god etc.

My cousin Titus proposed a reality that is inferior to a "super-reality" and that the biblical revelations  come from the intersection of these two planes. For me, reality is the super reality... We are using the same words to talk about differen things, but... Reality is everything that is real, it if is not part of reality, it does not exist; if something exists than it is part of reality. But, reality is much much much much bigger and more complex than our feeble minds and limited senses can compredend or detect.
There is the bigness, the sheer mind-blowingly hugeness of the universe. If such numbers can mean anything, these numbers ought to be repeated daily: our galaxay has at least 200 billion stars, and there are estimated to be more than 170 billion galaxies in the universe. Here's a gem from the wikipedia page:
 "Assuming the universe is isotropic, the distance to the edge of the observable universe is roughly the same in every direction—that is, the observable universe is a spherical volume (a ball) centered on the observer, regardless of the shape of the universe as a whole. Every location in the universe has its own observable universe which may or may not overlap with the one centered on the Earth."
While even the size of our own sun is difficult for our little brains to grasp.
And then there is the complexity. The higgs bozons, electrons, protons, atoms, molecules, cell structures, biochemical interactions, bacteria, slime molds, fungi, plants and animals, just on our little planet. The blood cells in the heart of the little bird on the roof of my neighbor's house. The bacteria in the goat chese in a village in Azerbaijan.
And those are just the things we know about. It goes without saying that there is so much more that modern science has not, cannot beign to sketch out.
For me, reality could be a huge dark underground cavern, but we have only a little torch to light our way with. A great work of art, or the systematic application of reason, or surrender to prayer may be able to enlighten us to a greater part of the reality which we cannot directly perceive by our torchlight.
I see spirituality, or monotheistic and daoist spirituality as a way of using the mind to sense all of reality at once. I like to think of it in a mathematical way: we can say "the set of all integers", or "the set of all real numbers". God is the set of all things that exist, or the set that includes everything in reality.  If art can reveal to us truth about the human experience, and science can reveal to us truth about nature, then religion could reveal to us truth about everything at once.
Then it gets a bit tricky if we start to talk about profecy and all. If God, that is, the entirety of reality, contrives to inspire someone at a certain time with a vision which reveals some truth about reality to fellow humans, who am I to dispute them?

economics.

It serves us well to remember that the fundamental fact of modern history is that everyone living in the developed world is vastly richer than all of their ancestors and all humans that came before the 20th century. Many of the cosmopolitan behaviors we consider normal are inherited from the tiny elite classes of europe. Meanwhile the vast majority of lived in ignorance, toil, filth, and exposure to the elements.

So, when I think of Beethoven or Newton or Marco Polo or Cook, and think, "oh, I'd like to do that" I should remember that my ancestors were very likely not riding around doing amazing or interesting things, but   were probably farming potatoes in a bog and dying of tuberculosis. If they weren't then they were extremely privileged compared to their fellow citizens, which is not much to be proud of either.

health care

The New York Times had an article about Rwanda's new universal health care system, which rapidly improved the quality of life in the country.
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/03/rwandas-health-care-miracle/ (Partners in Health's work there is featured in the article. This is the organization founded by Paul Farmer in Haiti, and publicized in the book Mountains beyond Mountains)
The per-capita income in the country is just 550$ a year, though this is has risen much even in the last decade. The system is successful in improving health, but is mostly funded by international aid.
What reading about this reminded me is that health-care does not have to be such a terrible nightmare. We are not re-inventing the wheel. On the contrary we are far behind the curve on healthcare, compared to the developed countries of the world, and we ought to be able to use this to our advantage. It just shouldn't be this hard to reform and improve health care in America.

The truly humble man will be boastful. To boast of one’s virtues or accomplishments is to sully oneself because everyone knows it is not virtuous to boast. A humble man does not believe he is better than his peers, and can so lower himself without fear.

A man who believes in his own superiority must speak humbly, for this is virtuous. By choosing not to boast he is telling his peers "I am better than thee, for I will not brag of myself." Meanwhile the humble man tells his peers "look at my human imperfections, my insecurity, my need for approval; I am no better than you nor anyone else and we are all brothers on this earth."

other blog

to the 4 people that `follow` this blog - I don`t really use it anymore. I have a newer better blog at http://ianparaguay.blogspot.com/

i do appreciate you following 2010 though

borrowed thoughts from HDT

from A Natural History of Massachusetts

I am the wiser in respect to all knowledges, and the better qualified for all fortunes, for knowing that there is a minnow in the brook.

...

They are of sick and diseased imaginations who would toll the world`s knell so soon. Cannont these sedentary sects do better than prepare the shrouds and write the epitaphs of those other busy living men? The practical faith of all men belies the preacher`s consolation. What is any man`s discourse to me, if I am not sensible of something in it as steady and cheery as the creak of crickets? In it the woods must be relieved against the sky. Men tire me when I am not constantly greeted and refreshed as by the flux of sparkling streams. Surely joy is the condition of life. Think of the young fry that leaps in ponds, the myriads of insects ushered into being on a summer evening, the incessant note of the hyla with which the woods ring in the spring, the nonchalance of the butterfly carrying accident and change painted in a thousand hues upon its wings, or the brook minnow stoutly stemming the current, the luster of whose scales, worn bright by the attrition, is relfected upon the bank!

We fancy that this din of religion, literature, and philosophy, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlours, vibrates through the universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of the Earth`s axle; but if a man sleep soundly, he will forget it all between sunset and dawn. ... When we lift out eyelids and open our ears, it disappears with smoke and rattle like the cars on a railroad.

and from Life Without Principle

A truly good book is something so natural, and as unexpectedly and unaccountably fair and perfect, as a wild-flower discovered in a prairies of the West or in the jungles of the East. Genius is a light which makes the darkness visible, like the lightning`s flash, which perhance shatters the temple of knowledge itself...

Read not the Times. Read the Eternities. Conventionalities are at length as bad as impurities. Even the facts of science may dust the mind by their dryness, unless they are rather rendered fertile by the dews of fresh and living thruth. Knowledge does not come to us by details, but in flashes of light from heaven. Yes, every thought which passes through the mind helps to wear it, and to deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii, evince how much it has been used.

Map of trails on newly aquired public land

Seattle and Portland

Time spent
Seattle: Lived nearby 13 years, plus 5 summers. Lived in city for 2 months with cousin Sky and on a boat at the QCYC.
Portland: Lived in city 4.5 years. Lived on outskirts 4 years, lived in city 1/2 of a year.

Lived
Seattle: with mom/dad (except 2 mo. in city)
Portland: in dorms and houses with LC students

named
Seattle: after chief Seattle.
Portland: after city in Maine, after an island in England.

population
Seattle: 617,334 (23rd in USA), metro 3,407,848 (15th in USA )
Portland: 582,130 (30th in USA {94% of Seattle}), metro 2,217,325 (23rd in USA {65% or Seattle})

incorporated
Seattle: 1869
Portland: 1851

peak growth rates
Seattle: 1870's, 1880's, 1890's
Portland: 1860's, 1870's, 1890's
Portland was larger until around 1900

White, Black, Asian, Hispanic
Seattle: 68.4%, 8%, 13.2%, 6.3%
Portland: 74%, 6.3%, 6.5%, 8.8%
USA: 65%, 12.4%, 4.5%, 15.8%

Seaport cargo value
Seattle: $33.4 billion (Tacoma $25.2 billion {combined $58.6 billion})
Portland: $14 billion

City Budget 2010
Seattle: $3.9 billion
Portland: $3.4 billion

Buildings over 500ft:
Seattle: 11
Portland: 3

Fortune 500 companies
Seattle: 6 (+4 in metro area, and 5 if you count Boeing)
Portland: 2

University size
Seattle (UW): 42,000
Portland (PSU): 28,000

Population Density
Seattle: 7,361.0/sq mi
Portland: 4,288.38/sq mi

State Population
WA: 6,664,195
OR : 3,825,657

Median Age:
Seattle: 35
Portland: 35
USA: 36.8

Average Rainfall
Seattle: 37.1 inches
Portland: 37.5 inches

Average Cloudy Days per Year
Seattle: 222
Portland: 226

Hours of Daylight December 21
Seattle: 8h 25m 15s
Portland: 8h 42m 04s

Average Temperatures High/Low
Seattle: 59.8/44.8
Portland: 62.1/44.8

December average Low and August average High
Seattle: 35.9/75.6
Portland: 35.0/79.7

Okay

Have turned 24 years old. Ate very much.
I am having tremendous burps and farts. Like I can feel my body decreasing in size as it releases gas.
I was invited to go to Latin America with the Peace Corps come February, though I still won't know what country until I get back to Portland. At least.
I watched the new Karate Kid movie. Maybe I should learn kung fu, or something.
What will I do with all of my stuff? What will I do in January?
I want to go back to Korea some day, as soon as I can. Katherine K is there, apparently. And Kevin A. of course too.
Did you know that you can write on bananas with your finger nail, and it turns brown where you scratched? I have decorated two bananas.
Tomorrow we go to see Kathy's grave with mom, I think. Also, will have folks over to celebrate my birthday. But it's so hard to have people over to dad's house. It is suffocating. And what is there to do apart from drinking beer?
Holiday ales make one sleepy.
I have so much trouble just getting a few friends to come over. Noah said he had 12 people at dad's house on the north end.

Mom does this annoying self-deprecating thing when we're with family for some reason. Because she's the youngest sister, she's not married, she still works all the time. She thinks its good if she points these things out with self-pity to her family members. She seems so committed to being depressed.

Noah and I walked from dad's house into town, which took at least an hour. We smoked pot at a place called "the winnebago", because there is a winnebago nearby, along the way. We talked a lot, but mostly I talked, about my nerdy things. Then I would wonder what he thought of me.
What a goofy character I must be, with my fierce opinions on the most mundane subjects, with my nice clothes, and heavy winter coat, and my home-body temperament.
I think he will disappear for a while, after college.
He'll ride all around the country with his friends and then I'll see him again at last. I'd like to do something with him! All we do is hang around the family during family time. I want to have an experience with the guy. Or else we'll just be more and more distant, the further we get from our starting place. I should visit him in Bellingham.

A long and overly sentimental reflection on life and stuff

I know I like this shirt and these pants. They feel like me. I feel like me when I wear them.
But, the shirt has some stains now and the color has faded. The pants have worn through at the crotch.
All my favorite pants get worn through at the crotch. I think this is because I ride bikes a lot, but I haven't heard of other bicyclists having this problem.

I have things, and I know people. Also, I know things. I see things, they are a part of my world.
I'm 23 years old, I live in North East (but only a block away from North) Portland, in basically a large attic above the garage. We can see Mt. St. Helens from our yard. 3 Boys Market, my favorite dirt-cheap neighborhood grocery seems to have closed while I was away working.

I have a college degree hanging on the board behind my computer (I don't have walls on the long sides of my room, just the sloping ceiling, but this board is where a wall would be.)
This is a document, encased in glass that I will always be able to point to, to prove something about who I am. The people I knew while in college were and are so much more important to me than that document, but connections with people are so god damn fleeting. You move, or people move, they drop out of your life.
I can go back up to campus and see the same buildings, and the same trees, walk the same paths. I could read in the fluorescent glow of the library. But its not part of my world anymore, it's just memories. Remembering the person I used to be. There are excited eighteen-year olds thinking about their "college experience" which will begin in a few weeks. They will meet fabulous people, walk outside under gray clouds, eat together, share rooms with someone they've never known before. They will study late under the fluorescent glow in the library with coffee in their bellies and step outside around 11pm for a walk and possibly a cigarette in the gardens, and up around the manor house. They will study with intensity history and languages and politics and science. Beer will be drunk, purchased by means of a fake license or a magnanimous Junior, and smuggled into dorms under shirts or in gym bags.

When I was in Korea for two months I had a girlfriend and lived with her and her father in a one bedroom apartment. It was in building 3 I think, on the 7th (top) floor in the Tae-bong apartment complex. Our apartment was accessed by an open balcony walk with a view to the north of the volcano Halla-san. Brian and Calli and I would cook and watch movies together. We dried our clothes on a rack on the back balcony (on the south side) after untangling them from the knot produced inside the washing machine. I had English students from ages 7 to 15 that I saw every weekday. We had a few friends that were other English teachers. Calli and I spent almost all our time together.

The island was beautiful and we explored it by scooter and motorcycle. We saw, smelled, touched, tasted, and heard many strange and previously unknown things. Twice, I think, we got take out and ate it sitting on the high basalt cliffs over the ocean at Oedolgae park and watched the lights of the fishing fleet on the horizon come on one by one as the stars would appear, one by one, over our heads.
We were in love. There were problems of course, and we broke up just a few months later. But that was a real thing, at that time. I remember it. I know that me, the person that I am, was present at that time, and now three years later I am still me, but not in Korea and not in love.

Love is a madness built for two.

Does that sound good? I like the ring of it.
A madness because it is a special reality, influenced by this world, but hovering above it, and sometimes soaring off in unexpected directions.

My feet have been on the ground for too long.

So, I've got all these possessions, I know all these people.
I've got a sweet vintage leather jacket that I never wear. I've got a desk and a blue bookshelf. I've got maybe a hundred records. I "own" 12 and a half days of digital recordings in my iTunes.

I live with people I've known for about three and a half years. At one point we ate together in the cafeteria, stayed up all night reading, wandered in and out of the dorms together. Most of the friendships I rely upon were formed around that time. Most of my acquaintances also still carry over from that time. I see these people now. In many cases far more time has passed since the forming period of the relationship than the relationship actually took to form. These relationships are running too long on reserves.

Relationships are difficult to store. For some people that may be easier than for others. For me I feel it takes a great deal of relationship "forming" for the relationship to last very long. I think this is because I am distant with people. I am overly self-centered and I do not put others at ease. I am not naturally generous with people. I like to be generous, but it usually doesn't occur to me at first. I think I build myself up, because I feel insecure, and this appears as arrogance and egoism to others.
I wish I could just say "I value you, and your presence in my life". In most situations that would sound weird and not put people at ease. One must find more subtle ways of showing it.


"Squeeze! squeeze! squeeze! all the morning long; I squeezed that sperm till I myself almost melted into it; I squeezed that sperm till a strange sort of insanity came over me; and I found myself unwittingly squeezing my co-laborers' hands in it, mistaking their hands for the gentle globules. Such an abounding, affectionate, friendly, loving feeling did this avocation beget; that at last I was continually squeezing their hands, and looking up into their eyes sentimentally; as much as to say,- Oh! my dear fellow beings, why should we longer cherish any social acerbities, or know the slightest ill-humor or envy! Come; let us squeeze hands all round; nay, let us all squeeze ourselves into each other; let us squeeze ourselves universally into the very milk and sperm of kindness.

Would that I could keep squeezing that sperm for ever! For now, since by many prolonged, repeated experiences, I have perceived that in all cases man must eventually lower, or at least shift, his conceit of attainable felicity; not placing it anywhere in the intellect or the fancy; but in the wife, the heart, the bed, the table, the saddle, the fire-side; the country; now that I have perceived all this, I am ready to squeeze case eternally. In thoughts of the visions of the night, I saw long rows of angels in paradise, each with his hands in a jar of spermaceti."

from Chapter 94 - Moby Dick

Holy Shit

Vashon Island soldier 1st Lt. Robert Bennedsen may have been trying to help his colleagues when he was killed by a roadside bomb Sunday in Afghanistan.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2012398585_bennedsenobit20m.html

A Daily Prayer

Let me remember the size of the the universe, and my size within it, and my role as a part of it, in the set of all things.

If the Sun were the size of an orange, Earth would be a grain of sand 30 feet away.
Alpha Centauri, the next closest citrus fruit, would be 1,243 miles away. (Which is about the driving distance from Seattle to San Diego)
It would be 78,000,000,000,000 miles to the edge of the universe.
If the Sun were the size of an orange and Earth were a grain of sand.

The Milky Way has 300,000,000,000 stars. It is an average sized galaxy.
And it is just one of 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the visible universe.

Voltaire, on the perfect religion:
"Would it not be that which taught morality and very little dogma? That which tended to make men just without making them absurd? That which did not order one to believe in things that are impossible, contradictory, injurious to divinity and pernicious to anyone possesing common sense? Would it not be that which did not uphold its belief with executioners, and did not inundate the earth with blood on account of unintelligible sophism?... Which taught only the worship of one god, justice, tolerance, and humanity?"
from A History of God by Karen Armstrong

Today

Today I woke up and had yogurt and cereal and coffee while Dad and Karen read the pink newspaper on the couch.
The sun rises in the East over the Cascades and the Puget Sound before it shines into the big window's in my father's house.
We've got like 5 magazine subscriptions because the airlines keep telling us if we don't get a magazine subscription they'll disappear our frequent flier miles.
I drove the old lovely red car through town and bought a Ninkasi Total Domination IPA for David. I requested 20 dollars cash back, but then forgot to get it in smaller bills. Now all I had was a 20$ in my wallet and I wanted to go to the Roasterie and get a 75 cent cup of coffee (only an 8oz since I'd already had a cup with breakfast).
But I was able to find 75 cents in change, a quarter, 3 dimes, 3 nickels and 6 pennies (there's an extra penny). When I walked into the door of this coffee saloon Camille and a dude were singing and playing songs on the guitar, banj-ele (or uka-jo?), and a drum. Everyone was so friendly and the music was so pleasant. I donated my extra penny to "Pennies for People", because that seemed appropriate.
I saw Stephen Floyd, he was off to grade 11th grade American Studies finals.
I called Annie and David and left messages.
I drove North to my old house which I had painted blood red and cedar-y green last summer. I had to paint some more cedar-y green in one spot where I had painted a different shade of green.
No one was home. Painting was easy and did not take long. Two hours. Annie called and told me where they live and that David would be around all day.
I drove South again in the old low red car, deposited my checks at the bank, and went to the Monkey Tree.
I got a savory delicious cheese and onion pastry, like a cinnamon roll, only not, and a cup of coffee. I saw Barbara Waterbury and I met her cousin from Alaska and he cousin's husband. I saw Fred Medlicott's mother. Fred just broke up with his gf in sf apparently. I saw Susan Nyman and met Joy and Chai Mann, whose house my father lives in. Susan had assured the Manns that Noah and I were not dangerous youths to have around their house.
And I saw Felix, breifly, but wasn't able to say Hello.
Of course I saw Adam and Megan and Nicole who run that great establishment. I got refills of my coffee and ate the free sample pastries on display at the counter.
And I left feeling warm and fed.

I drove the old sweet red car South, to Maury Island, just past the Maury Cottage B&B to Annie and David's house. I delivered to him a paper recommendation form for the Peace Corps because he was having endless trouble with the online version. I also delivered the beer and an addressed and stamped envelope for the recommendation.
Annie was on the phone for a long time so David and I just hung around his backyard and garage. He was scraping off some stuff he had sprayed on his car. Some shellac or something.
We talked about life and Seinfeld and cats and ants and traveling.
Eventually Annie came out and brought earl grey tea.
Before I left she showed me the oil paintings she was working on for her art opening on Friday, but that needed to be hung Monday, which was the day after tomorrow.
So I left.

I got home and read Time and the Economist. I can't read enough articles about how big a triumph health care reform is and how much the Republicans screwed up by calling it Armageddon. Everyone like to quote Frum because he's a Republican who's been criticizing Republicans. So much so that he lost his job.
And then Dad came over to the house from the Zen Center to start the taters and nips boiling for dinner and told me there were two women singing and playing harp and guitar next door in the Zen Center and that it was really nice.
So I went next door and got a mug off sweet cinnamon tea and listened to these women play and thought about music and sounds and the resonance of that room.
One woman said she saw a headline once that said "A Single Flower Bloomed Today" and it got her attention.
And I came back and we ate fish and taters and nips and salad for dinner.

Then we went to the Moisture Festival.
This is a variety show. It is very very well done. Its got a fair number of performers from the island, but this is the first year they've performed it on the Island. They left out the burlesque here so that it could be a family show. :(
I saw a duo called Lelavision. They had a five foot at the base diameter cone with a 1.5 foot opening at the top. The cone was elevated a few feet of the ground. Cello strings were attached to the outside so that they could be played. The man played this metal cone cello while the woman danced with a hoop radiating with long metal rigid wires with bells on the end. She spun this bell skirt as he played the cone cello.
Then they spun the cone cello. It spins, apparently. And they played it as it spun. And then they mounted it and played it as it spun with them on it. As they moved their weight towards the center of the spinning cone cello the speed of their spinning increased. Then they were both on top of it. Then he started to pretend to fall inside the 1.5 foot opening at the top. He fell further and further inside. Then he started playing it from within. She continued to spin and pluck the strings, but then she went inside as well and they were both playing the hollow spinning cone cello from the inside. They came out again, spinning. But then there was a way they could stand from inside the cone-cello so that they would be sometimes stationary as the cone spun around them.
They emerged, still dancing and plucking.
There were some 10 other acts of all types.

We drove home.
David and Annie had told me a character named Ian Moore was playing at the Red Bicycle tonight. I drove there in the old two door red car. There was no cover. The music was great. I saw one of the most beautiful women in the world and she sang sweet floating country songs, but I couldn't pay much attention to the songs.
And then Ian Moore and his band came up and rocked the fuck out.
And an old hippie mama I didn't know hugged me and kissed my cheek and said she used to drive these kids around after Youth Theater Project in an old Volkswagen Bus with a door that would just fall off, it was so old.

Yesterday

Yesterday I took the 56 to Sodo
I took the 23 downtown
I took the 10 to Capitol Hill
I saw the lakes, the mountains, and the trees all lit with spring light
I took the 49 to the University District
I saw a pretty girl, but she was awfully far away
I took the 71 downtown again
I went through the bus tunnel
I took the Water Taxi to my Island
I took the 119 to Ellisport
I walked across the tidal flat, to the estuary, to the road, and up the hill
to my father's house.

Saturday afternoon on an Island

It is a special thing to hold music in your hands
To feel the weight of it on your thumbs
To move the sweat slicked pads with your fingers
To give it your breath
To kiss it
To feel it in your mouth and to have the air from down in your belly come up and fill the horn
To feel the woody vibrations inside you and outside you
To have your own air carry the vibration
the longer you hold it in the deeper the sound stretches
until it gets free and fills the room and embraces you
like a funny kind of light or maybe a gentle earthquake

It is a special thing to hold music in your hands
to caress it
to bring it close to your body
to go at it until you are out of breath
from pushing through the sweet sonorous swells
from the hollowed and holed cone

There are some beautiful things. I've been struggling to feel that beauty.

The Last Cowboy - Tin Hat Trio

The Sun

In the evening when the western sky is still light yellow-gray and the clouds are darker than the sky but at some point overhead where the sky is deep indigo blue they become a light enough shade of gray that they are lighter than the sky. And the first couple stars come out and the half moon is just overhead.

Adventure

I need adventures!
I have the comfort I need.
Bacon, potatoes, onions, fried in the skillet in my own kitchen, and a pot of coffee, standing in my warm slippers, and a hot shower.
That is all the comfort that I need. Let us go out of our comforts. Let us go see something new.
I cannot always be in South America. There are new things to see here too.
I have wide eyed resolve. I have fire in my eyes and on my hands and up the back of my head and my neck. The world is 24,000 miles around. I have got two legs! And they move, independently of one another when I choose. They start at my thighs and they go and I have knees, and then more legs, and then I have feet!
Only tell me about things that excite you. You matter to me. We go out in the wide world!

Ecuador

- from 2/19/2010 -
Ya 'stoy in Ecuador.

It is good.

It is good to travel.

Thoreau said that moral reform is the effort to throw off sleep. That to be awake is to be capable of a poetic or divine life.

There are other words for this. To be inspired, or enlightened, or energized. I think they all describe the same thing, and I think this feeling generally comes from a few different sources. There are an infinite number, sure, but what comes to mind for me, as things that make me feel awake, are travel, art, love, and god.

Traveling is I think the most reliable.

I'm in Ecuador now, staying with my friend Erika. I arrived two days late due to record snowfall in Dallas (so I missed my flight to Ecuador) and to carnaval (which meant there were no bus tickets when I arrived in Quito). I ended up spending unexpected days in two Latin American cities, Miami and Quito. Though it was enjoyable to see these cities, I was very tired. When I finally did arrive in Cuenca Erika and I had to adjust our carnaval plans. We took the bus to Loja the next morning. This was a 5 hour bus ride to the south through the mountains. Everything is mountians here. They just rise and rise and rise. There are no highways that run straight from one city to the next. One must ascend and descend winding mountain roads over and over again to get anywhere. It is hard to believe that a country can function with such tenuous transportation connections between its major cities.

As we rose through the mountains above Cuenca we found ourselves rising above even the clouds. To the west massive cloud banks were rolling in from the pacific, but from our andean highway it appeared that we were the more heavenly bodies. At some points fully half one's field of vision was dominated by layer upon layer of clouds dramatically lit by the evening sun. As the sun fell to that western horizon the sea of clouds approached us. Our bus raced around each corner as cloud fingers reached for us.
- continued 3/15/2010 -
The clouds never caught us though. As evening came on we descended into a drier valley. As night fell we were climbing once again, and we saw brilliant stars from the windows on the bus as we wound our way over the last mountains before arriving in Loja.

We stayed at the Hostal Londres. It was an old place. It must have been a large family house at one point. Now the various rooms of all shapes and sizes are mostly empty. Our room was on the third floor with balcony doors overlooking the street. In Latin America I've always seen these old tall, narrow doors and windows overlooking the downtown streets, and always thought how I'd like to live in an old house like that. To stay in that room statisfied some part of that craving.
It was late when we arrived however, and when we went out to find food all that was open was a small store that served hot dogs. We ate our meals and talked with the shop keeper about our plans for travelling beyond Loja.

The next morning we walked to the bus station to find a bus to Zamora, an hour and a half to the East. Zamora is in the transistion zone between the Andes and the Amazon. It's a pleasant town, small enough to feel comfortable, but large that you cannot see every part of it in a few days. The Podocarpus National Park is a 10 minute drive south of the town. We spent the next three days exploring the park. The first day we slept in and then went swimming in the river near the entrance to the park. The next day we decided to hike, and climbed all the way to the top of a jungle covered mountain, without realizing that we had reached the end of the trail and kept going. It doesn't do you any good to get to the top of a mountain if the top is also covered in jungle. You can't see anything.

That afternoon we also hiked to the "poderoso" waterfall. It was incredible, but it was getting late. Both the first two days we got a cab to the park entrance, but then hoped to hitchhike back into town. The second time however we got back too late and had to walk. We smoked pot again as we walked down the road, carved out of the side of the steep mountains, with the river Bobuscaro below. It got darker and small bluish white lights began to flicker occasionally in the shadows. As the darkness increased we realized that these were gloworms, suspending themselves from the trees with silk.
We began to approach the outskirts of town and heard a concert down below us. The whole town was celebrating in various ways for carnaval. Where the road down to the concert arena met ours, there was an empanada stand, lit by only a candle, surrounded by people. They were making and frying empanadas in a big metal bowl heated by a gas grill. We got one each. Kids were hopping in the back of a pickup truck headed for town. We hopped on as well and bit into the hot, flaky, oily, cheesy empanadas as the truck pulled away.

As we got into town we had buckets of water thrown on us and everyone in the back of the truck, because it was carnaval, and that is what they do. That night it rained hard like it never does in the Pacific Northwest. Hard, loud, joyous rain, stretching into the morning.

Out

Tomorrow I go on the road! Just a little bit. Down to Olympia. But it'll be real good to do something. Always need to be seeing new things, or old things from a new angle.

And then to Portland! Where I have a life!