Leaving ones print

I come from a family of printers, perhaps so far back as Caxton, but certainly so far back as my grandfather and my father. That my alcoholic father had a severe case of lead poisoning from working with the hot lead type of his profession might prejudice me against some aspects of printing, i.e. actual printers, doesn't diminish my love of the actual printing process, i.e. the machines, the type, the fonts, the paper, the ink, the readers themselves. I love printing presses. I love Gutenberg and Caxton, and I love Luther and Tynedale. I love the Internet. I love the freedom one can attain because of reading, and the machines, even the men who make it all possible.

In a short walk to the bakery to pick up a slice of chocolate cake for dessert I poked my head into a small space in a doorway and saw, to my surprise, a working print shop.

[Print Shop, Arequipa, Peru.]

I can't identify the press itself. I would guess it to be some Heisenberg press, but another could say more and better than I. I like it just as it is, regardless, because it brings information, i.e. freedom, to the masses, for good or ill.

Men such as my family, and me too, we had California Job Cases full of lead bits, of types of various fonts, of slugs, and so on, and from those cases and into boxes went words, all backward, images, backward too, and then on to the bed and under the press to print.

[California Job Case.]

I have endless evil memories of lead poisoned lunatic alcoholics, but that is a personal story, and the story of printing, of literacy, of thinking, of learning and exploring, much of it is universal and available to all of us if only we care to sit down for a bit, to let the world rotate in its natural course, and we can read and maybe gain a bit more from life thanks to the efforts of others who might not, like my family, have any respect whatsoever for the product itself.

[Old man sitting in the sun, reading, Arequipa, Peru, 2011.]

Printing. Oh, I sometimes just laugh out loud when I realise how fortunate I am to live is such a world as this.

The sweet smell of success

I can't pass up a good sewer. I live a homeless life in Peru these days, not at all settled, not a legitimate resident, but not a tourist either. I'm a long-term independent traveller, as I like to call myself, a man without a real home or even a nation to belong to in any but the most tenuous legal sense. I'm just one man with a passport, and one man out of 350 million people entitled to the same passport and rights. A leaf of a certain colour and shape, I am sort of part of a tree of a kind of forest. I'm detached now, and floating on a breeze downward. No home but somewhere today in Peru. I like it here very much, and not least because I like its sewers.

Peru, from what I have seen so far from Lima to Cuzco to Arequipa, doesn't stink. I haven't encountered dead babies everywhere I turn, dead from sewage in the water. I eat vegetables here, brush my teeth with tap water, and even, if I can't find a cup of coffee, drink the tap water itself. I can do this because of sewers. This is not the cleanest place I've been to, but it is good enough to keep its people from mass death due to shit in the water. I've been there too, and I remember. I love sewers.

It takes some concern to make a sewer cover into something more than an iron covered concrete plate to cover a hole in the street. It takes some artistic skill to design something for the world, even if hardly anyone but a strange old man traveling would care to notice, if I may judge by the looks of those who looked at me taking a picture of a sewer cover. Yes, I have seen prettier covers. But this, like so much of Peru, is beauty itself. Someone cared enough to make it so. And others cared enough to make the cover come to reality, paid the money to make this cover for everyone to walk on and walk over and not notice.

I can make out, with my failing eye-sight, Medieval symbols of royalty and vibrant scenes of power and law. Some bureaucrat cared about this, and others made it happen, through agreement, finance, and labour. It is, this simple covering, a statement of benign concern for all.

I found a modern version of the man-hole cover, the city emblem. Most cities have such romantic emblems to promote themselves and their glorious pasts. Arequipa, Peru is no different. What is also true of other cities and this is that the city put their emblem on a sewer cover. This is a sign for those who care that cities value the work they do, no matter how insignificant it might seem to others, even those who directly benefit from it in the form of, for example, sewerage. One can be-- and I am, among others-- proud of sewers, and I (and we)) are proud to see city emblems on such master-works as manhole covers.

Even as an old guy drifting from some strange cold land through this land of warm wonder and equal strangeness I am blessed here by seeing on man-hole covers such concern for details and this expression of care for all, citizens or not, who pass by Sucre Street and who might, perhaps, look down for a second and smile at the work of those who did this for us all.

The Man Makes the Hat

I find it easy to miss the effort and labour and thought that goes into so much of the Human world, the sheer work that people do to make things good for me and the rest of us, being all of us. Sometimes something odd strikes me and I do look, and I do go out of my way to inquire and see for myself the detail of the maker, i.e. I go into someone's home or workplace where I interrupt the worker and demand answers to whatever questions I might have. “Who are you? What are you doing? Do people love you for your work, or are you anonymous and forgotten as soon as they leave with your work in hand?”

Work, as much as family, is the meaning of life. For some, work is sewing beads onto fabric in elaborate patterns so others can parade in public in wonderful grandeur. In Latin America, such people who sew such things are Bardados. I've met three such people now in Peru, and others in different nations, all of them mad as hatters. I would guess that is co-incidence.

When I see parades and look at the costumes and banners people have, I think of the men and women who sit for uninterrupted hours and days stitching and sewing and gluing bits of stuff to fabric, to sheets and shoes and wood and plastic, who must go blind early, who seem to go strange in the mind from so much solitude. But, assuming others value the work if not the maker, such things will last for a long time, longer, I would guess, than the makers themselves.

I'm a hat guy, myself, mostly because I use a hat to keep the weather off my head so I don't go baked and loony. But beyond that I think of hats as making the man into a public figure among men, a man wearing his identity for all to see in wearing a hat of a certain style.

None of us dress simply for the sake of weather. We all dress because we want to say something about ourselves to others. This is not a hat for me, but for those who do wear them, and who say to me that they care about themselves and their community, I thank those who lose so much to give so much to us all. We're all passing through, of course, and few of us will leave any mark at all. Maybe just a hat. Good enough.

See also: http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2007/12/hat-makes-man.html

A gentle reminder that my book, An Occasional Walker, is available at the link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Occasional-Walker-D-W/dp/0987761501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331063095&sr=1-1

And here are some reviews and comments on said book:

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2012/04/dagness-at-noon.html

Andean Walker, cover graphic

I keep private notes that I expect to use at some later date to compile a new book of travel tales, the working title being Andean Walker. The following photo I hope to use as the cover graphic, taken from the unpublished piece, “The Bodega of the Last Gasp Mannequins.”

If anyone comes across this picture, please include my photo credit.

D.W. Walker,

Author of

An Occasional Walker

and up-coming

Andean Walker

And

As Pacific Walker.

Lost?

My best gal will be an old woman now, this being her birthday, she being ageless and timeless to me. She is long gone for a long time, and yet it seems like yesterday she left for better. I lost her.

My gal found another man, a better man, a stable man who provided her with the life I could not. She looked long and hard for a man who could do for her the things a woman needs from a husband, and she found him. She was married to him for a long period, stable and happy.

But things are not static in our world, and she lost him. He was well-to-do, and the economy changed all that for him. He had some idea that stability was his right and that providing wealth was his duty to his family. He lost all that. He went into the garage and shot himself in the head.

There's always music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOKI_tIBWVI

Arequipa, Peru.

Having smashed my bad knee into a rock at Machu Picchu, and then losing a tooth on top of that, getting exhausted at high altitude, and stupefied to the point I forgot (and therefore lost) my guide book there in the downpour of tropical rain, I decided it was time to go for more water at the bus pick-up station at the entrance to the site. That only cost me a few bucks, whereas the woman next to me paid closer to twelve dollars for a sandwich. A cup of Coca Cola was around $5.00. I was mightily discouraged by most of the experience of visiting Machu Picchu, and by the time I left I was happy to say it was over.

I've been to a fair number of lost cities recovered from the wilds, and most, in fact, all of them, have offered me some interesting and often times unique insights into the ways of humanity that are, for me, beyond my experience in the modern world. Often times I am transported, if only in my imagination, to past times and am allowed experience of other ways of living that I can't get from reading or imagining on my own in the privacy of my own space; but in a setting far from the usual, in a place where I am surrounded by the exotic, then I find myself in a different state of mind altogether, at times so strange and awe inspiring that I am hooked on such adventure seeking. My time at Machu Picchu, however, was not a great experience; it was a huge let-down in that there were so many people tramping around, that the commercial aspects of the visit so over-powered any sense of the sublime, that I was put off badly and could hardly think of the place in situ let alone the hoped for and expected transport of the mind. But, having grumped about it, there will come a time when all the edges are worn off and the bright spots will shine like the sun.

At Machu Picchu I saw a marvel of human ingenuity and perseverance and imagination that is almost unrivaled in my experience. I was more or less disgusted by the initial encounter, but such will pass. I have the images of Machu Picchu vividly in my memory, the kind of deep impression that lasts and grows stronger with time. Good for me, after all. But my tooth. I was in trouble and needed help, which I couldn't act on at such altitude. I could hardly breathe at Cuzco when I returned, it being even higher up than Macchu Pichu itself.

I went for a consultation with a dentist, who just happens to be the most beautiful woman I have seen in Peru. Her name is Yerte, and not only is she young and beautiful and delicate and lovely, she wrote out a persciption for antibiotics and antiinflamtory drugs to get me within spitting distance of health. I had to get to a lower elevation, which I did by hopping a bus to Arequipa, some 12 hours south. At 6,000 feet I am in the safety zone, more or less. I've been a week now on the medicines, and will continue my way south from here. But I have had a week to look around Arequipa, a city I enjoy to some extent, though in many ways I am forced to consider that the people here are of a different race from those of Lima, a race not so pleasant that I feel any desire to stay here longer.

I've been here a week, in which time I've been taking my pills on schedule and am now more or less recovered from the infection I got. I've taken some time to explore the city, to see what I can, and to learn about the life of others. I see from the rooftop of my latest home the mountains all around this quaint and sort of attractive city, cobblestone streets likely laid at the beginning of the 20^th Century, crumbling buildings, unfinished buildings, empty buildings crumbling, and rubble. The sidewalks are narrow, and the main street of downtown, San Juan de Dios, a two lane cobblestone street filled with taxis and pedestrians, drivers and pedestrians alike looking like extras in a Hollywood movie, near misses and seeming chaos as everyone negotiates without the benefit of stoplights or traffic control of any kind other than luck and daring, cars darting in and out, intersections a heart-stopping spectacle of rushing and jumping, of what looks like certain death turning into just another car crossing through.

In many ways this is a 19^th Century city, but here there is electricity and endless imported consumer goods for sale in shops on every street, some shops selling stuff so obscure I can't describe it. What can one say of a shop filled with metal bits that make no sense to the average man? It must be for something, though I can't place metal bits as anything useful. Perhaps it's for some repair job I have never seen before. But other shops sell things universal, shoes, plastic goods, Chinese food.

Often I just wander around looking at this anachronistic city. There must be something this city produces, but it escapes me. So far from the centre of things, from Lima and the manufacturing and exports on the coast, and so far from the handicrafts economy for tourists that one finds in the Machu Picchu area. I have no idea what sustains this place. People have enough money to buy everything a people could need in our time, and I see only a few homeless men, obviously mentally deranged, and I see many people well-dressed and well-fed. It's not rich here, but stable and livable. It should be a good place. I find I don't like it at all as much as I hoped I would. On the surface it looks just about right.

I took a short walk to the river here, and on the way saw what seemed like a happy middle class area of smart looking houses and a well-tended homes.

The street is off the beaten track, the fronts looking clean and healthy.

But behind the houses I found the ruin of ages.

The stench of sewage behind the facade was unbearable.

But, like so much of this nation, the facade is as deceptive as the seeming disgusting reality behind it: I found a super market here that is a delight to my mind, a place a block in size and a beauty like a cheap Walmart. Food, food, food, and clothing and housewares and electronics and endless delights of the Modern age. All of it cheap and clean and new. I am in love with such places, the sign of the future when every man can live in peace and plenty. Vea. I see. I see the future. It is beautiful.

Manuel Carceres, Jefe of Machu Piccu Trains.

I took a walk along the Rio Urubamba this afternoon, crossing the train tracks and inching my way along the bank to look into the water in the faint hope of seeing fish jumping for flies. The water here churns in swift rapids high up in the mountains, and dark, filled with dirt and vegetation. I don't begin to know what kind of fish there would be in such waters. I had seen on my way here to Urubamba many fine places for a fisherman to cast his lot in the hope of plenty, but this is the first time I have had a chance to examine the water closely, and I must be pleased with the beauty of it all, passing on those natural places a fisherman would test his skill against nature, the man connecting, perchance, with a fighting fish, the two becoming one in the duel. I seldom eat fish anymore, catch and release being my personal policy, if only because I don't kill solely for pleasure. I have killed many fish in my time, but it's clear to me now that for the most part those days are fading. Much is fading, as I am slowly and painfully discovering on this leg of my journey.

I walked along the railroad tracks gazing at the river, many other rivers running through my mind as I did so, memories of wild beauty and calm. Those rivers flow through my mind even though today many of them have likely shifted and dried up and died on this earth from those places they were. But the flow continues somewhere, forever. I wanted to know about fish in the river, and I saw a young man who works for the railroad company and I called to him and asked about fishing. This is not, as I knew, a place of cutthroats, of sparkling trout. This is a land of Inca ruins and trains and locals working, so the man and I took a walk down the riverside and talked about rails and ruins, Manuel and me.

Another tired man, I had no need to tell him I am a stranger. Everybody knows. Manuel and I took a walk down the riverside by the tracks and he pointed out ruins there and a path across the water on the mountain side, part of this settlement built on steep slopes and the constant danger of falling. We looked at trains. At railroads that curled like smoke above his shoulder.

Maybe all things move and all things change; or maybe all this is illusion. I love the rocking and the swaying of the movement forward in the night, the surrounding darkness giving shelter like the womb or the perhaps the tomb, quiet and peaceful like a fish swimming in a river; like a man going nowhere.

In this valley of rivers and trains a man could reach for the sky only to surrender. There is nowhere else to go but onward. A stranger to Manuel, a man among trains by the river in a dark valley.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLq7Aqd_H7g

Primarily Red

Times come when gutters over-flow and men walk ankle deep in blood curdling slowly on paving-stone streets.Women suffer and die, as do children, all being one. Cities burn to the ground, motley smoke wafting upward through heated troughs, released to the sky beyond, grey ash swirling amidst the blackened ruins. The skies themselves aglow, a deep, shimmering red. The streets lie down and wait in red.

Red, red, red. Red as the eyes of the girl what loved me.

Red. To display what can be seen but cannot be felt.

I have read 10,000 books, listened to100,000 conversations, dreamed a million nightmares; and still my grasp of the moral is mired in red. Far from clear, the moral is marbled. It is red.

I have seen churches and cathedrals, galleries and museums, all filled with the glories of human greatness in this world. Across the spectrum of the arts much is red. Far more is empty space, not red at all.

People come from far away places to raft on white-capped rivers, to hang in clear amarillo skies, to tramp the pardo plains, to gaze in blanco astonishment at verdant jungles. I do not know what I am looking for, although I think it must be red.

As a boy I walked away from the black holes of mines, copper and silver, for the red wide world. Now in my old age I have travelled far and forever, and red eludes me when I most need it. Red. Red. Where art thou, Red?

I fear that many a man's soul is red, and I see in my blind state only green, finely wrought.

My road is red, and I shall want. I shall want red and have red. Red will be mine for all the days of my road, and I will give thanks for red.

Life is horror and ends in red; but life is red for us all, and I rejoice in red. Red, red, red. Red as the road that loved me, a flood of flowing red, organ's red. All the days of my life I will w*nder in red.

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2010/02/primarily-yellow.html

http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com/2010/03/primarily-blue.html

To Arequipa from Cuzco by bus

I got lucky, I guess, in that my bus trip from Cuzco to Arequipa, Peru's second largest city, was more or less uneventful, especially given that some of my fellow travellers were not so lucky. We all have seen newspaper filler of "Bus Crash in Third World Kills Dozens." I've seen some of those crashes myself, though only once was actually in a bus that hung off a cliff side without going over. A few days back two bussed did go over, killing eight and injuring over 40. That was from Cuzco to Puno, my alternate route. I went instead to Arequipa. Lucky me. I had stayed a few more days in Cuzco, seeing the sights, and resting up from my broken tooth and sore knee. I looked out the window to see what the world is like there, and of course I saw a lady and her llama.

I saw a lot, which I hope to detail in my book when this part of my journey is over and I have a sense of what happened and can write it in some coherent narrative form. I'll leave it for now and will write more about Arequipa next time.

Onward to Macchu Piccu and back again

One can walk the Inca Trail for three or four days to Machu Picchu, as I heard from a number of younger people, one a young woman who was collapsing sick at Machu Picchu itself, she and her group having fallen ill from food poisoning, and from a couple of older fellows from Rochester, New York, a building developer and a medical doctor out having a good time in this life. For me, the only practicable way to get to Machu Picchu was to go by train from Ollanytaytambo to the base at Aguas Calientes. I used to be a dedicated cyclist and mountain climber, but those days, sick to say, are finished. I've been hit twice by cars, and my knees are so badly damaged I often have a hard time walking at all. I took the train.

I took a nice train, to be fair, and went first class. On the way up I met a young couple, the boy and his mother from Chile and his girlfriend Columbia. I have notes to come in the form at some time of a book I compile as I travel. Here I must keep it brief.

We had an excellent view of the valley as we rode for an hour and a half toward Machu Picchu. Unfortunately, it wasn't possible to take photos out the window, so I chatted with my new friends. That's one of the great pleasures of train travel, the slow and comfortable ride with strangers who quickly become friends.

Off we went, and when we landed at Aguas Calientes, this below is the view from my hotel window of the pee-wee hill that is so small compared to Maccu Picchu that when I saw the latter I was thrilled at the thought of climbing it.

It didn't all go as well as I had hoped. My climb up the hill from the actual settlement at Machu Picchu was for me an effort, which surprised me badly. I had no idea how badly I had been hurt, assuming that I would be just like I was ten years ago, ready and eager to bound up and gloat over my little triumph. 

I went up in a slight drizzle.The day was warm enough, and I felt good if slightly winded due to the lack of oxygen at this altitude, roughly 9,000 feet or 3,000 meters. I wanted to go the extra mile. That was a mistake on my part. I climbed the path easily enough, but I had some trouble when I needed dexterity and agility. I don't have much of that left. I encountered a rock on the pathway, suggesting a slide, coinciding with a monster boulder on the road up, which I took by bus, middle aged sissy that I have become. This little rock should have told me, perhaps did tell me and I wouldn't listen, that there was a problem ahead.

I finally did get to the top look-out at Machu Picchu, having successfully negotiated a wash-out with the help of a group of locals working on repairing the path. A stretch of six feet or so was gone, and one had to cling to roots and branches to make it across the gap. I did that with the locals lending me some hands. 
****

The vista was lovely, and added a bit to my catalogue of small triumphs accumulated over a long life time of bumming around.

 

I spent a bit of time chatting with a couple from California, and then, having seen the view, having taken some pictures, and mostly, having made it to the top, I ventured down again.Snapping a few last shots.

Which is good for me, given that the actual site of Machu Picchu is so crowded with tourists it is nearly impossible at this time in history to have a moment's peace otherwise.

I've been to many such places, though this is something extra, being so remote, in spite of the 25,000 tourists and the hustling going on all the time that made it a trying experience for me. And then it went pear-shaped indeed. I fell on  the way back down and hurt myself. I smashed my left knee and lost a tooth. But I recovered in time to meet my train friends shortly thereafter, my pain and slight bleeding mostly forgotten for a time.

Here they are, and a welcome sight, indeed.

I'll post a bit more of the aftermath next time.