August 19, 2006
my 35 hour escapade home: The Turkish airport bus is the only competent transit agency between Istanbul & Oakland. 30 minutes sharp from Taksim to Atatürk Havalimani. Turkish Airways wasn’t honestly that bad except for being late taking off, thereby compressing my 35 minute layover even more. Made it, miraculously, to the next gate in Rome just in time to get in line. They boarded us, and we sat. Turns out someone had checked 2 bags & then never gotten on the plane, so they had to find those bags & remove them. By then we’d missed our window for flying over France & had to wait for another permission. Arrived very late to Chicago, by which time they’d lost my bags (perhaps that was Turkish Air’s fault too) & i’d missed my flight to San Jose. They put me on the next flight to San Jose three hours later, which put me arriving after 11pm, too late to catch public transit to Oakland, and I didn’t have anyone’s phone numbers to call for a ride, so I camped out behind a church, in short sleeves (since, remember, I didn’t have my bags) till 5am & caught the first bus, first subway to Berkeley then. Nice breakfast with real coffee… now i’m decompressing a little.
I’ll perhaps write about my actual time in Istanbul soon, but for now I’m gonna lay low.
July 27, 2006
It’s been a while I know. I’m in Istanbul, Aliah’s gone on to Tajikistan & is now officially in the sticks. No cellphone service, mon dieu!
Hmm to summarize the last two weeks:
Our time in Vranje (Serbia) was great. We met a very sweet cab driver, Dalibor, who became our fairy godfather, along with his lady Sanja. (There’s a strange gender error somewhere in that sentence, I’m certain.) They translated for us, took us all over town (& back & forth to Vranjska Banja, where we stayed mostly), & even set up a TV appearance for Slavic Soul Party (our friends we were kickin it with there). Somehow, and they couldn’t explain it either, in this town where very few people seem to work (and certainly not those under 35), everyone seems to have both lots of free time & some disposable income. See, Communism worked!
SSP invited me to join them in working with Demiran Cerimovic’s band, Vranjski Biseri (Pearls of Vranje), which was a great experience. I worked mostly with Demiran & another trumpeter (an older guy who used to be in Ekrem Sajdic’s band) & it was wonderful to get the transmission so directly. Both of these guys have tapped into something powerful & deep in their playing, and in their demeanor. They were incredibly generous & open with their information & music. I think my most profound lesson was in relaxed, focused playing at incredible volumes. These guys play so incredibly loudly (of course with dynamics, but their mezzoforte blasts the Menazeri’s fff ten time zones away) & yet with such ease & grace. Menazeri take warning: we’re gettin louder, and softer, if I have my way. I can recommend a good source for earplugs if you wannem. ;)
Then Aliah & I took the incredibly slow overnight train from Nish to Istanbul. Spent a couple of days traipsing, drinking tea under the Galata Bridge (I didn’t realize, last time I was here, that you even COULD go under the bridge; now I see it’s one of the most beautiful places in the city). Saw three clarinet players in the first three hours here. After a few days we moved into her uncle’s friend’s apartment, while he’s in England. (He’s been due to arrive back since last Saturday, and still no sign of him, so I’m still there.) It’s a nice pad in Osmanbey, near Taksim.
As I said, Aliah’s moved on to the goat-lands queasily close to the Afghan border. Since she left, I’ve been running around with my friend and fellow klarnetçi Sammy, stalking Selim Sesler, an amazing Rom clarinetist who Sammy studies with. I’ve been trying to get a lesson for 10 days or so now, and tomorrow’s supposed to be the day. Inşallah. Also just met violinist Hüsnü and his dancer-wife Rehan and hope to study with Hüsnü as well. Days have been kinda slow & introspective, with occasional wanderings into the neighborhoods I’ve never heard of; evenings filled with rakı and Selim’s clarinet.
All the time includes missing all of y’all…
July 11, 2006
Just in case you didn't know, Aliah (m'lady) & I are in Serbia, Vranje
to be exact. Spent the weekend in Surdulica at the regional brass band
competition, Vlasinsko Leto. This is the regional qualifying round
leading to the big competition in Guc^a later in the summer. Since
most of the bands I love most are from this area (the southeast, near
the Macedonian border), this is kinda more interesting to me than
Guc^a anyway.
Surdulica is a beautiful little town with one
(expensive!) hotel, a (cobblestone-paved) stream running through it,
surrounded by green (green) hills. Quite the lovely quaint
post-communist town which would probably be quiet as well if it
weren't for the brass bands roving the streets. Yeah pretty much my
dream. Though honestly during the day not that much was going on,
except on Saturday when there was the parade of 20ish bands, all
playing different things, ten feet from each other. And man, they play
loud. My new definition of cacophony.
My friends Matt Moran & the whole Slavic Soul Party crew from New York
were there too, as well as Sol (the guy who runs Amnesia in San
Francisco) and his lady, Shiva. SSP has something of an in with a few
of the bands, notably Vranjski Biseri (Pearls of Vranje), led by
Demiran C^erimovic`. These guys are my new favorites. I got to see
them play for tables of revelers a couple of times in our hotel's
restaurant. Demiran has such a calm, classy, deeply expressive way
about him, in both his playing & bearing. He fielded the outrightly
haughty & condescending attitude of the table patrons with humor &
grace. One guy actually picked Demiran up (he's tiny) & hoisted him
onto his shoulders *while Demiran was playing*. If you can't imagine
being bounced around while playing the trumpet, well I'll say it
wouldn't be easy. I won't elaborate all his antics, but I gawked at
his rudeness at least 50 times over the weekend. Yet all the players
were eminently graceful & unfazed.
More importantly, though: even in these adverse circumstances,
Demiran's playing was so soulful & effortless. I have a new concept of
the trumpet now. The music issuing from his horn had all the spiritual
content of a Sufi's ney and yet all the ecstatic open-heartedness of,
well, a brass band. I need to spend some time in the presence of this.
I tried to approach Demiran to ask for some lessons, but my Srpski
wasn't up to the task at all. But then Matt rode to my rescue: SSP are
spending a few days working with Vranjski Biseri in their hometown of
Vranjska Banja, and Matt invited me today to join them! So the next
few days I hope to be immersed with a master who inspires me so deeply
I can hardly express it. I'll let you know how that turns out....
Hmm otherwise not too much to report. Got serenaded on the Frankfurt
subway by some Romanian musicians (who tried to chat Aliah up in
Spanish--happens all the time, even though she's Iranian). Here in
Vranje we've already found a favorite cab driver (our motel is 2km out
of town) who loves brass bands & has promised me some great
recordings. Our bus from Surdulica to Vranje was chased down by our
favorite waiter from the hotel, bearing our passports. Unfortunately
his cab driver was demanding 10 euros for the 8 km chase. The entire
bus was in an uproar over the extortionist fare, but unjustly aimed
their outrage at our friend, who slinked away with our uncomprehending
underpayment of 200 dinars (about 2.50 euros). I'll just mail him the
rest, but I sure hope he didn't have to walk home or anything.
Ok that's all for now. Lots of love from a land that feels safer than
anywhere I've ever been, 10 km from the border of Kosovo.
July 01, 2005
today we returned to ubud after a week in tejakula, a beautiful kind of retreat on the north coast of bali. the plan to have daily workshops with local master musicians & dancers was scuttled by a fast moving intestinal epidemic in the group. as usual i got off easy, merely one day of slight nausea & no appetite; others became severely dehydrated from, well you can imagine what from, and one guy even had to go to the hospital. still no idea what exactly caused it. perhaps some underboiled water in our hotel in denpasar right before we left, but some folks got sick one or two days later, so perhaps it was some kind of virulent virus. anyway if we had to all be so, er, intestinally productive, at least we were somewhere where productivity of other kinds was not expected of anyone.
wow have i written yet about the performances? i don't think so. (there was no internet within 50 miles of tejakula.) thursday 6/23 we had our debut and principal show of situbanda, and we really pulled together pretty well. the audience loved it (at least they laughed, sometimes inexplicably, a lot) & we've apparently gotten some really good press. it's a bit strange that we've been working for four months mostly for that one night's performance, though. i mean, we're doing two more minor shows here (ok one's in java, whither we depart on monday), and we've done a few presentations of parts of the show, but mostly this phase is over. we'll revamp it radically for performance in san francisco in august as well, look for my announcements if you're in the area.
the next night the gamelan had a performance. we were at the same time, same night as the battle of the bands between the two best baleganjur gamelans in the country, which we were sad about not only because it sucked away lots of our audience, but also because we'd obviously have loved to be there. anyway we did have a decent crowd (granted 1/3 of it was the actors & dancers from our show;) & played a good show. my favorite parts was marije's tapdance with our west african reyong piece. she was incredible & i'd never really gotten to see her do her thing.
leaving the shall we say basic accomodations in tejakula for our airconditioned, openair-bathroomed, recently mopped palaces in ubud, i am shocked almost as much as when in 1999 in the space of 24 hours i transferred from the turkish earthquake tent city of 2000 with no clean water or proper sanitation but plenty of rain, to a five star hotel in florence with my mommy & aunt lizzie. not nearly as stark a contrast, but jarring nonetheless.
unlike other travels of mine, almost all of my connection has been not with the people of the country, but with my companions. i'll be here two weeks after most of the troupe leaves, which i'm actually currently unexcited about, feeling a bit ready to move on, but i suspect when it happens i'll find myself in a completely different world & actually spending some real time with indonesians;)
ok i'm off to have a mercifully non-fried dinner devoid of tempeh, peanuts & noodles with a few friends. complete with ice cream for desert. hope y'all are all well.
love p
June 22, 2005
phew, it's been a while since i've made it to a computer. now i'm in denpasar (the capital & closest thing to a city here) as of last night. tonight is our big performance at the bali arts festival & they sanely gave us the day off until 2:30 so we don't wear ourselves out for once.
hmm highlights:
we performed the first act of our show for bedulu village (where we'd stayed until yesterday) a few nights ago & the largely-under-13 audience really loved it. they laughed constantly, including plenty of moments that none of us can see the humor in, but that's just how people are here. perhaps we did something they've seen a million times in a different way, or perhaps we lifted our feet in an insulting way but they instantly forgave us, or perhaps we just mispronounced something or who knows. anyway it was wonderful, a feeling of being out of control & just playful, accepting that we don't understand every facet of how an audience responds & just loving the fact that they're enjoying themselves, even if we're unwitting clowns. one of our friends from bedulu said in a week the teenagers in the village will be trying everything new we did, and we said amongst ourselves that within two weeks they'll probably do it better. that's exciting, the beginning of a conversation. i can't wait to see what they do next.
we've also had good response to our dress rehearsals in denpasar (everything is open to the public in this country). i think our morale is actually generally high even though a few folks are eternally grumpy. we've mostly shifted our intention from refining a technically perfect presentation to creating something alive & exciting, and i think that's so much more important & now we have fun performing it, rather than worrying about all the rough details (there are plenty).
friday night (tomorrow) is our gamelan's performance in the new music series (which i just found out is actually a competition, ha ha i'm certain we'll win;) & i have to say that, even given the newfound relative ease in the theatrical rehearsals, when the gamelan really gets to let it rip it's so cathartic that within seconds we're all ecstatic. the other night, after not having a substantive music rehearsal for weeks, we finally had our chance. after arguing for 15 minutes (still carrying our contentious energy & exhaustion from the day's theater rehearsal), we finally just played & instantly were dancing inexorably and grinning whenever our mouths weren't full of horns. i guess my point is gee i love playing music.
socially things have been so intense & difficult & rewarding. i've been so focused on the group that i haven't made many Indonesian connections, which made me sad as we were leaving Bedulu, but then again that's kinda just how i am sometimes. but within the group i've been having to consciously & completely let go of wanting & expecting connection with certain people, and have been surprised by who i've been getting close to. ack, these humans. i can't imagine being one.
ok that's it for this installment, sorry for the sporadicity. i have to run a few errands before our 2:30 call. hope everyone's well & i send you my love.
p
June 16, 2005
orale pues i won't bother you with too much indonesian but just to get the spirit of travel i might throw in some more approachable languages on occasion.
so bali is populated entirely by beautiful, glowing, happy, exquisitely friendly people who love art. as far as i can tell, that is. i mean, logically, i could say it's easy to see why: the island itself is all of those things, lush & green & humid; mossy temples & houses that look themselves like temple complexes; wild strange fruit trees & plenty of rain. not even a highway to encourage people to rush, panicked. but there's something else going on here: communities take care of their members. with wide open, never-locked community spaces & nightly village gamelan rehearsals using instruments owned by the village, seemingly plenty of time for tea & conversation, & i've yet seen no obvious wealth nor obvious poverty. there's a certain social conservatism around ostentatious displays of affection between men & women in public, but people actually seem very open & relaxed about many things that would offend most puritan-inspired americans, right down to overt yet artistic depictions of nudity & even eroticism, in shops, homes, & temples. in general there's a relaxedness i've never seen anywhere, little sense of people wanting to restrict each other unnecessarily, and it's reflected (i think) in an endemic sense of contentment.
there are however, three armies i've encountered: mopeds, dogs, and roosters. the latter two face off every morning outside my window starting around 4am. as a result of that & of the fact that electric light is more scarce than i'm used to, i'm sleeping about 9:30-4:00 every day. i'm staying with a family in what appears from the outside to be a modest hindu temple, two stairs up to a porch of glimmering white tile, two more stairs to a beautiful red & gilded door. inside is considerably more spartan yet lovely in the manner of a monk's quarters, with woven grass ceiling & eternally open window, furnished only with a bed (still encased in plastic wrapping) & tiny table. the hornet's nest embedded in the ceiling seems dormant, thankfully.
we're spending most of our days mostly in rehearsal, punctuated by meals of tempeh, white rice, and papaya. we sweat constantly.
two or three or four mornings ago (the noun "time" is often here modified by the adjective "rubber") we were blessed at 5am by a hindu priest in a temple occupying grounds which can only possibly be described as the most beautiful place on earth. it's difficult to describe what i felt there in any words other than "surrender" but i can completely understand why they dedicated that land to worship hundreds of years ago.
yesterday we had an inspiring workshop with Pak I Wayan Dibya, one of the biggest innovators in balinese performance of the last forty years. he mostly works in the kecak form (which is one aspect of our performance as well, and consists of interlocking percussive vocal rhythms) but has taken it pretty far away from the slightly monotone, even textures you'll find in traditional performances, & he includes some really fun & funky sounds & even encourages improvisation. for the first time in a while, it felt like our group was playful together.
we have six more rehearsal days until we perform at the Bali Arts Festival, which is a big deal, and which i think none of us is sure whether we'll be ready for. some aspects of our performance seem interesting & close to ready, but plenty is rough & unfinished. we're settling into a mixture of panic & resignation, though there's still just enough time to think we can pull it together, perhaps. honestly, though, there needs to be some radical change in how things run. i'm planning an intervention with the director tomorrow to try to shift things... yes i'm being deliberately vague, because i don't want to gossip. i just want to convey a sense of the group's morale right now.
but that's just about the performance. being here & being with these people (both the Balinese folks and the people in my troupe) is actually extremely inspiring & even transformative. i've been meditating a couple of hours every morning (what else is there to do at 4am?) and finding myself opening in new ways with people.
anyway this computer thing is feeling quite jarring after a week of hardly using electricity, so i'm signing off. my access is somewhat sporadic right now, but will write again as soon as i can.
love p
August 02, 2004
well heck i made it home in one piece & managed not to catch a single amoeba or dysentery or giardia or decapitation or anything until my last night in DF, but i'll get to that in a minute. Or so, this is a long email. Make some tea & come back & settle in.
so forgive me, it's been a week or so since my last confession. i last wrote shortly after arriving in chiapas i guess. well i loved san cristobal de las casas. i wanna move there. after i last wrote, tory & i found our way to a salsa club & i realized it was the first time i'd heard live music since being in mendocino balkan music camp two days before leaving the estados. i also realized celia cruz's "la vida es un carnaval" is a bit overplayed in latin america. thence after two meager margaritas for tory & a coupla cheap beers for me, we happened upon a little upstairs bar that felt like we were walking into a friend's party, it was so comfortable & packed with people & there was a trio performing which reminded me a bit of briana & john's group except that i've never actually seen THEM perform. it was turntable, electric violin, and guitar/vocals & i was so happy to hear weird music i'm not really sure whether they were good or not, but i suspect they were cos everyone was having fun. especially after the bartender (who clearly liked tory a good bit) started giving us mezcal shots to go with every drink we ordered.
so yah, we took a while to stumble home that night. on the way a guy stopped us, perhaps scottish judging by his accent, asking if we knew where zapateros or zapatias was, he couldn't quite remember the name, and he'd just escaped running from a cab driver who had attempted to abduct him to the police station because he'd tried to buy unspecified drugs from the cabbie. we didn't know, so we asked someone else who didn't know but pretended to & gave vague made-up directions, we made sure the guy thought he was going to be ok, and we sent him on his way. of course we still couldn't remember which way to stumble ourselves, so we took a cue from the other guy and guessed, and eventually managed to wake our very sweet hotelier at 3am to let us in.
the next day we lunched at an organic restaurant that makes its own yogurt & tofu & who knows what else & i loved it. tory would have loved it except for her hangover-induced nausea. then the market. ok it's beautiful. people make & sell amazing things in there. including, thankfully, little dolls of subcomandante marcos on keychains. but i have to say that tory & i have very different levels of interest and/or patience when it comes to shopping. i thought i was being indulgent & generous after an hour & a half, but after three hours i didn't want to see another beautiful, embroidered, hand-woven thing ever. luckily my eyes glazed over & then dimmed completely until i was in a sort of somnambulent sensory deprived stupor & tory just kinda prodded me toward the next shiny booth. i don't remember the rest.
the next morning i went to get money from the atm (where'd all my money go & where'd tory get all those beautiful embroidered hand-woven thingys? hmm...) and knew i'd won (i always feel like i'm winning when the slot machine er atm gives me money) when upon exiting the booth a brass band starts up. just like in Underground or Black Cat White Cat or something. my favorite part was the guy standing in front of rest of the band playing cymbals. everyone else is reading or inventing this complex arranged music & he's playing a cymbal crash every four beats or so & looking so completely focused & intent.
we also climbed the big hill (really big hill, so many steps and pilgrims on all of em) to the cathedral where there was a festival for something. the cathedral was packed utterly & the jesi on the walls were backlit with red & green neon. very tastefully done. outside there was marimba music and a full scale carnival wherein the most common thing for sale in the booths was olives. 10 pesos bought you a plastic cup full of olives. i opted for pancakes with orange marmalade while tory had a vodka & soda, no ice of course what are you crazy? she videotaped the marimberos a bit until being accosted by a couple of little boys intent on getting in her shot. of course she happily obliged & now is the proud owner of lots of footage of blurry digits, noses, & ears against a backdrop of spinning san cristobal carnival skyline.
in all i think i saw live music 10 times in san cristobal. that's a big part of why i wanna live there someday. and zapatista dolls. and atm machines that don't eat my cards (more on that later too).
ok oaxaca wasn't as exciting as tory had hyped it up (to me and herself) to be. i mean, yeah nice market, been there done that got the guaravera. art, too, and museums that were more beautiful than the art within. but the town felt kinda sterile in some way. couldn't really find the interesting things happening. it seemed a little like noe valley in SF, like everything was pretty but too carefully arranged & people were uptight you might put the ashtray back in the wrong place. nice cathedral though. we found a nice silversmith as well but by then i was panicking about money so i didn't buy a dang thing.
mexico city (reached via our second all night bus ride in three days) was, well, an experience difficult to encapsulate. arrived at 7:30 am at the apartment of the son of a friend of tory's dad's. he's an art collector & also a very strange man. we napped. we met him for lunch & he drew us a map with all the museum names in english so of course when we asked people on the street to interpret this vague impressionist bit of cartography, they of course knew no better than we did that "fine arts mus." equals "bellas artes". anyway so we finally found it & there were some intense murals by orozco, diego rivera, and some other famous dudes whose names i'm now embarrassed to say i've forgotten.
on arriving back at the apartment, we open the door to find a guy from san anselmo (the town where tory grew up) on the couch, and our host's brother sitting on the floor, panicked from a dizzy spell. i asked if perhaps he wanted some water, and he really thought that was a brilliant idea. i mean, he really was impressed & thought that was brilliant. so, i got him some. he couldn't wait to be in a doctor's care. ok, i'm just gonna come out and say it: the guy was either the biggest wuss i've ever met, or utterly crazy. i mean, he'd gone from acapulco (sea level) to DF (9500 feet) in a couple of hours, eaten questionable food on the street, then ascended 6 more stories to his brother's apartment, and he didn't understand why he might be light headed, couldn't think to get himself a glass of water, and thought he urgently needed to be in a hospital.
there, i said it.
his cousin came & picked him up and victor came back home. our hopes of going out on the town were dashed when victor informed us, ridiculously, that no one ever goes out at night in DF, it's too dangerous. hm, there are 24 million people in that city. some of them go out. some of them were in fact laughing on the street below as he told us this. but additionally his doorman gets off at 10pm & there's no way into the building (except for the way he'd suddenly remember to tell us the next day) after that. so we decided it'd probably be a fine idea to go to bed.
victor awoke us the next morning to drive us to a little mercado for breakfast, where tory spent ten minutes explaining to the kid that really she just wanted plain white yogurt, not strawberry, not full of sliced bananas, just yogurt. to go with the cereal she was gonna buy from the next door girl, his sister. then he caught the bus with us to the area of the anthropological museum, & left us with a strict schedule which would also include the DF MoMA, the castle, the National Museum, and heck something else too i think. We never escaped the Anthropological museum all day. 10am-7pm we were there. We did have an intermission in the museum infirmary (who woulda known) when tory doubled over in pain from cramps (hope she doesn't mind me telling y'all that but it was the high drama of the day). The woman in the infirmary was very sweet & gave a fairly thorough explanation to us of menstruation in spanish which at least served to increase my anatomical vocabulary if not my understanding. She also gave tory essentially some strong tylenol which didn't kick in for a long time. Such a long time that the doctora got excited about the possibility of giving tory a shot. Tory wasn't similarly excited so instead she just curled up in the back for an hour until she could walk again.
Three cups of coffee with dinner at the museum restaurant for me. Bad idea. I'll get to that in a minute. (wow i'm the master of cliffhangers this time around.)
Pouring rain. Taxi back to the apartment. Our last night in Latin America before Tory's 7am flight. She has an errand to make, i go with her & try my luck at the atm. Lost. Ate my card. It's 7:45pm Friday, the bank is so closed but there are people inside. I just want my card back. After much knocking, ringing, dramatic use of the international sign for "please", and of course asking the cleaning woman for intercession on our behalf, hey we learned SOMETHING from all those saint-loving Catholics;), finally a guy comes to the door & starts explaining that yes, in fact the bank IS closed (a point emphasized by the compelling metaphor that the DOOR is also closed, which is why i can't actually hear a word he's saying) & they can't do anything about the ATM no matter what time our flight out of the country is the next day, and would we please just go away. So we did.
Back to the apartment, where i realize i've finally gotten sick but what a strange illness. I'm dizzy & kinda feverish & have such delusions as: 8pm is a reasonable time for bed. Ok! I'm not proud of it, but I went to sleep my last night in Latin America at 8pm. & fevered dreams did I have, yea, & upstairs did they sing flamenco & stomp around & still fitfuly dreamt I on. & lo, swift like the rapture arrived 3:30 A. M., the time of awakening, and of packing all of mine holy crap into the damned backpacke of my torment, and of figuring out how in the hell to get to the Mexico City Airport by the unsaintly hour of 5, count em, 5 horas de la mañana, so that Santa Torita de Santos Anselmo y Rafael could catch her blessed nonstop flight home.
And yet there remains one final chapter of our story. Crossing the border from Guatemala to Mexico by land, as we did, you actually have contact only with Guatemalan officials, not with those handy Mexican officials who give you the even handier tourist cards you need in order to be able to fly out of the country. At 6:30am, after waiting in line for over an hour to get through the completely unthorough bag search to the Continental check-in desk (by the way i will never fly Continental again for reasons too dull to bother you with) I was informed that I wouldn't be able to leave the country without a stupid piece of paper, which I could get from Office 78 upstairs behind the Burger King (this part felt like William S Burroughs for some reason) but not till after the office opens at 7. Shouldn't have to pay for it, she said, since they don't give em out when you cross by land. (If, however, you Do get one & Lose it, it's $42 to replace before you can leave.) Fine for me, my flight wasn't actually till 11am, I'd just gone early to share one last cab with Santa Torita, but what about her & her 7am flight? Well of course I couldn't find her at that point, having left her in the Delta line, so I struck off alone in search of the stupidly elusive tourist card.
Office 78 didn't actually open till 8, & the man inside didn't care Why I didn't have the card, & insisted that I had to pay 210 pesos to get a new one (thankfully about half the $42 I'd have had to pay if I'd had one & lost it). The problem here is that, as I've mentioned, my ATM card was at that moment working its way through the small intestine of a closed Banamex machine on Avenida Insurgentes. Now Tory had kindly lent me another 200 pesos that morning to help get me home, which brought the total of money in my pocket, and indeed the total of money at my disposal, to 204 pesos, 6 pesos short.
God damn i'm being long winded. I was wily. I went through security to the gates. I joined a mob of people getting off a plane & went through Immigration as if I were just then arriving to Mexico, thereby procuring a tourist card compliments of the United States of Mexico. Out through customs, nothing to declare, out of the airport, back into the airport, back through security, back to the gate to wait for my flight & clean my trumpet.
& they never even asked for my tourist card when I was boarding.
Incidentally, Tory succeeded in catching her flight by breaking down in tears for 20 minutes in the little Immigration interrogation room, finally eliciting the pity of the heretofore hardened officer, who upon finally discovering compassion & kindness after a lifetime of cruelty & denying visas & kicking dogs, has now devoted himself to the rescue of abandoned &/or abused lizards & has a good chance of being sainted. Ok that's two jabs at the Catholic Church now & that one wasn't even funny. Probably earned me an extra 10 years in Purgatory. I hear there are lots of clarinetists in Purgatory.
shut up peter
what an anticlimactic ending, and i'm not even drunk
July 24, 2004
tory & i pulled into san cristobal de las casas, chiapas, mexico, today at 5 pm after a day filled with scams but which began & is ending beautifully. we awoke in santiago de atitlan (guatemala) where yesterday we witnessed a ceremony asking intervention from Maximon (San Simon), the patron saint of vice, presumably to help a family member with a cocaine problem. i'd tell you more but everything the man said was in a Mayan language except for "bendecir" to bless the cigarettes & booze being offered, and "cocaina" & "marijuana". The attendants pour the booze into the wooden statue's gullet, & stick cigarettes in his mouth, light em, & gingerly tap the ashes off as it burns down. He chain smokes, by the way. He has to to smoke all the cigarettes he's being offered. He's also wearing about 50 neckties. We showed up as a giant group of German? tourists was leaving, & were left alone with the attendants, Maximon, & a drunk who was cursing the Saint from the street, mostly again in Maya. But then came the man with the offering & the prayer, which went almost an hour while Tory drew portraits of the still-standing-despite-enormous-quantities-of-alcohol saint, and our young guide waited patiently.
So um yeah i was trying to say how we woke this morning at 5am & took the boat (you can only get to Santiago de Atitlan by boat) back to Panajachel, whence we got a horrible breakfast & shelled out $30 each (yup 30 american dollars) to get a ride to the border, whereupon our until-then-very-helpful driver managed to stick us for $20 more as the "border crossing fee" supposedly paid to the border guards but for various reasons we're pretty sure he pocketed it. Once in Mexico we ended up having to change Quetzales to Pesos at a horrible rate because we were stuck, then i got stuck for 10 pesos by our first bus driver (my fault this time, i converted wrong)... finally, though we're back in North America & it feels good. actually this town reminds me a little of Italy or something, except for all the little revolutionary Zapatista dolls for sale on the street (this was the center of the 1994 uprising).
Oh yeah, hot showers & great pizza. We're happy.
they're closing the internet down now, gotta go.
love p
July 21, 2004
Currently Tory, Caitlin (a friend from San Francisco who also was part of the project at the hacienda), & Mary (another SFan who met us 5 days ago) are in Antigua, Guatemala, and thankful for the altitude, coolness (it's probably only 80 outside right now, and last night I wore a jacket), & resultant scarcity of mosquitos & fleas, thank the god(s) of your choice(s). This is by far the most gringoed out place we've been, since there are dozens of homestay language schools here & it's therefore one of the most popular places in the world to learn Español. I'd say 1/3 to 1/2 of the people I see here are extrañeros. But an interesting side effect is that the native Spanish speakers are very used to people who are just learning, so they speak very clearly, slowly, & simply, and even if their English is better than your Spanish, they'll stick to Spanish so you can practice. As a result i suddenly feel like i can speak intelligibly;). & Even aside from my newfound brilliance I like it here, it's bloody gorgeous, surrounded by mountains & volcanoes & lush lush land. & did i mention no fleas?
Yesterday we left San Salvador by bus, crossed the border (where I managed to get mildly scammed three times in about 10 minutes, losing a total probably of $6, but still frustrating to realize that I'm just not the most street smart person out there, for all my other formidable talents), hit Ciudad Guatemala, damn that place is intense--smog, hustlers, sprawl, apparently serious gangs as well--tried & failed to get Tory's return ticket changed from last Friday from San Slavador (i like that misspelling so i'm keeping it;) to the 31st from Mexico City (after repeated emails telling her that she could do that, the office said no, we don't fly out of Mexico City). While she was in the office getting dumped by Taca, I stood with our taxi driver outside, talking about marriage & divorce & sex before marriage, lemme tell you he has some strong opinions & wanted to know all about me-- had i had many girlfriends, had i had relaciones sexuales with them, will i get married, if i have kids would i ever consider divorce... He wasn't judgmental at all, just really interested. He was also really impressed when i said i made about $800/month, and similarly amazed that i pay $525 in rent.
Thus thwarted, we pressed on via campesino bus (no chickens on board, alas, but someone's parcel did picturesquely fly off the roof onto the highway) to Antigua. Off the bus there was the old familiar feeling of being hustled from every side. Much as I hate that (and reflexively say no to everyone without hearing a word they say), it did at least make me feel for the first time that I'm really traveling. That & finally using foreign currency & having to multiply & divide by 7.50 all the time... There was something about Colima & even San Salvador that felt too familiar. Probably partially due to using dollars & partially due to my expectation that all foreign countries should be as different from SF as Cairo, Jerusalem, & Istanbul are. Even Greece & Bulgaria, though in some ways familiar in that European "everything's almost familiar except the cars & boxes & streets are too skinny & tall", use different alphabets & no one smiles in Bulgaria;) All this is to say that I guess all my time living in the Mission has made Latin American culture familiar enough that I can forget I'm somewhere else entirely, perhaps just in Modesto.
Umm. Tangent. Anyway so before that we were in San Salvador for three nights & did very little. Stayed two nights with our friend Mauricio in his little basement apartment off his parents' really nice house in a pretty posh neighborhood. Parts of their house have no roof, by design, because you just don't need it (there are drains in the tile floors in those areas though) & extra airflow is much more important than hermetical seals. The architecture of the houses actually reminded me a lot of St. Croix when i was a kid.
We went to the mall (Mauricio's attempt to shut us up from our constant requests for good coffee was to take us the "The Coffee Cup", which sucked). We saw "21 Grams" subtitled in Spanish (which was actually helpful when the characters mumbled (or am i losing my hearing?)) at the "Foto Cafe", which actually DID have good coffee. Mary & Tory both came down with pretty bad digestive issues so we all went to the medical clinic & got them their antibiotics, & both are feeling much better now. It rained torrentially one night, Mauricio's roof leaked straight in & soaked a mattress, & i got some kinda cool photos of lightning.
before that we were two nights in a little hotel on the beach in La Libertad. the first night most of the hacienda folks were there so it was a nice cushy send off. ryder & lena & i played some music & we ordered food off a menu & didn't all have to eat at the same time & i think there weren't even fleas. (i think i haven't mentioned in email yet but my left ankle was one night at the hacienda devoured by spiders, fleas, and of course mosquitos & swelled up insanely for about a week, basically until yesterday. now it just itches.) Swam in the unpacified Pacific during a gorgeous lightning storm. Got locked out of the hotel grounds & had to jump the fence to get back in.
The last few days at the hacienda were eventful & hectic. We had a party which started with a procession from the mural, led by Ryder, Lena & me, enshrouded in a dingy mosquito net, cascading sweat & playing a funereal klezmer kolomeike. Ryder described it as cathartic, like breaking a fever. Several people asked what it meant, a question which we left mysteriously unanswered, because we hadn't really thought about that.
There were piñatas. Bloodthirsty kids. Griselda got punched in the eye for a dulce. The evening was calmer, just our closer commadres remaining. Rose & Shamita & Crystal & Melanie & i exited the guarded gate, crossed the highway, & played pool with the guys under the loving gaze of many swimsuited women on posters (was it love or lust i saw in that one girl's eyes?).
I don't know. i think there was lots more but i feel like i've been typing for hours & that my stories are getting increasingly dull (not that they were fascinating to start with). so i'll stop. we'll be here another night, then probably somewhere on lake atitlan, then perhaps quetzaltenango, then san cristobal (chiapas mexico), then oaxaca, then d.f. to see where the virgin mary appeared, then home, in just ten days, strange. i've never traveled so quickly...
anyway i have no phone number for the moment, nor text message access. but internet in antigua is fairly cheap so i'll check again tomorrow before we leave.
love p
July 10, 2004
hola queridas, lo siento por la espera;) now it's saturday & much has passed... wednesday i spent the morning painting the mural again, then afternoon teaching more rhythms until ryder (nee carolyn) arrived with her translation of "tres ratones ciegos" (three blind mice) which we taught to a bunch of kids (ever tried to scan spanish translations into a melody for an english song? lotsa syllables to squeeze). then some kids said they wanted to learn it in english also, so we started painstakingly teaching syllable by syllable the anomalous english-spelled slightly morbid tune. by the end (about an hour & a half later) only one pupil remained, but she had it, and mostly knew which words were which. hardest word: "thing". español centroamericano has no unvoiced "th" sound so poor rosa had to struggle with the right position of tongue between teeth (teethththth). she got it, but every time she came to the word she got nervous & invented a new pronunciation.
also some of the gringas had created a dance to the following song:
once there was a candy store
business was so bad
asked my wife
what to do
this is what she said:
take zee can of gasoline
spread it on zee floor
take zee match
make zee scratch
no more candy store, hey!
(repeat last 3 lines 2ce)
(song courtesy of ryder, "obviously" if you know her)
by then the kids musta thought all english-speakers are demented, which i guess isn't that far from the truth...
then yesterday about half of us rose at 6am to head to izalco, whence we rode horses up the volcano of which i've thoroughly forgotten the name. these were, bluntly, some ragged caballos. at first most barely wanted to move, though a couple were a bit too eager. one of our crew, jen, was nearly tossed off a cliff when her galloping horse decided to plant her front hooves fast, & kick her back legs out at the following horse & rider. jen grabbed the neck of her steed & held on but managed to hit her throat on the saddle horn hard enough to require a trip to the hospital, as she was having trouble breathing. she's ok, back here again, but that sucked. luckily it was early in the trip & we had (pathetically enough) two escorts: the horse owner in a jeep, and three cops on foot (apparently "tour groups" here usually get police escorts to ensure safety; a bit creepy to see them lurking in the brush behind us at times). so jen was easily whisked away to the relative safety of the izalco clinic (though i've heard some unencouraging things about other hospitals here...)
anyway, i personally loved the galloping (after trading in my original nag, i got a pretty antsy steed), not only for the thrill but also because those were some damn hard saddles & the transition from cantering (whereupon yr butt slams hard against the saddle with every step) & galloping (which feels more like gently leaping 20 feet, gingerly touching down, then leaping again) was ever more comfortable.
we didn't actually completely climb the volcano unfortunately (probably because we were so gosh darn slow), but ended on an old lava flow dating from 1956 or 1963 (the guy said one date in spanish & the other in english) which also offered a lovely view of most of the country (hey it's small) & also the coast.
ok other highlights: i drank from a spigot what was described as (& i still hope to be) spring water, figuring we were high enough above the cities' water tables that it wouldn't be contaminated by the same horrible things that they dump directly into most of the water supplies. i also ate three pupusas de queso & frijoles with the pickled cabbage stuff which seemed not entirely sanitary but by then i was feeling invincible (hey i'd just ridden a grumpy but hurried horse up & down most of a volcano).
another highlight. after our descent & starved 4:40pm lunch, we visited a tiny church which was essentially the center of a santeria sect. the couple explained how the indigenas had once worshipped sun & wind &c, & when the conquistadores came, they'd essentially just placed intermediaries in there, one saint representing the sun, another the east wind, another corn, etc, & placed jesus above them all so they're technically christian, but they still have largely the same rituals as 600 years ago. they also served us a rice wine that tasted a little like homebrewed mead, lots of it.
today, i made a point of doing as little as possible, since i'm shall we say a bit sore, especially shall we say my ass. i painted a bit, sorted through the photos on my camera (oh i took some really nice shots at 70 miles per hour from the bus window), & now i'm emailing.
we'll be here another week & then tory & i strike off for guatemala & oaxaca. thanks for yr responses & i love you all. p
July 06, 2004
well george bush intercontinental airport in houston, despite the name, wasn't so horrible after all, at least not compared to its namesake... the trip was uneventful, as flights should be, except for all the stupid ads continental shows for the first 30 minutes of the flight.
now i'm safely ensconced in la hacienda, helping with tory's mural project as rain permits (there's lots of rain). today i taught a bunch of kids to play middle eastern rhythms on water jugs (beledi & malfuf, for those who are dying to know). i felt a little like tobias after we started stringing them together in a little composition. i'd started with a cuban beat-- not much, bass holding the main 4/4 pulse, a clave on top of that, & one other simple pattern, but the teenage girls deserted as soon as the teenage boys showed up & the little kids couldn't hold it together. the middle eastern stuff worked better.
we're hoping (ok i'm hoping, i'm not sure the kids care, or even understood me when i tried to explain in spanish) to play for a puppet show here, as some other kids are making marionettes, other kids are writing a story (or 12, we'll see) & others are painting backdrops.
yesterday we worked on outlining the mural on the wall in preparation for painting to begin, but then today the rain stalled everything paintery...
el salvador is gorgeous, by the way. even just outside the airport. everything is lush & green. interestingly, there aren't many OTHER colors in the wild, like flowers etc, it's just all green hills. the hacienda is beautiful but a strange environment. the community isn't allowed into most of it, only the main meeting areas. there's a swimming pool & whole back area that are closed off. yet we gringos (actually mostly gringas) have free run of the place. feels kinda imperialistic. plus there was a massacre of 50 people here during the civil war, right in the courtyard where we eat dinner, and that pall hangs over the place a bit. but the only war now is between us, mosquitos, & amoebas, and folks seem acclimated to history (what are they gonna do, after all? there were so many damn massacres & atrocities, if every place became a shrine everyone would just have to move out of the country).
anyway i promised to play some music with some of the others here (lena & carolyn ryder cooley, for those of you who know them) so i don't wanna keep them waiting any more.