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Category Archives: living-in-the-midst

Perspective is a matter of Context

1980’s

When the children from across the field were lookng at photos of my family taken from my last furlough home, Agripina was intrigued by some weird thing growing out of my sister Cecila’s head. I looked at the photo and saw what she was seeing. It was a fixture on the wall behind my sister. Once Agripina could see it as “behind” not “growing out of”, she immediately spotted it in other shots, too.

The same strange type of impression occurred with a photo of my brother-in-law who was sitting in the living room of my sister’s home. We had been gathered to celebrate my nephew’s graduation from high school. “Is that a coffin,” wondered Mario, taken aback by seeing a coffin at a happy fiesta.

I looked at the photo, and sure enough, right behind Ernie’s head was a rectangular edge, with a design of silver patina in the metallic grey color, the color that is customarily seen in coffins in the Altiplano. I could identify it in place easily: it was the shelf of the mantlepice in front of the fireplace. Knowing my sister’s house, so typical in San Francisco, it was very clear. Lacking that context, however, in the eyes of an Aymara campo child, the gilt grey box-like edge took on the shape of the end of a coffin.

A matter of cultural perspective.

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Tremolo

Sometimes there’s a certain restlessness that goes along with unstructured time. A need to do something, an anticipation of what will come next. There’s a knowledge that something big will happen, but not what, or how, or when. Time seems to stretch out logarithmicly; a stretching laced with fear of the unknown future. It’s a persistent tremolo, an unrelenting vibrato that’s just out of reach. It’s a slow ascent up the scale, octaves and octaves until it feels like there is no more music left; it’s a crescendo that electrifies, and terrifies, and shakes.

It’s an emptiness that’s so filled with something that it’s almost unbearable. Almost.

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Last Rays of the Sun

One day, as the sun was setting, we took our ball python out to enjoy the last rays of the sun.

We’d taken him out of the house before, but only on short errands like getting the mail or taking out the garbage. Every time he did his best to play the part of an escape artist – he would slowly stretch out like he just wanted a better vantage point, then he would suddenly decide he wanted to go somewhere, and he wanted to get there ASAP. We hesitated about taking him out, but this was a nice day.

We went and sat on the grass, Mr. Snakes in my lap, and we both watched him closely. He un-balled a little bit, stuck his tongue out a few times, and slowly moved toward the grass. We were ready for a quick grab in case he made a break for it, but when the first blade of grass touched his face, he jerked back into his ball. He did this a couple more times, once even parting a few blades with his head like he was going to try the adventure, but he decided not to last minute.

We realized he had probably never seen grass until now. Our bold little snake who wanted nothing more than to go off and have his own adventure when we’re safely in the house or he’s safely in our hands, didn’t want to leave my lap because he didn’t understand the grass.

We let him sunbathe for a while, enjoying the sun ourselves. We took a break together, the three of us, to see the day off, then we went back inside.

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Altiplano Sketches

When I returned to Mocachi after a month away, the neighbor children came running over to greet me. After I unpacked my stuff, we visited in bubbles of excitement sitting in the earth-walled kitchen at the kerosene lamp lit table.

They recounted the distribution of sheep and llamas and cows from the re-structuring of the local government farming cooperative.

“We got eight merinos (sheep),” Mario boasted. “So we’re going to butcher our chuskas (mongrels) and then we’ll have all merinos! We got eight cows, too,” he bragged.

“No you didn’t!”

“Yes, we did!” And so rolled on traditional “my father is bigger than your father” competition of children.

According to Domitilla, her family already butchered one of the alpacas. But her sister Agripina said that was a lie!
The kitchen warmed with childhood storytelling and fantasies.
Early the next morning, Julia, one of the children’s grandmothers, came into my enclosure with a bowl of quinoa dough drops and fried bread dough. She thought I’d need some breakfast since I had just gotten back last night.

“Are you going to be home at noon?” she asked. “Well, I’ll bring over all you need for a nice barley soup and you can cook it up together for yourself and Marlene.”

“Oh, Julia, you’re a sweet heart!”

It was delicious!

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