Oakland Protest, Night Four: What now?

I had my perception of the Oakland protests.

Night One: people upset over the state of race relations in our country, and police impunity in reflecting it, demonstrated in the streets with signs, chants, compassion and anger. It was the purest form of democracy left in our plutocracy.

By the end of the night, things got out of hand, understandable with that much emotion and the way crowds work. The police showed admirable restraint at first, and I thanked them for it. People were wrong to throw bottles, and the police didn’t need to respond with tear gas, rubber bullets, and flash grenades against a civilian demonstration. I was disappointed to see the night end that way.

Night Two: perhaps a result of the prior mayhem, the crowd was smaller, and more militant, the message diluted in petty vandalism and burning garbage, faces hidden behind masks to enable counterproductive hooliganism. I’d seen enough, left the contested street and was waiting until I could reach my bike when one cop, maybe looking to make an example, maybe filling a quota, or scariest of all: having lost control and lashing out, had me arrested. I spent the next few hours with my hands zip-tied behind my back, seeing a side of the law that I thought was reserved for those who deserved it.

Night Three? I stayed home, angry at those I felt were damaging our desire for change. I felt I had my understanding.

But last Thursday the rhythms of a protest drifted in my window. I’ll go look, real quick, real careful, to see how things are going. I found a march, resolute and disciplined in the statement of their message, no mayhem, no excuse for police action, demonstrators I’m proud to have as countrymen. It felt good to see.

Then I looked left to a line of face-shielded police blocking a street, ready to arrest us...if we blocked a street? A cold feeling took root in my core, with cracks of anger and flecks of fear. Instead of cops doing their best, they seemed like ominous soldiers of suppression.

And every nauseous cell of my skin felt my white privilege. I had been inconvenienced for a few hours, my shoulders stiff and achy from being pinned behind me, and have to show up in court, once, for what I feel are unjust reasons. So many deal with so much worse, yet there I was, disturbed by the sight of the police.

What is it like for those who live under constant threat of police abuse? How the hell do we expect people to remain calm who have watched their brothers beaten, their fathers humiliated, their whole demographic thrown in prison (while the real criminals go marching on)?

A friend told me of his police ride-alongs where procedure is to stop (black) men on the sidewalk, handcuff them and sit them on the curb, THEN start to talk to them, ask what’s going on today. That has never happened to me, not in my white skin, in my relatively affluent neighborhood, where, despite being racially mixed, every driver I’ve seen pulled over since moving here was black or latino. Every single one. A few hours being treated like a dangerous criminal when I hadn’t done anything wrong and I was sickened; what’s it like when that’s your everyday reality?

So what do we do about it? Politicians are clearly not going to lead, and the police aren’t going to break the cycle of aggression by themselves. And the courts? In 2010, out of 162,000 grand juries, 11 did not result in indictments. 11 out of 162,000. Yet now we have two out of two deciding there’s no need to even have a trial. I see that as the courts declaring that it is not a crime for a cop to kill a black man. This cannot go on.

So again, what do we do about it? Smash Starbucks? Shake our heads and go back to watching Jersey Shore? Or maybe we, those of us with hearts and souls and self control, should spend some time in the street. Do you think it’s a crime to kill a black person? Do you want some punk smashing a window to speak for you?

So how do we affect change? Protest responsibly? Burn shit? Run for office? Do nothing? Vote on the vagabondurges.com version, here.

Why I travel.

Take me back.

Take me back to rotting garbage on dirty streets, where water is a luxury and stink a certainty. I want to feel unwashed and threadbare sheets on hard beds, and pay more than I think I should for it. I want suspicious food, where I savor every bite, knowing it might be the one that ruins the next day. I want to take nothing for granted, be vulnerable and love everyone who shows me kindness.

I want to be concerned about bed bugs, so I remember their absence. I want to be aware of the malarial menace of mosquitoes, so that I notice when my ankles are unblemished.

I want to be foreign to the irritation I felt on the BART train yesterday, “delayed” a couple irrelevant seconds by the guy who was too busy talking on his phone to put his ticket in correctly. I want to feel only incomprehension for the ambient discontent of the spoiled and comfortable, knowing that they are me. I want to stay shocked that people complain and grimace while they wait a few minutes for delicious, safe, nutritious food, prepared by people they won't even bother to thank, unmindful of the insane miracle that brings it to us, every single god-blessamned day.

That work, those wages...
a foreign experience

I want to look at those wrinkles everyone here has between their eyes, the scowl of the perpetually concerned, the mouths of unspecified tension, and feel a wash of gratitude that cleans my face and lifts my lips. I want to be aware of the masses that have so little, every country on Earth. I want to remember how scarce and precious food was for all of human history except the past tiny sliver, invisible on the timeline, and how horrifically we will return to that state...probably sooner than we realize, so that I can stand in awe in a grocery store again, unrushed, uncritical, reverent.

I want to move slowly.

I want to disconnect.

I want to be away from screens. I want to read a book.

I want to talk to strangers.

Here I have friends, but move among the distrusted, suspicious without reason, fearful until proven innocent. There is little danger here. Screw the newspapers, the evening news is a betrayal.

There I will know no one, but might move among possibility, alert and careful, but accessible and listening. The danger is much higher there. The intimacy with human brutality and human kindness, experiential and firsthand, the latter outnumbering the former, despite brutality's instant potency.

Here I can go in comfort. I can pass my day easily, accomplishing tasks in virtual reality, e-living in binary code that I can never touch, my life erased by a magnet.

There every hour will be uncertain, the world so foreign, so unknowable, that it might touch me at any minute. It will be under my fingernails and between my toes. Present on my skin and stained into my clothes. It's possible I will bleed. It's possible I will help, just a little. It's possible I will reach new magnitudes of suffering, or experience joy so visceral you'd have to pay a fortune to chase it.

Take me back. I want to travel.

Why is my head so constipated?

The question, comment, or discussion will sound good in my head before I start, all the Spanish/Dutch/Italian verbs lined up obediently, but once I try to bring it into the real world? Nada, nix, niente.

You nailed that song when you sang it in the car, but now that it's Wednesday night at Hulu Island Grill and Tiki Room and there's a karaoke mic in your hand...not so much.

Like this temple, that was an interesting walk.
Why can't I just talk about that?

Why is it that the process of formalizing, realizing, enacting something, even in a basic, beginner form, can so kill it?

I love stories, whether to my ears, from my mouth, or out of my fingertips in this blog, so why do they suddenly seem so alien to me now that I've attended an actual writing conference?

The staff at the Book Passage Travel Writers and Photographers Conference was so accessible, so amiable...and yet the equation still came though.

1. Americans don't read.
2. Americans don't travel.
   Ergo:
3. Americans sure as hell don't read about travel.

But F that, I want to do it anyway. So why does it feel like my word-brain has been anaesthetized and sent home for summer vacation?

There have just been so many distractions and other things that needed doing over the past two weeks! Excuse.

That dog guided me around the out-of-the-way temple in
Bagan. Too bad he's not here to guide me around my head.

The idyllic peace of a Portland summer afternoon is thick comfort and succulent ease! Excuse.

I'm intimidated by the quality of writing of others and fear that I have nothing worthwhile to say. Truth.

So? Start here. Uncork the brain and let the constipated sentences grind their way out.

Some of you might be shifting uncomfortable in your seats at that one. That makes me feel better already.

So here I am on the back porch, a cup of mediocre iced tea close at hand and far too many tortilla chips already eaten, going to start because what the hell, why not?

Is that a good start or a bad one? Jungle birthday Part 2.

I'll just come out and say it: I was wearing flip flops. Old ones. This may surprise you, given that I was hiking six hours each way to spend the night in the muddy equatorial rainforest of Taman Negara in Malaysia, but I had two reasons.

Warning sign as you leave the boardwalks of the
easy tourist area for the real jungle.

First, previous experience with leeches showed that flip flops allow the best access for removal of the little bloodsucking bastards.

Second, they were pretty much my only option after I retired my (somewhat notorious) oversized sandals after they became Grade A Disease Vectors in Myanmar (don't ask).

They worked well for the first 4 hours on Day One, then their age became apparent, as the anchoring thong in the front popped out with increasing frequency. I bought the things two years ago in Nepal, and they had served me well, but in hindsight, for perhaps too long.

I didn't mind sticking the little plastic plug back in, it was the fact that doing so meant stopping, which gave a much longer opportunity to the vampirous tube-beasts who were swarming around, doing their little head-waving leech aerobics as they smelled the approach of something tasty.

Have you ever seen them do this? It would be cute if it wasn't so sinister. They look like tiny hyperactive Ray Charles impersonators...who feed on your blood.

There was time to stop and admire the scenery on Day One

Since leeches don't spread any diseases or do any real harm, my plan had been to just let them do their thing and drop off when they were done. How very Buddhist of me.

Yeah, no. That plan lasted until I saw the first one squirming out from my ankle, where it had attached and bitten through the skin. But the leeches weren't the worst thing.

This was the world's oldest rainforest, where intense competition has driven evolution for 130 million years (the area is just slightly above the equator, so even the ice ages didn't disrupt things). What do you think rules this forest?

Elephants, monkeys, or tigers? Only on the postcards. All of these are reportedly found in the park, but to my eye it was clear who dominates this dense world where a single hectare holds 14,000 plant species, 200 mammals, and 240 types of trees.

One of the construction workers
alongside the normal workers

Ants rule this place. Mean ones.

I stopped to take a picture of the first river of tiny black bodies, but by the tenth I was just stepping over the glossy stream. It was when I got careless that I learned more about them. To my disappointment I have been unable to find exactly what the little buggers were (hell, maybe they were termites!) so I'm going to make some shit up that makes sense to me.

There were tiny workers in superhighways half a dozen lanes wide and stretching for unbelievably long distances, which I learned when they commandeered a guide rope left to help me climb a steep slope.

Don't grab that rope.

Don't grab that rope

Then there were the construction workers, unbelievably larger than the workers. At first I thought these were soldiers, and feared them mightily, but now I suspect their job is to clear fallen leaves and sticks that obstruct the path. They seemed to pace the edge of the stream, and they're not the soldiers because those, I definitely met.

The soldiers. Assholes! I took off my sandal the first night to find four or five ants stuck to its edges, legs waving furiously. Curious. They were much larger than the workers, but not nearly as big as the construction workers. It took me a minute to figure it out.

They'd bitten my sandal, and they weren't letting go. I flicked at them. Brushed at them. Still there. I flicked harder and the bodies fell away...but the head stayed put, anchored into my thin sole with insectile tenacity.

So when my sandals would come off anywhere near an ant stream? (And everywhere is near an ant stream.) It hurt. They're good at getting you right in the tender spot on the bottom of the arch too. You have to lift your foot and rip them off, sometimes coming back for the head.

I wasn't enjoying this process much as I started walking through the mud. Then I reached a nice clearing by the river. It was pretty...and I definitely hadn't passed it on the way out.

Crap.

I backtracked, took another path and came to a wide shallow river...that I also did not cross the first day.

My sandals had given up completely and the thong was coming out every couple steps in the sucking mud, so I had to just take them off and go barefoot. In the jungle. Where billions of members of two particular species were very ready to go right through my skin, and I didn't know what else.

Someone left these bloody footprints in the hide
after their own meeting with the leeches

I backtracked. Bled. Sweated, stepped, and slipped. And bled some more.

Getting lost in the jungle sucks. Especially during the daily Leech Feeding, which is 24 hours long.

The girls and the German were long gone, so I was very much on my own, and sound just doesn't travel in vegetation that thick anyway.

I tried another path and ended up at the stream again, mirrored by tiny red seeps from my feet. I considered walking out via the water, trusting it would lead to the main river, but if that didn't work then I'd have a hell of a time finding where to start looking for trails again.

I turned back again and started jogging to give the biters as little chance as possible. Left hand on my shoulder bag, bulky with camera, journal, long pants and raincape thing, my right held the quickly-decaying plastic bag that held the remnants of my food, and my elbow pressed the water bottle pressed against my side.

When I slipped down a slope it gave the leeches a chance to climb all over me, but I think I escaped unscathed. I kept running. I was pouring sweat, feeling incredibly stupid, and lost in the jungle on my birthday.

Is that a good omen or a bad one? Whatever it is, I decided “Screw this, I'm taking the boat.”

I finally found the right path, jogged down it, and half an hour later reached the river at Kuala Trenggan, but instead of a village I found abandoned houses with broken windows. Not stopping to think about what would happen if it was totally deserted and I had to start the six hour trek back, I headed to the water...

Where I found the girls. They were surprised to see me. Literally within a minute or two the boat showed up. If I hadn't jogged, had gotten lost once more or fallen a few more times, I would have missed it and there was no way to call for another. But I made it.

THAT, I'll take as a positive omen for the year ahead.

I am deporting myself. (And fair warning, a lot of sex talk.)

Note: This is not my favorite of my posts, nor typical, so if anyone finds it via Lisa's reblogging of my other post, skip this one and read any of the others for a better representation.

I remember thinking that eating in a restaurant or seeing a movie alone were the loneliest, saddest things on Earth.

Nothing to do with the blog, just lots of Santa Cruz pics.

I got over the first one many years (and many passport stamps) ago, but I had never actually seen a movie alone until this week. I wanted to see The Hobbit before he put on his ring and vanished…from theaters. So I biked into town for the Tuesday matinee.

I can happily report that I didn’t feel lonely, awkward, or out of place for being there alone. But I did feel lonely and out of place…in America.

The preview to the previews  was commercials, but fine, show me ads. But they showed this one. I don’t like linking to an advertisement, but in case you’d like to see what I’m talking about.

Ugh. More digitally animated baby humans and animals. Yawn through the pastiche.

But worse than dull, I find this ad irresponsible. It’s an implicit endorsement of a culture whose parents are too immature to talk to their kids about sex.

“Where do babies come from?” Asks the kid. The parents evade. Chuckle chuckle. Then the kid goes home and learns about sex from the internet. We have an entire generation (or two…or three?) who have learned about sex from pornography. That is a crime against ourselves.

Why talk to kids about sex even if it’s uncomfortable? Because otherwise they’ll get their sexual miseducation elsewhere. I presumably got mine from a 70’s era informative book of the “When a man and a woman love each other very much, they share a special kind of hug” variety, with drawing of the fuzzy pencil type that I associate with advent calendars. Illustration more appropriate to missionary handouts than the missionary position.

But I really got my info on the playground, which was cute in a clueless adorable way, but man oh man am I glad there was no internet back then.

Of course, neither kids not parents enjoy that process (though judging from my experience in college, Jews do a much better job of it) so my advice to parents: delegate the job to an uncle/aunt/godfather/godmother.

My family’s rather progressive-for-the-era plan was for our godmother to buy us a Playboy when we turned 14. Or as it 13? I don’t know, because years before that my folks caught us with a Hustler. We didn’t know why we wanted it, but we knew we weren’t supposed to have it, since sex was this big secretive thing that was the focus of 90% of pop culture, and that was good enough for us.

Part of America: urban gas guzzlers saying "B educ8d."

I am sooo tired of television, and our mass culture, performing for our weaknesses. And it’s not that I think I’ll find a country that does it any better, but it’s harder to tolerate when it’s your own. We fancy ourselves such cultural pioneers, but even after all these decades we’re even still fighting about gay marriage? Really?

Ok. Breathe. Thank you for letting me rant. I feel much better. Did you know you were a therapist? What do I owe you?

After my tirade played itself out in my head, I sat in the theater feeling out of place while everyone else cracked up. I deeply envy those who can just laugh at a cutsie commercial and not overthink it, I really do, but I can’t help it. Television, advertising, the media, all that stuff is way too powerful to waste on easy outs and inane fluff. And if I start thinking about the messages it sends women…my vision is already hazing towards red.

It’s enough to make me flee the country.

So I think I will.

Riding on top of the world

Hostel Izhcayluma, nice place to wake up.

 It turns out that the quarter-century old impressions of a six year old are not necessarily accurate.

Because that was the last time I rode a horse, and I remembered the feel of a large warm animal between my legs but it being a pretty easy, relaxed experience. So relaxed in fact that when asked in Vilcabamba what level of experience I had in riding horses, I answered "intermediate."

Seems so clearly foolish in hindsight, but I figured "hey, I rode camels down sand dunes in the Sahara, horses have to be easier than that, right?"

When we met our guide, Holger, that morning, he asked "are you loco (crazy), super loco, or ultra-loco? I brought two horses for you guys (K and I, we were joined by a German lass named J), one is water, one is rocket-gasolina."

When we saw the horses I was immediately drawn to one, which turned out to be my rocket-gasolina steed, named Lucero. I mounted and felt fine. Then we started trotting and I was highly embarrassed at the prospect of dying that way. Holger looked at me and said "don't hold the saddle horn, that's very dangerous. Both hands in the air like this...and it's good for the abs."

I thought back to everything I knew about riding horses...Maximus in Gladiator saying "I tell my son to keep his heels down when he's riding his horse." Okay Maximus, let's go!

We started up a rocky ravine, Lucero repeatedly falling behind then at my insistence trotting over the sharp stones, but by the time we reached the panoramic views I was feeling much more self-assured, which was good because the views were stunning.

Holger: "Later we'll try to find some lassos."
Me: "Nah, I've already got a girlfriend."
Holger: (looks thoughtful) "Do you want a backup?"
Me: (also looking thoughtful) "Nah, one already feels like too much sometimes."
Needless to say, this conversation was in Spanish, though K understands the language far too well now...





We tied the horses at Holger's family holding, high in the epic hills, and climbed to the top on foot, along meandering cow trails through clouds of bright ladybugs and butterflies.

Someone's clearing land for farming way off in the distance. Hard place to earn a living.

 Up here the horses decided to gallop. It was one of the best feelings I can remember (especially once I managed to put the camera securely away.)

It's an interesting and exhilarating sensation to gallop towards a cliff...trusting that it's all going to be okay.

I'm sure there's a metaphor in there somewhere.

Helluva place for a date, no?






 

This is one of my favorite pictures I've taken in awhile. Raining in the Andes, with rider... I want to go back!

A home for everyone.

Azogues is not in the guide book for Ecuador. A fifty-cent bus ride north of Cuenca, it's a pretty nice place, judging by my minimal exposure, but I don't think UNESCO is knocking on the door.

The ones who were knocking were K and I, on the door of an orphanage named "Un hogar para todos" which translates to "A home for everyone." Through the metal bars of the gate we could see a trampoline, a cracked plastic tricycle with purple pedals, and a few mismatched segments of doll bodies.

An orphanage is a rough place to be a doll.

Our knocks brought a stout woman, hair pulled back in a sensible bun, stains the size of children's streaking fingers all over the bottom foot of her red-striped shirt. She looked at us with polite caution, standing a few feet back from the gate.

"Good afternoon. Yes?"

"Good afternoon. We're...um...here to visit? We're the family of L----? We called yesterday? Is Nancy here?"

K's aunt and uncle adopted two children from this orphanage years ago, and was our connection to it. We were there to deliver some support, see the changes to the place over the last few years, and visit with good people.

Caution gave way to friendliness. As she showed us to our room, there didn't seem to be anyone else around. Just lots of doll crime scenes. She went back to the kitchen to continue making food, but for whom?

In one sunny room we found two severely developmentally disabled children laying on the mat, gazing up at the windows. They had soft smiles and seemed content, except one's face would occassionally contort and emit a blood-curdling scream before fading back into vague happiness.

K and I looked at each other, both with blank faces, rattled, both hoping the other would somehow make it all understandable.

In a small room next to the kitchen we found half a dozen small children, the 5 year olds helping to feed the younger. A row of 4 high chairs against the wall held four tiny boys who peered at K and I with the instinctive interest of the 1 year old, great big brown eyes.

We asked to help, and soon I was trying to spoon rice and small pieces of fish into Mateo, a cherub who preferred standing on the seat to sitting in it, and who was unenthusiastic about lunch. He preferred handing me an anonymous plastic piece of a broken toy, then asking for it back, at which point he'd wave it around before throwing it at me.

I managed to coax two bites in over the course of five minutes, and was feeling pretty good about myself when the blast came, lips blurbling and pieces of soggy rice and fish spraying all over the chair, floor, and me.

I am not a parent. This was a new experience for me.

I persevered, getting another bite in. Airplane noises and swooping spoons were useless, but I snuck a second one in when he yelled. Then, perhaps predictably, came the second blast. Sticky moist rice on my cheek. He was an unfamiliar contraption, and I wanted to beg "how do these things work?"

I did finally get one and a half mini-spoonfuls in before giving up, and letting one of the 5 year olds carry him off into the playground. I set the metal bowl of uneaten food on the table, not sure what to do next.

I didn't have long to wait before finding out...

How we barely avoided sleeping on the street in Ecuador.

All locked up.

We stepped off the musty bus onto the abused concrete sidewalk of the town of Canoa and immediately looked around for hotel signs in the dark. From where we stood, hoisting out backpacks on, we could see a half dozen hotels, with the promise of more on nearby streets. Cautious sighs of relief. We went looking for rooms.

"Perdon, hay habitaciones?"

A look of surprise from the manager. "No."

Next place, same. Again. Repeat. What the hell was going on?

We found a female innkeeper who was less abrupt about dismissing us and asked her if there was a festival or something. She looked at us with that "you poor tourists are so terribly stupid" look that every traveler dreads.

"Si. It's Festival Weekend throughout all of Ecuador. The entire country comes to the coast for this weekend, every place has been booked months in advance."

Crap. This is why we avoid festivals.

We couldn't help but wonder why our friendly abuela in Puerto Lopez (or either of her sons) had neglected to warn us as we sauntered out the door that morning, but at the end of the day, it's the tourist's responsibility to have a clue.

We kept looking. (What's the Spanish word for "manger"? Maybe we could find one of those...)

Things were getting desperate when a woman carrying her shopping bags home down the sandy street asked us if we were looking for a room.

"I have a...room. But it's not really...nice." She warned us. I had been sizing up clumps of bushes to sleep under (no, I'm not kidding) so we were happy to have the option.

Every year so many people flock to the coast for that weekend that locals rent out their extra rooms, or even entire houses. Our lady had rented her house to a group, and she was staying with her husband and 37 children in the other spare room, which looked like a converted storage space.

We had the laundry room.

There was a foam pad on a bedframe with a powerful odor, but there was also a mosquito net. (They hold the smell in, but are supremely worth it.) There was a "bathroom" we could use, which was really more of an outhouse, with a semi-broken toilet and no light.

But our hosts did all they could, and strung a bare bulb up in the outhouse via an extension cord from their room. This was very nice, but we had no control over the light, so when we got back from dinner and it was out, we were stumbling around in there blind, trying not to think about spiders, cockroaches, and things that go clickety-click.

Between the smell, lumpy surface, highway a couple meters from our heads, and relentlessly meowing kitten somewhere nearby, we didn't expect to sleep much, but we actually did pretty well, all things considered.

But we woke up with full-fledged colds from the overly AC'd bus, and did not want to spend another night there.

First things first, we went looking for breakfast. We found a place run by a retired Dutchman living the good life. He had opened an eco-cafe/hotel thing, and was happily bustling around serving breakfast with bare feet in his sand-floored yard just opposite the beach. It feels like a blessing to witness someone so utterly happy with their place in life.

(I wish I had a picture of him, but the cat at lunch was also part of the pep squad/welcome wagon.)

His happiness alone was a blessing, but when he heard we were looking for a room, he resolved to help us, and went marching off down the street with us, hailing each hotel owner by name and asking if they could fit his "friends" in.

These were people we had asked previously, and been universally rebuffed, but on only the second try they answered "no, we don't have any rooms. (pause) Except one, but it's not...nice."

Familiar refrain. This place's "not nice" looked better than the other one's (a functioning toilet!), so we grabbed it immediately. It turned out to be worse than the first one, with plenty of mosquitoes but no net or air circulation, but we felt lucky to have anything, and made it through to Sunday afternoon, when we suddenly had our pick of the town again.

We settled in a nice Spanish-owned place, where we stayed for our remaining four nights in Canoa, appreciating every moment in our palace of mosquito net, non-stank-ass matress, and fully functional bathroom. With light! This, my friends, was not "not-nice."

And to top it all off? They made the best tortilla espanola I've had outside of San Sebastian. All's well that ends well-seasoned.

Happy rebirthday, it's going to change your life.

When I turned 32 a couple weeks ago it wasn't a big deal, I was happy with a good navratan korma. But K's birthday yesterday...now that was a big deal. She turned....dumdumDUM...27!

Warning: my opinion to follow is a simplification/mis-statement of the "Saturn Return" in astrology, and/or the "sade sati" in Hindu Astrology, and/or probably other things, but you can please forgive me, and/or google those, and/or marvel at the transcultural unity of human experience. (I recommend all three.)

You're born. Your stars are perfectly aligned. As a child you just are yourself, and that's sublimely enough. You play with everyone, you eat what you want, cry when you want, and do what you want (within the bounds of parenting and circumstance of course). You just sort of wander around, learning every second (unless you're watching TV) and growing in every way.

13.5ish you hit puberty. My apologies. You pick a social archetype and cram yourself into it. Skater, Student, Artist, Stoner, Athlete, Hippy, Comedian, Beauty, Goth, whatever, choose your label and try to fit it, you poor tragic bastard. You play with those who chose compatible labels, eat what your archetype eats, and have whatever attitudes came in your prepackaged personality starter kit.

Personally, at 12-13 I started paying attention in school instead of entertaining my classmates, started running, and (hopefully) started treating people better. (I still owe a massive karmic debt to Blaine G, the kid I used to beat up in elementary school. I'm sorry Blaine!)

27ish (i.e. 13.5ish years later) you get This Thing. There's no arrival of acne, menses, facial hair, or any of that overt stuff, so it's harder to notice, but it's puberty 2.0, baby. Except with one major difference. Puberty sucks. This Thing is awesome.

If you're over 27, at that age did you start/end a relationship, get married, go back to school, have kids, start/quit a job? It's not everyone's path, and would be an oversimplification to assert otherwise, but there does seem to be a certain something...

For my part, I was a bit of a late bloomer, taking 27 to prepare, but quitting my job, dumping most of my possessions and heading to Europe on a one-way ticket early in 28 to discover this whole Traveling thing. Other cultures, places, and experiences. Homelessness by choice. The vulnerability and invincibility of the vagrant. (But that's another topic.)

Late 20's you STOP clinging to any vestiges of an archetype that no longer fit you. Peer Pressure doesn't influence your decisions very much (advertising and stupidity-on-a-societywide-scale are more topics for another day). You focus in and realize what you want to do, who you want to be. You can play with whoever you want, dammit, eat whatever you choose (significant difference from "want"), cry whenever you find it merited, etc.

Refreshing, isn't it? Let's go play football with the Nerds, smoke pot with the Students, and apply for graduate school with the Stoners.

But wait, there's more. Much better would be to divide each of those phases in the middle, and make it ~7 year cycles.

At 7ish I got a proper bicycle and began exploring the world around me with some degree of independence (this was the Good Old Days when we weren't as afraid of each other). At 20 I had fully left my childhood home and set up one of my own, entering into my first mature romantic relationship.

Increments of 7 do a better job of explaining the "27 Club" of musicians who die at that age; maybe they experienced that last phase so deeply and addictively that the tacit/subconscious feeling of its ending was unacceptable, or maybe unnecessary.

The Saturn Return of Astrology is about this, tying in to Saturn's orbit, though that takes 29.4 years (so yay! We're overachievers!) The Hindu sati sade on the other hand is structured around a circuit of 7.5 years. Darn those Indians, first yoga, now this? They think of all the answers. (Then forget them, but that too is another topic.)


To Sum Up.

Phase 1 (0-7ish): Childhood. You're a child, learning and just being one of those. Toys, cake, and swimming pools!
Phase 1.5 (7-14ish): Advanced Childhood. Your personality is emerging more strongly, in rough draft form, fits and starts.

Phase 2 (14-20ish): Adolescence: You diferentiate from everyone else...well, a large percentage of everyone else, anyway. Fun, horrible, exciting, terrifying, boring, exhilarating, and of course: confusing.
Phase 2.5 (2-27ish): Young adulthood. You have calmed down from the vicissitudes of puberty. Your perceptions, conversations, and relationships improve and clarify. Golden Years.

Phase 3 (27ish-?): Adulthood: You have figured out who you are and can make your own choices. The bullshit habits fall away. Your plumage is bright and beautiful. Congratulations, the music is for you. (Kinda makes me wonder what happens at 40ish. Gives more validity to the often-maligned Midlife Crisis, no? Maybe all those red convertibles aren't just about declining libidos and bald spots...)

So I propose a great Cosmic Toast to K, and to all the 27ish year olds (+/- 7.5 year increments). Happy rebirthday!

Groomed by Nacho and whipped by a shaman.

“How about we go to Papallacta, the town in the mountains near Quito rumored to have the best hot springs in the country, relax, email, and write about our jungle trip?”

Good plan, except this place is so bloomin’ beautiful I could rant and rave about it for a week, easy. (Plus the power tends to go out, delaying this post.) Laying back in any of the several pools (or the grotto!), weightless and wrapped in heat…divine. I enjoy wearing a bathing suit to church.

In the warm water you can just see the marks on K’s back from the whipping…

Day Three in the jungle began (after breakfast of course, what are we, savages?) on the river, spotting pink dolphins, toucans, and weary tourists. At one point we smelled the large dead caiman rumored to be in the area, but couldn’t find it.

We were headed to one of the local villages of the Siona people for something of a Meet and Eat, shamans and yucca bread, respectively, but roared up to find a deserted village. One of the local shamans, extremely respected and important people, had died a few days before, and everyone was at the burial taking place just upriver.

Well, not entirely deserted. Nacho came running up, although “running” isn’t quite the right word for the motion of basically four hands and a tail, somehow clumsy and graceful at the same time.

Someone killed, and ate, his parents (woolly monkey meat is supposed to be quite tasty), but Nacho became part of the village, wandering around with his goofy monkey knuckles, thumbs on his hind feet, and amazing prehensile tail with its thick leathery pad. He hung from laundry lines, danced in trees overhead, and happily engaged in grooming behavior with anyone, giving or receiving (when receiving he sprawls on his back, totally limp and blissful).

While we waited, Jairo brought out a blowgun (made from the core of a palm tree wrapped in black duct tape), still used to hunt bush meat, using poison from poison dart frogs (the “ruby“ one was my favorite) who excrete it from their backs when threatened. One session of annoying a tiny frog and rolling darts on its back produces enough poison to kill multiple animals.

We took turns shooting (unpoisoned) darts at a small spiky fruit, while Jairo painted on a couple of our faces with the red juice of its small pomegranate-like seeds.

Nacho’s incredibly dexterous tail and hangs seem to automatically reach up and grip things, and he ended up hanging from the blowgun several times, until our boat driver mentioned that he might break it.

Oh, by the way, our driver, a super friendly young man named Juan, spent the whole week driving us around, morning, noon, and night, spotting animals, and waiting hours while we tromped through the bush. And the whole time he was sick as a dog. Fever, chills, headache, body ache, nausea, the works. Not a word of complaint (I only found out via intercepted quick Spanish comments with Jairo, who didn’t seem to want us to know).

We heard a chirping sound like a hummingbird, and a tiny handful of animal came galloping up to me, then up me, climbing my pant-leg, shirt, and onto my shoulder with quick grips of its tiny claws. There was a pygmy marmoset riding on my shoulder.

They are the world’s smallest (true) monkeys, and feed on the sweet sap of certain trees, which they get flowing with little pygmy nibbles of their little pygmy teeth. They live in groups in a territory of a tree or two, which they eventually deplete and move on. His wee head darted around like a bird’s the whole time, though he seemed pretty darn relaxed exploring us.

We were pleased as peaches with the pygmy marmoset, but eventually it was yucca time, ostensibly “helping” the  impressively efficient woman who peeled the root with precise machete chops, shredded it on metal sheets with jagged holes in it (like the annoying back side of your cheese grater whose only purpose is ruining sponges),  squeezed all the juice out with a woven rope net, then cooked the yucca into a sort of tortilla, which we ate with tuna or pineapple jam. (Pygmy marmosets apparently also enjoy pineapple jam.)

Dribbling water for him to drink/wear

The bread tasted like the dusty stuff at the bottom of a bag of shredded wheat (unfrosted of course), packed into a dry pancake that resembled cardboard more than anything in your kitchen. It was good, but I can’t honestly say I would welcome a diet that features it so heavily (it is the primary food source for the villages in this area).

Saying goodbye to Nacho, which was difficult for everyone (including the monkey, who made a last-minute sprint to try and climb into our boat) we headed downstream to where a shaman had agreed to talk to us.

I was a little uneasy about meeting the shaman, fearing it would be one of those abhorrent cases of cultural exploitation verging on mockery. “Okay, native-type-person, put on something ‘tribal’ and do a little dance for us tourists so we can take your picture. And look noble.” Face paint in the market. Eagle feather headdresses in the roadside attraction. Culture turned into advertising for a product that is diminished with every performance.

Sally told us a story of her sister arriving with a tour in a village in Africa half an hour early, and all the startled inhabitants jumping up to run home and change out of their jeans and T-shirts into “tribal dress.” But Jairo reassured us that the shaman here would be wearing what he always wears, and it would basically be a Question & Answer between us, then he would demonstrate a basic ritual, using one of us as a volunteer.

We met shaman Raul in one of the thatched-roof huts, and I immediately felt reassured. Here was a genuinely kind man, supremely and comfortably dignified, wearing the outfit he designed himself through ayahuasca-inspired visions, who was happy to share his time and information with us. Excellent.

He told us how, when, and why one becomes a shaman in the Siona culture, and about his own initiation, in enough detail to be interesting and informative while clearly keeping his own secrets. Perfect. K, the consummate vegetarian, got to ask how they feel about eating animals given their respect for the animal spirits. (The spirits check to see if the community and the shaman are in harmony, and if they are, the animals are happy to join with them. Bush meat is a significant part of the diet, along with yucca bread.)

Then it was time for the ritual. We had all looked at the nasty-looking clipping of nettles on the table, and I had investigated enough to find that brushing it didn’t hurt as much as the nettles I was used to, but even a slight prick of the skin stung in that familiar way (I have something of a torrid past with stinging nettles).

I was ready to volunteer in order to give you guys something to read about, but K’s eyes shone with desire to do it (and I wasn’t really that keen anyway). She took a seat in front of Raul, who began a chant of preparation through which he tunes into the patient’s aura, like a diagnosis. Then it was the nettles, swept across her back, gently, but enough to leave the skin shining red and covered with small welts. Apparently K is either genetically superior to me or tough as nails, because when asked if it hurt she replied with a shrug “un poco.”