at last the desert

Leaving Lima, you can already see the dunes, so i began to feel like i was getting there. There was a house being eaten by the dunes. In Huacachina, i saw the open bled for the first time. The hostel manager tells me it goes for 40 Km. Even though this place was really touristy, it was a lot of fun going through the dunes, mostly because the driver was very funny (but Canoa Quebrada’s ride is a lot more wild).

But then i came to Nasca. And here… Well, here they don’t even have slanted rooftops. I love it. I do.

I do not remember most of it. There was a moment i
had the distinct sensation that my brains “remember” function was
turned on, like it was a switch, like “from now on, you can remember”.
It all began when the power lines began to look really, really
beautyful. And after that, i remember closed-eye images, and i
remember when the open-eyed world seemed to have been photoshoped –
though those were really good filters. The upper-right corner of the
door resembled very much a dragon. And there was all those colourful
intricate patterns. After the patterns, i felt like there was a
opening. And there was a very distinct sensation of time. Maybe i
slept most of it, i do not know, but i know that sleeping and waking
seem like inadequate words. Mostly, it all was an inside trip. And finally, when things were coming back to normal, the sun was rising and i went to the roof and saw it come from behind the mountains — but it was distinctly purple.

Today i walked my way to the aqueducts, they are called Cantilloq Aqueducts. They are nice, but the people around it, that use it, they do not seem to guess too much what the ducts are all about. Maybe if you can’t grow no more you just return to being bacteria, you just return to the previous fixed level. And the city, as much as i love it, is just bad juju. It seemed like that when i could see.

What about the lines? They are beautyful. But they are much more simple than people want to make them. There is no alien, there is no deep connection. It probably is a religious thing, but not on a contemporary sense. We should probably just think of it as the scribbles of some people that enjoyed drawing in the sand of the desert.

we are borg!

Yesterday, talking to Sarah Baker, i was led to saying that we humans are not computers, something in which i mostly believe. But i also think that, in another sense, we are not more than computers: we are physical systems, just as computers are.

war and our world

I’ve today went to the Museo de la Nacion in Lima, Peru. (Have i forgotten telling you i’m in Peru? Well, i had the best reason ever!) Anyway, the visit is awesome, in my forthcoming post about how maths is silly there will be a photo of me there with a quipu. Lots of Precolombino things there, but what was completely breathtaking was the exhibit about Terrorism.

As it turns out, Terrorism in Peru is the word for civil war, or more precisely to a kind of civil war that developed here in the 80s and 90s. Two left-oriented groups, the Sendero Luminoso and the MRTA created a lot of unrest and violence. I do not know nearly enough about such events to comment about anything, but i have a few musings about violence, war, and our lives.

All about P

I’ll not spell out her name, just to avoid unhappy googling. But when i was writing about her in my travel diary the radio started playing “Unbelievable”, for xs sake!!!

For anyone still out of context: i met a girl, we were together for a very brief moment, but it was one of those Goreki moments.