Perfectly Imperfect

So beyond over this stomach ailment. Every time I eat I feel sick. Really grateful for modern medicine though I must say.

Today is Saturday and the town is out and about.

Earlier from the roof I saw a man with a green parrot-type-bird on his shoulder just walking down the road. 

The donkeys and mules everywhere make me happy. The greenery and the fresh local life makes me happy even though it's clearly making me sick as well. 

My lips are chapped.

... today I lost my phone. It was awful. I found my phone shoved in the side of the bus seat. It was a glorious moment. 

Sometimes I feel trapped in silence in a Spanish speaking world. I have so much to say and I feel so much and want to express it all and yet my Spanish conversations typically consist of "sí" and "gracias"... like when the bus driver had to drop what he was doing to come open the bus doors for me, or when another worker on the trip had to stay back with me to help me look for my phone on the bus, and then had to help us both find our way alone to the next interview site. I had nothing to say but "gracias" over and over, and it wasn't enough. In English I would've had many more words to add to that. "No really thank you for coming to help me, thank you for staying back, no honestly thank you both you don't know how much it meant to me your help, your kindness and patience with my selective Spanish mutism, thank you, I don't know what I would've done if I'd lost all of my notes saved to become future blog posts or all of my photos on my phone. Thank you. This means the world to me. And for you to immediately stop to help me, ugh thank you. I was so panicked, I tore apart my room and all my bags, if it wasn't on this bus it would've been lost in a field somewhere beyond all the barbed wire and cacti back in Canaria, ugh I'm so elated thank you for your help!!!!" "Gracias, gracias, gracias" simply doesn't have the same effect. 

I find myself in bilingual conversations, listening in Spanish and responding in English. I hate myself for that.

Yesterday I had a conversation with a field school instructor about photography, cameras, photo ethics, the whole bit. Just fills me up, the love I have for that stuff, and the fun I've been having these past couple weeks shooting just for me, just because. I love exposing images. Manipulating light to make art out of a tiny box. The pay off doesn't even kind-of compare to snapping a quick iPhone photo. The color the motion the sun the alignment the angle the skyline the depth of field and the focus suddenly you see it all, you see every aspect that makes life beautiful, you see every detail every point of view possible, you dream of angles and lighting and for everything to just freeze so you can make it perfect. But everything moves. Life moves. And it is so, so imperfect. That's what makes it beautiful. It isn't art. It's life. It's life captured for all that it is and all that it ever will be. Perfectly imperfect. 

Tonight we went to a wedding. Wow is Pum-pín an ongoing dance or what? I've heard videos are available on YouTube, but that's for you to explore, won't find any links here. Culture sure is interesting.

Worry set in today, the glorious days of carefree happy culture shock are wearing down, and you begin to notice all the brokenness. It doesn't hit you all at once, rather puzzle pieces. People hand them to you to put in your pocket and they accumulate and you start to wonder what they are, what they mean, then suddenly you realize the puzzle makes an image, and well shit, it's pretty broken. Like 95% of local children suffering from anemia simply because they cannot afford proper diets, or 35% of local families reporting experience of violence in the home. The mental health concerns, the legal concerns the governmental concerns the environmental concerns the infrastructure concerns the educational concerns.  

It's cold and I find myself eager for warmer Peruvian days to come. It's yet to hit me that I'll not be headed home at the end of this. I'm glad because I'm not ready to leave Peru. But missing home is already tough, and missing the Honey Nut Cheerios that simply couldn't fix in my luggage is crushing my hungry American soul. 

I can't wait for visitors. Start scouting your tickets now folks, I'm desperate for a date to look forward to a familiar face! 

¡Buenas noches, hasta mañana! 

24/06/17

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