Three roommates share the modest abode. Next to my room is flamboyant, Prada-wearing Sergio, who studies telecommunications at the U of A. Next to him is young Laydies and her aunt, hushed and observant like siamese, always cooking something delicious. The dinning room is small and without furniture apart from some sitting pillows and a clothesline. My walls are Xanax blue and my thirteenth floor window yeilds a Fritz Lang metropolis view of the railcar cutting across downtown city lights at midnight.

In the morning I went to a bazzar in a warehouse where stolen and reconstructed goods of every variety could be bought cheap. I found a pair of computer speakers for the equivalent of $3 USD. Old men played Atari games on dingy TV prototypes from the sixties. Frankenstein television sets spilled their wirey guts behind wooden partitioned booths. Bastard radios grimaced from dusty shelves. Smells of solder and small electrical fires. The scene was straight out of a William Gibson novel.

Incidentally, Fractal '09 kicked off the next day in the botanical garden. The science fiction conference would last four days with speakers on topics such as ¨The Infuence of the Beat Generation on Science Fiction,¨ ¨Fractals, Chaos, and Determinism,¨ and ¨Who´s Reading and Who´s Writing Sci-fi in Latin America?¨

The event took place beneath the spiraling octagonal wooden slats of the Orchid garden, where two white sofas sat on an elevated stage in front of a sea of chairs which remained mysteriously empty throughout the conference aside from uniformed groups of high school students, whos homogenous attire mimicked the ¨Clockwork Orange¨ images flashing to the beat of electronic music across a giant screen on the back of a flatbed truck. The best topic by far was ¨Cyberpunk and Post-Cyberpunk¨ presented by writers John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly.

Cyberpunk is a genre from the ´80s typified by fast-paced escapades of high technology in the hands of low lifes. Virtual reality, shady antihero protagonists, gleeful subversion (a la Hakim Bey), dirty deals done in the dark. Kessel summed it up the best: ¨It´s about smoking cigarretes at midnight staring across the bar through slitted eyes at the girl with the prosthetic arm.¨ The real appeal of Cyberpunk, Kelly stated, is that it´s a feasible reality. ¨None of us are going to go to outer space,¨ he said, ¨but any of us can go to cyberspace.¨

Steve, Angela, and I spent the rest of the day lounging around the park. Steve corrected my Spanish and I corrected his English. Later, when the sun had set, we shared cheap wine and watched ¨Fahrenheit 451¨ in Spanish projected on the wall of the EMP building at Parque de los Deseos (The park of wishes).

The next night it was ¨Blade Runner¨, in English this time, as Colombia couples kissed and ate cookies on the park´s marbled incline. The moon, almost full, peeked through passing clouds and hairs were tossled by a cool evening breeze. I felt perfect and sublime.

Later I met up with Eliana, Amu, and Yeisey at a bar on the corner by the university blasting an inspiring volley of salsa punk songs. Dreadlocked beauties, mohawked wanna-bes, checkered pantsed loners - the entire hep crowd of Medellin was right there on the corner of Calle 67 and Carrera 52. The music drew out the adolescent mirth in all of us and we danced recklessly in a jumping, sweating heap. Fists were thrust to the sky. Chins jutted out in obstinant punk rock whateverism. Everyone sang along to the chorus ¨Sexo, sexo, sexo!¨

The bar closed at 2am and we went back to Amu´s apartment a few floors beneath mine. A riot broke out in the courtyard - twenty, thirty, drunk students punching, jump kicking, swinging metal rods and broken bottles. The police, always present on most every street corner, were nowhere to be found. The brawl dragged on. Girls screamed. Dudes yelled incomprehensible nonsense in Spanish.

We watched from above, considering the meaninglessness of it all.

written by  chaddeal on March 7, 2009 from Medellin, Colombia
from the travel blog: The Great Pan-American Synchronistic Cycle Extravaganza Unlimited
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do you have "how long is now" posted somewhere online?

written by  ms jillian bean on March 7, 2009

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Oh man i just started having 'mona lisa overdrive' flashforwards...
www.bambuhostel.com

written by  mike on March 8, 2009

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well, i had a very different idea of medellin than the way you described it. it always sounded interesting to me, but now it sounds interesting for very different reasons

written by  gertrudeyoung58 on March 9, 2009

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