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.