Sun beats blue
sky heart, sun beats not a cloud, not a distant night; heart beats fast below
the mountain pass, below the crater made of paz
(peace). Quiero sufrir. I re-realised
it, today, cycling my legs around and around, wind in face, growing red under
the sun. Becoming dark-skinned; just red
now, like them injuns up north. Heart
and soul feeds my prayers through the music box in the lounge—people smile as
they go by, a deeply-coloured smile.
Subtle, but like it tells a whole bunch of stories. Through and over hills, up and down (ariba y bajo), and back again. Can they see me breathing deeper now? Do they smile because they are amused, or
because they know something? People of
the mountains have different souls; or maybe their souls are just fed different
food. Seems more satisfying to me. I scoot up and back growing siredder and
redder, return the bike and wish I’d rented it for hours—maybe I will. A senorita
was singing in the street as I went by, walking with a friend and I smiled so
loudly instead of saying hola!
because her beautiful voice was resonating throughout this quiet town, singing
aloud to no one in particular, to everyone, to me even and I thought about back
home and people don’t do that much, if at all, certainly not in the same way
and I keep realising again and again that I am quite enchanted with this holy
place. Walking this morning with two inglaterras (Ruth from the north,
Jocelyn from the south) up a mountain, like the desert sort of, burning more
and more and talking and seeing the valley from way up high, rural properties
and a guy from the night before, a little worse for wear, who invited us to
look at his place which was a beautifully, simply constructed mud-house (you
get the gist) with wine bottles cemented into the walls and chimes
everywhere—there are chimes everywhere here and they echo the beauty around
them, of the little wind that blows below the often empty skies; and in his
home he was growing some meriwana in
little hot-house which was sort of impressive.
Up there we stopped and looked around and breathed and went back down
again. The day before I met Rodrigo, a
Chilean who ran a little café out of a caravan-type thing (it was on wheels);
I’d just arrived and was wondering the town in search of food and there he was,
a simple menu, so I went in and worked my Spanish as best I could. He made me a quiche with fresh tomatoes that
tasted better than any I’ve had, some pumpkin soup out of this world and a
fresh, cold orange juice, nice and sour just like I like it, though of course
he didn’t know that (he probably did actually).
After a while we figured out that English would be easier: I hadn’t
known and he had apparently been talking to an English family for a while that
morning and had switched back to Spanish without thinking, though there I was impressed
with myself for having such a fluent and believable Spanish accent. Lovely man, interesting man; a
journalist-turned-wanderer, in his forties with a very deep and resonant voice,
like it should be on a revoilutionary radio channel. And he looked like Che Guavara so much it was
uncanny, big dark beard, a little militant-looking cap. Amazing.
Leant to the left too. He sang
along to Broadway-sounding songs beautifully (I don’t really know exactly what
Broadway is, es verdad) and had some great
songs going around on his stereo.
Chilean folk, which keeps drawing me nearer; full of complex political
emotions to do with a history of great complexity and hardship. Later that night he would explain to me that
when Pinochet was in power, they hunted down anyone with any literature about
the art movement Cubism. This was, he said, because “Cubism” sounds a
lot like “Cuba”, and Cuba was a communist country and thus said literature
could not be tolerated. I thought this
was funny, but it gets better. Ironically,
the people who tended to own books on Cubism were quite arty and generally
leant to the left anyway, so the government was killing the right people in its
eyes after all! Fantastic, yet
horrifying. These countries have seen a
few things. Back at the café I thanked
him for the meal and he recommended me a bar where he and his friends hung out,
sometimes played guitar and sang, as well as some other tips on what to
see. But before we finish with Rodrigo,
there’s a little piece of our chat that almost slipped me by, well
salient…! A town near here called
Cochiguaz is quite isolated and known for weirdness: UFOs, strange folk that
have come here for spiritual reasons, or to find aliens, or to feel the magnetic
power of the earth here. Lots of whacky
stuff. So I asked him about it and up to
this point—and even after, really—he had been quite ‘rational’ (a tough word to
use, but I hope you get the gist). Spoke
very well, was well-informed, but didn’t say anything too off-the-wall. So I asked him about the town and he kind of
shrugged and said it was a strange place where things might happen to me, if I
go; kind of “psychological” he says, because it’s isolated there and there’s
nothing much to do but wait for yourself to pop up, or for someone else to find
you; something bad might happen to you
there, he says, and I look at him kind of eyebrow-raised like okay…and he goes on and says, or
something good like he genuinely couldn’t say. The specificity of the whole thing was pretty
notable. So I guess, well I’m pretty
sure (positive actually) that Cochiguaz is my next stop, because I’m pretty
sure I’m after either of the things he mentioned. Quiero
sufrir. I forgot, but it’s a little
true because I mean to suffer is to grow and to grow is to be, be being, be
onwards and upwards mi amigos back
home. I swear the vine keeps tugging me
from way up north too, but I have a few things to do, especialidid si mi espanol va a esta fluido (especially if my
Spanish is going to be fluent). God
knows. Under and up.
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