Unexpected Bagpipes

So I just hitchhiked from northeastern Argentina to northwestern Argentina, and I'm bound for Bolivia in just two days. However, for this post to make sense, I must briefly revisit my Junior year of college in Minnesota and recount a brief story:

I had stayed up until the nether-hours of the night writing a paper for my existentialism class. It was about Nietzsche and the death of God... how can we create a framework of morals in a word devoid of transcendent truth? I sure as hell didn't know, but I typed something thesis-driven and exited Carleton's computing center to the sleepy cheeping of birds and pre-dawn darkness. I wasn't only tired--I was beaten. Those unsettling unanswerable questions (you know, the ones that are so mighty at night when everyone else is sleeping?), they had stomped down on my sleep-deprived soul and ground in their heals. I walked slowly across the quad through solitude and confusion... And then it happened, The Miracle: A barely-visible figure in the middle of the grassy quad began to play the bagpipes. Passionately. The notes of the bagpipes rose bravely through the night. Lofty. Absurd. Almost-clashing. Epic. It was a little bit otherworldly, but it was human in a way that puts a pang in your chest. I forgot my deep fatigue and was moved. In that moment, I loved the anonymous player of pipes.

OK, fast-forward one and a half years to today, the 30th of January, 2011. Nathaniel and I have been on the move through Argentina since January 8th, and we're getting pretty tired of being tourists. I mean, we've seen some spectacular things, but a couple of weeks of spectacular-thing-guzzling can bring you down... you start to miss the trappings of community and get the urge to dig your feet into a place and get beyond the superficial "spectacular things." Last time we were weary like this we were at the southern tip of this continent, and we scrambled cookie dough on a stove top to console ourselves. Today, however, we decided to visit some painted hills. And they were, well... spectacular. It's like, God accidentally spilled all these oceanic turquoises and fiery reds and yellows on some random cliffs in the Argentine desert and forgot to clean up after himself. Giant cacti stood like sentinels as Nathaniel and I relished the quiet of the high desert. And then, out of nowhere, a man started playing the bagpipes. He walked slowly, belting out beautiful alien bagpipe twangs that were absolutely out of place in the Andean highlands. The painted cliffs were his intended audience, and I loved him. After a performance that was both heart-wrenching and silly, he packed his pipes back into his sports car (they wheezed as they deflated into the back seat) and explained that he was from Buenos Aires and yes, he did often travel with his bagpipes. Then he drove away.

Iguazú.

I would like to take a moment for us to consider the word cataract. As far as we know it started off in Greece. Katarhaktes means "broken, falling water;" "swooping, rushing, striking down;" and even "portcullis." "Portcullis," probably, because of the way that castle gates come slamming down. In Latin the word cataractus simply came to mean "waterfall." The French, however, looked at the Greeks, thought of castle doors in terms of "obstruction," and passed their interpretation to English. Then we labeled an eye-disease.

Cataract can also meas waterfall in English, and it strikes me as silly that such a beautiful word connotes blindness. Countless gallons of rushing water subjected to gravity and empty space... to me, that deserves strong syllables; hard sounds that ring while they flow. Cataract.

Forgive my etymological gushing (katarhaktes?). It's just that today I went to Iguazu falls in Northeastern Argentina, and I couldn't help but think of the brave letters that strive to depict beauty like that. In Spanish it's catarata. I mean, it was really just a wide lazy river that ran out of ground, but holy shit! rainbows and fireworks. You get dizzy, and the improbability of the mist and the roar, it eats you. Cataract. My eyes were so wide open.

Unfortunately my experience of Iguazu was tempered by fast-food courts, long lines, a cheesy train that played music, motorized rafts full of screaming sight-seers, and hoards upon hoards of co-revelers. I mean, I don't mind sharing nature with people, but there must be a way to make an awesome waterfall seem less like Disneyland? Maybe? I asked myself this as I watched a giant jungle-ant struggle to move a Pringle.

But whatever. I saw wordless falling water and weird racoonish-beings with long snouts and some of the most out of control spider web fortresses ever. Mist fogged my sun-glasses and I thought I could fly. I will try to forget to bandaids on the concrete path.

Tomorrow Nathaniel and I are planning to leave Puerto Iguazu and hitchhike our way westward across northern Argentina toward Salta, Jujuy, and Bolivia. The first large intermediate city we want to reach is called "Corrientes," and I am very excited to find myself a piece of cardboard, write that (very wonderful) word on it with my green Sharpie, and then stick out my thumb. I realize that I haven't written much about our experience hitching ~2800 kilometers to Buenos Aires (I'm planning on dedicating a whole post to our crazy road life soon--until then look at Nathaniel's blog), but it was awesome and I'm excited to do it again. So here's to the vagrant life, and cups of mate served steaming on the highway...

On an Uruguayan street after espresso:

Nathaniel: "You know, I think fiction might be a better way of expressing truth because you aren´t confined to reality."

Caitlin: (repeats Nathaniel´s statement exactly)

Nathaniel: "I hate you. You make me say things like that."

La Poesía

I write from Buenos Aires, from a cafe/bar called La Poesia. I chose beer over coffee, and have proceeded to watch a fleeting rain storm drench the parched streets of this teeming city. The bottom floor of the cafe has flooded--I watch with some amusement from the loft as waiters tiptoe over tiles. Thunder booms; there's a pictures of Jorge Luis Borges sipping coffee just downstairs. Yes, there is poetry here.

There's too much to write. Of course. Since my last post Nathaniel and I have
--said goodbye to an unbelievable universe of clouds and rocks and people
--hitchhiked over 1700 miles from Southern Patagonia to Buenos Aires, Argentina
--eaten Thai curry on a friend's rooftop terrace in BA while discussing Nietzsche

Sometimes insufficient lists make me want to run down a busy city street in the rain and bang my head on a bell. I don't think I'll do it, but I'm tempted. I think, my dear readership, that the times call for a promise (what with an imminent trip to Urugray with which to contend): I will write more. Soon.

It's time to ring, 2011.

Torres del Paine National Park awoke splendidly to the new year. Fairytale cloud castles, and lo! the towers. It's been such an honor to live in the shadow of these iconic granite spires... Today they appeared to me as the sweet craggy cores of carrots, but then they morphed into opaque amber, then pencil lead. There are a shit ton of poems in those hunks of rock, and you can't help but be a little reverent.

Christmas has passed here in the park, and now the new year too. On the night of Christmas Eve a crew of Chilean search and rescue workers yelled, "Gringos! Vecinos!", invited us to partake of their wine, and smashed a birthday cake (which they just happened to have with them) into my face. It was beautiful. The sun beat down on my tent on Christmas morning, we played cards in the grass, and since then the universe has given me many presents.

My last week of work in the park has included a disproportionate amount of time wearing a jumpsuit and a Santa hat. We've sung carols about the principles of Leave no Trace to passing hikers, decorated a Christmas tree, made wooden signs that tell people not to feed the marauding foxes, dug trenches, and moved boulders. For the new year we painted silly masks orange and told one another beautiful stories of 2010 (popcorn style). A small herd of sheep was crucified for the consumption of the hotel staff, I laughed so hard I cried as I helped wash dishes in the kitchen, and I proposed to a cloud.

We the volunteers decided that our motto for 2011 is "It's gonna be fine." Because it will be. The unknown course of my life can be terrifying, but there are moments when I love the panoply of possible futures that I might one day call mine. So ring, 2011! Ring! There's a whole year to live before the apocalypse, and it's gonna be fine.