So I still haven’t gotten everything back working how it should be, but I give up for now; there’s stuff I have to blog about, and so all the hassles with spam filtering and comment handling and templates… whatever, for now. Whatever. I’ll get to it when I can.
When I was four years old, just before my fifth birthday, my family moved to Peru. We left from Miami, and flew all night, stopping in Panama where we didn’t change planes. We were sitting at the bulkhead, on the left hand side of the plane, and I remember when they opened the doors this mass of hot, wet air came flooding in and woke me up where we sat on a dark runway. I asked, but we weren’t there yet. After a while, with people getting on and off and all that, the doors closed and we flew on.
About the time the sun started to rise, we came down through a lot of clouds and there below us were only waves. Then there were container ships and fishing boats and some desert, and a sprawling metropolis. We laned in the foggy gray dawn, in another place that was hot and muggy, and this, my parents told me, was Peru. But only Lima, they explained; there was still another plane ride. My sister was a baby. She doesn’t remember any of that.
The next plane was smaller, and bouncier, and we flew up through the clouds and above them and looked down on the desert. Then there was a blanket of thicker clouds, thick thick thick, and finally it gave way to green lushness that rose up from the fluff of clouds. We flew on over that and it kept coming up, and up, and up, and it turned rocky and blue-gray and eventually snowy. I felt like I could have reached right out, if the windows opened, and touched those snow-capped peaks.
And then, in the middle of them, with no sign of anything coming up, we started to descend. Down through those peaks we went, down and down and down, till we were close to green valleys and planted fields and then — I didn’t see it — a runway. And we landed. And now, my parents told me, we were in Cusco.
They wheeled some stairs up to the plane, and opened the door. The hot wet air was gone. The airplane air rushed out. Nothing rushed in. I felt dizzy. We stood up, and walked down those stairs, onto the tarmac, and the sun was bright, brighter than sun is in real life, I remember thinking, except it is that bright and this is real life, so I guess I just didn’t know it could be like this. Spots swam in front of my eyes. It was chilly and sharp and the air smelled like dust and living things. There was a building across the tarmac, with pillars. I walked as steadily as I could towards one, and when I got there, I leaned on it and threw up.
After that I don’t remember much for a while. I had altitude sickness and it took a while to get better. But then it was better and I really lived in this place with the cold sharp bright sun that could burn me to a crisp beneath a perfect movie blue sky and filled with ancient castles and people who spoke other languages and did things I didn’t know how to do yet. It was home.
When I was six years old, back in the US, I used to have a bad recurring nightmare. We would come down through the clouds in a plane bound for Peru, and see the lapping waves… and the boats and ships… and no metropolis of Lima. We would fly around and fly around and finally find a runway, and upon disembarking, would say, “We’re trying to go to Peru,” and someone would tell us, “Ah, Peru. Well, it isn’t here any more. It’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?” my father would say, “Gone where?” And they would tell us it had gone to a place called Ghost. “Well then I guess we’d better get a move on,” we would all agree, and rent a motorboat, and make our way through the lapping waves, looking for a place called Ghost, where Peru was now that it was gone, and we would search and search, and even when we found Ghost, what was left of Peru there would only serve to let us know it really was gone.
I would wake up sobbing, inconsolable. And every time, EVERY TIME, when I’m getting ready to go to Peru, that dream goes through my mind. I am always afraid it will be gone; that I will arrive, and there is only Ghost.
It’s always been there; but each time, indeed, there are things which have gone to Ghost, and which can never be found again. Wandering around in the search, there will be people who remember, who sadly seek the same things, and people who only heard stories and never knew, and for them, it’s different. And still people live there, die there, are born there, and carry on; still it is Peru.
The cold sharpness of the Cusco air always brings me to my knees, though not literally since that first time. The smell of living dust says VIVA EL PERU like the side of the mountain does when we fly in. The car horns sound different and everybody has the right accent. It’s always still there. But yet I always wonder, what is it this time, and who, that’s gone to Ghost and can never be found again?
Every time I fear it, and tomorrow is no different. Except I won’t be going alone. I wonder how it will be.
