chapter 9 - seismic activity

In Arequipa Hamish and I had our first snarly moment of the trip. I’d been on edge all the way here, ever since I woke up from dozing on the bus to look out the window and see we were pitching along at high speed along a road, one side of which ribboned under a steep and rocky mountain scattered with enormous boulders holding back far too many others in a precarious manner, while on the other side was an equally steep plunge to the crashing sea. We swerved to avoid a boulder on the road, bounced through potholes the size of small cars and swung past dozens of little shrines, testaments to the lack of guardrails.

By the time we arrived in Arequipa I was a little shaky and the inside of my mouth was raw from having been chewed for the last several hours. I could see that it was a lovely city, but everywhere we walked all I could see was the effects of June’s earthquake, rubble and scaffolding. And that only reinforced the rubble I felt inside me.

“This posada is also full. They’re all full. Is there some reason they’re all full? Some festival? Some event? The time of year? Shouldn’t we have known about that before we came?

Of course what I meant to say was “Shouldn’t you have known about it before you brought me here?”, and Hamish knew it.

Hamish and I both know what’s missing between us, and have talked ourselves blue trying to figure out how to furnish it, but still I can’t prevent bringing it up at times, with fruitless repetition. So much time has been spent considering the process that we’ve omitted dealing with the results. I reexamine the empty wound, seasoning it, keeping it inflamed and painful for both of us. I behave like a shrew when really I want nothing more at such times as to hibernate in a dark hole.

We do find a place that is perfectly nice, perfectly clean, perfectly fine. I try to atone and make him dinner and we take pisco sours to the roof top to watch the stars, letting the sweet tang of the brandy and lemon concoction still the surface of internal waters. We talk about what to do tomorrow, and the next day. What we want to see, where we want to go, what we want to eat. The moon is waxing and we speculate as to where we will be when it is full. Even with the moon's light, the stars were in force. The Southern cross, the ‘jewel box’, Cetus, Centaurus, Canis Major, familiar constellations upside down and ending halfway through the sky, the Greeks who named them never having been this far south. It makes me feel drunk, giddy. Somewhere on the street a band is playing and Hamish clapped while I twirled madly, Martha Graham dancing on the rooftop.