April 28. About long busrides.

The busride from Lima to the Ecuadorian border is very long.
I get up early and say goodbye to the friendly people at my hostel. "Goodbye!" or rather, I told them "Adios!" because, of course, they speak Spanish here. What follows is a long ride through the city of Lima, ending in a bus terminal where I wait having a sandwich a writing a few lines with a real pen. An old German guy who must have felt very south American (I can tell that from the way they move and stand leaning on the counter) told me that Venezuela didn't "vale la pena" under Chavez. He had lived on this continent for over eightteen years, doing god knows what. He didn't switch to German when I told him I live in Berlin. Whatever. Some people think the past is something you can want to escape from. And I am not one of them.

So, I get on this bus to Cumbles in the very north of Peru. My neck will hurt, and I will watch some movies on the on-board screen, Hollywood movies that are skillfully made to make you feel light but that lightness couldn't counterbalance the awkward position of my neck. All night long we drive, that I might as well write a song about it (we didn't do any songs, did we?), just some rhyme as a hommage to all those countless travelers and backpackers that have to rely on bumpy bus transportation.

How many buses does a man have to take
before you can call him a man?
Yes and how many songs does that man have to sing
before he's like Bob Dylan?
The answer my toad, lies in following the road
The answer lies in following the road.

The road a-heaaad
That road does never end
The road a-heaaad
da di da da

How many roads does a toad has to cross
before he gets hit by a bus?
Yes and how many buses will go down that road
just 'cause so many men don't know who they are?

Sorry Bob.

April 27. The only one that uses real bodies.

Woke up late. Bought a nutritious breakfast in a supermarket and walked around the center of Lima. Most of the streets were in reconstruction; smog and dust everywhere. One interesting thing about this city is that workshops of certain professions are located in the same area. I live in the printing press area were professional printing machines rattle all day to spit out brochures, labels, posters. I've seen a banking area and an optician area as well. Take a micro to Miraflores, the richer municipality adjacent to Lima, to work there in a Swiss café.

It can be argued that we will never totally get rid of fear. Death awaits us in the end, we all know that. As long as we live on, we close ourselves in in our bodies, and fear damage to them. When we are living bodies, we have fear, and when we have fear, we are living bodies. So, then, it is wise to redirect our abstract fears towards events we can somewhat overlook. Let's say patient A suffers from abstract fears, ie. she has a fearful character. Now her therapist advises her to concentrate on something she would like to do or achieve in the next years. Patient A tells about her dancing class, visiting her grandmother, a trip to Mozambique, and a narrower jeans. The therapist tells her that she shouldn't be only exited about these future events, but worried they won't occur. He teaches her to be afraid that she's not admitted to the dancing class, that her grandmother dies before she can visit her, that the plane to Mozambique crashes, that her love handles won't disappear. She learns to direct her abstract fears towards those concrete events. At first, patient A feels miserable, but after a while (normally two - three weeks) she feels better than ever and her yearning for the future events becomes livelier. When she occasionally wakes up in fear without knowing what she is afraid of, patient A thinks about an upcoming event and what could prevent it to occur. She starts being afraid and worried about that event, and she falls asleep. The patient normally dreams about the event and her own potential actions to support its occurrence. Worrying is an asset that makes fear bearable.

These phobic fears I find in my dictionary: acarophobia, acousticophobia, acrophobia, agoraphobia, ailurophobia, algophobia, androphobia, aquaphobia, arachnophobia, astraphobia, automysophobia, claustrophobia, cryophobia, cyberphobia, cynophobia, entomophobia, gynophobia, hydrophobia, hypnophobia, lepidophobia, musophobia, mysophobia, neophobia, nyctophobia, phobophobia, phonophobia, photophobia, pyrophobia, satanophobia, taphephobia, thanotophobia, traumatophobia, triskaidekaphobia, xenophobia, and zoophobia.

That night, I go to a horror movie called "restless" (the only one that uses real bodies) about an anatomy lab with an undead possessed cadaver in it, causing the bloody dead of many people who touch it. A pretty girl, first year medschool student and atheist, starts to investigate about the origin of the body, together with her religious boyfriend. It's not really scary though. The tension is built up in a classical manner, suspended events that get bloodier as the movie proceeds. There is some explicit footage of corpses but that can't really scare me off either. A drowning scene, claustrophobia, nyctophobia, a skull, "you're next" written in blood - standard elements that can't really evoke panic. This movie really could scare only one person: Stephen King who has a reason to be afraid his heritage goes down the drain.

April 26. Oil painting in Lima.

In the late afternoon our bus arrives in Lima, Peru's busy capital and center of Spanish colonial influence. This is the Rome of South America; there are churches everywhere. A taxi takes us away from the bus terminal and at their hostel I say goodbye to Candy and Alexandra. This city should be extremely dangerous, so I should be careful with my luggage when taking public transportation. Just as always, nothing happened. I dragged my backpack through the metro systems of Moscow, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paolo, Buenos Aires, and nothing happened. Anyway, Lima makes a good impression with its broad avenues and grand parks. A man talks to me and takes me to the hostel where he lives. They have a room available for 20 soles and I can have some rest after the marathon busride.
I lay down until eight o'clock and walk to the Plaza de Armas to eat something. It's crowded. Security guards everywhere, patrolling with big guns. A fastfood-court with papas fritas and spicy chicken, and several armed guards in the neon lit entrance. Maracuya juice and a man who is too curious about me. No supermarket to buy coffee, so my nightly writing won't last very long. A Bolivian guy shows me a rustic café that looked good. When he has me upstairs, he shows me a joint and offered cocain. A big dumb-looking guy makes some slow movements with his hands that I interprete as a suggestion to snort the white powder. Another man tries to hand me over a little plastic bag filled with grass. It's time to go. I head for my hostel and write solamente one hour lacking the caffeine intake.

Once again, I think it's the quantity that matters here. The sheer amount of words put together here. Compare it to oil painting. Once the paint is on the canvas you cannot remove it. You must paint it over to correct it. Just add another color, a few solid brush strokes and the prior pigment is gone. Just a few more words and you get something totally new. This is experimental writing. I use words as if they were thick clots of oil paint.

April 25. Hypocrisy and Santiago Mataindios.

Up 10am. Check out. Breakfast: real espresso I showed the girl from the hostel how to make it and a sandwich with a fried egg. Read bilingual Gideon bible I found in the hostel to improve my Spanish and have a glance at Jesus' words once again. After all, they are the weightiest words in our history. So I read the mountain sermon where Jesus takes on the commandments of the Old, and improving them. Love your enemies, turn your other cheek towards them, mind the beam in your own eye - it's all very neat. Yes, he has been doing a great job there. Yet at one point, I'd like to help good ol' Jesus a bit since I think he overlooked something. In Matthew 6 he talks about hypocrisy. You should pray and fast in silence, so that your neighbours don't know what you're doing. Otherwise, it is as if you are boasting about what you're doing. If you pray and fast in silence, only God will see and hear you, and he will reward you in public. So after all it is the public reward we're after. After all, the distinction between private and public does matter. So the old hyocrisy Jesus warns us for, that we are being pious just to show off, is replaced by a new hypocrisy I warn us for. Why? By saying we have to pray and fast in silence to be rewarded in public, Jesus justifies the distinction between private and public, and hence the structure of the old hypocrites. There is no structural change of thinking. And that means that the element of showing off can't be eliminated by keeping prayer private. We are still boasting. In other words, the structure of silent pious activity is no other than the hypocrites' public prayers. By keeping our prayer silent, we keep it between the holy God and ourselves and our devotion is pure. But this very devotion, isn't it the same devotion the old hypocrites brag about? It cannot be something totally new, only its intention is allegedly purified. Again, the old distinction private-public remains intact, together with the elementary function of boasting which is an essential element of this distinction. Without the possibility of boasting, the distinction is meaningless. Without water touching the coast, we can't distinguish between sea and land. Justifying the distinction private-public therefore, is accepting boasting. So when we pray and fast in silence, we must be boasting. We have squashed the old structure into the realm of our private relationship with God, that's all we've done. We are proudly showing God our piety. Nothing wrong with that? Indeed, I'd say so. But if you call the scribes hypocrites as Jesus does, you should call yourself a hypocrite as well. A smart hypocrite, that managed to deluge himself about the essence of his own piety. Remember me dressing up the bump in Santa Cruz? I really didn't care if I was doing it in private or in public. I didn't want to be part of the moral calculus and that is trying to change the structure. Alas, such a change might be impossible and I will be doomed to bear the reputation of a madman. Still, I might have delivered some clarity about the inevitable structures of the mind, and for what it's worth, prevented us from being hypocrites as you call it. These things aren't easy, and I think we should keep thinking about them. It's so important my friend to be aware of the inevitable structures (or the "grammar") of our actions, including worshipping God. Let's be very thoughtful and careful from now on okay? Jesus, my friend, that one goes on the house.

Today, I tour around Cusco from 2pm to 6pm, and feel happy when the kind tourguide Vladimir explains the immense Cathedral of Cusco, the Qoricancha, Saqsayuaman, Q'enqo, and Tambomachay. The Cathedral of Cusco is enormous. They built it here to show the superiority of Christian religion over the pagan Inca believes. They have converted the saint Santiago Matamoros (killer of the moors) into Santiago Mataindios (killer of the indians) and paintings of this pious butcher are omnipresent under the vault of this Church. One of the side churches is called Iglesia de Trionfo, that is the Catholicism's victory over the Incas of course. Vladimir the guide told us a lot more, but I can't remember it all. What I want to communicate to you is the abundancy of the Cathedral. The largest retable on the south American continent, decorated with gold and silver from nearby mines, a large collection of valuable oil paintings of the saints, a beautifully decorated cedarwood choir with a rotatable centerpiece to hold the score, an organ that contains over 1000 kg of silver, and much more. In a large painting, Judas was depicted as a darkskinned indigenous man, looking at the spectator, whereas the other eleven apostles were white and looked piously up to Jesus. This was the way to scare and convert the indigenous.
We walk a few blocks and arrive at the Qoricancha. Qoricancha means retreat of gold in Quechua. It used to be a very important religious site. Part of the structure is originally from the Incas. The other part is from the inca-paz (inca-pable), Vladimir jokes. The techniques applied to lay the bricks of this and other fortifications is impressive.
A small bus takes us uphill to Qench'o, literally labyrinth in Quechua. It's a place where Inca mummifications took place on a rock. After a short stay we continue to Sacsayuaman (not "sexy woman", Vladimir jokes), a huge fortification in the form of a head. A head? Well, from the air, Cusco looks like a puma and Sacsayuaman forms the tail. Unfortunately, many stones have been torn out by the conquistadores and reused to build the Cathedral. We go further up to about 3700 meters, to the sacred springs of Tambomachay. I am content with the tour as the bus takes us down to Cusco again, stopping on the way for a short instruction about how to tell real Alpaca wool from syntetic or mixed fabric. We get to feel different sweaters and the baby Alpaca feels the best because it doesn't prickle.

We take the 20:30 bus to Lima, everything goes according to the plan. The "buscama" seats can be folded 150 degrees, but it was not enough for me to sleep on it. There are a couple of movies, "Mr. Deeds" and "Pirates of the Caribbean - the curse of the black pearl" that should entertain the passengers while the bus rolls through the moon landscape of central Peru, somewhere here are the famous Nasca-lines. They amaze because the Incas who made them couldn't see the result. The tourist now can from a comfortable airplane. The lines form a hummingbird or a parrot, for example, and are likely drawn to please the raingods. The German Maria Reiche has devoted her life to those lines. There is a museum named after her. Anyway, I didn't see the lines with my own eyes. These busrides are not really interesting, and I should stop writing about them. I will be very tired and have a sore neck tomorrow.