Ok, it all began a while back, (leans back, scratches chin, chair tips over backwards spilling the writer to the floor)

(from floor) Uh...

my interest in Peru began long ago with an keen interest in the "lost city" and the rich history of that part of the world. I never really got around to visiting there for a very long time.

Ok, it is all CFK's fault. I take it back, a lot of the blame has to go to RTGooch. They could not just let me be, happy in the places that I have visited often. Twenty one visits to Brazil since 2002. Countless visits to Central America, a place where I am more "at home" than I am at home. Brief forays to Colombia. Going back a bit, visits to most of the carribean destinations. Work stints in northern Europe, romance and more in eastern Europe.

In late December, I found myself sitting in business class of a 767 headed for Lima, Peru. I was in a very introspective mood. Not a being ponderous sort of guy, it was somewhat strange as the last year began to play in my mind like a docudrama on Sundance. Docudrama with freeze-frame, rewind/replay and fast forward. It was 4 weeks after a shortened rio trip

I had been out of the country more in the past 15 months than at any time since the 1980s. Eight trips to Brazil during that period plus trips to central america where I have family.

I got close to the flame in November of 2006, and stepped happily into the inferno. I am still happy about my time in the fire.

She was not my first extended/deepened relationship with a brasiliera but right from the start it was the most intense. I was not looking for it, just sorta slowed down for a moment to tie my shoe in life and got picked up on the cowcatcher of a 80 mph locomotive. Sitting on a cowcatcher is not the most secure chair in life but the view, pacing and sheer adrenaline rush just cannot be matched. No new senses discovered but the intensity of each sensation was expanded, magnified and amplified. Each sound was louder and more urgent, each touch sensor like a thunderbolt, each smell sweet but strong. The view out of the apartment we shared was not just of the trees, the cars on the street, and glimpses into the apartments across the street. No, it was of the varigation of the individual leaves on the trees, the position of the eyebrows of the people riding in the cars and the facial expression of jesus in the neon picture on the wall in the dining room directly across the street and one floor up. Not that I remember any details, no. None, nothing, nada.

Ok, I remember everything. You caught me.

What an interesting piece of time. Coming back from abdominal surgery, to that first week together, to a Reveillon together in Copa, the best week in my life in Parraty, to the dodging and ducking of an entire kitchen full of dishes hand thrown as me as I stuffed items into my bag that last night. More surgery exactly one year from the previous one . Perfect. Would not change a thing. Ok, I would have changed having surgery but nothing else.

When I was 10, I had a pet bobcat. From the time I first found her as a starving cub I knew that my life was changed forever There is a undeniable yearning to be a part of the wildness, joining the unrestrained path of creature who knew no fear and possessed the ultimate security of needing no security.

Her eyes were unbelievable, a deep green fading to light green to white, then white with tan transluscent patterns, then pure white...wrapped around impossibly black pupils . The brasiliera's eyes were just as intense as hers with that same intangible that screamed "no limits".

My sharply-clawed childhood friend put me in the emergency room multiple times. The injuries were not from malice but unintended injuries that resulted from the intensity of our play. She wrecked the drapes in our house, broke countless items, chewed through a live electrical cord that put her into a coma, nearly drowned in the aquarium and dragged an almost dead water mocassin into the family room. She mauled a chow and caused my mother to have an involuntary bowel movement when it killed and ate half of a neighbor's chihauhua. Then finally, she backed out from around a hairball the size of a lincoln log onto the open family bible in the living room. Right there on psalms. I knew then that the end of the dance was near. It was all too quick but so packed with emotion, wonder and adventure. And wildness. No experience was as complete or as intense.

She reached out to me as the elevator door closed on her hand. I was flung back into the horrorfic moment of seeing my dad using a paintbrush to push paws of my only friend into the car trunk so the lid could be closed. I was rigid, I could not breathe and I suspect that my heart stopped for a while. I awakened with the doorman shaking me in the elevator with several people staring intently from the lobby. I was right back on the front steps as my father exited the car with his tattered shirt and and his arm wrapped with wrapped with electrical tape that failed to close a freely draining gash.

There is a gap of memory from that moment on the steps to my first day of junior high school. Memory is scarce from the resurrection from the elevator floor until I awakened from my 2nd abdominal surgery in 12 months. I remember a visit to Rio 3 months after the elevator ride. I met another magic but not-so-feral brasiliera during that week and nailed 4 others. Then there is another gap in time from then until I awakened from my second abdominal surgery in 12 months. I visited brasil again 10 days after this surgery, the trip that everyone said I could not do. It made me feel better, just like every rio trip before. My surgeon had told me that the goal was for me to feel better. I felt better in Rio but I was forced home by the rapid ebbing of strength. The surgery had taken its toll and the fatigue was the paintbrush pushing me into the trunk of the car. The clunk of the plane door closing stabbed me in the chest, way too similar to the sound of old Ford trunklid slamming shut.

A few months later I read in the local "Daily Astonisher" that a man in the south part of the county had broken his hip late one night when surprised by a "huge cat" lunging out of the window of his parked car. Open windows in the south were the norm in the pre-aircondioned and pre-cartheft south. She had often slept in the seat of my father's tired old truck. The newspaper article was the only time that god spoke to me as a child, telling me that wildness was still a force in this world and making herself felt.

On christmas eve, the phone rang flashing a european area code and the voice purred from the earpiece. She said that she still did not understand why I broke and ran. She had only actually hit me with one coffee cup out of the 57 dishes that she had tossed that night and furthermore she had passed on asking me to buy her new dishes. The resulting silence was ended by several minutes of bellowing and whooping laughter, a shared experience that was a huge part of our time together. Wildness is alive and still strong enough to provoke an overdue session of savagely unrestained laughter from 5000 miles away. Good to hear from you again, god, it has been awhile.

Huh??? (blinks)

Mr. bliss, are you ok? We are in Lima. Do you need any help?

I live in South Africa and have had some interesting experiences with wild Animals over the years. I have never thought how those events had prepared me for dealing with, and trying to understand, members of the opposite sex but there may be some truth to what you write. After all using logic to understand women has never worked.

I look forward to reading about your adventures in Lama Land.

I sure hope there is a part 2.

I accept no blame for this man's exploits. He seems perfectly capable of getting into trouble without me!



(Message edited by rtgooch on January 24, 2008)

Bliss

I loved this post.

Blissman, great story, novel material, please keep it coming.

Isawal, my time with WildnessI and WildnessII were parallel and extreme. But the longer I live it becomes clearer to me that trying to understand women and cats is not necessary or possible. I just enjoy and appreciate and let the mysteries continue to be magic. I hope you enjoy Peru as much I as I did and will do.

Bluelight, me too. I will try!

RT, it is never trouble and it is all good. I hope to soon deliver on the meal I owe you.

Smitopher, glad you enjoyed it. Living it was/is pretty darn good too.

Harami, it's not a novel, just real life. I, too, hope it continues to come...

Bliss,

I knew you would enjoy Lima. With the info RT and I armed you with it was a given! I actually have been throwing your name around in Pizza Alley, and for some reason the Chicas get this ¨deer in the headlights¨ look, hymnnn.
I was at Las Curcadas yesterday, did three girls, a Columbiana, a Peruviana, and one from Argentina!
I have gone Global (OH, BTY, later my non pro girl of 2 yrs came over for the night)
Tonight Latinalover arrives and the party will really get going! I havent´ran into your tour guide yet..
Will keep an eye out for Part II
RT coudn´t make it at the last minute, so now I only owe him something off the kids menu! Seriously tho, I look forward to another time with you both.
CFK
PS Relax Y Vida this afternoon!

"I have gone Global (OH, BTY, later my non pro girl of 2 yrs came over for the night)"

CFK did you tell her about me???? - Hemp

Mr. Bliss, between you and the indefatigable Messers. RTGooch and Copperfield Kid, I am burning up with massive jealousy. I may love Medellin, but variety is definitely the spice of life. I have to see Lima

Hemp,

I haven´t told her yet, Im afraid she might leave me! However, if I tell her you like blondes, hang out with Catocony and are a friend of Jag´s I think I will be ok! To clinch it tho I am gonna mention Diversity! Hell, she might throw a cell phone if I do that........
CFK
PS: for all interested, I met this girl thru her Aunt (who was dating my friend for 1 1/2yrs) one day at lunch when she and her cousin(19) came along. She was 17 and a virgin at the time. Finally this yr when she was 19 her Aunt let me take her out and (YEP, you guessed it) CFK actually had a virgin! Hemp, how do you like me now!
BTY, I dated her 18yr old cousin (second guy to ever be with her at the time) and still see them both ea trip to Lima. The now 21 yr old knows about me and her cousin but the other one(19) doesn´t know I am seeing them both.

Furysys, no need to be jealous, just hop on a plane. RT and CFK have put a wealth of info here that will make your first trip to Peru easy to enjoy. It is the friendliest place that I have ever visited.

So... where's the report?

I think Bliss is writing it now....his mind is stuck on VIRGIN for CFK! Give him a couple more days, he´ll recover and get it to the presses.

The weather is absolutly perfect here, as is everything else.

blissman,

You have our undivided attention, so please take us along on your spectacular journey. I'm anxious, as all of us are, to find out what happens next. Keep it coming.

BTW, what's the bobcat's name?

Jag

Gootch,
The report is coming together a little slow. Sometimes I am like that butcher who sat on his meat grinder and got "behind in his work".

For me, sometimes producing words is easy as a loose stool, it just flows right out of me. Other days it is like shitting barbwire, broken coca-cola bottles and brickbats.

It is on my list and I have a roundtuit somewhere nearby. It is probably in the same place as my car keys. I can't find them right now either.

Jag, her name was hairy. The brasiliera's name was not hairy.

Thanks for your attention. It truly pains me to make a prompt reporter like you wait anxiously. There are some things in life that I can force out and somethings I cannot. Hoop cheese and trip reports come to mind.

I did get a bunch of good words out and put them in a pile. When inspiration hits I will only have to fit 'em together.

This reminds me of a couple of things my daddy used to say: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him gather moss" and "Sometimes a fellow can get too much fibre in his diet".

(sigh) Sometimes it seems like the best wordworking has already been done.

Suddenly I am inspired to go take a dump. Maybe after that I will feel like pushing those words together.

Bliss,
Usually I only feel this way if I drink the water!
¨For me, sometimes producing words is easy as a loose stool, it just flows right out of me. Other days it is like shitting barbwire, broken coca-cola bottles and brickbats.¨
May I PLEASE be excused!
CFK