a day at the park

Why travel? I am traveling in search of new art experiences, something different than grad school. I want to reconnect with being present in a place that keeps changing. I amlooking for the art is being made around us as we travel. We left on sept 11th which got a laugh out of a lot of people. i like the idea of changing the context of that date. my friend gina got married on that day a few years ago. This sept 11th i left with the intention of travel and connection with people. 1story today´: The Park The ParkOn Saturday I met three groups of people in three very different places; the curiosity of children, the energy of teens, and the wisdom of age. Our last day in Barranco I decided I wanted to finish my painting of a church relic that lay next to the puente de los suspiros (bridge of sighs) I´d had a dream the night before that I was unprepared for an art show. this dream propelled me to paint and draw. Cam and I had been exploring Lima for awhile but we were a bit apprehensive about talking with strangers because of the amout of teens that we´d met trying to befriend us only later really wanting to sell us pot. Ive been doing on site painting for awhile in part because i like how painting in public somehow opens up a dialogue with people that does not occur ordinarily. it was a saturday in the park people were ambling around the sidewalks, the artesans had their jewelry laid out ,and i even saw alec, one of the pot kids, hiding out behind some bushes. I had been painting for awhile when a group of children ran up. They were fascinated by the painting and materials. I gave them a sort of mini lesson on the materials i had. One girl took a picture of my painting with her camera because she thought it was ¨so real¨. While they we were talking two teens walked up and sat down besides us. The children left with their family and we began to talk with the teens, they were either novios or cousins. The girl, Nuria, was an aspiring artists about to take her high school test for art school. She asked me alot of questions about myself and these questions led to an exchange about our experience in peru, descriptions of the US, and her advice on what else we should check out. they left after an hour. Not more than five minutes later an older man sat down next to us. To Aldo- everything was beautiful the church, the animals, the people. the way he said things made me think he was a philospher or poet. he revealed himself in bits and i was surprised to find out ,among all his optimism, he had just lost his job working security. he was afraid of how to find a job after 50. I didn´t feel worried for him though -the way he talked about books, movies, and art -i thought it would be impossible for him to not find something. An hour later I finished my painting and he walked us to the bathroom. When i came out of the bathroom he pointed to ¨the street he loved¨, were he lived, gave me a chocolate ring filled with carmel, a kiss on the cheek, and walked home. It´s easy to be optimistic and curious when you are young because the world is ahead of you, talking with Aldo was powerful for me because I could see he´d chosen not to let his fear of looking for a job on Sunday interrupt his appreciation of being in conversation with us that Saturday at the park.Sarahp.s. I am learning to use the south american keyboard with rubbed off keys pardon the errors.

first week

Its hard to believe we´ve been her only a week. Lots has happened. We just got into Cuzco yesterday and it is really different from most of the places we have been so far. Here is the rundown in short order:We started in Lima. Stayed in a small area called Barranco. Lima is pretty smoky, but the area we were in was really beautiful. Everything there was low buildings and it was very towny feeling. I realized how bad my spanish was when everone was friendly enough to want to stop and talk to us on the street. There was some really nice graffiti in spots and some amazing old buildings that were in perfect disrepair. The way they were crumbling, you could see exactly how they were constructed which was really interesting. The sad part is that just like st luois, there is a lot of really amazing stuff that is expensive enough to fix that it just fall deeper into disrepair - not to mention the thick layer of smog dust settling onto every ledge. Alot of kids in Barranco wanted to sell us weed.We took the bus to Ayacucho at night. We ended up in the very front of a double decker bus with a giant windshield in front of us. It was like flying around mountain roads on the roof of the passenger side of the car. Slept a bit but woke up when we entered the hairpin turns because we were swinging back and forth like crazy. Went through Pisco - where the earthquake was. Lots of tent and everything is pretty demolished but it was nice to see that the people seem very determined to get things put back together again. All of the rubble has been cleared out of most of the buildings and is sitting on the side of the road. People seemed to still be going about their business to some extent.Ayacucho was a bit of a whirlwind. We got there and somehow the first day stumbled into a religious festival. We wnded up dancing through the streets of the town (some very steep) with a giant group of people and a brass band. They fed us and we drank beer and chicha with them. For those who don´t know, chicha is a kind of corn beer, I saw where they were fermenting it in big open tanks like a cow trough. Apparently the process starts with people chewing the corn. It tasted pretty all right and we were all drinking out of the same cup anyway. The festival culminated in people throwing items out into a crowd- everything from underware to tupperware.We met a lot of really cool people at the festival. A guy named Willy who was a lawyer and told us about the devistation of the Incan Empire by the Spanish and got teary when he talked about surviving the crazy years of the Sendero Luminoso when something like 40,000 were killed. We also met Betty (Benigna) and her husband Donato who were artisans who made retablos. We ended up going to their house the next day to see how they made their work and meeting their son Arturo and their cousins who have a workshop behind their. We talked a lot with all of them and they fed us a snack and lunch which we totally weren´t expecting. We went to dinner with them (and two french couple who had also gotten swept up into the celebration) that night and had a great time. They gave us all gifts and were really gracious and amazing people.We actually ended up meeting Betty the next day and she took us to meet a ceramicist whe was also very gracious.From there we checked out the market and left that night for Andahuaylas.We got to Andahuylas at 5:00 in the morning. The road there was a 10 hour dirt trail winding through the Andes. I woke up at one point to see abridge that looked like some total Indiana Jones shit. I am pretty sure I heard pieces of the wooded deck falling to the rocks below. We slept late and took a cab to Laguna de Pacucha about 10 miles from town. We got stuck in a cab for probably an hour and a half because there was a rally race going on that had shut the road from Ayacucho to Cuzco down for most of the day. The lake was huge and we say some guys catching carp with their bare hands wading in the lake. They must have had 20 of them there so it seemed like they really knew what they were doing. We ate a fried trout in a tiny restaurant and fed the head and the skin to a dog that was hanging out by our table.Rode the bus to Cuzco fron 6am to 5pm. It smelled like some major BO inside and everyone had on blankets even though it was 80 degrees in there. We were freaking out because there was no breeze and it was another windy one through the mountains. The last bus smelled like the bathroom because the door kept opening so our only saving grace was that this bathroom seemed to stay closed.Our place in Cuzco is nice. We havent had a chance to check things out oo much yet but it looks a bit like a Peru theme park. We´ve seen a tenfold increase in the number of whiteys around and even got called gueros last night. Even the dirt hippies have popped up here. Had a good talk with a guy ogn the street. We´ll see how it goes.
Camf