Bella Bolivia

Bella Bolivia. You have been a cold country. The rivers in your lowlands run warmer than the tap water that freezescalds my fingers. I still haven't recovered from that sting. Your hillsides are naked, exposed, small potato fields struggling to warm themselves in your rocky earth. Clouds scratched across blue endless skies. Faces made of leather, shoes made of tired tires. I can see the bones of your elbows, your ankles, chalky with cold. The wind leaves your cheeks a crackly red, and your eyes, dry ceramic pots.

Bella Bolivia. In your Spanish chapels, the gold peels and I see earth material underneath. Jesus hangs on a faded cross of leather canvas. In your once silver-coated mountains, Indigenous blood paints the rock. Your history is skin and bones.

Bella Bolivia. From my bus window, I see your day meet night on the horizon, smelling sweet. I see your trees bending into the sunset, beaming with the golden reflection. Your lakes are a sea of tos'd glitter. Your streets a stony hallway. Your ancients, dressed like dolls, sink deep into the puddle of their skirts, melt down into the earth from whence comes the warmth, like your adobe homes. I watch your youth digging at the earth, revolving the minerals found there. I watch your men, coca juice filling their mouths, moving to a rhythm birthed in their torsos, wrung from the sorrow of the zampoño.

Bella Bolivia. You ARE beautiful.

"NO LLORES POR UN PAIS QUE ESTA LUCHANDO,

LUCHAS POR UN PAIS QUE ESTA LLORANDO"

-graffiti in Santa Cruz
"don't cry for a country that's fighting, fight for a country that's crying"

Roads like Journeys

Roads like journeys
there, always before you

A room like religion
dark, candlelit with waxy prayers

Hot water like democracy
promised, icy on your neck

Toilet paper like a journal
prioritized, when one runs out

Bolivia like a Texas landscape
conquered, still stubbornly sovereign

Bolivia

Bolivia lay at the top of the hill. Hidden from my view by the incline, I could only imagine it. Filled with mines and buried Eldorados? Indigenous women, babies slung cross backs. Socialist presidents. Cheap markets. I know that most of the people who knew about this trip, told me to skip it.

We changed our money in Peru. Bolivianos. Suddenly richer than we had been, the air felt lighter. Then I reached into my pocket and pulled out the coins that rattled there... 3 soles. I couldn't believe the coincidence. My spirit soared. I would carry these 3 soles with me through the rest of this journey and they would protect me and guide me. Later I would deliver them back to the USA to verify where I had been. I looked up at Bolivia. I contemplated how I would cross this imaginary line. Leaping. High on altitude and short on oxygen, we leaped our way from Peru to Bolivia.

On the other side, a new country, a new people, a new story... and a beggar. One of those women who look like they melted into their giant petticoats, bowler hat open and extended. I walked past her.

And stopped. I turned around. 3 soles. I turned them over in my hand before they fell soft on the dirty felt. She fingered them and looked up at me, then scuttled off. No Aymara blessing, no Spanish gracias. Just a lighter weight in my pocket, a story, and 3 soles given.

bubble babble

watching a group of middle aged english people blow bubbles at excited peruvian three year olds here in the plaza of Aguas Calientes, the mirrored joy on both sides of the magical globes, watching them fly, float, then foof! now this group of middle aged English people pull, like rabbits from a hat or dollars off a tree, new bottles of bubbles from their bundles tightly wrapped diagonally around their tall torsos and in so doing show these children what fantastical treasures lie in the foreigner's pocket.

the group of middle aged English people have left the plaza, gone to enjoy drinks and pizza in a balcony overlooking a river, but here in this plaza, bubbles continue to float above little heads, tiny eyes glistening, arms reaching up...

hey america!

It is the 4th of July and for the second time in my life, I am celebrating it in Peru. I was 16 and traveling with a gaggle of methodist girls and our mother goose. The day was gray, a la Lima, and smelling of exhaust. Someone, can't remember who, asked me, "Are you not sad to not be celebrating your Day of Independence in your country?" And it was only then that any of us realized, at least I think, that it was the 4th.

A few years ago on this day, I was in Seattle, watching eagles fly higher than the pines. Last year I was in Israel, feeling the Mediterranean spray, eating as much free ambassadorial food as possible, and giggling on the grass with Sarah. The other 4ths; west Texas, Wallace Wade Stadium, Orange County Speedway, Festival on the Eno.

Right now I'm in Arequipa, Peru, a diversion from original trajectories, but a welcomed one. We busslept through the Sierras, our noses frozen and our eyes red. Grateful, then, for the warm breeze and furry park grass of the morning. If the threads are woven right, we will be in Bolivia before nightfall.

I would love to hear about your 4th's. Send me some America.

Also, my amigito Jesus asked me to sing the American Nat'l Anthem and I could only remember the Costa Rican one. ¿ayuda?

wet life

Last night the same fat moon that welcomed us into the Amazons a month ago, was hung low in farewell. A final limon ice cream on a sticky night. A final paseo around the park busy with moms, dads, and tricycles. And at the end of the night, the wet eyes of illari, my 11 year old amiga, reaching up into mine from her koala embrace.

Puerto Maldonado, a city made of dust, trees, flakes of gold, wood, river, motos, catholics and evangelicals, markets, potholes, jungle. A city that held me for a while, will I be able to hold it? So quickly, I find myself back where I began, in Cuzco, 4000 meters up, wrapped in a fleece, and skypechatting with my family. My skin is anglo colored again, the dust and sun having washed off in the first hot shower.

History has shown that the jungle is forgettable. For hundreds of years, Spaniards passed through it on their way to Puerto Lima and Cuzco. Yet unable to dominate what they found there, they left and left behind little more than their castellano names carved into the trees. Later, the rubber barons would arrive, but rubber plantations in India would be more efficient and so they too would leave.

Today, I flew up and out of the jungle. Looking down, I might as well have been flying over the middle of the Pacific. Below, only a sea of trees, broccoli tops, smears of green, concealing the wet life hidden below.