A day before leaving Seattle for Lima, I stopped at Magus Used Bookstore and picked up a volume titled "An Area of Darkness" by Nobel Prize Winner U.S. Naipaul. The author, a Trinidad-born Indian now living in London, recounts his first trip back to India, where he was, in a sense, assulted by the sounds, smells, and attitudes he enountered there. As I follow Naipaul´s journey into places both familiar and exotic, I am comforted to know that there are others who have been stricken as I have by situations that at times make no sense at all, and by landscapes and people that are at once beautiful and imperfect. My very first impression of Lima, upon stepping outside of the airport at 11 pm was "It smells like fire." And the sky was indeed orange.
... read more
