous reality - everything here is interesting. The people, their faces...

Check this out; you have to see it to fully comprehend it; the faces here show you what they are simple and plain. Where you live, people (and I'm one of them) present their expression, on the street, at work, at home; as a kind of PR; in quotes. One level removed from simple and plain. They read, This Is My Face With A Little Smile On It. This Is Me Being A Little Angry. This Is Me Ready For Anything. This is Me Being Me.

Everybody up there - Europe too, Asia, even the blank, hidden visage - show their faces on a second level; "As If." Here, not. Here a man may keep his feelings and thoughts to himself, but that's all; he's not projecting, "This is me keeping my feelings and thoughts to myself." All the people, smiling, frowning, stoic, thoughtful, are who they are. 

Incas, pure blood, these are the guys doing the work; and who are going to live be to 110

That's interesting all day long, to see those faces. And relaxing. The favorite word of these people is "tranquilo;" tranquil. Peaceful. That's how they see their surround, and so do I. Peaceful but always interesting. 

Ozymandias

The territoriality, the potential violence, the cowboy psychology that runs through everyone up there, even the chubby balding accountant who has never been in a fight in his life, is missing here. Their toughness is downplayed, never announced. You don't hear them swear.

Yanantin - "A special, harmonious relationship between two unspecified entities"

I don't know, there's too much to try to tell. Way too much. The ground, the flora, the fauna - livestock everywhere, all sorts, and the dogs and cats run free - the sky, the winds, the people from back in the hills in their traditional dress, not worn for tourists; the crisp black suits worn to baptisms and weddings, the market ladies in layered skirts and sweaters, panama hats, carrying babies or great loads of pasto grass or chocla maize in colorful mantas across their backs; the school kids in soccer polos lost in their cell phones. The buildings going up everywhere in the strong economy, old adobe, cinder block, concrete and rebar. The mototaxis with their menacing iconography. Too much. But the center of it is the land we're on, and the beauty of it.

It's the wet season now, but the whole day yesterday was flawless late spring weather; hallucinatory perfection. This is a "valley of eternal spring," and that's what it gives you. Like spring in temperate climates you get chill mornings and evenings, stormy nights in this season; overcast days, once, hail. No snow on the ground or ice on the puddles. Hot noons. But all within a kind of Camelot spectrum.

Rainbows everyfuckingwhere. You just got to live with it

Every day is new. This is what I want to say. Every day begins again and is full, full of variety, of information, of surprise, of discovery.  It has been that way since I got here. There are plenty of things to bitch about, but damn, I'm glad I came here.

*****

Afterthoughts


You get fires on the hills a couple times a year. Pretty, aren't they? The men go up to keep them in line.

Brushfire on Bandolista mountain

Fields in every direction...maize, quinoa, potatoes, squash, beans, pasto, crops with no name in English or presence at Whole Foods.

Livestock all around - cows, bulls, goats, pigs, chickens, ducks, guinea pigs, alpacas and llamas up in the hills; sheep

Dusk in tourist country. The buildings are kept to two stories (barring the outlaws), and the lights kept gentle (same).


 

Watching the river flow...