Café Z
Lima Peru

Car horns
Through the sea of exhaust
There is discomfort in discovery
I am naked by the virtue of the passport I carry
They see dollars signs in place of my blue eyes
I am a privileged figment of my own judgment
I am choking on my own judgment in the clouds of burning gasoline

Who the hell am I?
I am in that uncomfortable abyss that opens when you choose to see with other eyes.

There is so much to be learned in this space. It’s discovery. It’s what DiscoverHope is.

We can walk paths we’ve always known and walked many times— the foliage and the landscape are familiar. When you come to the end of that path, you confront the enormous cliff in front of you. It has an amazing vista. Your familiarity fades. You breathe in the incoming wind, it blows a thousand stories about people on their own treks. there is something genuinely incredible about every story being so different and so valuable in its own way. The vista below in this place is full of electric green—everything you see has experiences of its own.

You look back from this vista. You know the way back. There is an unspeakable melancholy and a wordless excitement. There is a death opportunity for part of you with a promise of a birth. But it goes against reason and comfort.

To discover is to be enthusiastic about the impending birth regardless of the courage it will take. “enthusiasm” has Greek roots meaning “a god within.” How awesome to consult that god within and to summon the courage to leap into that new abyss, trusting-knowing-living-awake. Sure, you may be scared, but fear can be replaced by the Light that comes with trusting that you want to live awake.

This is discovery—meeting yourself on a new path with no trail blazed, whatever that is. It may be the job you’ve always wanted, the art you want to create, the decision to be a parent, buying a new home, forgiving someone, creating a passion and enacting an intention.

In this new place you meet yourself again. You are different and changed. This ripple goes infinitely into the Universe. It changes who you once were, who you are, and who you will become in that decision. You begin with new opportunity. This is hope—a chance to create a new vision for yourself.

In all of this there may be discomfort. This wrung in my stomach. There is a brand new path. What is ahead is not seen. I know there is confidence in trusting, to walk with Light and accept the discovery. Here we see how standing for a vision, no matter how small or large it seems, can change the world in ways we may see or not see. Knowing is great enough.

Mzm 4-24-07 Miraflores Lima

 

across the concrete divide

the sell desperately.

i am freshly showered.

i am watched while i watch

the rhythm of the day passes with a 20-person street band

and the bells of bread carts

everyone is waiting

waiting for something

maybe something better.

or maybe i'm the only unsettled one

they can sit on concrete slabs for hours

watching

yet aren't we always seeking?

i want simplicity

they want opportunity

we all want some opening for joy

the woman with half her face covered in mold wants it

the wrinkled hunchback man pushing a cart with 200 oranges wants it

and me, fresh and clean, i want it.

from our unsettled spaces in the human story

we each do what we know

waiting to open new magical golden doors

across the concrete divide

the door opens

and i walk thru.

MZM 4-29-07

 

barbie dreams

the barbie brings dreams to the dusty roads

with coins in her eyes

can she fill their outstretched hands?

they wonder about her World

a world where they work

for things

things they have no time to use

because they work

for more things

for this Dream.

the perfume of burning wood envelops us

they sit on the sun burnt earth

a woman with a bent back of plants

lays her shawl down for me

this barbie can't get soot in her nails

can't scald her milky skin with equator sun 

can't work all day for a bag of rice and potatoes

they protect this barbie dream

so it remains whole and possible.

they watch me

with beautiful brown hues swimming in their eyes

their children touch my hair

and marvel to understand blue eyes

we sit in a circle of simplicity

a respite of friendship and appreciation

drinking the remnants of water soaked coffee beans

they ask if I can bring the Dream

and I ache

knowing that in them I see the Dream.

MZM 5/17/2007 Cajamarca Peru

 

guineales

thoughts of who i am

intertwined in the wrinkled lines

and hardened weathered working hands

that accepted out of necessity

of hungry bellies and hard hot sun

the smell of wood smoking against the rusty pot

the sound of rain against corrugated tin roof

nieta running barefoot in the mud

sweet sweat of the day rising off the soil

you squint by the rising fire

sad eyes glazed with contented acceptance

of the being here.

of the now.

of the work to do.

of the work you'll do.

          your heart is so strong

you will not falter, sacred mother.

in the wrinkled lines

i see you seeing me

i see your living life force so utterly and completely

and i am humbled in the falling of incessant rain.

                                                MZM   6-6-06

 

carretera

            6-22-06

on the tired roadside

old school bus leads us

to the heat cracked streets of Patulul

hazy sun rises over sugarcane

gears shift to the static of Reggaeton

the sleepy humid mist among us

choked by lingering exhaust

sombrero man flosses his silver-lined teeth with a rubberband

the scent of shampoo and breakfast fires

dodging bony wayside dogs

bucket of milk spilling from burning breaks

we pass impatiently around blind corners

yet the decal assures me that "Dios es nuestra guia"

and so my soul rests easily among the fields of manure

we all stare forward on the carretera

to where it is we go

to the place that we Are.

 

panabaj
6-10-06

thirty-two revolutions around the sun and now i stand on the bumper of a truck with the morning air and smog rising to meet my lips as we enter Panabaj the soft land is covered is volcanic black dirt and i set foot on the scarred ruins of bodies buried somewhere deep in this mud that ravaged the homes and people.  it is morning and the wet clouds linger over what once once the top of volcano San Lucas i can now see the scars of broken earth that have tumbled into Panabaj.  we walk into the pueblo of numbered canvas shelters and tin roofs, a community of rows printed proudly with our slogan, "USAID, From the American People" perhaps so they will remember us or perhaps the cameras of the world with capture our kindness.  now babies are crying and the beans are soaking over all the fires smoke is asphyxiating the insides of the canvas covered dirt every child is playing amidst the mud with marbles and balls and a broken old toy or two and there is the sound of absolute innocent joy over the barren land and over the endless flies in the waste cans there is laughter and a warm "hola" from every direction from every single child there is warmth and life among these fires and singing that i hear about being in God's hands and a soccer game is played where houses once lived and games are played around the rows of shared outhouses and shower boxes.  i am invited in and my heart is heavy while Catarina feeds her child from her breast and i have privy to every single thing the own and have saved for their family of ten in this canvas box and the little girl brings me a picture of Jesus and lays it in my hands and i want to go and i want to stay in this push and pull and sea of flies and the little baby smiles at me with the purest of eyes and i listen and look and i feel the kindest love and their bonding soaring above and beyond all those Things, those things, and they GIVE me all this and i give each child a penny, From the American People, and they skip away in contented laughter to show their friends...

magic 

When someone says something, we give birth to it for a reason. Upon beginning this piece of musing, I am not yet clear of the intention. When I communicate I always ask, what is my intention? The one thing I do know is I wish to share the Love it is born out of, and so in doing so, I know that it is righteous in its intent. This is a Truth, and it's from my heart, both full and breaking at other times. There are many things I do not understand here in Peru. I don't understand why I live in a town where there is 80 percent poverty, with the richest goldmine in the world reaping gold only miles from here, and only 6 percent of these revenues returning to this city. I feel sometimes there is so little I can do for people. I want to do more. I sometimes feel selfish, caught up in my own worry and concern to gather together 300 dollars a month to live here, which is a challenge when everyone has the manana attitude toward life. I feel selfish for worrying. I feel annoyed sometimes thinking about the money I wasted in the USA once upon a time that I could have used now. I feel sad when I think of the grievances of those who are already blind with things already. I feel happy when I see a woman take the money from the project, the hope in her eyes and yet still the pain of worry that never ends. You can find me here in Peru with a smile, a peace, a concern, and a sadness related to all the sketches of simplicity and suffering that I see. I want you to know that I dont group any of us in the have or have-nots, this is not a piece of writing to put anyone in any group, or make anyone feel apologetic, for to me at the beginning and end we are all in the same group of the Human Be-ing. I just want to engage in some thought-sharing, we have so much to give and teach one another, so this is also one of the dialogic moments. I probably need it for some sense-making. Sometimes you need a little of what you know makes sense. Sure I don't understand silly little things and never will, and that is the most wonderful stuff of life I suppose. To Love when there is complete misunderstanding. I think that souls are born into this Life for a reason. I often wonder in the morning sun what my agreements were about, why did I come here and for what purpose? I can' tell you how bad I wish I knew those answers. Sometimes I feel like I am just a breath away from understanding all the world's mysteries, yet I cannot know what they are. I wonder sometimes what I am doing here, in Northern Peru in this small city full of present and poor people, wearing the same clothes basically everyday and trying to figure out different food combinations with the vegetables I buy from the market. I often remind myself of the gift of my bed and food when things get me down.

Sometimes I walk out of my door and I forget I have to change languages. Sometimes I forget to use boiled water to rinse my mouth. Sometimes when the dogs bark and random fireworks go off during sleeping hours I wonder about Peruvians acceptance of noise. Sometimes sometimes sometimes so many sometimes my mind wanders. When I forget about the Present, that makes me my own enemy more quickly than anything. The ego wanders and tells me what I could be doing, should be doing with my life, and the hole can become deep. But when we are in the quiet, spend time alone, away from so much of what we know, the noise, the schedules, the way life moves, there is time. Time. Time to get to know what I call God, Spirit, Universe. I am not sure you believe in it, and what your name for it is. But the Time and the Space are made for us to communicate with WHAT IS. This is when you learn to Trust. If I listened to my ego tapping on my back, I would have left here a long time ago. But I sure have had some deep-ass conversations with the Power that resides in this Life. When we are quieted, we have to learn to trust. To be in awe. To be humble. To be in Love and not hang with fear in its many faces. Oh dont let me convince you that I never hang with fear. There are many days I feel it ripping through me for many reasons. The Trust is in finding your way back to where Love resides. I suppose that is one intention for this sharing, you who I give these words to the ones that I love, that love me. You help bring me back to that greatest gift. So, I have asked myself many times over what I can do, what more I can do to help the people here? There are many ways I am sure I am giving to them. I suppose what I lose sight of at times is the fact that when God gets us alone, we are there to help ourselves as well. We must listen. We must ask. So I guess I have figured out I am helping myself just as much as I am helping anyone. This is a search for authentic power. Yet my ego struggles daily with artificial power. I wonder about being 31 and if I should be having a good paying job with a check and bills and goodies and cars and mortgages. That's what we learn to think power is and don't get me wrong, I think about it that way as well from time to time. BUT I KNOW IT IS NOT. When it all falls away, when our body ceases or we feel crisis in our lives, well we KNOW what we pray for. We don't ask for help in acquiring material things. We ask for those we Love to be healthy, happy, alive. I wonder why we choose the path of crisis as our way to learn things deeply. It seems it is the only thing that is guaranteed to make us stop, put our things aside, and ask for help. What is meant that crisis be so central to our lives? For so many, the awakening of themselves has had to come through loss, collapse, death. These losses are part of being human, of course. But we can choose to learn through wisdom as well, not only crisis. What I mean to say is that where I am at, you are at, we are at, is a perfect place. There is so much to learn in the places we have chosen for ourselves. We can choose to learn thru authentic power. The meaning of life is in what we GIVE. We come with nothing and we leave with nothing. Purpose is always in giving. To life is to see awe in everyday. I tell you the truth in saying there are many moments I hurt here. There are moments I don't understand a thing, I feel lonely, I wonder who I am helping...and yet I know it is this time to ask these questions that encourages me to grow. It is my desire to share them that is real. I do not question where anyone is, what they have and don't have, we all know what goes on in our own lives. It is not for me to judge. We can choose to live through authentic power by experiencing this giving. I have learned here to give even when I am freaked out by doing it. To release energy out into the world, and to trust that a space has been made then to receive other energy, without expectations of what that energy looks like. Today I walked home from yet another class that had been cancelled by my students. This meant another week without money. I left with such peace in my heart. No amount of anger or fear at these people would bring money into my pocket. Instead I breathed in the dusk air. I watched people doing their things; little children who have to sell 3 cent candies on the street all night long to eat and go to school in the morning, a woman helping her mother up from the grass hand-in-hand as they sat talking; the man preparing his hamburger stand; gray clouds covering the mountaintops like white feathers. All of these moments are the right ones for my life. The teacher is everywhere. Sometimes it looks different than we may think, but when we are ready to see it, it is everywhere. We have chosen the circumstances that surround our lives, and as such there are a myriad of understandings right before us to integrate into what we want to become, or what we don't want to become. The main thing is to become aware of what we have chosen and what there is to learn from it. I know that no matter how painful a day of mine may become, I have never been so humbled and thankful for simple things in my life. Sure I miss little things about the Home that I know, sure there are things I wish I had.but it is the people I know and love, the conversations, what they teach me and allow themselves to receive from me, this is what I miss about those I know the most. And everywhere I look, it is also possible to find and create here. The Universe is on purpose. We are on purpose. The limitations only come in what we choose to disbelieve about ourselves. Believe that you are your own miracle worker. It's all waiting there. I know the intention of this writing, just to tell you that: I believe in your ability to create magic in your own lives.

we are such women and men in the simple glow of the candlelight I think of a smile I know well it is wide with so many experiences there have been many kinds of tears in those same eyes and hearts filled with excitement and grief. the extension of a hand sharing a piece of bread the small touch of acknowledgement looking into eyes that have a story letting laughter flow to be experienced singing a song from the depths of yourself dancing alone or with others storytelling and listen to stories quenching bodies with life-giving water offering some of your food acknowledging abundance instead of gripping scarcity feeling the soft warmth of a safe place to sleep indulging in the miracle of shared thoughts feeling air fill you up and giving it back to the Earth touching another human creating your magic. Be Present. Be in Awe. Be in Giving. Con el amor de mi alma, te comparto contigo. Magdalena, Mags, Maggie

eyes

We have to have that hope.  I know we can re-member it. 

Today I sat in a tattered seat in a combi (minivan) in the Northern Andes in Peru, frustrated at my lack of understanding. And awed by life.  The sweat of the early morning sun clung heavily to our clothes, the warm wet heat now dusted with the shadows of the afternoon clouds, heavy rains arriving everyday from expectant clouds.  I looked up from my seat, my mouth silent, black smoke pouring in from the exhaust of the van into our wide-open windows, quick Spanish tongues rolling into my ears, the scent of cilantro finding its way from the wet Alpaca blanket wrapped around the Campesina farmer.  She held a baby in her left arm and rested the bag of plants on her right, sweat beaded on her forehead below the line of her traditional hat shaped to give her weathered skin cover from her hours in the sun.  Her baby stared at me.  She had the most transfixing brown eyes.  I stared back.  We found one another there in our togetherness.  Silence surrounded us suddenly, as we shared the human condition.  I thought about how someday she too would have her own words for joy and for sorrow.

She gazes at me with eyes of perfect hope.  She smiles with her beautiful bald gums, spit wet against the dirt on her cheeks.  Her long eyelashes blinking against her coffee eyes.  She speaks to me in her stare, Why are the people so sad?  Why is there pain?  Why do they worry so?  Remember Maggie, we have to remember.  Remember you were once like me, you all were.  You reveled at life.  You breathed simply.  You rested.  You laughed.  You cried.  You were innocent and unscathed by the hardness of life.  You looked out of eyes of Hope too.  Before you created definitions and labels, you were limitless about possibilities and how to relate to the world.  But you STILL CAN.  You are limitless, you still can see out of those eyes.  Tell them for me.  You can be.  You ARE.  We still ARE.

I sit in the combi, caught in her eyes.  Together we take a trip.  We rise from the seats we sit in and she shows me the world.  As we rise into the atmosphere, we look down and see the amazing field of light below.  We look at the Human Being, the one unit of all Personkind, the connectedness of all the smallest and largest of possible thoughts.  But a haze of gray covers the brilliant white light of life below, there is a blanket of despair and fear that covers the Human Being so that it becomes obscure and dulled underneath the layers of our collective attachment to power, greed, ego.  We blur further, briskly seeking to increase the pulse of our individual lives, even in exchange for the collective Human Being.  The collection of anguish blankets us now, whether we feel the security behind our own closed doors of the warmth of our spaces.  The Human Being is affected.  We share the fact that we are all born and everyday we are moving toward the disintegration of our bodies...no human can transcend this.  We share this condition, in this way nobody is better or worse.

I see the light under those layers.  It is there.  We make the collective commitment to lift that veil that hides it.  If we all decided at once to release the ego, the fears that keep us clinging to power and need, fears that cause us to treat others as less than part of the Human Being...if we decided at once instead to emanate the healing and hope and light into this world, in ONE instant the entire world would be changed.  I know that it is so easy to forget that we each have the capacity to do our part.  I know what fear tastes and feels like too.  We don't want to lose anything.  BUT WE will if we live in this fear. We must make a conscious decision to turn our attention to the Human Being, that which we are a part of.

Those innocent eyes guide me further in my dream.  They guide me back to a peaceful path where I can see the green land below me, a stream winding through the land.  I think about the miracle of that land, how it created itself as I step down, my first step toward the brilliant blue caught by the sun.  As I step, I am suddenly caught in fear itself.  I am crawling among the thistly branches and my hands are stuck deep into the mud.  I am breathing hard and I cannot see in the darkness of the twisted branches.  There are spiders crawling near me that make me breath shorten.  I close my eyes, remembering the light inside of me and when I open my eyes I am looking at the shore of the blue waters I had seen from the landscape above.  The sky is brilliant, my color blue, the one I dream about, it has an electricity that beams upward into the sky.  My eyes feel as if they are filled with opal currents of light as I look up.  There is no darkness, no branches, no mud, no spiders.  I know these fears are within me.  I know how when I release them, I change the landscape.  I know how much I want to escape from it.  I know how much we look outside for the fear to leave us.  But it is inside, it is inside.  I look at the still waters of the river.  It looks like a lake of thin ice, the water is so still and peaceful.  It is a perfect stillness, one that is unmolested by anything.  I close my eyes to see the light and when I open them I am awake, floating on my back in the warm waters of the river.  I am buoyant and my ears are below the water so that I hear the steady and calm beating of my heart.  My body is floating, I am weightless and unafraid.  My hair floats out in white strands, suspended by the water.  The clouds in the sky billow in soft white above me, they dance lightly with the breeze, soft and delicate, causing tiny ripples in the water.  Ripples that change everything, everywhere they disperse, they move out into the water, changing the form of the water.  I hear my breathing and I see figures around me, different people I know and love.  Teachers, friends, those I once called enemies.  They hold my body from hundreds of directions.  And we whirl in the waters together.  I understand their meaning and place in my life in this instant, the reasons I asked for them to be in this dream of mine called LIFE, what place they would have, what lessons they would teach, what information they would give to me.  I float in gentle circles with all of them supporting my weightless body and I feel the empathy in my heart for each and every one.  For I played my part and so did they.  Sometimes my part was difficult, and other times I can feel the hurt and sadness they had to take on to play their part.  Like I can see my Dad, a man of eight children, who knows not one of them and cannot express the love he has inside, the part he agreed to play in my life.  I love him more than ever for accepting his part, I have ultimate empathy for him.  I give thanks to each of them, knowing the choices I made, knowing the way I judged them at times when I really didn't love something inside of myself.  They tell me I can always come here, to the journey river, to meet with them, to understand what is inside of me.  To know the layers of life and how they all complete one another, and always will.  For this is reality too, and so too is the life outside of these waters, we exist in these layers.

Suddenly I hear moaning from the other side of the shore.  It is a painful slow moan that repeats itself.  I worry, it is sad to hear and I feel the hurt in my heart.  I do not want to leave the peace of these waters, but I feel as I hear the sounds that part of me too is dying.  For I know that we exist together, that when one of us hurts, well we all do somewhere deep, some of us do not want to feel that, the responsibility is great.  I crawl to the shores and I hear the moaning loader now, it comes from the heart, slow and sad.  I can hear the muffled heartbeat of pain. As I leave the water, my body is dry instantly.  I see a figure in a corner by a tree, they are folded over and their spine is bent over in grief, the moans continue.  I walk toward the figure, scared, wanting to turn away because I do not want this sadness in me as well.  But I know I must see.  With my eyes.  I cannot ignore it, I will be there and is there.  I touch the back of the doubled-over body and a man turns around.  His face is worn and hideous, disfigured from pain.  His eyes are drowning in sorrow.  I look at him, I look at him with my eyes.  I acknowledge him.  I love him and want to take his pain away from him.  I know my place in his life. He catches my eyes and I see light fill his.  He is a person he knows this by looking into me, he is acknowledged, he matters. He does.  He is cared for and about.  He is part of the same body of life that I am.  He fills with light and I stay filled with light, I am not afraid that I will be drained or filled with fear.  I know that we serve one another.  He face softens, the pain of his feelings of aloneness drains, for he is recognized by a fellow be-ing, and he is part of something.

I drift back into this layer of my life and I smell the exhaust of the combi once again.  The baby is staring at me with her wamr eyes.  In the quietude of her eyes, I can think about all of you.  You are my greatest gift.  In my reverence for you, I engage in giving thanks for Life that is beyond form, beyond what can be bought or obtained.  I honor this unfolding of Life and all of our places in it, for we have come together to help heal the splintered parts of our Be-ings.  I give value to that, and to you all and the people that you.  I value how you have helped me to see that evil or badness is really the absence of Light, and the only way to heal that is with the Presence of Light, or with compassion.  Reverence for you makes me understand our interdependency and the protection and honor of that.  When I think of you with reverence, I stand in awe at the experience of Life and I walk with a sense of Gratitude.  Because of this, I can be and will be a spiritual being in an Earth that is sometimes disrespected by people who have forgotten how to be spiritual.  My reverence for you family, originates in my heart, an authentic power that allows me to love you in all the form you appears, a power that helps me to see your meaningfulness and purpose in my Life and this Earth.  My dear friends, the present that I can give you today is the Presence of my absolute love for you.  And so, no matter where I am and where you are and who you are with, my love for you is undeniable....and always will be.  So know that I am there with you in every beautifully spiritual action of Life.

Reverence is in

the contented glaze of happy eyes

warm skin sharing a knowing embrace

the innocent power of a young child's ideas

the bloom that always grows from the melting snow

breathing windy air deep into your chest

emotions falling inside crystal tears

dancing your inside out to life

laughter birthing more bliss

the humility in emptying what is full

the growth in filling what is empty

light reflecting against radiant eyes

a child dreaming in a warm blanket

letting your actions be your most stunning art

the love that is wrapped within a kiss

fulfillment born from random acts of kindness

counting on the rising sun and the watchful moon

shared stories recounted in circles of comfort

music that speaks the words for you

the wet renewal of a fresh rain

the brilliant light gifted from a smile

shared LIFE with your family

            meant to continue on in every new soul.

        
blessings.  amor.  magdalena                                       

I love ethnography...the study of be-ing, of participating in culture.  Be-ing is life is motion, it is a verb in intrasitive action.  I like Be-ing because it is active like life.  Being is a static noun...this piece is about Be-ing in the Northern Andes of peru, a town called Cajamarca where I worked for two years.  This was my ethnographic piece of my experience of my first Peruvian wedding (that I was invited to be in and take part in).  Makes you think about concept of time and how we life.  When a western mind meets a manana world...

La dia de la boda (the day of the wedding) El 17 de Abril, 2004
 
I woke up at 7:30am so I could get in a good meditation and some thoughtful prayer before I set out for the salon to meet Nery (the Peruvian bride to be) and Meche (her best woman, Peruvian). I suggested we all meet in the morning, girls’ style, so that we could be in one another’s company before the big day…they both seemed excited about the plan. Just a little background..the wedding party was Nery and Adam of course, Nery was going to be given away by her older brother Gabriel who also lives here (he is 24), Meche was to walk in with Moises, Nery’s other brother, and I was to walk in with Miguel, Nery’s younger brother. Dan was to wait in front with his son Adam for the beautiful bride to walk in…well, that was the plan. All systems go at 11:30am. Well, except when you are in Peru. 11am Salon Olvio Well, here I am sitting at Salon Olvio, the wedding invitation reads that the ceremony will commence at 11:30, yet here we are sitting in the salon, Nery still getting her hair all twisted up and make-up still to be done…this doesn’t include the stop we still have to make at my house to put on her dress and finishing touches, or the 20 minute ride out to La Collpa hacienda…but alas, we are on Peruvian time, and if the wedding begins at 12:30pm we’ll be LUCKY. I am laughing as I drink my glass of champagne, thinking “la vida de los Peruanos” (the life of Peruvians), I am probably the one who is most stressed right now…and so I just pour some more champagne, because the bride doesn’t seem to be worried about anything. I arrived at the salon this morning at 9am as instructed, that’s when we had our appointments, but as I tried to forage my way thru Spanish conversation with the stylists…I didn’t see the bride or Meche until 9:30am, as they hopped out of their taxi, they said, “oh well, we’re late.” Supposedly, a car (a specially decorated taxi) is picking us up to leave for the ceremony at 10am…yeah right, I look over at Nery who has just had her hair washed at 9:45am and say, “there is no way we’re getting in any car at 10am.” She nods and sips her champagne. I smile and sip mine because I can picture myself with my sisters in IL. getting ready for weddings together (that should be a HBO Monday evening movie), we would be flipping out if this was the case…I mean us Miller women have a long tradition of being a little tardy…but this is down right late…well, again I laugh, because only in my “truth” is it late. I tried to bring some of that sisterly tradition I have gotten from my sisters to this whole experience. Se llamo este tradicion la union de las hermanas. (My name for this tradition is the “union of the sisters”). I don’t know how to say sisterhood, so that’s the phrase I used to describe us all getting together for some morning fun. Nery’s girlfriends didn’t really seem to practice these supportive womanly traditions with each other…and besides that she has four brothers and her mom passed away several years ago, so she needs some goddess power. Mini flashback to week before the wedding….Dan and Gabriel (Nery’s bro) were throwing Adam a bachelor party on Thursday, and Nery was a little upset because the Peruvian tradition is supposedly that the groom-to-be engages in some lovin’ with a Peruvian hooker-dancer of sorts on the bachelor night…Of course Adam said he wasn’t interested in doing that (and later he said the party was “as good as over” when the hired woman did a somersault during her “dance” to the love song from “Titanic.”) Anyway, Nery needed a little diversion, so I called together a mini-bachelorette party since none of Nery’s friends suggested going out. Nery, Meche, and I got together at my favy dinner spot, Don Paco’s, and I bought us 2 bottles of vino tinto (red wine). It was a good time, and upon the decision to get the second bottle I told Nery, “Let’s just relax, soon enough your man will come looking for you.” I knew Nery was fretting where Adam was and what he was doing, she is only 22 and a bit insecure I think (I remember that well), and so we drank and laughed and at about midnight (I knew the dudes party was over at 11:30), Adam and Nery’s brother came rolling by. I smiled at Nery’s excitement and surprise to see Adam…I hoped that she caught the small and grand learning of letting someone do what they need with trust in your heart, so that they can fulfill themselves, and then the love grows. So, back to the salon, I brought two bottles of champagne for us to imbibe and some bread and marmalade (I didn’t want to be responsible for getting the bride sick before her wedding on an empty stomach). The women in the salon looked at me like I was a lush as I broke out the bottles and glasses. I told them “en los Estados Unidos, es una tradicion con las mujeres antes de la boda, todos bebemos en celebracion” (In the U.S., it is a tradition that the women drink together in celebration before the wedding.) Well, at least that is the Miller lady tradition. So we all got our hair and make-up done. The girls decided for me that I would have my hair done “con crespas” (with curls), and so Tracey the stylist curled every piece up my hair into locks that later gave rise to my nickname at the wedding “la muneca” (dollie) and/or “barbie.” I didn’t know what to make of that name since Barbie always kind of pissed me off with her fake blue eye shadow and other unobtainable features. Despues…(later) The wedding invite read 11:30am as I previously noted, yet here I sit in the car just leaving my home at 1:15pm with Nery, Meche, and a cheeseball sunglass-bearing mousse-slicked driver named “Dante” and Nery’s younger bro Miguel in the front. Tio Dan has called me several times wondering where we are…and I didn’t really know what to say except, “nowhere near there.” Nery refused to leave for La Collpa until she received verification that the judge was present to marry her…she wanted to have a grand entrance to the music we picked last night, Sarah McGlaughlin’s song “Angel.” I laughed in the car all buzzed on my champagne as Dan informed me all the gringos who were his business associates had arrived at the wedding by 11:30am. The only ones there at the “real time” were all the gringos…Peruvians started trailing in at 12 noon, 12:30, knowing the ceremony would be at least an hour late. As we begin our drive, Dan calls and I inform him we are finally in the car..on the way there, but little did I know….. The music is slow and somber, and Nery tells the driver Dante “mas accion!” (more action.) And as we begin to drive with taped ribbons flapping in the wind on the outside of the car, the driver throws on some ACDC and we begin rockin out to “Back in Black.” We slug the rest of the champagne straight from the bottle family style and I notice we are not driving the way of the hacienda La Collpa, but instead we are circling the town. I begin to ask questions, knowing we are now almost 2 hours late and we are driving in squares/circles (darvueltas). I am informed at this moment that the tradition is to drive around town so everyone can wave at you and wish you happiness. And they do, the people yell out to us “Tiene una vida de felicidad!” (Have a life of happiness!) as we drive by with our ACDC blasting. Just as we complete our cruizin’ around Cajamarca and I think we’re headed out, we stop at two stores so that we can pick up some beers…I am hysterically laughing by this time (also buzzed), because I cannot believe we are making beer pitstops and now it is 1:30pm or so. Uncle Dan keeps calling me and I don’t even know what to say at this point except “we’re on our way.” I know he is stressed out about the gringos that have been there more than 2 hours now, and I am informed that no one brought the plastic cups for beer, so at the wedding space everyone is quietly sitting at tables with nothing to drink….I am glad I am with the ladies at this point. I chuckle to myself about my lesson to Nery the previous evening at the bachelorette gathering, she must feel powerfully about making her man waitï?Š Just as I think we are well on our way, I get a phone call from Gabriel, Nery’s brother, who informs us that his taxi is about 5 minutes behind us…so naturally as he is supposed to walk Nery down the aisle, Nery asks our driver to pull aside so that we can wait for the other cab while we drink some beers. We listen to some salsa music and I stare with the biggest enthusiastic smile outside at the dirt road, farmland, and bulls walking by. The girls notice me and ask what I am laughing at, I tell them “this is the most relaxed wedding I have ever been to.” Finally, Gabriel and taxi full of people catch up with us, I am told they have the plastic cups for beer, (oh all is well! SIGHHHHH, when they get there), and we carry on while listening to some Spanish love songs while the Peruanas sing enthusiastically. Next pitstop, 1:40pm, there is a part of the dirt road that was flooded out by rain…I suppose that is something most of us don’t think about making us late for our wedding: “flooded dirt road.” There are about 10 campesinos and a huge truck has just dumped huge boulders in the road to fill the flooded hole with…but the men are apparently on their siesta and just stare at our car as we look at them. Nery gets out the window all beautiful in her wedding garb and informs them in her rockin Spanish that she is the bride and her groom is waiting for her…they look at us…Dante the driver gets out and hands them some money…and all 10 of them start shoveling those boulders…in about 5 more minutes we are moving again. Dan calls again, and I tell him “we’re close.” I can feel the perspiration on his white bald beautiful head over the phone. I am now just as relaxed as the ladies and I don’t really care when we get there. ½ mile from La Collpa and Nery informs Dante that we need to pull over so she can take a pee on the side of the road. I tell her it is a splendid idea that she not have to pee during her entire ceremony, and i also have to pee so I am psyched! In the bright sun of the Andes, I hold up Nery’s wedding dress as her butt faces two mules that look at us with puzzled faces. I laugh as I try and pee and step into a muddy ditch and fall a couple feet, “ain’t nothing gonna breaka my stride (who sings that great song, Hall and Oats?) We resume, and in our last 200 yards of the drive, another taxi whizzes by us, it is Nery’s (3rd) last brother who is also in the wedding party, arriving from Lima “just in the knick of time.” Everyone cheers with gratitude and happiness, and I smile so huge knowing that “everything is exactly the way it is supposed to be.” That when we trust the Universe, it all works out perfectly…and in some sort of wondrous daze, we all step out of our cars, Gabriel grabs Nery, Miguel grabs me, and Moises grabs Meche and I hear the words from that beautiful song playing like in some sort of romantic movie, “Spend all your time waiting, for that second chance, for a break that could make it okay…there’s always some reason, to feel not good enough, and it’s hard at the end of the day…” The wind is whipping, puffy clouds in the blue sky, and everyone stands, and Nery has her entrance, and I am smiling that cheesy smile that I do, walking into the wooden room of the hacienda, looking at all the Peruvian faces (and they wondering who I am), and walking toward Adam and Dan, who looked relieved and happy. Nery is sparkling and it is beautiful. I am moved by all the emotion, the new learnings and experience, the trusting, and the memories of my family and others I love who are physically far but looking through my eyes with me. It is 2:15pm., Peruvian time. Al ceremonio (at the ceremony)… About 65 folks attended la boda, 4 of them gringos (one was Canadian). The ceremony was simple and included a beautiful exchange of vows and rings between Adam and Nery…in both English and Spanish. We four gringos smiled with pleasure during the English vows and the Peruvians sighed during the Spanish vows. Dan gave a fatherly speech to his son, welcoming his newest family member Nery, and all was translated by Gabriel into Spanish for the crowd. Gabriel next read a beautiful message from Adam’s mom Kit (who could not be there), and Adam’s best friend Pepin read a message from Adam’s brother Brian and partner Elizabeth…both translated into Spanish for the crowd. The peace, love, and longing on Adams face was evident and beautiful…as he listened to the words from his family, I know he was both happy and wishing they were here. We lifted our glasses and celebrated in solidarity with one big “Salud!” to the new esposo y esposa (husband and wife). After signing some scary thick pile of Peruvian documents that declared their Peruvian marriage to be legal, the fiesta was on, and let me tell you, the Peruvians like to party. We had 240 bottles of cerveza grande (3 8-ouncers per bottle), 12 bottles of whiskey, and 10 bottles of champagne. There was no shortage of booze, that was for sure. We ate meat stuffed bell peppers, some sort of alien chicken patty wrapped in pig skin (everyone seemed to dig it), and my savior of all foods…rice. The people looked thirsty as could be, so with a shortage in servers, I took this chance to be a beer server and to meet all the tables of people. I was excited to meet all of these people, especially the tables full of old-school suit wearin’ chimney smokin’ Peruvian patriarchs. I received a great compliment from one of them, Segundo Sandoval, who told Dan I did a good job being the womanly presence in Adam’s family with the absence of his mom (she is in San Diego and visiting next month). When I asked this patriarch-filled table if they wanted beer, they answered “siempre ” (always) with their raspy Spanish accents. When I asked them if they wanted whiskey, they said “siempre” once again. Some of the people asked me why I was serving, because it wasn’t my job to be a “servant” (that was the job of the campesinos that worked at La Collpa…and I have been told more than once that I am perceived to be on the “first” hierarchy of people and have to accept what is offered in that sense…more on that later) But I wanted to break that barrier, to show that serving people was about more than “serving” in the sense they perceived, it was about a chance to connect, to be with one another…and that I felt happy doing that, that I wanted to do that. Essentially, my favorite people (besides Adam and Dan) at the wedding ended up being my campesino “servant” friends who I believe respected me for my willingness to be with them, to connect with them, to serve as they served. I called them “familia” (family) and we took pictures together, pictures they asked me to bring back to them to hang in their rooms…tomorrow I will bring them their copies, they are such gorgeous people. Booze abound, Peruvians like to get their groove on! “Baila conmigo!” “Bailamos!” (Dance with me! Let’s dance!)…people were getting down to the Peruvian tones, and no one had any intention of resting anytime soon. Salsa beats filled the air accompanied by sexy women shaking their booties and men moving in wondrous ways with all sorts of rhythms. My philosophy I have shared with some of my Afro-American and Hispanic friends in San Diego is that white people are born without a certain gene…and that gene is the “bootie-shaking gene.” You can try and try, but I have personally never witnessed a white person shaking quite like this in my life. These women and men were getting down, all day and night for about 6 hours straight, sweating out whiskey, cigarettes, and beer. There were so many smiles and laughter, especially during the salsa tunes as they form two lines, all men on one side facing all the women. And everyone shakes it…I learned of course that the secret to salsa is in the shoulders, letting them go…there were some scripted dances (like our YMCA or Electric Slide), where everyone in the line turns to their right and grabs the voluptuous hips in front of them as you go “abajo” (down down down) to the floor, butt shaking into the air. Now turn to the left and get down with some more “abajo.” Of course I used this opportunity to get some groovy salsa lessons, my hips had it going but I needed to get those shoulders loose. By the middle of the wedding, I was getting nods of acknowledgement that I had achieved some “success” in my salsa moves from my Peruvian partners (or they felt bad for me). I had a couple dances with Adam where we busted out the good ol’ California club moves that you might witness to Snoop Doggy or Ludicris. Of course, we did try to throw in some gringo music here and there, mostly overruled with a big common group noise of astonishment and disappointment. We did get a successful response to “Wish You Were Here” (Pink Floyd) that Nery/Adam and Dan and I danced to like complete borrachos (drunks) losing our balance; I think we were all dancing that song for all of the people we longed to share these moments with. After the song, everyone applauded us, it was kind of like the momentary gringo show…see what they dance to…?! (Nery is kind of an adopted gringo now). We also got away with a couple of Bob Marley tunes, but otherwise, gringo music DEFINITELY overruled. The custom in Peru is that the wedding cake is only for the family…yet we had a three-tiered cake that was going to go home with four of us…so after some minor buzzed discussion regarding custom and not wasting food, at about 10pm Nery and Adam just hacked up the bottom tier of the cake for everyone, and we all dug in with our hands and slurped up the sugary satisfaction. The Andean night air began to blow in and cool the place off, and for the 15-20 people or so that remained, we called taxis that took a half hour to arrive. We listened to some more Marley and everyone sat in chairs slumped on one another, while some cleaned up the golden table coverings, all waiting to refuel in whatever ways we chose. Dan and I hopped in one of those cabs and slumped our heads into One as we both fell into the abyss along a bumpy dirt road that made for some strange dreamin’…We awoke at our house and I changed my shoes from salsa shin splint aches, and we headed off to Don Pacos, our favy restaurant, to join Nery and Adam and a couple others for some red wine, duck, pumpkin pasta, and good ol’ fashion wedding discussion that featured Adam being a smart ass about the “ice cooler” he received as a wedding present (he received four presents). I told him this glorious gift was for freezing infected Peruvian water ice cubes for when he had company over for dinner. Of course, Dan noted how wondrous this gift was and that he would love to have it for his whiskey evenings. (alpha males are fun to watch together). The night ended at Casa Luna, our hang-out bar, where everyone sat in some upstairs room with cement walls, floor laden cushions from some long-ago couch, five bottles of beer being passed around a crowd of 15 or so, and one guitar being played by Nery’s drunken Peruvian brother Miguel as we all sang in chorus Red Hot Chili Peppers “Sometimes I feel like I don’t have a partner, sometimes I feel like my only friend…” What a song of happiness for the end of la boda loca. Isn’t life wonderful? I went to sleep thinking of the gift of love, and one big thank you for witnessing it, receiving it, and giving it. Blessings… Magdalyn Z.