Asakiyume mita

A trip

Come Saturday, Wakanomori and I are going on a trip to a language school in Medellín, Colombia, to (a) improve our Spanish and (b) visit a new-to-us city in Colombia. And I get to peel off for a very short side trip to Leticia to visit my friends there.

My friend and Ticuna tutor and I had a video conversation today. "It's cold here right now," she told me. "Na buanecü" ["it's cold" in Ticuna.]

"Oh yeah?" I said. "What's the temperature?"

"24 degrees [75 Fahrenheit]"--which is indeed pretty cold, for the Amazon.

Her grandmother was around, so I said hello to her in Ticuna, and she said hello back, and then Francy gave me an on-the-spot Ticuna test by asking, in Ticuna, "What are you doing?" And I was able to dredge up "I'm talking with my friend," and was rewarded by her grandmother laughing and looking surprised, which probably means mainly that I was really butchering the words, but I took also to mean that I was intelligible, YAYYYY.

... anyway, I probably won't be very active here for the next 17 days and change. "And change," because as soon as I come back, I have to head right out to help out a family member. Though at least once I'm back in the states, I can post.

A graphic novel

I came across this climate-fiction graphic novel in my wanders on the interwebs. It's readable online or downloadable here, from the Instituto Humboldt, in Colombia. I haven't started it yet, but I loved this cover art by Guillermo Torres Carreño.



In the year 2100, the planet is an inhospitable place for the humans and other species that still exist. Hidden in the Colombian Caribbean is Aguamarina, an enclave created by the last remnants of Earth's civilizations ....

If I wait to have a chance to write about any of these properly, I'm likely to write about none of them, but if I list them here, then maybe I'll come back and do it?

• Nando has responded to the questions I sent him, questions that were gleaned from people's responses to his latest story. I will definitely be sharing his answers at some point, but I can't do it right now.


• I might write a cordyceps story. There is an awful lot of cordyceps fiction out there recently. But I might add to it. In honor of that possibility, I doodled some cordyceps critters. (Try to ignore the improbably long body of the dog in that doodle. Also: my story would not feature cordyceps critters. It would be All Humans.)


• Partly I want to write a cordyceps story because I feel like I have something in me--much less sinister, I'd like to reassure you (but of course that's what the fungus would get me to say, right???)--that is compelling me to go back to the Amazon. Or that's just me pulling a Digory-at-the-bell-of-Charn** move to forgive my own supremely selfish desires. Whatever, I AM going back. Solo, because Wakanomori does not have the flexible work schedule that I do. In 14 days. A 10-day trip, seven full days down there. I will shove my face in all the flowers, taste all the fruits, listen to all the birds, process some cassava and hopefully make some chambira twine, and ... uhhh, come back to infect everyone with a desire to go down there?

So yes. My news.

**( Explanation of Digory at the bell of Charn )

By this time on Friday--assuming no flight cancellations and no sudden-onset covid--Wakanomori and I will be on a plane to Colombia. We'll spend a day in Bogotá, staying at the same place we stayed in 2018, and then we'll hop on a plane to Leticia.

I blocked off this week from work so that I could be free to prepare for the trip, and the result is that I think I'm well prepared (sovay--I have in fact purchased antiseptic ointment and band-aids, and I can feel the ~ scorn ~ of Markiyan Kamysh), but I have plenty of free time for my body to mount a huge pre-travel anxiety onslaught. It's beyond the ken of reason, just wave after wave of cortisol flooding my bloodstream, leaving me practically fainting. I've been through this before, so I know what to do, but even though I can defuse it or grapple it back into its box (choose your metaphor), it's always waiting to surge back.

Right now it's receded, so I can write this! Most recent thing I've done, taskwise, is load a couple of books onto my kindle for downtime when we're not watching macaws or river dolphins. Thanks to a recommendation from skygiants, I'm taking Julie Czerneda's Survival, and thanks to a recommendation from Marshallese poet Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner, I'm taking Gina Cole's Na Viro, a work of Pacifikafuturism.

Fun fact that Wakanomori just shared: Bogotá is 4 degrees north of the equator, and Leticia is 4 degrees south. So we'll cross the equator! We'll maybe see Southern Hemisphere stars! (... I should have looked for them when I was in Timor-Leste, which is 8 degrees south of the equator, but I didn't.)

... The forest presses in all around. There's roads and houses, and then forest, and forest, and forest, and forest, on and on. Here's a screen shot from Tabatinga, the part of Leticia that's in Brazil (or you could call Leticia the part of Tabatinga that's in Colombia--you cross the street and you're in another country).



Even now, with my brain in cortisol overproduction, when I think about being in this green embrace, held so tightly, I feel as if I'm about to sprout wings.

On Thursday I picked up Wakanomori from the airport--he's back from the UK. We stopped around 7 pm at a rest stop on I-90, and as I was coming out of the bathrooms, I noticed a Verizon payphone, and on it, this remarkable sticker.



It starts with a blessing and a prayer, then turns to special needs: a job, help with Social Security and EBT (for people overseas, this is government food assistance), and then on to the lesser financial deities.

After snapping the photo, I wandered back to the table where we were eating, but my curiosity got the better of me. What happens if I press *10? What happens if I press *12? Or any of the others. So I went back. I picked up the receiver, but there was nothing.

It said on the machine that it was 50 cents for a local call, so I put in two quarters, but they fell right through and came out the coin return. I felt more than disappointed; I felt bereft. A scam and a prayer--but then the phone goes and doesn't even work. When I wrote about it on Twitter, a friend said, "This feels like a metaphor for ... something," and it really does. There's some kind of archaeology of desperation and last-ditch hopes there.

Wakanomori and I went on a five-day holiday. We thought our phones would work in our destination--our phone plan said they would ... but they didn't! His at least worked for non-calling/texting purposes (e.g., taking photos, looking at internet) if we were in wifi range, but mine had decided to try to do an update and so it was a brick.

That's all right though, our destination was fascinating and fun anyway. It did, however, suffer bunches of earthquakes while we were there, including one that woke us up and kept our room shaking, although we were some 40 miles away, as the crow flies, from the epicenter. That quake was the worst in a century and cut all power everywhere.**

. . . Can you guess our destination?


**Fortunately for us, many people and establishments, having lived through a very, very extended power outage in the recent past, have generators--including the place we were staying and a number of nearby eateries. Many people don't, though, so there's this, or, for something completely based in the locale, there's this. I was grateful that even before the generator came on, the water was still running--near the epicenter, many people are without water.

Eventually I hope to have photos in some form to share, but in the meantime, here's a sketch of our street. I really stink at drawing cars, clearly (click through to see it bigger):

For reasons that would make a good story, which I will tell any of you if I see you in person, but which I won't go into here, we made a journey to Canada yesterday.

That is a long trip for a day trip, may I just say, but anyway. We encountered some interesting people along the way.

The Leaf Lady

She was from England. We encountered her at a a rest stop and information center on the interstate in Vermont. She was here, apparently, for the foliage, which is looking pretty magnificent in northern Vermont right now, but my phone got itself in a tizzy trying to update operating systems, so NO PHOTOS.

Leaf Lady: Excuse me, where are the leaves?

Visitor Center Staff Person: There's a board out front that tracks the foliage. It's best in the Northeast Kingdom right now.

Leaf Lady: All right. How far is it to Kingdom?

VCSP: You're entering it now.

Leaf Lady: And so I'll see leaves?

VCSP: Well, it's overcast today, so it may not seem as impressive, but yes.

Us, mentally: THERE ARE BEAUTIFUL LEAVES LITERALLY ALL AROUND YOU.

We made up a story that one of her children, who likes mountain biking and free running and recaning old chairs and making cheese, came to the United States and married a Vermonter and wanted her to see this beautiful place, but the mom is very suburban and didn't really want to come and this is her passive-aggressive resistance.

That center had a school parent-teacher group raising money by offering fresh coffee and baked goods fro a donation. Excellent.

The anti-tourism border guard

We crossed into Canada at a very small crossing point. There were no other cars on the road, and only one border guard, a young woman in her twenties.

Border Guard: And what is the purpose of your trip to Canada today?

Thanks to Wakanomori's research, we had a good answer to this question.

Wakanomori: We're going to see the museum in Coaticook.

Or was it a good answer

Border Guard (incredulous): No one goes to see the museum in Coaticook!

Wakanomori (laughing): Uh, well, we are.

Me (piping up from the passenger's seat): It's a holiday in the United States.

Border Guard: It is here, too: Thanksgiving.

Me: Hmmm. I wonder if the museum will be open, then...

Border Guard: And where are you from again? Massachusetts? And you're coming up just to see the museum?

Wakanomori: It's a long story.

Border Guard: I have all day!

Wakanomori then told her the story of how he and the older kids had biked this route to Canada years ago, and how he'd noticed about the museum then, and....

Border Guard: I see--so you're retracing your steps! Well, enjoy yourself. Maybe you can get some honey or cheese!

Interestingly, we saw a place selling honey a little further along the road--so we could have!

The gas station attendants

These were boys who looked to me like maaaaybe they were 14 or so, but I guess they must have been older? They were full of life and smiles, and they were going to pump our gas! It wasn't a self-serve station. Going to Colombia has emboldened me in languages that I'm not fluent in, so I tried out my rusty, rusty French: "Avez vous une salle de bain?" And he answered me in French and pointed out where the bathroom was! 通じた！(This handy word means literally, it passed through and more accurately, I made myself understood. THE BEST FEELING)

The man at the museum
The museum had a definite shut vibe to it, though there were other people walking the grounds when we got there. We rang the doorbell, as requested by the sign. After a bit a man appeared and told us, politely and with a smile but at length, that he was desolé and that it was un dommage, but the museum was closed. We nodded and thanked him but he kept apologizing, and in that moment all I could think of for "we understand" was 分かりました and entendemos.

The fox spirit
On the grounds of the museum, the healing angel spied a fox. It ran under the museum porch, but then came out again and ran up some stone steps leading up a hill behind the museum. It was very tall for a fox, with long, graceful legs. It stood on the steps halfway up the hill and regarded us, very foxy. Then it ran the out of sight. It was a prince among foxes, a god, a spirit.

Annnd then we came on home, long drive back. Hope you all had a wonderful Indigenous People's Day/Thanksgiving/Monday.

I'm under the gun with work right now, but I have an adventure to look forward to: Wakanomori and I enjoyed the landscapes of La Niña and Lady: La Vendedora de Rosas so much that were traveling to Colombia on May 23, returning very late on June 2. Oh boy! Time to test out two-years-and-a-bit of Duolingo Spanish! But hey, when I very-first traveled to Japan, that's about how much Japanese I had, and I had considerably less Tetun when I went to East Timor. Anyway, I have an ice breaker, a question to ply people with: "Cuentame una historia de este lugar."

"Yeah," said a friend of mine, "but will you understand the response?" Good question. Maybe in bits and pieces? Fragments? Especially if they speak.... wait for it.... DES... PA.... CITO!

Sorry, sorry. The truth is, I really love that song. Me and several billon other people--currently 5.1 BILLION VIEWS on Youtube. Woo!

Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee are Puerto Rican. Have a different song that I also love, by a Colombian singer, Kiño, assisted by Jennifer Arenas and Elmece. It's "Sueños cumplidos," and it was the music that played at happy moments in Lady: La Vendedora de Rosas**



ETA--All of which to say, I will likely not be reading or posting much, if at all, during the days of the trip.

In unrelated news, but noteworthy for anyone who reads this on LJ: my paid account will expire while we're gone. I'm letting it lapse: I pay for the account over at DW, and I've decided not to pay both places. This means if you're reading at LJ, you will start to be assaulted by all manner of ads. There'll always be a link at the bottom of the entry to the original post on Dreamwidth, so you're welcome to come read here if you prefer an ad-free experience.

**Incidentally, I'm reading the story of her life (v...e...r...y slowly, which great help from a dictionary app), upon which the telenovela was based, and dang, but a lot of the things featured in the telenovela actually did happen.

I'm just back from a truly wonderful visit to Nova Scotia. I have so much to catch up with from everyone here! I had absolutely no Internet whatsoever, so it'll take time, but in the meantime, I wanted to share--just as a start--photos of the good cheer evident in every town we visited. Today marks Canada's 150th birthday! There were flags and red-and-white balloons and streamers everywhere, as well as a special flag representing Canada's multicultural heritage. (And, although Canada, like the United States, has its share of shame for various cultural conflicts, what we saw everywhere were efforts to include and listen to everyone--so encouraging.)

We got so into it, we put flags on our dashboard for the drive back across the border.



Happy Birthday, Canada! Canadian friends, you have an excellent country.

The healing angel, who longtime readers of this blog will remember as a child of 9,10, 11... is soon to embark upon new adventures. Rather than going straight to college, he's going to try to work for a bit in the land of his birth--England. To that end, he had to renew his British passport, not used since he was a baby. (He's used his American one several times since then.)

Today it arrived, and wow, the words at the front are redolent with the fragrance of Empire:

Her Britannic Majesty's Secretary of State Requests and requires in the Name of Her Majesty all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer to pass freely without let or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.

Requests and requires. Without let or hindrance! It's the ontological opposite of Movie!Gandalf's "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!"

ETA: The American equivalent:

The Secretary of State of the United States of America hereby requests all whom it may concern to permit the citizen/national of the United States named herein to pass without delay or hindrance and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection.

America, up your game! Where is your require??

(Asakiyume on a slackline)

( more doodles )