Black Thoughts
It's a fine day in the Andes - cool in the mornings, hot before noon, chilly in the afternoon, temperate in the evening. The light is sublime. I discovered a new ruin, not on any tours, a riverside retreat, they speculate, of the greatest of the Sapa Incas, the most influential personality known to the precolumbian new world; Pachacuti, Earth-Changer. I sat, foot dangling, on a corner of wall in the perfect noon, Urubamba river rush blending with the burble of the fountains running through this abandoned resort - the incas loved their stone, and they loved living water. There was a two-story tower with windows north and south to watch the river and the channelled waters both. They call the place Q'ellu Racay. My Spanish-Quechua dictionary tells me "q'ellu" is "yellow," but "racay" I cannot pin down. Well, Quechan orthography is going through changes these days, so spelling is nebulous - "rakay" means poultry, "rakiy" means divorce, and "raqay" is hut, or ruined house. You decide. Oh, you didn't pick "Golden Divorce," did you?
I found the place searching "Jean Pierre Protzen," who wrote the definitive work on the inca architecture in Ollantaytambo. Every now and then I prompted myself to buy it, but the cheapest copy available online is $220 US, and I lacked the nerve. It would have been worth it.
I'd upload photos, but the wifi would just say "loading one file" all night until I gave up; and, to you, it would just look like the foundations of some Norman farmhouse; fieldstone walls. You pretty much have to be an andeanist to get some of these ruins, it is an acquired taste. I think this site was intentionally humble in its construction, a quiet place for the great man to go to be alone and hear the silence behind the rushing water. Other Inca work will communicate to you, when I get back to a strong connection.
Which is today's theme: Yana Hamut'a: Black Thoughts.
Recognizing the sometimes sugary tone of this record, please note that the flip side, the dark side, of all this is not ignored. The inca artefacts will pall, I can't play with them all the time; sometimes everything I've gained coming here will seem like less than everything I've left behind. The people don't really like you. Did I say this already? And there are inconveniences...
Verizon has stranded me here with no international capability - I can't call out of Peru. They didn't tell me this would happen when I had them set me up with data down here; it didn't happen this way in Australia or France. But the grind is, the real betrayal is, there is no way to contact them to fix anything. Not by phone, not by email, not by web interface. Every avenue shuts down when it sees where I am. I could write them a letter; that's it. And I'm moving too fast for a reply.
Well, I could find a number and call on a local phone, maybe? That occurred to me today, but it wouldn't make me feel much better, and getting that to happen in this hostel wouldn't be fun. See below.
I owe Verizon for two month's service, but I can't pay, because my online banking service has done the same thing - it closes all approaches when it sees that I'm out of the country - there is no solution by web. I can't reach them.
Ah well, next time I'll know better. But they should make some simple email link available, both of them.
I said the people won't really like you, you are a stranger, an intruder. Of course, that's not always true; some of the locals do warm to you. Here, in this albergue, it's kind of mixed and iffy.
I locked myself out of my room - what an idiot - which caused the management some inconvenience. I berate myself for that. But then, you'd think they'd have a protocol in place for such an event.
Instead, the owner doesn't have any contingency plan for keys locked in the room - there's a cloth sack of about 100 unidentified random keys, and he didn't even know where how to find that, his adolescent daughter had to dig it out of somewhere; then he tries each one, but in such a hurry that he can't be sure he really has tried it; then throws them into a pile so he can't tell which one's he's tried and which not. Now you know, every lock comes with at least two keys, and that's true here too, because I saw the boxes they come in. The guy is dumb as a fucking post. He brought a hammer and pliers as his solution, and was going to knock off the knob, until I pointed out to his more effective eldest son that the bathroom window - glass slats fixed to a lever - could be removed, and the son divined a way to remove four slats and drop the four-year-old younger son, Inti (runasimi for "sun;" the kids seemed to have inca names) through to open the door from the inside.
Attitudes toward me may have changed after that, but I'm not really sure he doesn't like me, his smile is too obligatory to tell. One of the two or three senoras, however, consistently ducks down the stairs when she sees me coming; another, the principal one, is helpful enough when she's around, which is sporadically. The elder son does seem to like and respect me, as far as I can tell, and he's the smart one. There are about six four-year-olds (more or less) and they seem to regard me with suspicion, which is the best measure of the general opinion; but I don't think they really care much about any of their gringo guests, they're much more into their own family life. This is off-season, so they may think it's not their job really until June or whenever, I don't know.
Okay, so I'll always be an outsider here, but so what, I was in Berkeley too, and more so in East Lansing, where I was raised, and being a foreigner is a plus to some folk here. I can live with that, I guess. And there are the expats, dug in somewhere here - I suspect that after a few months here, when I've proved myself, they'd seek me out and whisper me their secret password.
Black thoughts! Fuck Verizon, how can they do this to a customer, they know you are in a far place and that they are your means of communication, why don't they plan for that?
Why didn't I?
What if the bandwidth I've got here now is as good as it gets? And I can never upload jpgs?
Twice so far the electricity has gone out in three out of four provinces in the state of Cusco. That wouldn't happen under the Incas.
Stranger in a strange land, under the sheltering sky. What a gas. I saw some willowy woman with a Nefertiti profile in an ankle-length skirt turn down a soliciting guide and go alone up the stairs to the main ruins today. Later she passed a few yards away in the plaza; I sort of smiled. Maybe she smiled back, my vision allows for fantasies at that range. Maybe I'll run into her again. Everybody else around are in twos and threes, threes and fours, twenties and thirties. Her colors were good. I don't need to get laid, just to share some qualities.
In Q'ellu Racay I met a couple from Quito, Ecuador - she was Australian, he Peruvian; they were there for a "ceremony." I could talk inca with him, we speculated about the wall I was resting on - could it support both a roof and an access walk to the second-story punku, gateway? I learned how to pronounce kallanka. We would have kicked that stuff around for a while, but he had a ceremony to get to.
I'm going to post this and dist to my chosen few back home. That's all it's for. I'll clean up this post later.
Dusk. Venus is out in the southwest, has been every night lately; it's called Chaska Coyllur, the long hair star. It's female here too. It floats over a snaggle-tooth peak off in the distance; the Olympic Peninsula has its beauty but where I live, not like this.
I found the place searching "Jean Pierre Protzen," who wrote the definitive work on the inca architecture in Ollantaytambo. Every now and then I prompted myself to buy it, but the cheapest copy available online is $220 US, and I lacked the nerve. It would have been worth it.
I'd upload photos, but the wifi would just say "loading one file" all night until I gave up; and, to you, it would just look like the foundations of some Norman farmhouse; fieldstone walls. You pretty much have to be an andeanist to get some of these ruins, it is an acquired taste. I think this site was intentionally humble in its construction, a quiet place for the great man to go to be alone and hear the silence behind the rushing water. Other Inca work will communicate to you, when I get back to a strong connection.
Which is today's theme: Yana Hamut'a: Black Thoughts.
Recognizing the sometimes sugary tone of this record, please note that the flip side, the dark side, of all this is not ignored. The inca artefacts will pall, I can't play with them all the time; sometimes everything I've gained coming here will seem like less than everything I've left behind. The people don't really like you. Did I say this already? And there are inconveniences...
Verizon has stranded me here with no international capability - I can't call out of Peru. They didn't tell me this would happen when I had them set me up with data down here; it didn't happen this way in Australia or France. But the grind is, the real betrayal is, there is no way to contact them to fix anything. Not by phone, not by email, not by web interface. Every avenue shuts down when it sees where I am. I could write them a letter; that's it. And I'm moving too fast for a reply.
Well, I could find a number and call on a local phone, maybe? That occurred to me today, but it wouldn't make me feel much better, and getting that to happen in this hostel wouldn't be fun. See below.
I owe Verizon for two month's service, but I can't pay, because my online banking service has done the same thing - it closes all approaches when it sees that I'm out of the country - there is no solution by web. I can't reach them.
Ah well, next time I'll know better. But they should make some simple email link available, both of them.
I said the people won't really like you, you are a stranger, an intruder. Of course, that's not always true; some of the locals do warm to you. Here, in this albergue, it's kind of mixed and iffy.
I locked myself out of my room - what an idiot - which caused the management some inconvenience. I berate myself for that. But then, you'd think they'd have a protocol in place for such an event.
Instead, the owner doesn't have any contingency plan for keys locked in the room - there's a cloth sack of about 100 unidentified random keys, and he didn't even know where how to find that, his adolescent daughter had to dig it out of somewhere; then he tries each one, but in such a hurry that he can't be sure he really has tried it; then throws them into a pile so he can't tell which one's he's tried and which not. Now you know, every lock comes with at least two keys, and that's true here too, because I saw the boxes they come in. The guy is dumb as a fucking post. He brought a hammer and pliers as his solution, and was going to knock off the knob, until I pointed out to his more effective eldest son that the bathroom window - glass slats fixed to a lever - could be removed, and the son divined a way to remove four slats and drop the four-year-old younger son, Inti (runasimi for "sun;" the kids seemed to have inca names) through to open the door from the inside.
Attitudes toward me may have changed after that, but I'm not really sure he doesn't like me, his smile is too obligatory to tell. One of the two or three senoras, however, consistently ducks down the stairs when she sees me coming; another, the principal one, is helpful enough when she's around, which is sporadically. The elder son does seem to like and respect me, as far as I can tell, and he's the smart one. There are about six four-year-olds (more or less) and they seem to regard me with suspicion, which is the best measure of the general opinion; but I don't think they really care much about any of their gringo guests, they're much more into their own family life. This is off-season, so they may think it's not their job really until June or whenever, I don't know.
Okay, so I'll always be an outsider here, but so what, I was in Berkeley too, and more so in East Lansing, where I was raised, and being a foreigner is a plus to some folk here. I can live with that, I guess. And there are the expats, dug in somewhere here - I suspect that after a few months here, when I've proved myself, they'd seek me out and whisper me their secret password.
Black thoughts! Fuck Verizon, how can they do this to a customer, they know you are in a far place and that they are your means of communication, why don't they plan for that?
Why didn't I?
What if the bandwidth I've got here now is as good as it gets? And I can never upload jpgs?
Twice so far the electricity has gone out in three out of four provinces in the state of Cusco. That wouldn't happen under the Incas.
Stranger in a strange land, under the sheltering sky. What a gas. I saw some willowy woman with a Nefertiti profile in an ankle-length skirt turn down a soliciting guide and go alone up the stairs to the main ruins today. Later she passed a few yards away in the plaza; I sort of smiled. Maybe she smiled back, my vision allows for fantasies at that range. Maybe I'll run into her again. Everybody else around are in twos and threes, threes and fours, twenties and thirties. Her colors were good. I don't need to get laid, just to share some qualities.
In Q'ellu Racay I met a couple from Quito, Ecuador - she was Australian, he Peruvian; they were there for a "ceremony." I could talk inca with him, we speculated about the wall I was resting on - could it support both a roof and an access walk to the second-story punku, gateway? I learned how to pronounce kallanka. We would have kicked that stuff around for a while, but he had a ceremony to get to.
I'm going to post this and dist to my chosen few back home. That's all it's for. I'll clean up this post later.
Dusk. Venus is out in the southwest, has been every night lately; it's called Chaska Coyllur, the long hair star. It's female here too. It floats over a snaggle-tooth peak off in the distance; the Olympic Peninsula has its beauty but where I live, not like this.
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