6.30.2004
try it, you´ll like it
mmm, i would love to try your..what is that exactly? oh yes, thank you so much for buying me your favorite dish in the market. i have been excited about trying local foods, and none more so than the potatoes, avocado and cow liver plate. uh huh, the grey brown slop constisting of a bean which you can not remember the word for in english, in which the the wobbly, pimpled meat slices lie, looks so appetizing. i´m sure i can load my fork with ample potatoes and avocado in order to mask the flavor of the cow liver. ha ha, it is not so easy to disguse that certain meaty texture though. yes it´s true, i have not eaten beef in nearly ten years - hoo, can you believe it? it´s funny that you told me yesterday that you were mostly a vegetarian, and today you tell me this is your favorite dish. see me laugh as i maw at the liver. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
6.29.2004
lost & found
i lost my watch about an hour ago. i´m not surprised, in fact i guess it had to happen. i realized it must be approximately 45 minutes before it was lost, like writing it´s own fate in my head. i had been sitting, writing a letter at a particularly serene vista which i climbed at least two hundred stairs to reach. when i took off my bag to which the watch was bound, i noticed just how loosley it was hanging on. knowing that it was wiser to just give in and ring it around my wristy, i opted against it.
so down down down the stairs i went. when i reached the bottom, i went to convert the bag from dorky fanny pack mode to slightly cooler diagonal-across-the-shoulder mode. it was then i noticed its loss. i thought i might have flew off during the conversion from dorky to cooler, and retraced my steps. all the way back the the begining of the stairs. but no further. to where my watch most certainly lies, somewhere on that staircase.
and so passes my watch, of which i was so proud because it was my little brother´s who had passed it on to me when he became to cool for a timex ironman with indiglo, i had had it for so many years before putting it to use. so proud was i of just installing a new battery with an incredibly small screwdriver, so small it came with a magnifying lense. and did my pride inflate further when i found directions for its setting of time and alarm clock on the internet and put them to use. i am not so proud of halting at the bottom of the steps.
tomorrow, i must rely on my own internal workings to rise and get myself to my spanish teacher by nine o´clock am. i´m glad that i can usually do this sucessfully, but it ususally leads to a rather restless night. fortunately, the action on the street outside my window starts very early, the dogs and construction and schoolkids have aided me in the past two days to awake like it or not. maybe my lateness paranoia will cause me to rise incredibly early, and i will have a sunrise hike to search for the ironman. or maybe i will ask marcos, my teacher, to help me find a new watch. as if by some premonition, i stopped him today while writing on the chalkboard, to translate a word i recognized but did not recall. reloj, of course, means watch.
so down down down the stairs i went. when i reached the bottom, i went to convert the bag from dorky fanny pack mode to slightly cooler diagonal-across-the-shoulder mode. it was then i noticed its loss. i thought i might have flew off during the conversion from dorky to cooler, and retraced my steps. all the way back the the begining of the stairs. but no further. to where my watch most certainly lies, somewhere on that staircase.
and so passes my watch, of which i was so proud because it was my little brother´s who had passed it on to me when he became to cool for a timex ironman with indiglo, i had had it for so many years before putting it to use. so proud was i of just installing a new battery with an incredibly small screwdriver, so small it came with a magnifying lense. and did my pride inflate further when i found directions for its setting of time and alarm clock on the internet and put them to use. i am not so proud of halting at the bottom of the steps.
tomorrow, i must rely on my own internal workings to rise and get myself to my spanish teacher by nine o´clock am. i´m glad that i can usually do this sucessfully, but it ususally leads to a rather restless night. fortunately, the action on the street outside my window starts very early, the dogs and construction and schoolkids have aided me in the past two days to awake like it or not. maybe my lateness paranoia will cause me to rise incredibly early, and i will have a sunrise hike to search for the ironman. or maybe i will ask marcos, my teacher, to help me find a new watch. as if by some premonition, i stopped him today while writing on the chalkboard, to translate a word i recognized but did not recall. reloj, of course, means watch.
6.28.2004
one for the manual
less than 24 hours, and already the old familiar recurring dream begins. this is the travel dream, in which i am required to return to the states for some important purpose, almost everytime because of some family requirement. i don´t want to go, and explain with concern that i can´t leave foriegn country x, but there is always the gentle familial response ¨dear, you´ll be able to return just as soon as this is done´ but i doesn´t feel as so, and i´m usually left in despair. thinking, ´how did i end up in upstate new york? i´m supposed to be in foreign country x. this is all wrong.¨
not usually in to deciphering dreams, but this is an easy one, about my subconscious wishing for the easyness of home fighting with some other part of me that thinks i should be here.
only last night, a new twist, in which the reason i am called home is because my grandfather is dying. the one who has been dead since i was in 5th grade. i get there, and when my family finally returns from the hospital, all the concern has passed, and he´s going to be okay. and then he walks into the room, and he´s fine. granpa? why the hell did i come here? my dead grandfather is alive and well, wtf?
i suppose this dream will happen plenty of times in the coming weeks. but i´m going to try harder than usual to really use this time, when i´ve got the travelvivid vision turned on, to do something mas fina with my dreams. really stick it to myself. bring it, granpa.
not usually in to deciphering dreams, but this is an easy one, about my subconscious wishing for the easyness of home fighting with some other part of me that thinks i should be here.
only last night, a new twist, in which the reason i am called home is because my grandfather is dying. the one who has been dead since i was in 5th grade. i get there, and when my family finally returns from the hospital, all the concern has passed, and he´s going to be okay. and then he walks into the room, and he´s fine. granpa? why the hell did i come here? my dead grandfather is alive and well, wtf?
i suppose this dream will happen plenty of times in the coming weeks. but i´m going to try harder than usual to really use this time, when i´ve got the travelvivid vision turned on, to do something mas fina with my dreams. really stick it to myself. bring it, granpa.
6.27.2004
baños = bath
a long exhale, for i have arrived. at the destination that i have been traveling towards for bleen hours and minutes. the destination did not have an actual name until 2 days ago, when i learned that it was banos. so called for its many hot springs. i have not yet submerged myself, but already the little town shows me what it´s made of with a friendly sprinkle. a welcome shower. like the blessed sf fog that chooses to baptize me at will, in this city too, i walk through water and feel renewed.
the sprinkles have stopped but the fog rolls down the incredible green mountains, perhaps to calm the volcano just up the street. the rain seems to have refreshed banos, and as night falls people are alive, what luck i have to land in a town with nightlife. with mr. joel´s piano man playing in this internet shop i see lots of lively people walking by and wonder why they are here. for the same reasons as me? maybe some of those cats in the hostel i just checked into. but then, they were watching friends on the tube...
ahhh, i´m so happy to have made it. after a week long introduction, an easing in through the american backdoor to ecuador, after the old familiar jitters of the first solo bus ride, complete with tardy arrival, language barriers, and flying by of foreign countryside - now the water that touches volcanos reaches me >> my eyelids and earlobes and the nape of my neck, and i am electrified.
the sprinkles have stopped but the fog rolls down the incredible green mountains, perhaps to calm the volcano just up the street. the rain seems to have refreshed banos, and as night falls people are alive, what luck i have to land in a town with nightlife. with mr. joel´s piano man playing in this internet shop i see lots of lively people walking by and wonder why they are here. for the same reasons as me? maybe some of those cats in the hostel i just checked into. but then, they were watching friends on the tube...
ahhh, i´m so happy to have made it. after a week long introduction, an easing in through the american backdoor to ecuador, after the old familiar jitters of the first solo bus ride, complete with tardy arrival, language barriers, and flying by of foreign countryside - now the water that touches volcanos reaches me >> my eyelids and earlobes and the nape of my neck, and i am electrified.
6.26.2004
me llamo
i've thought about names for daughters, and less sucessfully, names for sons. names for clothing lines (there are 2, depending on whether you want feminine or coolcat). b in the d, i named three cabbage patch kids. gave myself a cb radio name before entering kindergarten. a spanish name in high school. but this one is eluding me.
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