The Long Road to Pisaq

“If you want to know your past, look at who you are.
If you want to know your future, look at what you are doing.”

-Buddha

There is an ant climbing my wall.  Not a line of ants, just one, a seeker.  I’m currently in a bamboo-roofed cabin, one of seven such cabins in a little revolving community in the Peruvian Andes run by hippies, for hippies.  The walls of the hut have recessed nooks built into them, providing shelves used to place incense and other objects that were meaningful to people who’ve stayed here over time.  One contains an arrangement of feathers and a bit of burnt wood placed between two rocks, wax dripped on top.  Another has an assortment three stripped cobs of corn, a long lock of hair wound into what looks like a small birds’ nest, and a bundle of mystery herb.  You get the idea.  The borders of the recessed shelves are painted with geometric patterns, the kind of repetitive simplicity you can get drawn into for hours.  The ant is crawling around, staying within the colored border, it seems on purpose.  I don’t know enough about ants, I wonder if they know when the colors change beneath them.  I imagine the little guy is able to process most elements of the scene, largely through smell -maybe he’s aware of the corn, the incense, the inedible rocks- evaluating in his antish way each of them and making a split decision to go back and tell the others or to keep looking.  But for now, I am highly concerned with whether or not he is aware he is following a painted path.  Lying in bed, I’m struck by a fearsome thought:  he’s so small, he doesn’t even have a prayer of ever seeing the bigger picture.

For those of you who don’t know, Peru is my happy place.  This is my third annual visit, and I intend to keep up with it at that pace well into the future.  Specifically, I take my respite in a place called El Molle (by hippies, for hippies).  It is not the most easily accessible of spots, but the arduous journey makes it all the more alluring; I absolutely love it.  To get there, you must first fly into Lima, and from there you need to get to Cusco by plane or bus.  In the past, I’ve taken the flight which gets you to Cusco in less than 2 hours, but this time I opted for the bus.  It takes 21 hours, but it’s cheaper…you know how I roll.  Once you get to Cusco, you have to hop in a shuttle van bound for a little town called Pisaq deep in the heart of the Sacred Valley of the Incas, another hour away.  And once you get there, El Molle is just a mile or two out of town, walkable.

But back to Lima.  I enjoy the familiarity I feel when arriving at the airport.  I love walking by all the pushy taxi drivers clamoring for a fare, heading through the parking lot and down the street to where the local minibus pickup is, paying 3 soles instead of the 40 I would have spent on a cab.  I do not love the local minibus driver who lies to me and says his route is close to where I’m going and then drops me off miles away from my destination at 11pm.  I do love the old man on the street who told me it was way too far to walk and helped me hail a cab on the cheap.

The last couple of days in New York before leaving were pretty work-heavy and sleep-light.  I wanted so badly to sleep in my first morning in Lima, but I hadn’t booked the 21 hour bus yet and I was hoping to leave that afternoon.  So I drug myself out of bed, booked the bus…and then couldn’t fall back asleep.  Of course.  Last week, I was so tired I woke up to call out of work for the day, and it was much the same–I couldn’t go back to sleep after.  I actually ended up going in earlier than I was supposed to.  Needless to say, my boss was confused.  A lot of what I do confuses him.

A glance at the weather forecast in Pisaq gave a grim and rainy outlook for the week, but the weather in Lima at least is gorgeous right now.  I haven’t been here in April before, it’s still warm and right at the end of the rainy season so everything is green.  The only raining down of anything I’ve seen so far was walking out of the hostel for the bus station, where I pulled a serious matrix move and dodged a shower of sparks, falling inches from my face.  Lima’s a very modern city, but it would seem there is still something to be desired in terms of construction ordinances that might prevent someone from welding directly above an active doorway.

The long bus ride, in hindsight, was ok.  There was wifi most of the trip and an outlet next to the seat, allowing me to focus on live tweeting the busing event instead of completing anything meaningful or heaven forbid, living the event itself.  To add to the distraction they were also showing movies: The entire Hannibal Lector trilogy…so if you were having trouble sleeping through the night, you could always stay up and reminisce about cannibalism and serial killers.  I know this because I had trouble sleeping, though it had more to do with the bus swooping around mountain passes for hours on end, tossing me back and forth in the seat.  It’s strange because I remember somewhere around hour 20 thinking I was desperate to get out, cursing the bus and all busses before it, but now it doesn’t seem so bad.  I’ve ridden on longer/more terrible buses/trains- the thing that gets me is when I can’t sleep.  I’m a real stickler for that whole sleep thing.  When I arrived in Cusco, I bought a plane ticket back.

The ant has left the painted border and is now crossing a long (and must for him seem endless) stretch of white wall.  Humans have access to satellites, which gives us a leg up in navigating the terrain.  This little guy has what, instinct?  Could you call it faith?  I fancy myself a bit ant-like, especially when I’m traveling, ostensibly to see new things.  I’m thousands of miles from where I started, not moving blindly, but quite probably missing a lot.

The last leg of the journey was to El Molle itself, where a room was waiting for me.  Unfortunately, a shaman was not.  That’s a weird thing to say.  El Molle hosts visiting shamans from the Shibibo tribe in the jungles of Iquitos.  They come and lead ayahuasca ceremonies.  If you’re unfamiliar with it, ayahausca is a traditional shamanic medicine used to treat, let’s call them, spiritual illnesses (among other things).  For me, participating in a ceremony is an alignment of sorts, a chance to put together pieces of things I’ve picked up and didn’t realize I was carrying.  A soul satellite.  I’d thought El Molle’s resident shaman was a pretty constant post, but apparently they are between shamans right now.  It was a bit of a disappointment as the last time I was here, I worked with a woman named Olga who led a ceremony in which I gained some really valuable insight.  I wasn’t looking to reenact that exactly, but I saw what a difference it makes to have a good shaman at the helm.  Fortunately, there are still ayahuasca ceremonies being held in the area, and I’m all signed up for one tonight.  This one’s just between me and the plant.  I’ve been advised that it will be different from what I’m used to.  And I’m open to that.