WEEKLY WTF
06-03-24 Edition
Chase a Fucking Butterfly
This will get you there
What it’s Actually About
Day 11 of 15 in Peru. That’s Machu Picchu in the background sleeping quietly under a blanket of fog. Although I have many subsequent pics after the fog burned away, suddenly revealing cracked stone teeth protruding from a dazzling emerald mouth, I chose this pic for the fiercely confident gleam in my wife’s eye. A look that stirs me even more than ancient ruins and misty peaks. And that’s saying something because I do love me some misty fucking peaks.
You’d think a trip like this would be all about things and places. About mind bending ancient ruins and foreign sounds. About tastes never before tasted and sights never before beheld. There is all of that here in Peru but it has surprisingly become the very least part of this trip.
Yesterday we walked some of the Inca road which extended for thousands of miles connecting foreign communities and vastly different ways of life. What was even more important than trade or even communication for the deeply spiritually minded people was something much more fundamental: Experience. And a fucking magical experience that was, one that will take considerable time to unpack.
I’m all about breaking shit. Old beliefs and paradigms are like ancient citadels of stone, under the guise of protection they keep us bound and get in the way of our natural contours. I’ve seen my dear Wifey Poo begin to beautifully break open like a geode from the experiences born of this trip and I am basking in the light shining through her cracks. I’m quite partial to her cracks actually I’m also mapping the cracks that are appearing in my old tired heart. Even more so than my hungry eyes study the ancient stones of Machu Picchu or wince at the imposing cracked cliffs of the Andes.
It’s easy to be somewhat disconnected to a place by virtue of modern transportation. You step into an aluminum tube, take a nap and the next thing you know you’re in fucking South America. I imagine what the journey would have been like if I could have walked it. Blisters and bleeding feet no doubt. Trials and tribulations for sure. But also an expansion from the slow exposure to the unfamiliar and unknown. We are walking, so to speak, step by step through Peru and marinating in the unfamiliar. Gobbling this experience up like thirsty travelers drinking from a loosened fire hydrant and getting soaked in the process.
We escaped the gravity of Lima and Cusco and have been soaking in a jungle like sanctuary the last 5 days. A sanctuary located oddly amidst a neighborhood of mud brick buildings and dirt streets. Families working their small fields tenderly tending to what will be food for the village. Children brushing roasted Guinea pigs stuffed with unknown herbs in fire pits outside their front doors. Walnut faced Grandmothers with gold teeth ambling about on mysterious missions capped with strikingly tall hats floating above brightly woven skirts provide an almost surreal backdrop. Yesterday we explored Machu Picchu and I don’t quite have the words for it yet. I’m busy about the business of living this strange Incan dream and there will be plenty of time once I’m back in the flatlands to unwind it and lay it upon the small square alter of glass you hold reverently before you.
I have never before experienced such a richness of experience in such a short period of time, no shit. It’s as though time itself has been distilled into a temporal syrup frothing with culture and color, swirling with ancient dreams and strangely modern contrivances served in a dented and dilapidated dusty cup. We are walking our own Inca road in a way and are feeling the better for it.
If I had any doubts whether a strange transformative percolation is slowly bubbling through my mind I need only observe our stellar travel companieros Chris & Deneene who are both effulgent in their enthusiasm and lust for whatever comes our way both inside and out. And also my unexpected newfound friends here in the sacred valley and the ways they are subtly changing and shedding like an Incan snake. Their tired but bright eyes will dance amongst my dreams. Most of all though, I see through all my old repetitious stories and extrapolated hurts and find myself magnetized to the look of shiny eyed confidence in my wifey poos eyes both in this pic and those times she doesn’t see me, seeing her.
Unexpectedly & ironically, here in Peru, we are becoming the original us again. But more importantly we are individually reclaiming our primordial me. So many things solid as stone in the beginning turn to ruins that we later wander amongst in melancholy remembrance. We are defeating times demise by weaving new brightly colored memories. Like the vibrant fabrics of Peru we adorn our minds and memory with these experiential tapestries that weave in and out of every alleyway and dark corner of our minds. Decorating our defensive walls and leading our eyes towards the majesty of a world so big and yet so small. I hope you find some small way today to weave a new way of thinking in the wrinkly pink meat loom which resides in your bone abode. Tomorrow we head to Ollantaytambo to see what’s what and wander amongst what was, whilst remaining in what is. Or some shit like that. Perhaps we’ll find a portal, dimensional or perceptual. Mayhap we’ll just sit in the square fucking off whilst drinking coffee and chewing coca leaves. That’s the beauty of this Peruvian dream, we dream it as we go. Toodaloo.
