Two conversations in Mazac/Yungay: the meaning of life

If you go to Mazac, you have to promise not to share this with anyone- it would ruin Leo's life.

It's hard to leave Mazac. I've had to leave for different reasons- for Peace Corps business, or to escape to Huaraz, or to return to the US finally and set up a strange and half-satisfying life in Portland. This time I left to go to Lima and chase a different destiny. I left also to get away from endless days of carnaval, my unwashed self, the washgu and the life I can never leave.

On my way out I stopped to visit Leo and his family, his mom Utish and sister Lily, and to eat more guinea pig. There is video of this in an earlier entry.

I like to visit Leo's house because it feels, I dunno, normal. The worldview within these walls is somewhat closer to my own, so that as we sit in the smokey kitchen and exchange jokes in Quechua and eat rodent, I feel the comfort of something familiar.

After lunch, I sit with Leo and we share a pair of Pilsen and get to talking. Never do I ever start a conversation about religion with anyone in Mazac, but awash in Carnavales and Jugar con agua and the anti-catholocism of the catholicism, I ask Leo about his god. And he answers me honestly:

"I don't tell this to anyone. If people knew I thought this they wouldn't buy from my store. But Danny, for me it's like this: god exists inasmuch as people believe in god. As Isidoro believes in god, there is god, so I cannot say there is no god. But in the nature of the world, in all the things that happen, there is no god. There is no god in the aluvion that destroyed this place, and there is no god in the car accidents. People say that they have accidents because they didn't do this or that thing that god wanted. And when something good happens they say it's because of god. But this is people looking for reasons, and there is no god in the reasons for car accidents and aluviones."
...


Further down the road, in Yungay, I stop to drink a Coca Cola for hydration before the trip to Huaraz and on to Lima. At heladería Pilar, I run into William, a swiss gentleman who has been here for the last 10 years. I knew him when I was here before but I kept my distance- living here makes you nervous with other gringos. This time I felt glad to see him- glad because the drunken cholos at the party kept calling me William until I started to think of myself as William and now I wanted to see what I had become, what I would become if I were William.

Our conversation in heladería Pílar took place in grimy campo Spanish. I accidentally called him huevón, an affecionate, friendly "fucker." William asked me why I came back, and I stumbled through an answer, and I asked him why he stayed, and he stumbled through an answer:

"Here I live with a family, like the seventh brother, and I sleep in their house and eat with them. I work at the health post. I worry that there hasn't been enough rain and the the Cordillera Negra will suffer. I don't worry about accidents- everyone in Peru has been in accidents. I was in an accident, 4 dead and 37 injured and I was one of the injured, haha!"

I scoured his words for the answer to my question- why did you stay here? There appeared to be no answer, just the same spooky nonsense I would have said as a peace corps volunteer- I'm like the Nth child in the family, Aquí pues. "Here" is not an answer to any question, except "where?" It doesn't answer "why"-- ah, here we have our answer. Here there is no "why," no reason, just repetition. I'm the seventh child in the family, one of 37 injured. This is the Cien años de soledad of Perú, the constantly repeating story, and this, I think, is William's why.

Or he loves car wrecks, which are probably less common in Switzerland, I imagine.
...


Later that night, at 3 am in a hotel room in Huaraz, I sit on the toilet and feel the food, the cuy and tsucan and pegam caldo and fried chicken, try to escape me however it can. My eyes tear up and my body feels shaky. And this experience, so deeply rooted in my memory of Perú, shows me:

It's just a big game of memory with the strangest cards- my mom, Shubi, Grandma Jo, Kati and Greg, Flora, first love; La Colmena, Plaza Vea, Friend's House, NE 8th Ave, Avenida Canada, Hollywood Farmers Market; Movil Tours, Cannondale, Red Line to PDX, pasando puente más allá; El Comercio, Catcher in the Rye, Ray Carver, No se lo digas a nadie, NY Times Book Review; pegam caldo, lomo saltado, my gut. Aquí, my body: a bee and its nectar at La Colmena.

"Yo te doy todos los nombres: cielo, agua, aire que respiro."
Parque del Amor, Miraflores, Lima, Perú