The Brazen American

The afro-haired man walks and plays his guitar on the street mall. He has two friends by his side. They’re friends your mamma would warn you to stay away from. Both are about my age— young still. One of the afro-haired man’s friends is a ragged neo-hippie. He looks swarthy. His eyes are clouded by drugs. The other friend is a gypsy girl. Gypsy girls are always beautiful. This one was beautiful like a jump into an abyss. The three march down the street mall side by side while the afro-haired man sings too loud. Usually the street performers stay put and let you come to them. They entertain you and you can drop them a dollar if you’d like, if you think they need it, if you think you can spare one dollar. But the afro-haired man with light brown skin, wearing long baggy pants and an extra large hooded sweatshirt, doesn’t stay put. He doesn’t entertain. He intimidates. He walks while he plays his guitar, searching the street mall for inspiration.

Hey you there!
Why ain’t you lookin’ at me?
Why ain’t you lookin’ at me,
pretty lady?

The girl he passes, an awkward seventeen year old with blond hair, chuckles uncomfortably and quickly darts into a shop.

Goodbye blonde girl!
Why you afraid of my song?
My songs are for you,
for you,
for you…

The hippie laughs with half closed eyes and a fully closed smile. He shakes his head, silently acknowledging that he thinks his friends are the greatest. The gypsy girl looks at the afro-haired man with admiration. He’s witty. He’s more confident than everyone else. She wants to grab him and steal some of his attention. The afro-haired man keeps his periphery on her as he scans the crowd.

Hey mister skinny jeans!
You can’t walk that fast!
Not with those jeans,
A-squeezin’, a-squeezin your ass!

Hey lady in the blue dress, don’t run away,
You know that I’ve got something to say.
You lookin’ nice, with that blue dress on,
I said you lookin’ nice with that blue dress on.

The street mall bounces past like a slow cartoon background. The trio is center stage, center of attention, center of the world. The pedestrians are uncomfortable. They wonder who’s next. Who will the afro-haired man sing about? Will he make fun of me? Or that guy there, the fat one? He’s much easier to make fun of than me. Make fun of him for God’s sake, not me.

Oh hey there big boy,
off to the doughnut shop?
I hear they got bear claws
For a dollar off.

The hippie and the gypsy girl roll into laughter. The fat man grimaces but doesn’t say a word. He has no time to argue with an afro-haired man, a hippie and a gypsy girl. The fat man moves out of sight.

The crowd avoids the trio and the afro-haired man’s songs. It’s as if the trio sits atop a hillock while the crowd acts water-like, streaming around them at a safe distance. But all is two-dimensional and the trio walks at the same level as the rest of the masses. There is merely the separation of the singer and the crowd, a crowd now eager to be audience to a different show.

The trio smiles at each other and laughs with the joy of power. The afro-haired man sings louder still. He sees me watching. He strikes a chord.

This guy thinks he’s better me,
But I got talent and friends you see
He walks alone on a busy street
But I got talent and friends with me.

I walk past, annoyed that he brought attention to me, annoyed at his arrogance, annoyed at the lyrics themselves. He’s making everybody uncomfortable. He’s making me uncomfortable.

The afro-haired man struts away, confident, praised by his friends, feared by the mindless masses, the masses who have never gotten in touch with their inner street mall singer. Why not sing aloud? Show the world you have no fear. Show the world what real confidence looks like, because the world needs to know.

I hear the afro-haired man's guitar chords fade into the banter of the crowd.


The next morning I’m on the street mall again, in the cold of autumn dawn. A down jacket barely holds my warmth. The street mall is almost empty.

I pass a coffee shop that smells like cinnamon rolls. Outside, in the frosty shadows, four homeless men wait for patrons to come out and give them a quarter or two, or a cup of coffee, or a different life. The patrons of the coffee shop leave avoiding eye contact with the needy men who beg with their eyes. With warm coffee between their palms, the patrons pass the open hands of the homeless men, one after another. The leaves in the trees shiver from a cold breeze. The men wait patiently. More patrons sit inside. They’re wearing sweaters and typing on laptop computers.

I walk by the four men just as a fifth comes to join them. A fifth to beg for quarters in the cold. A fifth hand to be ignored by exiting patrons. It’s the afro-haired man. Just before settling in to stare at the coffee shop, he looks up at me. He holds my gaze and stays quiet. I look away and walk to work.

Smatterings of My Life

The mornings are heavy. The bed I wake up in is still strange. It’s a foreigner’s bed and I am still in a foreign country.

I expect to hear Spanish in the streets. Buenos dias. ¿Cómo has amanecido? Instead I hear my neighbor’s kids through the ceiling, hopping their way to the breakfast table. I hit 'snooze' in order to drift back into a life I was once certain about.

Back awake. Time to get up for real. I’ve got a job to do. I’ve got a life to live and money to spend. But I don’t have enough of it.

The shower doesn’t stimulate. It warms my muscles into jelly. My brain is slow to wake, plan, motivate. Mate isn’t the same without Argentinean and American climbers; without my gaucho friend giving me a hard time about boiling the water; without the peaks of Valle Trinidad in the background. To drink mate in a rush is a sin. But I gotta get to work, so I swallow it, pick up the pace and leave my apartment.


“This is bullshit!” a student exclaims in fifth period. Apparently my late policy isn’t up to his standards. He knows the drill. He’s been late eight times already. He sulks into a chair outside of the room and scribbles out the conjugations to the verb tener. Yo tieno. Tu tiena. El tiena. Nosotros tener.

“Not good enough Chris. Try again. Use your notes from yesterday. All you have to do is copy exactly what you wrote down in the notes.”

He hands in his amended work. Yo tieno. Tu tiena. El tiena. Nosotros tenemos. Ellos tener.

“We’ll work on this Chris. Just come inside.”

First period fades through to second, to third, to fourth. My energy is maintaining. The students’ energy is not. We all count down to lunch; to the end of the day.

“Hey Josh. Can I read about my dad in your creative writing class?”

“Sure Jake. You know, you don’t have to though.”

“I want to. I liked the exercise and want to share what I wrote.”

“Sure man. That’d be cool.”

Jake reads about his dad’s death. He fell climbing in Eldorado Canyon two years ago. The rest of the class is silent, understanding, mature. They almost seem like men. I’m proud of them.

Last class of the day. The room is too hot. My students sweat through Orwell. Orwell’s Winston and Julia sweat in an upstairs room while clinging to hope; to each other. Class ends and my students stay five minutes extra to talk about the book.

“Don’t they realize that every one would be happier if there was a revolution?”

“I don’t think they have the power of realization?”

“Well what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly.”


My sister’s in town. She’s staying at my mom’s house. Her three year old son is with her. I’m nervous. I haven’t seen him in two years. Will he like his uncle?

Upon first sight the little body timidly approaches, looks up for miles to catch a glimpse of my face, and hugs my leg. I ask if he likes to draw and then I produce a sketch pad and markers. Together we make Picasso look like a dilettante; Rembrandt a chump.

“That circle is the bomb, Cristian! Let’s hit it with some orange.”

“Let’s play racecars instead” he so wisely retorts.

“Agreed.”

We’re off to the driveway at sixty miles per hour. Cristian shifts into fourth and flies toward the mailboxes like lightning. I fall behind, my clutch is sticky, my motor chokes and Cristian speeds ahead. We pass the plum tree on the neighbor’s yard, the rock at the end of the drive. I catch up to Cristian’s tail, but he shifts into fifth and sends exhaust into my face hitting the mailboxes for the victory. I go to give him a high five but he’s already investigating a spider that’s eating a bee.

“I’m a dinosaur now” he exclaims.

“Well, me too then.”

We carnivorously snarl and growl our way down the sidewalk, destroying everything in our path. Scared, feeble dinosaurs move out of our way as we demolish palm trees underfoot. Occasionally we stop to let out massive stentorian roars, just to let people know that we are dinosaurs. Our footprints mark the path of havoc leading from the driveway to the park.

“Let’s swing.”

“Good idea.”

Cristian sails upward into the air. He flies into the clouds almost touching the…

”I have to go potty.”

Out of the swing, back up the sidewalk, past the havoc and destruction, past the mailboxes, past the racecourse, past the rock at the front of the drive, into the front door and to the bathroom.

“Don’t you have to potty too?”

“Maybe later, Cristian. But you go for now.”



Grandma sits in a rocking chair.

“I’ve always wanted one of these,” she smiles, rocking to and fro.

I watch her and I finally get it. After 26 years I finally see that she knows everything. She's the sage I've been looking for. How couldn’t she be? She’s been through it all.

Grandma, I was in South America. She’s been there several times. Grandma I’m going through culture shock. She moved to America alone when she was a teenager. She didn’t speak any English. Grandma I feel lost, scared, unstable. She was once a refugee.

I embrace my Grandma hoping that wisdom can be passed through hugs. It kind of works. I understand compassion and kindness a bit better. There are more lessons to be learned from her so I listen attentively. I’m upset that I understand the lessons but don’t feel them.



Dinner is served and my mother doesn’t mention that I owe her 550 dollars. She doesn’t mention that my stored knickknacks are cluttering up her garage. She doesn’t mention that I’ve only seen her six times in the last three months; seven times in the last two years. I live sixteen miles away from her but am almost as far as I was while in Peru. I realize that I only take on challenges I know I’ll be successful at. I haven’t taken on how to show my mother how much I appreciate her.

Dinner finishes and I wash the dishes.


“Cristian, come help your tio Josh,” I yell to my prehistoric, fuel injected sobrinito. He's also bilingual.

He drops his videogame and runs to help put dishes in the dishwasher. I flick water at him and we laugh and make sure everything is spick and span. I tell him to go wipe a booger on his mom. He laughs and runs around like a humming bird. Colibrí, colibrí. Ayúdame con los platos. I use him as a mop to wipe the counters. He wiggles too much to be a good mop. I don’t mind. His laughter is infectious.


Time to leave. I give grandma a big hug. I give sister a big hug. I give mom a big hug. I shake hands with mom’s boyfriend. I shake hands with sister’s boyfriend. I give Cristian a hug and kiss on the ear and he recoils into giggles.

“Buenas noches tio Josh.”

“Buenas noches Cristian.”

I'm As Cool As Nate's Blog Makes Me Out To Be

In an interest in giving a more objective view of my experiences, I direct you to my friend Nate's blog about our time in Cochamo. This should give another side to the adventure had in Chile a few months ago.

Some of my favorite quotes from the blog:

"[Josh is] omniscient yet incapable"

"let's just say there's a lot of love in the world just from the three of us"

"Really, there's nothing wrong with Vishal"

Check it out: Nate's Cochamo Blog

M.I.A.

Four months ago I woke up covered in bed bug bites the size of tea saucers. They itched like hell. It was the third time in as many weeks that I had woken up from burning spots that blotched my skin a reddish purple. I was in Córdoba, Argentina. I had been traveling for six months. I had been in South America almost two years.

I did it wrong, the traveling. Only now, in retrospect, can I see it clearly. The endless cycle of tourist destination to tourist destination to a hostel here and another there, to twenty eight hour bus rides and impersonal restaurant meals, to nights out binge drinking with the illusion that I would meet the love of my life, to full days on the internet to recover from yet another hangover— it wasn’t healthy. I was setting myself up for destruction, for the inevitable moment where I’d ask myself, “What the hell are you doing?”

That moment finally came with the bed bug bites. I couldn’t believe it. They must have been living somewhere in my clothes because they kept finding me. They were either the insult or the injury that was complimenting a host of other ailments. I hadn’t climbed in two months and a nerve sent electric twinges down my arm every time I moved it too far laterally. There were chest pains too. Chest pain combined with arm twinges meant a heart attack. And it was true, in a sense. My heart had been attacked several times in the months prior. The culprit wasn’t coronary artery disease however, but women. The women kind of heart attack is much more dangerous in my opinion because you can never fully recover from it. My wounds were fresh and I was tired of the lifestyle I found myself in. It wasn't just the women though. I was tired of being a tourist that ticks off destinations and never really experiences them. I was tired of being in places I was told to go to, rather that going to places I was drawn to. And I was too tired to change my routine. It took all my effort to get out of it. There was only one option. I bought a ticket. Destination U-S-A.

And here I am suddenly- in a desk at a school in Boulder I'll be working at until I can get things together to get to Asia. Four months have passed in that moment of decision in Argentina. I’ve had a desire to write but every time I sit down and write my mind goes blank. I feel like I should write some summation to the South America experience, attach some profound meaning to what I accomplished and learned. But I feel like I have barely just begun to learn and that those last moments there, where I was so beat by the way I was traveling are indicators that I messed up, that I didn’t learn a thing. After two years living abroad I’ve filled my head with an abysmal, black nothing.

I want to write about how amazing it is to be with my friends and family again. I want to write about the generosity shown to me by Leah and Adam who let me stay in their house for two months even though my only contribution was to be a depressed sack of culture shock that drank their beers (now that’s generosity!) I want to write a story about my friend Lance giving us a private concert where I heard the most beautiful music I have ever heard that included so many curse words and sexually explicit lyrics. I want to write about my new job and the fact that I like it, I think it’s perfect for me, but I still want to leave today and get back on the road. I want to write about Indian Creek and Eldorado Canyon, about the girls of Cordoba who still jump into my dreams, about my grandmother’s advice on the benefits of being rebellious. And I want to write about this damn thing called reverse culture shock which I still can’t get my head around. But I can’t. I’ve sat down maybe twenty times now, fifty, and I can’t get the stories out. No matter how much I try, the words eventually get swallowed by that black void of my mind and my fingers stop typing.

Salsa Picante

I was bleary eyed from yet another 14 hour bus ride. Trips like that were becoming characteristic of my time in Argentina. At least it wasn't a 30 hour ride like the one I did a month ago. But still the feeling was similar. You arrive in the middle of the night to an unknown city, peel yourself out of the semi-cama seat that stubbornly never grooved to the shape of your back despite so much time on it, and you pile off the bus. The hostel brigade storms in. They know to get you when you are weak and confused.

"You looking for a hostel?"

"Yes."

"These are the services we offer: hot water, dormroom, breakfast, free internet..."

"I'll take it."

"Really?"

The expression of surprise I got from that hostel worker didn't inspire confidence, but I figured that pretty much any hostel could meet my requirements of a roof and a shower. The last one I slept at was probably the worst, where the mattress on the bed was paper thin and yet still infested with bed bugs. I was still scratching the huge red bite marks on my bicep and back while I walked with the girl toward the hostel she offered. At that time of night I'd rather go with the first offer than wander aimlessly around an unknown city. It's a game of roulette, but more often than not it works out just fine.

The hostel worker looked at me from the corner of her eye and asked, "You thinking about going out tonight?"

"I don't know. I'm pretty tired."

"But there are going to be six girls from the hostel going out. We need a guy to protect us."

I laugh. "I probably wouldn't be much use to you in the state I'm in. I might need you to protect me."

She smiles at me responding, "You wouldn't want me to protect you. I'm too dangerous."

The hostel worker says the last point with an obvious coquettishness that would be flattering, maybe even interesting, if her lips and nose had less piercings and she didn't have about five kilos on me, despite being at least a foot shorter. I shrugged off the comment.

"So where's this hostal?"


Illuminated by flourescent lights that hummed like a beehive, my room was empty despite being designed for eight. Excellent. Peace and quiet. The pierced girl left me to settle in. I realized my shirt was sticking to my back from the sweat that seeped from my pores during the trip. I took it off, tossed it on the bed and walked the checkerboard floor to the bathroom.

New hostel showers are an experience unto themselves. They are like beginning a new relationship. Perhaps she'll be cold at first, making you believe you have no chance at warmth. Or she'll surprise you with so much heat that you get burned and have to run away. More often than not, you have to be a gentleman with the shower. You have to get to know her, learn how to push her buttons just right so that she provides you with consistent, comfortable warmth. One wrong move and she'll go frigid on you again. Or she'll scald you permanently.

I took my time with the shower. I was a gentlemen. She rewarded me with a stream of perfectly warm water. Sure it took awhile to heat up, but I smelled terrible and was obviously a bit needy at that point. I didn't expect the water to be warm right away. But when it was, I dove in and enjoyed every minute of it.

Drying off I heard a knock at the door.

"Joshua. We're leaving in ten minutes."

Right. I never declined the invitation to go out, so it was assumed I'd go. I was just about to shout that I was too tired when my stomache growled loud enough for the hostel worker to hear. I hadn't eaten for the last half of the bus trip.

"You're coming, right?" she asked.

"You think there'll be a place to grab some food?"

"Of course."

"Yeah. I'll go."


We got out of the taxi, me, the hostel worker, and two other girls. Where the other three girls were I had no idea, but my mind was on food, not on girls, and I searched the bar cramped street for a place to eat.

The slang expression for techno music here is poonchy-poonchy. It's called that because that's the primary beat that the music follows no matter what song is being played. Poonchy-poonchy. As I looked for food, all I could hear was poonchy-poonchy. I watched small crowds of people meandering into the bars and discotecs. It was a Wednesday night. There was not much nightlife around. The poonchy-poonchy echoed in the streets.

"Hey, I know a guy that works here," the hostel worker directed us to a discotec illuminated with neon purple lights. "I bet we can get some free drinks."

I was pulled into a whitewashed room where the poonchy-poonchy now picked up and grew louder. I shouted something to the hostel worker about food and she responded by putting a beer into my hand. She clinked her Fernet and Coke filled glass against my beer bottle, looked me in the eyes, and took a drink. I did the same. Before I knew it, I was stomping out poonchy-poonchy beats in the middle of the dance floor while the piercing faced hostel girl grinded on me like I was a stripper pole.

No, I was not happy.

I looked for an out, some way to escape the hostel worker who was now clearly trying to seduce me on the dance floor. An objective viewpoint would understand that inebriated poonchy-poonchy girations were everything but sexy and when combined with aggressive groping of my backside were less sexy still. But objectivity is tossed out the window when Fernet is mixed with CocaCola and I'm sure in her head the hostel worker thought she was Jessica Alba on that dance floor. Had that been the case, had she been Jessica Alba, I wouldn't of snuck off to the bathroom the moment she turned her back to me to do yet another butt out, drop to the floor move. But she wasn't Jessica Alba and as soon as that butt hit the floor, I was at the bathroom sink, slapping cold water onto my face.

I thought of a plan. I'd carefully sneak out, walk up the street to find some food, then grab a taxi back to the hostel. I just had to avoid the hostel girl and I'd be good.

I peered out of the bathroom, eyeing the dancefloor in order to find the position of the hostel girl, the only threat to my escape. She was right in the middle, but to my relief she had already swept up another gringo, one who apparently was into piercings and obesity because this time he was doing the butt out drop to the floor move on her and she was utterly elated by it. I knew I had been long forgotten and so I casually walked through the dancing crowd, grabbed my coat and made my way to the door. Just as I heard the poonchy-poonchy switch to some sort of salsa rhythm I felt a hand grab my arm.

Oh no. She caught me. I was doomed for another set of gropings and grindings. I turned around keeping my head down so as to see her face to face. Like I said, she was a bit shorter than me. But to my surprise, when I turned around all I saw was a pair of pert breasts hidden behind a tight flowery dress. Not bad. I looked up. Not in front of me. Up. This woman was quite a bit taller than me. I'm six foot one. She was a giant. She looked at me and said one word: "Salsa".

She was not talking about food, food which I so desperately needed at that point. Nor was she asking if I wanted to salsa dance with her. She was telling me what was going to happen, whether I liked it or not. Salsa was going to happen. It was an order. She pulled my face into her chest and started moving me back to the dance floor.

If I'm well fed, rested, and excited to dance I am still probably the worst salsa dancer south of the equator. There I was, hungry, tired and not at all interested in dancing and this juggernaut of a woman was forcing me to dance. She slammed her right leg between both of mine and began the quintessential hip rock that salsa requires you to be able to do.

White men, having come from savage barbarians in cold bitter areas of northern Europe have never developed the hip sway that the latin men, coming from Mediterranean vacation spots, seemed to have acquired so cunningly while drinking sangria on the beach. We were too busy wielding swords and tearing fur off of animal carcasses to keep warm. Hip sways didn't interest us. Latin men were just sitting in the sun wondering how to attract women. I'm sure they thought, "If I move-a my hips a-like-a dis, de womens, dey will love me". And they practiced it daily most likely being very successful, and copulating on the beach like rabbits. But where my ancestors lived, in cruel, inhospitable places with names like Slavs, Saxons, and England, I don't think there were even women to try to impress. If there were they probably just looked like the men. Legs just as hairy. Beards. And if there happened to be a man who "moved his hips like dis", I'm sure he was used as bait for catching bears.

Generations later, my ancestor's blood still pumping through me, I was hopeless to put together any step that could be considered salsa. But the giant woman gripped me tight and forced me to try.

I thought maybe if I started up a conversation with her she would lower the intensity level a bit.

"So. Where are you from?"

She looked at me with a bitter, angry expression. She coldly replied, "France."

France? Her ancestors were pretty much in the same boat as mine. I guess she had a little more of the latin influence than my skull bashing great-great-grandpas, but she didn't grow up salsa dancing. You could tell. When a latin girl salsa dances, it is rythmic, natural. It's like walking, something she grew up doing and is therefore a part of her. You could tell that this french girl learned to salsa dance, took classes. Her movements were calculated, robotic. They only fit with other specific, calculated steps. Steps that I had no hope of summoning up to save my life. Regardless, my efforts at conversation failed. She was there to dance. Not to talk.

I stepped on her feet more than a few times, trying to follow the rythym she required me to march out. She was not pleased. I wanted to remind her that she had grabbed me. I didn't ask to salsa dance with her. She wanted to dance with me. I was just afraid of her, so I obliged.

She kept pulling me towards her, lifting my right hand in the air as if thinking that if she did that, somehow she'd trick my feet into knowing what to do. It didn't work, I could only stumble out a few steps at a time, steps that were awkward and flacid.

She looked at me and again spoke to me callously, "You only do one step."

"Yeah...I call it the 'J-step'," I looked down in embarassment. "It's uh...yeah, it's not very good."

I tried to laugh off the tension created by the comment. She just looked at me sternly, towering over me. Every one around us was having a wonderful time. We were not.

Her frown gave away what she was going to say before she opened her mouth. "I'm leaving."

"Yeah...me too."

She turned her back and walked away, absorbed by the crowd of dancers on the dance floor. I left in the opposite direction, toward the door.

In the steet I saw a hot dog vendor. Finally I'd be able to eat. My stomach could barely wait for the food. I ordered two hot dogs. The vendor threw the sausages into their respective buns and before handing it to me he asked, "Salsa?"

I ate the hot dogs grudgingly. Somehow I had lost my appetite.

The Cathedral of San Francisco

It's a dead heart in the middle of the city. It's dead because if you were to cut it nothing would bleed from it. The gash would just sit gaping open like the mouth of a fish after suffocation. It's cold despite its earthly red color which would otherwise connote heat. The dichotomy doesn't work. The color would make you believe it should still beat, it should still feed the city with warm life. But it doesn't. It sits lifeless save that warm color of blood that covers the walls. The blood scabbed over long ago, to the point that now the Cathedral of San Francisco has begun peeling. Flakes of scab exfoliate off the walls revealing fresh pink flesh underneath. The wine colored paint chips are crushed into the sidewalk by passersby. The chips mix with dog feces and cigarette butts. They are the sands at the base of the temple, the sign of age and deterioration. Perhaps that's where the cold lifelessness comes from, from the fact that it is in the process of death, or ruin, or of being forgotten.

The city of Salta ignores its heart save a few religious nuts that still go in to pray. They're nuts because only madness would lead you to want to enter that sanguine structure. It's a house of God that has graffiti on the walls and smells of urine. It's piety is issued, not felt. Even the convent attached to it, tumor like, seems atheistic. I have not seen the nuns inside that are rumored to live there. Nor have I heard their prayers. Has God?

The pedestrians that walk by seem to have already forgotten it as the life organ of the city. There is little reminder of the heavenly, just pollution choked streets that extend from the crimson mass like black arteries. Its superior vena cava is a byway. The left subclavian is a mess of motorcycles and vintage Mercedes. It's a circulatory system filled with swarming flies and exhaust, extending to the ends of the city where finally the veins can release the chaos and breath.

* * * * * * *

I like the Cathedral of San Francisco. Sure it doesn't sound like it, what with all the death and filth metaphors. But I like it like I love Picasso's Guernica, which is about the massacre of innocent townspeople in the Basque Country. I stood and stared at that painting for half an hour, not able to take my eyes of it. I did the same with the Cathedral of San Francisco in Salta, Argentina. There is emotion in it. Emotion that does not have to come from optimism or from the conventions of what you are supposed to like. You're not supposed to like dead hearts...but you do like the color crimson, you like ruins, you like antique like deterioration. I like the idea of a cold religious temple. There is something telling in the idea, something darkly playful.

I suggest a visit to the cathedral if you get a chance. How would you describe it?

Weak Cochamo Post

Since it seems that my Cochamo writing may be lost forever in writer's block, I opted for the easiest way out: a photo essay that's not even grammar or spell checked. Hooray! All this happened about 4 months ago now, but I thought I'd share it anyway.

This is a rest for those of you who don't like to read that artsy fartsy stuff. Just click the link below to see some nice photos and read some very bad writing.

Cochamo Post

The Treehouse

She told me that she always wanted to live in a treehouse. So did I. So I took my paints and went to work creating a painting of a giant oak tree on a hill. I painted the branches reaching out into the cool air. I painted the leaves with colors of autumn. And cradled in the nook of the outstretched branches I painted a treehouse. Below the oak with the treehouse I painted text. It said,

"This is the treehouse I built for you. It's in a tree in the countryside of Spain, or in the South of France, or overlooking rice patties in China. This is where we'll live together with the freedom of childhood, where we'll walk barefoot across its creaking floorboards and drink tea next to the woodstove. This is where we'll cook delicious food that we'll eat in bed and where we'll read aloud to each other by candlelight. It's where we'll hang this painting on the wall along with pictures from our travels together.

This is the treehouse I built for you. This is where we'll spend hours talking honestly under blankets, laughing at a time when life seemed difficult. This is where we'll make love, where I'll learn something new about you every day and every time that happens I'll be fascinated. It's where I won't be afraid to look deeply into your eyes, where I'll give you kisses for no reason other than I wanted to. It's where I'll write and paint and wait for you every afternoon to come back from your walks. And every time I see you enter I'll think, 'Beautiful'.

This is the treehouse I built for you. It's in the mountains of Colorado, or the foothills of Patagonia, where the only sounds are that of the brook in the distance, the finches playing on the terrace, the wind caressing the leaves. It's where our son will take his first steps, on a floor suspended above the earth. It's where we'll go to celebrate and to greive, where we'll know real happiness together.

This is the treehouse I built for you, where I wait for you now, watching the sunset in the distance."

The painting was honest. The text, even more so. But I wasn't satisfied after I painted it because what I really wanted to create wasn't the painting at all. What I wanted to create was the treehouse itself.

2 New Posts

I've put up two new posts in the last few days. I hope you enjoy them.

El Chalten Sunset

Somebody threw a match into a field of violet wild flowers. The flames burned pink and slowly moved across the petals, kissing and tickling them. As they moved over the field, the flames left ochre ashes glowing with heat. Ever so slowly, naturally, the fire spread, dancing atop the field of violet.

The fire soon found an aspen grove caught in the radiant metamorphosis of autumn. Clutching the aspens, the fire exploded into rolling columns of flame, tossing the changing leaves into the sky, blanketing the earth in illuminant, lively light. Each burning aspen leaf, of which there were billions, was sent tumbling, turning and glittering among the others. The acrobatics were stunning. The mass of surging and ebbing leaves, burning red, orange, pink and yellow looked like a colossal school of brightly colored fish darting through the deep blue sea; like someone breathed life into a collection of shattered, stained glass and then lifted it in front of an evening sun.

South, in the distance, the sea overflowed. But rather than spill out over the earth, it grew vertically, swelling over the tops of snow capped peaks. It did not advance, nor retreat. It held its firm position, towering in the distance, swallowing the light emitted by the fire in the foreground. The light was lost in a blue that grew steadily darker, deeper and ultimately abysmal.

With the spread of the wind and the inevitable fatalism of time, the fire began to dissipate. It became brush strokes inspired by Van Gogh. The color did not loose its intensity but did become cooler. Apparently the artist who brushed these strokes into the blue canvas had not decided whether he preferred oils or acrylic. At first the paint held the form of the violent strokes, where the bristles carved the paint into intertwining lines that ended in independent, fading color. But then, as if operating with a mind of their own, the firm lines would begin to bleed through the canvas. The colors would drip and mix into themselves always maintaining their independence among the other colors, yet wanting to blend and share their luminance at the same time. The burning colors fervently explored one another in tumultuous curiosity.

The strokes were nonsensical, erratic. They randomly cut at the canvas like the artist painted with a handful of shattered glass rather than with a brush. The cuts bled like flesh does. Then the artist added strange form among the macabre, bloody background. It wasn't quite an addition, because it had been there the whole time. Rather, he brought attention to the forms, a Dali-esque profile in the center, a cold grey clump of cauliflower left in the distance. The artist was psychotic, a serial killer perhaps. He loved massacre, medieval war, slaughterhouses.

It was the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen. And it scared me to death. It was true madness. I laughed out loud at it. Then, I was completely silent, like a frightened child in a pitch black room. I was too frightened to breath and hoped to wake up from the nightmare that was that sunset. It foretold of terror, of irreversible change, of heartbreak. It portended doom, apocalypse even. I tried to laugh at it again, but no noise escaped from my throat. I couldn't look at it any longer. I curled up beneath it and hid my head.

Hours later, a lifetime maybe, or seconds, I lifted my head and the colors were gone. I stood up, looked at the blue black sky and walked out of the mountains. I couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible had happened.

In An Effort to Convey the Effects of Too Much Mate

I’m trying to write about Cochamó, (something that happened months ago now and I still feel a clinging responsibility to get something on the page about it), and I’m not motivated. I prepare a mate to help get my motivation started. But the problem is is that I’ve had too much mate already. And when you’ve had too much mate, the last thing you need is more mate. What you need is to go do something, something productive, something that provides an outlet for all that excess energy produced when you’ve had too much of the tea. And like I said, I’ve had too much. So the last thing I need is more. But I pour hot water into the mate and sip from the bombilla. Bitter. Delicious. I tap my pen on my notebook. I have no idea how to sum up the Cochamó writing and I get so frustrated that I close the notebook completely. I take another sip of mate. I think: maybe you should draw something instead. I try to draw. I start off with a convex line. Or is it concave? It doesn’t matter. I draw a curved line, maybe it’ll become the bottom of an eyelid later, but right now I can’t decide. I shade it. Where the shade comes from doesn’t matter because the piece has yet to have a light source. I’m just fed up with trying to draw a solid line and shading is easier to do. It feels more natural. It feels like I’m painting the drawing. I’d rather be painting anyway, but I have no paint. So I scribble wild strokes that go any which way. In Spanish, scribbling is called garabatear, and I think that garabatear is a much better word for scribble because my pen seems to be making that noise more than it is “scribbling”. I garabatear angrily on the page. I’m getting frustrated again. This drawing is going to be terrible. If it can’t be genius, why even try? Practice doesn’t make perfect. Perfect is only a mix of luck and perspective. And I have had no luck at drawing and my perspective says that the garabatear that’s on my page is terrible. I shut my notebook in disgust. I shouldn’t have had so much mate. I’m in such a fragile state. Maybe reading would be better. I go to my hostel room and it has to be at least one thousand degrees Fahrenheit in there. I don’t have a thermometer, so I don’t know for sure but it has to be at least that much. I sit on the rock hard mattress and open my book. There is no way that I’ll be able to read. My frustration grows. I’m so angry that nothing is working out and I know it’s the mate talking because I’m not an angry person and my life is easier than ninety nine point nine percent of the world right now so I can’t really be angry. Just frustrated. No more mate. A shower. That’s what I need. A shower. I haven’t showered in two days and my feet smell sour. So I’ll take a shower. I gather my shower things and go up the hostal stairs and remember that when I tried to take a shower the day before I ended up with a lukewarm dribble coming out of the showerhead and I didn’t even try to go in. So I’m not psyched on a shower. But I give it a shot anyway. I turn the knob and suddenly a deluge of water pours out of the showerhead at at least one hundred miles per hour. Actually it could be a thousand miles per hour, I’m not sure because I don’t have a speedometer, but it’s fast. And it’s hot. Steamingly hot. There is no actual shower head to stream the water into even, mini streams and so I am left with the insane, uncontrolled, cascade of burning water that is blasting against the shower wall and filling up the floor because that amount of water can’t drain fast enough. And I’m thinking: This shower feels exactly how I feel right now. This is my only kindred spirit in the world. And I’m elated, utterly elated. I jump in and my skin burns, but I’m psyched that I’ve found an environment that models perfectly how I feel about the world. The water crashes down on me like a ton of bricks but I take it like a solid boulder. It won’t smash me to pieces. And it’s at least a thousand degrees. And I’m loving every minute of it. I pop open the shampoo, spray more than I need into the palm of my hand and go to work lathering my hair while the water hits my back so hard that it sprays over the shower curtain and all over the bathroom. I’m sure my clothes are getting soaked outside of the shower because of the ricochet of water I’m sending over the shower curtain, but I don’t care because that shower and I have joined in some sort of holy bond because we feel the same way about the world and nothing else matters. I'm too crammed into the damn thing to avoid the water anyway, so I might as well enjoy it. I put my shampoo lathered head into the high velocity stream and all the suds are instantly gone. Instantly! I go for another. I lather up my head, get it really foamy, even so that a bit of foam drips down into my eye and stings it red, and place my lathery head under the stream. Gone. Instantly. I love this shower. We are on the same page. My skin is burning red at this point and I know it’s best to probably get out of the shower. I turn off the knob and think: Yeah! Awesome shower. It’s the first really clear thought I’ve had for an hour. The heat must’ve induced some sort of normalcy because I feel a bit calmer. I can focus my energy enough to decide on what to do next. I’ll go to the computer and write about mate.

The Gaucho

Often I see things while traveling that are amazingly beautiful but only last a second. What is written below is one of those flashes of beauty, as best as I can capture it.



THE GAUCHO

It's that time of evening I like, when the earth remembers the heat of mid day but begins to breath the coolness of evening. The sun still holds a position high in the sky but is beginning to retire, packing up his things before the walk home where he'll rest for the night. The Patagonian pampa is dry, unfriendly perhaps, but more likely lost in introspection. It unfolds past the limits of the horizon, to the end of the world. In one of its small pockets, land forgotten, dust is kicked up. A faint deep sound is heard, growing. Thunder? No. The sky is clear save a few giant cotton balls pouring through blue. The sound grows louder. It's the sound of boulders rolling down mountain sides, of racing heartbeats screamed through loudspeakers. Galloping hooves.

"Hep!"

Flashing out of the dust comes a man on his horse, flying. The thunder rolls under the horse's hooves. Its muscles are taut. Its head is forward. The wind is whipping across its face. Bound to the beast a gaucho rides. His muscles are taut. His head is forward. The wind is whipping across his face. They seem to be chasing after the sun rays that are breaking through clouds and settling on the pampa impossibly far away.

"Hep!"

Each beat of hoof to earth reverberates deep, bass like vibration into the dirt. Brush disintegrates into powder. A trail is left scribbled behind the darting horse. A few seconds pass and a quarter mile is covered. This is haste as only Patagonian wind can teach. The gaucho and horse move like a gust that bends trees. The thunder rolls. Black eyes squint keenly into the distance. His features are dark, his nose sharp. The gaucho wears a red scarf around his neck, a black, wool beret on his head. The rest of him is a blur.

"Hep!"

Up ahead a fleet of horses gallop, pounding down the pampa. Twelve of them, all colored hues of the desert. They run with fury, wild, crazed. The gaucho is in hot pursuit.

Theresa's Curanto

I'm working on this year's Cochamó post. In the meantime, I offer this as an (hopefully) entertaining read:

THERESA'S CURANTO
Puerto Montt, Chile

The sea wenches call to us. Filthy port restaurant whores.

Where you boys going? You lookin' for something good to eat? I got all that you need right here.

Frigid winds brought from coastal squals break over the land and send horizontal rain to the marrow of our bones. We just want a warm meal. The sea hardened women that see us coming from miles away start their calls. One walks with a limp, her gut pouring out from her tattered apron. Another winks one eye under a long and thick unibrow. Another calls from the second floor of the red laquered wooden skeleton of a building known as Anglemo, you can see the blackness of her teeth from where we stand.

I give you free soup boys. I give you free Pisco Sour. Why don't you come and sit down at my place. We'll warm you up real good.

We already have a place where we go to eat. We walk up stairs. Thick mucus spat from the sea whores sticks on the bottom of our shoes, pulling long yellow green strands as we lift our feet and approach the walkway that leads us to our destination.

More hags.

Hey boys. I got fresh seafood for you. I got a nice warm place for you to you sit down out of this rain. C'mon boys. Come to my place.

We look straight ahead avoiding eye contact with the women. Overflowing buckets of clams and mussels caught that day border our path. The floor boards creak sharply beneath us. We're afraid. But a quick glance up and we see Theresa, arms crossed, stoic, a Hercules of a woman, her short grey hair standing straight up from her head.

Hey boys. Welcome back.

Oh Theresa. Far from the cold, inhospitable streets outside of Anglemo. Her small eatery is a refuge of warmth and comfort reminiscent of blankets fresh out of the dryer, campfires and jaccuzzis in the winter. Sweet, sweet Theresa.

We slide into the benches, peel off our soaked jackets and fleeces and bread is set before us with thick butter and pebre. Theresa knows us now. She knows that we only come to eat one thing. Curanto. We bring our appetites as curanto is meant as a dish for two. But with the wind beating on the outside windows, and our bodies withered from weeks in the mountains, we settle in for a long haul, a full portion of curanto each is set before us.

The heap of mussels steams like a geyser. Those mussels alone would be meal enough for a small family, but curanto is more still than a mountain of mussels. Piled on top of the mass lay an entire longaniza sausage, two kinds of wheat dumplings, a chicken thigh, clams, and the equivalent of a dozen bacon slices, unsliced, together in one thick chunk. On the side, a consommé of the stewed flavors rests in a mug to be sipped between swallows of the other elements of the meal. The rules of gravity bend to the will of curanto as the mound seems like it cannot be physically possible. How can so many things come on one plate? How could such a large portion of food possibly fit into me? We grab the mussels, crack them open and watch the grease slide down our fingers. We pull out a knife and fork to cut the sausage bite size and throw the hot meat down our gullet. I lift the chicken thigh to my teeth and pull gingerly at the flesh. It falls easily off the bone. I slurp it up. I take a sip of the consommé. One bite of the bacon chunk, it's salty fat filling my pores and I look at Theresa and say,

Una CocaCola por favor.

The others order CocaCola too. The sugary liquid takes the heaviness out of the grease, fills our stomachs with gas and...

Buuurrrppp!

... more room for curanto now. Each mollusk holds a bit of sea grit in it. The seafood's that fresh. The dumplings absorb all of the fat and oil from all of the other items as they are stewed together in a pot. We still dip them into the greasy sauce that sits at the bottom of the plate. With every bite, the dumplings release a gush of hot, heavy flavor that makes us instantly blissful. More bites of chicken, bacon, clams.

Otra CocaCola por favor.

Theresa nods understanding. She knows that her curanto is an extension of herself, an embrace into her voluptuous bosom. She serves us the CocoCola.

Our hands are lathered thick now, making things slippery. The chicken's almost all gone, so I gnaw at the bone a bit to make sure I get everything. A small cube of bacon is left, mostly fat, but enticing nonetheless. The mussels are a graveyard of meatless shells, the clams the same. One bite of dumpling. One of sausage. I can feel my stomach stretch.

At the end of the meal our arties don't work like they used to. Our heartbeats slow to a murmer. Sweat sits like dew on our foreheads. Our eyelids droop but the pupils and irisis show satiation. We drink in the remains of our last CocaCola.

Buuuurrrrpp.

Theresa gives a wise, sympathetic smile. She has rolled up her sleeves, revealing forearms as big as a child's thigh. She clears our table.

Outside the whores of Angelmo are sitting. They won't bother us now. They know the face of a happy customer leaving. They wouldn't dare harass one of Theresa's boys anyway. She's the matriarch of that cold, dark place. The only warm heart in the whole damned structure. We zip up our rain jackets and go back into the cold squal.

Good Excuse

It's been awhile since I've posted. I was back in Cochamó for two months, away from internet contact for most of that time and couldn't get around to posting. Now I have finally posted a story about New Year's for you to enjoy (below). I'll be posting about the Cochamó trip soon. Good reading.

-Josh

A New Year's in Valparaiso

Everyone should celebrate New Year's in Valparaiso. No one should remember all of it.

My memory is black, foggy. Valparaiso is known to be vibrantly colored and yet my only recollection of the events on New Year's pertain to the colorless, light absent void of a drunken stupor. Rum and Coke are to blame. Two vicious culprits when paired togther. They become even more mischevious on a stomach nourished only by a bag of potato chips, corte americano, that we called dinner.

Here's what I remember: We took an ancient ascensor to a plaza that overlooked the ocean. There weren't many others there, though the prime firework viewing locations were taken. Those that were there were from various parts of Chile, Argentina, Gringolandia. There were wealthy families, destitute teens, young lovers and barbecuing macho males. Everybody brought la buena onda, good vibes ushering in a night promising revelry.

We drank too much and after an hour of slap happy joking in the plaza my mind closed up, like the iris at the end of a black and white film that shrinks to a pinhole and disappears. The sceen of my mind holds on that black image and only randomely allows for a brief recollection to emerge, dreamlike, confusing. A Peruvian girl. A tree with the strong odor of urine. A japanese tourist fleeing. Vishal fell down. Sausages. Fireworks. A kiss.

That was it. That was my memory of the beginning of 2010. That and a feeling that despite not remembering anything in it's entirety, I had an amazing time. But why? The morning after, I asked Vishal what he remembered.

"Not much man...You remember that Peruvian girl? She was beautiful."

My mind was jarred a bit. Was she the same as the kiss? What happened with her. I wished I could remember.

"Oye. What a great night!" Yael was awake too. She's the epitome of kindness and hospitality, a Chilean friend who I met in Spain and who guided us through the maze of events the night before. "Did you guys have fun?"

Vishal and I looked at each other each clueless as to what had happened.

"I think so".

"Oh that poor Japanese guy."

My memory was jarred again. He kept running away from us, the Japanese guy. Why?

Vishal and I had to go. We had to get a friend at the airport and we didn't have time to piece together the night's events. Before we knew it we were out of Valparaiso, New Year's Eve even further behind us, and hope for a complete memory dashed.

Wait.

My camera! I had my camera with me! The secret link! Vishal and I sat together on a bus Santiago bound and went into our investigation. We recalled the night via the order the photos appeared on the LCD screen.

PHOTO 1: Drinks in the Plaza

This I remembered still. This was our spot in the plaza where we sat waiting until midnight in order to see the fireworks. We began as vigilant protectors of our spot, but as we passed through the hours of the night, our space became less fixed and more fluid with the movement of the crowd. We talked about life in increasingly slurred Spanish, about how we were meant to be wanderers, vagabonds and seekers of real happiness. It wasn't even dark yet and we were already getting lost in the night.

PHOTO 2: The Peruvian Girl

The Peruvian girl. In all my time in Peru I had met two Peruvian girls that I found attractive. Two. Then suddenly, in that plaza in Valparaiso, there was another. I remember daydreaming of watching fireworks with her and sneaking a midnight kiss under the bursting lights; of dancing in the morning with her; of plans to see her again. While talking with her, I remember glances and flirtatious smiles, hints at daydreams becoming real. And then I remember a sharp pain in my lower abdomen and the sudden realization that my body was in need of fluid expulsion. But the conversation was going so well and I yearned for the daydreams to become reality. I tried to repress the call of nature, silent it, but it screamed in my gut and I had no other option. I excused myself from the conversation, ran to a the nearest tree that everbody had decided was the area urinal, and released. Sweet release. Upon my return, the Peruvian girl was gone.

PHOTO 3: Fireworks

We didn't know that it was midnight. We had been pushed into a mass of bodies swelling the plaza. We became indistinguishable particles of a whole that surged and ebbed on the side of the mountain. Then suddenly the mass erupted as a the fireworks began, appearing in clusters that stretched down the coastline for miles. Champagne rained down on us and we danced in the beginning of 2010 to the rhythm of shouts for joy and screams of celebration. Couples kissed on rooftops and friends embraced beneath the vivid blur of the illuminated night sky. For a minute fraction of a second, I was quiet, relfecting on what I had done right in my life to be in that plaza at that moment. That was the only lucid thought that the night offered me.

PHOTO 4: The Kiss
I looked at Vishal.

"I don't remember that." He smirks after his remark. That bastard. He got a kiss on New Year's and I didn't. Lucky son of a..That was right before the mass started to pour out into the streets, with a direction toward somewhere that seemed important. Everybody was moving in that direction. Everybody was in a mood that was celebratory, loud, amorous and free of inhibitions. Vishal snagged a kiss. Lucky Vish. I wandered with the masses.

PHOTO 5: English

As we moved through the streets our journey to this important place that everybody was going was broken up with shouts of "Hello!". They came from Chileans recognizing an opportunity to speak with gringos. Apparently alcohol stimulates Chileans to speak English and since we were not in a state to speak Spanish, we obliged their salutations. "Hello!" we would shout in response and then engage in broken English conversations about the night. Once leaving a group that stopped us, not 2 minutes would go by and we'd hear, "Hello!" again and we'd commence with a new conversation.

PHOTO 6: The Concert

The direction of the mass was soon revealed to us. We approached a stage, and Spanish rock blared through the speakers. We began dancing over broken bottles and thick confetti waste. The plaza was filthy but no one cared. The point was to dance and celebrate and begin 2010 as free spirits. The rock was fast, pounding, and our dance movements were slow, staggered, right on beat in our minds if not not in the outside reality. Outside reality didn't exist anymore at this point. The world was Spanish rock. The world was broken bottles and confetti at our feet, the smell of rum and smoke in the air. The world was the seething mass.

Amidst the mass a girl caught my eye. A beautiful girl clearly staring my way. I stared back and she made her way toward me. It was clear that we both wanted our New Year's kiss. We moved closer together, a crowd dancing and singing around us. We were inches away from each other and a hand grabbed her arm, pulling her away from me. It was a man, perhaps her boyfriend, judging by the cold look he gave me. He took her back into the chaos. I was left alone.

PHOTO 7: The Japanese Guy

At one point Yael was clutching at the jacket of a guy in a hat who obviously didn't want to talk. She wondered why he had not been infused with the buena onda of the night.

"No, no, we want to take a picture with you!" No response. Everybody else who we had run into we wanted a picture with and now this guy was running away. Yael tried her best to coax him but he avoided us virulently, disgruntled and unfriendly. We managed this picture but that was it.

"I guess he didn't like us". We all paused for a second thinking that we might actually be annoying people during their New Year's celebration. Then we looked around us, saw the fiesta that ensued around us and heard a call of "Hello!". We burst out laughing and again became part of the joy filled crowd.

PHOTO 8: The Night's End

The music was over. Vishal, Yael and I were tired. They led the way to a sausage stand to buy something that might help the inevitable hangover. I stumbled behind them. Suddenly a hand grabbed me, spun me around and lips embraced mine. The girl had returned, no boyfriend in sight now. A New Year's kiss. We parted from each other. She looked at me, smiled and disappeared. I turned to catch up with my friends.