More media?

Dear Readership,

I have a confession: I've created another blog. This blog, however, is entirely different in nature. I've been reading so much lately, and I've found myself copying poems and quotes incessantly... so it occurred to me that it might be cool to have an online place where I can copy poems, quotes, and images that are pleasing to me. Here is the URL of my newly founded collection:

riprapping.tumblr.com

Fear not, however. This blog will continue to exist (and hopefully thrive) as a place for my writing on thoughts and travels and the silliness of life. Happy reading!

Sincerely,
Caitlin

The Camión

Often at the end of a trek we take public Bolivian transport from our rural terminus back to Sucre. This mode of transport is known simply as "el camiòn" (literally, "the truck"). And that´s what it is. A truck. A high-sided flatbed truck that is filled to the brim with Bolivian villagers and their market-wares and tired hikers, standing room only. It grumbles bumbily over terrifying mountain roads, and when the rains come town the driver covers its occupents with a tarp. To call the camión uncomforable would be a gross understatement. The last time I rode it there was a poor little girl jammed into my smelly hiking armpit, a boy vomiting into his hat at my feet, and old lady pinching the back of my leg because I was squashing her bag of wheat. Note how I smile forcibly as the truck fills up (photo credit to Lim, a delightful French tourist with whom I hiked):

Strangely enough, however, I find something about the camión thrilling, maybe even endearing... Perhaps I haven´t ridden it enough, but I find it amusing to watch young campesinos exchange flirtatious looks and cell-phone numbers, and I marvel at the way the Bolivian mothers juggle numerous children and blankets full of peaches. And, with the right mental fortitude, I can find true contentment as I roll through jaw-dropping mountainscapes with the sun on my back (again, thanks Lim).

Parallels

Sorry Blog! I´ve been living in Sucre for over two weeks now, leading treks for a non-profit organization and pasting poems to the expansive blank walls of the room I´m renting. How do I fit it all into a post? How the labyrinth of whitewashed city streets blurrs with the labyrinth of my mind? How I´ve fallen in love with ancient Greek philosophy, and learned that cows with red tassel earrings are protected by the devil? For some reason I´m at more of a loss than usual, so I think I´ll copy down an entry from my journal. I tried to express two sets of parallel experiences... I don´t know if it makes sense or exactly how it matters, but I felt a weird resonance in these moments, like they were charged with meaning.

12.14.11
Happy Valentine's Day, self. I was thinking while I was hiking today, and, for some reason I started grouping imagines, like I could categorize this strange montage I call "my life." Below I will record some results of this thought experiment:


#1
(a) I´m listening to the only three songs on Master-G, my MP3 player, again and again on a bus ride in Northern Argentina. For some reason, the swirls of the bus driver´s smoke seem more beautiful than most things, like they are spelling out secrets in a language I can't understand.
(b) I´m experiencing wind and vertigo at the top of a wrinkled Andean cliff. I feel like the rushing brown river has turned to green falling numbers like in the Matrix. Like the number/water whispers Truth.

#2
(a) I´m laying alone in the shady grass after lunch during one of the treks. My body feels like part of the earth as I waft in and out of dreams... "This is what contentment tastes like," I think.
(b) I'm painting my toenails a perposterous shade of day-glo orange in my freshly-decorated room. It´s Valentine´s day, and I´m listening to Bob Dylan and thinking about love.

I don´t know... All these moments happen and you have to order them, draw analogies, build your narrative. But sometimes it´s so overwhelming. What do I do when an old woman in the Bolivian foothills holds my white hand and looks up at me in wonder through a face that mirrors mountains? When I climb out of a crater at sunrise at place my palm in the fossilized footprint of a Tyrranosaurus Rex? I make strange parallels, I guess, and grasp at poems.