Tôi muốn mua quần

I want to buy pants

Yesterday I did a couple hours locked in conflict with a cab driver and lost. Police were involved, the cab company, various civilians. He said I hadn't paid him the two hundred and fifteen thousand dong (about $9.50), I said I had given him a blue 500k bill. Variables were involved but in the end he could prove he had taken fares enough to explain the 500,000 dong bill in his pocket, but I didn't have figures to show I was short that amount. I didn't really remember how many $20 bills I'd given Hoa, the hotelier, to change,so I didn't know how much I should have left. The driver had a good reputation and seemed like a good guy to me, except that I could remember damn it handing him that bill.

In the end I caved. I went home bewildered and aback, still trying to put the pieces together. Now I lean toward him being right and me wrong, parsing out the data. Funny though, I noted I would rather be wrong, memory tricking me, than that I be tricked by them. I wonder what that says about me.

All right. I got back with my suitcase - that's what I needed the cab for - and a local sim for the cell. Still digging Vietnam.

I'm thinking now, even, that I'll cut out all the travel in the middle of this trip - to Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia - and just stay here. I just want to be here. Not to do all those airports, security checks, visa hassles. Might could even push the return date back a while. If Hoa gets the wifi put in; now I'm piggybacking on his personal wifi, which doesn't reach all the way to my room.

But this place is great; a moonlight walk on the beach was so beautiful it made me lonely. The air is warm and embracing. I was anticipating a complex aroma of spices, sweat, incense, but this isn't the teeming Orient in 1922; many of the scooter riders wear mouth and nose masks against the pollution from Da Nang. I don't notice anything.

I can see the beach from the balcony, between the Wermacht bunkers of new resort construction, surreal in the soft blurred night with a rainbow ring around the moon. 

But the pants, man. I knew I'd need shorts here, but chose not to bring any because I wanted to get them organically, in situ. Today was the day. I picked a hopeful direction, east, and walked past the Buddhas and bodhisattvas and long bearded maybe Lao Tsu's and stylised lions, all smiling, all statues, into the town of blocky concrete buildings with balconies, and didn't see a store for half an hour. After a while I jigged onto street with some little groceries, a lot of tea shops, mechanics - children said "hello" to me, I came back "chào bởi sáng," a woman too hello'd me as she directed her wheeled cartload of bricks onto the street. She's not getting fat. Once I saw a little hole-in-the-wall tailor.

Thing is, I'm in Buddha Statue District. Those stores continue to dominate the economy clear up along this great wide street, half a kilometer from my street, also full of Buddha statues. Cargo Pants District must be somewhere else.

Finally a big boulevard, three lanes each way, but block after block the closest I came to an emporium of cargo pants was a sports store with some bike shorts I wouldn't wear. On and on, block and block of motorbikes parked up on the slanting curb (one of those tricked me and I fell on my hands amazed), bikes and cars honking at each other, Asians talking Asian. Google maps told me I had doubled back way past my own territory, behind the pagoda peak in post below. 

I figured, one more block and I'll cut across to my road, the one that runs by the beach, not so likely but maybe something there. Got to the corner, hesitated, thought okay, one more block. In the middle was a cargo pants store. I kid thee not. Two skinny guys ushered me in and we laboured to find a 36" waist in this land of small lean men. Yeah, I used to be a 30". So. Just as I shrugged it off and walked to the door guy #2 called me back and now I wear these perfect, just what I wanted, pocket pants. How close I came to failure. 

Pantsed, I cut back across the beach road to the sea, walked the two or three kilometers past endless high-price resorts shoulder-to-shoulder, paying maybe $450 a night for a beach view, and the windows all curtained and nobody on the beach but me. 

And I pay $20 a night and sleep with the window open to listen to the surf.

Yeah, I might stay here and settle in for a while. But then, too, I'm looking forward to not having to study Vietnamese anymore. I like the language but I don't want to have to have to learn it.

Tôi không phuct trên China bãi biển

I am not phuct on China Beach

Looked like I was phuct last night, I stared into the malignant scowl of the "I'm getting out of here right now" monster.

I know I said this blog was done, but this is just too interesting. 

Every little thing went smooth on this trip, and everything I did was right, until I landed in Vietnam.

In Changi airport, Singapore, I learned by email that I had given Thuy Le, my hostess near Hoi An, the wrong arrival date. I didn't count all those hours. So she waited at Danang airport for two hours and I didn't show.

Rushing through customs to get to her before she lost faith again and left, the world threw obstacles at me. A form I hadn't (seen or) filled out, time at the visa window, time at lost and found because my main bag got stuck in LAX and won't be here until later today (if). 

She showed up all smiles and I learned - shoulda known - that she doesn't have a car, she's got a little bitty Honda scooter. She crammed my carryon between her legs, I got on the back, we did the 45 minutes to her place. 

I put down my bags and took a walk to the beach. Joked with her that I'd get lost and spend the night shivering in the rain.

I did get lost. Her folks' place is behind a crowd of bigger-than-life Buddhist statues between two hotels. Can't miss it.

The street is lined with places selling big Buddhas, and I couldn't, in the dark, find two hotels divided by a crowd of them. 

Mean Buddha Nice Buddha

Finally I did, further down than I thought, and got back to be told I had to pack up and go. Her drunk dad had a fit about strangers in the house. I was her first Airbnb guest and I guess they hadn't really wired the old dude into it.

I realised also that because of the hurry I have no Dong. My money's all in US dollars.

She sets me up with a place next door, one of those hotels, for the same price. I get inside, and find that none of the wall plugs work. I can't recharge my electronics. That's critical; the battery on this Mac air drains fast and I'm going to have to do a lot on online work to get myself out of this.

On top of all that, nobody here even recognises that I'm trying to speak their language. The simple phrases I've learned mean nothing to them.

Seriously, I'm ready to get the fuck back to Peru on the next flight out.

But hey.

In the middle of the night I notice that the bathroom light is on; it wouldn't light up when I was testing the plugs. I try the laptop, the charger light comes on.

Main bugaboo bugs out.

Dawn. I fire up the internet (wifi's good and strong), start checking out other places. But on the walk to the beach - China Beach, the place that 80's Vietnam War series with the loopy Irish nurse takes place - I saw a hotel-type place with gringos knocking back beers, and a skinny local dude waves to me in English. So I check it out. 

Now note, my bag is a day late. Thuy had a scooter. If my bag had been on time, no way we could have got it on that bike. It is big and heavy. And no place to leave it at the airport. Bad thing is good thing. And Thuy's room, well, I didn't like it. The cabinets were all clearly her family's and the only other thing in the room was her bed. I would not be comfortable there at all. But the place next door is a commercial hotel with a standard private room. So when her dad 86'd me, he did me a favor. Good thing.

This morning in the foyer, the little lady understood my Good morning and Thank you and lit up; and the rest - her man, sister, friend, gathered 'round and helped correct my accent and the like, all smiling. One man asked if I'd been to China Beach, the location in Vietnamese and then English, and since I had nothing to say in VN I just said, "Wet feet." They got that and laughed.

My room is chilly so I go out with the bomber jacket, but outside it is wet heat. Not oppressive, but too much for the jacket, so I take it back upstairs.

Here is Vietnam. Balmy, full of Buddhas and motorcycles and those mountains, those aren't American north or south; those aren't European. Those are cool chocolate drop hills from Chinese watercolors. And the air is different. 

Hoa's not there yet, but his wife cooks me breakfast, and it's good, and it's cheap. Then he comes.

Hoa - he's on the web, he's been there for 26 years - speaks our tongue, he's been hosting gringo expats probably since the war and knows the slang. He's friendly and he's got rooms for $10, $15, and $20. He's kind of a legend.

The $20 has a balcony and looks out over the ocean. Damn. My dream. I've got a place right on the beach. 

And, dig it, this is his new place. Just moved. First day open. I'm his first guest. He changes out my $US for Dong at a better rate than I had calculated ($1.00 = 22,569 Dong. Breakfast was Dong $4000). Cab to the airport will be about D15,000. I've run out of problems.

Now, wifi's not in yet; but he gives his word it'll be running today. So I'm still in the old place until maybe noon to keep wired.

If that comes true, I've run out of problems and I'm in a helluva place. So much to check out. Warm days and wide seas.

I want to tell you about the ride in last night.

On the back of Thuy's scooter, holding her lightly by the waist, nervous at first because I'm not confident of her skills and the streets are crazy crowded - thousands, no shit, of small bikes, weaving in and out of each other like a vast school of fish, like a great flock of of birds taking off over the sea, shifting and swirling. Dark falls, the night is warm, the city is strange,I learn to trust her; we thread across lanes of hundreds of bikes, tail lights and head lights like paper lanterns, all beeping but knowing the drill, making way for each other like, magically, impossibly - she cuts right across the flow of traffic four lanes wide to make a turn, and somehow it works. Riders come directly into traffic the wrong way at speed and everyone is cool with that. She makes a turn into slight traffic, quiet, there is a pagoda, then back into the luminous throng, I feel like I'm in a dream. Pressed up against her I'm tempted to get a hard-on, but I decline. Or am just too far gone. All the riders young and old with multicoloured helmets and raincoats. There's a guy with US kevlar on his head; a girl with an iridescent poncho flowing, a vast flight of others in the night. 

Chào mừng bạn đến viet nam. Welcome to Vietnam. I've figured out what words I need to know next. I should be able to pull this off. 

There may never be another good selfie mirror

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...

Cat Song

Poma Takina

Eight cats, three generations

Gen 1

La Grita, or Mamacita, or Mitochondria MRCA

Cat Mandala - clockwise: La Grita, Dumbass, Sniffles, Foo Fighter, Smoke, Snowflake, Iskay

Gen 2 - all black

Foo Fighter - biggest, male, explorer, momma's boy

Sister Sniffles - Femme, next biggest, quiet, will climb leg for food

Sister Sniffles

Kwee, or Round Eyes - smallest, female, whispers heavenly labials, born a loner but grew into the fold

Kwee

Sister Sliver - deceased, now down by the riverside

Gen 3, in order born

Dumbass, formerly Tiger or Tigre - male, stripe, strongly marked, takes a long time to figure anything out; alpha at the chicken parts

Iskay and Dumbass

Iskay - (means Two in Quechua) - finely striped, female, affectionate, sleeps in your armpit

Snowflake - female, smallest, black with subtle stripe pattern below - bit of a loner 

Smoke - female, almost twin to Iskay but slightly less defined, Virgo

Sniffles and Foo Fighter

Gen 3 will upon full weaning be farmed out to Juan at the mercado; two for mousers in the market, two as pets for his mom. I will advise Dumbass as a hunter, Iksay as a pet

Dumbass sort of faces camera

Footnote:

As I edit this post, two scraggly interlopers from the neighborhood slink in to forage from the cat's dry food bowl, one after the other. I'm not going to begrudge them that, having overcome so much fear to get here.

Interloper One

Interloper Two.