The ¨Happening¨ was advertised as a ¨cyberpunk concert¨ but turned out to be a tango show, complete with onstage vocalists and a cast of about twelve. Steve, Angela, and I shared a juice box of wine as lithe girls in airy dresses kicked and twirled around dudes in outfits from the 1800´s. An enchanted mood quickly possesed me and I decided at once to stay in Medellin forever - the most cultured city on the planet, to be certain. We were hard-up to find any connection between the performance and the stated Sci-fi theme of the conference, but so what? I was totally seduced by the passion and precision of the dance, and was reminded once again that the vast majority of Latin culture is pure celebration of human sexuality.

The conference closed the next day with the Medellin Philharmonic playing Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky to a looping background of what appeared to be a ten second clip from the trailer to Mary Shelley´s ¨Frankenstein,¨ loosely intertwining the event with the theme. Cyberpunk dynamo Bruce Sterling never showed up for his spiel, and for that I now boycott his writings for exactly 1.618 sidereal years.

We went to the monthly jewelry fair in Parque Bolivar - Steve, Angela, Eliana, Maritza, and I - where beaded and leather good of every variety were bargained for over the sound of handdrums and guitars. Street performers did their schtick everywhere - stand up comedy, music, clowning, blowing bubbles. Others simply advertised their enfirmities, infected sores and disfigured limbs. I observed my gut reaction to avoid the ugly ones, the injured, the sick - the ones who probably need help the most. Much easier to toss a few pesos to the grinning mime with smiley face stickers than to look in the eyes of suffering. Those eyes reflect guilt, resonate questions too vast.

Why did I just spend 7.000 pesos on some stupid piece of jewelry for myself and yet instinctually try to justify giving nothing to a starving man?

That night we went to lovely dready Eliana´s hometown of Bello, once a pueblo outside of Medellin but now amoeba-ed into part of the city. We danced late into the night, Eliana attempting to remedy my genetic dancing disorder by taking me on the floor and whirling me around to salsa, merengue, cumbia, bachata, reggaeton. By the end of the night I was speaking the language of dance pretty well, I thought, and even came to an apogee of sorts with my Spanish when I managed to accurately articulate to the girls on the bus the old Buddhist adage of ¨what is the sound of one hand claping?¨ and then made a daring metaphor involving an avocado.

Which reminds me - I´ve engineered a diet plan designed to boost energy and general enthusiasm, reduced incidents of stomach bugs, increase virility and stamina, and induce incidents of metaphysical bliss. Simply eat papaya in the morning, a fried egg in the afternoon, and arepas with tomato, avocado, and garlic for dinner. Put lots of hot sauce on everything. To approximate an arepa, loosely stick three or four corn tortillas together with butter and heat.

Presto, all your problems are solved.

written by  chaddeal on March 9, 2009 from Medellin, Colombia
from the travel blog: The Great Pan-American Synchronistic Cycle Extravaganza Unlimited
Send a Compliment

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Chad, Your bloggings may be helping me to understand the meaning of the statement "having too much fun."
But please keep it up.
BTW all that glitters is not gold and the beggars do not show their balance sheets.
Love, Granddad Deal

written by  Bob Deal on March 12, 2009

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