20190129-0130: Museos i(Lima)tados

Hello, nameless audience, nonexistent reader, hello! Listen as I shout into the void! —

Oh, I have a thought about the void. Yesterday, I learned about Mario Vargas Llosa. He came up during fishbowl, which is a game of sherades, taboo, and quiplash sandwiched together in which participants pull a name of a famous person from a ‘fishbowl’ and try to get their teammates to guess ’em by giving clues (Person: ‘Beyonce’; Clue: ‘Single ladies’) . Yesterday, I played with my new Peruvian English students. Antonio (a student) pulled Llosa’s name from the ‘fishbowl’, and all it took was a two word clue (“Peru author”) for everyone in the room to guess correctly who he was talking about. Of course, I – the ignorant American in the room and also the teacher – had no idea who this Peruvian author was. So the student politely explained Llosa is the most famous Peruvian writer ever, and one of the most important writers of his generation in Latin America, a revolutionary, politician, freethinker, one-time leftist, post-modernist. (An advanced English speaker, Antonio is, to be able to describe this to me. Full marks).

The very first thing that comes up about Llosa when you search about him online are his biographical high-points (thrice-married, including once to his cousin), his anthology (FAQ: Why does the English title of his first book, The Home of the Hero, translate literally from Spanish into The City and the Dogs? Answer: No one knows.), and his famous quotes. His most famous –

No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing.

– is both relevant to the void, and deeply melancholy. I’m a sucker for overly-dramatic sad things. Plus, it kind of describes this blog. “A novel [or blog] is something” more than nothing, at least…

The topic for today’s discussion is our journey to Lima, which ended for us about a week ago now. I wanted to share a few high points about January 29 and 30, which were days of half-assed, unplanned trips to museums.

Lima has some good ones, but the Natural History is not it’s best. Nonetheless, I’m a sucker for ancient taxidermy and as a (former) geologist figure I better know something about earth’s history, so we went on the 29th.

We figured something was up with this place when we tried to pay for admission with a 100 sol note and got an IOU in return. But we were tickled by the Peruvian pheasants roaming the courtyard and pleasantly surprised by the enormous display of the flora and fauna of Peru in the anteroom. (See pheasants below).

The place didn’t disappoint on the taxidermy front. We saw Peruvian dogs, marsupials (yes, marsupials!), tortoises, llamas, and alpacas (look at the neck on that little guy).

Our favorite was the placard describing the Quetzal (pre-colonial) legend of how a hummingbird saved Peru from the drought. It was a very informative and beautiful story, written entirely in Spanish, so it took us about an hour to read it all (while feverishly translating words on our phones). For a while, a little girl was staring open-mouthed at us while we were staring open-mouthed at the hummingbird placard till her mom said something to the effect of, “Dejar a los turistas solos” (“leave the tourists alone”)! Sometimes, as a tourist in Peru, I feel little like a taxidermy alpaca – on display.

Also – dinosaurs rock.

That’s all for the natural history museum. And don’t worry – before we left the museum for the day we were sure to get remuneration for that IOU. It’s a lesson for us tourists – not everyone is out there to scam us!

The next day we visited the most TripAdvisor-ed museum on the Lima itinerary: the Larco Museum. We traveled there in a taxi through the typically noisy Lima soundscape, and although the museum is just a block away from the meat of this noise-strosity it seems physically and metaphysically separated from the hustle and bustle. As soon as we stepped out of the cab, we were greeted by a 20 foot tall lily-white wall and ushered through wrought iron gates by three suit-wearing guards. Within this fortress was a veritable Eden – lush and verdant plants, colorful flowers, vines of ivy running down the walls of the central building, and a tastefully-decorated courtyard cafe (featuring a not-too-rusted wheelbarrow and a $4 cappuccino). We arrived shortly after opening, so at first we had the whole garden to ourselves (along with about 30 Chinese tourists). But soon the white people started showing up. Ask yourself reader, is this museum for the Peruvian populace? One has to wonder why they need the barricade and the guards.

So a little about the museum – in short, aristocratic since its inception. The collection was assembled by (and named after) Rafael Larco Herrera. Born in Peru, he was a a Vice President of Peru later in life, and a minister of foreign affairs, and finance and commerce. In other words, this guy was a titan, a mover and shaker, and an unabashed member of high society. His true passion, as the museum tells the story, though, was archaeology. His work and excavations helped to differentiate the Inca from other pre-Columbian and pre-Inca civilizations that existed in Peru. I don’t think there is a need to go into too much detail, other than to say the tools, pottery, jewelry, ornaments, textiles, bones, and burial swag that he ‘discovered’ are haunting. Beautiful, but haunting. It is so strange to see these artifacts  exhumed from their resting place and on display behind a walled fortress in contemporary Peru. The more we saw, the more we realized: physical monuments to our existence – such as those displayed in Museo Larco – are playthings of the super-rich of the past, on display for the aristocracy of today. The golden headpiece, necklace, and earrings behind two inches of bullet proof glass is no more visible to the average Peruvian today as it was to an Incan plebiscite. What does that make me, as a witness to this history? Chew on that for a minute, void-reader.

(Watch the movie Museo for a weird but good dive into the ethics and morality of anthropology museums in Latin America).

I have two main insights from this museum. Pre-Columbian Peruvians loved to put penises in pottery, and the son of the first Incan ruler was named Tupac (so many tears). Here are some pictures:

Alright, void. This whole effort took a lot of time. Hopefully I’ll be able to summarize the rest of our time in Lima and describe our new home in Arequipa to you. Soon, soon. I promise.

Quinn

20190127-28 – Lima-San Isidro / “Is infidelity common in your culture?”

Lean in a little closer, miniature wheeled air conditioner unit.

Firstly: It’s feels-like 91 degrees F in this 11th floor apartment, buddy. You gotta work a little harder.

Secondly: Here’s the rundown on our first few full days in Lima. Is that wheezing sound an ejaculation of excitement? Woah, calm down, little guy.

We arrived at Lima’s airport – the gateway to South America, some call it, and certainly the gateway into the Metropolis that is Lima and its 10 million plus denizens – at 5 pm. 5 pm is peak soundscape time in Peruvian culture, when each of those millions jumps into a car, meanders their way home from work, and (here’s where the soundscape part comes in) jumps on their horn. It’s a cacophony that doesn’t compare with anything back home in little ol’ Blacksburg, VA. Dave, the expat teacher-surfer-bro we met on the plane ride from Mexico City warned us about this ahead of time, by telling us that in Peru a car horn is the salve for all problems. “Stuck in bumper to bumper traffic? No problem, lean on that horn. Somebody’s wrecked and weeping on the side of the road. Sure fix – honk that puppy” (He said something exactly like this…). After a few days of cab rides and street ambling, though, we’re noticing that this description of *noise, unabridged and ubiquitous* isn’t sufficient. There’s like a whole dialect of horn honking/talking. Amanda, my partner, probs put it best in an email to my uncle Bob and aunt Nan:

“So far we’ve made it safely to Lima and Oh Boy! (Oh Houseboy!) [sic, this is an inside joke] has the driving here made us think Boston and NJ and even Mexico City weren’t this bad! I was surprised we made it safely to our Airbnb. And the honking, I don’t  know if you remember the honking, but my god it’s like there’s a honk for every occasion : “Do you need a ride?”, “Get out of my way”, “watch out I’m turning a corner”, “I’m here, I’m here!’, “Can I go?”, “I’m the fastest!””

(I’ll add that it’s not easy to get a Jersey girl to admit somewhere other than Jersey is supreme when it comes to road chaos).

For me, personally, I don’t have any idea which honks mean what. Other than that there’s usually a gentle double honk, coupled with a arm roving out-the-window rotation, that taxi drivers give when they see people like us who probably need a ride. I’ll have to try to get that one on camera, because it also could mean, “Get out of my town, foreigner.” Equal parts ‘come here’ and ‘fuck off.’ Anyway, maybe that’s Lima in a nutshell.

So all this noise has inspired me to keep a parallel sound blog series on the noises of Peru. In the future, I think these’ll go up on a separate page that can be accessed from this, the main page, but for now I’ll include a little snippet of the chaos. (Note that WordPress doesn’t let me share audio unless I pay. This links to my Onedrive)

**https://1drv.ms/u/s!AnuI5avCh4ybgugGiC17C7gNQibauQ

And, for contrast, the relatively serene sounds of the parque. Not so harsh!

**https://1drv.ms/u/s!AnuI5avCh4ybgugN5hUSYe5FzYMhEQ

My reaction? I like the sounds of this city. I like that they’re varied and loud and ubiquitous. It’s different from my roots; much louder but maybe also more honest. All I can think is that America’s clandestine sububan alcoves, should they ever be visited by a metropolitan Peruvian, must seem so quiet, concealing, and possibly boring.

A few other highlights.

• Getting the sim card. Cell coverage and access is greater and less expensive in Peru than it is in the United States. I think this goes for just about every country in the developing world. You can get a solid 5 GB data plan (no restrictions on common apps like Skype and WhatsApp) with infinite texts and calls for somewhere in the ballpark of $15 – $20. This is music to Amanda’s and my ears, because we teach online and having 4G access that we can link our laptops up to when the WiFi is sketchy is a must-have. The only reason I know about this? My man Briancito at Claro! He was listening to Rihanna in a red T-shirt at a Claro stand in the middle of a grocery store catering to wealthy Peruvians (yes, we went to the place that looked most like Wegman’s to get our first Peruvian groceries, yes we did!). After struggling through our mediocre Spanish for a few minutes he switched to perfecto English to give us the low-down. (Peruvian cell hounds: Yes, from what I’d read online Claro is more expensive than its competitors, but it’s the most reliable and has the largest coverage footprint. [Briancity confirmed, and he’s unbiased, right?]) And that wasn’t all, he gave me his phone number, and chatted us up about our favorite musicians. I told him Dylan, but he and Amanda bonded over their shared love of Beyonce. (How lame is it that I said Dylan?) His last question: “What do Americans think of infidelity? Because in Peru it is very common.” Pretty forward there, buddy. Amanda looked at her ring nervously (we’re not married, but she keeps a fake on her for times like these). But I’m not sure he was looking at her.
• Miraflores, and Playa Waikiki. Dave tipped us off to it, but damn, that beach had it all. Amanda said it reminded her of San Diego. I haven’t really spent anytime on the Pacific coast, so the only thing I could compare it to was paradise. There was no reference. 100 ft cliffs, lush grass, heladodores (ice cream sellers), tons of sun, and -AND – a beach composed of saucer sized stones flattened and smoothed by repetitive wave action. The geology of this place is something I want to follow up on later, but to me one of the coolest things about aggressive coastal areas like this is that the beaches get molded into these hill / valley ranges during high tide. I’ve seen it on Cape Cod, but nothing on this scale. The valleys (filled with water in the attached pictures) are sometimes deep enough to conceal a human, and as the waves rework the rocks with each crash, these valleys are not the place for a human to hang out. It was a great way to cap off our ambling morning along the boulevarded Avenida Arequipa (shut off from car traffic every Sunday morning)
• The last thing to note today is that we walked all around Lima, and discovered what a quick google search could have told us ahead of time. That most of the museums in this town are not open on Monday. Now we are delightfully sunburnt and dehydrated.  Fortunately, nothing a nap and a little bit of water can’t fix.

Hasta luego,

Quinn

 

Hello World

Hello to the great din of the internet! Settle down, settle down. I see you there in the back row! Yes, you, with the red hat and boxers in your mother’s house: Put your hands where I can see them! Very good! Eyes on me…

The talented writer can probably suck you in with wit or a good story. I don’t really have that. I actually 100% don’t expect anyone to be listening. Don’t really care. The fewer the merrier. The back row is empty; there’s actually no one in the auditorium. I’m talking to myself. Indeed, it’s about the only thing that I’ve ever been able to do.

Someone once told me that 90% of thinking is just rearranging one’s own prejudices. That is to say, his advice was to stop thinking so much. Because in doing so I (we) repetitively test and confirm what we think to be true. The conversation goes something like this: ‘Am I a piece of shit’ (I am); ‘Is there a god’ (Still no voices); ‘Can I get over my fear of people who don’t look like me’ (Cue crossing the street, again).

Maybe so.

But I think this point of view is cynical, right? I mean, to think that thought – nay, contemplation – serves no purpose other than to congeal the badnesses within me (us)…. Well, geez, why were we endowed with these big ol’ brains, then? Don’t get me wrong, I try not to be a pedant and I don’t know jack shit about neurology. But it seems to me the problem might be that I don’t do enough thinking these days, that maybe I never had.

So thanks, wordpress, for providing a space for those of use who relish entanglements with the broken armies of our minds and souls. Thanks for forsaking people like me into the land of prejudice. Thanks for making a place to write words that benefit nobody except the person who writes them.

If anyone ever reads this blog, I’m going to delete this post.