Houston Art Car Show

Auto-motive Houstonians

Let's be frank. There are a lot of very large people in Houston. Some are vertically large, going up and down like the Houstonian skyscrapers that dominate the downtown skyline, and wearing big cowboy hats that make them look even larger. But many, oh yes, are also horizontally quite large, with nice large bellies and big butts.

I was curious about why Houston seemed to have more than its share of horizontally large people. My friends Mike and Nic said they had read a study that said Houston had one of the highest rates of obesity in the country.

Then I remembered about the no car, no hamburger rule. (see previous post) And I figured that with so many people stuck driving around eating hamburgers inside their cars, this was bound to happen. The hamburgers eventually make the bellies expand to fit the size of the pick-up trucks and SUVs.

Unlike Los Angeles, which is also an automotive city, Houstonians are unapologetically large. In L.A., the prevailing look-like-a-movie-star-or-else mentality of much of the city has resulted in lots of gyms and yoga classes, and for those who can afford it, liposuction clinics.

But Houstonians don't seem to give a damn. They just drive around and drive around, buying good Texan beef hamburgers and not so good variations of it, getting larger and larger, depositing their money in drive-in banks, and using up all that oil that has made Houston what it is today.

Unlike some urban Californians, who are often too busy rushing around improving themselves and/or becoming enlightened to pay attention to anyone but themselves, Houstonians are as generous and hospitable as they are large.

Their generosity, or what I've seen of it, is simple, downhome, matter of fact. That guy who bought me the hamburger for instance. And walking down one of those interminable roads on the outskirts of Houston, the roads that have no sidewalks because pedestrians here don't exist, walking and enjoying the walk and the scenery and the exquisite pleasure of having legs, three Houstonians slowed down and offered me a ride, a look of alarm and concern on their faces.

No Car,No Hamburger

So there I was standing with my red backpack at 10PM at night in front of the window at Wendy's on Westheimer, my stomach grumbling and whining.

"I'll have a hamburger," I said.

"I'm sorry," she said, "you have to have a car to get a hamburger."

"What do you mean I have to have a car? I'm standing right here. I have two hands. You can put your hamburger in one of my hands and take my money out of the other. What's so difficult about that?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "No car, no hamburger."

She was a thin, pretty, mocha skinned African or African American teenager, with one of those
interesting Houstonian accents that I can barely understand. She looked nervous. She was only carrying out company policy.

"Do you want me to drive you around to the window?" offered some strange big guy in a pick-up truck. We were already at the window. He was offering to drive me around in a circle so we could return to the same window with me inside his car instead of outside it.

He was probably only being hospitable, but I declined.

I allowed my mouth to make a few grumbling noises to match my stomach, then went across the street to MacDonald's. Not wanting to repeat the scenario, I asked some other strange big guy in a pick-up truck to buy me a burger and a Coke, extending my five dollar bill.

With my backpack and my obviously car-challenged state, he must have assumed I was financially challenged as well.

"That's okay," he said, waving away my five dollar bill, and handing me the burger from his car window, before driving off.

Genuine Texan Genes

Genuine Texan Genes

Lest anyone think that I am making fun of Texas or Texans by my last post, let me make it perfectly clear that I am here because my Texan ancestors called me here, and that I would not be the multicultural California a-hole elitist that I am without all their hard work to get me on this planet.

If I could, I would visit all of their graves, giving thanks to some, praying to others, and perhaps, who knows, dancing on the rest.

I would go to Paris, Texas where my great grandfather William Bascom found himself at eighty some years old, cleaned up from alcohol and scratching out a letter to his brother talking about how he was 'so blind he couldn't see to pull a splinter out of a gnats behind'.

I would go to Laredo, Texas to see the grave of my great great grandmother Mary Elizabeth , a strong and steady folk healer who knew about herbs and laying on hands and reading the weather.

I would go to Gilmer, Texas, where a young soon-to-be Confederate soldier and his wife gave birth to my great grandmother Ella Gertrude before they both died, leaving her to spend her life 'working out' as a servant in other people's homes before she married my handsome fiddler great grandfather (the one who couldn't see the splinter) and took on nineteen children.

From Gilmer I would continue travelling through East Texas, visiting the ancestors who owned some fellow human beings as slaves and wondering if I had any black cousins there. I would visit the many times great uncle who married into Cherokee chief Stand Watie's family, wanting to know if old Watie ever told him what he was thinking when he signed
the agreement that sent the Cherokee down the Trail of Tears, or what it was like for his wife when she walked it.

I would say to them all: we have travelled a long way, haven't we baby.

(Insert Texan drawl, heal old wounds, extract splinter from gnat's behind, move on.)

Big-Ass Texas

Houston, like Texas, is quite large. It goes on and on and all around. And, as befitting an aging oil-town, it is full of cars. I don't see very many taxis or busses, and when you are staying out in Cloverleaf, a burb of Houston, that can be a problem.

"Texans haven't quite discovered green yet," says my friend Nic in her clipped British-California accent.

"Everything here is big-ass," says my friend Mike, Nic's boyfriend, in his lazy drawling all-California accent. "Nothing is just big. It's always big-ass. Big-ass beer, big-ass cars. Big-ass people."

This led to a discussion about how sometimes different parts of the world identify with different body parts. In Buenos Aires I was mildly shocked to hear the inhabitants refer to their lovely city as "the a-hole of South America" because of its location on the southern tip of the continent. We wondered if the usage of the A word around here as a suffix to just about anything indicated that something similar was at play here in Houston, which is also a pretty southernly city in the U.S.

"What about Miami?' asked Mike.

"Miami is more like a big toe," I said.

Actually, I have been pleasantly surprised by Houston, forced to break out of my California Bay Area elitist ways to recognize that this is an exciting, dynamic, artistic, multi-cultural city, mixing Latino, Louisiana Cajun, African, African American, Anglo, liberal and conservative and and a whole lot of other spicy stuff into a pot full of drawling yes ma'am yeah baybee Texas twang.

Big-ass Texas twang.

P.S. You can get an apartment here for less than the price of a room in San Francisco.

Reflections on the Longest Walk

I woke up this morning thinking about the very powerful work that is getting done on the Longest Walk. The young people who spoke about how the Walk was changing their lives, the people who received us in their different communities, the mix of ethnicities and cultures, the power of the land and the spirits of the land that we encounter in the walk.

Of course, there is difficulty--the usual interpersonal conficts that occur when a group of people are thrown together for any length of time. Some people complained about the 'negativity' of some of the people---but this 'negativity' has the potential to be part of the healing process of the Walk. (Also,kind of ironic--complaining about negativity!)

Road Trip from Arizona to Texas Photos

Houston International Festival

Some random pics from the Houston International Festival.

This year's theme: "Out of Africa", celebrating the African and African-American experience.

Houston, Texas

Took the Greyhound bus to Houston Texas where I will visit my friends Mike and Nic for awhile, two musicians from San Francisco who have bought an apartment building here and are having a go at being bigtime landlords.

I haven't been to Houston for thirty years. It's as hot and muggy as I remember it, though somewhat nicer--green and fashionable neighborhoods I never had a chance to visit the first time around.

My friends live in Cloverleaf, on the edge of Houston. Mexican restaurants, thrift stores, various businesses catering to automobiles, some with big signs with pictures of Jesus next to radiators and American flags saying "God Bless My Business, God Bless America."

I have decided to rejoin the Longest Walk later on.

Here's a picture of a Cloverleaf cat.

Austin Again

Back to Austin for several days where, this time without the bad cold, I could actually better appreciate my cuzns and the city of Austin, which has a relaxed flavor and a distinctly colorful architectural style which I liked.

We spent earth day in a small town outside of Austin, enjoying the exhibits, fishing for crawdads in a tiny plastic pool, riding on a glass bottom boat, and sitting on the grass listening to country and bluegrass music.

I am thinking a lot about my Texan ancestors since I've been here--hearing some of the fiddling of my great-grandfather in the bluegrass music, looking at maps and actually putting locations to the names of places I'd only heard about.

My cuzns wife Nina--a new cousin-- has been most hospitable. An engineer who became a later mother, she's dealing with two very young children in her early forties.

Ani, the baby, has discovered her index finger, and uses it frequently to point out the wonders of the world, accompanying the finger with excited indecipherable baby noises.

Eagle Pass, Texas

Drove down to Eagle Pass, Texas from Austin, to visit the Texas Kickapoo. Some of my ancestors may have been Kickapoo. so this was a special trip for me.

Eagle Pass is a sleepy little border town which has pretty much been absorbed by Mexico. Most people in town are of Mexican ancestry and speak Spanish--very few 'guero' faces here, outside of mine.

I found a delightful bed and breakfast called Weyrich Farms, a sprawling green pecan farm on the edge of the Rio Grande, run by two tall Texan ladies, mother and daughter. Leah (daughter) and I spent some time chillin on the edge of the Rio Grand, her drinking bourbon and me water, laughing and talking about where life takes you. I also went for long walks with their dogs, one with four legs and the other with three.

Spent a lot of time recuperating from my cold.

Finally got ahold of the Kickapoo tribal chairman for an interview at the end of the week. They are busy rebuilding their morale and finances after the corruption fiasco of a few years ago.

The Kickapoo Lucky Eagle Casino slot machines gave me some money for my trip. That was nice.

Austin, Texas

My father arrived in Window Rock after the walk. From there we drove to a motel in Gallup, and then hit the road early the next morning for the long drive to Austin, Texas, to visit cousins.

Unfortunately, I arrived in Texas with a bad cold and have been fighting it for the last week.

My father has since returned to L.A., while I have stayed here trying to recuperate and also catching up on life with my cousin, who has two delightful daughters I hadn't met before. Carina, four, who is exploring the world the way four year olds do, and a joyful one year old named Ani.

His mother Anne Marie ,is also here. She was nineteen when my uncle married her and is now sixty eight. Always a gracious and thoughtful person, even more now that she's aged.
We watched some old movies she made of her and her kids over the years.

An interesting trip down memory lane for all of us. Hard to believe how many grey hairs we all have now.

Good to catch up with all of them. Anne Marie and I talked about how you can tell whether or not a person has "followed their blueprint" in life--which to me seems to be the ultimate measure of success. Did you grow the way you were meant to and blossom in a way that is natural to you, or did you find yourself sidetracked, or stuck in the wrong box?

Fortunately, it seems to me that for the most part my family members all seem to have followed their original blueprints.

Navajo Nation: Window Rock

After a couple of days rest in Ganado, it was finally a day to walk.

My father had given up on the tent and taken a motel in Gallup. I stayed with the walkers.

We did around twelve miles, and were joined by local people from the rez--young and old, on feet, in wheelchairs, everybody moving towards Window Rock as the Buddhist monks and nuns kept time with their drum.

I made some new friends. One of them, also named Lisa, had a sore foot and wasn't going to walk, but she was asked to drum with the Buddhists, so walked anyway. She lived on the reservation. This was the first time she had left her 5 kids for any substantial amount of time. Her husband was taking care of the kids while she walked.

She says she'll go as long as this arrangement seems to work.

This was the first day of 'serious' walking for me. The beginning and end were fine--the worst part was in the middle. I also realized that I brought too much weight in my bag.

On the way, I spoke to another woman from the rez who had gone to California to live and then returned. "It's good to be home," she said.

We were greeted at Window Rock by speeches by members of the Navajo tribal council and others--and of course, food.

The welcome and appreciation the walkers have received from communities along the way has been phenomenal.

Navajo Nation: Canyon de Chelly

The Dine say that Canyon de Chelly is the center of Navajo Nation. Unfortunately, it does not legally belong to them, but to the US Park Service. We gathered in a forested area just outside the canyon, listened to speakers talk about the canyon, and ate.

Afterwards, we piled onto several pick-up trucks that drove us across the shallow river. One of them got stuck. Once in the canyon, the walkers sang The Longest Song--a song they sing at every community they stop at, each time adding a new verse. The verse here was: "Dine Nation is where we are, Canyon de Chelly is their home."

I found myself in tears again in the Canyon. Somehow the overwhelming magnificence of the canyon mixed with some of the residual grief I was feeling about Denise's suicide, as well as the power, sorrow and the beauty of the Navajo people, and I was caught in one of those painfully aware moments of the exquisite contradictions of this thing we call life.

I had to leave the circle of singing and stand by myself for awhile, next to the river. Behind me I heard someone say, " That's Mother Earth, crying through her."

Navajo Nation: Ganado Chapter/Window Rock

At Ganado, I convinced my father to set up his new tent and try camping out, something he hadn't done for probably 40 years. It was pretty funny, the two of us wrestling with how to set up this tent neither of us understood, while the wind blew us and the tent all over the place in the high desert of the Navajo Nation.

Finally, a friendly young Japanese guy helped us out.

I was very impressed with my Dad's willingness to try new things--but then he's always been that way.

The walkers had a couple of days off, so Dad and I went to Window Rock, where we visited the zoo and the Navajo Museum. Unfortunately, the main exhibit of the museum was closed, but the zoo was lovely--the animals, each with a partner, seemed relaxed and well taken care of.

Navajo Nation: Greasewood Chapter

So my father and I drove across Arizona, to Flagstaff, where we joined with the Longest Walk Two, who we found already walking down the highway to the Greasewood Chapter of the Navajo Nation.

A few more walkers had joined the group, which is now up to about 175. Only about 50 of these were walking when we caught up with them--at any given time, some of the walkers will be on kitchen or clean up duty and not walking.

It was good to see familiar faces from six weeks ago, when I walked in California--Emmet, the 76 year old runner, Julia, who seemed a little overburdened with responsiblities, Tony Galli from Pit River who had introduced me to the walk, looking windblown and tired but happy, young Andrea from DQ still striding along calmly. And of course Dennis, fiery as ever as he speaks to the group and reminds them of why they are walking.

Some of the people who had said they were going to do the whole walk had dropped out. Not surprising--this is not an easy endeavor, not just for the physical challenge, but for the emotioinal challenge of a multi-cultured multi-generational bunch of people thrown together on a strenous walk.

At Greasewood Chapter, two elderly Dine women sang, and then we danced. I was moved nearly to tears.

Leaving L.A.

I've convinced my Dad, who will soon be celebrating his 76th birthday, to join me for a few days on the Longest Walk. Today we are driving out to Flagstaff, Arizona, where we will spend the night. Tomorrow we join the walkers.

Springtime in LA

A Response from Denise and Two More Poems

The sudden death of a friend is never easy, but especially challenging if it has been murder or suicide.

Now that I have been through this a few times, I know something about the stages of grief you go through--denial, anger, eventual acceptance, and in the case of suicide--guilt. ("I should have known, I should have been able to do something.")

But I forget that each death brings its own particular grieving. This one hit me on a very physical level, like my body and soul had been slammed by a truck.

But each death or loss also brings its own teaching. I know that the only way to really 'get it' is to go through the grief, to not get stuck in denial. So I have let myself have all my emotions and internal conversations about guilt and anger and pain and loss and even humour.


Then there are the conversations with Denise. Many people have talked and written about "after-death communication". What exactly this is we can't really know, whether it is our own hopes and feelings attached to mere synchonicities, or genuine communication from the beyond. My own belief says probably a combination of the two, since my own belief about the immediate afterlife is that we simply change form.

There is even a form of grief therapy now called "Induced After Death Communcation", where the patient is encouraged to 'get in touch' with their lost loved one.

So in the first few days after I found out about her death, I was hearing a running conversation with her in my mind. Some of it was painful, some of it comforting, some of it was funny. Just like Denise herself. "Death is painful but not as painful as life," she said. And "don't bother me, I'm busy with my family." And: "Lots of good-looking sailors over here."

Maybe it was just me talking to my own memories, maybe not. Guess I won't know til I get to wherever she is.

At one moment when I was in the middle of yet another argument with her inside my head, I said, "Okay fine, if you are really
are still out there somewhere communicating with me, prove it. send me another email...Ha, I bet you can't do that, can you? I don't mean some kind of internal dialogue thing, I mean a REAL message."

And then I sat back, smugly with my arms folded, waiting for what I knew was impossible to happen. In a few moments, I'll check my email and see if she really did send something, ha ha, which of course I knew she can't, then we'll be done with this After Death Communication hallucination once and for all.

These are the strange mental Grand Canyons grief sends you into.

At that very moment a hummingbird flew up to my window, and hovered the way hummingbirds do, their wings moving rapidly keeping them in one place. It stayed long enough to stare for a few long seconds directly into my eyes. Then it disappeared, rapidly, the way hummingbirds do.

And I felt the fluttering of these wings deep inside me, lifting me and making me laugh.

Thank you, I said.

Some messages don't end up in your computer, but in your heart, where they belong.

And we don't really know who sends them, do we?

------

Two more poems, send by Denise last year:

Poem: "Goldfinches" by Mary Oliver from Owls and
> Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays. © Beacon Press.
>
> Goldfinches
>
> Some goldfinches were having a melodious argument
> at the edge of a puddle. The birds wanted to bathe,
> or
> perhaps just to dip their heads and look at
> themselves,
> and they were having trouble with who should be
> first, and so on. So they discussed it while I stood
> in
> the distance, listening. Perhaps in Tibet, in the
> old
> holy places, they also have such fragile bells. Or
> are
> these birds really just that, bells come to us—come
> to
> this road in America—let us bow our heads and
> remember now how we used to do it, say a prayer.
> Meanwhile the birds bathe and splash and have a
> good time. Then they fly off, their dark wings open—
> ing from their bright, yellow bodies; their tiny
> feet,
> all washed, clasping the air.
>
>
>

> Poem: "Trust" by Thomas R. Smith, from Waking before
> Dawn. © Red Dragonfly Press. Reprinted with
> permission.
>
> Trust
>
> It's like so many other things in life
> to which you must say no or yes.
> So you take your car to the new mechanic.
> Sometimes the best thing to do is trust.
>
> The package left with the disreputable-looking
> clerk, the check gulped by the night deposit,
> the envelope passed by dozens of strangers—
> all show up at their intended destinations.
>
> The theft that could have happened doesn't.
> Wind finally gets where it was going
> through the snowy trees, and the river, even
> when frozen, arrives at the right place.
>
> And sometimes you sense how faithfully your life
> is delivered, even though you can't read the
address.

Earth to Denise

Earth to Denise:

I am sorry that you had to leave so soon.

I am sorry that beauty of who you were to all of us was not enough to convince you to stick around.

I have 61 emails that still remain in the 'sent' file of my email--my responses to emails that you sent, with your originals.

You frequently started your emails to me with "Earth to Lisa" because I was always flying around the world.

Like our long conversations on the phone, or our conversations over drinks at Vesuvio in North Beach, the emails held the things that were important to us and passed them back and forth--the freedom and challenge of becoming 'older women', making a living, men, rants about the state of the world and about the difficulty of finding hairstyles that worked,kindness, love, old North Beach poets, and being a white woman and a black woman in today's America. And poetry. Lots of poetry.

Thank you for holding the things that mattered in our all of our conversations. Thank you for all the hope and inspiration, the wise and kind words you were able to give to others but not yourself. And thank you, most of all--for the ability we shared to laugh our way out of well, almost anything.

I knew we were good friends because we could get really angry with each other and laugh about it later.

And yeah,I let myself have one last argument you when I found out about this. Yelling at you from inside my car driving through the Berkeley streets, a shout from this painful messed up and exquisite earth that keeps us here and teaches us over and over again about letting go until finally just maybe we get it (or not) and then it is our own turn to go...

Like most of us here on planet earth, I am selfish. I wanted you to stick around for
awhile. I wanted us to learn how to be old ladies together, still laughing about 'going out to North Beach and picking up sailors." I wanted
more poems, more evenings at Vesuvio, more delectable meals in which
you complain, again, about how much you love to eat.

But it was not to be. So fly, little bird. Fly home.

I will miss you.

Lisa

sent June,2007:

Lisa;
>
> I must be getting really old because I am sitting
> around in the middle of the day with so many
> important chores left undone while I amuse myself
> with these lovely little corny poems.
>
> And I thought I would share ...
>
> Denise
>
> p.s. ...this one must be read out loud, and don't
> worry about people thinking that you're crazy,
> because it's a well established fact by this point
> :- )
>
>
> Poem: "Long Afternoon at the Edge of Little Sister
> Pond" by Mary Oliver from Owls and Other Fantasies:
> Poems and Essays. © Beacon Press. Reprinted with
> permission.
>
>
> As for life
> I'm humbled,
> I'm without words
> sufficient to say
>
> how it has been hard as flint,
> and soft as a spring pond
> both of these
> and over and over,
>
> and long pale afternoons besides,
> and so many mysteries
> beautiful as eggs in a nest,
> still unhatched
>
> though warm and watched over
> by something I have never seen—
> a tree angel, perhaps,
> or a ghost of holiness.
>
> Every day I walk out into the world
> to be dazzled, then to be reflective.
> It suffices, it is all comfort—
> along with human love,
>
> dog love, water love, little-serpent love,
> sunburst love, or love for that smallest of birds
> flying among the scarlet flowers.
> There is hardly time to think about
>
> stopping, and lying down at last
> to the long afterlife, to the tenderness
> yet to come, when
> time will brim over the singular pond, and become
> forever,
>
> and we will pretend to melt away into the leaves.
> As for death,
> I can't wait to be the hummingbird,
> can you?

sent September, 2006

Around the corner I have a friend,
> In this great city that has no end,
> Yet the days go by and weeks rush on,
> And before I know it, a year is gone. And I never
> see my old friends face,
> For life is a swift and terrible race,
> He knows I like him just as well,
> As in the days when I rang his bell.
> And he rang mine but we were younger then,
> And now we are busy, tired men.
> Tired of playing a foolish game,
> Tired of trying to make a name.
> "Tomorrow" I say! "I will call on Jim .
> Just to show that I'm thinking of him."
> But tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes,
> And distance between us grows and grows.
> Around the corner, yet miles away,
> "Here's a telegram sir," "Jim died today .
> And that's what we get and deserve in the end.
> Around the corner, a vanished friend.
> Remember to always say what you mean. If
> you love someone, tell
> them. Don't be afraid to express yourself. Reach out
> and tell someone what
> they mean to you. Because when you decide that it is
> the right time it might
> be too late. Seize the day. Never have regrets.And
> most importantly, stay
> close to your friend s and family, for they have
> helped
> make you the person that you are today !
>
>

Sudden Death

I have delayed my trip to join the longest walk for a few more days because of the sudden death of a close friend. I'll be spending some time with family first.

More later.

Next: The Longest Walk Two, Across the U.S.A.

In just a few days I'll be re-joining The Longest Walk Two, which started here in the Bay Area with a sunrise ceremony at Alcatraz, and is now several miles south of here, near Twenty-Nine Palms, California. This Native-led group is walking across the United States in five months, to bring attention to sacred sites, indigenous issues and our treatment of Mother Earth here in the U. S.A. It's called "two", because it commemorates the first Longest Walk in 1978, when the U.S. tried to anull all of the treaties it had with Native nations.

I started out with them three weeks ago in the Bay Area, and walked for three days. Many, many interesting people on the walk, of all ages and ethnicities. June, a 60 year old Buddhist nun, has been doing similar walks for 30 years. For her, it is a practice that, unlike meditation, takes her out into the community. Emmet (His Many Lightings), is a 76 year old runner who started marathon running when he was 40, and hasn't quit since.

As one man on the walk said, "There are a thousand people in your heart you haven't met yet."

I think I'll meet a few of them on this walk.

The Longest Walk Two website is http://www.sacredrun.org

These Retro Times

Mask of Flowers
Originally uploaded by lisa.garrigues

Mercury, the planet of communication and short trips, is retrograde again, and will be until February 18. The usual response to this from astro-believers is panic and paralysis: don't sign any contracts, be extra-careful when you drive, and be prepared for cell phone glitches and computer meltdowns. People go around irritably muttering the mantra of "Mercury retro Mercury retro" under their breaths, because the "backward" motion of this planet seems to make speaking to anybody but ourselves highly problematic.
But that, I think,is the point of these Mercury retrograde periods: slow down,revise, review,reflect. Spend some time talking to yourself. Don't be in such a hurry to get places, get ahead, get over, or get your message across. I for one,welcome them, though I understand that the speedaholic demands of Our American Life conflict with what the universe may want from us, which is perhaps more a dance of balance, of breathing in and out, than an endless pushing forward.

Monkey on My Back

PICT0353
Originally uploaded by lisa.garrigues

Somewhere near Pilcopata, Peru, with a monkey on my back, in 2007.

Remembering a hot day in the jungle from cold and wet San Francisco.

Northwest Light

The sunlight in Washington State is like a rare jewel when it arrives, sparkling clean and pure on the evergreen trees, shimmering a luminescent blue with streaks of gold on the Dungeness spit as the sun slowly falls behind the horizon.

A spit is a long stretch of skinny land that juts out into the ocean water. It doesn't have a very romantic sound--and when you look at it on a map knowing its name it does kind of look like a long thread of spit that some giant standing on the mainland let fly.

But actually standing on the sand of the spit you are in a landscape of mist that huddles up next to you,then moves back to reveal in the near distance a boat, a tree, a heron, before sliding on again to reshape itself and the landscape.

This is not San Francisco coastside fog, with its harsh and often incessant wind. This is something far more delicate--it paints the landscape around you with a misty brush, shifting and changing, like a Japanese watercolor.

Evergreens shrouded in wise silence, punctuated by persistently conversational ravens. Long and cool narrow beaches scattered with white clam shells resembling the small hard wings of angels.

The angels may not always be visible, but they have left us, in this physical world, with tokens, reminders, evidence of their presence.

I walk the beach collecting these hard white wings in my hands,following the fluctuating presence of light. At the end of my walk, I let them fall again, emptying my hands for whatever is next.

Shopping for George Bush Terrorism and other Deals

I just love the creative ways my computer has come up with to get me to buy things. When I googled for information related to my last post, here's what it came up with:

Shopping for George Bush Torture Terrorism 2007?

Find George Bush Torture Terrorism 2007 any many other great deals at MonsterMarketplace!

Wow, sign me up.

But seriously folks, I've realized I need to do a serious about face about George Bush. Instead of constantly maligning him as many of us lefties have been doing for the past eight years, I need to thank him.

Yes, thank him. For showing me the shadow side of my own country, and of myself. For galvanizing a lot of us into creating better alternatives. For our country, ourselves, and our world.

So, GW, my dear sweet enemy-teacher, thank you.

Now would you please leave?

frog in the boiling water

If you throw a frog into the boiling water, it will feel the pain of the water. If you put the frog in the water and then slowly turn up the heat, the frog gets accustomed to it, doesn't feel the pain, and doesn't notice the water is boiling.

This story has come up several times for me in my travels back and forth to the U.S, as I jump in and out of the water.
Every time I return it seems the water has been turned up a bit more, and no one is noticing. A few years ago, when it surfaced that the U.S. may have been using torture for terrorism suspects, there was a lot of press and discussion. Some relatively low level folks were arrested. There was outrage. Now it just seems to be part of the common knowledge: yeah folks, that 's just the way it is.

Then there's the domestic spying, on peace activists, journalists, etc. It was good in a way to read media validation of what most of us already suspected. But what's being done about it now?

The other news that caught my attention is an article about the epidemic of obesity in this country, primarily among poor people, folks that live in Mississippi and Washington DC. And of course many of us in this country are carrying a few extra pounds.

What it all amounts to, INHP,is a kind of collective bloatedness, which is physically made manifest in certain communities and individuals. As if the layers of flesh on our bodies were a metaphor for the layer of numbness we seem to need to survive here. We consume a lot, yes, but what are we consuming? In the case of the poor diabetic folks in Mississippi, a most likely a lot of junk. Poison.

We should probably ask ourselves, with so many people gaining so much weight, what are we hungry for?

I also notice more desperation, more obsession with security. Has it always been this way and I haven't noticed, or is this a change? We are so highly trained in our individualism that we have forgotten how to find security in one another.

Okay, I'm on my soapbox ranting again. Forgive me. These are just my froggy observations.

At the same time that I am noticing all this, I have to also say that I am seeing increasing pockets of change and inspiration, like new plant growth sprouting up in a decaying sidewalk.

And our collective head and heart turning towards the wounding of the planet may be a sign of our own healing.

Stopping to Hear the Song

Whew, I'd also forgotten how fast everything here runs, how time-poor many Americans are. Those that are the working poor are running to pay their bills, and the rich, well they are also running to pay their bills, they just have higher bills. And of course everyone in debt. It's the American way.

So okay I checked out of the afternoon classes I teach to go to the dentist (more bills) and sit down in a cafe afterwards and watch people walking by. Maybe I'd had too much wine, I don't know, but all of a sudden it felt like I was being hit by little hammers of clarity, bam bam bam. In the sixties I had to take acid to get these kind of insights, you know, the kind you can't remember afterwards, but now all it takes is a sip or two of Chardonnay. Okay, it takes the whole damned glass.

So one of the many insights I had in this insightful afternoon was that I suddenly began hearing the individual songs of people. I mean as each person moved by me, I could literally hear their individual rhythm and voice call out to me... some people were kind of shlub schlub schlub, you know the fat guy with his shirt out and some messy notebooks under his arm ambling along, and others had high clear notes, perhaps with a little percussion to accompany them, like that high cheekboned blue-eyed Swedish girl with her pony tail pulled back swish swish swishing in the breeze, and her heels going clackety clack.

Suddenly I wanted not just silent me there observing all this, but the whole band to play it out loud. I wanted to round up a group of my musician friends so we could play back the songs of people as they passed.

Stop and try it sometimes, and see what you hear.

Glut

What is always a cultural shock coming back to the US of A is the amazing abundance of stuff we swim in on a daily basis...physical stuff, food stuff, informational stuff. And here in the Bay Area, I might add the rich and densely packed cultural mix we live in..anglos, francos, italianos, latinos, african-americans, asians of all persuasians, muslims, jews, indians from india, american indians. Amazing.

It is rich, it is beautiful, and yet I think it can also contribute to a kind of numbing out, a kind of overload. Most certainly, living here, we rarely step back to appreciate the abundance of stuff we have.

I am always astonished, returning from the developing world, to see television sets, sofas, CD players, boxes of books, just left out on street corners for anyone to pick up. The variety of mustards we can buy if we are so inclined, to put in our refrigerators. The fact that we even have refrigerators. Holy shit.

Nobody Goes Anywhere Anymore, We Just Transmute

Is "transmute" a word, or is it "transform"? My English is suffering, I'm afraid, after the year and a half speaking Spanish and the occasional pidgeon Quechua.

I am now physically in Berkeley, Ca. Yes these are my arms and legs and this is my head and I do believe I am all here in one piece.

Yet I go to this electronic box..and presto changeo..here are my friends in Peru, Argentina, Colombia! With all of their passion and problems and interests, just as I left them before. With You-tube I can even see them dancing or hiking or doing inane things around the house if they want me to.

In our electronic world, we don't go anywhere anymore, we just transform ourselves into bits and bytes, into emails or jpeg images or You-tube videos and do our work or hang out with our friends that way.
In Bolivia once, I traveled by bus with a 19 year old and reminisced a bit about what it was like travelling for me at her age. "Yeah," she said, her eyes wide like I had been to the North Pole and back in a bathing suit, "You traveled before there was email!"

Closing the Circle

Ironically, now that I am back "home" in the San Francisco Bay Area, I will probably blog more. I realize my entries during this last trip have been pretty thin. Probably because a great deal of my writing energy was caught up in doing journalism, and my energy was also caught up in simply moving from place to place. Homelessness as an art form.

Constantly writing in internet cafes didn't help my "reflective writing" much, either, though it was fine for writing articles. Usually I went to the internet cafes with the article already written in longhand, and then braved the noise (screaming little boys with video games, loudtalking tourists) and confusion and chaos of the place to enter what I had written. But this was probably better than the risk of carrying a laptop from place to place.

In many ways, the return from a long trip like this is often the most important time for me, it is a time of closing the circle, of seeing and digesting what the trip has actually given me, and perhaps also reviewing what, if anything, I have been able to bring to the place I have visited.

Some people talk a lot about the importance of staying in your own community, or with your own "people" (whoever the hell they are)and doing your work there. But for some of us, that is not at all our path. The concept of the traveler--the travelling healer, the messenger, the chaski--seems to be much more accepted in South America than in the North. And it is not just young people who do it. Here, with our mortage payments and our debt and our need to have "stuff", it is much more difficult.

Some people who choose to move around a lot do it in a more linear fashion, moving from one place to the next, and shedding like skins the lives they have set up in various places. But I have always been a more circular traveler, with the point of return being this multi-layered, multi-cultural place called the San Francisco Bay Area.

It is spring, and the weather is good. Here in the East Bay, the flowers are blooming. Welcome home, they seem to say.

Home Again

..and what exactly is that thing called "Home"?

I am in Los Angeles, the place of my birth, after a year and a half of South America. Every time I leave for a long period and return to the States it's like falling into a time warp. I return, read the magazines and newspapers and sometimes have no idea what they are talking about. What? A black man and a white woman as front runners in the presidential race? Schwarzzeneger on the cover of Time promoting environmentalism? (In his way of course, without any of those "girly" hybrid cars that might cause men's penises to fall off or something). New techie terms and tv shows I don't recognize...it's all like returning from a very long dream.

And yet, this time I am actually feeling positive about my return. Newsweek had a piece by a man who noticed how many people around him, particularly "conservatives" who had done an about face in their lives and politics. This is happening, he says, because people in the States are suddenly getting it that we are connected to the rest of the world.

Yes. I'm all for that.

And these huge supermarkets, with this abundance of food and variety. As well as the abundance and variety of different nations and ethnic groups represented on the streets...this is what the US of A has going for it, among other things. And this white guy Imus has been fired for trashtalking some black female basketball players, opening up a renewed dialogue about racism and sexism in our language and how much we let people, black and white, get away with it.

Yes. I'm all for that too.

Bolivian Education : A Long Way To Go

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I've been having long talks with Marta Orozco, a friend who lives down the street, and a longtime acivist in indigenous movements here. She was one of the people who resurrected the ceremony of the Aymaran New Year in Tiwanaku, along with about 30 others from South America, and 5 from Canada. Also one of the first to bring in the Wiphala flag as the symbol of indigenous movements here. She is very warm, friendly, and also has very strong opinions, especially about the negative role of the Catholic Church on indigenous people.

Today her 16 year old son Huascar joined us in our conversation, and we talked a little about education in Bolivia. He says no Quechua or Aymara,the two main Native languages here, are taught in the schools. The books are there, but there's no one to teach the languages. Marta tells me that last year when he insisted on wearing his Chullo, the traditional Andean wool cap, to school, his teachers all told him he couldn't do it. The textbooks give pretty much the European viewpoint of view of the Conquest, though some of his teachers will add their own opinions. Former education minister Felix Patzi was trying to change things, bring more teachers of Native languages into the school system, etc. but he's no longer minister and now Huascar feels that everything has been left "up in the air." Some felt Patzi was trying to go to fast and was unrealistic about what could actually be done.

Indians here were not allowed to learn to read and write until 1952. I've heard stories about hands being chopped off and all kinds of atrocious punishments given to those who tried to learn, as well as to their teachers.

Morales has his work cut out for him.

Splat

It's carnival time in Bolivia...which means the streets of La Paz are packed with tiny kids shooting white foam out of waterpistols bigger than they are, teenagers in red t shirts drenching each other with waterbuckets, masks, yells, laughter, and the rumba rumba rumba of the Bolivian marching bands that have by now become almost background noise to me.

I'm installed in the Sagarnaga Linares district of La Paz, where I can walk down the cobblestoned streets in the morning to a buffet breakfast at the Sarai Hotel and then in to one of the internet cafes to work or just meander through the Net.

But during carnival time you have to be careful, because one of those little kids or teenagers is likely to see you as a potential target:splat.

In the nearby Plaza San Francisco, some miners from Huanuni and their family members have been staging demonstrations, climbing up on the front of the cathedral, and roping themselves to crucifixion crosses. Apparantly Morales wants to take them away from the mines they have been working as cooperatistas and send them to a different region, where there isn´t as much money.

Back to Bolivia

Back to Bolivia, just a few weeks after street battles in Cochabamba killed two people. The division in the country is apparant: one the one side, the indigenous and working class, most of whom still support Morales, and on the other, the wealthy and middle classes, who accuse Morales of "racism" and indigenous extremism at their worst, or simply muddle along feeling like something is slipping from their hands. Which it probably is.

There is talk of civil war, mostly in the foreign press, but I don't see it. I do see Morales trying very hard to keep the country together, which surely ain't easy with these kind of divisions. He recently replaced seven ministers and the news headline said he was adopting a more "consensual" attitude, after being criticized for being too confrontative. But now he is being criticized for not moving the country forward fast enough.

I suppose it remains to be seen what will be the best for Bolivia in the long run--keeping the country together, or allowing it to break up into, if not distinct nations, more autonomous sections.

Despite the political tension, I am happy to be back in La Paz. I have always loved this city: the surreal rugged stony mountains rising up around the city, with snow-capped Illimani in the background, the streets alive with all kinds of people: tall skinny white people, darkskinned businessmen and women in suits, fashionably dressed Latinas, Aymaran women in their bowler hats, elegant shawls, and wide, beautifully pleated dresses, boys leaning out of careening busses, shouting out the names of destinations, marketplaces filled with vegetables, candies, pharmaceutical products,anything you need.

When I return to the States, it's always the noise and song of Latin America that I miss most..the vendors singing and shouting, the caw caw caw of tropical birds, the people huddled in front of newspaper stands, discussing the daily news.

And yes, I will be returning within the next several weeks, so I'm trying to get myself psyched up for it, back into the different, Northern rhythm.

The Color of Ash

Alejandro is one of my Q'ero teachers. He's fifty six, and radiates the peace, humility and warmth I have seen in other Qero elders. His sister, another one of my teachers, is Maria Apasa Machaca, said to be the only Altomisayoq (high level Andean healer)left in the Qero nation, and definitely the only female Altomisayoq in a long time. To become an Altomisoyoq, you usually have to be hit by lighting three times. Maria seems to have survived it well. She's in her eighties, strong and vigorous. Alejandro tells me his mother had him when she was sixty, and lived to be over a hundred. That's how good the air is in the high Andes.

Alejandro also tells me that in the Qero Nation you have to be at least thirty before you can begin studying to be a pampa misayoq (Qero healer) and not everyone can do it.

We speak in a combination of his limited Spanish and my very limited Quechua. "You have to have luck (suerte) to become a pampa misayoq. Another pampa misayoq will read the coca leaves for you and let you know if you can take that path."

Today I performed a despacho with him, really the first that I undertook on my own, with his supervision. As usual I was impressed with the beauty and elegance of the process, a kind of artful unfolding of petals, coca leaves, seeds, candies and other items, as well as a powerful energetic connection with the forces of nature.

Actually putting the elements into the despachos with my own hands gave me a greater feel for each distinctive energy I was working with the apu masculine energy being quite different from the female pacha mama.

Alejandro and I don't seem to need to say much to acknowledge the energy of this work. "Allinta," he'll say. "It's good."

After making the despachos, we burned them both in the patio, in a small coal burning pot that I use to heat the house. We sat for a long time with the fire, praying, then he left me alone to pray on my own. After the fire burned down the pot had a fine white ash in it.

"VERY good," Alejandro said. "I didn´t expect it to be this good. I expected some black."

I was pleased. If you pay attention, you learn after awhile that what has long been called "superstition" is actually reading the language of nature: in the flight of a hawk or condor, in the visit of a spider, in the color of ash.

More than anything else I feel a deep sense of happiness after ceremony with the Qeros. Having escaped to the high Andes during the Spanish conquest they are carriers of an energy that is amazingly powerful and uncontaminated, a wisdom and innocence combined. It's not a head wisdom, but a heart wisdom. Somewhere I read that the Qero teachings contain an opening of different energy "eyes" that we have in our energetic field. Though none of my teachers have mentioned this, it is something that you simply begin to feel after awhile. Unlike Western teachings there seems to be little need to discuss analyze or evaluate the teachings one receives or experiences energetically.

I'm okay with that.

Hat Story

It's the low season now in Cusco, very quiet, very few tourists, days of rain and tranquility.
My favorite time to be here, though the locals hate it because their income takes a steep dive.

A few months back, during the high season, I made a face and mentioned to a street vendor friend in San Blas that there were far too many tourists in Cusco. Of course, I want to be the only one.

My friend, a Q'ero who sells chunllos, or Andean woven caps, shook his head sadly at my ignorance. He took one of his woven caps and pointed out its elaborate multi-colored texture. "See this hat," he said. "This hat needs all of its colors to be what it is, and all of the colors need each other. "

Well, shut my mouth, I thought.

Besides, without the entire hat, full of its colors and complexity, your head would get pretty damned cold.

The Cusco Paradox

Cusco is a paradox.

On the one hand, the energy here is powerful and cleansing--high up in the Andes, you feel the mountain spirits as they are, grandfathers and grandmothers. And the town itself is magical: light hitting the huge cut stones of the Incan ruins, steep cobblestoned streets, the Plaza de Armas alive with festivals of people in traditional clothes, the Incan traditons still alive in the thoughts, hearts and conversations of the people. All of this is seductive and captivating.

On the other hand, Cusco is so thick with bullshit you could cut it with a knife. A lot of this is due to the mystical reputation of the place, which attracts spiritual seekers from all over the world, and has made a commercial business of ¨shamanism¨and mysticism. I'm putting ¨shamanism¨in quotes because this word is not indigenous to any of the peoples I've met here. Though now that there's money to be made from it, it seems everyone's a shaman. And I can´t blame the Peruvians for hustling the tourists--the economic imbalance has created a kind of apartheid situaation within the town of Cusco, with the old town of San Blas converted to a high-priced tourist playground, and everyone else scrambling for the dollar or Euro.

Yes, there are genuine healers here, some of them local and some of them imports. Ironically, though a lot of Europeans and North Americans come here and spend big bucks to work with indigenous "shamans", some of the Peruvians I´ve met prefer to work with the imports, Europeans and North Americans who have taken up residence here. Not being rooted in the local traditions, they are less likely to engage in the "shaman wars" which local people sometimes get bogged down in. And, as they say, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, whether it is a physical fence or a cultural one. It seems a human response to want to enrich your own perspective with the gifts of others, despite all the advice I've always heard about sticking to the spiritual traditions of your own community.

Peru in some ways strikes me as the archetypal wounded healer. Here is Cusco, attracting thousands of people a year who want to work with healers, paqos, curanderos, and plant and medicine "shamans", often returning to their countries with powerfully moving healing experiences from ayahusca and other medicines, yet the country of Peru, and particularly the Cusco region, stumbles along unrecuperated from the ancestral wounds of its 500 year old conquest. I suppose that is the paradox of the wounded healer, who doesn't always receive the gifts that he or she gives to others.

I have been enchanted and seduced by the magic of the Cusco region, both the landscape and the people. I have tried maintain a detached amusement about the bullshit, which includes "shamans" who put together wowie zowie mystical tourism packages, mixing all kinds of spiritual traditons in a single night or weekend, and my favorite..the "kissing shaman"...a young man who wanders the streets in Andean garb offering to do "rituals" for gringas he encounters, which always seem to end up with his lips on some part of her body.

The bullshit you can always walk away from. The real magic will be there when you need it.

The Power of Place, People, and Tongue

This journey seems to be very much about recognizing and appreciating the power of place. Yes, there are "papitos" or spirits who live in mountains and other regions and they have an effect on us.

I came back to Cusco from the Pongo and Quillabamba feeling changed once again. I'm not quite sure what the spirits of the Pongo whispered to me when we crossed through it, but they certainly said something.

Or maybe I am just getting old and finally developing the tranquility and peace that comes with age. I seem to want to be a different kind of warrior now, not one that causes more war and conflict in the world, but fights for its transcendance.

One woman in the journey said she didn't want to talk to me about the Camisea gas project because so many journalists had come to her village asking questions and she was tired of it.

Though I have always respected this position in theory I have to admit I was annoyed that she was applying it directly to me, who am after all such a fantastically good person.

So this little pinprick of annoyance stayed with me throughout the trip, especially when I found myself sitting near this woman. A little current of invisible hostility began to grow between us, and I fell right into it.

At the same time, I recognized that I had to thank this woman for being who she was and giving me a chance to look at how quickly my own invisible hostility sprang up. It's easy enough to talk about peace and enlightenment when everyone is being nice to you.

So Añay, hermana. Thank you.

Here's what I learned to say in Machiguenga on this trip: Anomi. Tiarapipaita. Bekimba Egge.

Which means, "Hi, what's your name. Cheers."

For some reason I found Machiguenga easier to roll off the tongue than Quechua. Quechua is a language of rocks and mountains. Machiguenga is a language of the river.

But I guess we need them both.

Crossing the Pongo de Mainique

The Pongo de Mainique is a dramatically beautiful spot on the Urubamba river, with tall waterfalls, a rapid current, and spirits in the mountainous rocks by the side of the river who are said to give information to healers who pass through here.

The Machiguenga believe this is the place you go when you die. If you have lived a good life, your spirit goes on to the good waters. If you are bad, you go, essentially, to the waters of hell. Everybody gets a chance to come back again, as an animal, and then as a human.

I crossed the pongo with a group of Machiguenga and other people who were travelling to attend a meeting in Sivankoreni. We all bowed our heads and prayed to the spirits so that our asses wouldn't crash on the rocks.

I guess they heard us, because we arrived safely in Sivankoreni, about six hours away from Ivachote.

There was a lot of talking and the usual local political tug of wars at the meeting. I met some great people, and plan to visit the Lower Urubamba again.

The community has a giant tv screen and pretty modern community center. So there we were in the middle of the jungle, a whole bunch of us, watching big screen wrestling.

Outside, the women cooked in an iron pot over an open fire and washed their hands in the rain.

If You Don't Like It, Burn It

Turns out that some of the voters in several precincts of the regional elections in Peru were unhappy with the results. So they took the votes they didn't like, ripped them up, or burned them in huge bonfires in the city center, like in Paucartambo.

Some news commentators suggested this was another tactic of intimidation..that the losers hired the people in the crowds to make a fuss, and therefore nullify the results.

In the largely Aymaran district of Puno, Humala's far more militant brother Antauro won. I've read Antauro's newspaper and interviewed his etnocacerista followers. Most of them are really into their Indian roots. But one guy told me they also admired Hitler. "He did for the German race what we are trying to do for the descendants of the Incans here." Everyone in the office, a small group of about ten, nodded their heads. And the Jews? I asked. "Oh well, Hitler had to do what he did because the Jews were controlling the economy."

I see, I said, trying my keep my impartial journalist face from slipping.

Actually, there are parallels between the Incan descendants and the Germans post World War I. The lost empire, a sense of humiliation. Etcetera, etcetera. A dangerous combination, as the etnocaceristas have shown.

How quickly we stupid humans forget our own errors.

Great Moments in Journalism

Still in Quillabamba. I expected to spend just a few days here, since I'd been told in Cusco that it was rainy season here and impossible to travel by boat to the interior.

But what do they know in Cusco? Apparantly not enough, because everyone here tells me the river, and the famous Pongo de Manique waterfall, is still passable. So I'll be going there tomorrow, and visiting some Machiguenga communities.

So what have I been doing, in this high jungle town of heat and flowers?

Lots of nothing. Some interviews. Ex presidential candidate Ollanta Humala came to town and people swarmed around him with beaming faces, mostly campesinos. He was much more likeable in person than in his newspaper photos. I guess that says something about how he was portrayed in the media. So I took a few pictures on my own, and he made a point of reaching over and giving me some large pats on the back and a big smile. I'm not sure if he was doing this because I seemed to be the only media person welcoming him, or because I am the only gringa in town.

Being the only gringa in town is actually somewhat refreshing, after the Cusco deluge of tourists and the constant flow of vendors and other folks trying to wheedle nonexistent money out of me. This town is large enough so that people pretty much leave me alone, don't necessarily want to know what I'm doing here, though the little kids and even some of the adolescents stare at me like I was an extraterrestrial.

Until Sunday, the town was blooming with political banners, chants and speeches by loudspeaker, truckloads of youngmen yelling political slogans as they drove through town. Now the regional and municipal elections have ended..it seems more than anything that Peruvians voted for change. Hardly any incumbents were re-elected.

I've had to wait for various things to happen here in Quillabamba in order to continue with the articles I'm writing, and most of them didn't happen. People I was supposed to talk to never showed up, etcetera etcetera. Working freelance in South America, at least the kind of stories I do, is very different than working in an office in the States, where you can get so much information by just picking up the phone. Here, even local phone calls are relatively expensive, and in some places, there are no phones. So you go there.

But some of the best stuff that has happened to me--and the most amusing--has been stuff that never got into any of the articles. Like the time, just a few weeks ago, when I was introduced to a leader of an indigenous organization in Puerto Maldonado who I was going to interview and as I went to shake his hand my pen went flying out of my hand right into his eye. Ouch.

If I had been able to say something in English, I could have attempted something cute like "Heh, Heh, let's have a stab at this interview now, shall we?"

But in Spanish all I was able to muster was a dumb apologetic laugh and "Wow, great first impression, huh?"

At any rate, of all the people I spoke to in that particular organization, he is the one who is still sends me emails and wants to know how I'm doing. I guess he was impressed with my aim.

From Quillabamba

I seem to be living too hard and fast these days to do as much blogging as I thought I'd be doing. Since my last entry, I attended the continental indigenous conference in Bolivia, then came back to Cusco, where I got together with friends to try one more time to say goodbye to Cusco. The big joke everyone has is "Are you really leaving this time?" And I say, "Yes." And then something comes up to keep me in the Cusco area.

This time it's my desire to visit the region where the Camisea gas project is. Lots has already been written on this project, which has been filled with disaster from the very beginning...badly constructed pipes, ruptures, negative effects on environment. What hasn't been written about much are the social effects on indigenous people here of the project, or the "hush money" that seems to get liberally spread around to local politicians, journalists. and other leaders..and of course is difficult to prove. So I'll say it here in this blog, in the event that I can't say it in a forthcoming article.

The other thing I will say is that I don't understand why the majority of internet cafes in Latin America are also trying to be discoteques, with, like the one I'm in now, blaring hip hop or reggaeton music. Another reason why I don't blog much...I think I'm too old or too Northern to think straight with so much noise.

Later.

From Pilcopata: Hello Kitty

Jaguars and tigers here in the jungle are like bears in Alaska. Everybody has a story.

Walking back to town from my campsite, I met a woman who had hiked five hours from her community, Guadeloupe. She said there was a tiger, black and red and white, that was killing cows in her community.

One day she saw it, facing her about six feet away on the road.

"Hello Mr. Kitty," she said. " Pretty Mr.Kitty."

The tiger stared back.

They faced each other for about a half an hour, she said. It may have only been five minutes, but I'm sure to her it seemed like a half an hour.

Eventually Mr. Kitty turned around and sauntered down the road in front of the woman for about another half an hour, she walking a respectful distance behind him. Finally he ran off.

Bravery is like that. Ordinary. Staring into the unknown moment and speaking to it in a voice that may hold fear, but also tenderness and strength.

And maybe just a little bit of bullshit.

I understood the woman's encounter with the tiger because I had had a similar one with a rattlesnake that had risen to meet me on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, California.

I admired the woman and her bravery. I will probably never meet her on the road again, but her tiger story will always walk with me.

Sleeping With The Jaguar

Near the town of Pilcopata, Peru, I slept for four nights alone in a tent in the jungle.

By day, I watched bugs drill holes in the ground to catch other bugs, chased butterflies with my camera, swam in the river. At night, I fell asleep listening to the symphony of frogs, crickets, and the occasional caw-caw-caw of a bird calling in the dark.

Down by the river, I found some tracks that were distinctively feline in appearance, and bigger than a cat´s. Still, they didn't look all THAT big, so I didn't think too much about it. They simply looked like they belonged there, just as I for the moment belonged in the tent above the river.

After I returned to the village of Pilcopata, people told me about the jaguar that had been roaming the area I had been sleeping in. It had killed seven goats, and surprised a fisherman at night by the river.

I don´t know if the tracks I saw belonged to the jaguar, or one of its cousins. But I was glad that the people in the village told me this story after my four days and nights alone in the jungle. The human word is powerful, perhaps more powerful than jaguar tracks. If I had listened to the story beforehand, I might have lay awake at night and let fear interfere with the noises in the night. Instead, we simply left each other alone, I in my place and he in his.

To Salvation and Back

Out of Cusco, into the jungle with bugs the size of your hand flapping and sizzling against flimsy screen doors, orange and blue butterflies flocked in small crowds on the banks of the river, waterfalls, lush and bountiful plant life, sun rising in the morning through the trees as I bathe in the river, a beautiful 12 year old Machigenga girl named Juana with her nose pierced with the traditional red bead and her stiff grey schoolgirl uniform, standing shyly outside my tent, wanting to talk in the way that you talk when you are both in the jungle, silently, watching the miracle of it all, bugs, trees, water, earth, light, listening.

Yes one of the jungle towns is actually called Salvacion, and nobody seems to know why. Some say it¡s because a group of people were almost lost in the river and then miraculously saved, some say it's because of a local plant colloquially called Salvacion. At any rate, it's a pretty little town, quiet and calm.

Nearby is the Aramkbut community of Shintuya, where I spoke to some of the community leaders and watched a group of energetic boys and girls play a tough game of barefoot soccer on a grassy field. People in this area are nervous about petroleum development, which is planned for the area of the Native reserve and some of the surrounding region. The company proposing this development--Hunt Oil--does not have a great reputation in Peru, being one of the companies involved in the disastrous Camisea project further north. And the older folks complain that none of the younger people want to learn the Native languages. A grandfather and grandmother talked of a time fifty years ago, when whole families were wiped out by smallpox brought by contact with the outside world.

It used to be, the old man said, that fish were bountiful here, but not any more. Logging and mining have taken care of that. He's a skinny bright eyed man with a wealth of memories and a nagging pain in his chest.

For lunch, I ate macaroni soup with his family, then fell asleep in the humid heat of the afternoon. In the morning, there were no eggs in town, so I ate bananas, rice and papaya at the home of another neighbor, Victoria. She proudly told me of the time just a few months back when the entire community of Shintuya tore town a sign that the government had put on their land saying "Manu National Park." "We are not a national park, we are a community," she said.

The government wanted to put the entire community, all 250 people, in jail for their "vandalism", but the community won, and now the sign is gone.

Israel, Lebanon and the Jews

It's hard not to be shaken by what is happening in Israel and Lebanon, no matter where you are.

What has impressed me is the widening rift between both sides. Even most of the Israeli left is supporting the war in Lebanon, while the entire world reacts in horror to photos and stories of civilian carnage in Lebanon. Meanwhile, Hizbollah is being seen as a heroic force by an increasing number of people in the Arab world.

This widening rift was captured for me by two articles. One from a self proclaimed "cappucino drinking Yuppie" in Lebanon who now considers himself a terrorist because of Israel's bombing, and one about a woman who opposed Israel's first Lebanon war but supports this one, because basically, the world, historically, doesn't give a damn about Jews and therefore Israel's only recourse is to aggressively defend itself. Both sides feel that they have no choice but to pursue war.

I support Israel's right to defend itself, but think its choice of military strategy in this war has been both morally and strategically wrong. What's the point of "destroying" Hizbollah if you create a thousand other Hizbollahs in Arab states throughout the mideast?

With this current strategy, and the civilian deaths it is causing, Israel is only providing more ammunition for world outrage. And the world has been quick to blame Israel, and Jews--for all the world's ills.

Here in the Andes, I have found anti-semitism to be thick, and nearly impossible to argue with.
We're not talking anti-zionism, or disagreement with Israeli policies. We're talking old fashioned statements about Jews controlling the world and its finances and Jews being too secretive and refusing to help dying Christians on the Sabbath. .One guy even told me he didn't blame the US for any of its policies because it was really the Jews who were controlling things. He even swore up and down that the problem with George Bush was that he was really Jewish.

Some of these statements have come from locals, others from European tourists.

This is the part I have a problem with when it comes to criticism of Israel or of Israelis. Despite the egregious acts committed in various countries by my own government, most people are quick to separate the American government from the American people. Yet people will actually try to convince me I'm wrong when I point out that Jews in both Israel and the United States have widely different opinions about Palestine. People here seem to feel that they know more about Jews than I do, even though I am a bonafide Jew being Jewish on my mother's side and many of them have only seen Jews in the cartoons waved at street demonstrations or published in newspapers. Because to many I don't "look Jewish" (whatever that means) I have the dubious privilege of listening to all sorts of anti-semitic comments.

Okay so I'm ranting again. I'm ranting because in truth, the entire situation in the middle east fills me with horror and despair, and at times I wish it were simpler and I wish I could jump on the finger pointing bandwagon like so many people on the left who seem to feel that all the world's ills would disappear if Israel would just politely pack up its bags and cease existing, or the people on the right who are convinced its all an Islamofacist plot.

The threads of the current situation in Lebanon are far deeper and more tangled than many of us want to own up to. There are historical reasons for Israeli paranoia and aggression that many Europeans seem to conveniently forget when they start waving their Star of David equals Swastika flags, or make blithe comments like one leftist American friend who said "all the Israelis should just be shipped to New York". (Kind of like the Iranian presidents remark that Israel should be moved to Europe.) And Israelis and Arabs both, blinded by their own historical and ancestral wounds, can only lash out against the other side, in the mistaken belief that by destroying the other, they will have destroyed their enemy.