At the beginning of 2023, I went to Colombia to visit my friend TW. The area we spent the most time in was close to a mountain, ironically called Mt. Cristopher Colombus. The more fitting name, used by the native Kogis, is El Corazon del Mundo (The Heart of the World). Here is a documentary where the Kogi elders reveal some of their philosophies. So we return to February 2023:
My favourite restaurant. Assorted tubers played to the gallery - yucca, potatoes and squash over frijoles y arroz.
Some t-shirt slogans in Colombia: a teenage boy sports a shirt that reads "GET SHIT DON’T". A woman in the airport wears a simple pink design reading “anything you can do, I can do bleeding”.
I’m drinking a bad coffee in the airport. I’d like it to be better as it’s all I can afford to do to pass the time. There’s a lot of restaurants serving fried food but I’m not hungry, and they’re all overpriced anyway. It’s a packed out departure lounge and I’ve got hours left to wait. Large groups of people disembark only to be instantly replaced by just as many. I sit, the only gringo in the house, wearing Toby’s denim jacket and a haircut that’s much too clean for my liking. I got it done in a shopping centre in Cartagena. Nice guys, just a different taste in how a young guy should look. On me, it falls rather like Hitler, which for obvious reasons I’m not too keen on. Might be good for US immigration though, they like a clean cut fascistic type over there.
People love photos here - not taking them so much as being in them. There are two ways to pose: candid, or sexy. Well, actually, it’s always about looking sexy, candid or otherwise. Nothing else even comes into it. God forbid any silly faces. It’s also not the least bit embarrassing to then spend considerable time poring over each picture and strategising on how to maximise candidness and sexiness in the next round of shots, which will happen immediately afterwards. They spend a lot of time doing this, rinse and repeat. I feel like this is very odd, but then there are a lot of good-looking people here. Maybe they’re just liberated. We all secretly hope to have a candid photo taken of us that shows our best side. Most brits would never ask for it though. I suppose Colombians probably believe that you make your own luck in that regard.
This also makes me think about people who lived without ever seeing their own face. A stream too babbling to reflect faces, inland terrain. Before mirrors or glass. A nice life I bet, not thinking about how you look. To love someone without knowing your own face, and without them knowing theirs, that’s got to be great. A wonderful mystery - what is it about my face? Describe it to me. That must be the best way to learn what you look like.
TW and I, looking out of the tiny window into the streets of Getsemani, talk about migration. From the migration of the Europeans to the Americas in the 1500s back to the first migration of humans from east Africa to the Levant thousands of years ago. Before doing our research we assume South America must have been reached by boat. (In fact, we are quite stoned, and it's obvious that the small gap between Russia and Alaska was crossed on foot when sea levels were lower, opening up the Americas from the top down.) We try to imagine the insane magnitude of that first voyage, and a thought strikes me. What if a group of say, 30 people set out to sea. Months later, they have all died from disease, hunger, or drowning, except the last one. This person finally washes up on a beach on this vast continent, having no concept of maps or distances. There, alone, they survive as long as they can before expiring in the heat. What if the first person ever to set foot in the "new world" died alone, and it wasn’t until 300 years later that another person thought they might be the first? This could have happened hundreds of times. I’m convinced that this must have happened somewhere in the world, maybe in Australia or Iceland.
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