Me at Machu Picchu: A Few Shots of Me Bumbling About the Crown Jewel of the Andes

Last week I overcame my jaded ambivalence for ancient ruins that has overcome me these past few years, an ennui that derives from three decades of archeological adventures all over Europe, the Middle East and Meso- America. I used to find ruins romantic and captivating, but somehow lately that fascination has waned, and I've lost the intrigue I had then. I've been wandering about Peru this past month, and the anthropology courses I took back in the day have kept intruding into my thoughts, but I've had no interest in actually going out of my way to see anything, not even Nazca or the many several other major archeological sites that I've been near - There are many ancient cultures that existed here, the Inca being just the last great native culture to dominate Peru, but one that was actually quite brief in its preeminence, gaining power only in the few centuries before the Spanish came.  I was really not all that pumped up to visit Machu Picchu, and almost didn't, until my mother told me I had to, and I realized that she was right. If I didn't go, I'd be a titanic wanker. 

So, I did. I visited. Despite knowing very little about the Inca, despite Machu Picchu being actually quite bereft of history. The Inca had no writing, and the Spanish never discovered the place, which was apparently utterly abandoned during the collapse of the Incan Empire during the conquest. It was not a population center, but served some obscure ritual and political purpose for the Incan elite. They deliberately evacuated the place, to the point that very little has been found by way of artefacts there, because the site had a relatively short life span, and they deliberately stripped the place as they left.  The Spanish tended to destroy Incan cities, using their materials to build their own edifices, and they were particularly keen on destroying Incan religious sites, bent on suppressing their culture. Hence, the several extant astrological/temple structures there are rare survivors. The Inca worshipped the Sun and Moon, and arranged their buildings in astrologically meaningful ways. 

Anyway, more information on them can be found elsewhere online. I just tell you here what little I've learnt. That is, not that much. I thought my - and our larger collective - ignorance would inhibit my appreciating the place.  I was wrong. 

Machu Picchu is amazing. These next pictures really do it little justice, because the scale and spaces girding the place, which is a mountain peak bound by a serpentine river valley and an amazing array of immense mountains, cannot be grasped in two dimensions. Nor can the energy of the place - which is unmistakable, palpable, and vitalizing, be felt in a photo. Still, you can probably sense a scintilla of its magnificence.. And, I just have to post evidence to prove that I was there. 

The mountain falls away a good sheer 500 meters or more to the side in this first shot, but I couldn't get the camera to do that void justice, so I'll just let you imagine the vertigo here:

This next shot is looking uphill, the house in the far background is the "watchtower" where the final picture was taken:

From the watchtower overlooking the main section of the ruin. The classic Machu Picchu view:

I took many more pictures, but they are all just post card shots. I pulled these three because they have me in them.  Beautiful, eh?  Wish you where here..




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Buen Provecho.

And now, a view from the South American table.

The food here is probably the worst of any place - other than possibly Egypt - that I have ever been. From Bogota to Cali to Quito to Cuenca to Piura to Trujillo to here, it's all been insipid bordering on awful.  Huaraz has actually been a great improvement, has been consistently palatable, even on a couple occasions tasty. So things are looking up. The word is that Lima has a very good food scene, so I'm all anticipation..

A few weeks ago I ordered a Caldo de Pollo - chicken soup/stew - at the bus station terminal in Cali, Columbia.  This is what I got:

The Feet. The Neck. The Whole Freak'n Chick'n.

It was actually pretty yummy.  Better than 90% of what I've been served down here, where their idea of dinner is plain rice, big fat undressed Andean corn kernels and plain slightly steamed white beans with a greasy breaded chicken breast slapped atop it all. No seasoning, certainly no spice or chili. This is definitely not the same as Mexico..

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Las Días de los Vivos

So, I haven't had any impulse to put anything anywhere online for quite a long while now. It's like I've been hermetically sealed, I've had nothing much to exude.

I've been in South America for over a month now, I can't tell you exactly how long. I don't know if I have anything I much want to say, except to the dozen or so friends who have asked me to say something, to keep them in the loop.

So, here.  For the baker's dozen of you who really will enjoy this, and the few score more who I may slightly amuse:

I'm in Huaraz, Peru, in the middle of the Andes. The town is at 2,100 meters, and the couple excursions I've taken from here above 3,000 have left me - I, who haven't run a sustained mile since I left the army - feeling short of breath. This thin air is no good for me, so I'm seeking sea level tomorrow, I think in Lima. I'll make my mind up at the terminal, because maybe it may make more sense instead to head straight for Bolivia and then Tierra del Fuego.

Anyway, these past three days have been a welter of festivity here, beginning on Friday with All Saints' Eve. I'm not sure what they used to traditionally do here on Hallow's Eve, but this past Friday night as I went out to eat, the streets here were full of families - Peruvian ones - adults chaperoning their kids out trick o' treating:

They - all these little Inca - were just adorable, the photo opps just redounded unto absurdity because the sidewalks were mobbed with these nutty little critters, but since I hadn't been paying attention and so didn't have my camera with me, and was on a mission to find supper not wanting to go back to my digs to get it,  I just took a few shots with my phone instead.

They challenge you by saying "Halloween" with a slight accent, instead of Trick o' Treat - which I suspect may be impossible to translate into Spanish or any other language - and often get money instead of candy for loot, but the essential vibe was the same; and since they aren't terrified of the boogeyman down here, they have no phobia against letting their kids loose all over the urban streets in a great throng, propositioning every stranger who happens along.

The two days since have been filled with more traditional observances, mainly families going to their ancestral tombs to have dinner with the dead just like they do in Mexico. I didn't go with them, because I had other things on my mind, so no photos.

But at least you get a post.  Cheers.



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Here I Go, Takin' Pictures of the Navaho..

So, here there's this sadhu (hindu ascetic renunciate, who lives by begging) that I saw by the gate after mass.  He was pretty photogenic, so I naturally stole a bit of his soul with my Kodak click:

really nice beard, too..

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Photo Essay of Holy Family: The Local Parish Here in Mamallapuram

These past couple weeks I've been going to mass here in Mamallapuram.  This is what it is like:

The church is rather small, but the congregation of a few hundred overflows into the yard, which is what all the blue plastic chairs are for.

the altar boys.

Notice how the men and women sit separately; the women on Christ's right hand, appropriately enough.

I hope this video works, it's of one of the communion hymns. I adore how Tamil is sing song, and percussive, perfectly accompanied by the drum.  I shot this as inconspicuously as I could with my iphone, which did not focus.. those are my blue socked feet at the beginning, we take our shoes off before entering the church here, like Muslims at a mosque:

After mass, there is Marian prayer, like is common in Europe or many parishes stateside. Then, everyone rushes the front to venerate the statues of the Holy Family there:

They touched the table or base of the statues like the girl is doing here.  I didn't think to bring a candle with me, and they had none there to buy.

I'll get my own stash for future contingency.

So, that's how rural Catholics - who are mostly converts from lower Hindu castes here, and poor - roll in India.  Tomorrow I'll post the shots from the great Shrine of St. Thomas in Madras..



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Concerning Denizens of the Indian Street (A Lenten Post)

I've been holding off on this post for a few days, thinking I would have something sage come to me to say, but I have nothing.  

As you probably are aware, there is profound poverty in India.  Half of the population, of over a billion, subsists on less than a dollar a day.  Two thirds of the larger world's population does the same. 

The Western (and Japanese, there are a few of them about here) tourist comes here with the power of the banks behind them, flush with cash.  Prices here are - for goods and services provided by and intended for these poor - extremely low.  As La La - a girl I met here who lives in the street - put it, "Indian girl cheap, American man expensive."  

There are other things I could say here concerning all this; about for example, say, Mother Theresa and the Western conscience, but I'm not in the frame of mind or heart to hold forth like that tonight. I'll just post some pictures I took of people I've known in Chennai this past month who live in the street - I'd say that they actually are not "homeless" in the Western sense, because their home is somehow the street. Whole extended families, who are not addicts, who engage in rudimentary commerce (selling rice, driving a tuk tuk), who have possessions arrayed about them, and who are in no way molested by anyone, not even the police, live up and down most sidewalks here. They tend even to dress well, and even wear expensive jewelry, so forth.. It is incredible, really.

Here, then, without further commentary, are some of the street people of Chennai, all of them members of the same extended family:

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Concerning Sacred Cows

The stereotype is true.  Indian streets are in fact teeming with bovine masses. India apparently has 30% of the world's cows, and it is illegal to kill and religiously forbidden to eat them.. the result of which is that they are everywhere, being allowed to wander free, apparently anydamnwhere they please, such as the middle of busy urban streets:

Holy Cowz wandering free..

I've been told they are considered sacred due to the fact they give milk, and that "ghee" or clarified liquid butter is essential to many Hindu temple ceremonies.. the cow is an archetype of the earth and fertility, the bull of virility and fertility, the masculine and feminine. The cow is a surrogate mother, providing milk to children.  The Hindu epic the Muhabharata says "cows represent sacrifice.. they are guileless in their behavior and from them flow sacrifices.. milk and curds and butter.. hence cows are sacred."  Their dung is also used for fertilizer and fuel, and their milk is a staple in the vegetarian diet here.

To quote the Vedas: "The cows have come and brought us good fortune. In our stalls contented may they stay! May they bring forth calfs for us, many colored, giving milk for Indra each day. You make o cows the thin man sleek, to they unlovely you bring beauty. Rejoice our homestead with pleasant lowing. In our assemblies we laud you with vigor."

There are, if you are wondering, McDonald's in India. They do not, however, serve beef. My mind belts in amazement.. As in Israel where they do not put cheese on the beef, and so have no cheeseburgers, India is the one place in the world where they do not have hamburgers. Such delicate sensitivity on the part of Leviathan! They will do whatever it takes, even if it means dispensing with their signature product, to succeed.

Anywhichway, just know that cows do in fact have their way here, and it is in fact rather quite charming.. Even if you often have to step around them and their shit everywhere you go, and when out in the countryside driving at night you have to keep your eyes peeled, else you plow into one. Not so bad as hitting a moose whose legs are much longer, putting their carcass atop your roof, rather than merely your hood and windshield, but still..

Parting thought: maybe Chick fil-A can figure out an Indian angle for their ads someday?  Hmm..

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Picture of the Day: Succinctly Summating Why I Shall Forever Prefer la Cuccina Italiana to la Cuisine Française..

As I've said somewhere once before, paté is for cats, and the Italians know it.

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Tales of Rocamadour.. PART I

So, as I say, I left Lourdes last week and took the train to Rocamadour.  I'd read that Rocamadour is one of the most ancient Marian shrines in the world, a critical junction along the Camino de Compostelle, which I walked from Vezelay back in 2004, and which I am suddenly - and somewhat surprisingly; since until I think about this week, I'd felt absolutely no desire to ever do it again - feeling as if I may have to walk again, but from a different angle.  I thought I should go, and see the famous black virgin there, and climb up to the shrine on the cliff in the footsteps of Charlemagne and Saint Louis and dozens of other kings, saints, bishops, popes and millions of untold other pilgrims who have come there over the millennium and a half that it has existed.

So, again as I say, I embarked via Toulouse (where I stopped for the afternoon to visit the mother church of the Order of Preachers, and the Tomb of Saint Thomas Aquinas - !!! - pictures, some rather good ones, I think - soon to come, when I get my image sorting and storage issues sorted out!)  and then took the evening regional bus then another train to get to Rocamadour.  Along the way, it began to rain.

I got there about 9 pm, expecting there to be a village with some sort of selection of hotels there to choose from. But there was only one hotel directly opposite the closed station, and it was shut tight, and dark. In a spirit of mild abnegation, I decided to sleep out.  In the rain. No biggy: I have a sleeping bag, bivy and tarp. I've used the bivy frequently, but the tarp - a light, 6' x 8' - I've never used, and like a retard, have never even tested out.

There was an enclosed waiting bench on the far side of the tracks - which one had to cross on a rubber pathway laid across the rails with a lit warning sign that flashes whenever a train approaches - and the woods behind it looked somewhat promising.  I started to scout along the platform to see if there was a dim nook with good branches about on which to throw up my tarp.

I mucked about for ten fifteen minutes, and got well and drenched.  My anorak kept my upper body only damp, but my pantlegs were getting soaked. And I couldn't see anything obvious to pitch my tarp and bivy down on.  Damn frustrating..

It finally dawned on me that it was Saturday night, and that there most likely would be very little traffic in the station until well into the coming morning.. Why not just sleep in the enclosed waiting area, all nice and snug in my sleeping bag?  Genius. If you're gonna kick it like a hobo, you gotta do what you gotta do.

So, that's what I did.  I popped a sleeping pill, and went to bed on the bench in the enclosed shelter.

Next morning, I overslept.  I'd meant to get up at 8:30 and hunt down the church for mass, but screwed up my alarm and woke up 10:30ish, and groggily got myself together.  In the dark the night before, I'd assumed that the shrine would be revealed in the dawn, the impressive cliff would be right there in front of the station for me to just climb up and go to mass.

But there was nothing there.  Just that empty hotel, trees, and a few houses. What to do?  I had assumed that this being one of the most famous shrines in France, with a million and a half pilgrims coming a year, that 4mass would be easily had, even in the off season, just as it had been at Lourdes.

But here I was, and there was nothing there.

I was deflated.  It was like when I'd taken the train to Fatima from Compostella, and had expected a substantial station right near the shrine, but arrived to find a little dinky powdunk station 14 km from the shrine, that required a bus ride through the countryside to get to.

It was like that. I was screwed.  I hate missing mass, and this was a borderline thing - I should have done my due diligence, but I hadn't, and now I was out of luck..

I sat there, glum, waiting for signs of life.

About noon, a girl showed up.  Maybe 18, asian features, wearing a scout uniform and carrying a backpack.  Neckerchief, badges, the whole deal.  She came into the shelter, looks at me, smiles, and fires off a stream of French. I gaze at her through my glaze, try to smile back, end up with a sort of grimace and just shook my head. Now, normally I understand everything people say to me here. My French - not so recently "pretty good for a dipshit American" is on the verge of just being pretty good period.  But my mind had evaporated on me.  She looked at me pityingly, clearly thinking "ah, this guy is clearly some sort of mental gimp."

Yes.  That's right.  I sat wallowing in that deliciously familiar old sensation of mild humiliation and self reproach tinged with contempt.  It's been a long while since ineptitude in French has made me feel that, but I used to get all pruny bathing in it, back in the day, all the time. It was almost a cause for nostalgia.. But not really.

I decided to go see if I could roust someone out to tell me about the hotel, to get away from this girl scout. I was here, and I was going to see the damn shrine. I was not going to give up, dammit.

I went and knocked on the door of the house next to the hotel.  An extremely cheerful fellow with a round ruddy face, looking like he'd just stepped out of a Pieter Bruegel painting and changed into modern clothes, came to the door.  My mind clicked back into gear, and I asked him "ou est le proprietaire de l'hotel?  c'est encore ouvert?"  He grinned, and told me that yes, the hotel was open, but that the proprietor was visiting her family for Sunday and would not be back until four.  I could call her number, listed on the sign there.  I told him my cell didn't work in France.  Could he help?  He grinned again, apologetically this time, and said a client could call her, but he didn't dare, not when she was with her family.  The sign says she'll be bak at four.  Ah, can't call her, not even on behalf of a client?  No.  Sorry.  I was like, "elle va revenir a quatre heures, c'est ecrit en pierre?"  Sure.  Absolutely.

Okay.  I'll wait then.  I found the wall nearby and sat down.  A car appears and pulls abruptly in in front of the train station.  A girl and guy get out.  Late teens.  Both in scout uniforms.  He leans against the car, she leans into him, obviously digging his bones deeply.  I am amused.

Then, another car and a van pull in.  Disgorging more teens in scout uniforms. Over the next ten minutes or so, several more vehicles arrive, until about twenty 18-ish kids are gathered in scouting uniforms.  Two priests in cassocks drive in and drop off a couple kids and drive away.  The scouts - girls and boys - all socialize vigorously, eating lunch and screwing around with one another.  I am intrigued and bemused by the spectacle.

It's moments like this when the French strike me as being deeply other - familiar, somehow, but so very very not at all the same as us.  I was a boyscout, and made Eagle at 13.  Then, I basically disengaged.  Scouting in the States is very much a middle school thing.  Most kids - probably 2/3's or so - quit by the time they reach high school.  Cool kids definitely do not usually stick around.  It's definitely not cool to run around in uniform.  It's nerdy and definitely un-hip.  I think it has something to do with Vietnam and the hippies and the wave of cynicism that hit us back in the seventies..

But here, in rural France I was watching a co-ed group of strapping, attractive kids wearing rolled neckerchiefs and throwing scout salutes a eachother like gang bangers throw gang signs.  They threw their salutes like WW II British soldiers, throwing their hands up lackadaisically above their  shoulders with a loose wrist, like an SS officer barely acknowledging an underling's heil hitler salute; fingers in the three middle fingers up, thumb over pinkie below, just like in the States.

I was astonished.  Such amazingly artless lack of cynicism.. in teenagers. Astonishing, completely incredible.

Then they began to sing.  Sing.  It was like when the dwarves sang of the Mountain at Bag End.. They weren' t American style campfire songs, which are usually silly or comic.  They were singing about "le chemin" and "le seigneur," like something out le Chanson de Roland.

It probably was.  I tried to record it; but my camera battery was nearly dead and I could only take a few stills.  I'll put one up on the blog maybe, later.

Then, the train came.  Most of the kids got on it.  Five or six of them did not, and I realized that they'd come in uniform to see their friends off.  More salutes, they sing on the platform as the train pulls away.  I sit there mildly astonished, and somehow moved.

It happened all the time when I was living with the Philanthropotes (another group of vital early twenty something French kids who continually astonished, impressed and moved me like this.  I felt like an anthropologist amongst a strange people, a witness to all sorts of odd but profoundly human behavior that constantly surprised and touched me.

It's good to be here, in France.  I truly love these people.  They are awesome.

To be continued..



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Song of the Day: John Hiatt, Welfare Music

This one's for Cousin Kristi & Uncle Bill,



And the f'n ucking United Sates (thus) Congress.

Las Letras:

She quit school when she was seventeen
Senator on TV calls her welfare queen
Used to be daddy's little girl
Now she needs help in this mean ol' world

Buys cassette tapes in the bargain bin
Loves Carlene Carter and Loretta Lynn
Tries to have fun on a Saturday night
Sunday mornin' don't shine too bright

It's that welfare music
Watch the baby dance to the welfare music
Will she ever stand a chance?

Takes two to make three but one ain't here
Still chasin' women and drinkin' beer
Says nobody understands how it feels
But that don't pay them monthly bills

Angry fat man on the radio
Wants to keep his taxes way down low
Says there oughta be a law
Angriest man you ever saw

Welfare music
Watch the baby dance to the welfare music
Will she ever stand a chance?

Baby dance circles on the floor
Round and round just like before
Baby fall down, baby get up
Baby needs a drink from a lovin' cup

And it's welfare music
Watch the baby dance to the welfare music
Will she ever stand a chance?

Welfare music
Watch the baby dance to the welfare music
Will she ever stand a chance?

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Just Merely to Triple Double Dog Emphasize the Essential Point of My Prior Post:

Each one of us is invited to recognize in the fragile human being the face of the Lord, who, in his human flesh, experienced the indifference and loneliness to which we often condemn the poorest, either in the developing nations, or in the developed societies. Each child who is unborn, but is unjustly condemned to be aborted, bears the face of Jesus Christ, bears the face of the Lord, who, even before he was born, and then as soon as he was born, experienced the rejection of the world. And also each old person and - I spoke of the child, let us also speak of the elderly, another point! And each old person, even if infirm or at the end of his days, bears the face of Christ. They cannot be discarded, as the "culture of waste" proposes! They cannot be discarded!

- Pope Francis, Colloquy with Catholic gynecologists, September 20, 2013.

Translated from the Italian here.

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Upon the Recent Hubba- Ballooo Over All Pope Francis's "Scandalous" Comments About Erotic Sin, etc. [revised]

[Written in response to all the crap like this in the media, in reaction to interviews like this, these days.]

On the hierarchy of needs sexual pleasure falls well behind prayer, love, friendship, clean air, good food, clean water, sleep, good sanitation, shelter, medical care and education. The West's current obsession with it is merely a sign of its decadence and spiritual bankruptcy. The pope is talking to us like babies- yes, you can masturbate and we will still love you. God still loves you when you wack off into someone's mouth or anus. That this is taken as big news here is hilarious.

I mean, the operative question here is - now and forever shall be - not whether God and his Church loves each of us, it's whether or not we love God and his Church. It's whether or not we love the Truth (who is a person) and one another..

The pope is a Jesuit and a Catholic priest.  The things he has been saying about sodomy are not new. It's called moral casuistry, a.k.a. Catholic moral theology. See Molina, Escobar and Suarez; John the Baptist,  John Vianney and Padre Pio. See in the Bible where it says "judge not lest you be judged" and "take the beam out of your own eye before you condemn your brother for the speck in his" and then again "love your enemy" and then "he loved me while I was still in sin, I, the foremost of sinners."

Love the sinner, not the sin. Forgive, and you shall be forgiven. Justice (being merely the consummation of mercy) is mine, says the LORD.

The pope cannot and will not declare sodomy sex, because it is not sex. That's just biological fact. And it isn't just those with same sex attraction who commit it. He cannot tell us the earth is the center of the universe in any other sense than it happens to be the center of our universe. The Roman inquisition once got itself balled up on that point, hewing incorrectly to Aristotelean and Ptolemaic scientific consensus, and the world has never let us forget it, has it?

So, this pope is saying nothing new. He isn't going to endorse the sexual revolution by abandoning Catholic anthropology. And sin is still sin - love of money, hatred of the immigrant amongst us, denial the worker of his just wage, the murder of innocents and (yes) sodomy are still - and shall forever be - sins that cry to heaven for vengeance.  These are also sins that we, the people of the de-Christianizing West, commit with abandon.

The pope is waiting for us to confess, reminding many of us who call ourselves Christian that pride, perjury, wrath, envy, gluttony, sloth, avarice, murder, *as well as* hatred of the poor and sinful, are just as sinful as lust & sexual decadence is. If not more so..



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Diva Girl, Maximon's House, Panajachel Guatemala, July 1st 2012

 

 

 

 

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Location:8 Calle Oriente,Antigua Guatemala,Guatemala

 




 

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U.S. Men's National Team Ties Guatemala 1-1 in World Cup Qualifier

I'd bet practically no one up there in Gringoland knows that. But believe me, tonight more or less everyone in Guatemala does.

(Side note, I'm confused as to how come Blogsy's insisting on highlight "tonight" and "esta noche" as if hyperlinked - I've tried to fix this, but can't figure it out..)

Anyhow, I probably should have gone into Guatemala City, less than an hour away, to give our boys some support tonight. My other American housemates did. The boys, they need it. This is a point too few gringo jingoes appreciate, but our men's national team playing anyone anywhere is almost always a big deal to the locals in that country. Especially in the Muslim or third world, and most especially in Latin America. It's often a type of low grade warfare, that I've never heard reported on in our press.

Here's a clip showing how they have to deploy riot police to protect the U.S. team while entering the stadium, along with some fan shenanigans:



The upshot is that to get any good reporting on our team, it seems you pretty much have to go to the British press for it.

Here's the Guardian on what it's often like for our boys when playing on foreign soil:

Tough Crowd:

Well, as with any time the USA travel for a Central American fixture, it's one of those games that on paper they're expected to win, but which in practice is the sort of game people have in mind when they talk about the "grind" of qualifying.

That "grind" tends to start the minute the team get off the plane. Central American trips by the USMNT tend to be fraught affairs. Previous trips to the region have resulted in a Honduran newspaper printing the floor plan of the US team hotel for the benefit of "fans", a band assembling in the lobby of another hotel, and a previous trip to Guatemala City itself was marked by a local radio station hosting a "promotion", complete with loudspeakers, outside yet another hotel window. These trips have also presumably resulted in around 22 terrible Yelp reviews attached to the hotels in question, shortly thereafter.

And when the US reaches the pitch it's not likely to get much friendlier. The last time these two sides played here in a World Cup Qualifier, in 2008, there were two red cards, seven yellows, and an array of airborne objects that ranged from US players to batteries being thrown at them. The consensus is that the US are likely to be goaded tonight and while Jamaica may be the tougher footballing side they face in this phase of qualifying, this tie may be the sternest test of character.

Klinsmann is fairly phlegmatic at the prospect of what awaits: "It's hostile in Tehran in front of 110,000, it's hostile in Istanbul with 60,000 -- actually you can't even see the field before the game for 10 minutes for all the smoke. It's normal; this is what soccer brings to the table. I think it's just awesome. We are here because we want three points, and we have to take it seriously."


This report, along with a live blogging of the game (which was only available outside of Guatemala on $30 pay per view) can be found here.

The USMNT blog also has some good dirt on the game and historic rivalry.

This match was the second qualifier. The first the USMNT beat Antigua and Barbuda (as in the Caribbean islands, not this my here Guatemalan home, Antigua Guatemala) a sloppy 3-1. The USMNT began playing Guatemala in 1977. "Los Chapines" as they are affectionately called here, won the first four matches ever played, but have never again won since 1988, ever since US Soccer began to be taken more seriously at home. The upshot is that after the game tonight the U.S. is 12-4-6 all time against Guatemala, and 12-0-6 since 1988.

Compare this to Mexico, which leads the U.S. 30-15-12, and has never lost against the USMNT at home, as in not ever.

I decided not to go into the city, and also skipped going to the bar down the street that was showing the game. Probably should have, since I had a tallboy of beer wagered on our guys with Rafael my Guatemalan housefather here. Since it was a tie, the bet is null. I have a long history of betting on the U.S. Men's Team, dating back to a bottle of raki I won on our guys when they played the Turks in Izmir that year, because it's too much fun not to get into it with people when I'm abroad. They could care less about our U.S. sports obsessions, and know nothing about the NBA, NFL or MLB, but soccer gets people excited everywhere..

Excepting at home, of course. Naval gazing ethnocentric self obsession at it's most disappointing, really. If we're going to get all obsessed about grown men playing with balls like schoolchildren, we might as well do it with everyone else, you know? The fact that we have the gall to call our baseball championship the world series when we only invite one foreign team to compete (Toronto) is just pathetic. Why not invite the Japanese, Mexicans, Cubans and Dominicans to field their own teams? Because Boston and New York might lose to the Dominican Republic or Tokyo is how come.

So anyway, while I sat the game out here tonight in my room, I can still report that I could hear at least three televisions carrying the game from within say 100' of my window.

And that when Guatemala scored their goal in the second half, the town erupted in faint distant cheers, and probably a half dozen different sets of fireworks went off in the distance. I'm not kidding. It was awesome, really. I had to laugh.


For while I'm glad the U.S. team didn't lose (I have just enough national pride left in me to mildly care) I'm also somehow pleased that Guatemala didn't lose. I've grown especially fond, and so a bit protective of my dear little Guatemaltecos, you see.. I'm rooting deeply for them. Because while probably less than 1 in a 100 of Americans will even be aware of the game tomorrow, 99 in 100 Guatemalans will be. The fact that they at least did not lose to the great gringo satan is tonight salve for many a Guatemalan soul.. And for that I'm very glad.

Signing off,

Oye todos mis compadres, por esta noche se puede llamarme,

- Carlos Bocanegra Cortes




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Song of the Day: The Games People Play

Games we all play now..

I give you all, my beloved public, two versions of this classic here. First Joe's original, then Waylon's magnificent cover of the same:

 

 

Them Lyrics:

La-da da da da da da da,
La-da da da da da da..


Woe, the games people play now,
Every night and every day now,
Never meaning what they say now,
Never saying what they mean, y'all..

While they wile away the hours,
In their ivory towers,
Til' they're covered up with flowers,
In the back of a black limousine, woe ah..

Chorus:

La-da da da da da da da,
La-da da da da da dee,
Talking 'bout you and me, brother,
And the games people play..

Oh, we make one another cry,
Break a heart then we say goodbye,
Cross our hearts and we hope to die,
That the other was to blame, woe ah..

Neither one will give in,
So we gaze at an eight by ten,
Thinking 'bout the things that might have been,
It's a dirty rotten shame, woe ah..

Repeat Chorus.

Look here:

People walking up to you,
Singing glory hallelujah,
While they're tryin' to sock it to you,
In the Name of the Lord..

They're gonna teach you how to meditate,
Read your horoscope, cheat your faith (fate?)..
Come on to hell with hate,
Come on get on board..

Repeat Chorus.

Look around tell me what you see..
What's happening to you and me.
God grant me the serenity
To just remember who I am.

'Cause you've given up your sanity
For your pride and your vanity.
Turns you sad (turn your back) on humanity,
And you don't give a da da da da da..

Repeat Chorus..



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La Cara Guatemalteca, Antigua Guatemala, the First Week of May, 2012

I couldn't choose between them. I like them too much not to post both. Maybe my two favorite of all the images I've taken here so far.

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Note the delicious parody here of the all seeing eye. Magazines, third girl. Absolutely love it.

Take her gaze to heart..

I'd like to also point out that the older girl on the left is the same as the one in the picture I posted below on April 13th. Note too that she is wearing the very same green dress in both images. These kids often come by selling candy when I'm at my school being tutored in Spanish in the afternoon. I find the idigenous people here - they're apparently mostly K'iche' - to be fascinating, and beautiful. Inexplicably moving, actually..

 

 

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Location:8 Calle Oriente,Antigua Guatemala,Guatemala

 



 

Song of the Day: Jaded Lover, Chuck Pyle..

This one's of course for Annie Paradis.. As it shall always be for me.

 

Lyrics (variation off the version above, this being the way I sing it):

Now, it won't be but a week or two,
You'll be wantin' someone new lovin' you.
It's somethin' you've done a hundred times before.
Can't see you I been spreadin' myself thin too (in two)?
It's a lonely phase we've been goin' through..
Don't get up, I'll find my own way to the door.

Ah, I can see you are an angel whose wings just won't unfold,
Tune up your harp, polish your old halo..
'Cause the only kind of man that you've ever wanted,
Is the one that you knew you'd never hold very long,.
Now you're sittin' there cryin' like I'm the first one to go.

You may have thirty lovers behind you,
An' I may feel you but sure can't find you..
Seems you'd have found your own self by now.
But some nights those old lovers' tears come back,
Faces in your dreams, fingers in your back..
Echoes of the memories for cryin' out loud.

Ah, I see you are an angel whose wings just won't unfold,
Tune up your harp, polish your old halo..
'Cause the only kind of man that you've ever wanted,
Is the one that you knew you'd never hold very long,.
Now you're sittin' there cryin' like I'm the first one to go.

Ah, what a beautiful sight you are in your sleep,
I'll be leaving 'cause believing gets me in too deep.
That's easy enough for a man to say..
But we'd never agree if we talked all night..
Things get so heavy, I'm traveling light..

Goodbye my jaded lover, my undercover queen for a day.

Ah, I can see you are an angel whose wings just won't unfold,
Tune up your harp, polish your old halo..
'Cause the only kind of man that you've ever wanted,
Is the one that you knew you'd never hold very long,.
Now you're sittin' there cryin' like I'm the first one to go..


Think about it darlin'..


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Location:8 Calle Oriente,Antigua Guatemala,Guatemala




 

Further Thoughts on Humility & Knowledge

 

But let the Spirit of all lies with works of dazzling magic blind you. Then absolutely mine, I'll have and bind you.

- The Devil, Goethe's Faust

 

Gnosticism is the predominate heresy of our age. Gnosticism is belief in salvation by knowledge, belief in the (eventual) supremacy of the intellect over all. Essentially, belief in salvation through power. "Knowledge is power."

Gnosis is derived from the Greek for knowledge, just as science is derived from the Latin for the same. The conciet of the gnostic is that the spiritual (as with everything else) can be reduced to a science, that by understanding one can control things spiritual. Just as one can control the material, the physical through knowledge, one can also control the metaphysical by way of knowledge. Astrology births astronomy, alchemy births chemistry, both birth physics. Technology is as magic. We can be become like gods through knowledge. This is the Fall.

Christianity, in contrast is in this sense a practical agnosticism. We know nothing that can save us. Reality is ultimately mysterious, infinite when we are finite. We can never completely control it, which is to say never control reality's Creator, he who is the source of all that is. He is utterly ineffable, beyond all human power to control or even ultimately understand. The universe gives a hint of his transcendence, enough to inspire awe.

Thus just as we did not and cannot create ourselves, we cannot sustain or save ourselves. It is embrace of this abject need for the Other that saves. Salvation is love of him, and therefore love is the only thing we ultimately need. Again, salvation is through love and the humility and trust (faith) that love engenders. It is in our dependence, weakness, and ignorance that we are saved. It is not in pride, but humility that we are gathered in. "For God is love." Thanks be God forever.

Therefore, it is not knowledge as power that saves, but realtionship in the Divine Trinity, whose energies are grace born of love. And while love is animated by certain knowledge, understanding, it is not of the intellect. Rather, it is of the heart.

So it is then that the smallest shattered, diseased retard with a heart consumed with love is infinitely greater than the futile pride of all hell unbound.

My friend Dale is far greater than satan.

I.H.S.V.

A.M.D.G.

 

 

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Limboing the Light Fandango: Skipping the Guatemalan Border [re-posted]

So. I bought a baseline iPad two days before leaving for this trip. It's an amazing piece of technology, but one different from a laptop in hundreds of ways. It's taken me the last two and a half weeks to get the hang of it, and to get it set up properly. I actually didn't sync it properly with my laptop, which is a big annoyance due to the fact that this thing is like an iPod or iPhone, and needs a parent computer to set up and properly use. I made several mistakes when I did this the second day I ownbed it, the day before I left, by not properly tuning it to use iCloud fully, and by putting too much music on it limiting the ammount of hardrive space I have free. It seems impossible to mass delete music - you can delete individual songs, one by one, but not 10 gigs worth at once, which is what I need to do to free my 16 gig drive up sufficiently to upload photos and download software and all that jazz..

Essentially, I need to plug it in to my laptop which is back in Florida, and get the iCloud settings right so I can sync this thing off my laptop remotely over the internet. I also need to delete all but the few hundred or so songs that I listen to obsessively, and then put the rest of my media onto the cloud to be accessed remotely as I want it.. That too can only be properly done when this thing is plugged into my laptop.

Anyhow, despite that minor lackof secure iTunes equipped computer induced boondoggle (which I will rectify when I return home for a week and half Thursday) I have been enjoying trying out tons of new apps and discovering the many ways in which this thing differs from, and often surprisingly outperforms a laptop at a plethora of tasks. Its portability, and its $500 (as opposed to the $2000 on my lap top) price tag are the biggest pluses, of course. If this gets damaged or stolen it is not that big a deal. It can be remotely scrubbed if need be, if stolen; and much more easily replaced in any event. And it does 90% of what my laptop can do. A couple of the things it can't do, like run rss feeds and my strategic war games (Hi, my name is Charlie and I'm an HoI2 and Total War addict) are actually huge pluses. I need a break from the wave of information that my laptop engulfs me in, as well as the distraction of games.

And the apps are mostly impressive. This thing does many things well, in neat new ways, and sometimes better than a laptop can.

One mixed example are the blogging apps - Blogsy and Blogpress - that I downloaded a few days ago in Belize. I used Blogpress to knock out the original post that was published under this title. I spent an entire afternoon in this groovy little internet pub overlooking the main drag in San Igancio (such as it is- it's dusty, hardscrabble border town with an eclectic mix of people - sort of like Mos Eisley, only set in the Belizian jungle, not Tatooine.. )

I only took one picture from the cafe balcony for some reason. This picture of a Mennonite (think Amish, thereabouts) woman talking with some guy. There are many Mennonites in Belize, and they - as you might expect - are very industrious folk, kicking it like it's 1560 Friesland in 2012 Belize. They have major farms there that produce much of the country's produce. I saw them everywhere, and they fascinate and impress me. Hence this odd, lone image:





I blogged the earlier version of this post at that upstairs cafe. It was a slapdash, rambling affair. Typical of my blogging, indeed most of my writing, these days. I did really like some of the pictures I posted with it, though.

So it stings a bit that while screwing around with the Blogpress app last night, I somehow managed to erase that post. It was absurdly easy to do, and I still don't understand what happened.

Something that would be inconceivable on a laptop, but happened all too easily on this damn'd iPad.

I'd posted images of Christmas, my reef diving, and the very intriguing spelunking I did in a cave were the Maya performed ritual human sacrifices.

Virtual postcards of some pretty amazing stuff.. All swallowed by the matrix.

I may repost some of it, but tonight I'm in a hotel - an otherwise very decent place - with weak wireless. In lieu of recapitulating all that, I am going to paste a few images of my past few days in Guatemala:





The view at sunset from my hotel veranda over Lago de Petén Itzá. The town here, Flores, is on an island connected to the shore by a manmade land bridge. The last great Mayan fortress and ceremonial complex to be taken by the Spanish (at the end of the 17th century, 200 years after Columbus arrived) was on this island. None of it now survives, having been razed during conquest. It's a beautiful little town, reminding me a bit of Greenville on Moosehead.. Picturesque little place on a great 20 mile long lake..

The backyard, here:





This morning at 4:30 I left for a tour of the great Mayan ruin enmeshed in the jungle at Tikal about an hour and a half from here. It rained all day long, but the place was nevertheless still magical.

A few shots peremptorily culled from my camera, without editing:


















It rains rather fierce in the rainforest, you see. I was soddened by the incessant temperate damp .. Nothing that a hot shower, and a few reinvigorating libations wouldn't salve.

Tomorrow evening I take the overnight bus to Guatemala City to fly home on Thursday.

I repair once again to my natural state exile a week and half later, on the 20th of the month. Not a day too late nor too soon.

This here blog is far from undone. There are stories yet to come..



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Location:Hotel Casa Amelia, Calle Union, Santa Elena, Guatemala

Bruised Orange: O.J. Squeezed from the American Dream..

If I Have Anymore Faith in this Fu'k'd Up Country, It's Due to the Likes of John Prine..




Them Lyrics:

My heart's in the ice house, come hill or come valley,
Like a long ago Sunday when I walked through the alley,
On a cold winter's morning to a church house
Just to shovel some snow.

I heard sirens on the train track, howl naked gettin' nuder,
An altar boy's been hit by a local commuter,
Just from walking with his back turned
To the train that was coming so slow..

You can gaze out the window get mad, gettin' madder,
Throw your hands in the air, sayin' "What does it matter?"
But it don't do no good to get angry,
So help me I know..

For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter..
You become your own prisoner, as you watch yourself sit there
Wrapped up in a trap of your very own chain of sorrow..

I been brought down to zero, pulled out and put back there..
I sat on a park bench, kissed the girl with the black hair
And my head shouted down to my heart, "you'd better look out below!"
Hey, it ain't such a long drop don't stammer don't stutter,
From the diamonds in the sidewalk to the dirt in the gutter,
You'll carry those bruises to remind you wherever you go.

You can gaze out the window get mad, gettin' madder,
Throw your hands in the air, sayin' "What does it matter?"
But it don't do no good to get angry,
So help me I know..

My heart's in the ice house, come hill or come valley,
Like a long ago Sunday when I walked through the alley,
On a cold winter's morning to a church house
Just to shovel some snow.

I heard sirens on the train track, howl naked gettin' nuder,
An altar boy's been hit by a local commuter,
Just from walking with his back turned
To the train that was coming so slow..

You can gaze out the window get mad, gettin' madder,
Throw your hands in the air, sayin' "What does it matter?"
But it don't do no good to get angry,
So help me I know..

For a heart stained in anger grows weak and grows bitter..
You become your own prisoner, as you watch yourself sit there
Wrapped up in a trap of your very own chain of sorrow..



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