Interlude: Few Were We

Few were we, the wanderers, the lone, seekers of obscure fist-fights. Nomads who navigated entire continents disregarding all the maps that came before, knowing those could only lead down the path of another mans heart. Gypsy lovers of the broken branch, archers with our arrows drawn lit to guide the way. Desiring only to see with fresh eyes, intuitions filthy with experience, hides ruff, paws damp beneath the calluses, drunk on moonshine, teeth full with gristle. Few were we, who had gone to the ends of the earth only to tumble suspiciously down the deep ravines and hungry precipices. Our falling bodies clearing dust, thorn, and path, where even fewer still would leap willingly, with purpose. Not as guides but as battle hymns, singsong odes to great men, the campfire ghosts we honor. Few were we, so few not a single one of us could escape the sheet of loneliness that draped our wind-worn shoulders and raw eroded faces. That same sheet that kept our legs tangled in half slumber thru cold winter beatings. So few were we, a single glance from a stranger need not discern our sadness, we wore it with unmistakable identity like thieves of wine. We carried with us always the look of the hunted even while we tracked the great beast. We sang only the songs of the damned, the blues, the wild open storm we called home, lover, and adversary. We loved true, having one condition, that we would always leave, always return someday hiding strange gifts as better men.  Pulling foreign coin from behind the ears of our children. Grown in the eyes of the land, forged under the weight of her beauty. We died at dawn, stabbed thru the heart with elk antlers, thru the lungs with spades, thru the livers with thick oak barrel spinters, wearing only the names of our brothers. Need not bury us with our treasure; once the ashes scatter we are traveling her round legs once more. Let the funeral pyres burn and the great sea captains return to guide the tides again. Let the earth shake and rattle and kick the Rock'n'Roll back into the boots. The course is set for war, smile for it. Rush to it, leave your belongings behind. One kiss from her is worth more than all your life, absolves you of all you consider your debt. You need only to climb something very high, voyage steps to the edge with eyes closed and take a deep breath to see it. Hunker down low on your haunches between blades of desert grass and run to taste it. Lean and bury your face in the vineyard grapes, source of vagrant elation, to smell it. But you must leave, to be with it. It travels far and swings wide. So tell me goodbye, dear girl, dear campanero, like I tell you.  

-R. Vigilantics

            

Chapter 18: From Condors to Doctors

            I reached into my pockets to find them holding little less than enough for another glass of whiskey if the bartender favored me, I told him the best story I had on me and put the rest of what I had in front of me. A few soles short. He threw a little shine on me as the closing lights went up and my glass filled amber brown and sticky one more time. It was 5 in the morning and I was tired, the rest of my cash along with my backpack was locked away in a dingy room on the other side of the city. Everyone I knew was a day in front of me. I decided to stay on in Cusco another night alone and wait for Halloween to die down.

            I posted up outside the hostel across the street and threw rocks until the guard got distracted, then I slipped by him and grabbed the first empty bed I could find.

            I woke to find myself in the women’s dorm and girls in towels surrounded me with a playful curiosity. One of them immediately remembered me from Colombia and they all welcomed me to breakfast, told me I smelt like booze and offered to dress me up for Halloween. I declined the wardrobe but took em up on the eggs and marijuana. Despite my small protests the night ended well with my face painted like a lion, it felt good to participate again. It’s been years since I’ve dressed up. I stayed out till my bus left at 7AM. Forgetting to wash off the make-up, or not caring, I can’t remember which. I entered my 10-hour ride full of mariachi music and the same damn Adam Sandler movie. I probably look like I make more sense down here this way. A more tangible circus act covered in tattoos with a lions head.

            I show up in Puno to meet up with Ben, Chad, Elizabeth, get off the bus and realizing what a shit-hole the place is, I just get back on and leave. I see Lake Titicaca from the window and don’t feel like I’m missing much but Disneyland style reed islands, frustration, and Bolivia, which I want to go to but refuse to get the vaccines for.

            In Arequipa I can feel Peru coming to a close. This will be my last stop here before I enter Chile, I am excited to go again and long only for Colombia now and her. Although Arequipa reminds me of home as all deserts do. I can smell the sage, feel the cacti, rub the dirt into my pores, close my eyes and imagine the land where I was born with ease. Homesick remedies have to be creative these days.

            I go again to see the doctor here. Where he has me diagnose myself and then gives me medication according to what I think is wrong with me. He tells his assistant to have me pull my pants down and lie ass up on the table and then he comes in and asks me what the fuck I am doing with my pants off. We laugh about it and talk bout bad US movies and tattoos. As the girl at the reception begins to print me my bill he pats me on the back and says this one is on the house. Best hospital experience ever. He still doesn’t fix me. The sides of my legs feel like they have a million ants fighting and dying in them.

            Me and Ben take a taxi out so some local bullfight where two bulls are encouraged to battle each other by having their handlers grab their balls, finger their asses, and excite them in other such old school fashions. The betting system is you yell out a bet and another man takes it or raises it. The first bull to walk away looses. We end up with the old school papas who run this place and I earn their respect by picking the bulls better than they do. I try to trade my I-phone for the most amazing bolo tie I have ever seen and am laughed at, its on a golden rope with a pre-incan coin and I will find my own if it’s the death of me. Treasure has killed many men.  They take us past the gates and introduce us to the refs, the bull owners, the champions. In the middle of the winners circle in the middle of the ring we get prestige placement, hold trophies and are bought drinks.

            The fights come to an end and we hitch a ride in the dark in the back of a deep-dish truck with one of the bulls out to a bar in the barrio where we drink with the prizewinners from the night until everything and everyone feels good and celebrated. Walking back into town we stumble upon a punk rock show with only four people in attendance. Finally I can dance. We bounce the place off the walls and make the band feel like they are better than the Ramones. In the moment it’s true.

            In the morning we pack our bags for a three-day excursion to hike Colca Canyon, the deepest canyon in the world. Excitement runs. I love condors and they fly so close here. The canyon doesn’t disappoint me. The condors don’t leave me. A little oasis lies at the bottom for us to rest and make spears. The vastness of this place dwarfs even the biggest story. On the third day I hike the entirety out of  the canyon from the bottom without stopping once. I am proud of myself for this, I know my will is strong for this.

            Another 24-hour bus ride and now I am in Chile. We rent a car and Chad drives us out to one of the best observatories in South America. I can see distant nebulas that no longer exist anymore and shooting stars plainly fire blind every few minutes. I have seen some of the details of these other galaxies in my ayahuasca ceremony, and know things about their positions I didn’t recognize I knew before. I can locate the Andromeda Galaxy with a blindfold on. We keep driving another 5 hours south to the Capitol city of Santiago, a riot is taking place as we enter…police are firing water cannons and tear gas, several walls have been knocked over and most of the public building are covered in graffiti all of the statues are being held hostage. I like it here. The parks are full at night and the people seem to be constantly up to activities. I’ve been here three days all full of soap-box derbies, hells angels tattoo conventions, rude-boy festivals, car shows.  My days in South America now lie severely numbered, after the new year I will go to Amsterdam, two months after that I will be riding a motorcycle from LA to New Orleans with Josh Mills…I hope to get a return flight to Colombia though. I hope between here and there I find it. It’s almost time to put out a new record. I can feel it, but I can’t quite see it. I know it has to be good and I can’t settle. I never do but I tend to rush things. Maybe between all the 20 hour bus rides, bad Spanish, and blank stares…I have learned enough patience to make it work.

The Colombian government has a bounty out on a herd of Pablo Escobar’s escaped hippos. They don’t care what happens to them, they just want them gone. I pull my hat down a little lower and think about the possibilities.

Signing out from the thick my campaneros,

R. Vigilantics

Chapter 17: The End Of The Thick As We Know It.

As the 6 of us began our one-hour ascent to The Temple of the Moon no one spoke. A fevered storm had filled the night. It was Dios De La Muerte and lightning flashed so bright as to momentarily blind and then thunder would roll in minutes later, boom and echo for what seemed like an eternity. Little did I know I would enter there myself. 

Me, Ben, Chad, Mariana, Alej, and Julianno (our shaman), swept forward with our heads bent just above the neck, so as to stay the wind but keep the sight. We passed no other people on this path but directly below us sat the ceremonial pits and stones where the Incans would sacrifice and toss their human offerings. In front of us was where they would bury their own and worship the moon.

We were already soaked fifteen minutes in, as we slipped and wrestled with the mud and growing streams. My pants weighed heavy with water and my poncho did little to keep the feeling that this was fucking crazy off my back.

Once inside the cave we gathered stones to sit and unpacked our supplies for the night, ours consisting of blankets, water, and coca leaves. The Shamans of fur, tobacco, perfumes, tinctures, ayahuasca, rattles, and a stick. He spoke in only Spanish and maybe Quechqua, but had assured me once the medicine took hold I would need not for understanding.

The ceremony began with prayers and offerings, he put some kind of magical seal over the cave entrance to protect us, and we began in the dark with only the smoldering ash of incense burning. He shook, pounded, mixed the ayahuasca in a cup and passed it first to Ben (which worried me because I was told by a guide in the Amazon that the Shaman should always drink it first), then he refilled it and passed it to me, around the circle it went, until finally the Shaman poured for himself a large pull. Slowly and unsteadily I had drank. Fear is what I felt and that I was stupid for feeling it because maybe this was all bullshit.

For the first 20 minutes I sat with my eyes closed and could see nothing but blackness, did I have no soul, no questions? No vision at all I wondered? What could be worse? A growing sense of unease and annoyance began to grow in me, it was freezing in this cave and silent. 

Then he began to chant, I started to feel a heat first in my legs and then wherever he directed it until my whole body was warm. I started to feel very light and displaced in my seat. Slowly a serpent started to form behind him and I leaned closer to rub my eyes disbelieving and see it, not realizing that now I was way to close to him and knocking something over. The sudden clash of realities immediately made me sick and I went outside to vomit blackness upon blackness.

 Out of the cave the world looked wilted and winded and changing like it was inhaling and exhaling. Though I could tell it was raining I couldn’t tell it was different from the trees behind it. Slowly like a newborn trying to walk I made my way back into the cave and tried to find my spot amongst them again, though this time it seemed much lower down and Ben towered above me stoically  while Mariana had completely disappeared into some kind of dark recess right in front of me. The cave had quadrupled in size. 

I began to swoon and had to lay back from the Shaman as he chanted and spoke, then I realized by doing this I was moving away from the ceremony and that without it I would be truly lost, possibly forever. I was already tumbling thru geometric patterns and small Abysses. i had entered a long hallway with many keys and doors and at the end had chose to come back to my Shaman. As I leaned up to see him he turned first into a bear and then into a statue and then into all of his ancestors flickering dead on his face at once. The walls behind him continued to produce streams of serpents and bulges. 

Every question I asked of him he answered simultaneously with the twists of the words in his song and non-verbal communications. Everything he spoke of appeared, he told me to taste sweet and I did. He led me up into the sun and we peeled back layers of deep blue metallic inscriptions and crawled inside. Me and Ben began to speak telepathically. The Shaman lead us up and across the entire universe and back. I understood every word of Spanish he said without a single fault. At some point I receded into myself and deep into the past/future where alternate versions of me each came one by one and offered what gifts they had to give. The Shaman said “look how quickly we can go from one world to the other, its right here, all existing at once.” It was true in a span of less than then first hour I was watching with no doubt, one foot in front of me what was a bear with the face of a million dead leading me into the craziest most amazing thing I have ever experienced in my life. He spit mouthfuls of perfume with his lips directly on our heads. Any worry I had he immediately addressed with the boom of his stick or by simply leading me across a dimension where that worry no longer was relevant. The entire time I experienced the most extreme Deja-Vu. The ceremony winded out as if from a tunnel, he slowly took form again by smoking a big jungle tobacco cigarette and letting me see the light on his face as he flickered back and forth between all the shapes and then passing me a cigarette allowed me to do the same as I went thru all of my past lives and incarnations.

He said I didn’t have to remember what had happened or what I had learned, my soul knew it now and carried it with me as it always had. I was one step closer to the beautiful flight back of true death…and when I needed more I could return to this source and drink again of the medicine until someday I could go home. He would stay with me always as my brother and from my brothers I could drink as well as they would drink from me. 

In my life I have never experienced anything like this, shape shifting, ESP, thought-control, out of body, projection, transcendence, universe, time-travel. I know that these are just the names we have to put to things when the veil becomes lifted and we see that all things are a single unit existing simultaneously, but holy fuck.

The walk back into Cusco seemed perfect with time to adjust as eventually the city lights appeared below us and fireworks lit the sky while they celebrated The Day of the Dead. We had lived it a million times. We clasped each other and parted ways upon entering the city.

That night I dreamed and left my body many times again as I slept next to a beautiful Brazilian woman who had led me here to all of this, and though after a week together the thought that she was leaving back to Brazil in the morning welled me up,  I know now that The Thick is as much about beauty and true gifts as it is about heartache and fistfights. We can use the bad in us to fight for what is true in us. I will always be a little bit of a hooligan and a roughneck but I have other masks that fit me better nowadays, I am a lover and a leader too.

Yes we climbed Wannu and Macchu Picchu, sand-boarded the immense dunes of Wachachina, Sailed out to see sea-lions fight on the Ballestas Islands with TV star captain look-alikes, we went to Catholic-Mass drunk with no sleep in the golden capital cathedrals of Lima, fell asleep on dance floors that smelled of death, we ate beef hearts and gambled in the cities with all the earthquakes. Corey was here and gone, Chad came down and imported a crazy white girl, and Ben is shacked up with Elizabeth who I love in another hotel somewhere. Me, I’m just laying here with the smell still on me waiting for the night-bus out of this city, south to Lake Titicaca, signing out from the end of The Thick as we know it. 

Chapter 16: That Indigenous Drunk

I’m sitting in a room with 6 beds and no windows, dressed in a fur coat that goes well passed my thighs. It’s been a while since I’ve been this high. My mouth is open as if to speak but I’m about to sing. There’s two Uruguayans playing ukuleles and I am telling the story of a loss of love, my melody is high and the boys begin to sing along with me, “Please stranger won’t you hold me” Over and over again goes the chorus “Whoah I’m so lonely.” Chris is beside me encouraging me to never stop. Someone has their arm around me and it feels good, like home in a world away. I may have gotten cut off for spitting on a guinea pig only a few hours before and though I’ll never know why I did it, right now I’m feeling pretty fucking good. Welcome to Lima. To the catacombs of 20,000 bones and Presidential Palaces where you come-to with a distant friend of your grandmothers at 8 in the morning. It’s one thing to know Saint Francis licked the wounds of the sick, it’s another to see it depicted in one of the most gruesome and eloquent paintings you’ve ever laid your molly-balls on. When life becomes literal it looses its possibilities. I prefer it slathered in mystery, after all a senior detective needs a job. Saint Francis take your tongue away, I am better than I used to be. Interpret me well.

For ten Soles I grab a plate of civeche and a beer, sit out overlooking the jagged ocean cliffs that wall this city in and think about a snake I saw once when I was young. I get invited to a boxing match by a ring-girl and her sister, its cold out and I know those punches sting a little worse. I’ve felt em before. The doctor says my rash and sleepless nights are due to a fungal infection. Pour some whiskey on it and take it better places to eat and it will probably go away. I raise it one and take the bus out of town.

Tuk-Tuk drivers hide behind windshields so covered in Jesus decals they need not see, only the lord to guide them as they careen down these thin-lipped streets like stray bullets and three legged dogs. Roads covered in bananas and grain. Streets with no lining tell you to follow your heart. Don’t they know I have two. Huaraz sits her ass just above 10,000 feet and I am supposed to wait a day to acclimate to the altitude. The high Andes surround me and loom down with avalanches for promises like love letters. They’ve wiped this city out before, July of 1941, May of 1970. Not a single building remains from its past. 93 survivors lived to know what it felt like as they clamored to high ground and a sea of snow and boulder crushed 70,000 of their countrymen, somewhere in the states “Let It Be” by The Beatles was playing while this was happening. That’s just life.

I don’t wait to acclimate. I get off the bus and begin to run to the outskirts of the city, I climb over the walls, scramble up the hill, pull myself over the cliff and bury my face in the cross that overlooks all the girls who sleep here and those who go hungry in the streets at night. Just watches them. If I can breathe here I can breathe anywhere in the world. That thought comforts me.

I hiked 10 kilometers that day, the next me and Ben did 14, and the third we did 18. At almost 16,000 feet I found myself looking out over the top of the world, amongst lagoons and glaciers older than all my blood, all my lines. The sun sears you here. The people speak an ancient Andean language called Kichwa, I don’t speak much at all anymore. Against the advice of a local woman we head into the ghetto to help them celebrate a local Catholic holiday. 500 of the drunkest people I have ever seen surround us, the only two white people here. We are treated with all the respect a spectacle can expect to get. Indigenous drunk is just a different kind. You can see it in the tear filled regretful eyes of men who were born to know great secrets but have been cut in half by liquor induced amnesia and the hardest times. They got the roughest hands. Somebody turns his fingers into a gun and puts it to my head telling me he has spent time in hell and that he is still there. Another cries to Ben about his dead godfather. A third kisses me on the neck. A 17 piece peruvian brass band is the soundtrack to that South American affection that reminds me of all my close friends.

This week we go ice-climbing, hiking, camping. We promise each other always to fight back to back. I’ll be on Machu Picchu for my birthday. Corey and Chad will be here. I’ll be in Argentina for Christmas and maybe London for the New Year.

 I’ve been bitten by snakes and attacked by monkeys with sticks, in my life I’ve climbed the Andes and crossed the Amazon. Put out 4 records and played shows with my favorite bands. I sang a song that made a grown man cry and rode on a boat that carried the dead. I’ve wrecked motorcycles just because I knew how much they loved me and left women for less, but never in my life have I been in a place like this, feeling this way. 

Chapter 15: Just For You

To tell you what happened means to relive it, I’m not ready to do that. It’s been too ruff. Too hard already. I can only tell you the story. It’s the only currency that matters in the end. The only one I have, but even this true gold can’t warm me or put me to sleep at night. Though it may allow me to cull those I love and do for them what it cannot do for me. A mans words can stay close even as his breath recedes. This is the only gift if it is kind and the only curse when it is honest. May god keep the company of your heart and stay in the places where I cannot. Forever, I love you.

For weeks we traveled. From desolation to isolation and back again, from nothing and nowhere, to nobody and no way. I spent three days aboard a cargo ship where the sun blistered up layers of flesh in the day and the cold wind eroded them at night. We crushed termites into our skin to repel the mosquitoes. In the jungle we fished piranhas and held crocodiles against their will. In Iquitos violence layered a thick hand against us, at war with the money-changers and men with the quickest hands I’ve ever seen. Even the banks give out counterfeit dollars here, and then refuse to take them back. Kids carry knives, Shamans die of liver failure. A rash has come to ruin my life. I came to get lost without realizing it meant stranded. I can’t go back now, but I am only just realizing what it means that I can’t go back ever.

It seems like ages since I’ve seen an English man or had some warm water pressed up against me. I miss the strong independent western woman, she’s been replaced by a million whores, not in my life but in the world that surrounds me. The tribesmen here have sex with the dolphins and say that the lust can drive them mad, but I think they were mad for lusting. People put curses on those they love to bind them to them, I am close myself. I can feel the jagged edges of where I broke hitting against the waves, all the decisions just becoming reactions against the days. This place is full of sex and bad magic. A religion that has not changed, a people covered in dust.

A spider opened up my thigh like a hot dog bun and left me unable to walk for a few days. I met a German who had amazing posture and was accusing a woman of immaculate conception, a giant cat pissed on him thru mosquito netting and for a moment I believed in karma. Where has the adventure gone? I’ve lost it. I almost lost my life too, in a war against a boat that we had to haul by hand upriver. Neck deep in mud. The fear is hard on our tails. We have traveled from country to country and now reside by large desert walls. Time moves to slow here to get away from it.

Never trust the music. Never love a man with a broken heart. Never quit eating civeche. Always hunt. Always kill. Elect poets to go to war for you. I will, if you find me such. I will come back if you ask me to. Here I am in Peru. Where are you? A world is nothing to travel compared to the places I’ve found my thoughts. I only ask that you respect what I have done, if you make me ask. That was never our style though, was it babe.

Right now a man is asking me to eat a valume. I think I will. He has a mustache that crawls blond across his face. Hair that pulls up towards the ceiling. A Peruvian woman with his baby inside her.  I don’t think he has slept in a couple days. We should just relax he says. He’s right. If only for a moment, I can take his advice.

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

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.