Parobamba, birthplace of unicorns.

Unicorns chillaxing

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The Sonqo family's work

Daniel explaining everything

Foraging Chil'ka

My Peruvian lover

Cochineal

Passing time

Best dog 

Cochineal 2

The perfect weaving situation

Maia overlooking Parobamba

This is real

Small bug using larger spider as an incubation spot for its eggs.

Portrait by Akner

Akner in his element

Twinsies!

Reddssssss

Yellowwwwssss

Probably another unicorn

A perfect teal with fungus and the amazing Leonarda

Setting up the loom

The best weaving teacher, Nielsen, setting up my loom

An Inca tomb with skulls inside

WHAAA!

Akner grabs them and Daniel tells us about Incan tombs

Akner collecting orchids

Just some BEAUTIFUL horses in the road

This guy

My purchases and also how does the Sonqo family do it? These scarves are perfect.

Sourcing

An ideal language system attempts to embody and is shaped by the lived experience of its speakers. Each language is specific to the landscape of its origin and the emotional response that specific environment creates within its inhabitants. The languages of colonization introduce a separate set of cultural rules, taboos, and ideologies, creating friction and inequality while attempting to infiltrate the homes where other languages are heard.

Inhabitants of tough terrains seem to have an advantage over colonizers. With bodies that have adapted to the severe conditions found in high altitude environments, and a strong connection to the earth and sky where their native language can make sense of existence. Somehow, this does not offer enough protection from outside infiltration. The colonizers come and succeed, sometimes partially. It might be worse when the work isn't done because it leaves behind a trail of uncertainty, shame and the illusion of a "better" way.

Religion is the best tool to colonize but language is a close second. Introduce a group of people to a new way of speaking and interpreting their environment and you can guarantee a future mass-migration to a new place, most likely a city of immigrants all looking for the same thing. A place to fit in, to be valued and express their new identity.

Found poem from Notes from 1660 days ago

Seer and Looker
Dr. Edward Young
Rigor not originality
Dore Ashton
New York School and cultural reckoning
Jewishness vs. Buddhism
Suffering vs not
Art is useless
Politics in art
Hunger makes objects into food
Spectasia
Economy of Art
Scandinavia model supporting arts
NEA
George Soros
Qualcomm
Eli Broad
Vincent to Theo
Morandi
Autonomy in art is useless
Autonomy relies on not hearing the noise
Laforce
True concept of liberty
Judgements
When you get bored, cut yourself in half
The art of memory
Anxiety is life
Book about suffering
Acquired ADD
Sculpting in time.

Accidental abstraction of the plaza at night, 2013. Ollantaytambo, Cusco, Peru

Carros Alagoricos

Casual encounters with the limits of my body.

I began weaving lessons yesterday. My teacher, Felicitas, lives high up in the mountain community of Patacancha, above 12,000 ft in altitude. There is one passenger van that goes up the mountainside in the mornings. Its passengers are mostly teachers that teach in the remote villages along the road to Patacancha. My lovely host mother Sonia assured me that I could simply get in on this van and come back down at 1:30, the time that school lets out and the teachers come back down to the valley to have lunch. I didn't fit in the van taking teachers up to Patacancha but I did fit in the van going up to Huilloq, about a one hour walk from my destination. I suspect my sea level accustomed lungs were not factored into this time estimate, and still when the van arrived in Huilloq at 8:00 am, I assumed I had just enough time to walk up the rest of the way. 

Andean air brings me to my knees. I have no idea how tourists fly into Cusco at 11,000 ft and then trek to Machu Picchu.  I arrived to Patacancha at 9:25am, soaked in rain and with muddied boots, but ready for my first lesson with Felicitas. As soon as I walk into town, I'm greeted by a young man named Santos. I'm not sure if it was a coincidence but he just happened to be Felicitas' husband. I tell him I'm here to meet with her and explain I'm taking weaving lessons with her.  I think it's the first he's heard of it but he tells me he will get Felicitas and tell her I'm in town.  I go find a hut to sit under, take off my boots and wait.  I will be doing a lot of waiting today.

Felicitas shows up and tells me to come to her house. She seems a little surprised I made it but seems okay with it. She walks me to her home, passed her flock of sheep, chicken coop, and hospedaje.  My first lesson consisted of me balling the yarn I brought and setting up a simple backstrap loom. Alas, the yarn was not spun properly, or enough, and so my first loom was a bust. Felicitas began respinning the yarn on a drop spindle so that I can set up a loom I could actually work with. She tries to teach me how but I have no idea what she is doing, It kind of looks like she's spinning a top, but somehow, all of the thread accumulates at the bottom of the spindle like magic. Maybe with practice? 

My first lesson is over, and after a small snack of reconstituted, freeze dried potatoes and coca tea, I'm heading back to the school to catch the only passenger van out of town. I ask the adult I see if she could show me where the van picks up passengers. She tells me there is no van. There is in fact no van waiting for me. If there was it was not waiting for me. I am a pedestrian. 

I begin my ascent in the rain. I'm about 35 minutes into my walk and feel as though someone is following me. I turn around and sure enough a 9 year old boy was walking behind me to the next town. I try some small talk to get a little info about him, and the walk that lies ahead. He is in 5th grade, likes school and assures me that in Huilloq, there will be a car that can drive me the rest of the way. He is much faster than me, but I think that at some point he decides I need his help. He guides me with his shortcuts and makes sure I get into the next town. 

There are no cars in Huilloq. It is a 3 hour walk to Ollanta. This is what I am told. I continue to walk down this giant beast of a mountain, I pee on the side of the road, pop in my headphones and make it my mission to survive. At this altitude, a casual pace feels like running a marathon. The blood vessels in your brain expand to pump more blood to it because it is essentially starved for oxygen. Breaths are half as deep though you try to convince yourself this is okay, and that your body is not in fact selecting the most important parts of it to pump blood to and save. Things go numb, thoughts are a little looser, your vision becomes tunneled and intensified. Did I mention I had not eaten but one or two formerly freeze-dried, reconstituted potatoes and a cup of coca tea?

I start thinking of the things that await me at the bottom of the mountain; sleep, comfort, food, oxygen, when I bump into a younger boy, about 5 years old. I see him standing in front of a large expanse, staring at it, seemingly taking it all in. I approached him, he didn't move. He was in awe, that, or he had gone over the edge, maybe I had too, looking at the beauty of the landscape around him. As difficult as this terrain is, it is quite breathtaking. Maybe he was just looking for something in the distance, but it was such a strange sight, this kid was transfixed on something and nothing broke his concentration. Maybe this is what one sees toward the end of life, where oxygen is scarce and movements look and feel like silent, stop-motion animations. 

I keep trucking. I'm in survival mode after 4 hours of walking down the mountain. Let me clarify that it is not the time spent hiking that is a problem, it was the constant waiting for a save from a non-existent vehicle going in my direction, the altitude, the lack of food, the cold and wet landscape that made my bones shiver and hands go numb. It was the accumulation of these things and the lack of comfort or hope that made this seem like I was a survivor. This is day one of class.

I make it to the base of the mountain. Walk for another hour and see a town. Surely this is my town, Ollantaytambo. This is familiar right? cows? ruins? homesteads? No, it is not my town. It is one town away and also 2 hours from Ollanta by foot. FUCK!

I keep walking and notice I am at km marker 4. I started at 18. At mile marker 4 the unimaginable happens. A cargo truck with people standing up in the back approaches me and stops. This is the same kind of truck that was just in the news for falling off of a cliff and killing 51 people. Oh hell yes I am getting a ride in this bitch. Someone drops a ladder, I hop on for the ride into town, hold on for dear life as we traverse slick and muddy, cobblestone roads. 

I made it into town around 6. So it took 5 hours not the 6.5 my dead brain had calculated. I sat down at my favorite restaurant, destroyed a falafel sandwich and beautifully fried potatoes. Then I walked home, tore off my muddy clothes and slept for 12 hours straight.

I'm going back up tomorrow to stay in Patacancha for 3 days. I expect the visions to be spectacular.