The Transmutation of Memory

I am back in Oregon, and engaged in forming my memories of my first trip to Peru. (along with time spent in California). Yesterday, my father married Kacy in a small ceremony; in a few days, I think I will have my memories of this event as well.

This might appear to be a contradiction in terms. “How can you form memories of a place when you are not there? And why would you not yet have memories of an event that already happened? You were there, weren't you?” But the way I understand it, this is what inevitably happens.

During the event, during the experience, things are immediate, but not meaningful. It is the act of contemplateing, the act of reviewing the events and mentally sorting them out in the quiet times afterwords, that forms the memories which will be the event's lasting legacy. What is left is not the experience, sometimes not even close, but is valuable nonetheless.

I described it to my grandma as like canning preserves: you take something inherently unstable, (whether it's something wonderful like fresh peaches or something not-quite-good, like sour cherries or quince.) And you know you can't eat it forever just as it is, even though you'd wish to. So you destroy it, process it into something else, sometimes inferior, sometimes better, but something that wil keep indefinitely. And then what you have created, while not the same, still gives you pleasure throughout the cold, sparse seasons.

I am asked, How was your trip to Peru?

And I respond.

And in each response, I cast my mental eye back over the trip, and notice what was memorable, and what was enjoyable, and what I think I was aware of at the time, and what I notie by contrast now that I am back.

“It was good.”

“Good” means, “Many parts were beautiful, and even the less beautiful parts were important because they helped me to begin learning the things about myself and the world that are the reasons I am travelling at all.”

“Good” means, “Every plane flight was on time, every taxi was safe, my guides were competent, charming, informative, and had distinct and enjoyable personalities. I was able to meet a number of people who were not directly engaged in profiting from my presence, and they were without exception willing to talk, able to communicate in spite of my rough basic Spanish, and interesting to get to know.

“Good” means, “I saw more than enough ruins to satisfy anyone, and if you are curious about them, I made a point of paying enough attention so that I can tell you some anecdote or fact that will satisfy and feed your sense of wonder.”

“Good” means, I did this trip on a whim. Although at many points in my life, I have been fascinated by tales of intriately fitted stone temples and miraculously well-preserved mummies, I did not spend a long time saving pennies and reading books to culminate in this tour. It was not a dream-come-true, as the guidebooks say, because I did not spend the time in fantasy and pre-exploration that would make it so.

Travel has gone beyond the realm of dream for me, to become a calling or compulsion or, simply, a fact. It looms large-as-life, but no larger. The process of committing to the outrageous idea of giving up my home, job, and career prospects to wander until my heart finds something important, that was an exciting process and decision. Once it became clear that this was going to happen, that there was no better alternative than to commit to this path, once the decision was made, a sense of calm replaced that excitement. It became my everyday business: Searching for plane fares; making inquiries and reservations; establishing contacts to help arrange for my physical safety and support; coordinating my acceptance of many generous offers to avoid presuming too far on any one friend’s patience; scheduling time to recover from travel stress, and time for deliberately pushing myself to build strength, skills, and connections to fall back on.
The process of living this commitment has become, as I intended it to be, not a vacation but a life. It has the ego-threatening stresses of a career choice; the challenges of survival and creativity; and the even-toned, step-by-step progression of mundane reality. Vacations are an escape; in researching destinations, booking tickets, and arranging time off, it seems that part of the excitement is the sense of doing something different, something self-indulgent and not entirely productive, possibly even of getting away with something.
Like getting to choose your favorite meal for your birthday dinner, regardless of health or other family members’ tastes. Once you become an adult and cook for yourself every day, choosing your meal may still be satisfying, but it doesn’t have the same special excitement. Whatever you choose, you pay for, whether you cook it yourself or order haute cuisine at your favorite restaurant. And whatever you choose, should it disappoint, you will choose again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. The sense of “getting away” with something fades fast. And you become aware that, because no one will ever force you to eat vegetables again, your choice to skip them today, and tomorrow, and the next day, can have a serious impact on your health, Eventually, you may come to crave vegetables, not in the abstract but their special flavor and texture.
Like that, by the end of my wonderful, luxurious, thoroughly arranged and catered tour, I was itching to be allowed to do something useful. To carry my own baggage -- or even, shocking thought, to help carry group equipment or clean something. To cook. To pay for something, not with imported currency, but with the exchange of something wrought by my own hands, a service or gift, to have my efforts and considerate actions be received as valuable in this particular context. When everyone is friendly, it’s difficult to know whether they are being polite, or whether your presence and eagerness to be friendly back actually makes a difference.

I believe that my efforts were worth something -- my eagerness to use local language, not just Spanish but Quechua; my ability to evoke an answering smile in the midst of imperfect communication; my willingness to watch and meet people as close as possible to their place of comfort; my efforts to support genuine humanity and sharing rather than then cheapest or flashiest attraction; I believe these had an impact on others as well as myself. I also remain humbly and gratefully aware that the abilities of others to meet me where I was far exceeded mine. Everyone I met had, if not actual English prowess, that complimentary sense of how to find common words and simple words for someone else’s language. People had the patience and grace to accept gestures, mangled words, extra work, and repeated, basic mistakes. People had a high degree of competence in their work, which often consisted of shepherding and teaching tourists in various activities regardless of language, ability, or civil courtesy.

There’s something haunting about receiving a smile, or a gesture of thanks, from someone doing work you would miserable or frankly impossible. Like carrying hundreds of pounds of cookware and vegetables up and down mountains all week. Or giving a cheerful greeting or good-bye to strangers at 4:30 in the morning, as you arrange for them to painlessly tranfer from airport to taxi to hotel bed or vice-versa. And you smile, and say “gracias,” and maybe it occurs to you to wonder about their home life or aspirations. And you realize that they’re serious when they say “no trouble,” this work they’re doing for you is no problem, because it’s _routine,_ a burden so familiar its magnitude has ceased to matter, and they’re just glad you noticed.

[The paragraph above hit home hard, for me; I cried as I wrote it. It’s a crystallization of the sense of helplessness I repeatedly feel, in this endeavor, entrusting myself to other people’s generosity and achingly unsure whether I give enough in return.]

What is it like to be part of this community I visited so briefly? Like the guides, gone from home for weeks at a time, routinely, to escort yet another band of chatty, wealthy strangers through the classic places? Is it like being on vacation and getting paid? Or is it like never being home?

How is it for the children, or girlfriends, or husbands, whose lives are arranged to accomodate this? Does it destabilize the family, or the community, or does it foster social cohesion by giving young, educated guides the opportunity to stay close to their hometowns and extended family instead of pursuing other ambitions farther from home?

Does this generation of charming and competent welcome-agents have a greater appreciation of their heritage because they can see its specialness reflected in the eyes of the world? Or does the business of catering to intrusive and careless foreigners engender a sense of disdain for both the tourists and the things they flock to see? Does a child selling finger-puppets on the street see you as a distinct person, a “mark” or sucker, a potential friend, or something else entirely?

And what of the people whose lives are crossed only breifly by the hordes? Those without the connections, physical strength, language skills, or patience to be useful to the tourist industry? I have never lived in a place so bestrewn with tourists as Cuzco, but I have worked in the museum in Portland with visitors from around the world, and I have taken visitors to the zoo and gardens. I have a greater sense of patience with tourists, I think, than many of my fellow inhabitants. Partly because I have learned to serve them, partly because I have been one myself, and partly perhaps because patience and consideration are habits I cultivate in general.

It’s those who don’t try to sell me, who offer respect but mind their own business and try to be self-sufficient, that I most admire. One consistent element in encounters I enjoyed, was that anyone I met who was making something, I respected and enjoyed getting to know. It could be simple crafts, street-vendors cooking food, musicians, or virtuoso artisans. But they appealed to me so much more intrinsically, regardless of the nature of their work, than people who put their energy into attracting my attention and trying to sell things. (There were of course, some very gracious salespeople who put extra courtesy into their work, bothering to chat with us about the weather or soccer over our tiny purchases of water and chocolate, or giving us welcome as a returning customer after only a few encounters.)

I was fascinated by how things are made. By the rows of mud-brick drying in this dry season, and the stacks of already-dry bricks in doorways and windows, apparently to keep animals and people out of an unoccupied space. By the straw roofs, probably that same clumpy “hichu” grass that covered the high slopes near the pass with a carpet strangely reminiscent of beach dunes. Roofs not onll on buildings, but on walls, to shed the rain -- just grass, and gravel on top to hold it down. By the interesting collection of pads, straps, and buckles that held my saddle on the tranquil (cognate word) white horse that was my mount for our day of local sightseeing. By the notches, bumps, and textures that showed the working of the stone, more closely and perfectly fitted together than the scales on a reptile -- for these have little webs of skin between them, and the better grades of Inca stonework have neither mortar nor even cracks where moss might grow, except where earthquakes have jostled half a wall a few inches downhill. By the quick motions of the wood and horn and fingers that sort the threads in the hands of a master weaver. (The traditional belt-strap looms, said the schoolmaster Nilda Callan~aupa, are thousands of years ancient. Before ceramics, before gold, the people of this place were weaving cloth in this fashion.)

I am fascinated even by the novice efforts of children, and adults who never achieved and may never in their lives achieve mastery of an intricate art. But the cheerful attempt, to take the raw pieces and make something more whole, is something that puts me in immediate sympathy.

I am sometimes shy about sharing my own work, because as much as I enjoy this sense of kinship with everyone who creates, I am also wary. I strive for excellence in my own work, and admire it in others. But I also enjoy and respect even ungraceful efforts. For myself, I love being “good for a beginnner” when I can pull it off, but I generally don’t mind good-natured laughter or correction when my efforts bear strange fruit. For others, I love that they are willing to try to do something themselves, especially when better work is available cheaply for purchase.
I’m careful, though, because I have noticed that when faced with something -- a skill, a product -- that excells their own capacity, they may feel despair or envy as often as pleasure. To say, Oh, you draw, I love that! and then show my more successful drawings may produce mutual pleasure, but may also produce a sizing-up where everyone tries to say nice things, but is secretly judging which is better, and only pleased if the judgement comes out in favor of oneself.

Something similar happened with hiking, I think: for a while, I was afraid that the surprising ease and comfort I was enjoying as a first-time backpacker was actually dispointing my more experienced friend. I tend to keep frustrations to myself as much as possible, and actively cultivate cheerfulness; this is a habit, at this point in my life, and generally seems to be enjoyable to others as well as myself. But occasionally, it becomes maddening to everyone involved: when something is tough, especially for someone else, and my initial attempts to offer sympathy or encouragement meet with frustration, I’m not sure where to go. I restrict myself from complaint, generally, unless it seems useful (such as “I’m really hungry, if I pass out that was probably why,” or “Please don’t take my lack of attention personally, I didn’t get nearly enough sleep last night.”).
My anger is so rarely felt, let alone expressed, as to seem almost nonexistent.
So when a companion is angry or frustrated, I’m not sure what to do. It’s diffficult and unappealing for me to join them in expressing these negative moods. And it can be maddening for them to have my chipper attitude to contrast with their black frame of mind.
I wonder sometimes, if this is repression is unhealthy for me, as well as being a social dillema.
On the whole, I like how I am, and it seems to work.

I come back to one of my favorite ways of dealing with these “I don’t know what to do” situations, which is the purest candor I can summon up without being completely tactless. (By which I mean, I try to make these clear statements in private, if possible, and allow time for myself to be considerate as well as sure.) It works for jokes, too -- I’m alienated enough from popular culture to not always be entirely sure I’m getting something. When I’m not sure I’m getting things, and I’m not inclined to ask for clarification, I play them straight, making the most outrageous retort I can within my own limits of honesty. So unless you are very close to me, or catch me on a particularly whimsical day, there’s a good chance that I wasn’t entirely joking.

I love it when friends ask me to define a word I’ve use that they’re not familiar with, or clarify. So I also make a point of, at least occasionally, admitting when I don’t catch a reference or understand a remark. It’s a risk: it breaks the flow of conversation, and exposes a hole in shared experience, but when it pays off it creates genuine understanding in the place of fake or shallow agreement.

This is what my trip to Peru was like.

It was dry, dusty, yet obviously fertile land.
It was big -- usually bigger than could fit in my camera, so I have to hope Kristi and Damon will send me their pictures of the things we saw together.
It was chock-full of tourists, yet there was genuine friendliness, honesty, compassion, respect, and self-sufficiency to be found among both locals and visitors.

It gave me much occasion for intense self-reflection, and to examine my relationships with other people.

One other thing I remarked, which I will record rather than forget, is the churches. Several were on our tourist ticket for Cusco, and Kristi and I visited another one Sunday evening for mass. The tension, for me raw and unnnerving, between the massive cruelty of the Spanish conquest and the deep, loving worship evident in the locally-produced artistic extravagance of these Baroque and Neoclassical churches and cathedrals. The contrast between cruel death and loving acceptance is something ever-present in the Catholic church, but to see it echoed in the relationship between conqueror bishops and adapting parishioners was eerie.

Kristi commented later that “it was a lot like a Christian service.” (An odd comment for someone who grew up with the understanding that Cathlicism is one denomination of Christianity, but I think the word “Protestant” does not come easily to many people’s lips this long after the Reformation.) The altar and walls were practically writhing with baroque sculpture and plaster saints clothed in rich fabrics. But the priest was tiny against the tall backdrop, and the lectors shared a microphone with the small, not-quite-in-tune choir. People stood and sat in their winter coats against the mountain night’s chill, just as I know they do in England’s foggy Gothic cathedrals, and made quiet contact with their neighbors and kin. I suspect much of the congregation that normally attends evening mass (small to begin with in most places) had absconded to the nearby church that was celebrating the feast of St.. Teresa, one of its patrons, but we had chosen this church deliberately, knowing the other would be wilder tonight, to avoid being too avid gluttons for spectacle.

After Mass, which I understood only in basic outline through the chinks in my language barrier, I stood a moment longer in silence while Kristi walked up to see the side alters. I noted the feeling, “I will always belong here....and I will always have a rebellious heart / have serious doubts about the entire dogma.”
This church, despite the differences in language, decoration, and culture to anything I grew up with, remains the same spiritual home in which I was raised. Whereas in other people’s temples and sacred places, I am often moved to tears by something (which I can only guess it is the distance between visiting and belonging), in this space I felt only my own familiar struggle with my mother church, whose opinions and beliefs I largely disagree with, and whose traditions and values I immensely respect.

This is what it was like: I brought my own life and expectations with me, and checked them in the pale blinding light against the straw-brown hills. I absorbed a few fleeting glimpses of the country, bought postcards, took pictures, and talked to as many people as I could.

And as I return to my country, I think back, and choose things to remember -- the alpaca bourgignon that revived me more thoroughly than even the excellent chicken soup when I was struggling with a head cold; the colorful wares and fatiguing plaints of the street vendors; the professional friendliness and courtesy of our guides that made me feel at once welcome and distant; and the little discrepant events that suggested new perspectives on myself and my culture.

My memory of what it’s like to buy bottled water for two weeks crystallized when I aprached a drinking fountain in the Miami Airport. To sell water, let those without money suffer, seemed like misplaced priorities in a country that has electricity and cheap Internet access available (an hour online costs less than a liter of water, most places). But coming home I see my country with new eyes: to offer clean water in a fountain, especially one like the Portland ever-flowing drinking fountains, is a strange and luxurious courtesy, like a fountain of wine or soda-pop. Clean water is not something that occurs in nature, except rarely; enough for a wholen city must be processed, and then protected, if it is to be safe to drink when the residents receive it. So is it really better to invest in pipelines, and their routine maintenance, electricity for perpetual pumping, and chemical treatment for water that will largely be used to water lawns, wash cars, boil food, and bathe babies? Or is it efficient, in some sense, to offer it in bottles from places where it is cheaper, and let the population boil their own if they do not care to buy?

Efficiencies of this scale are enormously hard to calculate.