Peru Fragements Part III: Feeling Small in Peru

In the summer of 2014 I taught a short term study abroad to Peru. Here are the fragments (Part I can be found here, Part II can be found here).

One thing I love about traveling is how your whole life feels longer. Because you are experiencing something new the whole day long, it feels like every day is at least 2 days long. It's like life-extension.

Our fifth day we headed deeper into the Sacred Valley, towards the fortress of Ollantaytambo.
Besides the trip to Machu Picchu, this was my favorite part of our travels. I was in the Sacred Valley for almost six days, and I never tired of the sights, sounds or flavors of Peru. Wow, that reads like a commercial.

Our first stop was at a llama petting zoo (Awana Kancha)  set up specifically for bus loads of tourists to interact with and to feed the llamas, alpacas and vicunas.  It was great because we were the only group there (and we were a small group at that!) it was also perfectly scheduled as we spent maybe an hour here. It didn't feel like we were wasting any more time than we needed to.

One of these llamas spit in the face of my student F, and our guide said it was an "Andean Baptism". All in all, if you've gone all the way to Peru, you should feed and pet some llamas.

After another 40 minutes we made another stop just to take photos. At every decent vista, there were women in traditional grab selling tourist junk. We never once got sick of getting off our bus to take photos. For the first time in my life, I was actually making frequent use of the panoramic feature on my camera.

This is F with his back turned (I figured I wouldn't have to ask permission if his face wasn't shown). F would often go right up to edges of high places and do silly stuff like this, do the Karate Kid pose or if he was feeling energetic, head-stand. If I was going along as a friend, whatever, no big deal. However, being "in charge" makes you a little more nervous about being responsible for someone who might plummet to their death doing something stupid. Some where along the trip F started calling me "Dad" as I was the only one encouraging people to be careful. Oh, and everyone had a family name in the group for F too - so I wasn't the only one.

Next up was the market at Chinchero. It was standard tourist Peruvian stuff.  However, the prices were better than in Lima and Puno and in some cases Cuzco, so I stocked up. Still, I think the best place for typical stuff was in Cuzo in the big in-door market.  However, if you ever find yourself in Chinchero, treat yourself to some homemade bread or empanadas right out of the stone stove. So good.....

On the road again, we stopped to watch some locals roasting some cuy. I was feeling sick when we had it the first time and as you will learn in coming posts, I missed my other opportunity later in the trip as well. I did have a bite though....it was okay...kinda like chicken.

After a few hours of shopping (got some jewelry for my love along with other items for the fam) we made our way to Urubamba.

There's really no reason to go to Urubamba except for a few restaurants set up specifically for tourists passing through. It's an ugly city with an amazing backdrop.  We went to a nice restaurant with a buffet lunch surrounded by beautiful landscaping and gardens. Like a little piece of paradise in an industrialized zone.  Of course there was cliché live Peruvian music (El Condor Pasa MUST DIE....whenever we heard the song, everyone would look me and start laughing as they knew of my distaste for the song). The food was solid and the buffet allowed me to try things like alpaca (very much a cross between beef and a pork chop) that I hadn't had a chance up until this point.

Then, it was on to our final destination, Ollantaytambo. Ollantaytambo was one of the few places where the Incans defeated the Spanish.  The main attraction is a great (unfinished) Sun temple even though people mistake this structure for a fortress. This was our second taste of Incan ruins and it was pure sweetness. I'm a tactile person, so touching the actual rocks was an experience all on its own.  





The first leg up is a little challenging, depending on how in or out of shape you are because of the elevation. However, with the right pacing it's no biggie. Plus at each turn you can have a rest and turn around to appreciate the view (seen below).  

This was from about half way up, looking into town.  Ollantaytambo is a tiny little town. What you see is basically the whole thing.  You can see the trails to Pinkuylluna on the mountain on the left (more on that in another post).
 

This was at the top looking on the "back" side - away from town.  Only a little bit of green as it was winter in June in Peru. Next time I come back, I would love to take my wife in the "Summer" time and see everything with more color!
 

Better view of Pinkuylluna's ruins (center of picture). As I was looking over at the ruins (I had no idea what they were called or what I was looking at), I could see people hiking up the trail. They looked like little ants from where we were and I was jealous. As great as the temple was, they seemed isolated and it seemed like a more authentic experience than what I was having up until this point in the trip.  Little did I know I would be in their position the very next day.



Walking away from the "temple" to exit a different staircase down.  

My fellow professor and I decided to race down this staircase. It was totally stupid but fun. Oh yeah, I won. Incidentally, that's our guide on the left at bottom of the staircase.

After our visit it was time for us to head back to our hotel in Urubamba (about 30 minutes away). Our hotel was a former monastery and still has a church on site (although I don't think it's open to the public). It's quite beautiful (although after checking online - not that cheap either).

San Agustin Hotel, Urubamba

Urubamba really has little to no amenities after dark so that meant that we were eating at the hotel's restaurant. The food was okay but the restaurant itself was beautiful. This was a night where the wine was flowing just a little more than usual (although those under 21 didn't have a drop). Our meal was winding down but we wanted to continue the conversation.

I would like to think it was my idea but truthfully, I don't remember who came up with the idea first. We decided to ask if we could start a little campfire out behind the hotel so we could view the stars. It was a cold and clear night, perfect for star gazing. Even better we were in an area not inundated with light pollution.  They said we could star a campfire and showed what we could use for fuel (corn husks). We asked if we could take the last of our wine bottle and glasses and they also said yes by telling C that "this was our hotel". Wow.

Once we got to the back and had our fire up and going, we noticed that the hotel had very bright lighting for the back sidewalks, so we decided to ask if they could be shut off. Then it was show time for the universe. Surrounded by the Andes we sat and talked and above the mountains, the jaw dropping beauty of the Milky Way.

No, of course this isn't mine. All my photos looked like crap on every setting I could try.

For the first time in my memory that I could actually see the Milky Way in its full glory, as it was meant to be seen. Wine, a campfire and the most beautiful starry night I had ever seen. The only way to make this better had been if my wife had been with me.

This was one of those moments where you want time to stop. 

I've always loved looking up at the stars but in the big city  I've been reduced to staring at about a hundred stars (which on a clear night are still quite lovely).  Making matters worse, every time we go camping it's cloudy and I can't see any stars. I couldn't stop staring up at the countless stars about my head and then it hit me.

This night sky helps explain why the Andean people of  today and yesterday are so spiritual. It's was staring right at me. Being surrounded by this would create wonder and awe in your daily life. Wonder and awe are in many ways prerequisites for feeling "spiritual". Surrounded by the mountains and stars make you constantly aware of your own insignificance. Your smallness was made explicitly clear everywhere you looked.  I have a theory about this. If we are reminded of our place in the universe, it creates awe and fosters a sense of humility that we need to embrace more often. It was a wonderful night but there were more wonderful adventures to come....Part IV coming soon....

Fun With My Scanner: Casper: Grown Up

Working on a update of fragments. Also thinking about finishing up my Peru trip blogs (just thinking about it though, so don't get too excited).

In the meantime, I was scanning some personal ephemera and documents and came across this little gem. It dates from 1996 or 1997. I drew this picture in church of all places and passed it to my friend nearby who wrote the note at the top of the page.  For those scoring at home, Casper is sporting a "666" on his forehead and his t-shirt reads "Pervert".

Now, on the surface, it's just a silly little drawing.  Ok, it's stupid, but I was 19 or 20, ya know.

What turned this from a throw-away to a keepsake is who wrote back to me. 

It was from my friend, Mikey who passed away a few years after this was written. Isn't it funny how something so meaningless can turn into a treasure? I don't have many notes from Mikey so everything I have from her is precious to me.  A simply piece of paper that was seemingly destined for the trash but somehow rescued and now it "lives" on a bit longer than expected.

This brings me to the idea of changefulness. Buddhists would call it maya; that is, everything is an illusion. Most especially time and the temporary things we fill it with. I know this all too well. Everything is ephemeral, nothing is permanent.  And that's another one of those facts about the universe I am still struggling to understand and cope with. 

Comparatively speaking from the cosmological scale, I am a sentient piece of dust on a slightly larger dust ball floating in this massive soup of galaxies.  Everything we come in contact with today or tomorrow will cease to exist. Including this world and the star it orbits. I understand that's a long way off but still, major bummer.

I'm not Buddhist, but I get the whole non-attachment thing. I get it so well, I don't want to embrace it. I don't want to get rid of my attachments (clinging or non-clinging, even if it does create suffering).  I follow a Vicktor Frankel/Camus/Agnostic-Theist, eventually Christian position on the universe (at least I am trying) so, I have to make due with what I am and what I do have (even if it is temporary).

 In the meantime,  I hold onto my silly little things, treasuring my ephemeral existence surrounded by temporary objects, smiling back on all the eventually forgotten memories. Hey, at least it will get you a cheap laugh from time to time.

Stories from Before the Big Bang.....

The other night I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking of the cosmological argument for God’s existence and the Big Bang.  Yes, these sorts of things keep me up at night from time to time as well as thinking about making an excel spreadsheet of my comics collection and fantasizing about quitting my job and doing something crazy like moving my family to the other side of the globe.   

 I'm a big fan of the whole school of thought, "we are a way for the universe to know itself". Sounds cool, ya know? Really without us or another sentient, conscious beings, the universe is a utterly pointless and meaningless affair.

Anyway, if you’re unfamiliar with the cosmological argument, here is one version:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause.
2. The Universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the Universe had a cause.

Most believers point to the “cause” being God – although this itself is a leap of logic and faith.  The obvious weakness to this next leap is that if God started the universe and everything has a cause (per premise #1), then where did your “eternal” God come from?  It starts the whole argument over again. 

So this got me thinking what came about before the start of the universe?

Oh, that's clever.

I am reasonably sure I have thought about this before, but this particular evening, the idea stuck around in my head. I should state that I am way out of my depth here. Basically, my knowledge of the cosmos and philosophy can be fit into the palm of very small child. Maybe this is why I find it so fascinating because everything I read, I learn something.  Nonetheless, I will carry on because that’s what bloggers do (I  guess). 

I recently finished reading Klosterman’s Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs (eh, it's alright) and in one section he rails against probability, stating that everything is 50/50. Either something is going to happen or it’s not.  Either it is or is not true, etc. etc. . Of course if you play with this idea enough it gets absurd:  Unicorns: 50/50, UFO’s: 50/50, Noah’s Ark: 50/50,  and so on and so forth. 

Even still, there is certain logic to it.  I am working under two assumptions here and they are basically clarifying the positions above:

1. We know the universe began
2. Something can’t come from nothing

If we are discussing the prehistory universe (and apparently there are whole books on this subject) then we find ourselves, whatever our position to be, in theoretical conjecture.  Is everything at this point 50/50? Maybe there are no odds at this point, just ideas that are variously silly, educated, absurd, realistic, obvious and troubling. I guess what I am trying to say is that something caused the universe into being. It was either on purpose or a happy accident.

So if it wasn’t God behind creation, what was it? Again, we are in theory, and this idea might be debunked or outdated, but, work with me people! Here’s one theory I found: 
 

“…the new view argues that our universe was created when two parallel "membranes" collided cataclysmically after evolving slowly in five-dimensional space over an exceedingly long period of time. These membranes, or "branes" as theorists call them, would have floated like sheets of paper through a fifth dimension that even scientists admit they find hard to picture intuitively..”

Sounds good.... but wait - where did the “branes” in the fifth dimension come from?  A common phrase I kept  reading on the web, was "asking what came before the Big Bang is like asking what is north of the North pole".  It was a common discussion point among atheists. Here's an interview with atheist Richard Dawkins by fundamentalist Hugh Hewitt:

HH: I’m talking about the whole cosmos. Where did that come from, 13 billion years ago?

RD: It came from the big bang, which is not a complex process. It’s a simple process.

HH: And what preceded the big bang?


RD: Well, physicists won’t answer that question. They will say that time itself began in the big bang, and so the question what preceded it is illegitimate.


HH: What do you think?


RD: I’m not enough of a physicist to understand what I’m saying, but I have to say that that’s what physicists say.


HH: So when you consider before the big bang, what does Richard Dawkins think was there?


RD: I don’t consider the question, because I recognize that it’s an intuitively appealing question. I recognize that I, along with everybody else, wants to ask that question. Then I talk to physicists who say you can no more ask what came before the big bang than you can ask what’s north of the North Pole.

Ironically, whether you go with the "God" answer or the "nothing" answer, they each share similarities in that the ultimate answer is of what was before the Big Bang is...well...don't ask, because the question itself can't be asked. When I asked a philosopher (who is a few offices down from me) about what happened before the Big Bang,  he noted that people don't like to hear that this question is basically unanswerable. Even if that really is the case after all.  Still, something bothers me about saying there was nothing (or "branes") that by sheer nature did something. 

It is likely that I am missing something at this point (either from philosophy or cosmology). Maybe the more refined question is to ask why is there something rather than nothing to begin with? 

From my perspective, both of these creation accounts are stories we tell ourselves.  We consume stories in film, television, in novels and in art. We repeat stories told in song and in our sacred books. It's like our brains can't accept anything without a definite start (and end?)  We're the story-telling animal. Personally, one's belief of disbelief shouldn't be centered on one argument alone so I take this whole exercise with a grain of salt. All that being said, at least tonight, I'll sleep a little better about the story I've adopted for my own.  
 

"We are Here" or How to Defeat the Total Perspective Vortex

My youngest daughter loves the movie, Horton Hears a Who.

If you are going to sit through a kid's movie over a hundred times, it holds up pretty well and believe me, there are much worse things to sit through than this film. One afternoon on the 132nd viewing, the film's theme of being a minuscule person in a giant, unfathomable universe struck a nerve.

Please note 132 is a vague estimate, there was a period of time during nebulizer treatments that we watched portions of "Orton and Jojo" at least three times a day. My two year old loves Jojo, the misanthropic, non-speaking,Who most of all. Totally fits her personality....

The film deals with the heroism of Horton, who trusts in his big ears and the fact that "a person's a person no matter how small". However, another strand of the film is how the Mayor of Whoville accepts his infinite smallness in the universe. This is much more fleshed out than in the book, "fleshed out", as in the character doesn't exist in the book. I could only think of the great scene from Carl Sagan's "Cosmos". It's amazing, so, you know, watch it.

If you're too lazy to watch (shame on you) let me briefly summarize. Looking back on earth from a satellite thousands of miles away, the earth is only a pale blue dot. That's it. All that we've believed in, accomplished and fought and died for happened on a fraction of a pixel in the universe. The pale blue dot is about accepting the earth's rightful place in the universe - a tiny, unknown planet. It should humble us all and remind us that for all our pomp, we are really a primitive and disconnected race. It should in, Sagan's words, inspire us to "deal with each other more kindly and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot".

The fact is, we are the Whos.

We live in denial of this, almost as well as the Whos do - when Horton flaps his ears over Whoville, over and over again, the Whos just take their sunglasses on and off to adjust to the insanity.

"Nothing ever bad happened in Whoville, never has, and never will" -- as the lead on the Whoville city council says. We take our sunglasses on and off - we tell ourselves the narratives until they fit us like warm comfortable sweaters. Most of all these narratives (nationalist and consumer identities, religions, etc.) tell us we are important. We are the center of the universe.

yeah, i know it's only the world revolving around "me" but it's late and i'm tired...just go with it.

Let me stop here. For long-time readers (ha ha ha ha), you may or may not know that I consider my self a Christian. So these words you might find confusing, troubling, or crazy.

One day I might find the willpower or time to outline my exact theology, but until that unlikely day, just take my word on it - it's complicated. For now, it will be suffice to say I believe God created a universe that is (from my limited human viewpoint) ultimately unknowable. As far as the human mind can conceptualize, the universe is bordering on eternal. If God made the universe, then, we must be small.

In Douglas Adam's excellent The Restaurant at the End of the Universe a torture device called the Total Perspective Vortex, "annihilates you by showing you just how infinitesimally small you are compared to the Universe".

Books 1 and 2 are outstanding and then the series just kinda goes down from there with each successive book.  I don't think I finished the last one. Although if I taught an absurdist, existential literature course, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy would be on the reading list.


I don't think this smallness is necessarily inherently good or bad. In fact, the recognition that we are small is critical to letting go of our self-inflated importance and seeking a more authentic existence. Have you ever looked up at the stars at night and had the feeling of being inconsequential? The universe has created awe in theists and non-theists alike although with the size of the universe provoking (of course) different response and conclusions.

"What could define God [is a conception of divinity] as the embodiment of the laws of nature. However, this is not what most people would think of that God," Hawking told Sawyer. "They made a human-like being with whom one can have a personal relationship. When you look at the vast size of the universe and how insignificant an accidental human life is in it, that seems most impossible." -  Stephen Hawking (in a recent interview)


Because I do believe, I think our smallness shows us how special we are. At worst, we find ourselves alone in a vast, cold, life-less universe. Even in the best-case scenario, the universe is populated with islands of life surrounded by an almost unimaginable, life-less ocean. There is no doubt about it, humanity does seem to have a special place in the universe by virtue of being alive.

Ok, as you can tell I am not one of those "the universe is teeming with life' people. I could be wrong - but even if there is intelligent life, even lots of it - we still are millions, trillions of light years apart. It would be like telling you that you have a long lost sibling somewhere in the world but we don't know anything about that sibling. So, great you have a sibling but no way of knowing or communicating with he or she nor any idea where they might be in the world....So, so what?

Anyway, back to the film. At first, the mayor lives in denial of the entire possibility (thinking himself mentally unstable).... but eventually, he does accept his insignificance in the universe. He begins to trust a giant elephant in the sky for Whoville's very salvation. Don't confuse the mayor as one of Kierkegaard's "knights of faith" - his faith is based on verifiable evidence. Nonetheless, accepting his place in the universe means he must trust something above himself. Eventually, we all have to let go of something, and ultimately, I think it all ends up being about control.

Once we have accepted our role, and relinquished our ideas of self-importance we can move on to figuring out how best life should be lived. Now that I know I am no longer the center of the universe, what is my role? I answer that question by embracing the smallness - trying to integrate my role as a servant in my life. I struggle with this - but as I continue to surrender self to God every day a little more, I know my role must be one of helping and putting others first.

As the movie crescendo's the Whos must rally together and make enough noise so others hear them (and not get dropped into a boiling pot of oil). They shout "We are Here!" over and over - until they are heard.  I imagine that's what we are all trying to do on a metaphoric level every day.

"We Are Here!"; indeed.