Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Chapter 14: A Waterless Grave


I’m kicking, pushing, grabbing and ripping at the life jacket attached to the seat in front of me. I wake with a start. There’s dried blood all down the front of my shirt and pants. I have a wound the size of an eyeball on my hand, one bigger on my shoulder and a rip in my chin. The man on the other side of Ben and Saleem is dead…
Abigail was as sharp as the front teeth of two foxes quick dancing to the music of toothpicks. She was funnier than the time I watched Billy Marsdens dainty horse crumble beneath him. She wore a headband to keep back what seemed like a half-mile of hair and had a little jean shirt she tucked up and twisted in a knot, unbuttoned three buttons down so as to let some cleavage ride in the cool Colombian air with her. Her legs kept the company of a mustard yellow skirt and tights that held high above the ankles. She had cheese-puff shoes and a Lego watch that stole her left wrist from showing. Her facial expressions doted on me and then moved down the graffiti lined streets as her eyes followed the skyline passed the tops of all the mountains. She was constantly saying things like “I don’t understand you” and “I don’t think I like you” but despite these remarks she accompanied me inseparably for the better part of our last three days in Colombia. We moved from Police Torture Museums to pints of beer three liters high that reminded her of the London she had left behind. We danced to impromptu shows and laughed till we had to breathe thru our tears. I passed her headed south on a Wednesday morning from the seat of a small plane as I ascended over the city walls. I slightly waved my hand without realizing it for what it was. Colombia. Missing. I grinded my teeth as I do on flights and sleep. Into the jungle. The Amazon. Leticia.
We land and take a few planks of wood with a motor attached up river into Peru and get our entrance stamps. Here the streets are just pathways lined with large branches to keep them above the thick mud and water. You can see the difference between the countries immediately. You can smell the new food, its quiet here.  Desolate and muddy. Nothing grows along this shore, the water fluctuates so often it will be gone soon. An office sits amongst the debris and the very wood its made of seems to sweat and smoke. We sweet-talk the attendant into the maximum amount allowed for us in Peru, we walk out with a sentence of a 120 days stamped on our passports, etched in our minds that for the next 4 months we will travel here, get kicked out and bounce into Argentina. Lone. Baring down on the tip of the continent against steel grey motorcycles. 
We head back into Colombia the same way we got here. Across felled trees that serve as bridges we wait for our friend Saleem to arrive. Born from Scotland and living in Lima, raised in England, blood baked of Iranian decent. He wears a thick British accent, a steep face and quick laugh. Handsome with the classics. Educated and informed he makes for good company and he can hold his own, proven it on more than one occasion. We have grown close with him over our travels and consider him a brother. We will cross the Amazon into Iquitos together. While we wait overnight for him to arrive we rent motorbikes and ride them thru the jungle into Brazil. Naked as the people here are the dirt roads. Dotted as flesh with freckles stand huts and thatches. Parallel we take the Amazon River for miles. Strange looks brand me either heathen or curiosity. I stand for both. Ride fast in the name of. Bare some flesh and teeth myself.
Saleem enters. We decide to make a marathon of the borders; standing at the ports between Brazil, Colombia, Peru…Leticia was made for an international binge. Bred for lawlessness. A basin for the Wild West, only the steed has changed. 3 countries and as much consumption as you can handle between them. We realize the error of our ways as motorbike after motorbike goes down beneath us.  I am now forced to enter the Amazon Jungle with giant gaping wounds found in a holy trinity. Kicked out of Brazil as the morning enters, we were leaving anyways we reply.
We are 6 hours into a 13-hour boat ride up the Amazon River and someone has already died, next to Ben and Saleem rests his bones and awkward eyes. No one seems to sure how it happened. He just was and then he wasn’t. The heat? The fever? The Food? One man pushes breath into his mouth while another puts his fist to chest. No avail. Still wide eyes. No prayer. No music. Still we ride.  His lifeless body is covered with a blue blanket. I can’t help but say a small prayer, make the holy trinity back across my wounds. Sacrilegious follows folly. It takes a while to digest like any good ghost….but it seems common here. Everywhere you look there are steep signs of the pattern. In some ways this process is expedited by the jungle even as life around it crawls in pace.
 No sleep. I was in such a state of stupid disarray when I board at 4AM that I have no water and there’s none left on this boat. My tongue is sticking to the side of my mouth and it’s the only thing to swallow. The Amazon heat is oppressive and I can barely breathe. We have at least 6 more hours to go. In the seat in front of me a mother is milking her child. In the seat across from me a half bottle of water lies next to the hand of the dead man. I consider both these options with brief clarity and distorted values, then close my eyes and try to force a little sleep. Itch and snarl. Give it the same outlook as any inevitably trapped man and try to find something funny to observe.
Iquitos. We arrive with the smell of some decay. You can only get here by boat or small plane. Closer to the hot stars. Right on the equator. Malaria runs the sunrises, Dengue fever controls the sunsets. Many men made their fortunes off the rubber trade beneath me. It lingers. Once briefed to be the richest city in the world, now it is torn up and toppled over. Piles of dirt and floating cities that do not float this season. Planes don’t fly in the day here because of the vultures. The Witch market boasts your ailments and sell your faith. We stay at a beautiful hotel with a balcony overlooking the jungle. The nearest road out of here is 500 miles away. We gather rubber boots and machetes. We get drunk and fend off hookers with both. 
It’s from here we will enter deep into the jungle. Either by military plane or a four day hike. I have some concerns. A psychoactive infusion awaits us here and links us to the future or keeps us behind it. You get what you need they tell me, but I can’t tell if I have lost some faith or am just in a long moment of doubt. I miss Colombia already, the people, customs, and drink. I used the strength she gave me to leave and now my legs feel clumsy. Lucky for me my tomorrow is never the same, though I did have piranha for breakfast again today.


From The Thick,
            R. Vigilantics



Saturday, August 13, 2011

Chapter 13: Even Werewolves Cry


A political rally is raging against the small single street of Salento, around us chants rise with the sticks and cardboard signs made from old beer boxes. The men stop their card games and move to the doorways to raise their glasses. I feel a festive air of danger and do the same. Somewhere in the middle of it the howls and yelps of a vicious dogfight break out and the moon above us appears to show that it has eaten all its days. “Sometimes even werewolves cry.” Even as I say this I know my words will fail me, but everyone laughs and slaps me on my back.
If you were here with me now like I wish you were, you would see Ben and I speaking with a beautiful Turkish girl posted up against the rail of the last real pool-hall on earth. We pass stories back and forth with such intimate sincerity about the gift and curse of life on the run that she begins to cry and reaches out to clasp the back of our necks with shaking hands. At a men’s only bar in the middle of these coffee plantations this is quite the site to see us both holding her.
Old Colombian men with more swagger than tucked in button up shirts switch between cards, stick, and drinks the same way we trade song. Pool sticks with individual player padlocks line the walls. Ranchero 45’s take up what they don’t. The owner (big bellied, bigger mustache) knows us by name, the day before we downed 30 shots with him in an hour just to beat the fear. These men here surrounding us are some of the biggest baddest caballero gangsters I’ve ever met, they were in their prime when Colombia was an all out fucking war zone, they’ve seen more death and heartache than times you’ve put butter to bread. It’s our honor to raise glasses with these papas. It’s what we do. Now in their late 50’s and 60’s they just wanna sit on benches and in doorways, sip, smoke, let out another button, and watch the world go by. Don’t get it mistaken though, with a word they could have you belly up. No one no wiser. Shoulders pushed together we bully in.
From where I stand now, a ten-kilometer hike looking out over the fincas, the coffee plantations, the 100-meter wax palms, and jungle, seeing the world with the eyes of a first kill, it’s hard for me to imagine that it could all end soon. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the angst I felt the last time I was in NYC, or to recall the anxiety that gripped me so hard it broke me and sent me to the emergency room in Portland. I don’t get the same sense of world destruction here. I can still envision a flood warmly washing over the earth but something about being out here makes me feel like I could last as long as the river bed. Not forever, but passed what’s coming. Politics, comets, and war seem as far away as her and her love.
When you eat BBQ in Colombia they give you gloves instead of napkins. You loose some of the taste without your hands against the meat, just like a boxing match vs. a bare-knuckle fight. This layer cheapens with a false sense of sophistication. I try not to make too many of these compromises for comfort against the thick. My thirst for the taste of it on my hands is how I end up staying at a house (with a wonderful Colombian couple) a couple kilometer walk from the nicer ranch of La Sorena. There is no internet here, no tv, just this beautiful house on the mountainside and a half finished pool out back for us to help dig. We BBQ with them over a huge bonfire and dance while we eat with our hands deep into the morning light. We’ve been with them almost a week now.
It was a 9-hour bus ride here from Medillin. Supposed to only be 6 but as we head south towards the jungle the roads along with the infrastructure will slowly disappear into the background.
Back in Medillin we attended the flower parade where the giant floats were carried by the many hundreds each on the back of a single man. Heavy catholic connotations of Jesus carrying his cross prevailed. Low flying military helicopters dropped flower bombs that rained over the large city street.
We rent a car and drive two hours with our new friend Saleem and an Aussie girl named Virginia (but who we call Richmond) deep into the mountains to attend a “finca party” we’ve heard rumors of. Somewhere we find some cops on Kawasaki 250’s down a dirt road and they escort us to the party pointing the way with their drawn gun and even walking us in. We sleep in the car and wake up with the laughter of a good night.
The night before we leave the girl in my room has an epileptic fit and falls behind the coffee table in spurts and twists, after refusing my help she runs out never to be seen again. It must be time for us to go.
 I’ve been on the road now three months, some of those around me almost a year. I’ve learned you can’t trust the music. My Spanish is getting better. I’ve seen floating mountains and women with fake asses left over from the drug money. I’ve tasted the big adventure on most days and slept with its daughters on most nights. I still see speedboats and think they are “water antelopes.” I still think a good story is the only real currency you need. I still like it weird. I don’t think this journey is going to change me in some profound way; I am almost 30 and pretty set in my ways, both good and bad. I do think though that I can get my skill-set up. That I have a lot to learn from these people and can if I let myself. It’s gonna take some time and might happen so slowly I am never aware of any results. I am starting to worry a little about money but I wont let it stop me from spending my last penny and starting from scratch. I’m drinking coffee for the first time in my life and it’s right from the source. I’ve definitely learned the art of the goodbye. I’ve learned that the more beautiful it is the sadder it seems to me. Let me practice it now.

She saw a photo of me squinting against the sun and said,
“So even wolves get caught in headlights.”
In that moment I knew that I loved her more than the sea.


Signing out from The Thick,
                                     Rafael V.
                      





            

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Chapter 12: It isn't pretty but it's a fresh start

This is gonna be ruff. The truth is I don’t remember much of what’s happened to me since last I wrote. It’s like looking at a penny thru a whirlwind and trying to decide if it’s counterfeit or to see the date. The things I can relate here are just the cold hard facts and a couple paragraphs I wrote somewhere along the way mixed with random quotes from held tight strangers. It’s going to be disconnected. Lets just imagine a cut-up piece from the Burroughs era and call what we don’t understand art. Works in my favor.

She says “You cant come in here like that covered in hotels and houses. That’s not our culture.” We scrapped something awful and she sent up the coppers. This fucker in full regal uniform looks at me and all these dirty dogs who’ve made a boxing ring in the middle of the place and says, “who’s the leader.” So I tell him take off your shirt and trousers, get in the fucking ring and you’ll find out right quick who the leader is. Tuck tail then didn’t he, after we rang him out a few.”

That’s the story I’m waking up to. Three kids from London I’ve met like a head on collision a few good days before have busted into my room and are telling me to get “lifted” I think its about 8am and its more than obvious they haven’t slept. We knock down beers at the pool till we’re good and fit and somewhere along the way I end up at the World Cup/ Argentina vs. England in a sold out stadium of 45,000 South Americans and about 6 Londoners and New Mexico kids, standing next to Joss whose almost naked and covered in a giant cross of red war-paint. Songs are sung into the night. I think someone is crying.

A few of these days I can barely remember because I’m passed out on pain pills for 30 hours at a time and Bens moved on to Santa Fe or out I don’t know where. I had thrown out my back and it left me facedown on the floor in a pile. The other I had caught a fever that practically burned thru the sheets. I get a massage from two women on the second floor of the hostel and it almost puts me right. Thanks to Maria.

A fist, when thrown by the arm of a sober man rarely makes its pace at a crawl and this one is no exception. It’s a Saturday afternoon and the streets are slick crowded with the fast licks of commerce. My attention split as many directions as my opinions. I don’t notice it till it’s almost to my face. Hackles raised too late, suspicion of ambush in place. Passed me it flies, passed Benjarmin, a wild wide hook that finally descends directly into the mouth of a man walking straight for the heat of it. A total catcher’s mitt. A sound emerges akin to heavy dice being thrown against a thick oak table, clattering and bouncing back into a small pool of spilt whiskey. Blood splatters and big spits against the pavement. A police officer watches from a few feet away with mild thinly veiled amusement at what appears to be a previously agreed upon attack. The man amazingly continues to stand and pour blood and bewilderment while the other assures him that next time he sees him he will engage in the time-tested land-owner approved act of murder. In Spanish it sounds tougher and cooler. The police officer uses slight baton sign language to convey his alliance and assures the limbed bloodstain he should continue quickly about his way. I in a good faith act of desensitization see passed him to a brown leather hat I would like to purchase and do. I guess its what I always thought shopping would be like, or at least what it always reminded me of.
I’m on the Metro Line to a part of town I haven’t explored at night before. The street meat here is savory and cooked by a woman whose not just cooked it for 16 of her own kids for the passed 30 years but probably 16 more that weren’t hers as well. We find a bar where all the waitresses are dressed like nuns and a ranchero 6-piece plays the truest cuts from the ceiling. Thick well-versed paintings line the walls of nuns trying to get a quick peek down Jesus’ skimpy loincloth and other assorted similar debauchery.  For a heavily devout catholic country this place is pretty fucking cool.

A horse parade appears out of nowhere and 10,000 horses begin to do the tango. A private party along one of the edges tells us we can’t come in. I bat my lashes and Ben winks his words and they’ve handed us sandwiches and our own bottle of Aguardiente (some of this shit can actually make you go blind, and I thought it was a myth.) I see a real life advertisement of the fact. 

I’m on the mic playing a show at Kasa Kiwi. I’m at a bar where a shot of whiskey costs 20 bucks. I’m in line at the movies before I realize it, panic and leave. I win money at the casino, I loose money at the casino. Im dancing more than I ever have in this life or any past one. I'm smoking a joint on the roof. Someone says "I'm in" but I know I'm out. I eat fish and avocados everyday. I watch an entire season of Ancient Aliens while sick and then believe in ancient aliens. I swim laps in the biggest pool I've ever seen. I cross-train. I feel good, I look ruff. I cant wait to buy a suit. 

I have a dream about the origin of the wolf and before I know it I wake up 2 hours away from Medillin in Guatape. Here I am today. We’ve just ridden these shit mountain bikes with no breaks 16 kilometers up and down ruff terrain to a monolith in the middle of a chain of lakes in the mountains. It’s beautiful, there’s a ship graveyard here and the air is thin. Suicide showers and slower death buses. We have to get back to Medillin to get our big bags. Then it’s off to the Amazon. I love Colombia but I am looking forward to Peru. This is what its like when I don’t take notes and I show up to a party in The Thick, but sometimes this is just what its like and everything feels like this picture.