Close Encounters of a different kind, part 2

In the morning at Halem’s house I tried to sleep as long as I could to put off the inevitable morning hug but my bladder, full with the water from the infamous chalice and the four herbal mates we drank during the ceremony the night before, was not collaborating.  In the bathroom there were only two items: a strangled tube of toothpaste and a bottle of "Intimate Feminine Cream" on top of a lidless seatless toilet.  I did not even want to know.

Halem prepared breakfast: a plate of papaya and cucumber arranged in a precise crop circle formation served with cold coffee water (presumably to avoid brain scrambling from the microwave radiation).  He prayed.  We ate.  And then I sneezed.

His atenas perked up like a metal detector over a gold mine.  "Hmm, you are unwell.  I have a present for you.  Come."  Back to the Ceremony Room.  

The curing therapy started with rhythmic finger taps on my face, shoulders and back.  “Is there some pain in here?" he asked, jabbing his pointer into my kidney.  

"Yeah."  Now there is.

"Hmm... I had a feeling."

The tapping evolved into a full body massage.  At that point I was 100% certain that Halem was weird and 95% certain that he was not going to rob, rape or murder me, which are the three most important characteristics of a masseuses.   So despite the apparent awkwardness of the situation, I mentally shrugged my shoulders and enjoyed the free spa treatment.  

“I have another present for you,” he said afterwards.  His abounding generosity was starting to overwhelm me.   He handed me his backpack, grabbed his guitar and signaled for me to follow him as we power-walked to the bus station.  On the bus, I was privileged to listen to conspiracy theories about Princess Diana and stories about chatting it up with Viggo Mortison and hanging out with Manu Chau.  I refrained from asking which of the stories took place in this dimension and which of them occurred on other planets.  

Suddenly: “Close your eyes.”  He huddled me with a side hug and started mumbling something to the universe about love and plants.  Thankfully my previous involvement with evangelicals of the Charismatic flavor has desensitized me to random public prayer. 

Once we arrived at our destination (a little mountain town above Pasto), we convened with a small band of flowy-pants earth people, dreadlocked and pierced, carrying miniature instruments and a box of arroz con leche to sell in the plaza.  Before introducing me to each brother and sister, Halem ceremoniously squirted all of us with his travel-size spray bottle of eucalyptus water.  We sat in a powwow around the table and sang two-chord songs about our product.

“Arroz con leche...Arroz con leche... It’s so delicious and good... For only 1.000 pesos you can have it...”  Conventional poetic rhyme is against their beliefs.

“I like your friends,” I lied at the end of the day. 

“Yeah, they're better when we’re all in the stars together.”

And that is my problem with drugs and religion (in excess). 

In the minds of the hyper-spiritual, the Utopian world takes precedent over this one.   The present reality becomes an inconvenient stepping stone, a mere portal, to the perfect celestial realm.   This world is a boring and sinful place from which one should desire escape.  It is unpsychedelic and unholy.  It is a trap, an illusion, a cage.  And all of the unenlightened people who live within it, unaware of the other-earthly Paradise, are tragic prisoners that need to be rescued.  If the poor souls do not wish to be rescued they are to be pitied, or even condemned. 

But I am not convinced that the addicted or the dogmatic are any more free than the nonbelievers.  

Close Encounters of a different kind

He stared into my soul and passed me the maraca like a priest passing a cracker that is actually the body of Christ.  I did my best to follow his reggae guitar strum pattern and when I messed up I just closed my eyes as if overcome by the spiritual intesity of the music. We were sitting on the floor of a tiny incense-fumigated room in almost pitch darkness, the flickering of a lone candle the only source of light.  This cannot be real.

Actually according to Halem, my host in Pasto (a city in the south of Colombia), it wasn´t real.  Because everything in this Demension is an illusion.  

When I met up with him on a street corner after hitchhikking 200 miles from Quito, he wasted only three minutes on chitchat before diving into his philosophy of alternative metaphysics.  By the time he lead me to his house and ushered me into a low-lit sitting room (the speed of his powerwalk stride matching the speed of his ADD speech), he was already neck deep in the explanation of the entymology of his name--given to him by two mountain shamans who taught him how to use "The Medicine" (San Pedro) to open the portals of his mind.  He pulled some "relaxing seeds" from his pocket and offered me one to chew.  

Halem is 33 years old with a full but well-trimme beard on his face with features revealing the trace of Palestinean blood in his ancestry.  When he dawned his ruana  (a hooded wool poncho), all he lacked was a glowing halo and a pastor´s staff to complete the look that matched his complex perfectly.

"But tell me your tale, little sister.  What's your aura?  What's your path?"  I've been around my fair share of hippies so I know how to handle these kinds of questions.  I spoke vaguely and used words like "journey" and "vibe."  But I hadn't even finished explaining my travel plans when The Prophet felt the abrupt supernatural urge to tell me that I was emanating a water-like energy with a very positive flow.  Over the next four hours I only managed to speak about twelve words, mostly "Hmm..." "Yeah..." and "Thank you."  Despite the one-sidedness of the conversation he managed to intuit quite a lot about me (like that I was full of love and a child of the light), most likely owing to the fact that he had met me in a previous life.  He could tell that I understood well The Nature of Things.

There is a Seinfeld episode where George Castanza gets hired for a job based on his (supposed) ability to understand everything without having anything explained to him.  George and I have no idea what is going on but we can't ask for clarification without giving ourselves away.  Just nod and smile, nod and smile.

"But I note that your physical body is stressed."

"Well I had a pretty long--"

"Come.  I have just the therapy you need."

We darted across the main room and it was then we entered in the dark Ceremony Room.  He closed the door. I heard the unmistakable footsteps of a Colombian mother shuffling around in the main room and suddenly I understood why we were whispering and sneaking around.  Wizardry and the likes are not generally looked upon kindly in Catholic society.

With the flame of the candle he lit a gnarled stick and began waving the smoke in geometric patterns in front of his face.  He arranged the magic rocks around a shimmering chalice of clear liquid and a San Pedro cactus that sat enshrined on a floor rug in between us. Then he asked me if I was ready to fly.

And I said no because plants that alter one's state of mind are bad.  The end.

[THE FOLLOWING ALTERNATE ENDING MAY OR MAY NOT BE TRUE.]

At that moment there were two voices in my head.

Voice 1: "Maintaining lucidity is advantageous in unfamiliar situations (like foreign cities)."

Voice 2: "You'll never know if you don't try..."

I closed my eyes inhaling the acoustic minor chords that floated hypnotically among the mystic white fumes swirling around the room.  On the exhale my heavy-lidded gaze fixed on the chalice. I took the glass with both hands and was surprised by its levity.  It was plastic.  I raised it, the liquid glittering in the shadowy candlelight, and I lowered my head to him in a nod of honor.  Our eyes locked.  I brought the rim slowly to my lips and drank.

It went down smooth... too smooth.  San Pedro is thick, like aloe vera (from what I hear...).  

The chalice was a cup of water.  I was very confused.  But I did not show it.  George Castanza.

Halem was still talking.

"For example, I never knew that the Queen of England was a Reptiliano......."
While he carried on about his visions of the Fourth Dimension his fingers were working to untie the knot of a small artisenal draw-string purse.  Inside of which there was another smaller bag.  Inside of which there was another smaller bag.  Inside of which there was a fine powder that he sprinkled on the flame to make it flash little star sparkles that reminded me of the Fourth of July.  

"I would like to take a moment to thank the Pachamama for bringing you here tonight."  A tear flowed down his cheek into his beard.  "Because--" (voice choke) "I don´t know how much longer I will be here.  The Reptilianos know I'm enlightened and they don't like it."

I wondered how long this could possibly go on.  I considered activating the fake phone call on my phone (my Go-To escape plan for these kind of situations) but I didn't have it in me to break our hyper-spiritual connection for something as banal and wordly as a cell phone.  But the show had gone on long enough.

I let my head roll back as if falling into a reggae-induced trance and waited for him to take a breath in his endless prayer/song/conversation (hard to distinguish the three).  When the moment came, I suddenly resurrected myself to declare that my body had been filled with peace and tranquility and that it was entering into the Unconscious Night Dimension (also known as "Sleep").  He seemed disappointed and somewhat surprised, as if he had been sending me telepathic messages and was just realizing that some of them hadn't gone through properly. 

I changed and brushed my teeth as quickly as was appropriate for the half-conscious zombie state I had declared myself to be in and made a beeline for the bed.  I was intercepted at the last second by an open-armed request for a Soul Hug.  I obliged, awkwardly embracing him while kneeling on the bed.  Three minutes passed.  He was mumbling a prayer in a voice so low and sleepy that the only words I caught were "universe," "mother" and “plants.”

(To be continued...)

Carmen Sandiego

Colombia is infamous for its long and bloody history of drug wars, cocaine and narcotrafficking.  But there is another substance dangerously abundant in this fertile land, churning the wheels of the economy as it is exported to desperate American addicts who light it up and inhale it every day.

Oil.

Petroleum and its derivatives make up 40% of Colombia’s GDP and the industry employs almost a quarter of the population so I suppose it shouldn’t be surprising that my own life has become indirectly entangled in various corners of the oil web.   Maybe I played too many Carmen Sandiego computer games as a child, but I can’t help but fantasize that if all of the coincidences of my “involvement” with Colombian oil were somehow serendipitously interconnected it would make an epic Hollywood movie.

The protagonist: A white girl in Colombia who knew too much...

I was hired (and overpaid) to translate an 80-page business plan for two men in suits who wanted to make a few million dollars.  The first few pages were an explicit (and threatening) confidentiality statement so I can’t disclose anything about the document, but let’s just say it had to do with black stuff underground. 

I was also hired (and overpaid) to teach english a few times per month to geologists who work for a multinational oil company.  We practice the kinds of conversations they will have in meetings with their American, Canadian and Australian associates about project proposals, new explorations and most of all, contract signing.  ¿Cómo se dice, “Show me the money?”

The plot: a CIA conspiracy to use an unsuspecting exchange scholar to acquire top secret information about new oil discoveries.  

My boyfriend works for the telecommunications department of an oil drill company.  One time he snuck me in the office and had me answer a phone call from Texas on the tech support line just for fun.  All I had to do was read through the steps in the instruction manual but...

The drama: What she assumed was an innocent phone conversation was actually an orchestrated and surveillanced covert experiment to test her ability to unwittingly infiltrate key information systems.  Next They would need to her to get access to the oil rigs themselves...

Last weekend I went to go visit my friend Oscar who recently took a job in “The Field.”  Outsiders aren’t allowed in the oil rigs (although I don't think there are many tourists wanting to spend 16 hours in transit being jostled around like a popcorn kernel in order to arrive at a whole a lot of absolutely nothing... but I suppose a couple decades of paramilitary warfare justify the xenophobia).
Thus I was disguised in a men’s large button-up denim shirt, yellow galoshes with three inches of wiggle room, sunglasses and a hard hat.  Surely no one noticed that I was not a real engineer.  Or that I was a foreigner.  Or a female. 

[Side note: In the film version of this story the disguise will involve a wig, a mustache, and a fake ID card.  The scene will also include a moment of suspense where the girl is almost discovered by an armed security guard who calls out after her, only to inform her that she dropped her pen.]

In the truck on the way to the tavern/hotel offsite (disguise no longer necessary), my off-the-shoulder T-shirt shirt quickly became a draped-around-the-elbows shirt as we bobble-headed down a road constructed of basketballs and turtle shells.   The extra skin exposed on my back and arms was an unnecessary cherry on top of the fact that I was the only female under the age of forty within a thirty mile radius of the god-forsaken flatlands.  And since the men working in The Field live lives of all work and no play (high salaries and nothing to spend them on)  I was up to my eyeballs in free beer, despite the fact that I had lost all three games of pool.  

The climax: In the bathroom hiding from the debauchery and overwhelming machismo at the camp, the girl looks in the mirror and discovers a recording device implanted in her eyebrow.   Her mind flashes with the "coincidental" events of the past few months (the translations, the English classes, the phone call, Oscar) and she is suddenly aware of her unintentional role in the CIA plot.  

Since the year 2000, the US government has spent over $6 billion on an initiative called Plan Colombia for the War on Drugs (ranking Colombia third in US foreign aid, after Israel and Egypt).  The operation has done little to reduce the cultivation and distribution of narcotics (coca production actually increased by 25% in the first year of implementation).   The whack-a-mole strategy to rain down herbicides from Air Force planes on suspicious crop areas has proved to be about as silly as it sounds.  

However, the Plan has been extraordinarily successful one area: killing rebels. 

With special military training and equipment from the States, the Colombian army has cut the size of the FARC rebel group in half over the past decade.  And what do you know!  The 150,000 square mile region formerly occupied by paramilitary drug lords has been invaded, shot up, cleaned up, and now is being poked with giant metal American straws eager for slurping the sweet black juice below.  

The ending: Despite the danger involved in foiling a billion dollar corporate-political scam, the protagonist manages to outwit the government spies and leak the entire scandal to a major news source.  Back in Bogotá, wearing oversized sunglasses and a long white trench coat, she puts out her cigarette on the concrete with the point of her high heeled boots and walks past a television airing the news of the massive uncovering tipped off by an anonymous source.  She strolls inconspicuously into the airport and boards the next flight to an obscure Caribbean island.

Día de La Mujer

According to my roommates, International Women’s Day is a conspiracy fabricated by scheming capitalists to dupe the masses into spending money on frivolous things on an arbitrary date without any real significance or meaning.  That may or may not be true.  But I, for one, am not going to protest receiving chocolates from random friends on a Thursday.  

Perhaps at the ripe age of 22 I’m already becoming jaded with the youth counterculture, but it seems to me that shopping malls, golf courses and commercialized Christmases aren’t going anywhere so we might as well just enjoy them for what they offer and ignore the people who let themselves get hypnotized by sparkly kaleidoscope illusions.  Thus I have declared myself justified in soaking up Women’s Day for all it’s worth and, cliché or not, dedicating this post to the fabulousness of femininity. 

Where I grew up in Protestant Republican Land, “girly” was an insult on par with “dumb” “lame” and “gay.”  And in my Northwestern liberal arts university, things like fashion, makeup, and daily showers were considered vain excesses.   So despite the ballet classes and my ultra-feminist phase after a Women’s Studies class in college, I estimate very few people would use the word “feminine” to describe me.  I maintain, at least in theory, the philosophy that gender is a spectrum and there are no black and white differences between men and women as a whole.  But, I must admit, my roommate’s complete repulsion at the idea of a Women’s Day aroused my inner lionness. 

I bleed internally on a regular but unpredictable basis, goddamnit.  Do you have any idea how annoying that is?   I can’t wear spandex running pants without getting honked and hissed at by every truck driver and construction worker in the neighborhood.  The Pill makes me fat and Colombian’s aren’t ones to let that go uncommented, so I diet on orange-halves and “wheat” saltines (...and chocolate. Ok, I admit it!).  I spend an entire day preparing for a dinner party--shopping, calling, cleaning, chopping--and my boyfriend has to leave the kitchen after two minutes because the stove is making him hot.   

All of that is not to say that I live a suffered life as a woman.  Quite the contrary, in fact.  But--corporate conspiracies aside--I fully support a day to honor the unique, and sometimes misunderstood, aspects of Womanhood.  We are pretty awesome, after all.  

American invasion!

“No, I’m serious,” Paul said. 

It was a casual invitation, but I was also being sincere.   “No problem,” I replied almost as a dare. “You can come visit whenever you want.”

Six months later, he did (proving us both right).  

It was 1:00 in the morning when he showed up at my door, but his eyes were brighter than a boarding school freshman stepping onto the train platform.  I was determined to be a good hostess in order to pay forward all the karma I had accumulated during my own travels, however I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up the Super Extrovert Tour Guide act for very long.   But his enthusiasm was unavoidably contagious and when I greeted him my voice came out an octave higher than expected.  “Hi! Welcome!” I exclaimed with involuntary pep, foiling my plan to make our first encounter as mellow as possible.  

But I couldn’t help myself... 

We hit the ground running and within 48 hours we’d hit up all the major Must Do’s--downtown, the university, the hike to the church on the mountain, the city lookout, public transportation, street food.  I never realized how self-absorbed I was in my own world until Paul temporarily popped my bubble.  As we were twiddling our thumbs one afternoon he asked me what I normally did on Sundays.  Run, write, read, internet, eat raw oatmeal in milk out of a mug... Not the most company-conducive activities.  By day 3, we were like my family at my grandma’s house the day after Christmas: everyone sitting around the table taking the last bites of breakfast and someone asks, “So what’s the plan for lunch?”  The only interesting thing left to do was eat and talk about eating.  

But then my apartment flooded and we were occupied with the task of finding a place to sleep.  An eight-hour overnight bus seemed like the perfect solution, until we realized that the highway between Bogota and Manizales was the inspiration for The Matterhorn ride at Disneyland.   I would have put my hands in the air to maximize the thrill of hurdling around hairpin curves down a mountain in the middle of the night, but unlike a real roller coaster, there were no lap bars on the bus.  I white-knuckled the arm rests to prevent myself from flying down the aisle and through the dashboard.  

I imagined that Paul, who had been concerned about packing the right clothes and finding a hostel--the kinds of plans I intentionally avoid making--was realizing that those were the least of his worries now that his body was on the brink of being throttled over a cliff.   We bonded.  But once the solidarity of our shared near-death experience wore off,  different aspects of our contrasting personalities became more apparent.  

If all of my trips in Colombia were published in a travel book, the subtitle would be: “Everything happens exactly as not planned.”  Expressing the beauty of this approach to a financial accounting major whose universe revolves around order, statistics, and predictions is not easy.  

If I go to a movie, I refuse to watch the trailer.  It’s an almost neurotic obsession with not creating expectations.  Paul, on the other hand, is the kind of person who will read the Wikipedia article on the history, economics, and politics of Hawaii before going on vacation.  

If there’s one thing I’ve held onto from my Christian upbringing, it is that the Bible says that all food is good to eat.  Amen!  This philosophy is difficult to share with someone who is nauseated by vegetables and deathly allergic to anything in the birch family.

If I go on a diet, it will last one day and in those 24 hours I will cheat at least twice.  Paul uses his iPhone to keep track of every calorie, monounsaturated fat, and gram of protein than enters his body.

But despite the chasm between our personalities, we actually had a great time.  I didn’t even want to suffocate him with a plastic bag after hanging out with him for ten days in a row--a feat few humans have accomplished.  We each made adjustments to make it work (he pretended to be stoked about bowling and leftover pasta to make me feel better and I euphemized translations when the campesinos were making fun of him in Spanish to make him feel better).  But overall it was surprisingly effortless to relax and have fun.  

I was proud to show off the awesomeness that is Colombia--where you can spend one night in a metropolitan city and the next day picking bananas from trees in the mountains; where a three course meal costs less than a gallon of gas in the States; where perfect strangers will welcome you into their homes and shower you with fruit and chocolate.  

I think he liked it.  

 Apartment flooding...

So much butter...

A little Cheese with your Valentine's Chocolate?

This is simply too precious not to share with the world (even be it the mini cyber world that reads this blog).  My dad is adorable.

He wrote:

Dear Kates,

                      I'm glad that you are seeing life

                              in places old and new

                     but it seems so long since you've been gone

                             and I miss my Katie Lou.

                     I marvel at how well you meld into

                            a world where blondes are few,

                     but when, oh when, will you come back

                            and lift my heart from being blue?

                     Your enterprises and creative ventures

                           are amazing and give us all a clue

                     of how talented and sharp you are though

                           I've known forever this is true.

                     How I wish we could sit together and

                          talk as we sometimes used to do.

                     I wish I would have done more of that

                          and maybe you do to.

                     My hope and prayer to God above,

                          from whom all blessings must come through

                    is that one day soon you'll come home

                          and I'll be there to hug you when you do!!

                    Until that day, I'll have to be content

                         with asking you this plea;

                   "Please, oh please, my Valentine's will you be?"

                           

And I respond:

Dear Dad,

Although quite far I have sailed away

To seas seemingly beyond the light of day

In what appears to be a vessel untethered

Drifting along at the mercy of the weather,

Unanchored I am not.

Despite relentless tides carrying me horizonward

Towards waters unnavigated by traditional cartographers

Through vast expanses of dizzying possibility

The fog of indecision causing low visibility,

Lost I am not.

Though perilous storms and fearful gales

Crash upon the starboard tearing my sails,

Oft threatening to swallow in merciless thirst

My courage to face demons accursed,

Helpless I am not. 

For my anchor finds hold in the rock of my home,

In the love unconditional I’ve always known.

My compass points steady to a North innate

Instilled in me from a very young age.

My rescue has never failed to heed my call

Even in tempests of pride and rains of gall.

So I fear not voyaging into the unknown,

Even as I venge forth alone.

Because just as my eyes are blue,

I know the best of me has come from you.

So in your response to your plea, I reply,

Yes, I will be your Valentine.

Me and Steve

I’m too lazy to cook, too cheap to eat out, and I’m getting tired of empanadas and pizza.  So I decided to become a restaurant critic.  It was a foolproof plan.  

Domain name: $9.99.  Business cards: 5.000COP.  Tall black boots: 20.000COP.  Playing dress-up as a professional journalist and eating free food: Awesome. 

It was all fun and games until I started listening to the audiobook of Steve Jobs’ biography (ironically I’m listening to it out of order because my iPod is broken).  There’s something about listening to books that makes the ideas seep deeper into my brain, as if the headphones are a direct portal infiltrating straight to the core of my cerebellum, bypassing the filter that my eyes would normally put up if reading in the traditional way.  When holding a book in my hands, I am the reader in the audience and the author is on stage--we are two separate identities.  But when a book is in my ears, and its words are passing through my mind while I’m walking down the street or riding on the bus, I become enveloped.  The line between myself and the story blurs.  

Over the past five days, a small voice has inhabited the top of my spinal cord constantly musing about things like perfection, design, creativity, integration, minimalism, greatness, and beating out the competition.  So my little side hobby of masquerading around Bogotá as a restaurant connoisseur  quickly evolved into a slightly obsessive mission to become the Zagat.com of South America.  It seemed doable.   Of course it was a crazy idea, but in Track 17 Steve Jobs had just released the iPhone and he whispered to me, “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones that do.”

Skip to Track 12.  Steve gets ousted from Apple.  I do a more thorough Google search of online food guides for Bogotá and find that there are hundreds.  Pop! goes my balloon.  Some of the sites are stupid and ugly, but there are three or four that are beautiful.  Simple, elegant interfaces, search bars by categories, maps, comment windows, and professional photographs.  When I reopen my page, it looks like an 11 year old drew it on Paint.  The pictures are fuzzy, the fonts are mismatched, there’s no search bar, and I have a grand total of four restaurants listed. 

Skip to Track 24.  Steve is dying from cancer.  All of the sudden my hobby becomes an existential crisis.  Do I want to spend the rest of my life doing half-assed mediocre projects that are erected, deflated, and never remembered?  I’ve never stuck with anything long enough to be excellent or perfect. I’ve spent 22 years just floating around from one thing to the next, never really failing, but never achieving greatness.  What impact will any of this have on the world?  Steve is reflecting on his work revolutionizing six industries but worrying about how long his company will survive without him.   I am reflecting on my happy-go-lucky life and wondering how long it will be before I get serious about something. 

Skip to Track 5.  Steve is building Blue Box telephones with his friend in his garage.  I have my first meeting with a restaurant owner.  I do an interview, take some photos, eat on his tab, and walk away feeling like a million bucks (or at least the 30.000COP that my meal was worth).  Everybody’s gotta start somewhere. 

Skip to Track 1.  Steve is illegitimately conceived by two unwed 23-year-olds.  I guess you never know what will come out of unexpected accidents.