from The Once and Future King by T. H. White
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil hordes, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then--to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting."
(jdk6, since our Book Conversation I have made it my mission to read as many of the books on your bookpile that I've not yet read as possible. So far I've done The World According to Garp and am 1/4 through The Once and Future King.)
Thursday, May 19, 2005
In Memoriam for the Bug
Yesterday my dad sold his 1967 Volkswagen Beetle, which he has had for all 38 of its years. He bought it new for $2,000, and sold it, 38 years used, for $2,000. And to think most cars depreciate in value.
He was pretty torn up about it. The reason he sold it is because he bought a truck, and there was room in neither the driveway nor the bank account to keep all of our cars. But can you imagine? Saying goodbye to something that has seen you through 2/3 of your life? Something that represents your entire youth? I'm sure some of you can, actually, with much more poignant examples than a car. But, so far in my innocent and lucky life, I can't.
In the dimming light of the last night the Bug would spend with us, we took family photos around the car. "You were almost born in this car, you know," my dad said. I did know, but had forgotten (those days of before-birth are but distant memories). On the coldest October night on record in Georgia, they drove in the Bug from Athens to Douglasville, several hours, where there was a hospital that offered midwives instead of doctors. They stopped at regular intervals for my mom to throw up. When I finally did come (I managed to wait for the hospital), the first thing I did was poo in my mom's hand. I came into the world with shit and bile, but also with love. And, as my dad points out, "If it wasn't for this car, you wouldn't be here."
He says that about a lot of things. If it weren't for his choosing my mother over the Most Beautiful Girl in All of France who picked him up while hitchhiking on his last days in Europe before grad school, if it weren't for his choosing not to visit the mainland while he was stationed at Pearl Harbor, on a routine courier flight that exploded over the Pacific, if it weren't for World War II, even, which brought my grandparents together, I wouldn't be here. Is it worth it, I wonder? Am I really so necessary to the world that WWII should have happened to bring about my existence? It's a scary burden to hang on unsure shoulders.
It's much easier just to think about the Bug, and how if it weren't for that, even if we were here we might be in totally different places. My dad, for instance, would have paid a lot more for mufflers over the years, having bought a lifetime-warranty Midas muffler for as long as he owned the car. All of us might have aged faster without that tie to younger, more carefree times. I've only felt sorrier for my dad when his mother died, and when various pets have died over the years. The Bug is far from dead, and will continue to please some other die-hard VW enthusiast, but that's part of what is so sad: to have to say goodbye, move on from something, to cut the cord yourself when what you are letting go is something you could be holding onto. Letting go of something before its time, and ending the era of your youth in doing it.
He was pretty torn up about it. The reason he sold it is because he bought a truck, and there was room in neither the driveway nor the bank account to keep all of our cars. But can you imagine? Saying goodbye to something that has seen you through 2/3 of your life? Something that represents your entire youth? I'm sure some of you can, actually, with much more poignant examples than a car. But, so far in my innocent and lucky life, I can't.
In the dimming light of the last night the Bug would spend with us, we took family photos around the car. "You were almost born in this car, you know," my dad said. I did know, but had forgotten (those days of before-birth are but distant memories). On the coldest October night on record in Georgia, they drove in the Bug from Athens to Douglasville, several hours, where there was a hospital that offered midwives instead of doctors. They stopped at regular intervals for my mom to throw up. When I finally did come (I managed to wait for the hospital), the first thing I did was poo in my mom's hand. I came into the world with shit and bile, but also with love. And, as my dad points out, "If it wasn't for this car, you wouldn't be here."
He says that about a lot of things. If it weren't for his choosing my mother over the Most Beautiful Girl in All of France who picked him up while hitchhiking on his last days in Europe before grad school, if it weren't for his choosing not to visit the mainland while he was stationed at Pearl Harbor, on a routine courier flight that exploded over the Pacific, if it weren't for World War II, even, which brought my grandparents together, I wouldn't be here. Is it worth it, I wonder? Am I really so necessary to the world that WWII should have happened to bring about my existence? It's a scary burden to hang on unsure shoulders.
It's much easier just to think about the Bug, and how if it weren't for that, even if we were here we might be in totally different places. My dad, for instance, would have paid a lot more for mufflers over the years, having bought a lifetime-warranty Midas muffler for as long as he owned the car. All of us might have aged faster without that tie to younger, more carefree times. I've only felt sorrier for my dad when his mother died, and when various pets have died over the years. The Bug is far from dead, and will continue to please some other die-hard VW enthusiast, but that's part of what is so sad: to have to say goodbye, move on from something, to cut the cord yourself when what you are letting go is something you could be holding onto. Letting go of something before its time, and ending the era of your youth in doing it.
Corrections and Caveats
I got an email recently from a dear friend who just graduated from Duke--so therefore, for the purposes of argument, we'll say that his brain is a lot more used to thinking deeper about things, analyzing things to the core, as it were. Mine has gotten used to being excited 'cause I'm gonna have pizza tonight, or thinking it's a sweet deal when I get paid $7 an hour to babysit.
So when he wrote to me with a concern about one of my posts (Back in the Land of the Free), gentle readers, I listened. He pointed out that it's not viable to compare Latin American governments to the US government because, in so many cases, they got to be as weak/corrupt/inefficient/poor as they are because of our interventions--free trade agreements, drug wars, military actions undermining their fledgling governments, etc.
And although it's not really what I meant to say, he's totally right and there is that implication in what I wrote, looking back. I don't want to change the post because I really was looking forward to coming home and was thinking those thoughts about missing certain things about the US of A. But I had not considered the implication that it was Their Fault and Their Problem to Fix, when, in most cases, it is so much more complicated.
I remembered another story I heard on NPR: about a US drug-fighting campaign that involves spraying herbicides on coca plantations in Colombia. Not only has it proved inefficient, because people just replant (and should we be surprised, if we destroyed their only livelihood without providing a viable replacement?), but the runoff has entered the Amazon basin and we don't even know the extent of that damage, although both people and the environment have appeared to suffer the consequences.
What I meant to say was that, while there, I was looking forward to the luxuries we have here--the luxury to not always be on your guard, to not pay attention to the war in Iraq, because it's not happening in our own backyard even though we ought to be painfully involved, the luxury to not think about how we got the freedoms we have--the luxury to Take For Granted. And I don't think it reflects particularly well on me to have been missing those luxuries.
Uplifting, no? So thanks, P, for holding me accountable. I'll be back with more depressing riffs soon.
So when he wrote to me with a concern about one of my posts (Back in the Land of the Free), gentle readers, I listened. He pointed out that it's not viable to compare Latin American governments to the US government because, in so many cases, they got to be as weak/corrupt/inefficient/poor as they are because of our interventions--free trade agreements, drug wars, military actions undermining their fledgling governments, etc.
And although it's not really what I meant to say, he's totally right and there is that implication in what I wrote, looking back. I don't want to change the post because I really was looking forward to coming home and was thinking those thoughts about missing certain things about the US of A. But I had not considered the implication that it was Their Fault and Their Problem to Fix, when, in most cases, it is so much more complicated.
I remembered another story I heard on NPR: about a US drug-fighting campaign that involves spraying herbicides on coca plantations in Colombia. Not only has it proved inefficient, because people just replant (and should we be surprised, if we destroyed their only livelihood without providing a viable replacement?), but the runoff has entered the Amazon basin and we don't even know the extent of that damage, although both people and the environment have appeared to suffer the consequences.
What I meant to say was that, while there, I was looking forward to the luxuries we have here--the luxury to not always be on your guard, to not pay attention to the war in Iraq, because it's not happening in our own backyard even though we ought to be painfully involved, the luxury to not think about how we got the freedoms we have--the luxury to Take For Granted. And I don't think it reflects particularly well on me to have been missing those luxuries.
Uplifting, no? So thanks, P, for holding me accountable. I'll be back with more depressing riffs soon.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
On the World's Most Dangerous Road Without a Seat Belt
We got some advice on Bolivia and bathing suits from a drunk Australian in the Galapagos. "You have to bike on the world's most dangerous road," he said. "You have to go to ____ Bar where they have really good coke." And we were complaining about how you can't buy a bathing suit with a butt in it in South America--even if they've got full frontal coverage, they diminish away to thonglike proportions in the back. "It's the way of the future, ladies," he told us. "Get used to it. My girlfriend designs swimwear in Melbourne. Accentuate the positive."
I wasn't really keen to take any of his advice, but when we got to La Paz we were surrounded by tour agencies and friends that wanted us to bike down the world's most dangerous road. Jodi had run into a friend she hadn't seen for six years, and he had a cohort of travelers he knew in La Paz, and they were all doing it, and didn't it look like so much fun? I allowed myself to be coerced. I mean, people do it every day. How bad could it be?
The World's Most Dangerous Road is a 60 km. stretch between La Paz and Coroico, which Lonely Planet describes as "a little Bolivian Eden." Which it may be, most of the time, but not on Good Friday (it is, after Copacabana, the Bolivians' spot-o'-choice for Easter Weekend). Good Friday has always seemed to be something of a misnomer to me anyway. Case in point: we are biking on the same road as two-way traffic, on a one-lane dirt road carved out of curving mountainsides, on the busiest travel day of the year. At first it wasn't so bad--it was paved, mostly downhill, and you could go thrillingly fast with no work at all. Then, the pavement ends. We were supposed to take a 5-minute trial run and then convene with the guide again. In this five minutes you were supposed to determine how fast you were comfortable going, and if you wanted to be in the fast group, middle group, or slow group. And in that five minutes, everyone I knew on the tour disappeared in the distance while I was riding the brakes, sure that every rock I hit was going to plummet me over the edge (you had to ride on the un-guardrailed left side), keeping my lips pressed shut so my teeth didn't rattle out onto the ground. When the group convened in five minutes, I got off the bike. "What group do you want to be in?" they asked. "The car group," I said.
They have a bus and two Jeeps following the group in case you want to access your stuff or ride in the vehicles at any point. I consigned my bike to the roof-rack and rode shotgun beside Hector, one of the maniac Jeep drivers. I reach for my seat belt. There isn't one. I suppose it wouldn't help much in the event of plummeting hundreds of feet to one's death, anyway, but still I felt a bit insecure. Hector drove like a madman, but like a madman who has done this every day for years. Contrary to instinct, I felt much safer in that car than I did on the bike. And then there was the traffic jam. There had been some kind of accident, and traffic in both directions was stopped. The cars might have to wait there all day, but bikes could pass. It appeared God was not going to let me off so easy. Perhaps I had not empathised enough with Jesus' suffering for his liking. So, when the slow group passed, I reluctantly left my vehicular safe haven and tagged onto the end.
I suppose it's always useful to learn that something is not your calling in life, because that narrows down the options. It is now official that mountain biking is off my list of potential destinies. Surprising, no? I stuck it out on the bike for the greater part of the journey, much to my chagrin, and I have to admit to almost total misery the entire time, except for about two minutes as we approached and passed under a small waterfall. The air became a prism and misty rainbows surrounded me. If I hadn't feared for my life, it would have been perfect.
At some point the traffic jam had dispersed, and Hector caught up with us again in time to hand out surgical masks to everyone as they passed a certain curve, after which you had to continue the rest of the way in clouds of dust. I used this as the golden opportunity it was to get back in the car. Soon, we were at the endpoint, a hacienda-esque restaurant and petting zoo with excellent showers, food, and pet monkeys and llamas. It turned out that I and one other American girl had hated it--besides us, the general consensus was that it was SO AWESOME.
If only the day could have ended on that note--but we had to push our luck. We wanted to see what Coroico was like, and had planned to stay there overnight and join in the festivities. Unfortunately, it was the one time that it would have behooved us to have a reservation, and we couldn't find anywhere to stay in the whole town. The bus with our fellow bikers had long since departed, so we had to pay for a public colectivo (van with jumpseats in every conceivable inch of space) that was embarking on the road we had just ridden down in the dark. It did not bode well.
Somehow, though, I lived to tell the tale. But I'm glad I had the wherewithal to stay away from the rest of that drunken Australian's advice.
I wasn't really keen to take any of his advice, but when we got to La Paz we were surrounded by tour agencies and friends that wanted us to bike down the world's most dangerous road. Jodi had run into a friend she hadn't seen for six years, and he had a cohort of travelers he knew in La Paz, and they were all doing it, and didn't it look like so much fun? I allowed myself to be coerced. I mean, people do it every day. How bad could it be?
The World's Most Dangerous Road is a 60 km. stretch between La Paz and Coroico, which Lonely Planet describes as "a little Bolivian Eden." Which it may be, most of the time, but not on Good Friday (it is, after Copacabana, the Bolivians' spot-o'-choice for Easter Weekend). Good Friday has always seemed to be something of a misnomer to me anyway. Case in point: we are biking on the same road as two-way traffic, on a one-lane dirt road carved out of curving mountainsides, on the busiest travel day of the year. At first it wasn't so bad--it was paved, mostly downhill, and you could go thrillingly fast with no work at all. Then, the pavement ends. We were supposed to take a 5-minute trial run and then convene with the guide again. In this five minutes you were supposed to determine how fast you were comfortable going, and if you wanted to be in the fast group, middle group, or slow group. And in that five minutes, everyone I knew on the tour disappeared in the distance while I was riding the brakes, sure that every rock I hit was going to plummet me over the edge (you had to ride on the un-guardrailed left side), keeping my lips pressed shut so my teeth didn't rattle out onto the ground. When the group convened in five minutes, I got off the bike. "What group do you want to be in?" they asked. "The car group," I said.
They have a bus and two Jeeps following the group in case you want to access your stuff or ride in the vehicles at any point. I consigned my bike to the roof-rack and rode shotgun beside Hector, one of the maniac Jeep drivers. I reach for my seat belt. There isn't one. I suppose it wouldn't help much in the event of plummeting hundreds of feet to one's death, anyway, but still I felt a bit insecure. Hector drove like a madman, but like a madman who has done this every day for years. Contrary to instinct, I felt much safer in that car than I did on the bike. And then there was the traffic jam. There had been some kind of accident, and traffic in both directions was stopped. The cars might have to wait there all day, but bikes could pass. It appeared God was not going to let me off so easy. Perhaps I had not empathised enough with Jesus' suffering for his liking. So, when the slow group passed, I reluctantly left my vehicular safe haven and tagged onto the end.
I suppose it's always useful to learn that something is not your calling in life, because that narrows down the options. It is now official that mountain biking is off my list of potential destinies. Surprising, no? I stuck it out on the bike for the greater part of the journey, much to my chagrin, and I have to admit to almost total misery the entire time, except for about two minutes as we approached and passed under a small waterfall. The air became a prism and misty rainbows surrounded me. If I hadn't feared for my life, it would have been perfect.
At some point the traffic jam had dispersed, and Hector caught up with us again in time to hand out surgical masks to everyone as they passed a certain curve, after which you had to continue the rest of the way in clouds of dust. I used this as the golden opportunity it was to get back in the car. Soon, we were at the endpoint, a hacienda-esque restaurant and petting zoo with excellent showers, food, and pet monkeys and llamas. It turned out that I and one other American girl had hated it--besides us, the general consensus was that it was SO AWESOME.
If only the day could have ended on that note--but we had to push our luck. We wanted to see what Coroico was like, and had planned to stay there overnight and join in the festivities. Unfortunately, it was the one time that it would have behooved us to have a reservation, and we couldn't find anywhere to stay in the whole town. The bus with our fellow bikers had long since departed, so we had to pay for a public colectivo (van with jumpseats in every conceivable inch of space) that was embarking on the road we had just ridden down in the dark. It did not bode well.
Somehow, though, I lived to tell the tale. But I'm glad I had the wherewithal to stay away from the rest of that drunken Australian's advice.
Saturday, May 14, 2005
Speak of the Devil
The best thing about Copacabana, Bolivia, is the Virgin. The Virgin of Copacabana is almost as great a miracle-worker as the Virgin of the Holy Water in Ecuador. People bring miniatures of their houses and cars, bus drivers bring miniature buses, and have them blessed before the statue of the Virgin to protect them. Apparently this is more effective than insurance.
It’s a good thing there is this omnipresence of Virgins in Latin America, because, as Jodi pointed out to me one day, by the time we left we had almost seen the Devil. They have this habit of naming features of the landscape after parts of the Devil’s body (never after God’s. But of course, that would be sacrilegious). So we saw the Devil’s Nose (the switchback-ridden train trek down a steep mountainside in Ecuador), the Devil’s Tooth (a mountain overlooking La Paz), the Devil’s Penis (a plant in the jungle said to impregnate young maidens), and the Devil’s Pailon (a roiling waterfall near Baños). We’re not sure what a pailon is, but I guess that if we’ve already seen the Devil’s Penis it can’t be anything worse than that. Right? Guys??
We climbed the Devil’s Tooth on Easter after visiting the Valley of the Moon. Wouldn’t that be a great first sentence for a sci-fi/fantasy trilogy? It’s hereby up for grabs, as I won’t be writing one anytime soon. And don’t worry, we didn’t attempt to scale the fangs of Satan alone—we rounded up reinforcements, in the form of Reto and Claudia, the wry and apple-cheeked Swiss couple from our Galapagos tour who (perhaps unfortunately for them) ran into us as we were leaving Copacabana, and allowed us to follow them around La Paz once they got there a few days later. It worked out quite well—we let them find and taste-test an excellent Italian restaurant, and then we let them invite us to it (twice!). They didn’t feel like biking the World’s Most Dangerous Road with us on Good Friday (what could they have been thinking?), so we made an Easter date instead, and what an adventure it was. The Valley of the Moon was a hot, dry canyon filled with what look more like drip-sandcastles than anything else. It was sort of interesting, but on a scale of one to moonlike it was probably only about halfway. The best part were the rules and regulations, which were helpfully translated into English: Poner basura en los basureros disponibles became Place garbage in the willing trash cans.
From the Valley of the Moon you were supposed to be able to get to the Devil’s Tooth. You could see it, anyway, looming over the horizon ominously—although if I were in charge of naming it, but had to choose a Devil’s-body-part name, I think it bears far greater resemblance to the Devil’s Middle Finger. We got directions from one of the moon-men: they involved two buses, getting off at the end of the latter, and walking Up.
Suffice it to say that directions are never that simple. The first thing we were supposed to come to was a cemetery, and from there the hike was about an hour and a half. It took us that long to find the cemetery, after asking every local we met including children and cats, wandering through what was either the town garbage dump or a messy person’s backyard, and probably arousing quite a bit of amusement or suspicion: 4 gringos, wandering through the dump and politely asking where they can find the cemetery.
We eventually did make it up to the Devil’s Tooth, after huffing and puffing for some amount of time far greater than an hour and a half. And it was totally worth it. After hours of hot sun and garbage dumps and slums and cemeteries, we ended up in a tiny settlement on top of the mountain, removed as though by miles and decades from the urban sprawl below. Children ran around playing soccer and asking us for candy, women tended gardens and other children tended animals, trying to get an obstinate burro to continue down the path or a herd of sheep to hurry up. At this town, the dusty road turned into a grassy path, and we headed up through fields of wildflowers, heady with altitude and dehydration and the determination that the view would all be worth it. And would you believe it? It was. On one side, La Paz, spread over the immense valley like a large birthmark—one that is not ugly, but so noticeable as to become a defining feature of the person whose birth it marks. On the other side, a wilderness of mountains and valleys, some snowcapped in the distance, and just below us, the Valley of the Moon. The name made sense after all—it was truly as though something had bitten through the earth at the point where city became country, valley became escarpment, earthscape became moonscape. But for me, on top of the world, there was nothing devilish about it.
It’s a good thing there is this omnipresence of Virgins in Latin America, because, as Jodi pointed out to me one day, by the time we left we had almost seen the Devil. They have this habit of naming features of the landscape after parts of the Devil’s body (never after God’s. But of course, that would be sacrilegious). So we saw the Devil’s Nose (the switchback-ridden train trek down a steep mountainside in Ecuador), the Devil’s Tooth (a mountain overlooking La Paz), the Devil’s Penis (a plant in the jungle said to impregnate young maidens), and the Devil’s Pailon (a roiling waterfall near Baños). We’re not sure what a pailon is, but I guess that if we’ve already seen the Devil’s Penis it can’t be anything worse than that. Right? Guys??
We climbed the Devil’s Tooth on Easter after visiting the Valley of the Moon. Wouldn’t that be a great first sentence for a sci-fi/fantasy trilogy? It’s hereby up for grabs, as I won’t be writing one anytime soon. And don’t worry, we didn’t attempt to scale the fangs of Satan alone—we rounded up reinforcements, in the form of Reto and Claudia, the wry and apple-cheeked Swiss couple from our Galapagos tour who (perhaps unfortunately for them) ran into us as we were leaving Copacabana, and allowed us to follow them around La Paz once they got there a few days later. It worked out quite well—we let them find and taste-test an excellent Italian restaurant, and then we let them invite us to it (twice!). They didn’t feel like biking the World’s Most Dangerous Road with us on Good Friday (what could they have been thinking?), so we made an Easter date instead, and what an adventure it was. The Valley of the Moon was a hot, dry canyon filled with what look more like drip-sandcastles than anything else. It was sort of interesting, but on a scale of one to moonlike it was probably only about halfway. The best part were the rules and regulations, which were helpfully translated into English: Poner basura en los basureros disponibles became Place garbage in the willing trash cans.
From the Valley of the Moon you were supposed to be able to get to the Devil’s Tooth. You could see it, anyway, looming over the horizon ominously—although if I were in charge of naming it, but had to choose a Devil’s-body-part name, I think it bears far greater resemblance to the Devil’s Middle Finger. We got directions from one of the moon-men: they involved two buses, getting off at the end of the latter, and walking Up.
Suffice it to say that directions are never that simple. The first thing we were supposed to come to was a cemetery, and from there the hike was about an hour and a half. It took us that long to find the cemetery, after asking every local we met including children and cats, wandering through what was either the town garbage dump or a messy person’s backyard, and probably arousing quite a bit of amusement or suspicion: 4 gringos, wandering through the dump and politely asking where they can find the cemetery.
We eventually did make it up to the Devil’s Tooth, after huffing and puffing for some amount of time far greater than an hour and a half. And it was totally worth it. After hours of hot sun and garbage dumps and slums and cemeteries, we ended up in a tiny settlement on top of the mountain, removed as though by miles and decades from the urban sprawl below. Children ran around playing soccer and asking us for candy, women tended gardens and other children tended animals, trying to get an obstinate burro to continue down the path or a herd of sheep to hurry up. At this town, the dusty road turned into a grassy path, and we headed up through fields of wildflowers, heady with altitude and dehydration and the determination that the view would all be worth it. And would you believe it? It was. On one side, La Paz, spread over the immense valley like a large birthmark—one that is not ugly, but so noticeable as to become a defining feature of the person whose birth it marks. On the other side, a wilderness of mountains and valleys, some snowcapped in the distance, and just below us, the Valley of the Moon. The name made sense after all—it was truly as though something had bitten through the earth at the point where city became country, valley became escarpment, earthscape became moonscape. But for me, on top of the world, there was nothing devilish about it.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
Nickeled, Dimed, and Duped, Heaven on Earth, and the Canyon of the Condors
We had rushed to meet our bus, had bought our tickets at the window, and the woman indicated that behind her and to the left was where the bus was waiting. To get there, we had to go through the next archway, where we found a formidable-looking revolving door (a la New York City subway turnstiles), and a small passthrough for baggage. Unburdening ourselves of our backpacks, we pushed on the door. “Oh no,” said one of the ubiquitous uniformed men who had helped us off with our backpacks. “That’ll be 20 cents to use the door.”
I just stared at him. “What?” Jodi asked. “He says it’s 20 cents to use the door.” “What? WHY?” she asked the man. He shrugged, and reminded us that it was 20 cents to use the door. “Do we have another option?” I asked. “No,” she said, and pointed to our bags, now on the other side of the Plexiglass. It appeared we had no choice.
The man didn’t have change, so we had to go to a booth in the terminal that exists for that purpose. On the other side of the door, the world was no different, except that our wallets felt slightly, unfairly, lighter. And that I suddenly had to pee. At the bathroom, I was relieved of another 20 cents, which was only slightly less annoying because I had come to expect it by now. Men usually pay 5 cents, and I have tried to get a discount, perhaps to the male rate, for having my own toilet paper. This doesn’t fly. It’s 20 cents, whether you take toilet paper or not. So the only conclusion I’ve been able to draw is that I’m paying, essentially, for sitting on the seat (if there is one). I’m thinking that maybe next time I’ll ask if it’s still 20 cents if I both bring my own paper and promise to stand.
Later, in the market, we pass a stand selling fruits that look like small red and green Koosh balls. Jodi wants to try them, but they’re $1 a bag. You can’t buy half a bag. The lady gives her 4-year-old child one and tells him to pass it to Jodi, which he does, and after peeling it for 5 minutes we discover it’s sort of like a bland lychee. “Thanks,” Jodi says. “5 cents,” the lady replies. Nothing in life, it turns out, is free.
As we turn away, we nearly trample an ancient woman with no teeth, bright eyes, and bare feet like hooves. She comes up to about our waists and though we can’t understand her, we know from her tone that she’s asking for money. I find it easier not to give anybody anything, but Jodi always has a soft spot in her heart for old people, so I try to piggyback on her good karma. She gives the lady the rest of our change, and the woman’s face lights up, she kisses the coins and blesses the Santissima Virgen.
Usually, at several points throughout the day, we calculate how much money we’ve spent. We’ll think we’re doing pretty well, having counted all the food, buses, and lodging of the day, and then we remember the sitting on the toilet seat, the trying of strange new fruit, the alms to the poor and the 20 cents to use the door, and we realize we have been nickeled and dimed to above our budget. So I’m wondering if next time, the revolving door man will let me pay him in trade—if my urine is worth 20 cents, maybe I’ll just embrace my masculine side and pee right there on the door.
***
After two and a half months of travel, you begin to formulate a very clear conception of heaven. Heaven is a place where you don’t have to unpack, repack, or lift your backpack for a whole week. Heaven is a place where you don’t have to worry about stuff getting stolen, whether you carry it with you, leave it in your hotel, or leave it on the beach while you go swimming. In heaven, you never have to decide where to eat and worry about how much it costs. No one tries to overcharge you for anything, and English is spoken. And then you get off a plane and discover that Belinda was right, and heaven IS a place on earth—the Galapagos Islands.
The whole thing was like a reality show without the challenges or the vindictiveness (what’s left? you ask). 10 strangers, plunked on a small boat in a place foreign to all of them—how will they interact? Will the two single people share a room in harmony? Who looks best in her bikini? Who’s got the coolest accent? Hence, I include the superlatives from Survivor: Galapagos.
Most enviable talent and profession:
Reto, the Swiss photographer with approximately one ton of camera equipment who took photos that looked better than real life. We all wanted a CD of photos at the end, but he has to sell them to magazines. Life is tough.
Most positive attitude:
Lisa, the American girl traveling on her own who kept smiling even when the airline didn’t let her on the plane and she almost missed the tour, and when several of the crew persistently begged her to elope with them.
Best quote:
“It is such a dangerous country, America—so many wet floors.”
--Stefan from Switzerland, relating his most memorable impression of a visit to America.
Biggest mystery:
Where the British couple, Carly and Paul, got their money—when asked how long everyone was traveling for, the usual response was somewhere between 3 weeks and 6 months. They, in contrast, are traveling for 16 months, after which they are getting married in Spain and then traveling Spain for 6 months to decide where they would like to live. No, we’re not jealous at all.
Closest call to near-hospitalization:
Jodi, when she stepped on a sea urchin and suffered multiple impalements to her heel. The captain said if she hadn’t been wearing her fins, she would have had to go to the hospital, as he gleefully sprinkled vinegar onto her foot, joking that he was “making ceviche,” a native dish featuring raw fish, vinegar, onions, and lemon. The spines haven’t come out yet.
Most imitatable habit of speech:
A tie between Jan, the Dutch retired headmaster who, whenever he agreed with you, which was often, would say, “Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh” very quickly, a la the “Yip yip yip” Sesame Street Martians—or Alfonso, our guide, who was constantly pointing out all the possibilities for things: “This iguana is starving because there is too much competition. He is going to die—maybe not today, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week—nobody knows.” Or, “Tomorrow we will go hiking for one hour, then snorkeling for one hour, and then stay at the beach—maybe for half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes, maybe an hour—depends of you.”
Rosiest cheeks:
Claudia, the last of the Swiss and Reto’s girlfriend, and the kindest, pleasantest, and, well, Swiss-est of all. Unintentionally does a great Audrey Hepburn impression in her big black sunglasses. Also, coins some great new English words, which I hereby command everyone reading this to help introduce into the vernacular: “Dizzly” for “dizzy,” “fruitable” for “fertile,” and “Milk Street” for “Milky Way.”
Klutziest:
Magdalena, Jan’s wife, who was constantly tripping over her two left feet. We were all a bit scared when they gave her a huge cake knife on the last night to cut the celebratory cake, as the boat pitched back and forth on the waves.
I felt seasick a few times on the longer “navigations,” but sleep and seasickness pills set me right. Stefan, who works in a hospital, kept offering me his pills, saying nonchalantly that since I had bought mine in Ecuador, they were probably just placebos. When we were horseback riding on Volcano Sierra Negra on Isabela Island, Paul’s horse bit my leg as it walked by. But apart from those minor setbacks, the Galapagos were truly heavenly. I’m sure you’ve all seen videos—I had—but I still had never grasped how up close and personal of an animal experience it would be.
The animals regard you with placid, sometimes condescending, stares, and carry on with their business of expelling salt from their nostrils, if they are marine iguanas, or walking on water, if they are red Sally Lightfoot crabs, or dancing and screeching, if they are blue-footed boobies. The sea lions were often playful and curious, and Jodi had a few particularly close encounters with pups. One swam in the shallows with her, using the surf to rush for her face and veer away at the last moment, splashing her with his flippers, and treating her as I imagine it would a sibling. Another crawled on top of her as it got out of the water, sat on her for a bit, kissed her, and was starting to make me a bit jealous before it finally moved on to bigger and better (and realer) sea lions. And snorkeling added an entire new dimension to this new and wondrous world—we floated past reef sharks, and one nearly made Jodi lose her breakfast when they both rounded a corner, from opposite directions, unaware that the other was coming. The fish were amazing, but it was the larger animals that left you trembling in awe. One day we followed a giant sea turtle for about half an hour as it chomped algae from rocks in the shallows. One day we played with a colony of sea lions that swam and tumbled around us, chasing our fins as if we too were water-creatures. And on the last day we got to swim with Galapagos penguins, tiny, waddling, tuxedoed things that are so slow and awkward on land (like toddlers) but in water can swim so fast that you could blink and miss them.
The beaches were amazing, the sunsets brilliant, and every place and each new animal full of history and mystery—this is the one place out of all my travels that I fervently hope each of you gets to see someday.
After our tour, Jodi and I bade fond farewell to our fellow shipmates and headed into Puerto Ayora to spend a few more Galapagos days in the home of my friends Alan and Damalis. Although we were scabby guests who didn’t even think to ask if we could bring them any goodies from the mainland, we got to reap the benefits of their having other, more generous visitors by drinking succulent English tea all morning. It was really nice to be in a home for a couple of days—and what a home it was, too. Be prepared to writhe with jealousy as I describe a house, only reachable by boat and a footpath along the beach, past waterlilies and bowers of low-standing coastal trees (of course full of finches). When you walk in the door you are standing on a boardwalk over a pond, and the boardwalk leads to the living room, guest room, kitchen, and bathroom in different directions. Upstairs is a bedroom with a view of the sea. Skylights abound. In a hole in a post that holds up half of the living room lives a gecko guarding her tiny eggs, and the other half of the room’s post is the trunk of a tree that stood in that spot when the house was built. I could go on.
And although our few days there were nothing like being on the boat, it was really nice to be home for awhile. One night we were taken to a fancy restaurant (courtesy of National Geographic) by a group of Swiss and Dutch botanists, and on our last night we thought we would be nice and make dinner for our gracious hosts. Jodi took on the lasagna (lasaña, as they spell it in Spanish), and I embarked on what would go down in history as one of the biggest dessert disasters the world has ever seen.
Having harvested tons of free passionfruit when we went to visit a lava tunnel in some old man’s backyard that day, I set out to make a passionfruit pie from a recipe on an evaporated milk label. Now, several factors, in retrospect, were hindrances to its success. One, several ingredients were missing or available in the wrong quantities; two, I was a little drunk when I went to substitute other ingredients for them (take note, y’all: evaporated milk and sugar doth not condensed milk make). And three, the recipe was in Spanish, so I may have missed out on some of the nuances and idiomatic expressions. Anyway, what was meant to be a gelatinous pie with scrumptious passionfruity topping and golden-brown crust turned out as a lactose-y soup (albeit a passionfruit-flavored soup) on top of a half-cooked lump of dough, and when I poured on the topping it sunk straight to the bottom. It was a bit of a Holly Golightly moment—but although there are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl’s complexion, everyone kindly acted like it really wasn’t that bad.
That night it rained (true to form, Jodi and I brought the rainy season with us, this time at least to a place that needed it, and it didn’t stop for the next 14 hours. Everything we owned was wet, including the clothes we were wearing to fly back to Guayaquil and then board a Peru-bound bus for approximately 3 days. Somehow, the plane still took off and by nightfall we were on a bus from Guayaquil to Piura, Peru. I will spare you the details of the next three days—they basically involved about 10 buses, 3 nights on buses instead of hotels, and a dazed staggering the morning of the 4th day into the strange new light of Arequipa, Peru. I didn’t write in my diary about those days, because if I had, it would have gone something like this:
Rode bus through desert. Couldn’t fall asleep, so read Crime and Punishment (quite soporific!). Ate passionfruit. Picked scab (very satisfying!). Ate Oreos. Got on different bus. More desert. Watched same Jean Claude Van Damme movie 3x. Then The Princess Diaries dubbed into Spanish. Read some more C & P. Ate passionfruit. Ate Oreos….
So Arequipa was a welcome change from the bus, but in my opinion did not live up to its own catchphrase, “When the moon separated from the earth, it forgot Arequipa.” We definitely felt like we were back in Peru—there were none of the familiar comforts of Ecuador (toilet paper, Magnum ice creams, $1 beers)—and everyone started lying to us again—from our hotel, which lied about their rates and services, to the bank, which lied about the exchange rate. A huge sign in the bank proclaimed 3.35 soles to the dollar (about 15 Peruvian cents higher than everywhere else), so we waited out the lines patiently, discussing what we would get for our crispy Ben Franklin. At the window, we were handed 320 soles and a pre-printed receipt. We pointed at the sign. “That’s not the rate?” we asked, just in case our sign language had been unclear. “No,” said the teller, and equally helpfully pointed at the 3.20 on the receipt. We were too flabbergasted to argue, and took our money, which didn’t feel nearly as special anymore. It’s strange to have to question everything, even if it seems blatantly obvious. But I suppose, if there’s one thing I learned at Governor’s School, it was to question everything, especially if it’s blatantly obvious. That’s my optimistic point of view. The pessimistic point of view unfortunately wins out more of the time, which is that it f***ing sucks to be lied to. Ah well. Yin and yang, I guess (or whatev).
The highlight of Arequipa itself was the Monasterio de Santa Catalina, a convent as large as a city-within-a-city, which only opened to the public when, in the 1950s, they were forced by city ordinance to install electricity and plumbing, couldn’t afford it, so started charging tourists an arm and a leg to explore its nooks and crannies. In colonial times, it was like a party school for second daughters of Spanish aristocracy, each of whom had to contribute a dowry of silver and slave girls to Our Lord, and then live in a beautiful convent waited on by said slave girls, who existed in a ratio of about 3 to 1 “nun.” Later on, they cleaned up their act, “got religion,” and, by virtue of this, got to wear barbed-wire undergarments during ritual scourging. But hey, at least they were doing God’s will.
From Arequipa, the main attraction is trekking through the Colca Canyon in hopes of seeing condors and steeping oneself in the culture of a place where everything that comes in and out has to do so on the back of a mule or on foot, on crumbling, dusty trails that zigzag steeply up the canyon walls. We found a tour that was $33 for 3 days, including food, accommodation, and guide “with basic English.” When we met Rafael, it was clear that this had been an exaggeration. But still we managed, and learned to decipher his constructions, which were patched together from three sources: actual English words, English words pronounced as they would be in Spanish, and Spanish words with the last syllable lopped off. For example, he knew how to say “The local people. The sacrifice,” (actual English) in reference to how they must constantly toil up and down the canyon walls with their produce and supplies, and whenever we passed locals he would usually gesture at them and say this. He knew that “I” was the word for oneself in English, but pronounced it “ee,” as it would be if it were a Spanish word. And for words he didn’t know, he would take the Spanish word and remove the a or o from the end—it works in many instances, when “mula” becomes “mule,” “roca” becomes “rock,” and so forth, but not in others: taking the last syllable off “años” does not make “years” in English. This confused us for awhile—he would say the people settled here hundreds of “an” ago, or that he had been a guide for fifteen “an.” But once we had learned his language, we had a great time.
We saw condors at the beginning of the hike, before we had even entered the canyon. There were four of them, with their enormous wingspans apparent as they glided around us and overhead (some can reach 6 feet). We were at the rim of the canyon, and the birds flew close to it, so that they were over thousands of feet of empty space but near enough to the walls to see if there was anything worth preying upon. And even though I’ve always wished I could fly, nothing has ever made me wish it more than this. There seemed like there could be no place as peaceful, thrilling, and free in the world. No place where you could be at once so entirely isolated and utterly in communion with everything around you. It was immediately no wonder to me that the ancient cultures of this region worshiped condors as the earth’s connection to more heavenly realms.
Our tour group consisted of Jodi, myself, and a 22-year-old guy named Dustin who looked like Jesus. He was from California, had come to South America to gain independence and have spiritual experiences, was probably 6’3” and 130 pounds, with long blond hair and beard, and he loved to smoke pot and play golf. Play golf? I asked him. Everything else made sense. This did not. This guy was the most anti-golf looking guy you ever saw. But he could talk for hours about the joy of perfecting the precision required to get that ball in a hole. At night he would write in his journal and read us poems he had just written based on our conversations that day. We spent two nights in the canyon, once at a quiet pension run by a family with a little girl and a baby horse, who were hopelessly devoted to each other, and Jodi took the best photo of the entire trip of girl and horse playing in an orchard full of ripe apples. The second night we spent at The Oasis, a green place in the middle of the dusty canyon with grass and fruit trees and swimming pools, but the bliss was ended prematurely by the fact that we had to wake up at 2:40 AM to ascend the canyon wall, in order to get to the top to get to a town where a bus left at 7 AM for the return to civilization.
It was pretty miserable. 3 hours of nothing but uphill, mostly in the dark, on terrain where with each step up you seemed to slide two steps back. I was optimistic and doing fine for the first two hours, and then I made the mistake of commenting on this to Jodi. As soon as I said I was fine, I slipped into a decline and the last 45 minutes were some of the most excruciating of my existence. But even though I had had hardly any sleep and everything hurt, it was quite a beautiful sunrise, over that deep and misty canyon full of local people and sacrifice, mules and appletrees and “ans.”
And so we spent another day on a bus—7 hours back to Arequipa, and then another 6 to Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Puno was a little dismal, but had great pizza and vegetarian options, although thanks to a little souvenir we picked up in the canyon, they were less enjoyable to us than they might have been had we encountered them with functioning bowels. Rafael had told us not to drink the water at the Oasis, because there was sulfur in it. The other option was to buy bottles of water for 4x what you would spend in town. We asked if we could use our water-purification tablets, and he said yes. But somehow I don’t think iodine does much to sulfur. My stomach and entire digestive system were offline for about 2 weeks after that, and a haze of fumes worse than rotten eggs surrounded me wherever I went. Anyway, we soon decided that there was nothing much in Puno we wanted to see except the Floating Islands of the Uros people.
In order to avoid the culture wars between other tribes and the Incas, the Uros took to the lake hundreds of years ago. They built islands out of reed mats, layering them until they’re about 3 feet thick, and they constantly weave new mats to put on the top, while the old ones rot away from below. They build reed houses on top of the reed islands, and reed boats to navigate between islands. They eat reeds for dinner. We took a rushed and kitschy tour, but it was still lovely—grimy kids tumble all over the place and mothers absentmindedly pull them away if they get too close to the edge. Only a few of the islands are open to tourists anyway, so I’m sure what we were seeing was specially prepared for us, but even so it was like stepping back in time to when humans had to survive on their own ingenuity. And in some ways, we didn’t even have to step back in time—some of the reed huts had antennae and solar panels affixed to the roofs, and as you walked past their cavelike doorways you could see the flickering blue of the television. People, I’ve noticed, would rather anything than give up their land. Even if (especially if?) it’s land they wove themselves.
Coming next: all-too-short escapades in Bolivia and a KMT original, “If You’re Going to Mess Up Your Coccix for the Rest of Your Life, Might As Well Do It On the Inca Trail.”
I just stared at him. “What?” Jodi asked. “He says it’s 20 cents to use the door.” “What? WHY?” she asked the man. He shrugged, and reminded us that it was 20 cents to use the door. “Do we have another option?” I asked. “No,” she said, and pointed to our bags, now on the other side of the Plexiglass. It appeared we had no choice.
The man didn’t have change, so we had to go to a booth in the terminal that exists for that purpose. On the other side of the door, the world was no different, except that our wallets felt slightly, unfairly, lighter. And that I suddenly had to pee. At the bathroom, I was relieved of another 20 cents, which was only slightly less annoying because I had come to expect it by now. Men usually pay 5 cents, and I have tried to get a discount, perhaps to the male rate, for having my own toilet paper. This doesn’t fly. It’s 20 cents, whether you take toilet paper or not. So the only conclusion I’ve been able to draw is that I’m paying, essentially, for sitting on the seat (if there is one). I’m thinking that maybe next time I’ll ask if it’s still 20 cents if I both bring my own paper and promise to stand.
Later, in the market, we pass a stand selling fruits that look like small red and green Koosh balls. Jodi wants to try them, but they’re $1 a bag. You can’t buy half a bag. The lady gives her 4-year-old child one and tells him to pass it to Jodi, which he does, and after peeling it for 5 minutes we discover it’s sort of like a bland lychee. “Thanks,” Jodi says. “5 cents,” the lady replies. Nothing in life, it turns out, is free.
As we turn away, we nearly trample an ancient woman with no teeth, bright eyes, and bare feet like hooves. She comes up to about our waists and though we can’t understand her, we know from her tone that she’s asking for money. I find it easier not to give anybody anything, but Jodi always has a soft spot in her heart for old people, so I try to piggyback on her good karma. She gives the lady the rest of our change, and the woman’s face lights up, she kisses the coins and blesses the Santissima Virgen.
Usually, at several points throughout the day, we calculate how much money we’ve spent. We’ll think we’re doing pretty well, having counted all the food, buses, and lodging of the day, and then we remember the sitting on the toilet seat, the trying of strange new fruit, the alms to the poor and the 20 cents to use the door, and we realize we have been nickeled and dimed to above our budget. So I’m wondering if next time, the revolving door man will let me pay him in trade—if my urine is worth 20 cents, maybe I’ll just embrace my masculine side and pee right there on the door.
***
After two and a half months of travel, you begin to formulate a very clear conception of heaven. Heaven is a place where you don’t have to unpack, repack, or lift your backpack for a whole week. Heaven is a place where you don’t have to worry about stuff getting stolen, whether you carry it with you, leave it in your hotel, or leave it on the beach while you go swimming. In heaven, you never have to decide where to eat and worry about how much it costs. No one tries to overcharge you for anything, and English is spoken. And then you get off a plane and discover that Belinda was right, and heaven IS a place on earth—the Galapagos Islands.
The whole thing was like a reality show without the challenges or the vindictiveness (what’s left? you ask). 10 strangers, plunked on a small boat in a place foreign to all of them—how will they interact? Will the two single people share a room in harmony? Who looks best in her bikini? Who’s got the coolest accent? Hence, I include the superlatives from Survivor: Galapagos.
Most enviable talent and profession:
Reto, the Swiss photographer with approximately one ton of camera equipment who took photos that looked better than real life. We all wanted a CD of photos at the end, but he has to sell them to magazines. Life is tough.
Most positive attitude:
Lisa, the American girl traveling on her own who kept smiling even when the airline didn’t let her on the plane and she almost missed the tour, and when several of the crew persistently begged her to elope with them.
Best quote:
“It is such a dangerous country, America—so many wet floors.”
--Stefan from Switzerland, relating his most memorable impression of a visit to America.
Biggest mystery:
Where the British couple, Carly and Paul, got their money—when asked how long everyone was traveling for, the usual response was somewhere between 3 weeks and 6 months. They, in contrast, are traveling for 16 months, after which they are getting married in Spain and then traveling Spain for 6 months to decide where they would like to live. No, we’re not jealous at all.
Closest call to near-hospitalization:
Jodi, when she stepped on a sea urchin and suffered multiple impalements to her heel. The captain said if she hadn’t been wearing her fins, she would have had to go to the hospital, as he gleefully sprinkled vinegar onto her foot, joking that he was “making ceviche,” a native dish featuring raw fish, vinegar, onions, and lemon. The spines haven’t come out yet.
Most imitatable habit of speech:
A tie between Jan, the Dutch retired headmaster who, whenever he agreed with you, which was often, would say, “Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh” very quickly, a la the “Yip yip yip” Sesame Street Martians—or Alfonso, our guide, who was constantly pointing out all the possibilities for things: “This iguana is starving because there is too much competition. He is going to die—maybe not today, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week—nobody knows.” Or, “Tomorrow we will go hiking for one hour, then snorkeling for one hour, and then stay at the beach—maybe for half an hour, maybe forty-five minutes, maybe an hour—depends of you.”
Rosiest cheeks:
Claudia, the last of the Swiss and Reto’s girlfriend, and the kindest, pleasantest, and, well, Swiss-est of all. Unintentionally does a great Audrey Hepburn impression in her big black sunglasses. Also, coins some great new English words, which I hereby command everyone reading this to help introduce into the vernacular: “Dizzly” for “dizzy,” “fruitable” for “fertile,” and “Milk Street” for “Milky Way.”
Klutziest:
Magdalena, Jan’s wife, who was constantly tripping over her two left feet. We were all a bit scared when they gave her a huge cake knife on the last night to cut the celebratory cake, as the boat pitched back and forth on the waves.
I felt seasick a few times on the longer “navigations,” but sleep and seasickness pills set me right. Stefan, who works in a hospital, kept offering me his pills, saying nonchalantly that since I had bought mine in Ecuador, they were probably just placebos. When we were horseback riding on Volcano Sierra Negra on Isabela Island, Paul’s horse bit my leg as it walked by. But apart from those minor setbacks, the Galapagos were truly heavenly. I’m sure you’ve all seen videos—I had—but I still had never grasped how up close and personal of an animal experience it would be.
The animals regard you with placid, sometimes condescending, stares, and carry on with their business of expelling salt from their nostrils, if they are marine iguanas, or walking on water, if they are red Sally Lightfoot crabs, or dancing and screeching, if they are blue-footed boobies. The sea lions were often playful and curious, and Jodi had a few particularly close encounters with pups. One swam in the shallows with her, using the surf to rush for her face and veer away at the last moment, splashing her with his flippers, and treating her as I imagine it would a sibling. Another crawled on top of her as it got out of the water, sat on her for a bit, kissed her, and was starting to make me a bit jealous before it finally moved on to bigger and better (and realer) sea lions. And snorkeling added an entire new dimension to this new and wondrous world—we floated past reef sharks, and one nearly made Jodi lose her breakfast when they both rounded a corner, from opposite directions, unaware that the other was coming. The fish were amazing, but it was the larger animals that left you trembling in awe. One day we followed a giant sea turtle for about half an hour as it chomped algae from rocks in the shallows. One day we played with a colony of sea lions that swam and tumbled around us, chasing our fins as if we too were water-creatures. And on the last day we got to swim with Galapagos penguins, tiny, waddling, tuxedoed things that are so slow and awkward on land (like toddlers) but in water can swim so fast that you could blink and miss them.
The beaches were amazing, the sunsets brilliant, and every place and each new animal full of history and mystery—this is the one place out of all my travels that I fervently hope each of you gets to see someday.
After our tour, Jodi and I bade fond farewell to our fellow shipmates and headed into Puerto Ayora to spend a few more Galapagos days in the home of my friends Alan and Damalis. Although we were scabby guests who didn’t even think to ask if we could bring them any goodies from the mainland, we got to reap the benefits of their having other, more generous visitors by drinking succulent English tea all morning. It was really nice to be in a home for a couple of days—and what a home it was, too. Be prepared to writhe with jealousy as I describe a house, only reachable by boat and a footpath along the beach, past waterlilies and bowers of low-standing coastal trees (of course full of finches). When you walk in the door you are standing on a boardwalk over a pond, and the boardwalk leads to the living room, guest room, kitchen, and bathroom in different directions. Upstairs is a bedroom with a view of the sea. Skylights abound. In a hole in a post that holds up half of the living room lives a gecko guarding her tiny eggs, and the other half of the room’s post is the trunk of a tree that stood in that spot when the house was built. I could go on.
And although our few days there were nothing like being on the boat, it was really nice to be home for awhile. One night we were taken to a fancy restaurant (courtesy of National Geographic) by a group of Swiss and Dutch botanists, and on our last night we thought we would be nice and make dinner for our gracious hosts. Jodi took on the lasagna (lasaña, as they spell it in Spanish), and I embarked on what would go down in history as one of the biggest dessert disasters the world has ever seen.
Having harvested tons of free passionfruit when we went to visit a lava tunnel in some old man’s backyard that day, I set out to make a passionfruit pie from a recipe on an evaporated milk label. Now, several factors, in retrospect, were hindrances to its success. One, several ingredients were missing or available in the wrong quantities; two, I was a little drunk when I went to substitute other ingredients for them (take note, y’all: evaporated milk and sugar doth not condensed milk make). And three, the recipe was in Spanish, so I may have missed out on some of the nuances and idiomatic expressions. Anyway, what was meant to be a gelatinous pie with scrumptious passionfruity topping and golden-brown crust turned out as a lactose-y soup (albeit a passionfruit-flavored soup) on top of a half-cooked lump of dough, and when I poured on the topping it sunk straight to the bottom. It was a bit of a Holly Golightly moment—but although there are certain shades of limelight that can wreck a girl’s complexion, everyone kindly acted like it really wasn’t that bad.
That night it rained (true to form, Jodi and I brought the rainy season with us, this time at least to a place that needed it, and it didn’t stop for the next 14 hours. Everything we owned was wet, including the clothes we were wearing to fly back to Guayaquil and then board a Peru-bound bus for approximately 3 days. Somehow, the plane still took off and by nightfall we were on a bus from Guayaquil to Piura, Peru. I will spare you the details of the next three days—they basically involved about 10 buses, 3 nights on buses instead of hotels, and a dazed staggering the morning of the 4th day into the strange new light of Arequipa, Peru. I didn’t write in my diary about those days, because if I had, it would have gone something like this:
Rode bus through desert. Couldn’t fall asleep, so read Crime and Punishment (quite soporific!). Ate passionfruit. Picked scab (very satisfying!). Ate Oreos. Got on different bus. More desert. Watched same Jean Claude Van Damme movie 3x. Then The Princess Diaries dubbed into Spanish. Read some more C & P. Ate passionfruit. Ate Oreos….
So Arequipa was a welcome change from the bus, but in my opinion did not live up to its own catchphrase, “When the moon separated from the earth, it forgot Arequipa.” We definitely felt like we were back in Peru—there were none of the familiar comforts of Ecuador (toilet paper, Magnum ice creams, $1 beers)—and everyone started lying to us again—from our hotel, which lied about their rates and services, to the bank, which lied about the exchange rate. A huge sign in the bank proclaimed 3.35 soles to the dollar (about 15 Peruvian cents higher than everywhere else), so we waited out the lines patiently, discussing what we would get for our crispy Ben Franklin. At the window, we were handed 320 soles and a pre-printed receipt. We pointed at the sign. “That’s not the rate?” we asked, just in case our sign language had been unclear. “No,” said the teller, and equally helpfully pointed at the 3.20 on the receipt. We were too flabbergasted to argue, and took our money, which didn’t feel nearly as special anymore. It’s strange to have to question everything, even if it seems blatantly obvious. But I suppose, if there’s one thing I learned at Governor’s School, it was to question everything, especially if it’s blatantly obvious. That’s my optimistic point of view. The pessimistic point of view unfortunately wins out more of the time, which is that it f***ing sucks to be lied to. Ah well. Yin and yang, I guess (or whatev).
The highlight of Arequipa itself was the Monasterio de Santa Catalina, a convent as large as a city-within-a-city, which only opened to the public when, in the 1950s, they were forced by city ordinance to install electricity and plumbing, couldn’t afford it, so started charging tourists an arm and a leg to explore its nooks and crannies. In colonial times, it was like a party school for second daughters of Spanish aristocracy, each of whom had to contribute a dowry of silver and slave girls to Our Lord, and then live in a beautiful convent waited on by said slave girls, who existed in a ratio of about 3 to 1 “nun.” Later on, they cleaned up their act, “got religion,” and, by virtue of this, got to wear barbed-wire undergarments during ritual scourging. But hey, at least they were doing God’s will.
From Arequipa, the main attraction is trekking through the Colca Canyon in hopes of seeing condors and steeping oneself in the culture of a place where everything that comes in and out has to do so on the back of a mule or on foot, on crumbling, dusty trails that zigzag steeply up the canyon walls. We found a tour that was $33 for 3 days, including food, accommodation, and guide “with basic English.” When we met Rafael, it was clear that this had been an exaggeration. But still we managed, and learned to decipher his constructions, which were patched together from three sources: actual English words, English words pronounced as they would be in Spanish, and Spanish words with the last syllable lopped off. For example, he knew how to say “The local people. The sacrifice,” (actual English) in reference to how they must constantly toil up and down the canyon walls with their produce and supplies, and whenever we passed locals he would usually gesture at them and say this. He knew that “I” was the word for oneself in English, but pronounced it “ee,” as it would be if it were a Spanish word. And for words he didn’t know, he would take the Spanish word and remove the a or o from the end—it works in many instances, when “mula” becomes “mule,” “roca” becomes “rock,” and so forth, but not in others: taking the last syllable off “años” does not make “years” in English. This confused us for awhile—he would say the people settled here hundreds of “an” ago, or that he had been a guide for fifteen “an.” But once we had learned his language, we had a great time.
We saw condors at the beginning of the hike, before we had even entered the canyon. There were four of them, with their enormous wingspans apparent as they glided around us and overhead (some can reach 6 feet). We were at the rim of the canyon, and the birds flew close to it, so that they were over thousands of feet of empty space but near enough to the walls to see if there was anything worth preying upon. And even though I’ve always wished I could fly, nothing has ever made me wish it more than this. There seemed like there could be no place as peaceful, thrilling, and free in the world. No place where you could be at once so entirely isolated and utterly in communion with everything around you. It was immediately no wonder to me that the ancient cultures of this region worshiped condors as the earth’s connection to more heavenly realms.
Our tour group consisted of Jodi, myself, and a 22-year-old guy named Dustin who looked like Jesus. He was from California, had come to South America to gain independence and have spiritual experiences, was probably 6’3” and 130 pounds, with long blond hair and beard, and he loved to smoke pot and play golf. Play golf? I asked him. Everything else made sense. This did not. This guy was the most anti-golf looking guy you ever saw. But he could talk for hours about the joy of perfecting the precision required to get that ball in a hole. At night he would write in his journal and read us poems he had just written based on our conversations that day. We spent two nights in the canyon, once at a quiet pension run by a family with a little girl and a baby horse, who were hopelessly devoted to each other, and Jodi took the best photo of the entire trip of girl and horse playing in an orchard full of ripe apples. The second night we spent at The Oasis, a green place in the middle of the dusty canyon with grass and fruit trees and swimming pools, but the bliss was ended prematurely by the fact that we had to wake up at 2:40 AM to ascend the canyon wall, in order to get to the top to get to a town where a bus left at 7 AM for the return to civilization.
It was pretty miserable. 3 hours of nothing but uphill, mostly in the dark, on terrain where with each step up you seemed to slide two steps back. I was optimistic and doing fine for the first two hours, and then I made the mistake of commenting on this to Jodi. As soon as I said I was fine, I slipped into a decline and the last 45 minutes were some of the most excruciating of my existence. But even though I had had hardly any sleep and everything hurt, it was quite a beautiful sunrise, over that deep and misty canyon full of local people and sacrifice, mules and appletrees and “ans.”
And so we spent another day on a bus—7 hours back to Arequipa, and then another 6 to Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. Puno was a little dismal, but had great pizza and vegetarian options, although thanks to a little souvenir we picked up in the canyon, they were less enjoyable to us than they might have been had we encountered them with functioning bowels. Rafael had told us not to drink the water at the Oasis, because there was sulfur in it. The other option was to buy bottles of water for 4x what you would spend in town. We asked if we could use our water-purification tablets, and he said yes. But somehow I don’t think iodine does much to sulfur. My stomach and entire digestive system were offline for about 2 weeks after that, and a haze of fumes worse than rotten eggs surrounded me wherever I went. Anyway, we soon decided that there was nothing much in Puno we wanted to see except the Floating Islands of the Uros people.
In order to avoid the culture wars between other tribes and the Incas, the Uros took to the lake hundreds of years ago. They built islands out of reed mats, layering them until they’re about 3 feet thick, and they constantly weave new mats to put on the top, while the old ones rot away from below. They build reed houses on top of the reed islands, and reed boats to navigate between islands. They eat reeds for dinner. We took a rushed and kitschy tour, but it was still lovely—grimy kids tumble all over the place and mothers absentmindedly pull them away if they get too close to the edge. Only a few of the islands are open to tourists anyway, so I’m sure what we were seeing was specially prepared for us, but even so it was like stepping back in time to when humans had to survive on their own ingenuity. And in some ways, we didn’t even have to step back in time—some of the reed huts had antennae and solar panels affixed to the roofs, and as you walked past their cavelike doorways you could see the flickering blue of the television. People, I’ve noticed, would rather anything than give up their land. Even if (especially if?) it’s land they wove themselves.
Coming next: all-too-short escapades in Bolivia and a KMT original, “If You’re Going to Mess Up Your Coccix for the Rest of Your Life, Might As Well Do It On the Inca Trail.”
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Back in the Land of the Free
I love my country
by which I mean I am indebted joyfully
to all the people throughout its history
who have fought the government
to make right
--Ani Difranco, “Grand Canyon”
By the end of my travels in South America, I was really looking forward to coming home. I was feeling pretty up on America (North, that is). I had realized so much that I’ve always taken for granted—just how important quality of life is, and how what we mean when we talk about poverty is a completely different thing than what a Peruvian means when he talks about poverty. That even though our government lies, cheats, and steals just like any other, at least, in general, I could stop and ask a policeman for directions without worrying that he will try to follow me there, steal my wallet, and have an illicit affair with me along the way. At least we have the Bill of Rights. At least our government doesn’t just print more money whenever it feels like it in order to finance its leaders’ new Ferraris (well, as far as we know). The list went on.
Then we got to the Miami airport, and I gave Jodi one last hug before entering the immigration lines (separate lines, of course, for residents and aliens), where she would be interrogated, fingerprinted, and retina-scanned and I would walk through with barely a nod from the tired, uniformed officers, as though I owned the place, a princess of this free, imperfect country. Silent tears ran down my face. “See you on the other side,” she said.
And I remembered what I had been running from in leaving America, the democracy-turned-theocracy, the fear of foreigners, the fear of everything, the Focus on Family, the wars waged for peace, the need to amass wealth the way people in other countries need food and shelter. I had stayed blissfully ignorant of news and current events for the whole of my travels—I remembered isolated incidents from passing through restaurants with CNN on their televisions. Glimpses of the Terry Schiavo case, the death of the Pope (or El Papa, in Spanish, which also means “the potato.” I had a good chuckle with that one), aftershocks of tsunamis in regions of the world remote to mine. I deleted emails from MoveOn and the Environmental Defense Fund while I was traveling. “I can’t do anything about that right now,” I would rationalize. “I’m a citizen of nowhere.”
I did see Jodi on the other side. She had a relatively easy pass through immigration, since she was moving on to Australia in three days’ time. I had missed my connection and had 4 hours to wait in Miami, and the unenviable position being the one left behind when Jodi’s flight left in one hour. Over these almost-two years, I’ve answered that age-old question of “is it easier to be the leaver or the left?” Definitely the leaver. The leaver is immediately thrust into the next segment of their life; they must look forward, watch the stewardess, fasten their seat belt, watch land and water recede beneath them. The left person has time. Time to sit in a sterile airport and remember, in painful slow motion, last moments. Time to watch the plane sit on the tarmac for 45 minutes, wondering why, if it was going to sit there, did they have to take her away so soon? Time to watch it taxi into the distance, until it faded away in a glimmer of Florida heat and left me wondering if there had ever truly been a plane there at all.
It has been great to be home. It’s spring and everything is blossoming—flowers in North Carolina in April seem to have no idea that winter ever happened, that deserts even exist, that there are places in the world flowers do not grow. My animals seem to live for the moment when a person comes home from school or work or errands. They glean meaning from their leash-led walks each morning and night, and from a warm body to sleep with or the dying embers of a fire to watch (yes, my cat loves to watch fires). It’s so innocent and precious, and sometimes I wish so much that I could narrow my life down to those simple comforts, and leave the world with its factions of hate and violence to tear itself apart around me. I could probably go on for quite awhile before everything started to fall to bits and intrude upon my bubble of warmth and home. But eventually, it would intrude.
I’ve been listening to NPR, and I’ve started reading the MoveOn emails again. While I was traveling, it was easy and comforting to envision Bush as a lame duck now, because how much more damage can he really do in just three and a half more years, really? Hillary Clinton can just reverse all his nonsense anyway. Now I’m being shorn of my innocence—he can do lots of things that are irreversible. The first three news items I remember from my return home were: drilling in ANWR (in four more years, it will be too late to say “Sorry, polar bears, that was just a misunderstanding, you can have your habitat back now,”), the demise of the filibuster (if you don’t like the Constitution, just change it! That’s what I say.), and the election of a former Nazi as the Pope (but at least he’ll get things back on track, right where Jesus would’ve wanted them).
Of course, some of these depressing developments have come coupled with rays of hope. For example, one night Terry called me, distraught from a bad day at work proofreading for the Texas House of Representatives. For some of us, a bad day at work means we had cramps, a nasty customer, stingy tips, or plummeting stocks. For Terry, a bad day at work means that he had to grab his little red pen, read a bill that denies gay people the right to be foster parents, and mark it “OK, looks great!” I asked him if he felt like a Nazi collaborator. “You know, when this is all over, it will be people like you whose only defense will be ‘I was just doing my job.’” But I knew, even then, that I was being harsh. There is nothing he could have done about it, except quit. And then he would have to revert to prostitution, and they’d just get some other starving English major to fill his position. Enormous protests, petitions, and referenda all easily fail when there is someone in power who wants something pushed through. Even if Terry marked through the whole bill with his red pen, saying, “Wrong! Cut! Not only have you employed split infinitives, but you are EVIL,” it would have passed. I’ve ceased thinking of our government as a receptive, flexible instrument of the people. It’s now a mindless bulldozer that uses too much gasoline.
So where is that ray of hope you mentioned at the beginning of the last paragraph, you’re wondering. Soon after that conversation with Terry, I was driving home from babysitting and passed a city park thronged with hundreds of people. I slowed to read the signs, and couldn’t believe my eyes: “Charlotte Pride Festival.” “What??! There aren’t enough gay people in Charlotte to have a festival, and most of the ones that are here probably aren’t PROUD of it,” I was thinking. It crossed my mind that maybe it was just unfortunate word choice for something put on by the city for people that are proud of living in Charlotte. But I looked closer, and there were rainbows everywhere, girls with short hair, men with fashion sense, and—wait—was that a drag queen onstage in the distance? And then, on the fringes, I saw picketers with signs that said “YOU CAN’T MAKE A CIVIL RIGHT OUT OF A MORAL WRONG” and groups of people with matching red shirts that said “CLEANSED IN THE BLOOD OF JESUS” and I knew I was in the right place.
It took me half an hour to find a parking space (and finally I did, at the Baptist church). As I walked toward the park, I realized that the noise wasn’t just from a monster sound system; there really were hundreds and hundreds of people there, attending the festival. By contrast, the protesters were there in scant numbers. There were police officers in abundance, which I thought was a nice gesture, but wondered if they would really do anything in our defense if shit went down. It was a beautiful day, and I made my way in solitude through the throngs of people—laughing people, loving people, some people engaged with the staffers of booths in activist-conversations about what they can do to get involved with the fight for equality. As I entered the park, someone handed me a newspaper that listed queer happenings in the southeast—including the Pride Festivals in East Tennessee, Central South Carolina, and Central Alabama. I had been surprised to see a Charlotte event, but Central Alabama? That was a bomb threat waiting to happen. Still, I was filled with a silly, strange sense of hope.
Into my other hand was thrust a pamphlet that had a photo of a guy with a mullet on the front, with a speech bubble proclaiming “I WAS gay.” Inside was John’s story, how once he had succumbed to the evil forces of Satan that led him into temptation, but was able to suppress his Satanic desires through counseling and prayer. I think I actually said “thanks” to the guy who handed me the pamphlet; I didn’t even look at it until a minute later. I looked back, and saw the red-shirted people with the mullet-emblazoned pamphlets in one hand and their golden-paged Bibles in the other, stopping people on their way in and out and trying to engage them in proselytizing conversation. They seemed to attempt to speak only to couples holding hands, butch women, and men with lots of piercings—people who, to them, must have “looked gay” (I didn’t note any mullets among their victims, though). I had gotten away with just the pamphlet. How embarrassing for them, if they had lunged at me with their doctrine and I had turned out not to be gay! I could have easily been one of them! Best to stick to the obvious ones. I was glad they hadn’t spoken to me, but felt like a bit of a traitor as well. Causes are not forwarded by blending in.
I wandered through the booths, smelling falafel and funnel cakes and watching couples kissing on the grass. I signed a petition supporting the granting of same-sex-partner benefits to city workers. I wandered, and I thought of all the things I would say to those protesters, if given the chance and the guts. Why are you so scared of me? maybe. Or I feel really sorry for you. A bit harsh, perhaps. Who would Jesus love? They wouldn’t get it, probably. How many people’s minds do you really think you changed today? That might take them aback for a minute, but inevitably they would reassemble their wits and say something like “It doesn’t matter if we change anyone’s mind; what matters to God is that we are out here upholding what we believe.” I thought of Jodi’s words: See you on the other side. In a way, it was the perfect thing to say. But I knew it wouldn’t communicate either.
I sat on the grass for awhile on the fringes of the amphitheater, reading the gay newspaper and every now and then looking up at the acts onstage. They were, for the most part, unimpressive—drag lip-synchs or weak comedians who began “How many of y’all out there have been drinkin’?” But then I heard the crowd start murmuring and I realized everyone was standing up and I couldn’t see anymore. I stood up too, and saw one of the Bible-beaters marching across the stage, in front of the current drag queen, brandishing his Good Book, and yelling something that no one could hear above the music and the response from the crowd. Perhaps he was speaking in tongues. He was out there for a few minutes, ignoring the MC’s request that he please leave the stage. An effeminate Asian guy skipped up from the first row of the audience and kneeled in front of the man, stuffing a dollar bill in his waistband. The crowd went wild. I kept looking at the police milling on the edges, wondering what they were there for if not to defuse stuff like this. Finally, two of them came and interrupted the evangelist’s tirade, and walked him offstage. Everyone cheered. Through all this, the drag queen had never missed a step in her dance, and for the rest of the act I watched the police trying to reason with the evangelist, and with several of his friends who had shown up as reinforcements. I couldn’t hear their conversation but it looked like something along the lines of “It’s a free country and you’re inhibiting my rights to express my beliefs by interrupting this performance,” and the police nodding and saying “I understand that you’re angry, but we need to be respectful.” Perhaps I lend them too much eloquence in my conjectures.
When the song had finished, the MC, before introducing the next act, said, “And as for the gentleman who tried to help us with that performance….” A few boos arose from the crowd. “Now don’t boo ‘em. Don’t boo ‘em. That’s not friendly.” She was the perfect Southern belle drag queen. “Let’s all just look at ‘em and say ‘We love you!’” And she counted to three, and five hundred people all looked toward stage right, where the protesters were continuing to argue with the police, and in a booming, collective voice of benevolence (not unlike the adjectives with which we might imagine God’s voice), five hundred people shouted in unison, “WEE LOOOOVEE YOUUUUU.” Fists were raised and grimaces were formed on faces in response. But I, at that moment, felt great.
As I left the park, not long after that, I saw that I would pass groups of red shirts milling in uncertain twos and threes. I rehearsed saying “How many people’s minds do you really think you changed today?” but as I walked by them I just looked at the ground. I had just engaged in a collective expression of love; I didn’t want to ruin it with an individual expression of hostility. I also passed a group of policemen, who seemed jolly, happy to be on an assignment that had them outside on a beautiful day. I said hi, and “Thank y’all for being here.” “Oh of course, of course!” one of them responded. He seemed so sincere, like some of my friends from high school’s dads when I would thank them for having me over. “We really appreciate it,” I said, and continued walking toward my car (and the Baptist church). I didn’t look back, but I imagined them staring after me for a few seconds, taking in my long hair and Roxy T-shirt and CK jeans, surprised that I was someone saying “We” to mean “gay people.” But I didn’t look back, so I don’t know. Maybe I’m not giving them, or me, enough credit.
Yesterday I drove to Chapel Hill, then Durham, then Winston-Salem, and then back home. I listened to NPR for about 6 hours, and each news item seemed more chilling than the last. Two car bombs exploded in Iraq. Kansas (and 18 other states) want to teach Creationism in science class again. Medicaid, Social Security, and the retirement pensions of United Airlines employees are all doomed to failure. A state legislator in Alabama wants to ban all books by gay authors or with gay characters from public school libraries (“It’s not censorship,” he said, “it’s protecting our children.”). Protecting our children from Shakespeare and Michelangelo? Whatev, as certain college roommates of mine would say. A North Carolina woman was fired from her job because she lives with her boyfriend, to whom she is not married, and there is a LAW from 1806 prohibiting unmarried cohabitation. Apparently six other states have these laws, and North Dakota has motioned to repeal it 3 times, and each time the state legislature has voted to keep it! One of their reps was quoted: “Cohabitation is an unfortunate fact we have to live with in today’s society, but the government shouldn’t condone it.” And 5,000 people showed up in Raleigh today to show their support for an amendment banning same-sex marriage. I suppose it was only a matter of time.
There was also a severe thunderstorm watch in effect through the evening, and even though Susan and Amanda tried to get me to stay, it wasn’t raining at the time so I started back to Charlotte. About 20 minutes down the road, I ran into the rain. For awhile, I could see enormous, brilliant lightning bolts every few seconds directly ahead of me, but there was no thunder and no sign of rain. And then it found me. At first it wasn’t so bad, and then it was so hard I crept along at 40 mph, rocked with apocalyptic thunder and flashes of lightning that seemed like strobe lights, and buckets of rain assaulting my dad’s new-old truck, which I had never driven in the dark or the rain before. I knew that when I was growing up they used to say that the car was the safest place you could be in a storm, because the tires were rubber and would protect you from lightning, but I wondered if there were newer theories on that, the way they go back and forth on whether you’re supposed to eat dairy or not. I started to worry that Susan and Amanda had been right, and I had made the wrong decision, and I should have stayed. I had this horrible feeling that I was trapped by destiny, that there was a Right Decision to be made and I had no idea what it was—would I have avoided an accident by staying? If I turned around and went back right now, could I still avoid it or is it making that decision that would ultimately throw me in the path of danger? I know it doesn’t make sense, but I was truly scared. I’ve never really had intuition worth listening to; I’ve had much better luck analyzing situations and making rational decisions based on the data. But now I felt like that could cost me everything.
Every now and then the highway would pass under bridges, where the road was dry and there was a brief respite from the rain. It was quiet—for this leg of the trip I had abandoned NPR to wallow in its depressing tidings and put on some Paul Simon, and under those bridges, for a split second, I could actually hear it: “poor boys and pilgrims and families, and we are goin’ to Gracela—” and “angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity, hey, hallelu—” I kept going, though. I had decided to drive home, and I had to stick with it, stop second guessing myself, and drive through this storm. I saw another bridge coming up, and looking forward to that brief second of silence, I said to myself, See you on the other side.
by which I mean I am indebted joyfully
to all the people throughout its history
who have fought the government
to make right
--Ani Difranco, “Grand Canyon”
By the end of my travels in South America, I was really looking forward to coming home. I was feeling pretty up on America (North, that is). I had realized so much that I’ve always taken for granted—just how important quality of life is, and how what we mean when we talk about poverty is a completely different thing than what a Peruvian means when he talks about poverty. That even though our government lies, cheats, and steals just like any other, at least, in general, I could stop and ask a policeman for directions without worrying that he will try to follow me there, steal my wallet, and have an illicit affair with me along the way. At least we have the Bill of Rights. At least our government doesn’t just print more money whenever it feels like it in order to finance its leaders’ new Ferraris (well, as far as we know). The list went on.
Then we got to the Miami airport, and I gave Jodi one last hug before entering the immigration lines (separate lines, of course, for residents and aliens), where she would be interrogated, fingerprinted, and retina-scanned and I would walk through with barely a nod from the tired, uniformed officers, as though I owned the place, a princess of this free, imperfect country. Silent tears ran down my face. “See you on the other side,” she said.
And I remembered what I had been running from in leaving America, the democracy-turned-theocracy, the fear of foreigners, the fear of everything, the Focus on Family, the wars waged for peace, the need to amass wealth the way people in other countries need food and shelter. I had stayed blissfully ignorant of news and current events for the whole of my travels—I remembered isolated incidents from passing through restaurants with CNN on their televisions. Glimpses of the Terry Schiavo case, the death of the Pope (or El Papa, in Spanish, which also means “the potato.” I had a good chuckle with that one), aftershocks of tsunamis in regions of the world remote to mine. I deleted emails from MoveOn and the Environmental Defense Fund while I was traveling. “I can’t do anything about that right now,” I would rationalize. “I’m a citizen of nowhere.”
I did see Jodi on the other side. She had a relatively easy pass through immigration, since she was moving on to Australia in three days’ time. I had missed my connection and had 4 hours to wait in Miami, and the unenviable position being the one left behind when Jodi’s flight left in one hour. Over these almost-two years, I’ve answered that age-old question of “is it easier to be the leaver or the left?” Definitely the leaver. The leaver is immediately thrust into the next segment of their life; they must look forward, watch the stewardess, fasten their seat belt, watch land and water recede beneath them. The left person has time. Time to sit in a sterile airport and remember, in painful slow motion, last moments. Time to watch the plane sit on the tarmac for 45 minutes, wondering why, if it was going to sit there, did they have to take her away so soon? Time to watch it taxi into the distance, until it faded away in a glimmer of Florida heat and left me wondering if there had ever truly been a plane there at all.
It has been great to be home. It’s spring and everything is blossoming—flowers in North Carolina in April seem to have no idea that winter ever happened, that deserts even exist, that there are places in the world flowers do not grow. My animals seem to live for the moment when a person comes home from school or work or errands. They glean meaning from their leash-led walks each morning and night, and from a warm body to sleep with or the dying embers of a fire to watch (yes, my cat loves to watch fires). It’s so innocent and precious, and sometimes I wish so much that I could narrow my life down to those simple comforts, and leave the world with its factions of hate and violence to tear itself apart around me. I could probably go on for quite awhile before everything started to fall to bits and intrude upon my bubble of warmth and home. But eventually, it would intrude.
I’ve been listening to NPR, and I’ve started reading the MoveOn emails again. While I was traveling, it was easy and comforting to envision Bush as a lame duck now, because how much more damage can he really do in just three and a half more years, really? Hillary Clinton can just reverse all his nonsense anyway. Now I’m being shorn of my innocence—he can do lots of things that are irreversible. The first three news items I remember from my return home were: drilling in ANWR (in four more years, it will be too late to say “Sorry, polar bears, that was just a misunderstanding, you can have your habitat back now,”), the demise of the filibuster (if you don’t like the Constitution, just change it! That’s what I say.), and the election of a former Nazi as the Pope (but at least he’ll get things back on track, right where Jesus would’ve wanted them).
Of course, some of these depressing developments have come coupled with rays of hope. For example, one night Terry called me, distraught from a bad day at work proofreading for the Texas House of Representatives. For some of us, a bad day at work means we had cramps, a nasty customer, stingy tips, or plummeting stocks. For Terry, a bad day at work means that he had to grab his little red pen, read a bill that denies gay people the right to be foster parents, and mark it “OK, looks great!” I asked him if he felt like a Nazi collaborator. “You know, when this is all over, it will be people like you whose only defense will be ‘I was just doing my job.’” But I knew, even then, that I was being harsh. There is nothing he could have done about it, except quit. And then he would have to revert to prostitution, and they’d just get some other starving English major to fill his position. Enormous protests, petitions, and referenda all easily fail when there is someone in power who wants something pushed through. Even if Terry marked through the whole bill with his red pen, saying, “Wrong! Cut! Not only have you employed split infinitives, but you are EVIL,” it would have passed. I’ve ceased thinking of our government as a receptive, flexible instrument of the people. It’s now a mindless bulldozer that uses too much gasoline.
So where is that ray of hope you mentioned at the beginning of the last paragraph, you’re wondering. Soon after that conversation with Terry, I was driving home from babysitting and passed a city park thronged with hundreds of people. I slowed to read the signs, and couldn’t believe my eyes: “Charlotte Pride Festival.” “What??! There aren’t enough gay people in Charlotte to have a festival, and most of the ones that are here probably aren’t PROUD of it,” I was thinking. It crossed my mind that maybe it was just unfortunate word choice for something put on by the city for people that are proud of living in Charlotte. But I looked closer, and there were rainbows everywhere, girls with short hair, men with fashion sense, and—wait—was that a drag queen onstage in the distance? And then, on the fringes, I saw picketers with signs that said “YOU CAN’T MAKE A CIVIL RIGHT OUT OF A MORAL WRONG” and groups of people with matching red shirts that said “CLEANSED IN THE BLOOD OF JESUS” and I knew I was in the right place.
It took me half an hour to find a parking space (and finally I did, at the Baptist church). As I walked toward the park, I realized that the noise wasn’t just from a monster sound system; there really were hundreds and hundreds of people there, attending the festival. By contrast, the protesters were there in scant numbers. There were police officers in abundance, which I thought was a nice gesture, but wondered if they would really do anything in our defense if shit went down. It was a beautiful day, and I made my way in solitude through the throngs of people—laughing people, loving people, some people engaged with the staffers of booths in activist-conversations about what they can do to get involved with the fight for equality. As I entered the park, someone handed me a newspaper that listed queer happenings in the southeast—including the Pride Festivals in East Tennessee, Central South Carolina, and Central Alabama. I had been surprised to see a Charlotte event, but Central Alabama? That was a bomb threat waiting to happen. Still, I was filled with a silly, strange sense of hope.
Into my other hand was thrust a pamphlet that had a photo of a guy with a mullet on the front, with a speech bubble proclaiming “I WAS gay.” Inside was John’s story, how once he had succumbed to the evil forces of Satan that led him into temptation, but was able to suppress his Satanic desires through counseling and prayer. I think I actually said “thanks” to the guy who handed me the pamphlet; I didn’t even look at it until a minute later. I looked back, and saw the red-shirted people with the mullet-emblazoned pamphlets in one hand and their golden-paged Bibles in the other, stopping people on their way in and out and trying to engage them in proselytizing conversation. They seemed to attempt to speak only to couples holding hands, butch women, and men with lots of piercings—people who, to them, must have “looked gay” (I didn’t note any mullets among their victims, though). I had gotten away with just the pamphlet. How embarrassing for them, if they had lunged at me with their doctrine and I had turned out not to be gay! I could have easily been one of them! Best to stick to the obvious ones. I was glad they hadn’t spoken to me, but felt like a bit of a traitor as well. Causes are not forwarded by blending in.
I wandered through the booths, smelling falafel and funnel cakes and watching couples kissing on the grass. I signed a petition supporting the granting of same-sex-partner benefits to city workers. I wandered, and I thought of all the things I would say to those protesters, if given the chance and the guts. Why are you so scared of me? maybe. Or I feel really sorry for you. A bit harsh, perhaps. Who would Jesus love? They wouldn’t get it, probably. How many people’s minds do you really think you changed today? That might take them aback for a minute, but inevitably they would reassemble their wits and say something like “It doesn’t matter if we change anyone’s mind; what matters to God is that we are out here upholding what we believe.” I thought of Jodi’s words: See you on the other side. In a way, it was the perfect thing to say. But I knew it wouldn’t communicate either.
I sat on the grass for awhile on the fringes of the amphitheater, reading the gay newspaper and every now and then looking up at the acts onstage. They were, for the most part, unimpressive—drag lip-synchs or weak comedians who began “How many of y’all out there have been drinkin’?” But then I heard the crowd start murmuring and I realized everyone was standing up and I couldn’t see anymore. I stood up too, and saw one of the Bible-beaters marching across the stage, in front of the current drag queen, brandishing his Good Book, and yelling something that no one could hear above the music and the response from the crowd. Perhaps he was speaking in tongues. He was out there for a few minutes, ignoring the MC’s request that he please leave the stage. An effeminate Asian guy skipped up from the first row of the audience and kneeled in front of the man, stuffing a dollar bill in his waistband. The crowd went wild. I kept looking at the police milling on the edges, wondering what they were there for if not to defuse stuff like this. Finally, two of them came and interrupted the evangelist’s tirade, and walked him offstage. Everyone cheered. Through all this, the drag queen had never missed a step in her dance, and for the rest of the act I watched the police trying to reason with the evangelist, and with several of his friends who had shown up as reinforcements. I couldn’t hear their conversation but it looked like something along the lines of “It’s a free country and you’re inhibiting my rights to express my beliefs by interrupting this performance,” and the police nodding and saying “I understand that you’re angry, but we need to be respectful.” Perhaps I lend them too much eloquence in my conjectures.
When the song had finished, the MC, before introducing the next act, said, “And as for the gentleman who tried to help us with that performance….” A few boos arose from the crowd. “Now don’t boo ‘em. Don’t boo ‘em. That’s not friendly.” She was the perfect Southern belle drag queen. “Let’s all just look at ‘em and say ‘We love you!’” And she counted to three, and five hundred people all looked toward stage right, where the protesters were continuing to argue with the police, and in a booming, collective voice of benevolence (not unlike the adjectives with which we might imagine God’s voice), five hundred people shouted in unison, “WEE LOOOOVEE YOUUUUU.” Fists were raised and grimaces were formed on faces in response. But I, at that moment, felt great.
As I left the park, not long after that, I saw that I would pass groups of red shirts milling in uncertain twos and threes. I rehearsed saying “How many people’s minds do you really think you changed today?” but as I walked by them I just looked at the ground. I had just engaged in a collective expression of love; I didn’t want to ruin it with an individual expression of hostility. I also passed a group of policemen, who seemed jolly, happy to be on an assignment that had them outside on a beautiful day. I said hi, and “Thank y’all for being here.” “Oh of course, of course!” one of them responded. He seemed so sincere, like some of my friends from high school’s dads when I would thank them for having me over. “We really appreciate it,” I said, and continued walking toward my car (and the Baptist church). I didn’t look back, but I imagined them staring after me for a few seconds, taking in my long hair and Roxy T-shirt and CK jeans, surprised that I was someone saying “We” to mean “gay people.” But I didn’t look back, so I don’t know. Maybe I’m not giving them, or me, enough credit.
Yesterday I drove to Chapel Hill, then Durham, then Winston-Salem, and then back home. I listened to NPR for about 6 hours, and each news item seemed more chilling than the last. Two car bombs exploded in Iraq. Kansas (and 18 other states) want to teach Creationism in science class again. Medicaid, Social Security, and the retirement pensions of United Airlines employees are all doomed to failure. A state legislator in Alabama wants to ban all books by gay authors or with gay characters from public school libraries (“It’s not censorship,” he said, “it’s protecting our children.”). Protecting our children from Shakespeare and Michelangelo? Whatev, as certain college roommates of mine would say. A North Carolina woman was fired from her job because she lives with her boyfriend, to whom she is not married, and there is a LAW from 1806 prohibiting unmarried cohabitation. Apparently six other states have these laws, and North Dakota has motioned to repeal it 3 times, and each time the state legislature has voted to keep it! One of their reps was quoted: “Cohabitation is an unfortunate fact we have to live with in today’s society, but the government shouldn’t condone it.” And 5,000 people showed up in Raleigh today to show their support for an amendment banning same-sex marriage. I suppose it was only a matter of time.
There was also a severe thunderstorm watch in effect through the evening, and even though Susan and Amanda tried to get me to stay, it wasn’t raining at the time so I started back to Charlotte. About 20 minutes down the road, I ran into the rain. For awhile, I could see enormous, brilliant lightning bolts every few seconds directly ahead of me, but there was no thunder and no sign of rain. And then it found me. At first it wasn’t so bad, and then it was so hard I crept along at 40 mph, rocked with apocalyptic thunder and flashes of lightning that seemed like strobe lights, and buckets of rain assaulting my dad’s new-old truck, which I had never driven in the dark or the rain before. I knew that when I was growing up they used to say that the car was the safest place you could be in a storm, because the tires were rubber and would protect you from lightning, but I wondered if there were newer theories on that, the way they go back and forth on whether you’re supposed to eat dairy or not. I started to worry that Susan and Amanda had been right, and I had made the wrong decision, and I should have stayed. I had this horrible feeling that I was trapped by destiny, that there was a Right Decision to be made and I had no idea what it was—would I have avoided an accident by staying? If I turned around and went back right now, could I still avoid it or is it making that decision that would ultimately throw me in the path of danger? I know it doesn’t make sense, but I was truly scared. I’ve never really had intuition worth listening to; I’ve had much better luck analyzing situations and making rational decisions based on the data. But now I felt like that could cost me everything.
Every now and then the highway would pass under bridges, where the road was dry and there was a brief respite from the rain. It was quiet—for this leg of the trip I had abandoned NPR to wallow in its depressing tidings and put on some Paul Simon, and under those bridges, for a split second, I could actually hear it: “poor boys and pilgrims and families, and we are goin’ to Gracela—” and “angels in the architecture, spinning in infinity, hey, hallelu—” I kept going, though. I had decided to drive home, and I had to stick with it, stop second guessing myself, and drive through this storm. I saw another bridge coming up, and looking forward to that brief second of silence, I said to myself, See you on the other side.
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