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