Music From a Farther Room: Outside the Usual Spheres

I've given the same book away the last two times I've been in Colombia -- A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe. I brought a fancy German compass this time so I could do some of the assignments (see my awesome circles above, which don't conform to any assignment) and left it with my friend Yos, who has one of the copies of the book. This trip's copy went to Jaime Franco -- painter, philosopher, cinephile, rock climber -- and the stage mother I never had. These renunciations don't mean I've given up my quest -- I'm just going about universal construction with a slightly different approach.

Jaime Franco and me in Jaime's studio - Bogotá

I brought another book with me that was a gift from someone I met on my last Colombian escapade in December -- biologist, son of Yos, cosmic traveler, cultivator of cocoa and my personal translator and friend, Simón. I'd been introduced The Teachings of Don Juan in high school (I'm from Portland, after all) but found the accounted journeys into the nature of consciousness a little easier to relate to with a few more years of experience to boast.

My week on the northern Caribbean coast of Colombia was the perfect setting in which to reengage Mr. Castaneda and to ponder things like the difference between looking and seeing. I'm not really one to skimp on exploring the nature of reality, but I find Latin America to provide a more hospitable setting for this type of inquest. I've managed to find similarly inclined sorts of people and have found ways to communicate in various languages -- though I've also found that words are not only insufficient, but are ultimately kind of incidental once outside the confines of technology -- outside technology, where energetic, psychic and physical communication surpass anything that words could express. I've thought a lot lately about how curious it is that two people can be experiencing the 'same' thing at the same time -- and yet with nothing more but words to communicate their experiences, each is left to make all sorts of assumptions about how close his experience is to the other's. Where what we call 'connection' exists is where each person's sphere of understanding, belief and experience overlaps with the other's, and there is a shared common space. In geometry, this space is called the Vesica Pisces -- recently popularized by my friend David Regelin in his yoga stylings and teachings.

Simón

Matias, quite possibly one of the sweetest little biscuits whose company I've shared. . . an exotic Mexi-Colombian hybrid.

Yos and me

Santi and me in-between realities -- on the way to the airport to Bogotá

One of the many conversations I had with Jaime and my friend Lina in Bogotá -- and also in Suezca, where we went rock climbing and mountain biking -- was about how and why Latin Americans are so much more demonstrative and expressive of their feelings than North Americans and Europeans generally are. I think part of why I go to Latin America so much is to soak up all the love and affection -- however fleeting it may ultimately be. Jaime -- who is one of those people who remembers the most esoteric facts, dates, chronologies and other things I am terrible at remembering -- conceeded that the explanation for this divergence in behavior lies in our religious roots. The Protestants broke away from the Catholic church in order to escape the hierarchy that characterized it -- they wanted a more direct, more individualistic connection with god. Henry VIII also wanted a divorce so he could marry a new woman -- one who he ended up having killed, by the way, when she didn't produce a son for him. Bastard. . .

Anyway, the northerners/Protestants evolved in societies much more focused on individualism, much more 'vertical' in their orientation to god. Meanwhile, the Catholics burned a lot of incense and maintained more of a 'horizontal' relationship both to each other and to god -- thus forming societies built around groups, families, hugging, etc.

Otto and Jamie, my aforementioned stage mother and climbing teacher, coached me through the climb of 'La Abeja,' which I made on the second try. It was scary. I also learned how to rapel. Climbing involves a lot of trust -- much in the same way that getting on a motorcycle does, which I did recently in Bogotá with my friend Santiago. I find myself consciously letting go when I do these kinds of things, resigned to the idea that my moment will come whenever it does -- and I just hope I don't survive in some sort of vegetal state.

Santi in the offices of Cisne/Rhyuela in Bogotá. Production offices around the world are basically the same -- bikes, pool tables, espresso machines, tattoos, attitude.

I'm ending my late-winter/early spring 2012 journey with my friend Hugo here in Guanajuato, my home away from home. The inhabitants of Guanajuato and visitors from neighboring towns ooze through the streets like honey, taking their time and savoring the celebratory atmosphere -- buying tacos, small plastic toys, beaded jewels and other beautiful things in observance of Semana Santa, the week leading up to Easter. I'm imitating them -- since that's what humans are so good at doing -- learning to slow down, look around a little, be less New Yorky and more Latin American, wear bigger earrings and eat more tortillas. I'm moving outside my usual spheres, but also inhabiting the space created where two spheres overlap -- this space that is both empty and perfectly full, this space that is a portal to something new.