Journal snippet

All right, here's a little something from Friday the 13th:

Wowza a lot to digest.
Literally, right now my stomach is incredibly full of yummy quinoa thai-curry plus mango-yogurt jugo. 38 soles yikes! But it's for my salud. I'm a skeleton right now, I must weigh (well, before this meal) about 115 or 110 pounds. I haven't been this thin since I started high school. NOT COOL. My butt bruises on the toilet seat, and my bones stick out from my cheeks and my hip joints are popping as I walk. But now that I'm not leaking out of both ends and I've got my apetite back, I can get some healthy meat on my frame. Ah but what I really meant by digestion is the processing of the whirlwind of smiles and colors and guts and fruits on my walk in the lower market area of Huaraz this morning and afternoon. That's right, I got out of the hotel on my own (Ana had gone on a short climbing excursion)without a deadline or schedule before 10am. This is an embarassing victory because it reveals my struggles with languishing away the mornings ¨getting ready,¨ but it is a victory nonetheless. I am, gradually, gaining more dexterity at managing my life. I took 4 rolls of pictures to document and guide my exploration of the morning market, but I think if I push a little some words will go a long way in developing the experience.

At first I was pretty nervous because people here have not been eager to be photographed and often tell me no when I ask if I can take their picture. As I walked down the sidewalk, I kept up a friendly internal banter about my ¨right¨ as a photographer to photograph whatever is in the public eye regardless of perople's explicit wishes to not be photographed. Despite the consensus in my photo classes, it is very clear to me that I am not entitled to anyone's image, especially not here since they have no reason to live under our laissez-faire media rules. That said, I felt like I might be able to convince people with a smile that the camera I'm wielding is an instrument and not a weapon. A local woman Sandy who we'd shared a crazy cab ride with encouraged me to keep trying to connect with the traditionally dressed women I found so fascinating even though they didn't seem naturally inclined to be very open. Her certainty that their reluctance to be photographed came from shyness and not coldness or a resentment of an invasion of their privacy urged me on even past a couple of failed overly-polite requests. I kept going feeling that if I was open enough about taking pictures then I could capture the beautiful public scenes without offending anyone. I took pictures straightforwardly, obviously putting the camera to my face, pointing down the sidewalk, focusing and setting the aperture and shutter speed in movements that have become delightfully instinctual, making sure that no one in the frame was freaking out, and then click. This was much more effective (and felt a hell of a lot better) than taking furtive pictures hoping the subjects wouldn't notice or than being too cautious and getting turned down. This way, if people really didn't want to be in the picture they had an opportunity to let me know (or jump out of the way), but mostly people just went about what they were doing, which is exactly what a photographer wants. I ended up finding people woh didn't mind having their photos taken and some who even liked it. One woman called to me from behind the row of plucked hanging chickens I was focusing on and invited me into the back room where two young men were killing, boiling, and pounding chickens on the table. Chicken goo ranging from watery liquid to feathers to entrails sloshed on the floor and I stepped around the thick river headed toward the drain to get a better angle (and maybe enough light) for the pictures. We'll see.

Actually the first opening I felt in the public of the Andean marketplace happened when I was sitting on the sidewalk reloading film. A young girl about 11 years old approached me while her mom was buying veggies from one of the many wrinkled old ladies selling on the street. The girl touched the feather in my hair and asked where I was from. Or maybe first my name. I'm glad she asked my name, it means she saw a person and not just a foreigner when she looked at me. Hers was Leslie. Anyway, her momma and also the elderly lady selling teh fruits and veggies came to see about the gringa and we talked about hats. My green felt fadora that I got in Quito and nearly daily express my adoration for (especially since a traditional Ecuadorian lady helped me put my feather in correctly) and the granny's tall, gray, ribboned hat both cost 30 soles we discovered after some quick math on Leslie's part. I'm surprised actually that she knew the 3:1 soles to dollar ratio off the top of her head. After she and her momma said adios, ciao gringa, the old woman sat down in her tiny red plastic chair and I let the two cats who stretched and preened in the sun between us give permission on her behalf for me to take photos. I left them a present of a flower with two little feathers tucked in among the petals as thanks.

...


I'll end the quotation from my journal there. I wrote that seated outside a restaurant having feasted on thai curry over quinoa. After returning to the hotel room for a half hour of quiet with the Isabel Allende book I'm reading, I again mustered my energy to break out of the comfort of the room. I spent the evening light walking up winding streets and paths until I found myself on top of a hill overlooking the city as the sunset colors bounced off of snow-topped mountains on all sides. In the twilight hours a group of kids congregated to play with spinning tops on the steps of the small chapel at the top of the hill and I joined them in translating words between quechua, spanish, and english and laughing at the sounds of their friends' names said with an american accent. I sang some songs with them as the moon sliver came up over the mountain, but realized almost all of the songs I know are sad, with the centerpiece being La Llorona. So I pulled on the depths of my musical knowledge and came up with ¨Chickity china, the chinese chicken, you have a drumstick and your brain stops tickin´...¨ That one went over pretty well until they asked for a translation. Anyway, at 6:55 they all split, running to get home before 7 so they wouldn't get in trouble with their mothers. I headed back toward the main plaza to make arrangements to meet up with Ana for rock climbing in the morning.

I won't get into the lentil-cooking-at-high-altitudes disaster that entailed the following afternoon, but I did finally get to try my hand at boulder scaling yesterday and despite my emaciated muscles I had a really great time pushing myself to reach for each next grasp, knowing that Ana and the crashpad were below to catch me when I couldn't go any further.

All in all, I'm on the recovery and am excited about the new ways in which I'm growing too :) A little shocked to discover that there's only a month left to this trip, but I'm beginning to get the point that you can't drag your feet against time.

Con mucho amor,
Justine