Chillfest at Jardin Botanico

One day we met up with Steve and Angela and went to the Musuem of Modern art, where we observed feminist paintings contrasted with whorish lifesize wooden mermaids with too much lipstick.

Womens Rights

Gettin some

Steve and Angela

Afterwards, we all lounged around my apartment with a few beers soaking up the sweet sounds of American music from Jillian´s iPod. I made some arepas with avocado and quesito, a marvelous culinary epiphany which resembles queso fresco in its crumbly texture and salty aftertaste. We ate and Jillian said I had fed her too much, a proclaimation which would become the central theme of her stay in Medellin.

As it turns out, just about everything is cheesy and fried, if not also meaty and saucy in Colombia. Which is just tits for me. But the descriminating palette protests. In an attempt to distract from this fact, we went to Exito for some hot sauce.

Hot Sauce is Sexy

We also encountered Salsa Negro, a fantastic feat of political incorrectness in a bottle.

PinC condiments

We roamed the streets of Carrera Carabobo (literally, ¨face of the fool¨), a pedestrian marketplace where the intuitive shopper can find avocados at five for seventy-five cents. Old women ratteld plastic jars full of chicle, a impromptu ritual meant to generate prosperity, and we were approached by whirly-gig salesmen, who accosted us as if they knew in the core of their being that we had been searching our entire lives for their worthless goods. We stopped by Govinda´s, the Hare Krishna´s vegetarian restaurant, where I filled Jill up with a cheesy dish and we experimented with the new hot sauce, which was very hot.
We left plump and sedate, resembling Botero´s exaggerated sculptures with faces which may well have been described as foolish.

Jilltero Cat

Chadtero Dog

Jill bought me a pair of shades, which made me look like the Terminator, hippy pimp edition.

Effin Cool

The rain started up and we went to see ¨Twilight¨ in the cinema, which was in Spanish so it was called ¨Crepusculo.¨ It felt cosmic, somehow, both of us sitting around in Colombia watching a movie which was filmed in Forks and Port Angeles, Washington, a place that both of us had happened to live at different times of our lives for no good reason. Fate had triangulated on us right then and there, and a mysterious, ineffable mood possesed me, impressing me with the inescapable connection of everything. Like when you are thinking of something, for example, ¨that fellow sure has got a strange shape hasn´t he? Sort of spherical, sort of rotund, yes rotund is...¨ and right then someone walking by on the street says ¨rotund¨ for whatever reason to whoever it is they might be talking to on their mobile phone and you think, ¨now wait a minute. Who´s in charge of this whole charade anyways?¨

Chillian

Jillian flew away Saturday afternoon, full of hot sauce and cheese and avocados and lousy Colombian pizza. I went with Deisy and some of her friends to Guarne, a small red brick pueblo about an hour outside of Medellin. The rain came heavy and we were fully soaked when we arrived at the half-finished house which belonged to the sister of one of Deisy´s friends. The place was empty and dusty with the feel of a well-kept squat, bunk beds everywhere, cute posters on the wall reminding you to ¨Smile!¨ in Spanish rhyme.

We sipped some aguardiente, a traditional anise-flavored liquor, to warm up and suddenly I had a breakthrough of sorts in Español. I observed how people would change their address from the formal ¨usted¨ to the informal ¨tu¨ and the informal informal ¨vos¨ depending on their mood, the context, and who else was listening. After several hours of conversation, I realized I was fluently discussing the pros and cons of Freudian psychology with a local and wondered, ¨now how the hell did that happen?¨ It was as if the language had slipped in unnoticed while I was busy contemplating the best way to eliminate reggaeton from the face of the earth.

I passed the next day in the botanical garden, reading the Spanish version of ¨The Tao of Physics¨ by Fritjof Capra and watching the people go by. The rain came around five, as usual, and in no time I was huddled under the over-hang by the cafe with everybody else as a booming storm lit up the evening sky. I sipped coffee and watched the lightning, feeling part of something huge and dynamic, something magical and alive, an inspired extra in the pandimensional tango of life.

The rain let up and I returned to my apartment. I looked out my window for a long time. Far below, street lights flickered sulpher-orange and reflected from wet asphalt in hazy blobs of infinite mystery and sadness. The city lit-up bit by bit - faux-luna blue metal halides illuminating vacant warehouse bays, the distant San Javier barrio on the hillside, the metro sliding over its rails like a well-disciplined glow worm, Cisneros apartment blocks and the towers of Carabobo, the intelligent building shining like a glorified tin can, the TV towers by Pueblito Paisa phasing in and out of each other in urgent, emergency red - every nook of the city acknowledging the nocturne in its own way.

The rain stopped and I smoked a cigarette from my unscreened window.

The world felt timeless and immortal.

Window vista