Lost in Bolivia

Summer Vacation

2010-06-08T17:30:00.001-07:00

School is out for Summer! Yippee!

Oade to Internet

2010-01-18T14:58:00.000-08:00

I bought an old-fashioned sewing machine last year and figuring out how to thread the thing has been on my list of things to do for about 6 months (right after buy needles). I finally made it to the fabric store before it closed at 6pm. Today, a rainy MLK holiday, I found a Utube video of how to thread the White Rotary Machine.
Hurrah! Happy New Year! Now all I have to do is make it sew...

Oh the places I'd go ..

2009-06-08T13:59:00.003-07:00

View Places I'd like to go in a larger map

Emile Antoine the Simian Bandit

2009-04-13T18:43:00.000-07:00

Surrealists in Dolores Park

2009-02-11T09:46:00.000-08:00

Happy Good President Day

2009-01-21T15:10:00.000-08:00

It's the day after Obama's inauguration, and I stole that title from Jon Crawford's gmail chat heading. Like many liberals, I'm almost ready to exhale, but don't believe it's safe yet. I feel depressed a lot, and I'm always wondering whether is has a chemical cause, or rather what part part of depression is externally imposed, a natural reaction to unpleasant circumstances. Scientists are constantly finding new biological determinants of depression (and love or other emotions for that matter). Yet clearly it's not all biology, just a predisposition. There have got to be social factors that play a role, not to mention the constraints and small oppressions of daily life. I'm likely to blame modernity and capitalism, the break-down of traditional social support and community activities, the tendency to place people in small confined spaces without a lot of exercise for days on end. Or is it just a matter of having a bad attitude and not willfully imposing a sunny outlook onto every situation?

I guess my point is that for the last 8 years I think it was natural for liberals to be in a state of depression, given the resounding trampling of civil liberties, lack of global cooperation and support and the inept and self-profiting government we had somehow elected into power. How could we hold up our heads when our people elected this old-boy crony with so little regard for the rule of law and the moral imperative? It spoke poorly of the American populous and by extension ourselves. In the past few years I felt alienated, angry, and helpless. Hearing the president speak cogently about things that I care about has eased these negative feelings a bit, reinforced the things about America that are admirable and I think it's evident in a brighter mood among the people of San Francisco.

Web stalking

2008-12-15T18:35:00.000-08:00

Web stalking, I spend my days web stalking. My friend in New Zealand's wife is pregnant and all these random people I've been avoiding for 'bout 10 years are friending me, offering up new last names and photos of their babies. Sorta cute and sort of ug. In Paris, a girl gets a new vest and someone flies in from Delhi. I. moves to Cambridge. H. posts photos of vacations in Thailand with M., then headed to Pittsburgh from Vietnam. A. publishes papers on mushrooms. CMC expects a visitor from Uruguay and in Chile, Gorda lives alone.

He said

2008-11-07T14:08:00.001-08:00

"To those who would tear the world down: we will defeat you," he promised. "This is our moment. This is our time"

"tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope."

Yes We Can

2008-11-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

San Francisco roared last night. People honked, swung cow bells, and cried out to other people passing on the street. I stood in a crowd outside, of all places, the Moby Dick bar in the Castro and watched Obama argue for unity and humility amid cheers of victory from the crowd. It is so exhilarating to see someone I can admire, who isn't a bumbling embarrassment, in this position. A young black man, with a clear head, leadership skills, enthusiasm and a sense of purpose. "Yes we can."

This morning, as Raj burrowed his head further into the covers, I said "yes we can."
As I made my coffee and went to work, "yes we can." Never mind that Raj responded by rolling his eyes and this feeling can't last, it's good to savor the exhilaration and sense of, well, hope.

Good Guy Politics and Winning that War

2008-11-03T12:16:00.000-08:00

Nuanced arguments seem to get lost in the political process. There are phrases of this campaign, and perhaps politics in general, that frustrate me. Palin’s recent rhetoric about “Does Obama think that terrorists are the good guys?” makes me want to bite someone, anyone (so much for non-violence). The idea that there are “good guys” and “bad guys” rather than a complex web of human interactions, influence, greed, power, and abuse of power is so simplistic and anachronistic. Do you have to say something so idiotic to get popular support?

Similarly simplistic, in my mind, is the concept of “winning the war.” In Iraq, it’s not clear to me what “winning the war” would mean. Didn’t we already win the war with our campaign to bomb the shit out of it in order to “win hearts and minds?” We’re not trying to capture territory, right? The expressed objectives of the invasion of Iraq was to topple the regime of Saddam Huissan in order to prevent Iraq from getting nuclear weaponry (which apparently wasn’t as far advanced as our bogus intelligence would suggest) as well as to prevent his aiding and abetting terrorist groups. Since the intelligence was wrong, I’ll cede that the first two items are more or less accomplished. In regards to terrorism, the war has done next to nothing to reduce animosity towards America, and has likely stepped up recruitment of would-be terrorists. Even if we managed to salvage the wreckage of the invasion and leave a relatively peaceful Iraq, would this constitute a win? This is the kind of thing that no presidential candidate can express, for fear of appearing insufficiently bloodthirsty and patriotic (Blogs may be the best venue for these musings). Obama steps around this by pointing to Afghanistan as the real focus of the “war on terror and saying we should “kill” Osama Bin Laden. Lets hope his rhetoric is convincing to our bloodthirsty and terrified semi-literate populace on Tuesday(another comment you can't make as a politician).

Daniel, your work is amazing

2008-10-25T11:51:00.000-07:00

It is so great to see you finally latch on and create work that is so alarmingly vibrant and disarmingly beautiful.

Keep dancing while Rome burns?

2008-10-07T22:23:00.000-07:00

The recent financial and electoral events suddenly seem history making, whatever that means. I wonder how hindsight will frame it?
I watch the daily drops in the stock market with a bemused feeling. Given my relative lack of assets and relative youth, it all seems like somebody else's bad dream. I can't imagine how it will affect me, just as I can't really understand or imagine the causes of the most current economic crisis. A friend reminded me on the phone, however, that I was muttering about the inflated housing market years ago. Easy to mutter, I suppose, lacking the assets to climb on board the speculative bubble that promised guaranteed equity. Easy to mutter because a slowing of the housing market was inevitable, but who predicted the fallout? I've taken to listening to This American Life episodes for lay information on the causes of our troubles. What is most troubling is how little even the experts seem to know. How much are these assets the federal government is buying are really worth? Why weren't credit derivatives regulated like insurance? Why aren't we even considering a more "Swedish" option, where our money actually gets something for our money?
Meanwhile, the election mirrors my confusions. Suddenly. McCain, Biden, Palin, and Obama are trying to out middle-class each other, talking 'bout their single mother, food stamps, sittin' around the table trying to make ends meet, about gettin' up when knocked down. Suddenly the Republican and Democratic candidates are talking about who is more in favor of alternative energy, who is going to cut taxes more for the middle class, who is more of a maverick, who will bring more change. It's about time that American politics took more of a progressive turn.
That said, life is still pretty good out here in the West. Last weekend was one of those San Francisco weekends, full of crazy, high, half-naked people, world literature, and banjo music, reminding me of all this city has to offer. I still struggle with the relative lack of opportunity for me here, but I'm usually willing to throw it to the wind because of the rich cultural and artistic resources we have. Meanwhile, I just got a rascal of a kitten named Emile or Antoine, or some combination of the two. Stay tuned to see if I run off to Africa, kitten in tow.

These people must really want their pastry

2008-05-11T11:45:00.001-07:00

Election

2008-05-05T08:49:00.000-07:00

It makes my blood boil that the former first lady from the middle-class suburbs of Chicago with 109 million in her bank account gets off calling Obama elite. The guy is black and was raised by a single mother, how is that elite or out of touch with working class people? Meanwhile, the tax repeal would do little to actually maintain lower gas prices, and would likely funnel more money to the Saudis. How did idiotic economic policy become a way to show your support for working class people?

Where've you been lately

2008-01-16T09:52:00.001-08:00

Somehow the urgency of writing in a blog changes when you are working all day on websites. Namely, HIV InSite, Women, Children, and HIV and I-TECH

Oh, and, while I was lost in Richmond, this nice man came and found me. Now I am lazy and warm, riding out the winter.

2007-09-09T15:45:00.001-07:00

I love people, but most of all I love people who take me by surprise with their unexpected vision of the world. Naturally, I long for some of that spark, but mostly it is enough to glimpse it.

Currently Lost in Richmond

2007-08-15T14:17:00.000-07:00

That is currently lost in Richmond the city, not The Richmond, a neighborhood. I'm staying in a house edged between two freeways, with my city shimmering in the distance like OZ. In the evenings I run along the water, outrunning my demons and the past. On the way, I say hello to Lindsay at the Richmond Field Station, sitting rocking in her studio, now vacant. I greet the voles from Bio IB, especially the one I found dead in the trap in the rainstorm one night. I pass myself, walking with a bottle of wine and howling at Arnaud in that glittering city across the Bay. The wind agrees. At last I reach the look-out and salute the sky on my favorite hillock, barren except for dry grass and some boulders. Old factories decay across the way, remnants of another bellicose time. I might do a little dance to the music running through my head, a bow, a turn, a final wave, then run back to the solitude of the small house surrounded with freeways and filled with cats.

Next Steps

2007-08-01T10:39:00.000-07:00

For most of the year the streams in California are a tumble of boulders, with the slight tinkle of water slipping below. These boulders are irregular and pale grey tinged with pink, often warmed by the sun. In the winter, when the creak runs full and brown after a rain, they sometimes move along with the water. For the moment, they are still and solid under the irregular sunlight slipping through alders that line the banks. As a kid I would go leaping as fast as I could from one to the other. There was an element of danger to rock-hopping, and an accompanying exhilaration. The point was to risk danger, to risk the twist of the wrong step, the possibility of tumbling into water, into stone.

The key was to think not only of the next step, but the next three… to know where to push with strength, when to pause. One foot on the small crack, then leap, then two steps over the hump, then right on the small one near the water, and large leap to the left. Look at me, I'm in control, unstoppable, strong. This is not unlike looking for a job, where an ability to know where your foot will land, to sense an unstable rock and avoid it or move quickly to the next is an essential survival skill. Sometimes, things become clearer, and the steps line up: if I go here, then this will lead here, then to where I want to be, the nice big one over there in the sun.

FACEBOOK, LINKEDIN, Hi5, FRIENDSTER, etc.

2007-07-28T13:33:00.000-07:00

Has it occured to any of you that we will soon need a social networking page just to connect all your social networking pages?

San Francisco-Hallelujah

2007-07-22T15:13:00.000-07:00

I'm back in SF. May the food fetishism begin again. Cheers to the bi-racial babies followed by forty-something moms at the teaming Saturday farmer's market. Hello to the hum of a crowd watching sixteen candles in Dolores Park on a windy summer's eve. Hello to boom boxes on bicycles. Here's to feeling guilty to waste a perfect day inside, and equally guilty to be outside playing. May I have a tiny apartment lined with books and spend the day fog watching from my bay window.

Lost in Ojai

2007-07-17T18:24:00.000-07:00

It does not take a genius to tell that being homeless, jobless and staying with my parents (however temporarily) 1) Is not going to make me very happy 2) May even drive me crazy. You see, this is not your usual temporary return to the suburbs. My parents have made the eccentric choice of choosing to live three miles up a dirt road, past two locked gates and three creek crossings. While this seems to work fine for them (though perhaps my dad would not be declining so quickly into senility if he had a bit more to do), I need a LITTLE more stimulus. Help! The good side is that it is piquing my adventurous side, and I can read, sleep and study all I want. I am currently reading a book called Oracle Bones that makes me want to move to China and become a journalist (is it too late?). It has all you might want to know about Uighers, Felong Gong, and Americans following in the footsteps of Graham Greene.

The New Disorder (by David Denby)

2007-06-30T20:58:00.001-07:00

In the campus where I am staying, there are buttes above like something out of an old western. I run these dusty trails around the campus, dodging cactus and startling bunnies. These rabbits appear to have no predators, and hop boldly across campus and the surrounding hills, only to turn their white tails like a snow flurry when approached. While running the dry hills, I look out over the irrigated track suburbs of Thousand Oaks below, complete with identical houses, emerald lawns and palm trees. Two things ring for me in this place, astonishment and irritation at this oasis imposed upon a dessert and confusion about what I’m doing here in Southern California, running the dusty trails again as if I had never left at 18. It seems like there is rationality to it, some sort of cyclical pattern that I should be able to discern. Is there a code to break that would unravel what I’m looking for, why I remain so independent and rootless? How did I end up here anyway?

In my beach reading this afternoon, a happened upon an essay on film that seemed to explain some of this. The author identifies a common stylistic trend in many recent films (Pulp Fiction, Momento, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Syriana, Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel). Each shares a manipulation of chronology. In my relative ignorance of film history, I didn’t know that playing with the film timing is a recent trend, notable for taking non-linear storytelling techniques or narrative manipulation typically most evident in the van guard, and making them common in popular works. Of more traditional chronology, David Denby states that:

“ Storytellers, relying on sequence and causality, make sense out of non-sense; they impose order, economy and moral consequence on the helter-skelter wash of experience. The notion that one event causes another, and that the entire chain is a unified whole, with complex, maybe ambivalent, but, in any case, coherent meaning, not only brings us to a point of resolution; it allows us to navigate through our lives.”

This is exactly the sense that I’m having, that my life is somehow lacking a plot line, that is should line up more neatly and march like a Hollywood movie from difficult trials to euphoric conclusion. Yes, I know it is senseless to take life cues from a Hollywood film, but shouldn't this all make more sense? Perhaps this is why, when I can’t face myself and the world, I go to the movies. I need the reassurance that there is a narrative in the non-sense of experience.

As my friends drift closer to being contemporary artists, and drag me to gallery upon gallery of art that seeks to provoke rather than please (or at least only please those elite few with a knowledge base to understand the hidden jokes and ironies), I’m sometimes repelled. This is explained by Denby “for more than eighty years, frustrating our pleasure in the orderly unfolding of a story has been a familiar strategy of the political and artistic avante-guard.” While I suppose that there are many works of contemporary art (including film) that do delight, for the most part I find an obtuse resistance to easy pleasure in the work that I saw in Los Angeles these past few months.

Contemporary art is not only often intended for the elite (which both repels and attracts me), requiring of a knowledge base that I don’t necessarily possess, and lacking in that simple narrative or causality that I take pleasure in. Obviously there is a place for both popular entertainment and challenging avante-guard work, but I can’t help but feel that both fields would benefit from borrowing a bit more from each other. Maybe they are in these films. Meanwhile, I drive the Santa Monica mountains to Malibu, slip onto the PCH, and feel like I'm in another film about a disillusioned girl driving along the California coastline (or is it the Mediterranean?). I'll continue to strive to find reason and logic in my cyclical return to my roots, in my attraction and chance encounters with film-makers and artists, in my sense of dissatisfaction.

No Sudden Movement

2007-05-10T10:29:00.000-07:00

As I contemplate hurling myself and my stuff across country again, I wonder if it is all worth it. I have moved every year, if not twice, for the past 10 years. Only amazon.com appears to be keeping track, so I go there to find a list of previous addresses for a background check. Apparently this is my one constant, I order books whereever I go. What am I looking for? Stimulation? Economic opportunity? Economists and sociologists would likely attribute it that, anthropologists to culture, public health professionals to improved opportunities to live healthy productive lives... whatever.

The best answer I can give is fear of boredom and stagnation. My twin scales are trying to find some point of peace between this sentiment and love for people and place. For they are what I love, bittersweet from afar, my people and my place. In looking from a distance, their details become fuzzy and idealized and I wax sentimental. Up close, like a gaping pores in a shaving mirror, I see their flaws. I can't decide whether this dispasia is self-imposed, a mental illness, or a product of an external pressure from modernity, capitalism, etc. Is dissatisfaction justified? Depression or a warped way of looking at things? The natural product of our culture?

So anyway, no answers yet.

Summer Crossing

2007-04-11T14:06:00.000-07:00

While my advisors are reading my thesis, and while sitting in the shade waiting for the rare event that an Atlanta bus would come my way, I read Summer Crossing yesterday. It is Capote's Great Gatsby-ish story of social class, youth and rebellion. My favorite quote? "It is very seldem that a person loves anyone they cannot in some way envy." Struck a cord that one, especially because of my tendency to admire these creative expressive (read: unavailable and highly unreliable) types.

Atlanta in Springtime

2007-03-31T08:54:00.000-07:00

Atlanta may just be the best place in the world during springtime, unless you have allergies. Cars are tinted green with pollen and all the trees are white or pink with flowers. When it rains, little yellow rivers of pollen water run down the streets. Nights are warm again, for drinking on porches and other late night activities. Though I've been in my local cafe (The Inman Perk) pulling out my hairs one by one (err, working on my thesis), I itch to sit in the grass under a tree and read a novel.

2007-02-15T21:14:00.000-08:00

February Already

2007-02-04T11:11:00.000-08:00

Nothing particularly interesting nor glamorous to report.
Keeping my head down, focused on my work during this frigid grey winter. Every day I'm in the cafe, trying to get my thesis done. This is my ticket out of here, to much idealized old haunts or new adventures. It's pretty interesting, also.
I'm listening to Midlake now, who are playing at The Earl this evening.
After the much anticipated, but unactualized, visit from a the tall Mexican stranger did not take place, I'm looking forward to next weekend when my friends arrive on their trip cross-country. If you want something a little more interesting to entertain you, check them out: http://nytake2.blogspot.com/

Family

2006-12-31T11:07:00.000-08:00

My family gathered Christmas Eve, our own secular tradition. The family consists of cousins mainly, flying in from Michigan, Utah, Alaska, San Diego. Ours is a disperse family, though most of us were raised among orange fields, blue hills and golden light of this small town in Southern California.

Our restless individualism and a classic American search for self drove us away looking for meaning beyond the sweet sun-filled days of our home. This movement was also motivated by the sleepy pace of Ojai, spiraling increase in cost of living and competition for space in this fruitful region, long idealized by advertisements.

Many of these cousins I haven’t seen in a few years, and they came with packages and kids a few feet higher than the last time. I’ve slowly grown to love my family again, much to my surprise. It’s as if I suddenly stopped to examine my own bony feet and slowly realized that they were strong, well-formed, and filled with character.

In particular, I like my cousin Dorthey's family. Dorthey married a gregarious, academic, and adventurous New Englander. I fit neatly between their generations, my cousins in their 40s, with kids now in their late teens. In my teens and twenties I’d baby-sit, tossing Ian over my shoulder in fits if laughter. Now both kids have too-hip-for-product hair, and are sweetly awkward. How surprising really, to find within the ranks of my family people I would choose as friends. They are warm, knowledgeable, caring, cultured people. They grow orchids and make great pie. Their choices in life I can understand, the years in Japan and Malaysia, with the eventual return to the comfort of California. They live in a small open house designed by a sister, above their constantly traveling grandmother. They cook well and share funny stories. Mostly, they’ve made a life here in the valley that I can admire.

No, it sure ain't y'all

2006-12-04T12:58:00.000-08:00

DOWNLOAD:
MP3: Hem :: Not California

In this Image of Happiness

2006-12-02T22:17:00.000-08:00

This image of happiness is like a glimpse of something poorly remembered. A fuzzy image of singing along to a song on the record player, with sun streaming through the windows and my mother washing dishes in the next room. Rock hopping over a creek as fast as you can. This is an amalgam of riding along some empty Western road with the radio on and the windows open and then the hot asphalt on my bare feet as I run across the gas station to buy something cold and sweet on that summer day. Doodling with friends on table outside pottery class, then someone takes the drawing and makes us copies and we all sign our names. The nest with large windows and small cupboards and a Wedgewood boiling water for tea while Lindsay reads in the next room. It’s showing up to the holiday party in new pumps with my companion brushing the small of my back as I enter the room. It's this song playing as I dance around with the shades drawn.

The Be Good Tanyas - The Littlest Birds

Austin, TX

2006-11-30T06:44:00.000-08:00

Just back from a Thanksgiving with my sister and parents in Austin. This song keeps running through my head. I finally had to look Denton, TX up on a map... it's near Dallas. Oddly enough, Texas might be a place that I could grow to love. It is western in a comforting way. Compared to the prim sweaty South, it is a dry paradise of brush with a cinematic sky. I could let my hair grow long and blond, get a tan and a tattoo of a rose on my shoulder, then I'd ride for hours in a truck with my dog, listening to this song.

-mp3- Damien Jurado - Denton, Tx.

Raining Babies

2006-11-21T18:34:00.000-08:00

I’ve hit my personal baby boom. My sister had a baby last Tuesday, my best friend from high school is pregnant, my former boss, my friends in the Bay Area, everyone. (Please note the photos: Darwin and Tillie)
For the moment, I’m perfectly happy to snuggle in milky baby necks and hand them back when they need to be changed.
However, it does raise these maternal instincts, sense of not being part of a club,
and anxiety over time passing so quickly through my fingers. Essentially mortality and basic human instincts are staring me in the face.

Songs for a Winter Day

2006-11-21T17:18:00.000-08:00

Hangover Days ♦ Jason Collet

Geometry of Lawns ♦ The Clientele

I don’t Want No Aggravation ♦ Johnny Cash

After It All ♦ Cat Power

Somewhere I know there is nothing ♦ Chad VanGaalen

Which Will ♦ Nick Drake

Nicole ♦ Gravenhurst

Cars and Telephones ♦ The Arcade Fire

I Miss you like I Miss You ♦ Chad VanGaalen

Careless Love ♦ Bonnie Prince Billy

Hand on Your Heart ♦ José González

Bed is For Sleeping ♦ Matt Sweeny and Bonnie Prince Billy

Honey Baby Blues ♦ Leah and Chloe Smith

Fidelity ♦ Regina Spektor

Winter Ahead

2006-09-25T21:38:00.000-07:00

On Homes

2006-09-05T22:05:00.000-07:00

I read somewhere that single women are the second largest group of people buying homes, behind heterosexual couples. Makes sense to me. I’ve just acquired (read rented) a new home in Atlanta. My roommate, with the help of his parents, is breaking the mold by being a 23 year old male homeowner. Meanwhile, I’ve taken over his peaceful home with a nearly aggressive round of cooking and bringing friends over. I’ve demanded a porch swing and rearranged the cupboards. Honesty, I hope he is not regretting his decision to let me move in.

The house is old, but furnished and refinished blandly but recently. There is a useless fireplace in every room and a large front porch screaming for a porch swing (currently no porch furniture, but that will be remedied). The kitchen has an island and a pleathera of spices (my roommate is Indian). The mattress is like heaven, but does not quench my insomnia.

My globetrotting inclinations have always been complicated by a strong aching desire for a place to love and live. Since I stopped calling my parent’ s place home (my roommate still does) around the age of 22, I’ve had one place where I planned to stay indefinitely. Some of you might remember 2575 Le Conte, too small for most, but for me an airy nest with ideal nooks and crannies and a large gas Wedgwood.

After Lindsay moved in, there might never be another place to top it in my memory. We crawled over that building like a tree house fort, sipping wine (were we old enough to sip wine?) on the roof, watering my kumquat tree, swinging legs off of the fire escape. The slim sliver of the Bay glimpsed from a window seat made the furnishing complete, even when Lindsay refused to furnish the rest of the room besides my oversized chair. At night, she would pull a mat from the closet to sleep. Sam would come over for breakfast, Christina and Alicia practiced acrobatics in the afternoon sunlight. Daniel would make furtive night visits and then sleep late while I fetched Nefeli Sandwiches and coffee. Lindsay paced the room on the phone while towers fell and Daniel and I cuddled closer to escape the sound. Mansur and Lindsay plotted aircraft across a hand drawn Middle-Eastern map pinned to the wall. Times were good, in a desperate unknowing sort of way.

So I’m seeking home, in the most illogical way possible (travel?). Each time I return to San Francisco and fall for 48 tense hours into my old life I am reminded that home has less to do with the physical structure and more to do with the people that inhabit it. Loved ones are best for this purpose, but sometimes alarmingly charming new friends will suffice on warm Southern nights.

Coroico

2006-08-25T10:03:00.000-07:00

My last few weeks in Bolivia I was wracked by disease. In a classic one-two punch I had a nauseating intestinal illness followed by a cold that left me snufflying all the way to California. This didn’t stop me from taking a trip to Coroico on the last weekend, and swimming in the hotel pool surrounded by potted hibiscus which overlooks the valley below. The climate changes from La Paz to Bolivia are difficult to get used to. In three hours you slip from the dry yellow plains of the altiplano to la cumbre (or the summit) where buses and cars are blessed for the journey. Then you move through a pass and are winding down into the fertile hills covered in vegetation. Suddenly there are semi-tropical plants and parrots. They grow bananas, ferns, coca, and huge red-flowering trees. The road is billed as the “most dangerous road in the world,” by the mountain bike companies offering downhill rides along its narrow dirt expanse. The buses seem adept at taking the route, honking at corners as they swing wide into the other lane. If two large buses meet, one has to back up until there is sufficient room for two to pass. At least one bus simply backed off of one of these cliffs in the three months that I was there.

Coroico is a beautiful little town, but I had the same reaction I’ve had traveling alone in other beautiful little Bolivian towns: Now what? It’s not that there isn’t plenty to do, given will and organizational skills. There are wonderful hiking trails and outdoor activities like the mountain biking trips. For some reason I seem incapable of getting myself together enough to plan one of these. It is a combination of poor social skills (lack of travel companions), illness and lack of organization in this case. Due to my cold, my ears were dulled by the pressure changes of the trip, and I felt like I was in my own muffled world. This is how I imagine that autistic children feel, pleasantly removed from caring about the actions of people around you.

In Coroico, there was a party of new Yorkers attending a wedding, identifiable because they were skinny, overdressed, and slightly unfriendly. This is the opposite what usually identifies Americans- friendlier, heavier and dressed down relative to other tourists.

I had a bus ride out of Coroico on Sunday, but dallied on the other side of the plaza with some French acquaintances while the bus blithely left at precisely two (I had assumed that there would be the usual half an hour delay while they loaded huge bundles to the roof). Every ticket was sold out until the next day. At times like these my North American roots kick in and I bitch about order and efficiency and “why didn’t they anticipate this?” The New Yorkers were about to let me travel back with their chartered bus, but supposedly one of the buses broke down ahead on the road. Luckily, a Cuban band from La Paz who I vaguelly knew (they had been playing at the New Yorker's wedding), had bought extra tickets for their conga drums and were willing to let me squeeze in to their party. The moral? If you need help, ask a Cuban not an American.

That is how I ended up driving away from Coroico at night, with my aching ear resting on the shoulder of a beautiful brown musician. Above a line of fire crept up the mountain, started to prepare the hills for the coming planting season. In my other ear, Jose whispered over and over, “don’t leave on Friday” as he flashed me his white teeth

Unhealthy Tendencies

2006-08-11T10:52:00.000-07:00

So there are people out there… I see them, climbing stairs, waiting for taxis, talking to each other in cafes. So why do I spend so much of my time on email, or skype, or writing this blog? Sorry excuse for human contact, if you ask me. Why am I so attracted to my computer?

Well, for one thing, all my dearest friends are so far away. Admittedly, if the were in the room with me I’d probably still be idly checking my email. Partly it is because I much prefer written words to conversation, and partly it is an anxious habit. It is a counterproductive approach to feeling lonely… a virtual automobile, cruzing along in my private bubble nodding my head to my own music and my own thoughts. So isolating.

Sorata

2006-07-21T15:38:00.000-07:00

Sorata is a small town on the base of Mnt Illampu (not to be confused with Illumani, above La Paz). For some reason (influence of the nearby Yungas?), it has a particularly mild climate though it sits on the edge of the mountain. Waters there are clear, cold, and straight from the snows on the mountains above. Meanwhile, hibiscus, cherimoyas and camellias grow happily in the gardens of colonial style hotels

There were two rather strange elements to my trip to Sorata… the case of the Spanish spy and the chance encounter with a Californian acquaintance. At first I thought that the group of people sitting next to me at the café and later barbequing on our beautiful deck were a family, perhaps Spanish, because they were pale skinned with what sounded like a Spanish accents. It was some time later, after drinking beer with them for hours that I realized they were two parties. The females, mother, two daughters and a friend, were a Bolivian family and the Spaniard was an acquaintance who happened to be staying in my hotel.

The Gallego was a chain smoker (along with the mother and older daughter) with stories of being the Spanish army, training soldiers to shoot at close range, being part of UN troops in Africa, now supposedly retired in Bolivia. We took to calling him the spy, because of his mysterious presence in this small town in Bolivia. Apparently he had two ex-wives and two daughters living in twin apartments in Gallecia. He proceeded to flirt mercilessly with the 26 year old daughter, though he was closer in age to the mother. Though a soldier, he seemed educated and liberal in U.S. terms. His presence, his stories, and sly smile were welcome entertainment. He opinions to spare, and one diatribe about how Cubans would prostitute themselves to get out of the country was unfortunately cut short by a Cuban woman dining at the table next to us. We all shrunk lower in our seats, trying to remember what we had said about Cubans while he tried ineffectually to dig himself out of his hole.

Meanwhile, around us the town celebrated the feriado, in honor of the foundation of the La Paz district, with a typical three day bought of drunkenness and dancing. The amateur band played the same songs incessantly for most of the day and the night. Toasted chollitas shook their multiple skirts in time. We stayed up late on Saturday drinking rounds of ponche, a seemingly benign hot spiced milk drink, which left all of us with aching heads in the morning.

An older, pale, North American lurked on the edges of this revelry. We saw her sitting alone at the same spots where we went. I noticed her watching us, but didn’t think much of it until I was sitting drinking coffee on Sunday morning when she passed me by. When I quarried where she was from, she said Mendocino. Do we know each other I asked? No, I wasn’t the person I reminded her of, she said. Then she mentioned her daughter in Berkeley, Jade, and we slowly realized that I reminded her of Lindsay. We had visited Jade’s family in the Anderson Valley about a year and a half before, so we knew each other, if only vaguely.

The weekend in Sorata ended with the usual excruciatingly long mini-bus ride home. While I have contact with the Bolivian family, the Spanish spy seems to have mysteriously disappeared. Our plans to cook a tortilla in La Paz never materialized. Meanwhile, the daughter admitted he had confided that his reason for being in Bolivia was to sell false papers to Bolivians for immigration to Spain. I had run across my first coyote.

Things About Bolivia I Could Live Without

2006-07-14T16:27:00.000-07:00

Small children selling things
Dogs scarfing down trash out of randomly strewn bags
Buses belching smoke
Suspicious looks
Manicured upper-class Bolivian women
Smoking in restaurants
Urine scented corners
Sidewalks the size of a catwalk with throngs of people

So Why Are You In Bolivia, Exactly?

2006-07-05T09:58:00.000-07:00

Honestly, it has a lot to do with keeping track of people.

I had an old friend from college who has been living in La Paz since she moved away from San Francisco in 2002 or 2003 (cannot remember). So Bolivia was one of the places I looked for a project in early January. My project is looking at the acceptability of the HPV vaccine (otherwise known as the cervical cancer vaccine) among Bolivian women.

Essentially, I’m curious whether they have any objection to vaccinating girls 10-13 for a virus which is sexually transmitted. There are many factors which could be important in acceptance of the vaccine, including religion, sexual habits, education and age. So far, in the incredibly biased group of people who come into the clinic of the Bolivian Foundation Against Cancer, the vaccine has received overwhelming support. There has been a recent Rubella vaccination campaign by PAHO and USAID, and I think that women who use health services in La Paz are inundated with positive vaccine message. This makes the topic of my project far less interesting, but is hopeful for the introduction of a low-cost HPV vaccine in Bolivia (do you hear me MERCK?)

So that is what I am doing here. I’m talking to women in clinics here in La Paz. I had an incredibly good day today. After weeks of disappointments regarding permission to work in two hospitals, today I was introduced to a friendly resident and a helpful chief of gynecology in El Hospital de La Mujer (which caters to mostly lower income women). I’m supposed to go in tomorrow, and things are looking up, at least for the moment.This does not resolve the issue of the Bolivian Chef and his live-in girlfriend, but it generally puts me in a more positive mood.

Windowsill View

2006-06-26T10:00:00.000-07:00

Pyromaniac Day

2006-06-24T12:44:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was San Juan, which involved lots of patio-side pyrotechnics, presumably burns, and waking up to hazy skies this morning. I ran with a Belgium Doctor to Valle de la Luna, like Bryce Canyon but smaller and whiter. I still feel like I live on the moon, so perhaps the name is appropriate.

Missing Atlanta

2006-06-21T10:39:00.000-07:00

Since nostalgia and a sort of bittersweet sense of loss seems to be my modus operandi, primarily in relationships, but also in regards to geography and pretty much anything you can think of, this new feeling should be no surprise to me. I MISSED ATLANTA TODAY! Atlanta, the city I have been bashing since I moved their nearly 11 months ago.

This doesn’t mean I didn’t complain about the city to the bashful American from Seattle sitting on a bar stool next to me last night (and then proceed to get in a fight about cars, obesity and city planning, but this is another story).

However, today, sitting in this freezing office while outside the sun bakes the badlands above La Paz, I missed Atlanta. You see, it is so green there…the air is thick and heavy with the scent of waxy flowers… gardenias, honeysuckle, magnolias. Spring is so extreme. This spring I held hands with Taije in a street festival among the Victorians of Inman Park, listened to Appalachian music sung by sisters, watched the bare branches of the dogwoods turn white in a day. By now the mosquitoes, cicadas and cockroaches have most likely taken over… making the night a jungle cacophony. Even this has charm… sweating in the darkness of a screen porch, comfortable in short sleeves and sandals on a porch swing… while the jungle movie noises overshadow our whispers.

Another day

2006-06-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

I am back in La Paz after a short stint in Buenos Aires. Some of my elation has faded, though I still feel incredibly comfortable here in my new home. My roommate and I tend to fall into conversation in the morning over a cup of coffee. We linger there, warming ourselves in the sun around the large table that dominates the room. Laurence has so much experience and so many interesting thoughts to share. I end up enthralled, shirking work, wanting the morning hours to extend indefinitely, the coffee, toast and dark Yungas honey to last just a little bit longer so we can stay like this for hours.

My other roommate, a red-headed archeologist bounces in and out of the house with intense energy. I think it is the loneliness of categorizing pottery shards for weeks at a time in the campo that give him his manic edge. Reminds me a bit of Ian…

The excitement of last night was the defrosting of the fridge, including hurling large chunks of ice out the window into the garden below. Andy took great pictures I’d like to send.

Buenos Aires is a city that is hard to describe. Honestly, I think it may have trouble living up to its reputation as a city of encanto and romance, birthplace of the sensual Tango, land of European immigrants (I kept my eye out for older Germans). In many respects, it is just another large cosmopolitan city like others. The streets are crowded, the shopping good. In general the people of Buenos Aires are warm and open to foreigners, especially relative to Bolivia. I feel a sort of guilt at being so at home here, in an area where racial and economic tensions are less obvious because many inhabitants are richer and whiter. Like in the States, this region of the world the tended towards genocide rather than intermarriage with indigenous groups. What a shameful reason to feel comfortable. Regardless, I kept trying to come up with ways to make it back there.

A movie, El cronólogo de la fuga, reminded me of other bitter histories of oppression, the disappeared of the 1970s. While I was vaguely familiar with the story of the disappeared, I had no idea that it was so recent. The disappearances occurred primarily 1976-1978, precisely around my birthday. A legacy of this time period was the occasional adoption of the prisoners’ babies by their torturers. People of precisely my age are still finding out that the people who raised them were not their parents. Apparently, the mothers of the disappeared still march around the Plaza 2^nd de Mayo (pronounced maijo) on Thursdays.

So, you might ask, what about my project?

argg.

I am working on it…

Episode II: In which a girl shirks work and travels to Buenos Aires.

2006-06-20T11:04:00.000-07:00

Did I ever mention how brilliant I am? I decided to take a bus to Buenos Aires. Never mind that the Lonely Planet said the trip took 72 hours. I wanted to see what was out there, I wanted to feel the movement of wheels under me, and wanted to read for days on end. Needless to say, there actually isn’t a whole lot out there. At least little that can be seen by bus in the middle of the night (I did read, and watch a few American blockbusters)

Most of the journey I was lulled to sleep by the movement of the bus. The most exciting part of the trip was the first day, waking up in a wasteland of sand and cactus… something like the old American West. We were going around curves of a sheer cliff made of sand in a huge bus. Each curve, the bus would honk, to make sure that there was nobody coming from the other side. I was on the cliffside, practically hanging over the edge of the road. At some point later on, the bus stopped abruptly and the drivers started messing around with the engine. I was sure that the bus had broken down there in the wasteland. My seatmate was an old man, slightly smelly, but with a kindly air. We exchanged no words but he’d sort of tuck my sleeping bag back around me each time I sat back down.

Early in the morning we stopped for breakfast. Everyone started putting down large bowls of soup. Meanwhile outside, the dogs were milling around and the school children were going to school along dusty streets. There was another bus stopped at restaurant, and another eccentric foreigner. We eyed each other warily but didn’t say hello. Later, I saw him unloading his stuff from the other bus at the third border patrol stop of the day.

Then I got to my destination, the border town of Villazon. No sooner did I arrive than I wanted to leave. It was sunny and barren, with a few stands selling cordero soup. I sat on a stool and sipped the brithm, trying to avoid the fatty grey meat in the middle (so far I’d had nothing but café con leche and bread…and Toddy, Bolivian style weak hot chocolate).

After, I took a taxi to the border, which turned out to be a couple of blocks away. There was a wide gate into Argentina, and a line of people seated on the sire surrounded by packages. I was beginning to regret my decision greatly, imagining hours of waiting to enter Argentina. Luckily, a small boy alerted me to the fact that this was the line for declarations. Actually, entry into Argentina turned out to be quick and simple, though the bus to Buenos Aires was stopped at least three by the Argentine Border Police.

The North Eastern Part of Argentina is lovely... dry with rolling hills. I saw my first Llama, and admired the young Argentinian soldiers who checked out bags (I have to say it, Argentinians get my vote for most attractive men... the recipe? cute sneakers, messy dark curls and light eyes).

What happened to that girl Heather anyway?

2006-06-20T10:57:00.000-07:00

Hmm,

In the tradition of travelers, I will regale you mass mailed stories of adventure, of brave exploits and dirty hostals. Ok, not really.

I arrived in La Paz at 5:30 last Wednesday, just as the sun started to peek out from behind the peaks that surround the Bolivian altiplano. La Paz is the highest airport in the world, and the flight in is supposed to be specatular. Unfortunatly, or fortunately, I was asleep when we arrived. I shared a taxi with a teva-clad outdoor type from Colorado. The taxi ride was certainly spectacular, as we spiraled down into the basin that is La Paz. Basically there are two cities here, El Alto… the poorer city perched on the harsh cliffs above La Paz, and the bowl that is central La Paz. Once down, I quickly found my hostal, some coffee, and went promptly to bed with a headache from the altitude.

When I awoke and had explored a little, we went out to the local tourist bar of choice, Mongos. It has a warm feeling, with low ceilings and fires burning. Tim, the Colorado kid, had several Bolivian friends, as he leads tours fairly regularily. The small pond that is La Paz was quickly made evident when I realized that one of them worked with the only other person I knew here. Also, the house I now live in used to be inhabited by another outdoor leader type they all knew, Lyle.

I forgot how quickly you make friends and lose them while away from home. By the next day, Tim had moved on to another destination and I was keeping the barstool warm at a tourist bar called Sol y Luna. Though my hostal was cute, including a turquoise inner courtyard, my room was cold and quiet. I found talkative bartenders at Sol y Luna, including a chirpy brit who worked in scaffolding and a long haired Bolivian chef with tales of playing a guitar in Italy. Needless to say, I felt sort of lame when I went there three nights in a row.

My overwhelming desire this whole time was for HOT WATER. I’m spoiled these days I guess. I think that is one thing that this trip is reminding me of. In the states I feel so poor, but here I feel so privaliged. I think I needed this.

During this time, I’ve been adjusting myself to my job. It is in the middle of chaotic, hectic, lively La Paz. I sit at a large table in the president’s office (he is my contact, but he is never here) and type most of the day. The staff doesn’t really know what to make of me. Similarily, I cannot really figure out what to make of them. The hours are different, no one comes in until 11, then the have lunch from 12 to 2:30. The you work ‘til 6. You can get lunch here, including three courses (bland, Bolivian courses which always include some type of potato) for less than a dollar. I sometimes go to the American coffee shop which had wireless internet, or sit in the plaza on the steps of the church and watch people cross themselves as they pass. The ice cream men are everywhere during the afternoon, making handmade ice-cream sandwichs, and the pigeons are extraordinary in their numbers and their vigor.

Outside of one of the government buildings on this plaza, there are young soldiers in silly red uniforms standing on pedestals. They undress you with their eyes as you pass.

I just moved into my new place, with a Belgium girl named Laurence. Perhaps it is because we have a friend in common, but I felt like I had known her all my life from the moment we met. She is brilliant, with a mischievious smile and huge eyes behind her glasses. She talks of Gent, rowing, and growing up French speaking in a Flemish region.

The house is perched on a hill, and if I climb out my window and stand on the sill to peer over the newly constructed house a foot away from my window, I can see this great mountain in the distance (Illumani, I think it is called). It is the same mountain that you can sometimes catch peeking behind high rises in the middle of town. In the evening, it turns pink as the sun falls.

I couldn’t imagine a place more suited to me. The furniture is sparse but well chosen, there are wood floors, hot water, a couch, a fireplace. There are plants growing, and weavings on the walls. Honestly… my inner housewife is busy baking and sweeping the floors all day.

So things are going well. I’m planning a 72 hour bus trip to Buenos Aires to visit my friend Paula (flying home, thank god). It should be very interesting.