p s a

It was my intention and ambition to publish at least one post each day. My plan has been foiled.

I am writing to you from a computer in Mail Boxes Etc. in a mall in Caracas, Venezuela, which is about a 30 minute cab ride from where I am staying.

The past two days I have been well-fed and well-loved by Carlos's family. I will spend 2.5 weeks in Venezuela to attend the wedding of Carlos's cousin and travel. When I return to Lima on 8 November, I hope to return to the regularly scheduled posting program.

Kisses to my dear readers.

seísmo

At 5:48, an earthquake registering 6.4 on the Richter scale emanated from Pisco, Perú.

My apartment building, room, and bed shook, but it was the car alarms outside that roused me. I lay in bed watching the ceiling lamp swing hypnotically, waiting for a hypnotist's voice to break through the gray dawn and the fog of my consciousness for instructions.

This is the biggest earthquake in Perú in 2006. There was no major damage and no reported injuries.

Have you ever picked up a rock from a lakeshore or beach? Felt its cool, dense weight? Then imagine entire mountains moving.

There is something awesome and formidable about being shaken and moved by, it seems, air—without the gross hold of hands, maws, or machines. Life is not limited to carbon-containing creatures, but extends to things like concrete and continental crust.

Wow.

I wanted to offer a sacrifice, build a temple, genuflect to the sun, moon, and stars; anything to hold on to mystery.

angeles caidos

There is an independent theater nearby, El Cinematógrafo de Barranco. We saw Pasolini's The Gospels According to Saint Matthew on Sunday and Wong Kar Wai's Fallen Angels today.

I had forgotten that I'd already seen Fallen Angels. I still didn't understand it the second time around and I left once again satisfied.

calling on god

I am working on essays for grants and graduate school applications. The questions are seemingly simple: tell us about yourself and your motivations for pursuing advanced study.

In my desperation for eloquence, I do little things that can only be classified under superstition: I drink hot theobroma cacao hoping to supernaturally stimulate my creative capacity. After a long day, I stand on my head in my room imagining amrita (nectar of immortality) flowing back into my corpus, revitalizing concentration and relieving achy muscles.

It's silly, I know. But that's what I did today.

milk in a bag

Milk here comes in a bag or a box and is really tasty. It reminds me of the milk from my childhood in China. The milk in the States tastes metallic to me.

China doesn't have a lot of cows because the landscape is mountainous and the farmable land is needed to grow food for people. Perhaps it is because of this rarity that made milk so expensive and such a treat when I was growing up.

I can still recall the glass bottles they were delivered in. And I still remember the time I snuck away a bottle of our neighbor's milk, drank it, and got caught by my parents. My parents were embarrassed and angry and made me confess my crime. Our neighbors were nice and offered me another glass to console my shame, which I drank.

bubble head

I spent most of today reading one article in El Comercio (the local equivalent of The New York Times).

While it's a pain in the neck to have to thumb through a dictionary every other minute, I'm learning lots of new vocabulary and phrases. Too bad I don't have a photographic memory, which means there's still an echo when you rap on my skull, but at least my thumbs will be nicely toned.

Most of the time I feel like Frodo wading through the swamp of Dead Marshes. Every now and then I'll read a sentence and comprehend it immediately (in Spanish without having to translate it into English in my head). When this happens, I feel a sweet bubble float out of my clavicular notch (with rainbows and everything) and I brighten.

Little by little, I think I can make this work. I just have to be patient with myself and keep trudging.

mercado ecológico

There is a farmer's market in my neighborhood. It is small and makes me muy happy. For US$0.93, I bought one kilo of darling little sweet, red strawberries and for US$2.47, I bought a half-kilo of unbelievably creamy queso de cabra (goat cheese). I stocked up on spinach, beets, basil, bread, daikon, and granola made from quinoa.

hiring: robots

Soon after I posted waxed and worn, I visited Carabayllo (where Carlos works) and learned that Carabayllo was nothing at all like Miraflores or Barranco (where middle–high income families live and play). The streets and homes in Carabayllo were not sophisticated and sensuous; they were shabby and sad. The air there was not salty and spry, but dusty and stale.

Yet, Carabayllo still felt vital. There were vendors and gente who were hawking, walking, and working.

Tuesday, on my way to a pricey café for lunch, a boy, as tall as my waist, tried to sell candies to me. Holding his left hand was his younger brother, who came to my knees; he was not older than 3. Both were filthy. The brothers still walked with a waddle; when they crossed busy intersections, I saw they were vulnerable and experienced.

Carlos said once, “Whoever invented jobs is mad. Jobs should be for robots.”

In some ways, I think that is what I am trying to do here—to use my privileged education, access, and affiliations so that my work will earn me more than just a buck.

I am not talking about “doing good.” I am speaking about “doing hard.”

For the Waddling Brothers, doing hard means selling candies and crossing mean streets.

For my parents, doing hard meant picking up their life in China and moving in their late-40s to a new country where they worked 6–7 days a week and 10–12 hours a day so their daughters could have better opportunities.

Doing a job is not the same as doing work. A job is a task, which can be easy or difficult, that does not require intellectual, emotional, or spiritual investment.

Whether rewarding or demoralizing, monotonous or dangerous, work is always difficult. With work, there is always something urgent, imperative, and burning at stake.

That is why charity is only “doing good” but effecting change is “doing hard.”

squiggly streets

The past few days, I have been getting to know my neighborhood. The civil engineer charged with planning this city must have been a Dadaist. He created a labyrinth of squiggly streets that squiggle into each other at a million different places. Nevertheless, I finally feel (mostly) oriented and know the general direction to my destinations.

sitting

As of yesterday, I have lived in Lima for 7/10854 of my life.

I am full of dammed-in nervous energy; I have so much to report (and do!). As I've told Valerie, I oftentimes feel that writing gets in the way of telling.

Really, I can't simply write everything. That would be idiotic. I must filter, distill, and narrate. I can't just show you tomatoes, garlic, basil, and olive oil. I have to give you sauce. And sauce takes time to prepare and simmer.

So bare with me, my dear friends, while I learn to sit into my new landscape, language, and life.

lento

The stereotype is that in “warm-climate nations” (including Perú even though it has four seasons), things take time.

For many do-gooders with progressive sensibilities, rational outlooks, and efficient ideals, this slow speed of change is a source of endless frustration.

Yet, if you've ever been a passenger in a taxi or moonlighted as a pedestrian, you'll know that drivers in Lima are anything but lento.

I have been speaking in generalities. Let me offer you a more concrete example: Last Thursday I accompanied Carlos to the immigration ministry to extend his visa. We visited six stations in order to accomplish this task (1. request desk 2. application desk 3. back to request desk to submit his application 4. cashier counter 5. photocopy kiosk 6. request desk to show proof of payment and submit remaining paperwork). Each administrator at the various stations was professional and efficient. And, as you can see, the process was not.

Though a small inconvenience, the quality of life lay in the details.

I am still struggling to understand the mechanics behind this idea, phenomenon, and perception of "slow." However, having worked in a large American corporation, I do know that slow is not endemic to "developing nations."

Perhaps we have it backwards. Perhaps it is not the people who are slow, but those in power who impose slow on the population as a means of control; to reinforce inertia and maintain the status quo.

Who is to blame? What is to be done?

¡a tu casa!

A little old lady yelled at me today.

She lives on the first floor of my apartment complex. There is a window to her apartment that faces the courtyard and has a mirror on one side, like those in police interrogation rooms one sees on Law & Order.

I did something I usually don't do, which is to fix my hair and make sure my clothes are not hanging crookedly on my shoulders.

Quite satisfied with myself, I took one last look. And just as I gave myself a goofy smile to say goodbye to the freshly primped me in the mirror, the little woman opened her window, pointed to my apartment above, and admonished, "¡A tu casa!"

Instantly I deflated. Flustered and mortified, I muttered an apology and escaped into the street.

humo lovin'

This is Humo. He's been whining and crying night and day. He needs a girlfriend. Elizabeth hesitates to fix him because then Humo wouldn't be macho anymore.

dropped

Carlos and I took a bus to Barrio Chino today. It broke down halfway through our trip and we transferred to another bus. Because it wasn't run by the same bus company, we had to pay an additional fare. The company whose bus broke down did not reimburse us. Carlos did his best to argue our position but no other passenger seemed bothered by this imposed subsidy. We paid our fare and dropped the matter.

Our mood, injected by our excitement for adventure, remained bright and we searched out a "highly recommended" chifa (Salon Capon) in Barrio Chino for dim sum. We found it, though were disappointed by the lack of pushcart-style dim sum ubiquitous in New York and California.

At the end of a satisfying meal, I found a rat dropping at the bottom of my chrysanthemum tea.

All right. It may not have been a rat dropping. At least that's what the managers claimed. A Chinese woman even brought out the dried chrysanthemum and yelled that there are dark parts to the flowers. My stance was: after drinking tea, of all varieties, for the past 20 years, I know the difference between a twig and a black thingy that looks like sausage links that could have come from the intestines of a small, rodent-sized animal.

We explained that the restaurant was filthy and wondered what else could have been in the other food we just consumed in the last two hours. We should not be expected to pay the bill.

By this point, the managers have stopped insisting that it was tea that I saw. However, they continued to treat us with hostility and demanded that we pay the bill. Well, actually, they threatened our waiter. If we didn't pay the bill, the waiter's job would be in jeopardy and our bill would be docked from his pay.

Eventually the police was called. The policeman advocated for the restaurant. His logic was that since we ate all the food and only found the Black Thing in the tea, we should pay for the food and not pay for the tea.

First, if you ate all your tomato soup and found a rat at the bottom of the bowl, should you still be expected to pay for the soup? Would you be expected to pay for the pasta with tomato sauce and salad with sliced tomatoes even though the pasta and salad did not appear to be garnished with dead rat? If you found a Black Thing in one dish, would you be glad to know that you had polished off the other dishes? Or would you question everything you've eaten and what the diners at the other tables are eating?

Second, the tea was complimentary.

We stood our ground. The policeman invited us to the police station to resolve matters. At the station, another officer tried to reason with us. If we didn't have another appointment to keep, it would have been an interesting (and terrifying) experiment to see what they would've done to try to get us to pay. We didn't know our rights.

In the end, we paid the bill and resolved to make a complaint to a consumer agency.

Cancelling our check would have been a nice courtesy. It is definitely what people with our backgrounds would expect. But not true in Lima. Fine. But what about restaurant hygiene, worker's rights, and consumer's rights?

Our mistake was distilling this incident into paying a bill. Bill not paid: police get involved; bill paid: police work done. Problem solved—the bigger questions of what was a rat dropping doing in our food, what is the restaurant going to do about it, and how can they make a waiter financially accountable for conditions not of his making have all been ostensibly solved because we paid the bill, the restaurant owners got their money, the waiter kept his job and pay, and conflict was resolved.

I would call it ball dropped.

one a.m.

It's one a.m. I'm home, posting. Somewhere in Barranco, new friends are starting on their third round of drinks and watching the dance floor gradually populate where they, soon, too will dance and dance. Carlos tells me that Peruvians don't leave a party. Period. We left. We're tired. We feel bad. We're also too tired to feel that badly about leaving. Still...

waxed and worn

The sidewalks in Lima are waxy, smooth, and lustrous, except in places where cracks and chips meander like dry riverbeds and oxbow lakes.

Because many enclosed exterior spaces (such as patios) are tiled with ceramics that are similarly waxy, smooth, and lustrous, walking the streets of Lima feels very much like taking a stroll through a very large palace. Each shack, house, mansion, and tower is a room in this great palace.

The rooms in Palacio Lima are a collage of styles, colors, and textures. Wood, stone, iron, and glass are melted, sculpted, layered, and joined to form grand as well as intimate spaces.


Particularly beautiful are the lines of wrought iron, sometimes curly and coquettish to form elaborate patterns as delicate as chantilly lace, sometimes spiky and stern to warn off intruders; oftentimes, all it takes is a few vertical bars and some horizontal ones placed in their proper proportions to frame the most utilitarian-looking electric meter box as if it was a priceless masterpiece.

Dogs in Lima sleep so it's the work of tall cacti, sturdy and prickly, to stand guard. Some cacti have only one arm and, while elegant, are not seriously threatening; I've seen cacti that wear such a heavy wig of branches that those drama queens are unlikely to be concerned with nonsucculent callers.

Lima has many pristine, well-coiffed homes; there are just as many once-glorious ones that contribute to the feeling that Lima is a city of rehabilitated ruins recently resuscitated. Though covered with graffiti, caked with dust, and crumbling with age, even a home in the most desperate condition has the power to present its simple lines, secret history, and subtle intelligence like an ancient king returned home.

jewel in the rough

My first full day in Lima, already I've sampled two alfajores. What is there not to love about Lima, about Perú?

Carlos waltzed me through central Lima to the Gran Hotel Bolivar and introduced me to the most famous pisco sours in the city. A friend of the hotel's general manager, celebrating the birthdays of two friends, shared his merriment and treated us to two more.

The drinks came in stoutish flutes, with short stems and simple geometry. The cocktails were a creamy sea green, topped with lathery white foam, and finished off with drops of anise-colored bitters; they tasted sweet, tart, strong, creamy, and a tad herbal from the bitters.

Our bartender, despite his wrinkle-etched face and 35-years in service, seemed youthful with his shockingly glossy black hair that I thought only existed in the imagination of anime artists.

¿Qué más? Hay mucho más.