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Published: July 26th 2006
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well hello again friends. I have reached the point in my mind where I give the world that sick sidelong glance as I pick apart the pieces of my mind and package them for your consumption. It feels good to be back. Back where the chicken scratch flows from my fingers in waves, like the ocean I left behind. The ocean with crushed shells and sand made soft by the everlasting violence of its sweet rhythm.
Speaking of rhythms, i had a singular moment in my travel one late Saturday night. The dancers were disrobed, performing before the altar of their passion. Naked, tho clothed, these shaman sang their siren song.
(The word singular here is the key component to this story. A singularity is defined in physics as the point at which equations have lost their significance. Examples include the moment preceeding the big bang, or the point in space defined as as a black hole. For some a singularity is a sign of the supernatural, for others, an unending mystery. But one thing remains, what happens here is all interpretation, all speculation, and all beyond the normal realm of our known and knowable universe. Time dialates in these
realms, and infinity cannot even be used to described the vastness of time, matter, or energy).
And what a song they sung. I first saw them after the long dust filled ride through the mountains, on a combi where passengers pleaded for pennies as rivers and ruins floated by unnoticed. Unnoticed to me because I was enraptured in Spanish and with the almond shaped eyes. Soft shapes intermediary between my own and Asiatic eyelids. These soft brown nuts held the link between the strength of the Incan past as well as the eyeliner of modern beauty. So I stared sideways and wandered to the intersection of past and present, Quechuan and Cusqueno, light and dark.
But my story is not about eyes, it is about the people circled in the street who I encountered when I disembarked from that bus in Paurcatambo. The circle formed and the fans stared as a dance was done. Then one man stepped up and crossed his arms in defiance. He wore a smiling mask across his face and a dead llama strung on his back. Then he was whipped. Then the whippee, then whippppped, then the whippeeeeee then whippppppped, then the whipppeeeeeeeee... Until the
dance commenced in lashes of ecstasy as rope cracked across their bare ankles. I was impressed.
But no so impressed as when they sank me into that trance some hours later. A trance which transcended time, as did my memories of that night. I had seen and was seeing and still see the devilish dances representing the demons dwelling in the unknown darkness of the jungle. The gringos smashing full bottles of vodka on the street. The stench of 5 cent toilets at sunset. The sight of the friendly family sleeping 3 to a bed. The colorful cloth of Quechuan women hanging from their makeshift markets. And the talk of America with an arm of a new friend tucked gently against my back. that never ending description of the vast riches and homeless poor which side by side, like myself and Berto, tell the story of my land, my life. He chuckled, as I told him this trip took six months to save for, he would take six years to save for the states. But the distinction between peoples dissipates as common ground was found, and ours was forged in the streets as we suckled beers and exchanged ideas
in broken language.
I thought of this and less as I continued to blankly drink the dance and watch my beer. Then, the men left as they came. On clouds of fog and stamping feet. Their song echoing in my head a hundred times. Their movements mirrors of each other and a window into my mind. The simple rhythm from which i still have not awoke. And that makes me tired.
And so did Salkantay, so this is where the story ends. Before I can describe the red salida del sol I witnessed at Tres Cruces. Before I can relate to you the piles of personal shit nurturing the plants by the river. Before I can recount the countless people I saw. Before I can describe the drunken merriment of thousands thronged in the square. Before I can retell the story of my friends flitting through great fires. Before I can recall the moment when fireworks landed flaming on AlisonĀ“s shoulder. Before I tell the thousand stories shared by a people in peace, a people in party. A people drunk with happiness dancing to the rhythm of the coco leaves which stuck widely from their lips. Because there
are too many stories to tell and none of them my own. Because my only moment of clarity, my only moment of importance, the only moment singularly mine, came when the Quechuans danced disrobed, and my mind lay naked as well.
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