This is my last day as a solo traveller. Tomorrow I meet two friends at our new apartment in Palermo Soho.
Time has flown by. I remember in Lima having some slight anxieties about the long stretch of weeks that laid before me. Actually, those anxieties, they weren't slight, not slight at all. I was damn worried, depressed even, and I kept asking myself: What have I got myself into? What the hell am I going to do
here, in this crazy country, for the next 3 months?
But I can hardly believe that was me at all now. I miss Peru, I miss the people and the food. I never got to try the Guinea Pig roast, ha; there are many other cities I would have liked to see. And it seems I just flew right through Bolivia - what happened to Potosi? to Santiago? (the San Pedro prison tour...) The memory of these places flicker through me. Sparkle, fade, etc, etc...
As I said before - getting off the bus from Bolivia, into Chile — I felt like I left some stupefying circus, writhing and happy and dirt cheap. Like some kid terrified of a roller coaster, which he is persuaded to ride, and getting off, wishes the twisting, twirling steel-and-wood tracks would never come to their inevitable, terrible finish. I miss the roller coaster, although I hate it. Although it is reckless, dirty and cheap.
The essence of my trip is about to gain an entirely new flavour and formula; this writing is the nostalgia I am having for the first part - all things ineffable, I am trying to capture something about a brief part of my life which is all but over already. So brief and liquid it's hard to believe it happened at all - it is impossible to even really know what it is I am missing: but let's try to stick a few pegs around it.
I was alone and the people I met did not know me. Strangers all of them, and that made me a stranger too. There was no plan and no need to stay anywhere, or do anything. I spent days, too many, in Lima, not speaking a word of English. At least one third of the nights up there were in night busses, watching stars and finding constellations that don't exists in the skies back home; being the last one - every time - with the reading light on. Waking up too early, or too late, eating alone. My heart stopping almost every hour for the first two weeks from fear.
Fear! That's the word.
The wonderful, horrible fear that existed for this first month and half, that is fading, is evaporating. What is left is the pulp, the idea of it: night bus to Trujillos; the cab driver who cursed me at the Huaca de Luna, only minutes after he drove off the road down a dirt path, through a twisting alley way of concrete , full of pariah dogs and chikens — scarred chicken missing feathers —
he is trying to rob me— he says he is only taking an alternate route, and that the main one is closed. I grab on tight to my rucksack and ready myself to jump out of the yellow, rusted cab... wait, we have arrived. He tells me the cost is doubled and I tell him I am no
estupido.... he spits on the ground at my feet and tells me I will regret it all. (Later, I see him waiting in the parking lot for me...I take the dirt path past the Huaca de Sol - a still buried temple - and get onto the collectivo mini bus. I ride back to town with farmers missing teeth, Peruvian wives and girls, and two perros sin pelo (dogs with no fur, sick black muts with tuffs of vomit coloured, wirey hair sparsely occuring on the muzzles and backs).
This alley way on Chile St., here in Buenos Aires, which I can't even explain or entirely remember.... I am with three Swedish boys, and we are looking for a bar party, and the American at the hostel has given us the wrong directions. It is three a.m. and a woman with her two toddlers playing in the shadows behind her - a normal sight here to see small kids on the street, playing with the stray dogs or eachother, at any hour - tells us that we are looking for this place, right there across the street. Foolishly the Swedes thank her, and offer her two pesos for the help - she inexplicably refuses the cash, perhaps because of the two police cars parked down the street, officers eye's trained on the gringos....the swedes foolish as always and very young meander into the dark building... inside a dark alley way...inside is not inside, but it is a roofless shanty court yard, a large wooden desk with a glass shield and a leading to this reception area is a line up of ten or twenty homeless, young and old, men. They lambast us all for our cigarettes and some spare change (monedas). This is not the party we are looking for, the Swedish boys are exhilirated and want to stay. They are buying drugs.... Watched the yolk -or pudding - sun come up over the Avenida de Mayo later that morning - this, after breaking into the rooftop terrace of a neighbouring hostel, and smashing the light sensor on the brick wall...
fear, destruction, discovery, some moments of absolute joy: this is life. And moments of absolutely loathing too. This is life?
I realize I have been very negative about the journey. Don't take it the wrong way. I am happy to be here, I think that I am generally a cynic with all things: anyway, I am just being honest. Traveling isn't all peaches and pancakes. It's difficult, it is scary (for me at least), but it is wonderful!
I am glad that this thing is over, this solo adventure, but that I want it to go on. It is better to leave something wanting more, then begging for it to be over. I'd rather be dragged out than dig my way out.
UPDATES:
- been searching for video camera person via craigslist because I start to work with SPIN Magazine this next week. Have at least 3 or 4 meetings set up with local boys and girls this week to meet a good partner. This is a good way to meet likeminded people.
- My laptop is working, it turned on for me, that little tease....
- book report to come this week on Miller's BLACK SPRING. Damn good, so good. Look our for it!
- if you haven't yet subscribed as a FOLLOWER to this blog, please do so now!
Thanks,
xot
