Haku

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Right now i'm tired. the bags under my eyes have deepened to a new level, and sometimes when i see myself in the mirror I wince a little because it's so obvious that i need sleep... lots of sleep. Lately my dreams have been filled with faces, of people far away but close in my heart. i wake up and feel as if I've just visited a friend, and for a moment they are right next to me. It usually take a few moments for it to sink in that they are thousands of miles away, and that I haven't seen them physically for a while. Sometimes my nights are filled with many dreams like this, rendez vous with 4 or 5 people a night... I can feel that it is soon time to go home. Mom just left... goodbyes are hard, and in ways I'm getting a little tired of them, feeling so close and comforted and then finding yourself standing alone again, reinventing your reality. The moon has been my constant companion on this trip, something that I've looked at in every country and found comfort, this easy tranquility.

Mom and I had an amazing time together. I spent some time alone in Lima before she came and stayed with another great family. The Mom and the sister sat and watched TV soap operas all day and they had a store in the front of the house... so every so often you'd hear shuffling in the front and a member of the family would have to go and make a transaction, people leaving with water or gum or a hairbrush. I spent most of my time with Lucho, a really generous boy who showed me the town. We went out and saw some great jazz in a smoky club that had people hanging over the balcony and dancing salsa to awesome improv trumpet. The musicians leaning back with feeling, blending themselves into the atmospehere of the night, meshing thier music with red curtains, tapping feet, and the one shameless guy at the front who was moving his whole body and letting random sounds escape him as the inspiration flowed. It was a Monday night and packed, people sipping beer and tapping their heels and looking cool. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face and Lucho thought I'd had a lot more wine then the one glass that I had indeed drank.

I waited for Mom at the Sheraton hotel which was luxury beyond belief in comparison to what i'd gotten used to. I spent a good hour wandering around, watching the golden lobby glitter, stealing mandarins from the exercise room, and running down the carpeted hallways. I took my first hot shower in two months and I have no problem admitting that it was one of the most heavenly things I've ever experienced and even though it should be used sparingly, hot water equals heaven, new beginnings, and running around naked afterwards because you're WARM and don't have to throw on your clothes in order to conserve body heat. Seeing Mom after 6 months was a pretty incredible feeling. i went to the airport to surprise her, and ended up having to wait quite a long time because flights were delayed. I watched as person after person came through the sliding doors, looking expectantly for someone. Families crying and hugging, old friends running across the terminal to hug and smile and laugh, tour guides picking up eager looking travellers... It was neat to see, all these different realtions waiting to happen, all this love waiting to be unleashed. It felt like forever but I finally saw her, in a familliar jean outfit, looking beautiful as always. i snuck up behind her as she was leaving the airport, oblivious to my sly presence, and tapped her on the shoulder. We hugged for a long time and looked at each other and after not to long it felt like I'd just seen her yesterday but had this new found appreciation that you get when you're away from people for a while. Everything they do is just a little sharper, their smile brighter, presence warmer... you're concious of you're legs toughing and the way they talk to other people. Mom, of course, made friends with our cab driver as we drove in the night through empty Lima streets asking him about his family, his children... laughing at his spanish accented jokes. She gave him a huge tip, which would become a theme of the trip, and I felt pretty lucky to be able to call this incredible person my mother.

We spent the day in Lima, walking around a lot and taking candid photos of ourselves outside of plazas and in front of statues. We lunched at the market... fish soup and ceviche which Peru claims it has invented, truth or myth? It's delicious, raw fish cooked with lemon and salt and served fresh juices and all. Dinner was a contrast to our economical market lunch, 5 soles or 1 dollar 50 for soup ceviche and chicha... a purple sweet liquid made from maize. The restaurant we went to for dinner reached out into the ocean, waves crashing against wooden beams, rustic cozy candlelight. we had our first pisco sours, perus's national and fricken delicious drink made from pisco, lemon, sugar, and eggwhites all shaken into tasty delight. We underestimated the strength of the piscos and ended up each stumbling a little as we got up from the table, giggling and happy to be together, both making similar sounds as the wind blew through our sweaters... cool cool nights.

The next morning, painstakingly early 4 AM, eyes puffy from 2 hours sleep, we somehow found our way onto a plane that took us to Arequipa which is Peru's second largest city nestled in the Andes. We were picked up by Alex, who ended up being our guide for the day. Alex's hair sweeps across his forhead black and straight. He looks incredibly good, clean plaid shirt and khaki pants. he has a really nice smile and treated us from the beginning like his friends, calling all the other white tourists gringos, somehow making us feel like we were excluded from this group. We climbed into a van and began the 4 hour drive to the Colca canyon. The drive was a little difficult as the altitude was a big adjustment, at one point we were at 15 000 feet... having come from sea level this was quite a shock to the system. My head felt like it weighed more then any other part of my body, and my feet felt shaky, like they'd forgotten how to hold me up properly. Alex bought cocoa leaves in a little store and demonstrated enthusiastically how to chew them. We removed the stems and wrapped a bundle around a little desert rock to make a cocoa leaf cylinder that resembled a cigarette. The Andean people chew cocoa leaves almost daily or drink them in tea. They are said to keep the cold away, give you more every, help you lose weight, and make you feel happier, miracle?... I felt a bit like a baseball player with the wad stuffed inside my cheek... it was quite funny actually, Alex nodding and smiling big like this was the best stuff he'd ever tasted and Mom trying to look pleased but then glancing over at me and revealing her real emotions, disgust and a bit of nausea. Driving into the canyon was like approaching a different planet. At first everything wak stark, the huge blue sky aricng over us, the road that stretched on for miles and sand colored hills rising out of the ground and looking so defined against the sky. The sun was a ball of warmth that kept getting hotter and hotter. The climate in the canyon is very bipolar. In the mornings and evenings it is freezing, you can see your breath and mom and I often had to bundle ourselves in blankets, scarves, mits and touques made from alpaca wool that we bought from local women to stay warm. Alpaca wool is fairly new, but the tourists love it, so now there's quite an industry. Often in the streets of Chivay, the main town of the Colca canyon, we would see women in traditional dress, pulling around alpacas as if they were pets... holding baby ones in their arms, a spool of wool at their feet. They twist the wool into yarn, double it, and then knit all kinds of wares to keep the unnaccustomed shivering tourists warm as well as their families etc. Sometimes women would cluster into groups and look candid and ask for money in exchange for a photo, which always makes me feel a little strange as someone who can be a sucker for "authenticity" which i'm learning doesn't exist. I now generally take pictures of only people that I know, because i imagine some chinese guy dressed in pants pulled up to high pointing a big camera lens in my face as I'm drinking tea or getting money out of the bank and i don't really like the feeling. When the sun comes out, everything changes... the valley is basked in light that gets warmer as the day goes on. Mom and I would often either be piling on or ripping off the layers...never mastering the ability to dress appropriately. The sun is extremely strong and burnt my face so that I sort of resembled a lobster every night at dinner. You can understand how the Incas and pre Inca civilizations worshipped the sun as their God. When Pisaro came to Peru, he showed a bible to the Inca leader and said that he must worship the one and only true God. The Inca leader looked at him amusedly at first and then realized that he was serious. He threw the book to the ground and said are you crazy, my God's are all around me, the sun, moon and earth... what my people depend on to survive... they are not contained in some book. Then Pisaro determined them to be demonistic heathens and waged war... Oh the good sense of the spainards.

One morning we went to go and see condors, the world´s largest bird associated with a lot of Andean spirituality. The condor is said to represent the heaven, the puma is earth life, and the snake the dead. People also worhip the mountains, calling them Apu´s and you can understand why as you´re walking through the valley and you feel the presence of it cloaking you like some kind of magicians cape. there is a sacred relationship between the sky the mountains and the land... the sky brings snow to the mountains which brings water to the land and food to the people. The earth is called pachamama, and it seems right to have the word mama associated with the earth. It was just so different, being in this place where you could really SEE people´s connection to their surroundings, their dependency, dedication, and respect for the land. Walking in the fields with the hand made irrigation channels running down the sides, the families all out there, babies strapped to mothers back´s, little boys throwing hay at eachother. In the valley, terraces which were created by the Inca´s are still used today. That sort of blew my mind, living history, seeing something that was innovated hundreds of years ago still being put to use, unchanged by the people today. It´s such a different appreciation you have for the past when you´re living its outcomes, feeling with your own hands instead of drawing a timeline or reading a chapter from a histroy book. In the canyon where the condors are the mountains drop into an abyss that appears to be bottomless, mountains reaching all around, vertical drops and cold stone. Across from the tourist lookout called the condor cross, barely big enough for the eye to see we could barely make out 3 houses which looked like they were glued to the side of the mountains, seemingly isolated from anything. We learned that it was a group of families who had decided to move there to catch these special insects that ooze out red dye and used to be the primary source for lipstick coloring...the lengths people go to survive, to live every day doing something.

Poem inspired by visit to condors, possibly entitled BIRDWATCHERS

condor spirals upward
effortless wings spread
a giant
belittled only by canyon

mountains open themselves
to the centre of the earth
plunging down so deep
you can smell the mystery

the tourists

dressed up in their clothes with to many pockets
and shoes that squeak with newness
bout specially for the trip
hanging off the edge of the canyon
cameras reaching
awkward retractable limbs glinting in the morning sun

condor swoops low
passing just above the different colored heads
watching amusedely as they run
this way and that
elbowing eachother and gasping
as if they were a group of blind lovers attempting an orgy
aiming their lenses like prepubescent snipers
frantic to get the job done
shaking in their boots
at the prospect of capturing a sliver
of the freedom soaring above

condor drops out of sight
and they start heading back
to the line of white vans
stark and bosxy against the dull colored road

they buy sweaters and gloves
sold by ladies with sing song voices
hola senorita
venga senor
bonitas cosas aqui

the ladies smile like condor
observing quietly
as the foreigners fumble for money
hidden far beneath their clothes
furrowing their brows
trying to figure out
just how many dollars is equal to 20 soles?

When the leave
it´s as if they were never there
in the first place

The ladies pick up their wares
and begin walking home
bright colored shawls wrapped loosely arounf their shoulders

they look up
and see condor circling
it´s silhouette familliar against the fading sky
it´s shape embroidered into the patterns on their dresses
it´s meaning hidden in the stories lurking beneath their skin

there is a moment
when they acknowledge eachother´s presence
a slight nod of the head
ritualistic and involuntary
so subtle that it´s existence is only know
by those who are taking part

the ladies follow the road
that winds and curves like a scar on canyon´s back
who now moans and creaks

a sound low and guttoral
only to be heard by condor
as music brought by the wind

Time in the Colca passed, but not easily like it does when you´re by the ocean. The sun wakes you in the morning and you´re hugging yourself at night to keep the cold out. the presence of everything there is thivk, something that sits on you if you let it. This guy Joseph said, ¨if you want to find yourself, then you need to stay here¨. One of my favorite things was the talks I had with Mom... spanning so many things and bridging our different opinions with a willingness to understand eachother. There are things about my Mom that have always been the same in the mind, the way her lipstick stains her wine glass, the way she holds your hand, the sound she makes when something scares her, the way she looks when she´s reading her book before sleeping... eyes concentrated brow slightly furrowed. She always surprises me to though, with her openess and constant curiosity to learn and grow... it´s just a really empowering thing to remember that we will always be surprised by people that we love if we´re willing to see it, and that we always have the ability to surprise ourselves.

After mom left I was alone in Arequipa and the hours felt like they stretched on for days and I knew that my heart was pulling me somewhere else. One morning I found myself crying alone in the hotel room and feeling like I was going against what I needed by trying to pretend that I wanted to keep travelling. Once I made the decision to go home, I felt a lot more present and found myself in some pretty interesting situations on my own. Arequipa is a beautiful city, people are always crowding the main plaza and the streets were often closed for stirkes or marching bands or protests. i stayed with this guy named Raul who had long hair and lonely eyes that looked at me to long sometimes. He was incredibly generous, but there was this wounded thing about about him, like he was searching for something, and often in conflict... part of me held back from being fully open to him just because of my worries of him projecting this conflict on me... he cooked me soy meat for dinner and we had some really good conversations about sexuality, his experiences in the peruvian army and love. One morning I was walking around looking like a wounded puppy about tears threatening to pour from eyes at any given moment and this magic woman Karina helped me open my gmail and put out her wing for me to sit under. She took me to her house which looks like a museum with huge archways and paintings of old men with moutaches. She had a dog that looked like a dinosaur and asked me questions in this way that made me want to jump up and hug her almost every time she spoke. David took me to a neighbourhood that was ll white and we sat on a bench and he told me stories about Hare Krishna. How when Krishna was a baby the devil tried to take him away by flying with him up into the sky... but Krishna made himself heavier and heavier until the devil couldn´t hole him anymore and the fell downwards. Krishna strategically maneouvered himself to land on top of the demon, crushing him and prancing off without a scratch. ¨it is the truth,¨he said to me when I asked about the validity of the story. I said it was HIS truth, but he responded that everything is for Krishna and we left it at that. Other people´s lives imprinting themselves on you, sometimes you feel the deposits, like multi mineral crystals, other times things just slip through you and you wonder where and when they´ll turn up.

Light blurry, unspeakable words that get forced inside you. pressed down deep if you don´t watch yourself. Unwanted hands and necessary gloves, heart beating fast in the morning and slowing down with the sun and the earth, this is my love.

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