Contemplating Koi

To a certain extent this post assumes familiarity with the Borges’ short story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”, which you can find here.

The freeways around Buenos Aires form a vast labyrinth with snaking asphalt paths. “Take that exit. No that one, THAT exit!” “Fuck! We almost got creamed by that bus, you’re going to get us killed!” “Shit! Is this where we’re supposed to be?” “We’re lost. Where the fuck are we going?” “I don’t know. According to the GPS we’re right where we’re supposed to be.” “Okay, we’re on Pasco. And there’s Moreno.” “Here it is. WTF. Where are we?“

I owe the discovery of Uqbar to the concurrence of a mirror and an encyclopaedia.
-Jorge Luis Borges, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

GPS: Fail. We were to meet Luis Alvarez at Pasco 261, cross street Moreno. That is exactly where we were, but it looked like a rough neighborhood with low-slung buildings. As it happens in Argentina, we were immediately surrounded by friendly and helpful people, who after their initial empuzzlement on finding us in Ramos Mejía, soon pointed us in the right direction. Several days later Luis called to say: “I was just reviewing Borges’ ‘Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius’, and did you know that the mirror that led to the discovery of Uqbar was located in Ramos Mejía?” Sometimes the universe conspires to show us strange things – this time it had led us to the starting point for my favorite short story.

Zodiaco – 1953, Xul Solar.

The story is rooted in the philosophy of George Berkeley, that objects are known by our perception of them. In fact Berkeley goes so far to say that that is the only way we know objects, so if our perception of the object changes, it changes the object itself. So that “cute colorful wiggly thing” drastically changes to “Oh shit, snake!” when it chews on your tent mate and leaves him writhing with agony. Borges cleverly keeps introducing unusual objects and concepts until Tlön is set to overwhelm Earth by displacing all perceptions about it.

For example, there is nothing equivalent to our word ‘moon’, but there is a verb that for us would be ‘to moonrise’ or ‘to moon’. ‘The moon rose over the river’ would be ‘Hlör u fang axaxaxas mlö’ or, literally, ‘Upward behind the lasting-flow it moonrose’. (Xul Solar translates this more succinctly as ‘Upward, behind the onstreaming, it mooned.’)
-Jorge Luis Borges, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius

Desarrollo del Yi Ching – 1953, Xul Solar.

“Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” betrays the the strong influence of Xul Solar, a friend of Borges’ who lived on Laprida street in Buenos Aires. There is a curious and quirky exhibition space where he used to live that is dedicated to his work, mostly art, but also the musical instruments and games he invented. It is difficult to categorize a person like Xul, the closest I analogy I can come up with is that he was a latter-day-Buenos-Aires equivalent of Leonardo da Vinci. Among the recurrent themes in his work are his fascination with the number twelve and the development of new languages to express his ideas. Two of his rather ambitious projects were neo-criollo, a new language for South America, and Pan-lingua, a formal universal language to express axioms, facts, and their derivations. This inspired me to think about everybody needing their own language to communicate that which is important to them. To me I use language in two ways – to communicate with myself (internal dialogue), and to communicate with others.

Tu y Yo – 1923, Xul Solar.

So why a personal language, isn’t English sufficiently rich enough to express my personal experience? I would say no, how many times have you had that feeling “Augh! I just can’t express myself. It was on the tip of my tongue and now it is gone.” For example how do I represent the indescribable joy and serenity of watering my orchids at 5:30am in the morning? If I create a token, “Orchibliss”, I can interact with that feeling in an abstract way and improve my internal dialogue. I find that English in particular is quite restrictive in the words used to express the sensations of taste and smell. Most likely I would find Xul Solar’s languages deficient as well, if perhaps not in the same areas.

Xul Solar also encoded his artwork with a language of its own, one that unveils a transcendental state or euphoria and scholars are still trying realize the many layers of meaning in his paintings. Luis Alvarez told me “I have grown up with Xul Solar’s paintings and I always liked them, but now they speak to me.”

In the rubble

Not so interesting – Diamond in the rough – Welcoming people – Herd instinct – Shades of gray. (Map this!)

There is usually a reason why certain spots are off the beaten path. Most of the time this is because there is not much of interest to be gained at that site or the trouble involved in getting there does not merit the payback in entertainment value. On the other hand, going to sites mobbed with tourists can be quite off-putting and most places cannot handle the large volumes of people wanting to see them. Rare is the site like Machu Picchu that can handle hordes of visitors and still feel uncrowded and spacious.

Employee housing

But still we persist, trying to find that diamond in the rough, that place of special value that few have taken the time to examine. Often times even these places are mobbed with tourists and the supposed diamond in the rough turns out to be a poorly cut zirconium. The most obvious case of this have been the supremely mediocre villages of the Guatemala highlands, full of noise, pollution, and little of natural and cultural beauty. Indeed, with the exception of Tikal and Volcan Pacaya, I would put the entire country of Guatemala in that category.

Chacabuco Theatre

One of the paybacks of going to a less visited place is that usually the people are a bit more open and a bit more willing to spend time with a visitor. In the town of Mompos, in Colombia, we were personally greeted by the director of tourism and given a long and enthusiastic explanation about all the little spots of interest in town. This warm and generous welcome was quite common throughout Colombia, until recently, an entire country off the beaten path.

The scream

And so we still persist, hoping that the beaten path is a result of herd instinct and that our unique and less traveled path will make all the difference. This is how we found Chacabuco. Not mentioned in any guide books and so far off the ruta normal that even the tourist office in nearby Calama knew nothing of it, I came across it while doing research on Chile’s nitrate ghost towns. In addition to being an ex-nitrate oficina, Chacabuco was also used as a concentration camp during the Pinochet years. I had to visit – maybe to find the phantasms of those who dared opposed an absolute regime, maybe to find the ghosts of a land raped by mining and drill baby drill.

A happy place

After the detention camp was closed down an ex-prisoner decided to keep the memory of Chacabuco alive and appointed himself as caretaker of the site. In an ironic twist of fate his own memory came under the assault of retrograde amnesia of Alzheimer’s disease. So we undertook a journey deep into the Atacama desert, hoping to meet an old man slowly going crazy in a place of hidden horror. When we finally arrived, hundreds of kilometers from anywhere, we found someone we least expected – a blond girl of slight build from Dresden, Germany, named Maria Schöne.

Chimney

If this were a television sitcom script I would greet Maria’s arrival about as warmly at that of Ted McGinley, but this is not a script and I found Maria’s story as interesting and fascinating as the one that brought me to this place. An architect interested in post-industrial design, she is dedicated to preserving the memory of Chacabuco and is the current administrator of the site. She is also suspicious of the motives of the old caretaker – large scale theft of materials from Chacabuco took place during his tenure and former prisoners that she has met do not recall the caretaker as a fellow internee.

Maria was extremely enthusiastic about the site and gave us a spirited tour, and she also stayed with us until sunset so we could get good photographs. In the evening she invited us to her place for dinner and we talked about Chacabuco, its past and its future, and how a girl from Dresden came to live in an isolated part of Chile.

Welcoming hotel

So as it is with most topics of substance the story gets very complicated and gray as soon as one scratches the surface. This is as it should be – a world without clear answers is ultimately a more interesting one for it is in that murkiness and lack clarity that we find space to form our own opinions and conclusions. As for Maria her research at Chacabuco led her to find Victor, a handsome Chilean man living nearby to whom she is now married.

Unknown Machine	View Window	Roof lines	Nitrate oven

Storage tank	Picture window?	Tree	Sunset

Turbulence within

Brief history – Drug running – New markets- Neo-prohibition – A modest proposal

No discussion of Colombia can be complete without touching on the topic of the FARC or Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia. Founded during the turbulent period in Colombian history known as “La Violencia“, FARC reached its zenith in the late 1990’s with an estimated 15,000 members and free reign over 40-50% of Colombian territory. Despite its now reduced strength, estimated at 7,500 combatants, it still remains one the most powerful illegitimate army organizations.

Last stronghold of the FARC

During the 1980’s the organization made a critical decision in the method it used to fund its war against the Colombian Government – it decided to traffic illegal drugs in exchange for arms. In one of the worse examples of sliding down the slippery slope, the FARC added kidnapping, extortion, and robbery to its methods of raising money for its revolution. At this point it lost popular support and had to turn to forced conscription of young boys and girls to keep its ranks full. Campesinos from around the country fled to Bogotá to escape these policies, swelling its population to the current eight million.

Bogotá: Safe haven?

Now that the FARC are on the run the areas where their presence was the strongest are getting used to a post-FARC environment. The town of Neiva, the former financial center for FARC, now struggles to reinvent itself as an adventure tourism destination. The proprietor of our hotel spent an evening with us showing all the tourist infrastructure and discussing Neiva’s plans for development. A local priest talked to us about how farmers with fourteen year old boys fled his parish to avoid forced conscription into the guerrilla army. Few have returned, still fearful of reprisals. At the end of the evening he treated us to dinner and thanked us for listening.

On Volcán Puracé

The FARC are weakened but definitely still alive and able to conduct operations. It is time to deal them a death blow from where they least expect it: legalization of drugs. This change in US policy will remove their most significant source of funding and cripple their source of arms. Throughout Central America I was struck time and time again at how much pain this ludicrous drug policy has caused but the Colombians have paid the heaviest price by far. If the prohibition of alcohol has taught us anything it is that humans love mind altering substances and will do anything to obtain them, filling the coffers of Al Capone or Pablo Escobar notwithstanding.

Leave this alone!

And now a modest proposal for all you cocaine and crack users out there… Have you considered a switch to crystal meth? Crank is an artisan all-organic substance, locally produced, right here in the US of A! Why see your dollars fly overseas into the coffers of corporate drug cartels when you can support you local mom and pop meth-lab? Make that yucky back of the mouth taste a thing of the past – methamphetamine is best enjoyed mainlined in a clean no-fuss no-muss way! If you want to ruin your life go right ahead, but leave Colombia the f— alone.

Expensive laundries – FJ gets a chassis wash – an unimposing UNESCO site – Parking in Panama City

“Lost in Translation” was not one of my favorite movies. While watching it, it seemed slow and boring. However, this movie has been more often in my thoughts than ever before. Our situation just begs for misunderstanding on a grand scale. The cultural differences, added to the language difference, are the perfect recipe for disaster.

Coffee farms at Siempreverde.

Misunderstanding caused us to run up a $65 laundry bill. We were staying at Siempreverde Lodge, a lovely B&B located in the coffee country around Alajuela in Costa Rica. The caretakers were very nice, greeting us with the usual Costa Rican courtesy. Eager to please, they offered to do the laundry for us when we inquired about a laundromat nearby. They had no idea of the cost, as the hotel didn’t offer laundry service, but said that it would be cheap. Lo and behold, on the last day we were presented with a laundry bill equal to the cost of our room! We were directed to take our grievances directly to the “senora” (either owner or manager, we weren’t sure). She assured us that laundry by the pound in Costa Rica was much more expensive than either the US, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua or Honduras – all the countries that we had visited on the way. We didn’t pay the $60. I suspect she pulled the rates off an old hotel bill.

At Super Service Panama.

The car always offers up opportunities for misunderstandings. As in the time when we asked for a chassis wash in Playa del Carmen and found that this included dowsing the undercarriage of the car with used motor oil to prevent rust! Aha, that’s what the “engrassar” on the sign was all about! Shocked, Shreesh had to intervene and hurriedly wipe it off the brake lines and CV joints. Then there was the time when we were waiting for a mechanic to look at our car window which wouldn’t roll up or down. The mechanic’s wife explained that he was stuck in traffic, so we would have to wait. Trying to put our time to the best use possible, we started to troubleshoot the window problem ourselves. Engrossed in this task, we didn’t notice the mechanic arrive. He took one look at us, assumed we were going to fix it ourselves (in front of his shop, I guess) and off he went on another traffic infested route, never to be seen again.

Cathedral?

Guidebooks can be relied upon to cause misunderstandings. I notice that every beach has possibly the “clearest waters in Central America” or the “best coral for snorkeling”. For us, the biggest disappointment was Leon Viejo. Designated as a world heritage site, Leon Viejo was the old capital of Nicaragua. It was abandoned due to the proximity of the volcanoes Momotombo and Momotombito. Expecting to walk through a ghost town with cool ruins like Antigua, we excitedly made the 35 mile trip braving the awful Nicaraguan traffic. When we found that the last few km of the road to the ruins was paved with stones like old Roman roads, our expectations peaked. To our surprise, Leon Viejo consisted of a stroll amongst 4 ft high walls, which was all that was left of the beautiful churches, convents and noblemen’s houses. Although restoration had given it quite an aesthetic look, we couldn’t help but be disappointed that the highlight of the trip was a lovely view of Momotombo and Momotombito from a small mound on the site.

And then there are the hotels. “Te lo dijé”, our nice receptionist at Hotel California told us, “I told you that the garage had no roof”. We had no idea that an open air garage meant a few reserved spots right on the street in Panama City, with no doors that could be comfortably bolted at night. We rolled our eyes and resigned ourselves to the perils of navigating a foreign country in a foreign language.

Chiriqui Highlands

An Innocent Character – Smacking wee balls – The Quetzal! – The asterisk

In the guise of an innocent character there lurks a fiend. Now we all know that 42 is the answer to life, the universe, and everything, but how many are aware that in ASCII it is the mark of the devil? For it is the code for the asterisk (*), a character that throws in doubt everything that precedes it. It is the uninvited person from Porlock that ruins a good theme, the movie that ends by revealing that the last two hours were a dream sequence.

The asterisk was in the headline news not too long ago when Barry Bonds was chasing the all-time home run record set by Hank Aaron and many were saying that an asterisk should be added to Bonds’ name due to his alleged steroid use. All those years of slugging away at that wee ball only to be foiled by an asterisk. So there you have the evil deeds a simple character can accomplish. Barry Bonds*, took the road less traveled by and that has made all the difference.

Finca Dracula, where we saw the Quetzal*.

So why, on this glorious day should I think of this silly and unimportant character? For today, against all odds, we have seen the Resplendent Quetzal*. This is not the season for Quetzals and one has to be quite lucky to see one since they are nesting. In order to keep their nests secret from marauders such as the Emerald Toucanet the normally garrulous Quetzals go about their business in a clandestine, furtive, and silent fashion. This makes the green bird quite hard to spot in the green forest.

It was Neena who spotted it first. “I think there is a parrot or something in that tree”, she said. I trained my binoculars on the bird and immediately recognized it to be of the Trogon family. Then I saw it – the brilliant green scallops of the wings draping over the body, unmistakably Quetzal, the sacred bird of the Maya and the national bird of Guatemala. But alas, now for the asterisk. The individual we saw was not the long-tailed male but the less flamboyant but still attractive female. So, the quest for the Quetzal continues!

Hot but happy

The role of fortune in our daily lives. A meeting with a nuclear engineer and a WW II vet.

“You are so fortunate to be able to take the time off for this trip” is one of the most frequent comments we get. We are fortunate, yes, for being born in relatively well-to-do families, for having trained in an area that is in high demand, for getting the lucky breaks that enabled us to hold well paying jobs and most importantly, for being so well matched that we enjoy taking long vacations together without stress or compromise.

Yet what is “being fortunate”? There is definitely an element of choice in being able to take long vacations, we choose our path to some extent. So we own neither house nor land, we did not sell our souls to the digital gold rush, we are willing to risk losing a comfortable and happy existence in San Francisco in return for our long and frequent travels.

“I feel so fortunate in my life that I was given the chances that I got”. We were speaking to Lindy Ferguson, a World War II veteran from a small manufacturing town in Wisconsin. We had been searching for apartment rentals by the week when we ran into Lindy in the ex patriot corner of Merida. We ended up spending the evening listening fascinated to his stories of being down in the engine room of ships used for troop transport, of heading towards Okinawa and certain death, of the gallows humor of the engine room resulting from hazardous and perilous work. (For “What would you aim a torpedo at? The engine room”!).

After the war the chances of finding a job in manufacturing towns were slim. He went on to relate how his experience with steam engines allowed him to get a job in the nuclear engineering department of Argon National Labs, how a boy from a mainly blue collar town with no relevant training worked with and among Nobel prize winners and of meeting Oppenheimer. And all through this fascinating narrative there was a pervading sense of gratitude for such unexpected rewards.

Yet, over a pint of (terrible) Mexican beer at a (pretty good) pizzeria, we remarked how unusual it was to meet an eighty year old whose conversation was not limited to complaints of his aches and pains, who was obviously enjoying himself inspite of any setbacks that he may have had, who was genuinely amazed and grateful for his good fortune, who never uttered a negative sentence in the entire conversation. I wonder, was it good fortune that led to his success, or his refreshingly positive attitude?