As Agapito left Ka’ata in the Apolobamba this time it felt like it could be the last time. He chipped the dirt from under his nails, peeled the sunscreen off his face and, stained green, he pulled the last coca stem from between his teeth. He shook the grain husks from his hair and noticed he smelled like dank donkey fur, powdered with adobe. His eyebrows furled a bit more than
when he arrived and his skin was one crispy layer thicker. Looking down on Medicine Valley from the last pass before heading down to Charazani and the bus back to La Paz he had a last look at the Apolobamba Mountains and the terraces that drop from the glaciers like generational striations from the corn down by the river to the fava beans and then the potatoes at the top. He then realized that there really is no last time here.
Ka’ata moves with him as the burden and blessing of human existence. It is the dirt into which the holy breath has blown and brought about creation. Here is the tierra and the alma, the son and the holy ghost. This place can never leave because it is the very mesh in which we live. Each breath in Ka’ata is filled with the fundamental impulse to cut into the earth and allow her, Pachamama, to nourish while also granting that she devours just as much as she gives, no more and no less. It is the body before the mind or the mind giving way to the body, to being.
Agapito learned that donkeys carry a cross on its back, literally. Have a look, every donkey has a cross etched into the ratty matted coat on its back. Similarly, this valley carries the Christian cross on top of its pre-colonial cosmology just as the pre-Columbian Andean Cross has been altered to that of the crucifixion in most parts of the Andes. Here in Ka’ata the herding Kallawaya woman wraps a traditional weaving around her head and a felt hat over that while her healer husband carries a colorful pouch of medicinal herbs over his shoulder. Demons, achachilas and ordinary animals are woven into the fabric that they fold around the child as they harvest potatoes at the start of the Bolivian winter.
Ka’ata is both beautiful and tragic, the same as the world. The infant wrapped in the intricate weaving is more likely to die soon here than anywhere else on the continent. The communal enthusiasm that the village has for tilling, planting and harvesting each year is frequently met with the tragedy of insufficient harvest; and so growth, life and death are all woven into the collective memory as well as the perceptions of the present. Visiting Ka’ata is a reminder of this and a reminder that this reality has infused all creation. It is impossible to shake this fateful reality and for this there is no leaving Ka’ata.
when he arrived and his skin was one crispy layer thicker. Looking down on Medicine Valley from the last pass before heading down to Charazani and the bus back to La Paz he had a last look at the Apolobamba Mountains and the terraces that drop from the glaciers like generational striations from the corn down by the river to the fava beans and then the potatoes at the top. He then realized that there really is no last time here.Ka’ata moves with him as the burden and blessing of human existence. It is the dirt into which the holy breath has blown and brought about creation. Here is the tierra and the alma, the son and the holy ghost. This place can never leave because it is the very mesh in which we live. Each breath in Ka’ata is filled with the fundamental impulse to cut into the earth and allow her, Pachamama, to nourish while also granting that she devours just as much as she gives, no more and no less. It is the body before the mind or the mind giving way to the body, to being.
Agapito learned that donkeys carry a cross on its back, literally. Have a look, every donkey has a cross etched into the ratty matted coat on its back. Similarly, this valley carries the Christian cross on top of its pre-colonial cosmology just as the pre-Columbian Andean Cross has been altered to that of the crucifixion in most parts of the Andes. Here in Ka’ata the herding Kallawaya woman wraps a traditional weaving around her head and a felt hat over that while her healer husband carries a colorful pouch of medicinal herbs over his shoulder. Demons, achachilas and ordinary animals are woven into the fabric that they fold around the child as they harvest potatoes at the start of the Bolivian winter.Ka’ata is both beautiful and tragic, the same as the world. The infant wrapped in the intricate weaving is more likely to die soon here than anywhere else on the continent. The communal enthusiasm that the village has for tilling, planting and harvesting each year is frequently met with the tragedy of insufficient harvest; and so growth, life and death are all woven into the collective memory as well as the perceptions of the present. Visiting Ka’ata is a reminder of this and a reminder that this reality has infused all creation. It is impossible to shake this fateful reality and for this there is no leaving Ka’ata.
No comments:
Post a Comment