Tomorrow morning, just as the sun settles into its fiery guardpost over the city, as the fried plantain vendors start up their grease cookers, as the coffee men pour their first little white plastic cups of sweet tinto, I will be leaving South America for the first time. It marks the essential conclusion of the wandering period -- from here on I have partners, goals, structure. I am setting myself up here for some self-reflection, some "What does it all mean" crap, some "What did I learn about myself" bullshit. Okay, perhaps I am being too harsh on self-reflection. It is worthwhile to look back at these past weeks since I arrived in Lima. We are changing every day, every second, are we not? Growing further from the past. And so, what does a few thousand miles, a month and a half, what difference does that make, wouldn't I be changing anyway, wherever I might-have-been? Perhaps I can flounder through some sweet but shaky generalizations: I'm glad I made this trip, even though the timing wasn't right. I did learn some things about what moves my gears and what stops them. I got my chance to step back from my world and see what everything looks like from a distance, a lucky chance, a chance not everyone gets.
But it is artificial to say my flight tomorrow marks some serious life-boundary. And that distinction is not particularly useful, at least not to me. I am happy to be flying tomorrow, happy to get to spend some time with my brother, and happy that the experiences of my wanderings are now experiences, stories to be told, memories to be filed away. It is easy to be contemplative when sitting in an air-conditioned room in an otherwise terribly hot city. A sense of journey at its end, that, for the time being, there is no better place to be. So now, I will return to some vignettes.
> I spent my last two nights in Santa Marta with quite different partners. Second to last night, I wandered up to the roof and found a crying kitten. I made it a home in my lap and stayed for over an hour, petting it and digging some chicken bones out of the garbage for it to nibble on. Throughout my trip I have sought out animal companions; draw your own conclusions. My last night I spent having dinner and beers with an annoying Austrian guy and a quiet, tall German lady. They did not get along at all. The Austrian guy was one of those people who laugh nervously at everything in the hopes that what they don't understand will turn out to be a joke. I found it much easier to dislike him when I found out he was a big fan of the late Jorg Haider (major right-wing racists Austrian politician) and professed to have met him on many occasions. Awkward dinner. Beer did not, as the Man will have you think, make us all good friends.
> Went to buy some shorts in Santa Marta, some of which were sized in the US fashion and others of which in the European fashion. I chose wrong. 34 whatevers barely fits up to my waist and is miles (centimeters?) from buttoning up. Gave them to one of the cooks. I guess some mistakes are actually mistakes.
> Sunday morning in Cartagena went for an early walk, down by the water, and through Old Town where I came upon a fried plantain street vendor. (Ed. note: Almost every time I try to type the word "fried" it comes out as "friend". Why?) While waiting for the next batch I witnessed a fat lady chasing a skinny guy down the street and then a fist-fight, one-sided, between two guys outside a crappy hotel. People gathered and laughed. I joined, and devoured the fried yellow goodness. Then, walking along the old Spanish stone wall around the main part of the city, I saw two guys sitting on a bench.
"Hey," said one, "Come over here."
"What?"
"Come take a shot."
"Oh, I don't know," said I, walking on, "It's a little early for that."
(It was before 9am, again, on a Sunday)
"Come on, buddy. A shot."
"Okay, fine," said I, walking over, "But just don't tell my mami. She doesn't like me drinking this early."
They both got a good laugh out of that one. And I took a shot of rum, poured out of an almost empty bottle into a little white plastic coffee cup, thanked them, and walked on.
Today will be another Very-Chill day, just like the last two, with some shopping to spend the rest of my Colombian money. Tomorrow's flight leaves at 6:15am, so early rise and taxi to the nearby airport, first back to Bogota for an hour layover, then on to Panama City, where I plan to stay for one day to see the Panama Canal, and then onwards with two longish bus trips over the border to Costa Rica.
As a side note, last night I decided to get drunk on aguardiente (anise/licorice flavored alcohol) and cook myself a dinner of rice-ground beef and cucumber salad while listening to the radio on my Walkman. Which, despite appearances, was a great idea.
2 comments:
Your trip may not be at a life-boundary, but it is clearly at an isthmus, a narrow transition between 2 wider masses, no? (2 can play at this meaningfulositiness game.)
I hope you will have many such opportunities to reflect by stepping back, be it by travel as you notice now, by recalling and comparing experiences, or as a daily habit. As someone said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Just as the unfried plantain is not worth eating.
Is it an isthmus? Or is it actually a canal? Or a canal through an isthmus? The deeper you go...
An unfried plantain is, truly, not worth eating. Although doubtful that Socrates, despite all his wisdom, was aware of plantains.
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