Musings about CuChulainn, Missing the USA

Over the course of a few very busy weeks, I've been writing guest posts for travel blogs here and there, and here's a short article I wrote for Enjoy Irish Culture about CuChulainn, the hero of the ancient Irish epic, The Tain.

For anyone who hasn't read The Tain, it is just a barrel of laughs, while also being very stern and warlike, of course.  I must have missed the funny bits back when I first read it during a university course on The Ulster Cycle, but parts of it are properly hilarious if you're a fan of absurdity and gallows humor.  A certain warrior named Cethern, who slaughters many men in battle and then crawls back to camp nearly dead, with his guts around his feet, is informed by the healer that he will not survive his wounds.  He responds, "THEN NEITHER WILL YOU!" and punches the healer's brains out through his ears.

There are also quite a couple of scenes where CuChulainn's adversaries refuse to fight him, because he is a beardless boy and it would be degrading to their manhood, so he has to run around looking for a fake beard.  And then, after a great battle where he's single-handedly decimated the armies of Connacht and everyone's afraid he's going to go on a rampage and just tear up the entire province, they send all the Ulster women out to flash their breasts at him, and he gets so embarrassed he hides his face and runs away.  Because, ya know, he's seventeen.  Oh, it's just a delightful, dramatic, bizarre epic altogether, and anyone interested in ancient Celtic cultures should give it a read.  (My translation is by Thomas Kinsella, which gives a pretty accurate rendition of most of the important stories in the Ulster Cycle, while interpreting it in a way that's accessible to modern readers.)

Also, I had so much fun reading it, that I drew a comic of CuChulainn and his wife-to-be, Emer, and here it is:

Moreover, in light of the sudden realization that I have six days left in the States, I am beginning to freak out a bit over all the things I have left undone, whether I made the most of my time here, whether I'm ready to be a vagabond again, et cetera and so forth.  So, having been in the US for a good four months now, I'll write about some of the things here that I take for granted, and don't realize I love until they're gone.  As a highly adaptable person, most of the things other American expats miss I am glad to be without.  Like smiling... I can't stand how much Americans smile.  It's exhausting, and unnecessary.  I don't drink soda, don't eat either large portions or fast food, and don't buy brand clothing that costs ten times as much elsewhere.  However, there were a couple of things that going without for nine months as I jetted up and down the length of South America filled me with rage and enormous cravings.

1)  Bagels.  It's silly, I know.  But there is a certain way a bagel has to be, and that is a proper New York style bagel, enormous and golden brown and with crust you have to tear at with your teeth but light and steaming on the inside, and then you eat it with smoked salmon and cream cheese and capers and any number of delicious things.  Nowhere in the world have I found anything up to par (bagels were still a relatively new phenomenon in Ireland last time I was there), except for a tiny cafe just off of the Plaza de Armas in Cusco that served fresh bagels with sides of scrambled eggs, tuna fish, and avocado, bagels so good I almost cried eating them.  It was run by an Israeli family, and then they closed up to travel back to Israel for a few months, which was very sad.

2)  Loud people.  And I'm not saying the US is the only loud country.  South America was pretty loud at all hours of the day and night, and China, as I remember it, had its fair share of street vendors screaming at you over bullhorns.  But the parts of Europe I've been to, people on the whole talk quite a few decibels lower than their American counterparts, and sometimes you have to strain to hear what they're saying.  That being said, I have been reprimanded for being too loud, which generally happens when I'm telling a particularly exciting story.

3)  Peanut butter.  Again, something I never thought I particularly needed to survive until it was gone.  Yes, I suppose it's an acquired taste, but when you think about it, it's the perfect traveling food.  It's high in protein so a little bit will keep you full for a long time.  It's so versatile you can eat it with apples and pretzels and sandwiches and stir-fries.  It doesn't need to be refrigerated, so you can keep it in your backpack as you ride a bus for 20 hours across the Peruvian desert and then eat it for breakfast and not die.  I once paid the equivalent of $9 for a tiny jar of peanut butter that I found after much searching at a "food for foreigners" shop, and I am not ashamed.

4)  24/7 convenience stores.  How I hate including this after years of rolling my eyes at Americans who go to Europe for a week and then complain about how there's nowhere you can buy burritos at 3 o'clock in the morning.  But when you're hiking up Machu Picchu at five in the morning and you have the sudden realization, "I need tampons right now and there is nowhere within a 3,000 mile radius where I can get them because it's Sunday," you see the value in such pandering to rampant consumerism.

Aaaand I really thought I'd have more that I'd miss about the States.  Sorry, America, not sorry.  I will be spending the upcoming 4th of July in Dublin, drinking copious amounts of tea and eating curry chips and Cadbury chocolate and walking around in the rain, and other such non-American things.  It will be absolutely magical.

Extreme Caged Combat In the City of Brotherly Love

First of all, if anyone is curious about a few thoughts I had about writing 24 Hours Dublin, The Irish Times kindly published a small article I wrote about it.  The editor came up with the description "a long-term love affair condensed into a day," which I thought was just charming!

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/24-hours-dublin-a-long-term-love-affair-condensed-into-a-day-1.1778725

It sometimes occurs to me that, having traveled and lived in so many different countries, I take the United States for granted and assume there's nothing here I haven't already seen.  Which is unfair of me, because I've only lived in two states and visited a few others, and I'm well aware that there are tons of different cultures and and modes of life and wild things to see across the continent.  I just tend to be less motivated to explore places I don't need a passport to visit partially because I've found it's more expensive to travel within the States.  You seem to need a car to get anywhere, for one thing, and we don't have as widespread a hostel culture as the rest of the world does.  Aside from couch-surfing, in many cases the only option for budget accommodation is a $50 motel room.  Plus, having grown up here I tend to think there's nothing particularly unique to visit in my area.

Anyway, I made amends for my complacence and nose-turned-uppery by taking a mini-vacation up to Philadelphia for the weekend.  My college friend Silas, whose wedding catalyzed my return back to the States from Peru, picked me up from 30th Street Station and we drove out of the city to the National Guard Armory.  Our friend Anthony, an old comrade from back when we studied Goju Ryu at college together, was competing in an MMA cage fight, so we showed up for moral support purposes... and also it was his birthday.  I'd never been to a cage fight before, though Silas has - both fighting and watching from the sidelines - so I was pretty excited alright.  And the whole atmosphere of the place was so uniquely Pennsylvanian, a weird melange of good-natured family sporting event and gun-crazy, truck-driving right-wingers who if you stand within a five-foot radius of them will bowl you over with the smell of beer and weed.

At the beginning there wasn't much of a crowd, but then once the energy of the place got cranked up, it seemed like the entire gymnasium throbbed with a massive swell of people roaring and cheering.  The girl I sat next to kept laughing at how into it I was getting - I was waving my fists around and jumping up out of my seat with sheer excitement.  And it was exciting, watching extremely ripped guys pummel each other good-naturedly (all the contestants were very sportsmanly as well, which I wasn't exactly expecting,) and made me really miss practicing martial arts.  It's been about six years since I practiced Goju Ryu, and I always saw it as one of those things I'd get back into once I have a stable lifestyle and enough money to afford a membership at a dojo.  However, that hasn't happened just yet.

Anyway, the night was a series of nine amateur fights, three rounds of two minutes each, leading up to two professional fights.  About halfway through, everybody stood up and turned towards the massive flag on the far wall as a girl with platform shoes and gold bangle earrings sang the national anthem, which I'd forgotten was a thing Americans do.  Then Anthony's fight was the last of the amateur section, both of the contestants weighing in at 155 pounds.  Now, it is customary in XCC for whoever's fighting, when he's being introduced by the emcee (I say "he" because I don't feel like being PC about it, but there were actually two women fighting in the pro ranks that night, and they were really intense), to have scary death metal or aggressive rap music blasting as he swaggers into the arena, shooting the audience looks like he's going to go out and chew up their hubcaps after the fight.  Anthony strode out to the tune of the Ninja Turtle Rap with this sardonic smirk that didn't budge from his face for the entirety of his fight.

His heavily tattooed opponent charged into the ring to a tune that went something like, "DEATH DOOM DIIIIIE BLOOD GUTS DIE DIE DIE!!!" and man, this guy was huge, no way he weighed 155 pounds.  (I believe what had happened was that Anthony's original opponent had dropped out and was replaced at the last minute by someone much heavier.)  As he steps into the cage, Anthony's sister is sitting behind us is freaking out that she's going to have to watch her brother get torn apart by this terrifying behemoth.  The fight lasted 23 seconds before Anthony KOed the guy, boxed him in the side of the head and rendered him completely dazed for the remainder of the event.  All of us in our section of the bleachers went absolutely wild, and I still have a scratchy throat from all the screaming I did.

Afterwards we ended up at Frankford Hall, an open-air German-style beer hall where we drank many steins of fancy IPAs and had the best curry bratwurst and cabbage I've tasted in my life.  The place was jam-packed and lacked only a brass band in liederhosen playing proper German oom-pa music.  (Though apparently they do have those on special occasions.)  On Saturday I had the whole morning free to explore downtown Philly which, astoundingly given how close I've lived to it most of my life, I've never done before.  It was actually a cool town, with a few modestly arty sections and a few modestly elegant buildings (it seems overall to be a very quiet, modest city... their one claim of fame is that 200 years ago they were the stomping ground of the Founding Fathers, and they don't even make much noise about that,) and every now and then you'll run into this fantastically post-apocalyptic, gargantuan condemned building covered in rust and graffiti where you're sure some mad scientist is hidden away creating an army of zombies.

However, there were a few lovely parks where you can lounge on the grass and eat ice cream, and I had the good luck to stumble across one where there was a fine arts and crafts fair going on, where I lingered and perused through all the quirky ceramics and hanging mobiles and hand-woven textiles and eventually bought a little dill plant for my mom for Mother's Day.  (Dill is a criminally undervalued herb on this continent... you can only find it in special grocery stores in Maryland, and it's practically nonexistent in South America.)

I wandered through City Hall which was very impressive indeed, and discovered Philadelphia's Chinatown, in which I was hoping to find fresh dumplings and those rice flour buns with red bean paste inside, but instead bought what turned out to be the worst dumplings I've ever tasted.  It was like eating glue with peas in the middle, and only too late did I realize that it was because they were vegan dumplings.  Darn vegan dumplings.  However, the proprietor was very friendly and gave me a glass of hot tea and then pointed me in the direction of the Liberty Bell and Benjamin Franklin's grave... the grave I visited, but not the bell because I was quite tired and the line to see it curved all the way around the park.  But I could see a corner of it through a window, so I figure that counts.  (Whereas once in Moscow I waited in a line in Red Square for two hours, in the subzero wind and heavy snow, just to go inside Lenin's mausoleum.... I am a bad American.)

So it was a great trip overall, and good to know that I can satisfy wanderlusty feelings and the need to do something different without decimating my life savings and jetting halfway across the world.  Also, in my mission of scoping out American cities to eventually settle in quasi-permanently, Philadelphia is definitely a contender.  We'll see...

A Cabal of Knitters

As I've said, I generally take a more solitary approach to knitting, but the other night I decided to get out of the house and sit in on a knitting circle, having been invited by a woman I met at an Irish dance class.  It was, in fact, a delightful night all around filled with wine and cheese and chocolate-covered Matzo and lots of women - some with professional artistic backgrounds and some knitting for recreation and some knitting for charity - working on different projects.  There was a very tight, comradely sort of atmosphere as we all chatted about different events and tools of the trade (alpaca! mohair! raglans! Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival, which I am officially banning myself from attending this year because I have no money to spend on more fancy wool!)  And it might just be me imagining it, but I'm pretty sure the knitting I did there was less sloppy than usual, because I was actually focusing on what I did.

There was also a lot of pressure to knit your best, because some of the women's other nearly finished garments were seriously gorgeous.  One or two of them were proper maestros, taking a properly creative approach to their craft.  I mean, I know a few knitting tricks by this point.  I can make a decent sweater, I can increase and decrease like a champ, and I am unfazed by cables.  But the women here were so far beyond all of that they were using patterns as guidelines only, making their own flourishes and changing the measurements or numbers of stitches whenever they felt it was necessary, which I would be terrified to do.  Plus, a lot of them knew how to knit pockets, which is my next big goal.  At any rate, it was a great community for bouncing ideas off of each other and asking for advice.  The most advanced of them was able to tell me the point of the whole turn and wrap technique, which I'd figured out how to do but couldn't put my finger on why.  It is, in fact, to be used when you want to preserve a certain pattern but have one side of the piece you're knitting shorter than the other, as in a trapezoid shape.  I needed this to knit a collar for a new sweater I'm attempting, and she described it as allowing for a sort of sawn-off cone shape to the collar rather than a cylinder shape, which would make it arrange itself more naturally on your shoulders.

So there was much chatting and gossiping and laughing late into the night, and everyone was very interested to hear about Peru, and especially the trove of alpaca wool I'd brought home from there.  One interesting thing I noticed, which seems to be universal among knitters who hang out with other knitters, is that it was very good manners to come up to someone, ask to see what they're working on, and then pick it up and feel it very intently it all over with your hands.  In fact, it's quite flattering when someone does that, and especially if they then start rubbing your stash of yarn between their fingers.  And anyone who shows up wearing an interesting sweater or shawl can expect to have it complimented and then petted by various different people who might be interested in replicating it.

The project I began there is the Alienor sweater by Anna Larsson which is beautiful but intimidating.  (It's the one that had me all frustrated by the whole notion of turning and wrapping.)  But I've gotten the initial cable pattern down for the collar and am making headway with that.

And, best of all, I've finally broken into my alpaca wool from Arequipa.  It is absolutely the finest stuff I've ever dealt with, soft and silky but with a slick feel of lanolin, and I have to hold myself back from knitting every spare second I get.

Publishment and Pontificating

In lieu of any actual travel tales, (although I am slowly plotting out my trip to England in June!) I have two big announcements to make on this blog.

Announcement the first, 24 Hours Dublin is finally up on Amazon.com, ready to order for $4.99 and have for your very own.  Follow this link to take a look, browse through the sample pages and read about all the different reasons why Dublin is the greatest city in all the history of all the world.  No exaggerations there, no sir.  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JGVAZW2

See!  Look how happy I look there!  Look!  Everyone just go to Dublin - you will not be sorry.

Announcement the second, I am currently attempting to knit a tunic dress, loosely based off of the Liesl pattern by Julie Weisenberger only I've nixed the pockets and am making up the dimensions as I go, hoping that the finished product will fit a tall, gangly person such as myself.  The pattern required that I learn the selvedge stitch, which requires that you slip the first and last stitch of each row, but in such a way that you don't end up with any less stitches at the end of it.... it's all still somewhat of mathematical wizardry to me, but it seems to be working out well enough.  I especially love that my stockinette stitch doesn't curl at the edges now, something I had resigned myself to years ago as just one of knitting's inherent tragedies.

Otherwise, I've been reading a lot about all the secret health benefits associated with knitting and crocheting, which have been getting a lot of press recently.  And finding out there's actual scientific evidence behind how addictive knitting can get makes me feel like much less of a weirdo, which is always nice.

First of all, knitting offers some of the same benefits as meditation.  I probably lose some of the effect, since I generally knit to stave off guilt as I watch TV shows (currently Breaking Bad) or sometimes while I'm buying anti-guilt by listening to audio books.  But the simple, repetitive movements of casting on stitches apparently activate the same areas of your brain as reciting a mantra, decreasing production of stress hormones and increasing production of dopamine and serotonin.  Aside from the mental benefits this sort of "instant relaxation" technique can have, helping ameliorate symptoms of everything from ADHD to Alzheimer's.

In addition to the more esoteric benefits, you also get to enjoy the good old increased nimbleness in your hands, which can help stave off the onset of arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome (the last one which occasionally worries me, as my job includes frenziedly typing a bajillion words a day).

And the endless ways knitting can assist with an emotionally and healthy lifestyle shouldn't be overlooked either.  Stereotypes of hermitly cat-ladies aside, joining a crafts club can be a great way to find a close-knit (!!!) group of friends with the same interests as you.  And, in these high-strung, adrenalin-fueled ADHD days of jumping from distraction to distraction and buying quasi-disposable clothes from monstrous super-mall warehouse-marts, it can be immensely fulfilling to wear something that you've put time and and effort into creating.  (Of course, no one but another knitter will ever realize you're wearing a self-made item, but you get mad respect from anyone who's in the club.)

Perk #1: Spending your money on fancy yarn and bamboo needles is better than spending it on drugs.

Perk #2: Wooden needles can double as stakes for vampire slaying.

Perk #3: You can give failed experiments  to your mom for Mother's Day and tell her it's a stylish scarf.  She will be overwhelmed.

Perk #4: Having some sort of demonstrable survival skill, such as hat-making, will make you a valuable asset to post-apocalyptic warrior societies.

California Gallivanting, Culture-Shock, Among Other Things

Yes, I know.  It's been a month since I've updated, mainly because a) I'm now back in Baltimore and exciting travel stories have been few and far between, and b) I've been insanely busy getting ready for the launch of this little beauty:

For anyone in the Baltimore area curious about what there is to do in Dublin or planning a trip to Ireland at any point, I will be giving a talk about some of its best pubs, activities, cafes, shops, and so on at 1:00 pm on April 12th, at Ukazoo Books on Dulaney Valley Road, right across from the Towson Town Center.  If you have any questions at all, stop by for tea and goodies!

To round off the end of my most recent stint of travels, I flew into San Francisco to visit my age-old friend Rima and her awesome roommates.  I've been to San Fran twice before - once with my dad and once with my sister - and I was barely in the city an hour before I remembered just how much I love it.  I'm not sure if it's the blustery weather or the hills or how pleasant the locals are, but there's just a great energy to the place that makes you want to eat avocados and exercise and be overwhelmingly friendly to everyone you meet.

So over the course of the weekend Rima took me all around the city and to more social engagements than I'd been to in the past two months.  (I seemed to get free food and drinks wherever we went, so I was very pleased with the itinerary.)  There was a dinner party at a beach house with her soccer team, an early-morning nature walk along the coast, a going-away party at a super-secret speakeasy bar where you have to utter a password at the front door and then another password to gain admittance to an even secreter bar behind a bookcase - I had the single most luminous and delicious cocktail of my life, though I can't remember what went into it... vermouth and brandy and a cherry, among other things - and a fundraiser for an AIDS/LifeCycle to San Diego that she and her roommates are taking on.

Though we had only one cold, foggy day left to do touristy things after all of Rima's social engagements were taken care of, we got a good deal of it done.  We had clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls down by Fisherman's Wharf, we saw the sea lions sprawled out over the pontoons in the bay, and we ambled through Pier 39.

We had hot chocolate at the Ghirardelli factory and then lunch at Chinatown, which was all decked out for Chinese New Year, and went in search of a certain tea shop that my sister and I had stumbled across once five years ago, Vital Tea Leaf.  In addition to selling a huge variety of loose-leaf teas, both delicious and chock-full of health benefits, the shop has a special, welcoming atmosphere, inviting passersby in to give them a full demonstration of how to brew and serve the tea, with free samples for all!  So Rima and I took shelter there from the rainstorm that had rolled around and we drank fancy tea out of eggshell-sized teacups.  And we even got to chat to Uncle Gee, the wildly charismatic and hospitable owner who doled out hugs left and right and then went back to his post at the front door, where he stood shouting down potential customers, "Hey, you!  Come in here and have some tea!  It will make you YOUNGER!  And STRONGER!  And TWICE AS SEXY!"  

Following San Francisco, I hopped a Greyhound north to Chico where I spent the next week being fed tea and fancy chocolates and gingerbread cookies by Katharine, my age-old (but not quite as age-old as Rima, whom I'd known since high school,) roommate that I hadn't seen since January of 2010 when I stopped by Frankfurt on a trip from Moscow to Helsinki.  It was a cozy and delightful time of cooking borscht and going on a promenade through the fairy tale playground, drinking artistic beers at the local microbrewery, taking a tour of the historic Bidwell mansion and their garage of turn of the century motorcars, and visiting the world's very biggest working yo-yo (they needed a crane to yo-yo it!) 

But mostly we just sat around wrapped up in blankets and played with her cat, Punkin.  Punkin was a very dapper cat indeed - he was all black with little white patches like he was wearing a tiny tuxedo and elegant cuff-links, and he bore himself with the brooding mien of a Byronic hero.  And then, when you were sleeping, he would sneak over and step quite delicately on your face.

And for now - until June, anyway - I'm through with traveling and shall spend my days focusing on writing projects and visa schemes.  I am, of course, knitting far more than I should, so any updates prior to me leaving for London will most likely be me babbling about my knitting attempts and experiments with cables and other over-my-head techniques.  Until then!

Alpaca museum and weaving in loose ends

I know I've been kind of lagging in the knitting section of this blog... in my defense, I've been quite busy (writing, having Christmas in summer, going to parties and barbecues, drinking Fernet and Coke in Buenos Aires which apparently I'm the only foreigner in the world who actually thinks is delicious,) and plus the temperature in Argentina and Chile was around 40 degrees and humid - not exactly propitious for knitting woolly mittens.

After a harrowing 42 hours of transit by bus and colectivo from Valaraiso to Santiago, Arica, Tacna, and finally Arequipa, I found myself back in the heartland of alpaca wool culling clothes left and right to make more room in my backpack for yarn.  For anyone interested in purchasing good quality alpaca wool, I got mine from a tiny alleyway filled with touristy restaurants and little artisan shops, just off of Calle Alvarez Tomas and to the north of Plaza de Armas.  One particular shop had a little bit more upscale, hand-knitted sweaters, hats, and gloves rather than the generic manufactured things you see everywhere, and if you ask the surly woman at the front desk she'll take you into the back room and show you a stash of alpaca skeins - 50 grams for 5 soles.  Any Sol Alpaca boutique you find will also sell skeins of baby alpaca, but you may end up paying an arm and a leg for them.

So I was staying up in San Lazaro, a tiny historic district filled with cobblestones and lantern-lined alley ways, and right around the corner from my hostel I discovered Mundo Alpaca, a museum of all things alpaca.  For anyone interested in textiles, it's sheer paradise because you get to wander through, learn about different types of alpacas, run your hands through a giant pile of raw wool, and watch it go through the combing, carding, spinning, and weaving process.

For anyone not interested in textiles, it's worth a look-see because a) it's free, and b) you get to see these guys!

But really, anyone curious about traditional artisan crafts in South America should set aside half an hour for this museum.  There are crazy machines with giant wheels and cogs reminiscent of Modern Times, (the knitting machine made me feel depressingly superfluous,) a dyeing station, and women demonstrating their mad weaving skills.  It really gives you an insider's perspective on all the work that goes into the alpaca industry, and just how important it is to the culture and economy of the area - of the estimated 4 million alpacas in South America, 95% of them are in central and southern Peru.  Plus, there's a gift shop at the end filled with gorgeous luxury alpaca garments, but I had no money left at this point and couldn't let myself go in because I would just get sad.

Overall, it made me really want to try spinning my own yarn, and I came close to buying one of those dreidel-shaped drop spindles you see women spinning with on street corners.  But, realistically, I would have no way of buying raw wool and then no patience for actually sitting down and spinning it.  Some day, though, when I actually have an overabundance of free time.

Squalor in the Vale of Paradise

Nothing can effectively describe Valparaíso- UNESCO World Heritage Site, incidentally - unless maybe you're Pablo Neruda, but I will certainly try.  It was like a compilation of all the weirdest and most exciting cities I've ever seen - a mix of San Francisco and Ping Yao and St. Petersburg - and it smelled like sewage and cigarettes and piss and freshly baked cakes.  So many cakes!  Moreover, it's filled with art and lovely stray dogs and pyramids of onions and avocados people are trying to sell you.  There is a raw transience about it, (maybe that was just me though, frazzled and at the end of my trip and projecting,) and colonial grandeur, and decay of Soviet Union proportions.  The houses have walls of corrugated tin and are painted in vibrant colors.  They look like boxcars from abandoned trains that have been stacked on top of each other all the way up the 42 hills and beyond the reach of tsunamis.  Plus, there are sliding boards for no reason at all.

The streets make no sense at all - they curve and spiral and stop dead and jut out over dizzying stone staircases.  All the walls have these alien fever dreams painted on them - geishas, koi fish, naiads, spaceships, steampunk chameleons, and even the stones have eyeballs - and it's swarming with bohemian types, ensuring that every street you walk down is going to have some sort of impromptu circus or jazz session or guy drawing chalk murals.  There are crumbling palaces and Belle Epoque hotels with fancy plaster facades and everything behind the walls demolished.  To get up and down the hills you can climb hundreds and hundreds of Wall of China-esque stairs or you can take the antique, rattling ascensores.  Walking up along the tsunami evacuation route, you can see the whole city spread out beneath you, 19th century mansions perched precariously over ravines, houses crowded together up and down hills, staircases switch-backing through raggedy gardens and past the ascensores and not really going anywhere at all.  The whole place is like something out of a Hayao Miyazaki film, like the place all your childhood toys go after you lose them.

Clearly, I could not get enough of the murals.  Over ten days of exploring I found some great art galleries, cafes, and second-hand bookshops, a lot of them around the trendy Cerro Concepción area.  I kept hearing the night life in Valpo was bar none, but I was entirely too tired/poor to go out much.  (Chile is the most expensive country in South America, with prices similar to what you'd get in Europe.)  However, I did take a tour of La Sebastiana, Pablo Neruda's amazing house full of seafaring things from around the world, where he used to sit and write in green ink in his study that overlooked the Pacific Ocean.  In the evenings he would hold parties for all his friends and say clever, poetic things, and sometimes come in disguise, darkening his face and eyebrows with burnt cork - Pablo Neruda was essentially Mr. Rochester.  It made me really want a house or flat to live in; nothing extravagant, just a charming couple of rooms in some squalid, romantic city where I can throw open the bay windows to the Black Sea in the summer and in the winter light cheap cigarettes off the gas stove as I knit fingerless gloves for the stray cats outside, where I can burn the manuscript of my three-volume novel for fuel and cook great, walloping pots of borscht and maybe even have my very own teapot.  (I've been missing Eastern Europe lately...)

Now I'm back in Peru again, after 42 hellish hours of transit from Valparaíso to Santiago to Tacna to Arica and finally to Arequipa.  It's a huge relief a) to come to a city I already know, which hasn't happened in practically eight months, and b) to be someplace where $3 can buy you a three-course meal plus a glass of chicha morada.  I've met up with Lisa, Darragh, and Diane again which is great, because traveling alone makes you crazy after a while.  Otherwise, I'm pretty busy finishing up the first draft of my book on Dublin as well as a few other travel articles and conceiving new projects and whatnot, and all is right with the world.