Into a Womb and Onto a ShoulderAgapito, by this time, was unstoppable. He did not stop to eat or blink, his eyes began to dry. He brushed his teeth with coca leaves and strolled up and down the cobblestone streets of the nation’s capital laughing his awful new laugh.
He set north with a machete to the mysterious Apolobamba Mountains, abode of the acclaimed Kallawaya medicine men and the most remote corner of the High Andes. The Kallawaya spoke a language of their own, neither Quechua nor Aymara, and claimed the language to descend from the ancient Tiahuanaco of Lake Titicaca. They used this language solely for medicine which involved knowledge of over 1,000 healing herbs collected from the mountains from Argentina to Ecuador and down to the Amazon basin. They were known to wander thousands of miles on trails they had built carrying only a small herb-satchel.
Due to their proximity to the jungle, the Apolobamba Mountains are in a perpetual fog. Agapito walked into this foggy world from Curva, at the southern extent of the range, and did not emerge for 6 days. He walked on a Kallawaya trail that brought him over icy 5,000 meter passes, catching glimpses of native villages that emerged from the mist for an instant only to be engulfed the next. He met colorful figures on the trail, mules, llamas and children. They would emerge and then vanish back into the cloud. For six days figures, places, shapes, trees, rocks and entire mountains would emerge and disappear, like a microcosmic display of the macrocosmic dance between form and space, creation and destruction—manifestation from the white void and subsequent dissolution, a sort of womb.
Out of this womb, six days later, Agapito emerged on a gentle shoulder. Dusk was approaching and the fog around him began to lift. Slowly, larger forms appeared: first the trail stretching out in front, then the slope down the valley to his left, then a river below. As his eyes followed the river to the darkness creeping in from the East, he saw the Amazon basin of Madidi National Park stretching to the horizon: the Amazon born from a damp womb in the heights of The Apolobamba.
The Amazon: Happy with Life, Happy with Death
The transition from the Apolobamba to Madidi in Bolivia is the most biodiverse place in the world, period. It is one of the most beautiful and terrifying place in the world dancing between two opposing poles as all this world does. The extreme poles of the Amazon allow for myriad creations to move within the poles. Madidi is home to the most spectacular life forms and the most frightening methods and quantities of death: bountiful life demands a consumptive feast. Sometimes it was only the beauty and blessing of the place that was in him, other times he was absorbed by pain and fear.
There in Madidi landscapes and mindscapes raced past, and the visual and mental horizons were right in front of his face, cut further by his machete: strangler fig, fern, leaf-cutters, pigs, waterfall, bees, slender yellow snakes, blue-morpho butterflies, fear, inspiration and excess. Everything glittered in his immediate periphery.
As he descended from the mountains the trail began to fade, consumed by the thickening jungle. After three days of stone trails through cloud forest and highland jungle, his path vanished.
Chew your coca. Now move!
Cut, run, slah, duck, dart, snag, rip, sweat, drip, snap, ouch.
Somewhere along the way, a bug peed on him. The urine became a rash. The urine! Agapito’s elbow began to itch, and his waist, and his wrist. He sweated in the heat, and the itch worsened. He dove into a river and showered in a waterfall, cooling the rash.
Ghost Towns, God’s Movie, and a Good Life
Agapito followed no trail for three days straight and in that time stumbled through a half-dozen villages enclosed within the jungle. His rash worsened. He met people pressing sugar cane and picking bananas—he met people that did not know the name of their country—he met a man living in the branches of a ceiba tree and another living in the roots—he met one woman that loved living in the jungle and met a child who didn’t. He spent the majority of his days on a strict diet of coca leaves, coca tea and bananas. Agapito could not stop to eat because as soon as he would stop bees swarmed and stung until he moved again. When he set up his tent at night they stung until he could get his mosquito net set and dive inside.
His skin boiled and his eyes would still not blink yet he was composed. He developed streaks of white hair with each frightening turn he made yet he smiled. These were all signs of his new insight. His perception once moved up into a tree where he swung from branch to branch transformed into a child. At the same time he saw himself as an old man moving slowly through the same jungle. He began to realize that he was not simply exploring the jungle.
Agapito wondered about throwing himself into such desperate situations and the benefit of this behavior to humanity. He had a thought that humans and all other animate and inanimate objects and all their perceptions may be a sensory recorder for God as God attempts to know God. So all possibilities of the world must be explored by creation. This makes some people go to war, other become explorers, others simply fuck their whole lives, while still others despair their whole lives in melodramatic displays. All extremes of sensation and experience made God’s movie that allowed God to understand just what God was. Eyes provided the sight and other sensations such as bee stings, itches, loud noises, bitter tastes, heartbreak, and stubbed toes provide subtler sub-plots to this movie. This is the point of the billions of eyes and infinite nerve connections as well as the myriad macro and micro organisms and non-organisms that are manifest from the jungle-consciousness of God. As Agapito saw and felt these things of the Amazon he reasoned God was happy because now God knew that they existed and—since everything that exists (and doesn’t exist for that matter) is God—this new knowledge gave God a deeper understanding of God. As God grew to know God better, the World was fulfilling its purpose, which was good.
“This,” cried Agapito at the jaguar that was whistling to his South, “was why Geronimo had to fly!” He was almost right.
Agapito laughed his new laugh and a tremor was set in the ground in front of him. As this tremor moved forward he noticed a trail opening in front of him, and as he laughed more the trail was cut further. This continued until the forest opened into the mighty Pata Tuichi and Agapito saw his laugh create a wave that rippled out across the river. He stopped laughing and sat down on the bank and he knew this journey was not coming to an end. On the other side of the river began a road that he could walk to Apolo, from where a shuttle could carry him to La Paz.
He set north with a machete to the mysterious Apolobamba Mountains, abode of the acclaimed Kallawaya medicine men and the most remote corner of the High Andes. The Kallawaya spoke a language of their own, neither Quechua nor Aymara, and claimed the language to descend from the ancient Tiahuanaco of Lake Titicaca. They used this language solely for medicine which involved knowledge of over 1,000 healing herbs collected from the mountains from Argentina to Ecuador and down to the Amazon basin. They were known to wander thousands of miles on trails they had built carrying only a small herb-satchel.
Due to their proximity to the jungle, the Apolobamba Mountains are in a perpetual fog. Agapito walked into this foggy world from Curva, at the southern extent of the range, and did not emerge for 6 days. He walked on a Kallawaya trail that brought him over icy 5,000 meter passes, catching glimpses of native villages that emerged from the mist for an instant only to be engulfed the next. He met colorful figures on the trail, mules, llamas and children. They would emerge and then vanish back into the cloud. For six days figures, places, shapes, trees, rocks and entire mountains would emerge and disappear, like a microcosmic display of the macrocosmic dance between form and space, creation and destruction—manifestation from the white void and subsequent dissolution, a sort of womb.
Out of this womb, six days later, Agapito emerged on a gentle shoulder. Dusk was approaching and the fog around him began to lift. Slowly, larger forms appeared: first the trail stretching out in front, then the slope down the valley to his left, then a river below. As his eyes followed the river to the darkness creeping in from the East, he saw the Amazon basin of Madidi National Park stretching to the horizon: the Amazon born from a damp womb in the heights of The Apolobamba.
The Amazon: Happy with Life, Happy with Death
The transition from the Apolobamba to Madidi in Bolivia is the most biodiverse place in the world, period. It is one of the most beautiful and terrifying place in the world dancing between two opposing poles as all this world does. The extreme poles of the Amazon allow for myriad creations to move within the poles. Madidi is home to the most spectacular life forms and the most frightening methods and quantities of death: bountiful life demands a consumptive feast. Sometimes it was only the beauty and blessing of the place that was in him, other times he was absorbed by pain and fear.
There in Madidi landscapes and mindscapes raced past, and the visual and mental horizons were right in front of his face, cut further by his machete: strangler fig, fern, leaf-cutters, pigs, waterfall, bees, slender yellow snakes, blue-morpho butterflies, fear, inspiration and excess. Everything glittered in his immediate periphery.
As he descended from the mountains the trail began to fade, consumed by the thickening jungle. After three days of stone trails through cloud forest and highland jungle, his path vanished.
Chew your coca. Now move!
Cut, run, slah, duck, dart, snag, rip, sweat, drip, snap, ouch.
Somewhere along the way, a bug peed on him. The urine became a rash. The urine! Agapito’s elbow began to itch, and his waist, and his wrist. He sweated in the heat, and the itch worsened. He dove into a river and showered in a waterfall, cooling the rash.
Ghost Towns, God’s Movie, and a Good Life
Agapito followed no trail for three days straight and in that time stumbled through a half-dozen villages enclosed within the jungle. His rash worsened. He met people pressing sugar cane and picking bananas—he met people that did not know the name of their country—he met a man living in the branches of a ceiba tree and another living in the roots—he met one woman that loved living in the jungle and met a child who didn’t. He spent the majority of his days on a strict diet of coca leaves, coca tea and bananas. Agapito could not stop to eat because as soon as he would stop bees swarmed and stung until he moved again. When he set up his tent at night they stung until he could get his mosquito net set and dive inside.
His skin boiled and his eyes would still not blink yet he was composed. He developed streaks of white hair with each frightening turn he made yet he smiled. These were all signs of his new insight. His perception once moved up into a tree where he swung from branch to branch transformed into a child. At the same time he saw himself as an old man moving slowly through the same jungle. He began to realize that he was not simply exploring the jungle.
Agapito wondered about throwing himself into such desperate situations and the benefit of this behavior to humanity. He had a thought that humans and all other animate and inanimate objects and all their perceptions may be a sensory recorder for God as God attempts to know God. So all possibilities of the world must be explored by creation. This makes some people go to war, other become explorers, others simply fuck their whole lives, while still others despair their whole lives in melodramatic displays. All extremes of sensation and experience made God’s movie that allowed God to understand just what God was. Eyes provided the sight and other sensations such as bee stings, itches, loud noises, bitter tastes, heartbreak, and stubbed toes provide subtler sub-plots to this movie. This is the point of the billions of eyes and infinite nerve connections as well as the myriad macro and micro organisms and non-organisms that are manifest from the jungle-consciousness of God. As Agapito saw and felt these things of the Amazon he reasoned God was happy because now God knew that they existed and—since everything that exists (and doesn’t exist for that matter) is God—this new knowledge gave God a deeper understanding of God. As God grew to know God better, the World was fulfilling its purpose, which was good.
“This,” cried Agapito at the jaguar that was whistling to his South, “was why Geronimo had to fly!” He was almost right.
Agapito laughed his new laugh and a tremor was set in the ground in front of him. As this tremor moved forward he noticed a trail opening in front of him, and as he laughed more the trail was cut further. This continued until the forest opened into the mighty Pata Tuichi and Agapito saw his laugh create a wave that rippled out across the river. He stopped laughing and sat down on the bank and he knew this journey was not coming to an end. On the other side of the river began a road that he could walk to Apolo, from where a shuttle could carry him to La Paz.
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