Okay, here they are. Just what the world has been waiting for! All my travel journal ramblings from 1989 to 2005. Comments and emails welcomed.
European Journal
3/10/89
The wanderer within comes forth!
Up to this point, you've done every thing that was to be done. You got a job and rented a house and had dozens of people tramp through like so many undone pilgrims. You've broken bread and drunk lots of wine. You've enjoyed scant pleasures of the flesh that evaporated like tenderness. You've planted a garden and stoked the hearth. You've taken in the stray cat. You've paid the bills one day ahead of the turn-off notice. You've consoled the women next door who lost her son and then her husband. You've pushed a quartz crystal into the crotch of a stick and nailed it up on the roof for good luck. You've gone back to school. You've started to run, fast, meditate and then quit. You've walked down to the water at night, in the rain, and looked out at the dark shore beyond. And look here! The supreme and shameful token of your sloth: your ass has worn a hole in the rug where you've sat watching TV!
3/20/89
I hardly feel like someone about to undertake the (1st) journey of a lifetime, a freewheeling tour across Europe. I am morose, sluggish, practically depressed. It has to do possibly with the part of me that hates to surrender the familiar, comfortable surroundings carefully cultivated over the last ten years. A feeling of resistance and distress knots the stomach and clouds the outlook. A kind of leveling effect applied to experience: why the hell do anything? Here or there, it's all the same.
Up to this point, you've done every thing that was to be done. You got a job and rented a house and had dozens of people tramp through like so many undone pilgrims. You've broken bread and drunk lots of wine. You've enjoyed scant pleasures of the flesh that evaporated like tenderness. You've planted a garden and stoked the hearth. You've taken in the stray cat. You've paid the bills one day ahead of the turn-off notice. You've consoled the women next door who lost her son and then her husband. You've pushed a quartz crystal into the crotch of a stick and nailed it up on the roof for good luck. You've gone back to school. You've started to run, fast, meditate and then quit. You've walked down to the water at night, in the rain, and looked out at the dark shore beyond. And look here! The supreme and shameful token of your sloth: your ass has worn a hole in the rug where you've sat watching TV!
3/20/89
I hardly feel like someone about to undertake the (1st) journey of a lifetime, a freewheeling tour across Europe. I am morose, sluggish, practically depressed. It has to do possibly with the part of me that hates to surrender the familiar, comfortable surroundings carefully cultivated over the last ten years. A feeling of resistance and distress knots the stomach and clouds the outlook. A kind of leveling effect applied to experience: why the hell do anything? Here or there, it's all the same.
March 21, 1989
Departure from Dulles Airport
Airborne and London bound. Flight so far smooth and uneventful. Bear hugs at the boarding ramp for Dad and Doug, come back to us safely, amen. Watched out the window as the light bespeckled shore of Turtle Island slipped beneath me and gave way to vast black expanse of Ocean. Darkness outside all encompassing while inside this hurtling projectile there is warmth and light, polite conversation, food, drink, crying babies...
About an hour outside of Heathrow. Sun's up, clouds reflecting orange dawn light; the ocean, flecked-with-spittle in appearance. We are told it is raining in London. Breakfast is served. Tea, orange juice, bun. I don't believe any of the pretty English flight attendants are going to invite me back to their London flats. Oh well. Lisbon by mid-day. Over Ireland now, south of Cork. Rivers, farms, villages.
3/22/89Lisbon - a mind-blowing assault on the senses that began with a reckless and diverting taxi ride from the airport. The ride to Pensao Ninho de Aguias was an astonishing tour of some of the older and stately, albeit crumbling parts of Lisbon.
Dinnertime. I take a stroll down Rua Dom Durate, which rapidly turns into about three other streets, all going in different directions. Narrow alleyways with steep steps lead endlessly upward toward colonial era buildings with red tiled roofs. I make my way to one of the local eateries, one of dozens along the way. I point to certain breaded delicacies and indicate how many I want, not really knowing what they are. The proprietor wraps them carefully - 350 escudos. Further up the street I turn into one of the narrow alleyways. On the first landing some kids are kicking a soccer ball around and there is a small, dark establishment selling wine. A pretty young woman waves me away from the bottled goods to the real stuff: vino tinto, stored in large oak casks, possibly a local or house brew. She draws off a liter into a used plastic mineral water bottle. I give her 200 escudos but she calls me back to hand over the 50 escudos in change. Back in my room, (atop a carpet and drapery store) I enjoy the delicious food and wine watching the street scenes below. Traffic noise, music, snatches of Portuguese.
Footnotes: Lisbon is the first truly foreign city I have ever visited. No longer in the good ol' U S of A! Whoopee and hallelujah!
My impression of the Portuguese: proud, earthy, with warmth that extends graciously to the foreign visitor. Portuguese women are uniformly beautiful with (for the most part) dusky complexions, dark hair, and an easy predilection to smile. Men on the street stern faced, that gives way on the slightest pretext to open friendliness. One old man approached me as I surveyed a fabulous view of Lisbon from one of the many higher vantage points of the city. He, not a word of English and I, a few stumbling words of Portuguese and yet we managed to converse. He corrected my pronunciation and then spread his arms out towards the city below indicating the Castle, the Alfama, the Bairro Alto. We laughed, gestured, shook hands and took our leave.
3/23/89
A day spent wandering aimlessly. I'm beginning to love this place. It is the best possible city to begin an exploration of Europe getting use to the sights, sounds and customs of a large foreign capital where the people are friendly and unpretentious. The Alfama, a fascinating district of steep narrow stairways and that branch off from each other in totally unpredictable ways. I stopped and looked in amazement at the cave-like entrances to dwellings. The doorways and windows are veiled with lace-like hangings through which comes the smells of cooking, strange music, the soft (sometimes loud!) babblings of Portuguese. Children playing everywhere, the most beautiful and happy children I've ever seen. I stop to take their picture. They smile, mug and carry on shouting a few choice words of English with mischievous grins ("fuck you too!"). One little boy with a better than average command of English indicates my camera and watch and warns me to "be careful" while gently tugging at them, signifying their vulnerability to being ripped off. On landing after landing I see the same thing: children, young mothers washing laundry at the local fountain, old grandmothers watching from windows.
Earlier in the morning I walked through a more rustic district. Small flower and vegetable gardens dotted the landscape everywhere, vegetation spilling over into tiny dirt and gravel alleyways, everything saved from squalor by this unabashed closeness to the earth, to growing things and the trilling of songbirds, in fact, an almost paradisiacal arrangement of earth, family, and dwelling. The birds - there must be more caged birds in Lisbon than any other place on earth. They hang outside almost every window and balcony and they sing beautifully. My memories of Lisbon will always be associated with trilling of caged songbirds.
The Barrio Alto - another old part of Lisbon, a slightly larger version of the Alfama. Narrow winding streets, steep stairways, every street overflowing with humanity carrying on the everyday tasks of living. There is a strong sense of community, perhaps a shared sense of destiny as the inhabitants play with their children, converse with their neighbors, and carry on the job of providing for every (simple) conceivable need from their tiny storefronts and restaurants. Footnote: there is apparently a strong communist party presence here - I see communist slogans and graffiti everywhere.
Again, this area is saved from squalor by the sheer, uplifting spirit of the people who live here, their sense of themselves and their community. Their openness to outsiders is amazing. I snapped picture after picture under their tolerant gaze without complaint. The weather: three straight days of warm sunshine and cool nights. The food and drink are plentiful, delicious and cheap. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Portuguese patrons at a bar while feasting on fish, rice, salad, bread and beer, absorbing their language and ways, has been an education. Coffee comes in the Arab style, little doll house cups but very strong and stimulating.
Earlier in the day, lunch in the Barrio Alto, having just visited the tomb of Henry Fielding at the Englishman's Cemetery. The entrance was locked. I banged lightly on the large metal door and was ushered in by a little old man who at first seemed reluctant to let me pass. I entered and instantly all the sounds of the city fell away. A place of great restfulness and beauty towering cedar trees, palm trees and other tropical species, wisteria carpeting the ground with small purple flowers. Birds trilling, soft fragrances borne by gentle breezes. Found the resting place of Henry Fielding amongst the hundreds of other gravesites. Paid my respects after a fashion, gratitude for the feast of language he left us, his humanity and compassion. Returned to the outside world past the old grounds keeper who, it occurs to me, I probably should have tipped.
Lunch at the Flor de Estrela, one of the many neighborhood restaurants in the Barrio. Trutas e arroz e salada e pao. And good Dutch beer. A plain, working man's establishment. The magic of comprehension when you speak their language.
3/25/89
Leaving Lisbon via ferry across the Tagus River. Shady character approaches and offers first a golden ring (nao) and then a beautiful chunk of hashish, 750E. Tempting, but no thanks. Must have been the backpack and jeans, a kind of international releasing mechanism for underground characters to come forth and display their wares. "Mucho trouble, senior," I say and wave him off. He is persistent. "Nao, nao."
Tagus River quite polluted, a scummy grey-brown in appearance. As we pull away from the dock, I recall a dream I had the night before of Lisbon personified as a jealous paramour who refuses to let me go.... Adeus Lisbon, adeus, adeus.
(Last night, in the Pensao Gloria. I awake with a start to the sounds of doors being slammed as if in great anger, while a soft feminine singing arises up out of nowhere, now near, now far away.)
Out on the river, a dark cloud of smog quickly obscures the city and I realize how big it is. At the Barreieo station a short wait for the train to Evora. Walked along the shore of this bleak industrial area. A few small fishing boats and the ruins of a windmill are all that remain of a simpler existence. Train ride, with stops, to Evora. Mile after mile of cork and olive trees, an occasional orange or lemon orchard. One stop, at a tiny rural village, was like a snapshot of Portuguese country life. A small whitewashed house with red tiles, old man drawing water out of a well while another irrigated the adjacent gardens with a battered old watering can, old wife shuffling among the chickens, the area all about lush and green. I lean out the window taking pictures they smile and wave.
The countryside, once clear of the many cork plantations, reminds me of the American mid-west except for the occasional farmhouse with the ubiquitous red tiles. Gently rolling hills and fields as far as you can see on either side of the tracks, unmarred by power lines or billboards.
Evora - a fabulous medieval walled city with narrow, labyrinthine streets and whitewashed buildings. But first a strange encounter. Arriving late Saturday afternoon and running short of Escudos, I ask the French dame at the tourist center where I can change money. She points out a place next door, a run down looking establishment with shabby wooden steps. I am told to ascend and ask for "Mr. Mosquito." I do so and find myself in the realm of the moneychangers, glowering old men amidst dust and decay who regard me with suspicion. I feel foolish and out of place as I inquire after "Mr. Mosquito." I hear a cough and a shuffle of papers in the next room and there, seated at a long wooden bench, is the man I take for Mr. Mosquito himself. Stooped, white haired and unsmiling, he is counting over a pile of Escudos and making entries in a ledger. "Change money?" I ask and produce two U.S. twenties. Yes, yes, quite satisfactory as he nods and ruminates and then scribbles a figure on a small piece of paper: 8.080. That seems okay but just to make sure I make my own calculations on the same slip of paper and come up with 6.080. A mistake. He sees my figure and oh dear what an uproar! I'm trying to cheat him out of two thousand escudos and his offer promptly comes down to match my lower figure. "But you were going to give me eight! Hard currency monsieur!" He mutters French imprecations and waves me away. I grab my forty bucks and split.
Back out into fresh air and sunlight, I begin to explore this old, magical city. I head off towards Giraldo Square and without even trying, find the first genuine Roman ruin I am to set eyes upon, the beautiful Temple of Diana. Fourteen Corinthian columns support what is left of ancient stone lintel work, the whole edifice resting on crumbling stone steps. The upper portions of the temple catch the dusky orange evening light as swallows and sparrows, singing madly, flit between the columns.
I wander aimlessly as is my wont. One narrow cobblestone street leads to another, some straight, some curving away and disappearing. Whitewashed walls rise steeply on either side. An occasional doorway left ajar reveals a tantalizing glimpse of Evoran everyday life - tiny stairways lead up, sometimes down, to cramped but eloquent quarters; kitchen, dining and living room occupying a single, well appointed space. The upper chambers may lead to a balcony or a rooftop garden where small orange and lemon trees with overhanging fruit swoop down just out of reach.
3/28/89
The last twenty-four hours have been a real trip chuck full of the unexpected - but first to finish with Evora.
The twelfth century Se Cathedral, mid-morning Sunday. The sheer stone centerpiece of Evora. Stepped inside (before arrival of Sunday worshippers) and again the sensation of utter peacefulness, the falling away of mundane concerns. Vast, soaring space carved and shaped from stone, with barely a sense of containment, a quiet invitation to come forth out of your tawdry, cramped worldliness and fill these gigantic dimensions with peace and goodwill. Flickering candles illuminate iconography of Jesus, Mary and the saints. Took the usual tour up on part of the chapel roof to examine the ancient stone work and look down into the cloister, and then, via an ancient, spiral stone stairway, to the cloister itself. In one of the several turns down the stairway, you are in pitch-blackness, hands reaching out and touching stonework worn smooth from centuries of human contact. The cloister consists of an ancient walkway surrounded by arches, inclosing a small courtyard with well.
An earlier visit to the famous "Chapel of Bones" at the Church of St. Francis. Not quite so ghoulish as I had been lead to believe, but definitely impressive. Numerous skulls and what appeared to be femur and tibia bones had been pressed into wet mortar, forming the columns, walls and archways of the chapel. Unfortunately, every skull within reach of the causal visitor had been desecrated with graffiti. Names, dates, and just plain rubbish had been inked and sometimes carved into the skulls, and some skulls appeared to have been chipped away by souvenir hunters. I could not resist the temptation of running a finger across the smooth cranial vaults and eye sockets of some of them. In less than fifteen minutes, my fingers had swept across the mortal remains of dozens of the deceased. "Our bones are here awaiting yours" seemed like a fitting riposte to all, both believers and non-believers alike.
It is time to leave Evora, marred as it is by commercialism and the tourist trade, but enough of the old city left to set the mind to contemplating opposite impressions: Evora, the name of a Renaissance virgin, and Saint Evora, black cloaked dowager lighting candles in the cathedral.
And so to the train station for a lengthy wait for the train back to Barriero, then south to the Algarve. Along the way, a spectacular tour of southern Portugal. Sandy loam and vast rolling grassland give way to weird scrub forests of pine pitched in sand, and finally to sods of deep earthy reds and browns. We pass through rural villages with names like Aquas do Moura, Pinhiero, Vale do Guizo, Lousal, Alvalade, Torre-Va, and finally, Funcheria. Along the way are the beautiful farms and haciendas of the Portuguese homesteader, the red tiled and white-washed houses and barns set upon hills overlooking lush valleys. There is a deep love here, as everywhere in Portugal, of the earth, the loving cultivation of the earth. Everywhere are to be found gardens, vineyards and orchards. Even in so appalling a place as the slummy outskirts of Setubal are to be found tiny vineyards and gardens set out along the railroad tracks, or anywhere space permits the putting in of cabbage, lettuce, peas and onions. In every village we stopped at were to be found an overflowing bounty of vegetation, neat rows of growing things, and always a small orchard, oranges and lemons practically incandescent against the background foliage.
At Funcheria, I share first class accommodations with a young mother and her two young boys. I am immediately aroused by the mother - her Portuguese with its many trills is more like music than speech. Why is it I think she is alone, separated or divorced, raising her two children by herself? Perhaps a manner she has, weariness about the eyes and mouth. Or several side long glances in my direction that linger too long, and a way of arching her back up out of her seat that I find deliciously suggestive. Or (more likely) these are merely the fantasies of a single traveling man who would like nothing better than to spend the night with such a woman. Asleep and in profile she is even more beautiful and it is all I can do to take my eyes off her. Meanwhile, the two boys engage in delightful monkeyshines, bouncing and cavorting, all a giggle and bubbling over with a warm and happy Portuguese. Out of their mouths, their native tongue is pure delight, and this is something I have noticed throughout. The Portuguese are an effusive, outgoing people, the young brash and naturally so. Older men gather in bars and side streets and engage in animated conversation. The women shout to each other from balconies while hanging out wash or just inside doorways of small produce establishments. The very old men gather in small groups, especially in public squares. They are more reserved, a small cabal, knowledgeable of old customs and ways, a lore past from elect to elect.
3/28/89
To Lagos. Arrive on the late train. There are no rooms to be found at this hour and I refuse to spend a lot of money on a hotel room. Back out behind the train station I find a field lush with grass and succulent-like vegetation. It’s cool and breezy, there's a gibbous moon, everything seems fine as I nestle down into my sleeping bag. Am awakened by rain. It's light and passes quickly, but every cloud that passes over leaves me with a face full of rain. I cover up with the tent flysheet, which helps a little, but by daybreak I'm pretty wet, not soaked but wet. I am accosted by a little old man who inquires if I'm looking for a room? 1000 E? You betcha and the next thing I know I'm being escorted into private quarters - a double bed, window, clean bathroom with hot water - a bargain in this town. I settle in and rest
up, then head out for a little exploring.
Lagos - another old town - Prince Henry the Navigator launched his voyages of discovery from here in the fifteenth century. The center of town is totally given over to tourism - dozens of cafes, bars, and restaurants, tacky little gift shops - all overpriced. Would not have stayed here long if it had not been for the cheap accommodations. Glad I did - the scenery along the Atlantic coast is spectacular. High, steep lime and sandstone cliffs predominate. Huge piers of land jut out into the water forming caves, grottoes, coves and inlets. The abyss falls away on either side; one slip and you momentarily fly with the birds before smashing on the rocks below. I spend the day exchanging perspectives - climbing high up among footpaths and the crags of cliffs, then lengthy descents to the beach and rock strewn coastline. One stretch of beach leads straight into the diminishing light of day - evening lights of orange and yellow cast near perfect ovoid sculpted stones along the beach in a beautiful unearthly glow. I take off my boots and leap from boulder to boulder amidst the crash of waves, if only to hear the slap of my feet on their smooth surfaces.
4/3/89
Sevilla, Spain. How do you capture the essence of a great city in just a few days? All you can do is wander, ravished with wonderment, with only a perfunctory glance inside the guidebooks. They can point out thus and such, but for the solitary traveler, astonishment and delight
are always a matter of personal unfoldment.
But, to finish with Portugal. Spent my last day there (3/31) in Sagres, or rather the environs thereof. Rented a small motorcycle and spent the day exploring country of unsurpassed beauty. The small country villages between Sagres and Lagos, villages with names like Hortas do Tabual, Figueira, Salema, Vale de Boi, Barao de St. Miguel, Raposiera, Praia do Zavial. All had a common quality of the surrounding country blending indistinguishably with the boundaries of the village; the country, the land spilling profusely over and across the boundaries of the village proper. Everywhere, the intense and loving cultivation of the earth. Wild flowers ran riot, their fragrance filling the air. Timeless scenes of villagers tilling the fields, herding flocks of goats and sheep, leading their beasts of burden through the narrow streets of the village. Here, as everywhere in Portugal, the dignified black-shawled old women amble through the streets filled with the cries of playing children. Heaps of manure and straw everywhere, donkey carts drawing this rich compost into the fields, the fields, as I have said, spilling everywhere over into the village. Paved roads turn to dirt and vanish into the surrounding greenery. The light of day, partly sunny, partly cloudy, conceals and then suddenly illuminates the red tiled rooftops of distant villages, a single tree, a single hilltop, then plunges everything back into a uniform gray. Flying down the highway on the whining little monster of a motorbike I have rented, I turn down dozens of little dirt roads that lead nowhere, but open up to vistas of lush rolling countryside densely carpeted with wildflowers. One of these roads leads down to a desolate but rugged shoreline along the ocean. Two parallel canyons have been cut from sheer rock into which huge waves crash with enormous force. One is drawn to such scenes of natural power and held fast. I stayed for over an hour, making feeble photographic attempts at capturing the grandeur of the place. Again, the sun would suddenly capture a distant sheer rock cliff and the manifestation of great natural power as geysers of seawater shot hundreds of feet into the air.
There are, sad to relate, scenes of modern encroachment. The little fishing village of Salema once consisted of a single steep street lined with picturesque little white-washed houses and a beautiful stretch of unspoiled beach. It is slowly being engulfed by high-rise condominiums, expensive European styled villas, and just plain ugly tourista crap. Some rich consortium of Europeans (mostly English speaking) discovered Salema and decided it was just a dandy place to despoil. They thought they could some how buy the beauty and tranquility of Salema and make it their own. The result is an ugly conglomeration that will never harmonize with the timeless spirit of this place. The villagers continue to fish for a living - their colorful boats lie along the beach and fathers stand by sons calking boats and repairing fishing nets, but their way of life is doomed. The single (and original) steep and balconied street of Salema commands a sweeping vista of the Atlantic that white, rich Europeans will one day own. It's a shame that such a place could not have been put aside as a national treasure, forever immune from the white European buck. Few things can resist the flood of big money its deadly undertow will pull down more than a few Salimas, an immemorial culture and way of life. I despair of a southern Portugal tidied up and Europeanized by tides of moneyed Northerners, who, to escape the smog and garbage filled landscape of their native lands, can do no better than visit the same misfortunes on impoverished cultures abroad. It was a relief to move on to villages where modernization was more in keeping with tradition.
But again, it is time to leave, time to leave Sagres, time to leave Portugal. Next day I take a bus back to Lagos. The Saturday open market is in full swing. All manner of items are being offered clothing, appliances, shoes, pots and pans, fruit and vegetables, heaps of dried beans, rice, fish a confused and delightful din of exchange, offer, and counter offer, the hawkers gathering piles of escudos as the bright sunny morning wears on. I wander around, watching and taking pictures.
I board the train in early afternoon for the last port of call in the Algarve, Villa Real de Saint Antonio. Along the way, more precious scenes of Portuguese rural life, perhaps the best I've seen so far. The afternoon warm and sunny, the air filled with the fragrance of orange blossoms. Green rolling fields filled with the fruits of loving labor, the soils of this region deep earthly reds and browns. Never far from view are the shores of the Atlantic. Outside of Faro are vast stretches of muddy flat lands, as far as the eye can see. Tiny figures of people can be seen digging for shellfish. I reach Villa Real and take the ferry to Ayamonte, Spain. The failing light of day scatters in ripples across the water and silhouettes the dark shore of Portugal. The white washed houses of Ayamonte glow like coals in the distance. Plunge into Spain, walking up and down the old streets of Ayamonte. I hear the distant strains of Spanish from shabby old watering holes along the waterfront.
Out of the Centro and up high above the city, the crumbling remains of battlements from long ago wars with Portugal. It is dark, eerie and almost silent up here. Cool gusts of wind rustle through the grass and trees, the river below, a dark ribbon dotted with a few solitary lights. Stars leap out from a cloudless sky. I walk about with an idea of sleeping out. I'm tired, it's late, and my pack is wearing me down. Walk all the way back down, find nothing in the way of a room, walk all the way back up but take a different route; I now find myself in a large grassy field opposite the crumbling old church with a tolling bell that creaks like the spell of doom. Bed down exhausted in the tall grass and take my rest at last.
On to Sevilla, mid morning by bus. Am let out in the midst of teeming streets and simply plunge in.
4/4/89
In Algeciras, gateway to North Africa. On to Morocco tomorrow. Algeciras - a seedy, dirty port of call, transient characters from all over the world. Hustlers and hash dealers - the way they draw a bead on you from a street corner (the back pack and jeans again) and then fall into step just behind you, couching their pathetic little wad of goods in the palms of their hands and murmuring enticements. Dark, swarthy, beat, of indeterminate nationality. The main strip in town down by the water, with dozens of travel agencies, tour guide type businesses; little run down bars, cafes, and video game arcades in between, with sharp eyed déclassé youth waiting in doorways waiting to separate the unwary from their pesetas. There are heaps of garbage everywhere and the streets smell of sewage. Real armpit.
4/9/89
Back in Tangier after spending last four days in Marrakech, Fez, and Siddi Kacem. I'm in a seedy little pension just off the main boulevard in a room with a magnificent view of the city. The action, sights, and impressions have been intense and non-stop. Trips out of time and the modern world, i.e. America, Europe etc. valuable because they are irreducible to anything previously known or experienced or former schemata neatly filed away. They are better related in parts not necessarily sequential in time.
Hassan, who is to be my guide in Fez, boarding the train just outside of Marrakech - the studied politeness, the too winning smile and slick ingratiation "welcome to my country, welcome to Morocco!" the smile only occasionally disturbed by incomprehension or calculation, a hustler of course but gentle and so very smart, returning to our compartment later and making his pitch, "I hope to be your excellent guide in Fez!" With me are Blair and Heather, Canadian friends I met in Algeciras. Blair skeptical, struggling to be civil, asking pointed questions but unable to penetrate Hassan's practiced and polished demeanor, asking finally sensitive political questions which Hassan brushes aside with cool evasion and winning us over finally, quite an accomplishment in Blair's case, who has the novice traveler's suspicion of all things foreign to a high degree. Arrive finally in Fez, the station shabby and depressing, filled with all the local hustlers waiting for their catch of the day, staring at us, looking for a pretext (eye contact is sufficient) but angel Hassan leads us safely through the gauntlet. We're safe from aggressive come-ons as long as we are with him.4/18/89
In Perigueux, southern France. A town of many contrasts. People friendly and patient with the stupid foreigner who does not speak French. But I am attentive; the language bubbles and flows like a spring freshet. The "new" city is still old looking, sometimes shabby, but mostly worn and smoothed over like old furniture, sooty and discolored, or literally dissolving away. The "old" city around the cathedral is, yes, genuinely old, Medieval or Renaissance looking and yes, older still with Roman-Gallo ruins, an old Norman archway, the remains of a Roman wall, temple, amphitheater and villa that once belonged to the Pompeys; the Vesone Tower, center of the ancient city of Vesuna, and the eleventh century church Saint-Etienne de la Cite. And most prominently, the Saint Front Cathedral, an immense Romanesque church with soaring, intersecting quadruple archways and four (five?) huge pendentive basilicas, the whole thing built of massive rectangular stone blocks. Its many interior perspectives look like something Escher might have painted, both staggering the imagination and uplifting the spirit - yes, all this and more in Periguieux, amidst clouds and mist in the hills behind the L'Isle River, turbulent and muddy after three days of rain. Yesterday and today, a little sun. The "old" city, well, it's been spiffed up a bit for the tourist and equipped with just the accoutrements every "old" city needs: boutiques, pastry shops, cutesy little pubs and restaurants and paved over (no shit) cobble stoned streets. For once, I would like to see a genuine slice of old Europe stand up and say "fuck you" to the tourist buck, which is impossible I know since old Europe no longer exists and her crumbling monuments persist and are maintained at the behest of the new and powerfully moneyed Europe and sheep herders and stone cutters are antique absurdities. Old Europe, thank God, still lives in the hearts of many Europeans. A walk down to the river in the evening is confirmation of that.
This particular stretch of the river is delightful. A well-worn path runs down one side through thick grass and vegetation. Men and boys have come down to the edge of this swift moving river to cast their fishing lines. They strike poses that are utterly relaxed. Many have brought their dinners with them - bread, wine, sandwiches, pickles and olives. Further down, and on both sides of the river are large tracts of bottomland transformed into a patchwork quilt of little gardens beautifully and lovingly tended, a by now very familiar sight. Again, the magic of the evening light casts a warmth and tenderness about these scenes that plays tricks with the mind. I could be anywhere, at any time in Europe. The angler baiting his line, the old man with a wheel barrow full of compost and straw, mothers and babies, squealing children, an old bum with his pack, all have come down to the river to watch the lights kindled and extinguished and rekindled in its eddy and wash, to smell the rank smell of old silt laden waters and to hear the last of the doves crying in groves of lilac.
4/30/89
Four days in La Spezia, exploring the Cinque Terre. I have found paradise, frigged a little by tourism but still a deeply lived, immemorial life style. Wandering through the tourista crap in the lower part of each village, you move up through a landscape of almost hallucinated beauty, with mountains, the sea, the heavens, and the works of man in near perfect harmony. These medieval fishing and farming villages have cultivated the same plots of earth for over a thousand years without exhaustion. Indeed, the vegetation, both wild and cultivated, spills richly down into the village itself. At last I have found the essence of old Mediterranean life that I had hoped to find; sweet, vigorous, serene, and assured. Alas, I cannot live here. All I can do is follow tiny foot trails up into meticulously terraced mountains and climb higher still up ancient stone step ways, some chiseled into solid rock, and gently trespass in the exquisite gardens and vineyards found everywhere. No one complained. They saw me gawking about and went on with their business. These were the real villagers, not the souvenir hawkers below. The typical Cinq Terre village tumbles out of canyons to the very edge of the Mediterranean. A fresh water stream runs down through each canyon or gorge, where, in town, it is conducted by causeways to the sea. Water is drawn from these streams to irrigate the extensive vineyards cultivated in terraces on the hills and mountains surrounding the village. Small footpaths and ancient stone step ways lead up, through, and around the terraced vineyards, sheds, cisterns and other out buildings. Up through the central gorge, the vegetation is wild and lush, and the stream forms numerous waterfalls. In several places old stone archways form bridges over the gorge. Everywhere you climb, there are panoramas of sea and mountain to delight the eye. The village itself rises dramatically up out of sheer rock, nestled within the curve of sea and canyon, the terraced vineyards spreading out or falling away on the surrounding hills.
5/7/89
In Paris, at the apartment of Blair and Heather already mentioned, friends I made in Spain and traveled with through Morocco. Been here since the 4th, early, arrived from Milan. A city of wonders, a vibrant, polyglot city with numerous ethnic groups represented, indeed a vast multi-complexioned populace on every street corner. Heather and Blair do their best to show me around but I'm best as usual wandering around on my own. The Notre Dame cathedral is another exquisite, soaring medieval edifice, candles flickering within, music - organ and voice reverberates from morning mass. Light streams in through the famous rose windows, throngs of tourists file through the corridors and tramp up deeply worn marble steps to the tower above for a spectacular view of the city. The Seine is nearby. I walk up it to the Latin Quarter and walk the streets. Find the Eiffel Tower and yes, it is a very impressive structure but I forego the privilege of spending 47F to ascend to the top.
5/13/89
On Corsica, outside Ile Rousse. Well by God, I'm camping out tonight. I'm in a rocky little cove outside of town. The weather cool and sunny. Got here by boat a few hours ago from Nice. I almost decided not to come to Corsica but once in Nice I figured it was to close to pass by. Nice was nothing, or rather a lot of over developed coast line characteristic of the Cote d'Azur, huge condos, apartment buildings, casinos - a sprawling ugly city only partly redeemed by a beautiful pebble and stone beach that curves out and away like a sickle. It's a relief to be here in the rugged mountainous beauty of Corsica. My original plan was to travel southward through the islands of Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily, but I'm cutting short the original itinerary and leaving Corsica by boat to Livorno or Genoa, and from there to Venice, down through Yugoslavia and finally into Greece. As the weather warms up and days dry out, I'll be doing more camping, hitching, and just plain vagabonding, as I dreamed of doing years ago. It's time to cut loose and see the rest of Europe from the less privileged perspective of a pitched tent. Also, though trains are fast and convenient, they pick you up in the busy middle of one city and deposit you in same in the next city. A lot of beautiful, old and very curious scenery flies by the window. And of course, I'll be saving money
5/14/89
In Corte, within a splendid scene of natural power and beauty. A Corsican mountain river swollen and roaring with the waters of spring melt off.
5/18/89
Spent superb night under the stars beside an over hanging rock ledge outside of Ile Rousse, soft grass, Big Dipper directly over head, swoosh and murmur of the Mediterranean lulling me to sleep. Next day hitched a ride to the mountain town of Corte and spent several days camping out. 1st day wandered around Corte. Huge craggy mountain peaks and ledges visible everywhere, many wreathed in cloud and mist. Climbed up to the old citadel that crowns the old city for a great panoramic view of the countryside. The Tavaganani River in melt off is audible everywhere, its waters a beautiful transparent turquoise blue, cold and sweet tasting. The Corsicans are definitely the toughest cookies I've met yet in Europe. Proud, rustic, sometimes gruff, but overall friendly and given over to animated conversation. On 2nd day took a walk literally up into the clouds, hiked up the Restonica Gorge along a road chiseled out of sheer rock (as are all the creations of man in this region). Spectacular scenery everywhere, the Tavaganani crashing and frothing over huge rocks and boulders. Higher peaks still capped with snow, many small melt-off fed waterfalls falling hundreds of feet down sheer rock cliffs.
6/4/89Where am I? Volcanic-alchemical caldera of an island some take for Atlantis. Prodding ancient lavas in the scorching heat of mid day for rare volcanic mineral powders, rich oranges, yellows, reds, (deep magenta reds) olive, olive to brown, dark brown. Stumble later along the late afternoon lava cliffs of Vourvoulos Beach, lava and volcanic ash cliffs carved into exquisite sculptural forms by wind and water. The old ones of this isle (Santorini) weave immemorial customs and lifestyles amidst the mindless, materialistic crush of western tourism. Donkey trains bearing straw, produce, oil, necessities, led by peasant mule driver riding side saddle threads his way up the narrow village streets around and between cars, motorbikes, tourists. You can hear the jingle of their bells and the clomp of hooves from a distance. Mule driver whistles, calls out, and snaps the whip lightly as his team advances. They are mostly ancient. Their way of life will be gone in another generation of finger snapping Grecian youths who look to the west and America, rock and roll and fast food and material comfort as the new standard to admire and emulate. Santorini is an exquisite, blasted out volcanic desert island made fertile by a millennium or more of painstaking cultivation. The natives are tough cookies alright, turning volcanic ash into vast fertile fields, growing grapes, olives, and produce; raising goats, chickens, sheep, lading their tables with a rich harvest from this intensely elemental, earthly place. Puppy tourists, you have no idea! (their bemused looks seem to say) coming here with your stupid puppy assumptions of comfort and prosperity! Where's my chilled wine? No ice? Give me some of this, give me some of that! You speak a few words of English, good for you! In a few years you will all speak our language and embrace our customs as your own. There is no other future. I can't blame the few angry ones, the few reticent ones. The familiar, sly ingratiation masking resentment and yes a kind of fuck you, you rich American pigs with your video cameras and spreading waist lines. (I'm getting drunk on Santorini home brew. Sweet, musty, potent red wine). Overhearing Americans talking who might just fucking well have stayed home in fucking America, their stupid twaddle about how Europeans owe us something! How they should be more honest! More polite! More civil! Meanwhile, our demands tax their supply and fill their streets and villages with an ugly clot of shoddy, made-for-tourists dogshit! In Tinos an unforgettable sight: a bloated tourist puppy getting his plump pink arms and shoulders rubbed down with sun tan lotion by his bloated puppy wife. Ah Christ! His shit eating squint-eyed grin of ecstasy! His smirking little wifey! By the end of the day, they both look like a couple of steamed prawns, burned and miserable. And I bet they didn't even leave Tinos Town...
High above Tinos, the old ones still press the olive and the grape, bake bread in stone hearths, tend the livestock, re-plaster the ancient whitewashed walls of their medieval villages, dance the old dance steps in the shady central squares, and doze at mid-day during siesta. Rented a motorcycle and rode high into the hills to see just this and hardly met a soul. Those few I met submitted warmly to my requests for photographs. I've taken over a thousand goddamn pictures since Lisbon! I have no idea of what I've got. In Tinos Town, my camera was stolen in the goddamned Bank of Greece of all places by (I think) employees of the bank. One moment of forgetfulness and it was gone, baby! I've had bad luck with cameras, one broken, one stolen, and finally I end up with a Kodak aim-and-shoot tourist puppy camera with fixed aperture and shutter speed, zero focusing options, no idea of what I'm getting now but it's better then nothing. Challenge: extracting high quality pictures from this primitive device.
A few hours later, after losing camera and filing police report, my eyes beheld the Megalokhari, the most sacred relic of Greek Christian Orthodoxy, an icon of the Virgin Mary encrusted with jewels and pearls, housed in the Panagia Evangelistria. Here also are to be found the hanging silver chalice lamps with their single flickering candle, underneath which hangs an icon of the body part healed or the material possession given thanks for, in their dozens, a beautiful, shimmering spectacle in the dimly lit church. I bought a few specimens in several of the religious trinket shops below the church. But this is piety in a simple, straight forward manner, gratitude for physical well being and for children, sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, even well running automobiles, rendered in a physically, universally understandable way, laid at the feet of the divinity and His intermediaries, with prayers and offerings. Icons everywhere of Christ, the Virgin, the Apostles, the old teachers and saints, beautifully illuminated in vivid colors and gold gilt (just the opposite of Islam with its prohibition against image making.) Greek Orthodoxy is perfectly suited to the Greek character: pious, passionate, volatile, reverent. There are hundreds, nay thousands of orthodox churches spread throughout the Greek Islands and mainland with their characteristic basilica and multi-tiered bell towers, blue domed and white washed. Rode high into village after village with names like Triandaros, Dio Hora, Potamia, Mirsini, and Steni Arnados.
From day book, Falatados village: 5/31/89
"On the Greek Island of Tinos, in the village of Falatados. I am sitting in the small, tree shaded square, where villagers drink, dance, and socialize. I have had my cup of strong Greek coffee and am awaiting lunch of salad, bread and retsina. It is mid day, cool and beautiful under the shade of the trees. The view before me is pristine rustic Greek Island countryside, terraced, sun splashed hills dotted with white washed houses and churches, a white washed village in the distance. White doves flash against the country greenery".
Back to Santorini, an island utterly blown to pieces by an ancient volcanic eruption, the same (some think) that destroyed Minoan Crete and the brilliant Minoan culture on Santorini (ancient Thira). Archeological museum shows the few, pathetic, brilliant fragments of their funerary rites, their handy work in pottery, marble, lavic stone, frescos and whatever was at hand to be fashioned into works of utility and beauty. The main island of Santorini curves away in a stony embrace of the ancient volcanic caldera (now an island called Nea Kameni) that created the original island and later blew it to pieces. Sheer volcanic cliffs rise out of the Aegean to spectacular heights. It's a crazy place to build a village, but there they are, white washed and strung out along the top right at the edge, in defiance of the next (possibly imminent) earthquake or volcanic eruption.
6/5/89
Of Venice, one is everywhere reminded of her faded past glory rather than her present beauty and charm, crumbling, faded palazzi on the Grand Canal, stately and colonnaded. St. Mark's Square turned into a vast back street warren of expensive shops: the sulphurous stench of the smaller canals deep within the city.
6/6/89
Stranded in Santorini. Delightful. Ferry to Heraklion cancelled because of bad weather. Must take 11:00 PM ferry to Agios Nikolaos instead. Meanwhile, here in the tiny port town of Athinios, nothing to do but eat and drink and watch my fellow puppies eat, drink and belch. Delightful. Piped in music from Zorba the Greek. Eating souvlaki and drinking good red wine. And now to linger here a bit. Bravo!
Befriended young American woman of Greek extraction by name of Demie (short for Demeter) from Washington DC. Young (29) attractive, we walk about Thira Town and talk up a storm, get kind of close and then bounce off each other the following morning at the youth hostel where we are both staying, she to a tour of the caldera, me to Vourvoulos Beach (again). Earlier, met Jill, young beautiful blond en route to Athens - Yugoslavia, from Baltimore. Wanted to travel with her and possess her, she seemed a little lost and vulnerable. Got phone number for future rendezvous.
The sheer, dizzying, multiplication of event after event; a face, a monument, a scintillating sunset over the Aegean, the incomprehensible babble of foreign tongues. Some of the Greek men down a few tables are playing guitar and singing - a kind of slow, sad, bittersweet strain of a kind I have not heard before in Greece. Rembetika?
6/7/89
Watching Howdy Doody and Buster Brown on early 50's box like black and white TV, what glimmer did I have that I would someday visit a place like Crete? In the early evening here in Heraklion, the bells from nearby Greek Orthodox churches chime, fall silent, and then chime again, a comfort, perhaps, against the coming uncertainty of night. At dawn (as I heard on approach to Agios Nikolaos this morning) they will chime again.
6/8/89
To Knossos, in the morning, after having viewed Minoan treasures at the archeological museum. In ceramic, painting, the fashioning of sacred icons and images, here was a people in touch with the swirling, ever playful, effusive flow of existence. In their frescos, the Minoans reveal themselves as a people of almost impeccable physical beauty, power and beauty combined with a childlike apprehension of the world about them. Not one physical representation shows a Minoan scowling in contrast to say, the Mayan codices or the rictus of otherworldly obsession in Egyptian painting, or even, as in Greek and Etruscan painting, the serene enigmatic smile, but a continence of wide eyed wonder and simple smiling pleasure in themselves and their world.
6/9/89
In Matala after nice bus ride from Heraklion. Well, if this ain't a pretty slice of paradise! Got room with complete bath including hot shower for 1200 drachmas. That's about as good (& cheap) as it gets in this former hippie hangout. Matala built at the end of a deep cove on the Mediterranean. Blue-green waves roll and crash. Took my first swim in these waters, sandstone cliffs tower all around and to the right are the famous Matala caves - home to the 60's flower children now abandoned but picturesque. Later hiked up over near barren, moon-like landscape to Red Beach for some pleasant nude sunbathing. Beautiful young women, children, a gay couple, all floating serenely in the buff, a very pleasant, suspended moment of innocence, when all the horrors and stupidities of the outside world fell away. Crete looks to be, perhaps more than any other place I've seen, the pure elemental essence of Gaia, a place hot, dry, and harsh and yet incredibly fertile; grapes, olives, oranges, flowers and herbs grow in profusion; another near perfect conjunction of heaven, earth, and sky. Man is not outside this formula here but an integral part; tending, nurturing, and cultivating. Heraklion of course is a malignancy unto death, its gritty stench flows beyond its boundaries to besmirch the countryside with smog and noise, unto the very precincts of Knossos and beyond while here in Matala, the late afternoon light strikes the higher cliffs and hills and rebounds into a pure blue sky. Streamers of light fall obliquely through the hyacinth blossoms before me. Am now eating Greek fast food at its finest - gyros, French fries, olives, red wine. Late afternoon in Crete - it's a good place to be. The hyacinth blossoms look like an impressionistic painting.
6/11/89
Another day of random exploration, this time to as many of the small mountainous and coastal villages as I had time to visit. Main visit was to the small fishing village Lendas (ancient Lebena) where the beautiful ruins of a temple to Asclepius lies just behind the village. I counted twelve pillar bases and a number of broken and toppled marble pillars. Two remain upright, enclosed by a fence. A spring, said to have had healing powers, once flowed here. Good Christians have built a little church on one of the foundations of the temple. Got more powerful dirt bike to negotiate rough mountain roads. Drove high into the hills for breathtaking views of mountains and valleys, plunging towards sedate plains, many fertile and in cultivation. Drove into hill and mountain villages some, it seemed, barely clinging to existence, others bravely trying to modernize in ways that were unsightly if not down right ugly, with numerous box like concrete structures, mostly unfinished. But the old rural ways and rustic village houses and livestock enclosures were still very much a part of every village. Smell of manure, black-shawled old ladies knitting or baking bread, the men sitting in the tree shaded square with café, drinking, playing cards or backgammon and loudly conversing. Villages with names like Pitsidia, Sivas, Pombia, Petrokefali, Antiskari, Mires. Watershed patterns very conspicuous in a twisted, turning and folded pattern of valleys, gorges, and ravines, giving the landscape as a whole a starkly rough-hewn appearance. Towering solid rock precipices everywhere, bare in most places or covered with a tough, desert-like scrub flora, much of it in flower, fragrant and beautiful. Indeed Crete is a splendid desert paradise; one only needs to retreat into the shade, anywhere, to escape the heat. Villagers look on with curiosity as I stop and walk about. Some (the elderly) wary and reticent of outsiders intruding into their midst on loud, whining motorcycle. But friendliness comes quickly with a smile and a nod in their direction. I take photos as discretely as possible, pay for my indiscretion by being waved angrily away (as in Lendas), or showered with Greek expletives (as in Rethymnon), my only rational being (as I gently trespass in Antiskari): this is all passing away, rapidly and slowly, even as we sit here on a quiet afternoon (as in Sivas) quaffing raki and eating peanuts and slices of cucumber, drinking a toast to the sweet old man who refills my glass, this, as I say, is passing from the world and I wish only for the privilege of bearing away some faint, inadequate trace of it before it is gone altogether.
The old man in full Cretan male get up approaches me in a nameless mountain village, comes forward painfully, white mustachioed, bent; his eyes meet mine from a distance. As I raise my camera, he stops, smiles broadly, waits for the shutter to trip, then grabs my hand warmly as we pass, with warm salutations in Greek. The epic narrative of this island, in heroic or other suitable verse, awaits to be written, taking altogether history, culture, geology, climate, flora and fauna; in short, the rocky substrate and all that moves and grows upon it in an endless, immemorial flow; past, present and future.
6/14/89
In Plakias, after Rethymnon. At the beach. Beautiful, bare breasted women, their breasts bobbing and swinging as they walk. Rethymnon touristed out - crowded, expensive, noisy. Back to the simple conjunction of land and sea. Two small mountain villages, Myrthios and Sellia, look down from the north and east. More explorations tomorrow. Today given over to lazy swimming and sun bathing on a large beach surrounded on three sides by craggy mountains and cliffs. Have taken refuge under scrub cedar, surrounded by sandstone blocks and smoothed over stone. Surf. Soughing wind.
6/20/89 Plakias, trieste Plakias. Later.
Arrived in Sparta, south central Peloponnese after journeying from Kastelli, Crete to Neapolis. First thing I saw after disembarking from bus was a young boy with a withered left foot, just the kind of child the ancient Spartans would have exposed on a mountainside. Modern Sparta is a squat, unsightly sprawl, in many ways a typical Pelopponese city. But there is true character here and intensely lived lives. Got room and had dinner, then followed the signs at dusk to ancient Sparta one kilometer north of town. Not much left to see, a few crumbling walls, the remains of a small agora, the eroded and tumbled down remains of a theater said at one time to have been the largest in Greece. But impressive because this after all is Sparta, one of the most formidable military powers of ancient times and the nemesis of ancient Athens. All that is worth seeing is enclosed within an olive grove. It was quiet and peaceful, if not a little eerie in the failing light. Bats flittered overhead. There are no fences, no guards, no booths selling tickets to the precious ruins of Sparta. Everything is left quite open and untended. Returned to the modern city to watch the promenade on the public square. Hundreds of people young and old (mostly men) sauntering casually to and fro along the square or as "Lets Go" puts it, "evening strollers, all-dressed-up-with-no-place-to-go pace and, after a moment, pause, then retrace their steps". It all seemed a rather delightful sight, something you would never see in America, the casual warm socializing, children gamboling about.
6/21/04
Visited the museum in Sparta. The weird, marvelous votive masks; snarls, grimaces, devilish grins - the Spartans were definitely in touch with the irrational. Something cruel, twisted and primitive, the smirking and arrogance even as their society is crumbling. Numerous depictions of chthonic deities with snakes or just snakes in bas-relief. In complete contrast to the Minoans. No hint of wonder or playfulness or even the sturdy grace of the human form as in Greek sculpture but a dark, unswerving purpose.
Backlog:
1. Sneaking into the Theater of Dionysus below the Acropolis at night to drink retsina.
2. My remarkable young friend Driss in Sidi Kacem.
3. Fado in Lisbon.
4. The pre-historic cave paintings in Les Eyzies, at the Grotte de Font-de-Gaume.
5. Discovery of astragali in Neolithic, Greek, Roman and Near Eastern usages; the huge bronze sculpted simulacrum in the Louvre.
6. Venice.
7. Drinking vodka with the Polish workers on the late train from Venice to Athens.
8. French boys getting me stoned on the night train between Narbonne and Toulouse.
9. Belgrade
10.Plakias - Anna
11.Granada - the Alhambra.
12.Bicycling through the Dordogne region in
Southern France.
13. Delphi
6/22/89
To the ruins of ancient Mycenae. On a small plateau between two huge hills the mighty house of Atreus commands a stupendous view of the surrounding countryside even unto the shores of the Aegean far in the distance. Huge foundation stones are all that basically remain. There are scattered remains of a surprisingly small throne room on top with a nearly obliterated temple of Athene. You are ushered into the remains through the exquisite Lions Gate, supported by massive stone pillars and lintel. The two lions, now headless, rear up on hind legs and rest their forepaws on a bas relies support. It would seem that the lost lion's heads looked down fiercely on the approaching citizen. Inside and to the right is grave circle "A" royal burial place. Outside the gate and to the left are the tombs of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, in the so-called beehive tholos immense conical structures. The tomb of Aegisthus has collapsed, made entirely of huge stone blocks. Down the road a bit found the Treasury of Atreus (another perfectly intact bee hive tholos) and the so-called Tomb of Agamemnon within, site of Henry Miller's famous vastation - his stunning description in The Colossus of Maroussi came to mind as I stumbled across the threshold waving a flashlight in the pitch blackness. There were no worlds waiting to be smashed to smithereens as I stepped into the giant world of Story, a world of kings and heroes, illicit loves, murder, matricide, incest, revenge, the furies of conscience, the lifting of a divine curse, none of this but the idiotic babble of tourist puppies and the pompous lectures of their puppy guides - this way, ladies and gentlemen - blah blah - and then out again to stumble aimlessly about or pose for pictures.
6/30/89
Home tomorrow. In Athens last three days. Revisited the Agora, a fitting pilgrimage before departing Greece. Stumbled about in blazing mid-day amongst the ruined foundations of temples and public buildings and nice heaps of stone the archeologists have made. Not so much to tread the same ground as say, Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle but to pass through and beyond the same spatial coordinates as they did on what would have been for them a typically hot, sunny day in the marketplace. Could everything have happened just here on this relatively small piece of ground? Trials, speeches, plots, intrigue, dialog, democracy, triumph, decline. Some of the best new ideas of the world from this place? It looks more like a bombed out stone quarry than the birthplace of western intellectual ferment. The Athens - Piraeus subway cuts through the very spot where Socrates was tried. A small cluster of ruins lies beside the track and are closed to the public. From the Agora you can see two jurist styled seats carved out of stone where, one imagines, two of Socrates' accusers sat. There is the splendid Temple of Hephaistos of course, overlooking the dusty ruins. Ignoring boundaries again, I skipped over the rope barriers, climbed the old marble steps, and past over the threshold - fateful moment! - into the temple interior. Cool and dark, a soft wind buffeted my face, bird cries echoed of the old stone walls, sanctuary from the intense heat outside. A moment of peace before the guard's shrill whistle summoned me - fateful moment! - back out onto the Hades-like heat. Much like at Delphi at the Temple of Apollo where only pillars remain, beyond the threshold where, just here, the Pythian Oracle sat and pronounced for a thousand years. Delphi, another place more hallucinated then real - reconstruction allows us to marvel at a place of great power and beauty.
So. Knossos, Phaistos, Aghia Triada, Epidaurus. Argos, Mycenae, Tiryns, Corinth, Delphi, Athens - how proud they must have been! Places where I knew for a certainty that I was treading on sacred ground. How assured the vision and steadfast the hands that raised these places!
It would strain a comparison with Odysseus, but I, like him, like any sojourner out of his accustomed place and time, turn my face homeward, bearing the treasures and tokens of sojourning to those left behind so long ago.
Later Journal Entries
9/10/90
This is my first journal entry of a return trip to Europe, to commence sometime in the fall of 1991 (or sooner). What I am visualizing is a no-frills vagabonding tour of Portugal, North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), southern Spain, Italy, Sicily, a more prolonged exploration of the Greek islands and Crete, and finally Western Turkey. My first stop will be Lisbon for sentimental reasons, a city that will always be dear to my heart. And then the open road. No Eurail this time but more hitching and buses, trains only occasionally. Also more hostelling and camping out. Preparations will include getting more physically fit (running and working out), liquidating some personal possessions, and study of places to be visited. My first trip to Europe has provided me with the knowledge and confidence of traveling to foreign places. I’m now completely at ease with the thought of casual travel from country to country.
9/14/90
On track via travel plans, start new job tomorrow.
Temporary/permanent, twenty minutes away, $5.75/hr. but freedom , can wear jeans, T-shirt, old boots. Money to live and 1.) pay off credit card balance 2.) modest investment in camera and photo stuff 3.) travel bucks for Europe, yes and/or South-Central America. Also hear the call of Canadian expanses - Northwest Pacific, closer to M.R. yes? Start getting rid of stuff - yard sales, give away, whatever. Meanwhile, I have found secluded mandala on Wye Island, a shrine, observatory, and refuge. Camped there last Saturday night. Way back behind old field, high off the Wye River, stars and planets peeking out, high wind in trees and wonderful chorus of night sounds. Read, meditate, write, study. Learning French via cassette home study and workbook. Anthropology, Buddhism - Shamanism, photography, natural history, deep ecology. Running, dieting, laying off too much booze. Aim: clear and calm.
Spain/Morocco-February 1996
2/5/96
Madrid
It should be noted that the area in Morocco I plan to visit has been officially deemed "risky" by a State Department travel advisory. That is, the Rif Mountains and environs. Also, it is the month of Ramadan in the Islamic world. Privation, poverty, and an inclination to be not so friendly towards affluent Christian westerners does not recommend itself to travel there.
2/6/96
Algeciras
Here after a hellishly long train ride from Madrid. Am met at the station by Javier, who manages the Hotel Rif. Nice fellow and I need a place quick. He shows me a room - your basic no frills hostel type accommodation. Algeciras is much as I remember it; crumbling, raunchy, with a smell of sewage and trash everywhere. Went out and had a beer, served by beautiful, decadent, red-hair-cropped-short bar maid with "beat to the bottom of your heart" embroidered on her blouse. Her looks (a few) in my direction are cool and appraising. I aim to kick about town tomorrow and snap some nice touristy pics of this place before taking the ferry to Tangier.
2/6/96
2130 or so in Tangier after very rough crossing, lots of officious bullshit on board and at the port what with passport checks, being made to wait in ferry hold while big trucks unloaded and then, running the gauntlet of dockside hustlers ah me what an uproar. With me are two Canadian fellows I met and befriended, first time travelers to Morocco, a little green and totally unprepared for what is to come and I kinda feel responsible for them. Oh yes and it's Ramadan and the streets of the medina are packed with sights and sounds the intensity of which I had forgotten. Our new made Moroccan interlopers are pressing us at every step. I fend them off somewhat by telling them I've been here before. Nothing to do but stay cool and ride it out. The crush of people, the noise, the utter third world destitution of the crumbling filth ridden streets are a lot to comprehend all at once. And our would be guides are unshakable. We make our way slowly up into the medina to the Grand Socco and in slight desperation duck into a small café, where we are cheerfully followed. Lots of shouting and carrying on. I order three mint teas and slowly the hubbub subsides. An old man serves us harira - spicy bean soup traditionally eaten to break the Ramadan fast, and when the dust settles, we are left with the fellow who is to be our self-appointed guide, "Mustapha".
Portugal - November 1997
11/5/97
In Lisbon after smooth flight from Newark - only just look as all of New York city drops off behind your right shoulder. It's raining heavily now outside my cozy room in the Arco Banderiea, nice and cheap, (1200 Escudos), all the Praca places were much more. It's all strange again, but these are the hard raps needed to demolish the cocoon a bit: an amazing, polyglot city, young African women of stunning beauty are everywhere, also women of mixed African - Portuguese ancestry; tall, slim, gorgeously built and complexioned. There's a hard edge to the city that wasn't here before. People are cool and in a hurry. Young men stand on street corners jabbering into cell phones, homeless men lie in cardboard boxes in the center of the Praca, crazed old men walk up and babble at me incoherently. Things to be expected in any large city but in Lisbon it seems out of place. Or it could be that I have become more hard-edged and cynical and these things get tuned in more easily? All human appetites are catered to, some openly, others in back streets away from public view. The ubiquitous Moroccan guy trying to sell you something "cheap", could it be the same one that was here three years ago? A vision of hell: wandering the crowded, indifferent streets of a foreign city for eternity, trying to sell worthless junk that nobody wants, abjection as a way of existence, perpetually. Foreigner as scapegoat: we've changed from the gentle people we were and it's your fault. Expo'98 to be here next June. New construction everywhere, men labor in muck to what end? Corrupting influx of a profane and greedy culture, from outside. But there are still the good old things here that I love about Lisbon. Techno-beat has supplanted Fado. I didn't hear it once in the record stores down in the Rossio or Praca, but I did see fabulous CD collections - hundreds - in one store. Been here just less than 24 hours, readjusting diurnal rhythms. Need sleep. I'm fifty. Forty the first time. Themes of disintegration.
11/9/97
Vejer de la Frontera
Been here since Friday night. Fascinating, delightful place. Heavy rains nearly made Lisbon a washout. Crossed the Tejo River into Barriero only to learn that a railway bridge further south had been washed out, NO trains to Villa Real! back across the Tejo into Lisbon where the sun breaks through just for me. Stow my backpack and head for the Mouraria/Alfama where I manage to get off a roll of infrared black and white, have no idea if this little experiment is working. The window of sunshine doesn't last long, soon it's raining again. I head back to Barriero. The authorities have devised a plan for busing passengers around the washed out bridge. We arrive in Tunes to continue our train south to Faro. I arrive at a dark and shuttered Villa Real at one thirty in the morning. Wander around the monstrous grid of streets in slight desperation. Some kids out late direct me to a hotel at the far end of town where I get a room for 5000 Escudos. I had the foresight to provision myself with food back in Lisbon so I have shower and meal watching whacky Portuguese late night television. Next day, a tugboat ferry ride across the Guadiana River to Ayamonte. New construction everywhere obscures my memory of the place from eight years ago. More rain. Change my Escudos for Pesetas and then off to Huelva looking for my elusive connection to Vejer de la Frontera. On to Sevilla. Success! Run into my first hustle at the old bus station in downtown Sevilla. Kid walks up and says he needs just 100 more pesetas for bus to Algeciras. The pesky little bastard is practically shouting as I buy my ticket for Vejer. This time the language barrier works in my favor as I gibber at him and he tries to gibber back. I finally brush him off and he melts back into the street hustler twilight of the old Sevilla bus station. Two and a half hours later I step off the bus onto main street Vejer with feelings of relief that my trip is back on schedule. Here's a first - use my Visa card to extract 5000 pesetas from local ATM. No place to change traveler's checks at this hour so what a relief to see five new 1000 peseta notes roll out of the machine into my eager hands! I re-provision myself at the little corner mercado and get a room at nearby Posada Hotel. I do a little late night exploring around the narrow maze-like streets and alleys.
Peru - May 2003
5/21/03
Layover in Newark awaiting flight to Lima, a longish four hours. Heightened terrorist alert, "orange". Splendid milling about of early 21st century American denizens, all ethnicities and lots of poopy white folks, cell phone bedecked like me. Dozens of disembodied conversations, like stairways to nowhere.
Rain. Fog. Somehow, one must generate new information.
Deep space over Cusco, the nightly procession of stars never seen before, old Northern lights obscured by passage across the equator. Awoke this morning from exquisite burnished titanium dream painstakingly riveted. Each rivet and sheet was a conversation with mildly sinister forces. The artifact dissolved in wakefulness. Wine and the alchemist's elixir mingle with a fusion of sunlight through the airliner window. Over water now. Gulf of Mexico?
6:45 PM
Flying over the Gulf of Panama I saw a brilliant dagger of light in the darkening sky that ended in boiling clouds of orange and pink. Marks for me the passing into primeval earthly realms.
Lima 11:00 PM
The Lima airport is a major local hangout when the big international flights come in. They congregate in the hundreds. From ground floor to mezzanine they lean forward behind barriers and ogle you like a movie star. I manage to change some money and ease into a little Internet eatery. I sip a local brew and dash off email dispatches to Michelle and Mike.
Their faces! Burnished bronze, a hint of the Inca lurking beneath, while one cannot forget that Pizarro the Destroyer is also their progenitor. I lugged along entirely too much stuff, even my cell phone, which is useless here. A worker in the Galleria touches me with her kindness and beauty. Something pitch perfect in the way her face registers curiosity and a willingness to be drawn into deeper intimacies. Americans and Europeans are uniformly squint eyed and disreputable looking. The retro appearance of this place, like an old American '50s bus station waiting room. 5/22/03
And now to enjoy the delights of Cusco. Spectacular views of the snow capped Andes on the flight from Lima. Then a wild ride from the airport through funky down-at-the-heels Cusco in early morning chill. The cold and altitude left me catching my breath before retiring at (expensive) hotel room for much needed rest. Now at mid day surveying brilliant sun flooded Plaza de Armas from restaurant balcony with beer and cig. Altitude no problem so far. Policia Natcional and army guys on every street corner. I begin to feel the effects of sensory overload though. Beautiful textiles and crafts strike an agreeably covetous cord. Tourista carrying capacity here quite large and manageable so far. And oh yes, the beautiful live pan pipe music that greeted us at the airport this morning. Time to wander aimlessly again.
Chewing Coca Leaf
Photo by Jacques Henry
Coca tea (mate de coca) to lift the spirits and order the thoughts and ruminations. This is good tea! Illegal in America of course. A good red wine will top the bill later. Fatigue blends agreeably with tea and intoxicating sunlight.
As I said before, one must generate new information out of what is merely given, to be hammered out and fashioned into shiny new ingots. What is given is a fullness, a generosity of place. Analogies from weaving and metallurgy come naturally to mind: weft and weave, striking new alloys from the merging of exotic metals. You are the
weaver's loom, the alchemist's furnace.
The near harsh sun at noontime gives way to more subdued mountain light ala Chaouen. The buff colored stones and tiles of the Cathedral bleed into earth tones suggested by some of the vegetable died textiles. Everything here is a corollary of everything else. Boundaries merge together and are lost. With enough time and coca leaf tea, you could recreate the great Amer-Indian cultures on this very spot. And now words must lend themselves to new meanings that create new grammars. Puissant magic.
5/23/03
Brilliant, brilliant beautiful sunlight. Brilliant Inca sunshine! The Inca lived and breathed it like mana, then set out to create their extraordinary civilization. Their descendents sell hamburgers in the Cusco gallerias. The contrast between the Cathedral spires and big fluffy white ones almost hurts the eyes.
The great civilizations always found their beasts of burden close at hand; the Spaniards the horse, the Bedouins the camel, the Inca the llama.
To the Central Market today. Absolutely splendid. A stupendous archetype of human barter and exchange. It would take months to catalog its contents. It is huge, the biggest of such markets I have ever seen, an acre or more, covered in sheets of corrugated plastic that act as sky lights and spilling out into the street. Everything from piglet carcasses to needle and thread to exquisite woven textiles. Standing, sitting and milling about in their hundreds are the Andean salt of the earth.
5/25/03
Sacsayhuaman. Ahem. Later.
Preparations, both hurried and unhurried, have brought me to the departure point to Machu Picchu via Augas Calientes. Here at 5 AM in Cusco San Pedro station, leaving at 6:30. Two slight (so far) infirmities, lower GI distress and a mild cold. Am sipping a delicious Taza de Leche. One little pitcher of highly concentrated café which you dilute to your pleasure with a big jug of warm milk. Add sugar. The bread sellers are out first, in the market across from the station, stacks of big round loaves, as daylight breaks over the mountains in the distance. All aboard, a bright and beautiful day ahead!
Peru April - May 2004
4/21/04
Back to Peru!
Airborne over lower Chesapeake Bay at the beginning of this seven hour flight to Lima, then morning flight to Cusco as before. Drinking white wine and admiring the view: complex mud flat islands interlaced with dozens of little streams and inlets. In flight movie: lame, idiotic, useless. America’s fodder. The pleasure of defecating at 31,000 feet.
4/23/04
In Cusco, standing in the pure streaming light, beautiful and intense at 11,000 feet. No soroche thank god. And the weather forecasts were all wrong! Now for a day of aimless wandering about in this old magical city.
5/3/04
The air feels thinner today. Piñatas of light cartwheel through my head when I close my eyes. I want to be close to a center of learning: maps, books, stars, geography, explorer's accounts, art, music, culture. Break the old vessels and fashion new ones, clear the mind of all former presumptions, peel away the layers of illusion. A catalog of all things seen, heard, felt and tasted, resolved into a single essence. Send forth the brilliance of your awakening! The Old Ones' nudge was always towards brilliant sanity.
5/4/04
Motorcycle trip through the Sacred Valley, now in Cararo on market day. Gorgeous, unique items, amazing native people! Some village names: Rayanniyoc, Huancalle, Taray, Qoya, Lamay, Calca, Urcos, Huran, Huayocari, Yuccay.
5/15/04
Hospedaje
Sumaq T'ikaq
Tanda Pata 114
Back in Cusco. The above delightful little hostel nestled deep within San Blas. Long looks that linger. Bright sunshine with cloud mottled sky. (Ricaudi-Quechua for "tomorrow.") With me are Delphina and Yanette, two lovely sweet young women who follow me around, teaching me Spanish and Quechua which they both speak fluently, naturally, and try to get me to buy their stuff - hand made dolls from Delphina, and beautiful woven belts from Yanette and so, buy I do.
5/18/04
One travels to seek corroboration, to take the serendipitous random walk through a city, across a landscape, along the features of the face of a stranger. When all these things are in agreement, one can be said to have acquired corroboration. But this process does not come to an end, rather, your search for corroboration is re-aligned into more precise forms of inquiry. That is why it has been fruitful to come here for the past three years. Trials and tribulations await - I can sense them with a blind man's fumbling touch - but the price of corroboration is taking risks. You must do so while cultivating forbearance and compassion, and always, gratitude. Then you may sit serenely with your coca leaf, your cigarette, your glass of wine and experience the quiet euphoria of assimilation. Must learn Spanish and at least some Quechua!
Now eating breakfast on balcony overlooking Calle Plateros, a bright, beautiful day.
Today, get train ticket for Aguas Caliente/Machu Picchu. Tomorrow, second tour the Sacred Valley on motorcycle. Delphina, pretty young native woman follows me around. What does she want? More than I should buy her street wares (dolls, woven belts, CD-Rs that don't work.) Maybe that I should marry her and take her back to America?
(The Incas by Garcillaso De La Vega - Inca myths.)
5/20/04
San Pedro station awaiting train to Aguas Caliente. Sky just lighting up behind Cusco, bright and cloudless. My third privileged trip to Machu Picchu in as many years. Serene physical well being. Thank you Apus! Conclusion of third tour of Sacred Valley yesterday, drinking corn beer (chicha) with campesino family outside of Maras in the shadow of immense glacier capped mountains. Grande montanas!
The night sky
The cultivated earth
Sun arcing in over mountains
Rio Sinuento
Urabamba?
Campesino mud brick village at the confluence, old Inca stonework, terraces, Ollantaytambo. Bananas, mangos, tortillas, corn, fat kernelled and long eared. Choco-corn con queso.
Mountain steeped in abundance
Eye travels from meadow
Wild flower to immense
Glaciered massif to glacier fed streams
Writing now from Machu Picchu in full view of its splendid ruins. I'm high up, tucked away in a cornice. It does induce tranquility and wonder, even amongst the tramp of innumerable tourist feet. It is overcast, mist and cloud obscuring the distant high valleys.
The sheer stone fastness of this place - a million interlocking stones create a stunning wholeness that can be broken down and subdivided into any number of pleasing fractal integers. The beautiful repeating pattern of descending terraces and staircases. How it must have pleased the Inca master builders to watch it all take shape. A hundred places provide unique settings for observation and contemplation. Move five feet in any direction and your view point changes completely. All ringed about by massifs that dwarf the human scale. A new definition of immensity.
Now back in Aguas Caliente, "Gringo Bill's" again, room 31, $20 a night, cozy and happy. Reading Hiram Bingham's Lost City of the Incas, his excellent account of discovery. Back up to the ruins early tomorrow. Price of admission has gone up-$26-and they only take soles. Big noisy disrespectful crowds of tourist idiots spoil the experience a bit.
5/22/04 Earth Day!...for what it's worth.
In search of Adrian Flores - master of the Andean harp. Heard him perform in Aguas Caliente after waving him and his roving band of musicians into the restaurant where I was dining. Suburb! Gave them a nice tip and asked if they had a CD. One of the boys came back shortly with a CD that was not an original but crummy CD-R copy. Can only listen to first five tracts (out of twelve) the rest skip or don't play at all on my portable CD player. There is something haunting and bittersweet in his music that I like very much. So am looking around for some original CDs by him.
Chewed coca leaf at Machu Picchu yesterday. It seemed fitting. Coca is such a sweet elixir. Felt calm and uplifted for the rest of an arduous exploration of the ruins, up and down many flights of old stone stairways. Earlier that morning sat in awe as sunrise broke over MP, first illuminating the old stones with a bronzed incandescence, then lighting up the whole place like a glowing ember. Someone played zaponas pipe music higher up on the ramparts like an incantation. Got out just as the mongrel tourist hordes were arriving.
Adios, Machu Picchu. Thank you Apus.
5/23/04
Third sojourn up the Sacred Valley on brand new Honda 250cc dirt bike which nearly ended in disaster. The day, pristine picture perfect.
Hypnagogic Pachatata - Father Earth
weaver's loom, the alchemist's furnace.
The near harsh sun at noontime gives way to more subdued mountain light ala Chaouen. The buff colored stones and tiles of the Cathedral bleed into earth tones suggested by some of the vegetable died textiles. Everything here is a corollary of everything else. Boundaries merge together and are lost. With enough time and coca leaf tea, you could recreate the great Amer-Indian cultures on this very spot. And now words must lend themselves to new meanings that create new grammars. Puissant magic.
5/23/03
Brilliant, brilliant beautiful sunlight. Brilliant Inca sunshine! The Inca lived and breathed it like mana, then set out to create their extraordinary civilization. Their descendents sell hamburgers in the Cusco gallerias. The contrast between the Cathedral spires and big fluffy white ones almost hurts the eyes.
The great civilizations always found their beasts of burden close at hand; the Spaniards the horse, the Bedouins the camel, the Inca the llama.
To the Central Market today. Absolutely splendid. A stupendous archetype of human barter and exchange. It would take months to catalog its contents. It is huge, the biggest of such markets I have ever seen, an acre or more, covered in sheets of corrugated plastic that act as sky lights and spilling out into the street. Everything from piglet carcasses to needle and thread to exquisite woven textiles. Standing, sitting and milling about in their hundreds are the Andean salt of the earth.
5/25/03
Sacsayhuaman. Ahem. Later.
Preparations, both hurried and unhurried, have brought me to the departure point to Machu Picchu via Augas Calientes. Here at 5 AM in Cusco San Pedro station, leaving at 6:30. Two slight (so far) infirmities, lower GI distress and a mild cold. Am sipping a delicious Taza de Leche. One little pitcher of highly concentrated café which you dilute to your pleasure with a big jug of warm milk. Add sugar. The bread sellers are out first, in the market across from the station, stacks of big round loaves, as daylight breaks over the mountains in the distance. All aboard, a bright and beautiful day ahead!
Peru April - May 2004
4/21/04
Back to Peru!
Airborne over lower Chesapeake Bay at the beginning of this seven hour flight to Lima, then morning flight to Cusco as before. Drinking white wine and admiring the view: complex mud flat islands interlaced with dozens of little streams and inlets. In flight movie: lame, idiotic, useless. America’s fodder. The pleasure of defecating at 31,000 feet.
4/23/04
In Cusco, standing in the pure streaming light, beautiful and intense at 11,000 feet. No soroche thank god. And the weather forecasts were all wrong! Now for a day of aimless wandering about in this old magical city.
5/3/04
The air feels thinner today. Piñatas of light cartwheel through my head when I close my eyes. I want to be close to a center of learning: maps, books, stars, geography, explorer's accounts, art, music, culture. Break the old vessels and fashion new ones, clear the mind of all former presumptions, peel away the layers of illusion. A catalog of all things seen, heard, felt and tasted, resolved into a single essence. Send forth the brilliance of your awakening! The Old Ones' nudge was always towards brilliant sanity.
5/4/04
Motorcycle trip through the Sacred Valley, now in Cararo on market day. Gorgeous, unique items, amazing native people! Some village names: Rayanniyoc, Huancalle, Taray, Qoya, Lamay, Calca, Urcos, Huran, Huayocari, Yuccay.
5/15/04
Hospedaje
Sumaq T'ikaq
Tanda Pata 114
Back in Cusco. The above delightful little hostel nestled deep within San Blas. Long looks that linger. Bright sunshine with cloud mottled sky. (Ricaudi-Quechua for "tomorrow.") With me are Delphina and Yanette, two lovely sweet young women who follow me around, teaching me Spanish and Quechua which they both speak fluently, naturally, and try to get me to buy their stuff - hand made dolls from Delphina, and beautiful woven belts from Yanette and so, buy I do.
5/18/04
One travels to seek corroboration, to take the serendipitous random walk through a city, across a landscape, along the features of the face of a stranger. When all these things are in agreement, one can be said to have acquired corroboration. But this process does not come to an end, rather, your search for corroboration is re-aligned into more precise forms of inquiry. That is why it has been fruitful to come here for the past three years. Trials and tribulations await - I can sense them with a blind man's fumbling touch - but the price of corroboration is taking risks. You must do so while cultivating forbearance and compassion, and always, gratitude. Then you may sit serenely with your coca leaf, your cigarette, your glass of wine and experience the quiet euphoria of assimilation. Must learn Spanish and at least some Quechua!
Now eating breakfast on balcony overlooking Calle Plateros, a bright, beautiful day.
Today, get train ticket for Aguas Caliente/Machu Picchu. Tomorrow, second tour the Sacred Valley on motorcycle. Delphina, pretty young native woman follows me around. What does she want? More than I should buy her street wares (dolls, woven belts, CD-Rs that don't work.) Maybe that I should marry her and take her back to America?
(The Incas by Garcillaso De La Vega - Inca myths.)
5/20/04
San Pedro station awaiting train to Aguas Caliente. Sky just lighting up behind Cusco, bright and cloudless. My third privileged trip to Machu Picchu in as many years. Serene physical well being. Thank you Apus! Conclusion of third tour of Sacred Valley yesterday, drinking corn beer (chicha) with campesino family outside of Maras in the shadow of immense glacier capped mountains. Grande montanas!
The night sky
The cultivated earth
Sun arcing in over mountains
Rio Sinuento
Urabamba?
Campesino mud brick village at the confluence, old Inca stonework, terraces, Ollantaytambo. Bananas, mangos, tortillas, corn, fat kernelled and long eared. Choco-corn con queso.
Mountain steeped in abundance
Eye travels from meadow
Wild flower to immense
Glaciered massif to glacier fed streams
Writing now from Machu Picchu in full view of its splendid ruins. I'm high up, tucked away in a cornice. It does induce tranquility and wonder, even amongst the tramp of innumerable tourist feet. It is overcast, mist and cloud obscuring the distant high valleys.
The sheer stone fastness of this place - a million interlocking stones create a stunning wholeness that can be broken down and subdivided into any number of pleasing fractal integers. The beautiful repeating pattern of descending terraces and staircases. How it must have pleased the Inca master builders to watch it all take shape. A hundred places provide unique settings for observation and contemplation. Move five feet in any direction and your view point changes completely. All ringed about by massifs that dwarf the human scale. A new definition of immensity.
Now back in Aguas Caliente, "Gringo Bill's" again, room 31, $20 a night, cozy and happy. Reading Hiram Bingham's Lost City of the Incas, his excellent account of discovery. Back up to the ruins early tomorrow. Price of admission has gone up-$26-and they only take soles. Big noisy disrespectful crowds of tourist idiots spoil the experience a bit.
5/22/04 Earth Day!...for what it's worth.
In search of Adrian Flores - master of the Andean harp. Heard him perform in Aguas Caliente after waving him and his roving band of musicians into the restaurant where I was dining. Suburb! Gave them a nice tip and asked if they had a CD. One of the boys came back shortly with a CD that was not an original but crummy CD-R copy. Can only listen to first five tracts (out of twelve) the rest skip or don't play at all on my portable CD player. There is something haunting and bittersweet in his music that I like very much. So am looking around for some original CDs by him.
Chewed coca leaf at Machu Picchu yesterday. It seemed fitting. Coca is such a sweet elixir. Felt calm and uplifted for the rest of an arduous exploration of the ruins, up and down many flights of old stone stairways. Earlier that morning sat in awe as sunrise broke over MP, first illuminating the old stones with a bronzed incandescence, then lighting up the whole place like a glowing ember. Someone played zaponas pipe music higher up on the ramparts like an incantation. Got out just as the mongrel tourist hordes were arriving.Adios, Machu Picchu. Thank you Apus.
5/23/04
Third sojourn up the Sacred Valley on brand new Honda 250cc dirt bike which nearly ended in disaster. The day, pristine picture perfect.
Hypnagogic Pachatata - Father Earth
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