Saturation.
Dusty dusty road, we just travelled to get to town. We live up a mountainside with a funny, warm family an hour away. I began practicing sanding down rocks, rubbing them together incessantly as I walked. Eventually I hope to sand them down into a nice size and shape and do "piedra de tazara" - stone wrapping.
Choon and I wash clothes to make them a teensy bit less dirty. Socks are pretty much hopeless. We have music now, which is amazing. Balkan Beat Box, Defiance Ohio, Against Me!, Michael Franti, Elliot Smith, Lali Puna, Leftover Crack, Shpongle, Shiva Chandra, progressive house...etc. while brushing up on our Spanish (by which I mean...learning from scratch...) Now that Ish is gone for a few days, the family - his dad, mom, sister Faviola, shy brother Almicar and then our little sidekick Jouel - have emerged from their shells more. We are forced to speak Español!
Cole and I have been taking turns reading Naked Lunch. Burroughs on the brain, we ramble on into the night about giant ectoplasm oozing through the holes of our mosquito nets from the giant grasshopper in the corner, whom we can hear but not see...Giant dandelions reminiscent of the nuclear ones from Ninja Turtles line the ceiling...with a sunflower ("There has to be a sunflower!" - Cole´s OCD) and a giant beanbag chair, mostly blue, and a green door. Cheska dreamt of diablo - the Spanish devil; oversized gnashing teeth in an emaciated face, grinding his chompers while staring her down, clutching a rock in his hand. It scared us in the way that you can scare yourself in the dark at night if you think about it too much. We didn´t want to sleep alone so we spooned. I was the big spoon and she was the little spoon. That made no sense because I´m way shorter than her. But we tried the other way and well, it was just awkward. So I was big spoon until my arm fell asleep and I elbowed her, falling asleep. Woke up to an empty bed. Spooning mishap.
And then there are the bananas. Almost everything we eat here contains bananas. Our bodies are going to overload and not be able to process any more bananas. Some choppy & chipper classical music is playing all of a sudden in this internet cafe. It was there and now it´s gone.
I read the first book of Ecstasy by Irvine Welsh last night, my eyes becoming droopy, sleepy slits in the darkness with a flashlight...It was very disturbing in an engaging sort of way. Necrophelia, obese romance novelists, clubbing to jungle music in the UK - type-a book. Filled my dreams with strange things. Blue spiders as pets.
So enough about life in my head. Life outside is wonderful. We wake up to the mountains and the blazing sun. Yesterday morning we followed alongside Ish´s padre to pick coffee beans. It was meditative. They grow on trees red and berry-like, then harden in the sun and brown. Coffee is pretty much what they depend on to live. They drink it like we drink espresso, a little splash of coffee in their tea or hot water with milk. While we down gallons of the brown sludge every day, with sugar and cream. I guess coca leaves are their substitute for caffeine.
I´m going to start sketching plants and animals here. There´s a lot of selection here - the cow (vaca), the mangy dogs loco and chorro, the chickens and roosters, the guinea pigs that run wild in the house (fattening them up for eating on special occassions), the goose, the huge grasshopper that dwells inside the door of the bathroom every night...
Tomorrow morning Cole and I are going to Quillabamba on the bus to take out money from the bank and load pictures onto the computer. He wants Dante to understand where he is. I want to get the pictures off of my camera so I can take more!!
Always more to say, not enough ways to say it.
I better write some e-mails.
Choon and I wash clothes to make them a teensy bit less dirty. Socks are pretty much hopeless. We have music now, which is amazing. Balkan Beat Box, Defiance Ohio, Against Me!, Michael Franti, Elliot Smith, Lali Puna, Leftover Crack, Shpongle, Shiva Chandra, progressive house...etc. while brushing up on our Spanish (by which I mean...learning from scratch...) Now that Ish is gone for a few days, the family - his dad, mom, sister Faviola, shy brother Almicar and then our little sidekick Jouel - have emerged from their shells more. We are forced to speak Español!
Cole and I have been taking turns reading Naked Lunch. Burroughs on the brain, we ramble on into the night about giant ectoplasm oozing through the holes of our mosquito nets from the giant grasshopper in the corner, whom we can hear but not see...Giant dandelions reminiscent of the nuclear ones from Ninja Turtles line the ceiling...with a sunflower ("There has to be a sunflower!" - Cole´s OCD) and a giant beanbag chair, mostly blue, and a green door. Cheska dreamt of diablo - the Spanish devil; oversized gnashing teeth in an emaciated face, grinding his chompers while staring her down, clutching a rock in his hand. It scared us in the way that you can scare yourself in the dark at night if you think about it too much. We didn´t want to sleep alone so we spooned. I was the big spoon and she was the little spoon. That made no sense because I´m way shorter than her. But we tried the other way and well, it was just awkward. So I was big spoon until my arm fell asleep and I elbowed her, falling asleep. Woke up to an empty bed. Spooning mishap.
And then there are the bananas. Almost everything we eat here contains bananas. Our bodies are going to overload and not be able to process any more bananas. Some choppy & chipper classical music is playing all of a sudden in this internet cafe. It was there and now it´s gone.
I read the first book of Ecstasy by Irvine Welsh last night, my eyes becoming droopy, sleepy slits in the darkness with a flashlight...It was very disturbing in an engaging sort of way. Necrophelia, obese romance novelists, clubbing to jungle music in the UK - type-a book. Filled my dreams with strange things. Blue spiders as pets.
So enough about life in my head. Life outside is wonderful. We wake up to the mountains and the blazing sun. Yesterday morning we followed alongside Ish´s padre to pick coffee beans. It was meditative. They grow on trees red and berry-like, then harden in the sun and brown. Coffee is pretty much what they depend on to live. They drink it like we drink espresso, a little splash of coffee in their tea or hot water with milk. While we down gallons of the brown sludge every day, with sugar and cream. I guess coca leaves are their substitute for caffeine.
I´m going to start sketching plants and animals here. There´s a lot of selection here - the cow (vaca), the mangy dogs loco and chorro, the chickens and roosters, the guinea pigs that run wild in the house (fattening them up for eating on special occassions), the goose, the huge grasshopper that dwells inside the door of the bathroom every night...
Tomorrow morning Cole and I are going to Quillabamba on the bus to take out money from the bank and load pictures onto the computer. He wants Dante to understand where he is. I want to get the pictures off of my camera so I can take more!!
Always more to say, not enough ways to say it.
I better write some e-mails.