going back to the United States tonight...

El Fuerte

My two favorite things about these ruins: They were the work of three (or four) cultures--the Chanes, the Guaranis, the Incas, and the Spanish.

And, these recesses contained mummies, which were open to view, a few yards away from houses where people lived.

condors

loros (parrots)

The Table Where the Rich People Sit, Byrd Baylor (and Peter Parnall)

If you could see us sitting here at our old, homemade, scratched-up wooden table, you'd know that we aren't rich.
But my father is trying to tell us we are. Doesn't he notice my worn-out shoes? Or that my little brother has patches on the pants he wears to the first grade? And why does he think that old rattle-trap truck is parked outside the door?
"You can't fool me," I say. "We're poor. Would rich people sit at a table like this?"
My mother sort of pats the table and she says, "Well we're rich and we sit here every day."
They look surprised. You can see they never think about the things we need.

Right here, I might as well admit that my parents have some strange ideas about working.

They think the only jobs worth having are jobs outdoors.

They want cliffs or canyons or desert or mountains around them wherever they work. They even want a good view of the sky.

They always work together, and their favorite thing is panning gold—piling us into that beat-up truck and heading for the rocky desert hills or back in some narrow mountain gully where all the roads are just coyote trails.So we start with twenty thousand dollars.

That’s how much my father says it’s worth to him to work outdoors, where he can see sky all day and feel the wind and smell rain an hour before it’s really raining.
He says it’s worth that much to be where (if he feels like singing) he can sing out loud and no one will mind.
I have just written twenty thousand when my mother says, “You’d better make that thirty thousand because it’s worth at least another ten to hear coyotes howling back in the hills.”
So I write thirty thousand.

Then she remembers that they like to see long distances and faraway mountains that change color about ten times a day.
“That’s worth another five thousand dollars to me,” she says.

We all say seven dollars doesn’t seem to be enough. We talk him into making it five thousand.

Now my paper says four million and sixty thousand dollars —and we haven’t even started counting actual cash.

To tell the truth, the cash part doesn’t seem to matter anymore.
I suggest it shouldn’t even be on a list of our kind of riches.

So the meeting is over.

The rest of them have gone outside to see the new sliver of moon. But I’m still sitting here at our nice homemade kitchen table with one cookie left on my mother’s good blue-flowered plate, and I’m writing this book about us.

I kind of pat the table and I’m glad it’s ours.

Samaipata, Bolivia

unmanned, ppl. a.


1. Not furnished with men or with a crew (cf. MAN v. 1). 1544 BETHAM Precepts War II. li. Liij, That he leaue not his campe vndefenced and vnmanned. 1592 KYD Sp. Trag. IV. iv. 211 Set me with himVpon the maine mast of a..ship vnmand. 1670 MILTON Hist. Eng. I. 5 Not put to death, but turn'd out to Sea in a Ship unmann'd. 1726 POPE Iliad XXII. 469 See, if already their deserted towers Are left unmann'd.

2. a. Devoid of a man; empty. 1602 WARNER Alb. Eng. XII. lxix. 291 At first she feares, but lastly findes the Armor was vn-man'd.

b. Unsupported by men; unassisted. c1620 [FLETCHER & MASS.] Trag. Barnavelt IV. i. in Bullen O. Pl. (1883) II. 271 Make haste, he is yet unmand: we may come time enough To enter with him.

c. Unoccupied by men; unpeopled.

3. Not trained or broken in; spec. of a hawk. 1592 SHAKES. Rom. & Jul. III. ii. 14 Come ciuill night,..Hood my vnman'd blood bayting in my Cheekes, With thy Blacke mantle. 1611 COTGR. s.v. Acheter, Buy a house made, and a wife vnmand. 1623 J. TAYLOR (Water P.) Discov. by Sea Wks. (1630) 28/2 Like a wild Kestrell or vnmand Hawke. a1637 B. JONSON Sad Sheph. III. iii, No colt is so unbroken, Or hawk yet half so haggard or unmann'd.

a mask has to be horribly beautiful

The Bolivian altiplano is not a home to me, but I recognize it. It's got its dust in my bones and has had, as long as I've had bones. I don't know how it got there, but it's a place that echoes in me. A dream place.

just look at this

Sucre

Cochabamba

Potosi

take note

I sat next to this pup at a stopover on a bus ride in the Bolivian Altiplano for five minutes before I noticed him.

lay me down

lay me down
pick me up
pick me up

salt is not sugar

Vigor of waxing

Hammered by a thing called homesickness.

Because--a home is a place where you understand the avenues. A prayer to simplicity.

Travel is upending, play.

Both are valuable, but I persist in the notion that travel is a means to a better, deeper, stiller notion of home.

Night bus from Potosi to Cochabamba. Dogs desultory on dusty streets. Headlights illuminating startling curves and sharp drops. Trash and toilets that make no attempt to hide the bodily functions they exist to contain. And still this is the most beautiful country. Gracias por todos.

glory to

salt

Gould's Book of Fish, Richard Flanagan
That a book should never digress is something with which I have never held. Nor does God, who makes whatever He wishes of the 26 letters and His stories work out just as well as Q-E-D as A-B-C.

The only people who believe in straight roads are generals and mail coach drivers.

A fish on the other hand, is not an easy thing to forge.

A fish is a slippery & three-dimensional monster that exists in all manner of curves, whose coloring & surface & translucent fins suggest the very reason and riddle of life.

shelter

shelter

shelter

shelter

play

This is the view from the study of a house that Pablo Neruda lived in. He talked of keeping his house in play and he collected objects as toys to design and create the space around him

Valparaiso

Valparaiso is a city thrown out onto the hills above the Pacific Ocean. It's a port city with shipping containers by the ocean and houses the colors of shipping containers on the slopes. At the port, there are cranes and cables and in the houses, there are lines of laundry and staircases.

A good thing about staircases in cities: They function as secret folds in city structures by taking you in and then throwing you out into a new and unexpected part of the city.

This artery gives off twigs of indeterminate number.

.Sailors in the second half of the 19th century called Valparaiso "Little San Francisco".


Valparaiso is the home of the first public library in Chile.