www.NormSchriever.com

The Pushups in the Prayer Room press release:

AMERCIAN AUTHOR LEAVES IT ALL TO FOLLOW DREAM OF WRITING IN CENTRAL AMERICA

Sacramento entrepreneur Norm Schriever, who sold his house and of all his possessions and moved to Costa Rica to write, releases book about his year traveling the world.

                                                                                                         

March 1, 2012 — Tamarindo, Costa Rica — In today’s reality of financial insecurity, one man has decided to turn the idea of security on its head and pursue a life most people only dream about. In 2011, Norm Schriever, a successful Sacramento entrepreneur, sold his house and cars, and then sold or donated all of his material possessions and moved to the seaside town of Tamarindo, Costa Rica, in Central America. His reason? To write. One year later, the author has released his first book, a collection of vignettes from the year he traveled the world from 1999-2000.

                                                                                                                

Pushups in the Prayer Room: Reflections from a Year Backpacking Around the World (Authority Publishing, ISBN-13 978-1-935953-32-6, $17.95, paperback; $7.99, ebook, 218 pages, March 2011) by Norm Schriever, details the highs and lows of the author’s journeys through more than 20 countries in 6 continents, spanning 70,000 miles total. 

From the book’s jacket copy:

There is never a dull moment on this wild and irreverent adventure, whether Norm is evading armed carjackers in a high-speed chase in the barrios of Venezuela, exploring ancient wonders of the world like the pyramids, the Great Wall, and Machu Picchu, almost landing in a Bolivian jail for cocaine trafficking, or witnessing the holiest sites on earth in Jerusalem.  Along the way, Norm encounters a broad spectrum of human existence and experiences a blossoming of consciousness and spiritual growth that he never anticipated. What started out as a wild, raucous party trip evolves into a man’s quest for his life’s purpose in the world.  

Schriever, who is donating a portion of the book’s proceeds to several charities including Farm Haiti, Trafigura Work and Learn Business Center, and Fiji Aid International, says of his year abroad, “I was just a crazy, confused kid going into it, and when I came back I was a conscious man with a pinpoint of certainty about who I was and what I wanted my life’s purpose to be.  But it took me a lot of years to figure out what to do with that meaning.  I had no idea I would become an author or come full circle and live in Costa Rica.  Hell, I had no idea about all of this even a year ago!  That’s how fast everything has happened.” 

For additional information, visit www.NormanSchriever.com.

About Norm Schriever

Norm Schriever grew up in Connecticut and graduated from the University of Connecticut.  He went on to live in North Carolina, California, Boston, and Colorado, and now resides in Tamarindo, Costa Rica. He plans to publish a second book about life as an American living in Costa Rica soon. 

www.NormSchriever.com

Pushups in the Prayer Room book is released for pre-sale!

Starting Feb 15, 2012, the book "Pushups in the Prayer Room" will be released for pre-sale. The book is officially being released in early March, but I wanted to give my friends and supportive readers a chance to purchase it earlier.  Go to www.NormSchriever.com to order it, and it will ship ion early March.  The e-book will be available then too. Thanks for spreading the word and I hope you love it!

www.NormSchriever.com

The book "Pushups in the Prayer Room" to be published February 2012!

Coming February, 2012 look for the book "Pushups in the Prayer Room",  a collection of short stories and reflections from a year backpacking around the world.

Available on www.normschriever.com and www.PushupsPrayerRoom.com and 

www.Amazon.com 

For more info email me at hi@normschriever.com

Mamani Mamani

There’s a painting by a Bolivian artist that captures exactly how it feels to be in the mountains in South America.  His name is Roberto Mamani Mamani and he’s Aymaran, an indigenous tribe of Incas that dwell in modern day Bolivia, Chile, and Peru.  His paintings are simple and yet it’s hard to look away: the dazzling colors and symbols of suns, moons, mountains, mothers and birds, all of the elements of Inca lore almost whisper a secret of the world from the canvas.  It emanates truth.  In this particular painting the pregnant sun takes up most of the sky, almost touching the earth.  The mountains look like they are melting more than trying to climb the sky, curving gently like the lines of a woman ready to be sketched.  Nestled into the crux of the mountains is a grouping of little houses with blue and green and orange roofs, a village who’s insignificance relative to the rest of the universe is apparent.  And then there’s a cathedral, with two rounded bell towers adjoining the grand sanctuary, built by the hands of the Spanish who came to colonize the Incas with intentions of building an empire that rivaled the sun and the mountains, but failed. 

That is how I felt when I was in the Andes Mountains.  The “spine of South America” runs over 4,000 miles, the world’s largest continuous mountain range, and reaches heights of 22,000 feet above sea level, dropping off precipitously to the Pacific ocean off the Western coast.  For those of you who’ve never been subjected to high altitude, it plays tricks with your brain in weird ways.  There is no experience quite like walking along the cobble-stoned streets of colonial cities like Quito, Ecuador, La Paz, Bolivia, or Cusco in Peru, which all rest at 10,000 feet or higher in the Andes Mountains.  To put it in perspective most of them are twice as high as Denver, Colorado - the Mile High City.  You perpetually feel light-headed, with a slight twinge of a headache at the back of your skull.  Even normal activities like walking up a flight of steps or a slight incline leaves you gasping for breath.  But the air is so dry and thin with oxygen that it could take hours to recover.  You always feel a little dizzy, like the afternoon hangover after swilling ten mimosas with cheap champagne for brunch.  Everyone moves slower, gliding along as if in a dream, but that's cool because you also feel that there’s nowhere more important you’re supposed to be.  It’s either cold or hot outside, or both at the same time, and either way it feels like a blessing, not an inconvenience. 

After a few days at 10,000 feet I start getting used to it, and I’ve even lived in a city that high for a few months and loved it.  Getting drunk actually makes you feel better, like it levels out the delicious vertigo.  But any higher than that and my brain starts to disconnect and misfire, or to resemble scrambled eggs to put it simply.  I’ve climbed a couple of 14’ers and did OK but when I tried to ascend Mount Cotopaxi in Ecuador, setting out from the base camp lodge at 2 a.m. with crampons and an ice axe, my mind just didn’t work right.  By the time I hit 17,000 feet my consciousness was fading in and out and I saw flashes of light.  It became hard to string a series of rational thoughts together; when I forgot who I came there with the day before I knew it was time to turn around and head back to the base camp.  I felt like a failure until I saw ten of that only five of our original fifteen climbers reached the summit. 

But when I was in Cusco, the gateway to the hike to Macchu Pichhu in Peru, sitting at 11,000 feet, I felt like I was in that Mamani Mamani painting.  That’s the gateway to Macchu Picchu in Peru.  Everyone comes there for a week or so to acclimate to the altitude, gear up and hire porters.  From there they head out on the Caminar Inca – the Inca train, an improbably windy path through the mountains to the hidden plateau of Macchu Picchu.        

               

In Cusco I was transported to a dream world somewhere in between heaven and earth.  It’s an enchanting colonial town nestled in the Andes Mountains that was settled and fortified by the Incas in the 13^th century.  Cusco was the center of the Inca Empire and also the place where all life originated in their religious lore.  I absolutely loved the vibe; – everything centered around a big park, the Plaza de Armas, that was lined by internet cafes, bars full of Peruvian students and travelers, discos hidden in alleys, tourist shops, hostels, and grand Spanish-era churches.  At night friends met in the park and drank hot chocolate with booze in it, shivering against the mountain cold and sitting on park benches, staring longingly at the thick stars which seem close enough to touch.  As I walked along the city walls I ran my hand over the gigantic twelve-sided keystones that are still held as strong as when they were placed 800 years ago.  Everything appeared to be at a slight angle - whether that was the case or if I was just feeling a twinge of vertigo from the altitude was hard to determine because there were no straight lines on the horizon to compare it to.  I felt like I was pitching on the waves of a submarine under the sea.  Walking up and down cobble stone streets and stone steps all day made my calves ache and so I stopped often to collect my breath and feel the sun on my face.  During the days Shane and I suffered through full court basketball games at the local highs school, which felt like running with mud in our lungs.  In the afternoons we hit a bar in the North corner of the Plaza Armas, Norton Rats, with its old motorcycle theme, where his Uncle knew the ex-pat owner and we could play pool and listen to the Rolling Stones with a couple of pints.  Or we’d sit outside on the balcony and watch the townsfolk sell flowers on the steps of the Church of La Compania as an old man played a wooden flute.  There were good, cheap restaurants in abundance so I tried every local dish I could, even eating alpaca and guinea pig, though most of the food was a variation of their staples; sweet potatoes and corn. 

   

The young women were strikingly beautiful, with hair as black as spilled ink and sultry vampire eyes.  The younger generation is Americanized, working in tourism and aspiring to go to college, but their parents are from a different era.  The Quecha, a term encompassing a few of the indigenous ethnic groups in South America, still dressed in the traditional garb; men wore wool waistcoats and red panchos with woven hats with earflaps, called chullos, even when it was warm.  The women wore bright wool dresses and bola coats decorated with beads, on their heads bowler hats that were brought in fashion by the British rail workers in 1920’s and never left.  Most of the time people wore ajotas, flimsy sandals crafted from recycled tires.  

The indigenous people in Peru and the surrounding countries of Bolivia and Ecuador are poor.  The post-Columbian era tribes were so scattered among isolated mountains communities that until recently there’s never been a need for a common identity or even language they could share.  Some would call them simple and passive, but I would describe them as peaceful and so spiritual that they are blissfully resigned.  Still, life is hard for them; most survive through manual labor and tough agricultural jobs and their life expectancy is short.  Their daily life stsill holds tokens of ancient mysticism and superstition like drying the carcasses of goats or small game and hanging them up as talismans to ward off bad luck.  They’ve born the brunt of not only conquest by the Spanish but discrimination and a lack of rights in modern day Peru, where the education, healthcare, and economic systems have marginalized them, often a boiling point for protests. 

After five days in Cusco Shane and I began our preparations to walk the Caminar Inca, the 88-kilometer (55 mile) roller coaster of a mountain path leading to Machu Pichu.  We visited one of the ubiquitous travel agencies that lined the Plaza de Armas and sat down with them to coordinate our trip.  Most tourists spent a lot of money on ensuring their comfort on the walk, but if you haven’t figured it out by now we’re not like most tourists.  The Peruvian college student working at the guide shop briefed us on what we would need for the trip; a guide to lead us, porters to carry all of our food, water, and equipment, a stock of carefully planned rations and drinking water, cold weather and waterproof gear, tents and sleeping bags, and very good hiking boots.  That all sounded way too easy – and expensive.  We decided to embark on the journey with no guide, no porters, and only our jeans, sweatshirts, and thin jackets to keep us warm.  Our waterproof gear included a plastic tarp and garbage bags.  We did buy llama hair mittens and hats, and rented huge backpacks that we filled with a tent, sleeping bags, a bunch of canned goods, a few potatoes and candy bars, and jugs of drinking water.  My hiking boots were just my brown dress shoes, which had a decent grip on the bottom and doubled as my fancy dance shoes on the trip.  The guy at the guide shop looked at us like we were crazy, and we soon found out why – he was right.  

Our last night in town we kicked it at a local disco and met some really cool Peruvian dudes.  They loved it that we were heading out to the Inca Trail without the creature comforts that the other pampered tourists enjoyed.  We laughed and sang and filled our glasses with beer from pitchers that came to our table faster than we could drink them.  Each time they made us go through the ritual of pouring a little beer onto the floor to bless the name of the Mother Earth in Inca lore, Pachamama.  As we grew quite drunk one of the guys grew sentimental for his traditional Inca ways.  He took off his necklace; a braided rope made of Llama hide or leather and adorned with green stones, and placed it around my neck.  He told us that there was magic in the mountains, and this necklace would give us good luck and help the spirits protect me on my journey.  I wish he had given me toilet paper instead.  

The Incas, or the Quechua as their culture and language are now called, are spiritual people who believe in reincarnation and have a whole pantheon of Gods to appease.  They consider this life a temporary passage to a better existence so it’s important to live by the Incan moral code – “Do not steal, do not lie, do not be lazy.”  Once they pass it’s important that they didn’t die by fire, nor that their body was burned, because this will prevent their spirit from being free.  Their Camaquen, or dead spirit, needs to follow a long dark road in the afterlife with the help of a black dog to see the way.  Only then will they reach their heaven - fields of blooming flowers and snow-capped mountains as far as the eye can see.  

But their theology isn’t all warm and fuzzy; the noble and elite in ancient Inca cultures practiced cranial deformation, wrapping tight cloth straps around infants’ heads.  Their soft skulls molded to the wrappings and left them conical-shaped skulls, signaling nobility and wealth.  It’s well documented that the Incas engaged in human sacrifice, especially with children to appease the Gods during important events like the death of an Emperor or a famine.  They chose children who were healthy and fattened them up for months before walking them up to ritual sites high in the mountains.  The children were dressed with ornate jewelry and costumes and given a special drink, probably containing coca leaves, to anesthetize them to the fear and pain.  The high priests sacrificed them either by strangulation, hitting them on the head, or leaving them on the mountaintop to die of cold and exposure.    

Sugar Shane and I took a train to a village on the trailhead, along the Urubamba River, and strapped on our packs and started the trek up the hillside and out of site of the village.  Looking back at my pictures from the beginning of that adventure I see myself bright-eyed and bushy tailed, clean-shaven and smiling as I began a nice stroll up a mountain.  The “After” pictures looked way different.

The four-day trip on the Inca Trail starts at the ruins of Patallacta at 9,200 feet and climbs steadily by the side of the Rio Cuscicha, or Happy River.  It’s hard to say how many other people were with us on the trial at the same time because everyone is stretched out in a single file line, but there were probably 50 tourists and 50 porters in our little caravan.  The hike was no problem on its own; I was in good shape and acclimated to the altitude, but I underestimated how much our backpacks would weigh.  It added up quickly as we threw in clothes and supplies for a fire and a tent and especially when we put cans of food and water in there.  Water weighs 75 lbs. per cubic foot and we had to bring enough for four days.  On the trail there was no place to collect safe drinking water because every stream, river, and lake could be tainted with animal feces.  My pack probably weighed 90 lbs. on the first day, and walking up the hills felt like giving a petite lady a piggy back ride, which I’d rather be doing than carrying my own backpack.  We were the only tourists carrying our own gear and the porters were somewhat puzzled by us.    

The porters blew right past us, gliding up the steep mountain effortlessly even though they balanced impossibly huge loads on their backs so they looked like figures in a Diego Rivera painting, the weight of their bundles bending them parallel to the trail on the way up.  They wore the traditional, colorful woven llama hair cloaks and hats, and some of them only wore flimsy sandals or slippery black dress shoes.  Each evening when we arrived at a campsite after a hard day of hiking the tourists were met with perfectly-erected tents, sleeping bags laid out, clean water, bottles of red wine, and a great meal of meat and vegetable stew already cooking over the campfire.  The tourists only had to carry a daypack with a small bottle of water and their camera up the trail.  When Shane and I showed up, dog tired, we still had to go through long process of trying to find a flat spot that wasn’t too rocky, throw up our ratty tent, scavege the alpine landscape for some dry wood, moss, or bark to start a fire, and get a paltry dinner started.  Still, we wouldn’t want it any other way – we were giving props by doing it old school; earning our journey to Machu Pichu and paying respect to the mountain, the culture, and Pachamama.  The porters began to acknowledge our journey and even treat us with growing respect.  These guys were barely over five feet tall with packs that easily weighed as much as they did and yet they just flew up the mountain.  They were super athletes, and legends circulated of these Incas running ultra distances, up to 50 miles a day, straight up and down mountains.  They told us about a yearly race where porters set out over a thirty mile course in the hardest terrain with only sandals and a couple of oranges, which they ran in marathon time.  They had been born in the thin air and knew nothing else so their lungs and pulmonary functions adjusted to the altitude, but they also had a little other help; they shared their coca leaves with Shane and I.

Coca is considered sacred and possesses magical qualities in Inca culture.  They’ve used it forever for medicine, religious purposes, and also to lessen hunger and pain if they’re working in the fields or going on a long journey.  The coca plant looks like a blackthorn bush about 7-10 feet high with small green fruit.  It’s harvested for its alkaloids, one of which is converted to powder form and called cocaine.  Needless to say it’s a pivotal plant in South America for several reasons but the porters took the leaves whole and rolled them into a black tar-like gum that they chewed on and spit out the juice.  The gum was bicarbonate that acted like a catalyst to release the narcotic qualities of the leaf.  They used it for a little pick me up from time to time on the Inca Trail, as well as drinking it in tea form called Mate.  They were nice enough to share a little with us because we were carrying our own bags, and indeed it almost instantly alleviated any feelings of fatigue or altitude sickness. 

On day two of the Caminar Inca we walked through the village of Wayllabamba, where the path joined the Mollepata trail.  The village consists of only 400 people who lived in tiny stone shacks with thatched roofs.  Kids ran around smiling and waving at the hikers as their mothers made maize cakes with a mortar and stews with small game over outdoor fires.   Llamas and donkeys milled about, tied to a tree.  Once we left the village the trail went West along the tributary to the Cosicha River and then rose to an impossibly steep climb up the Warmiwanusca, or Dead Woman’s Pass, cresting at 13,829 feet.  The vistas were breathtaking, passing in and out of cloud forests, switchbacks where you could see a panorama of the mountains and valleys below you, dense thickets of jungle with birds buzzing around, and occasionally onto grassy plains where the Incas practiced steppe agriculture to grow potatoes, yams, and maize.  

It’s right there that I learned the most basic lesson on supply and demand.  They should use this example on the first day of every Economics 101 class.  All about the trail there are indigenous women who hike along to sell water and candy bars to the tourists.  Of course everything has to be hand-carried so those items are at a premium if you are running low.  I came to find out that I could have just packed my bag with Snickers bars and that would have supplied me with enough calories and protein for the trip but still light enough to transport.  I was at the bottom of Dead Woman’s pass, readjusting my pack and getting ready for the two-hour intense climb when a lady walked by me selling her stuff.  I bought a bottle of water from her for $1, thanked her, and fell in line to trek up the steep pass.  Everyone was sweaty and exhausted by the time we reached the top.  A parched tourist asked the same lady for a bottle of water and she charged him $3, which he gladly forked over;  $1 at the bottom, $3 at the top; a perfect demonstration of value being dictated by supply and demand. 

The ascent of Dead Woman’s Pass was brutal and most of the tourists, who didn’t even have to carry any weight, fell by the side of the path to rest, panting like dogs in the sun.  Shane and I managed to get up in great time by being steady – putting one foot in front of the other slowly but without stopping to take breaks.  

Unfortunately I got stuck behind a donkey the whole way up.  When you’re in a single file line its important who’s in front of you because you don’t want to be trapped behind an annoying chatty tourist, a fat lady stops all the time, or a pack animal.  I had a nice view of the donkey’s ass the whole way up and had to bear the olfactory brunt of its mid-walk bathroom breaks.  Once we rose and fell from Dead Woman’s Pass we came to a valley at Pacaymayo, where the river drained.  The campground was a field of soggy moss teeming with mosquitos and pools of water.  The porters had claimed the good spots for their clients so the only place left was on the outskirts, right next to a huge bull with big horns grazing in the grass right next to us.  He wasn’t tied up so whole time we set up our tent and made a fire we kept one eye on him in case he decided to charge.  He made a lot of noise but didn’t disturb us.    

And it’s there that I ate the mashed potatoes that got me sick.  I knew it was that because Shane and I had eaten exactly the same things on the journey except for the instant mashed potatoes I cooked up.  I knew the water in the swamp would be bad news but I boiled it over the cooking fire before I put the potatoes in and chowed down.  It must not have killed all of the microorganisms because by morning time I was ill.   

I can think of 4,327,499 things that are more fun than contracting Gardia Lamblia, a protozoa that contaminates water in low areas where grazing occurs, including paying my taxes and getting tied to an ant hill naked and covered in honey.  When we set out on the trail again that morning I knew I felt like shit and was blowing up the little outhouse bathroom at the campground, but I had no idea how sick I would become.  I put on my backpack, which now felt like it weighed a ton, and as we hit the trail I got worse.  Every fifteen minutes I had to run off the side of the path and to get violently ill.  There is no comfortable, convenient place to go to the bathroom on the side of a mountain path; I’ll spare you the gory details but I was so sick that I was getting scared, and seriously dehydrated.  I tried to keep down as much water as I could.  Think about the worst food poisoning you’ve ever had, then strap a ninety pound pack on your back at 12,000 feet walking uphill with no toilet and no running water and you’ll get an inkling of what I was dealing with.  I got sick all day, and soon I had gone through my roll of toilet paper and also Shane’s.  I had to use my extra tee shirt, a bandana, then my boxer shorts, then each mitten, each sock, and then tufts of leaves and grass as toilet paper as the day went on.  There was no one who could help me and it didn’t make sense to turn back because we were more than halfway there.  Even if we could get word to a hospital we were so high up in the mountains that I would have to be airlifted out by helicopter.  I trudged on, my eyes sunken and my face completely void of any color, a zombie falling one foot forward up the trail.  No one wanted to be near me in case I start spontaneously vomiting or worse, and even the smelly donkey kept his distance.  Shane was great as usual, offering to carry more of my stuff and sharing as much of his water as he could.  But I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it.  I was facing Death by Diarrhea, an exit so inglorious that you wouldn’t even wish it on your enemies.   I was racked with fever and delirious with dehydration.  I heard a haunting voice in the my brain, “Don’t go towards the light, Norm.  Stay away from the light!”  Grandma – is that you?  Or maybe I would see the black dog soon, who was supposed to guide me along the dark road to the afterlife.  But all I saw in front of me on the path was a donkey’s ass and a butch lesbian couple from Texas with a disposable camera. 

In the midst of all of misery I managed to lift my head and see some beautiful views.  We’d trekked out the other side of the valley up to 12,300 feet, by Cochapata Lake where deer drank and thousands of yellow butterflies fluttered about.  In the afternoon we passed the ruins of Phuyupatamaba, the Cloud-Level Town, and had to climb an almost-vertical buff of 1,500 stone steps.  Mist rose from the valley below and shrouded the mountains.  It was exhausting and I have no idea how I got through it, except my only other alternative was just to lay down on the side of the trail and die of exposure like a child being sacrificed to the Gods.       

And then we were in Machu Picchu, the ruins of an ancient citadel built in the 1400’s for the Incan emperor Pachacuti, who they revered as the child of the sun god Inti.  He and his son, Tupac, the descendant to the crown, ruled the vast Inca Empire from this estate.  It was built on a narrow plateau with an impossible drop-off on every side, completely inaccessible except for one winding mountain path – the Inca Trail.  The inhospitable topography provided a perfect natural fortress for the Emperor and his estate.  The city of 140 structures was divided into upper and lower portions, separated for urban and agricultural usage.  They had temples, sanctuaries, residences, stables, storehouses, guard towers, and public baths.  The water system was an incredibly well designed series of channels and fountains that supplied drinking water, water for people and animals to bath, and irrigation for agriculture to the entire complex, fed by rain water.  

Most of the structures had been built with grass-thatched roofs so only the walls remained 600 years later.  They were built with huge stones carved out of the surrounding mountains and placed together so adeptly that they didn’t need mortar; joined with such mathematical precision that in most places you can’t even fit a blade of grass between the seams in the rocks.  Like Stonehenge and the pyramids, historians and archeologists still are dumbfounded how the ancient Incas transported the stones to their current location.  And just like those sites every stone in Machu Picchu was placed with religious significance, the ritual stones lining up with key astronomical points in the night sky.

But the empire’s use of Machu Picchu was short-lived.  Only a hundred years later, as the Spanish began their brutal conquest of South America, the city lay virtually abandoned.  Some people say it was abandoned because they didn’t want the Spanish to discover it, but a terrible small pox epidemic probably did more to wipe out the population.  The jungle overtook the city and it lay dormant and completely unknown to the outside world until 1911, when an eleven-year old local Quechuan boy guided a Western researcher named Hiram Bingham to the ruins.  

   

I could sympathize with the Incas who had died from small pox.  It was a small victory to have reached our destination and I tried my best to walk around and get the full effect of the different parts of the city, but I had no energy.  I laid down on the grass next to a stone wall, too weak and sick to even sleep, and put my hat over my eyes and just focused on my breathing.  The tourists hopped around gleefully snapping pictures and purchasing postcards and trinkets at the gift shop.  A couple of shiny new tour buses pulled up in the parking lot and unloaded the richest and fastest of the gringo tourists.  I was shocked - I hadn’t realized you could access one side of the ruins by bus without hiking at all.  I resented them instantly; I had earned it and suffered and they just took a three-hour bus ride from their hotel and they were there too.  They had thousand dollar Gortex jackets and hiking boots with metal ski poles to help them walk the fifty meters from the parking lot.  The Japanese each wore three $1,000 cameras around their necks and set up tripods to snap pictures of their countrymen at every possible angle, including with me passed out and looking like death warmed over in the background.  They thought my lifeless form was part of Macchu Pichu, a semi-human remnant of the ancient Inca civilization who was petrified and grown over with moss.  As the tourists stepped around me I gave them dirty looks and asked for donations of toilet paper.

We took a bus down to the village and hopped on a train back towards Cusco.  I was still sick, running into every bathroom I could find, but it had slowed down because I was so dangerously dehydrated.  I don’t even remember getting back to Cusco or getting in my hotel bed, but I came to consciousness a day later.  Shane had found me some antibiotics to try and kill the parasites and I spent the next several days in bed, sleeping and recovering on Gatorade and ice cream bars.  I only emerged when Shane dragged me out of the hotel because he needed a wingman on a date with a couple of Peruvian hotties.  I remember being in the disco with them that night and still having a fever and barely being able to keep from passing out.  I’m frighteningly thin in the pictures we took that night, the bones in my face and tendons in my neck protruding against my sagging skin.  I think I lost about 25 lbs. in the ordeal, getting pretty close to my original birth weight.  Looking back I definitely should have been hospitalized, but when you’re young you think you’re invincible and exercise little caution and make stupid-ass decisions.  Story of my life.  Still, I loved Cusco and I want to go back some day, to drink spiced rum under strands of white lights on the trees in the Plaza Armas and pour some out to honor the Earth-Mother Pachamama.  I want to feel, again, like I was created by oil and brush amongst red mountains, living in a painting by Mamani Mamani.    

The Stolen Generation

I found myself sitting in a small rubber lifeboat, crammed in with eight other passengers, bobbing on the waves of the Sydney Harbor.  We were wearing bright orange inflatable life jackets courtesy of Quantas Airlines.  With small rubber paddles we rowed as much as we could towards the main shore of Sydney, which loomed on the near horizon but seemed miles away.  There were other boats around us, probably ten in all, holding wet and nervous passengers who were all rowing in the same direction and hoping for a quick rescue.  When we were close enough we pulled out a flare gun and shot one off into the sky, sending a burst of light into the sunny daytime sky.  The cavalry came quickly – a column of Australian Coast Guard rescue boats with their red sirens blazing.  They pulled up next to us and carefully helped the occupants of the life boats climb up a rope ladder.  One guy fell in, cursing at the cold water, but he was ok, and other than that we all got on board safely and headed for the marina area.  The concerned Coast Guard guys gave us blankets and water bottles and asked if anyone had any medical issues.  Soon we were at the docks and unloaded and herded into the vast cafeteria of an emergency shelter.  Nurses, doctors, policemen, and Quantas officials interviewed us to make sure everyone was OK and assess our medical condition and start a report on each individual passenger.  They wanted to hear our stories, for it’s not every day they have to pull plane crash survivors from the Sydney Harbor.  

A nurse in a crisp white uniform asked me if I was ok.  Yes I was.  She asked what my name was, where I had been sitting, and what happened.  As I gave her this information she wrote it diligently on a clipboard.  I was supposed to ask her about something, something very important, but I was forgetting.  I think it was about my wife or something.  Yeah, that was it, I was sitting with my wife and when the plane crashed against the waters and we headed for the doors we got separated.  I was supposed to ask about my wife’s whereabouts.  

“Have you seen my wife?” I asked matter-of-factly.  “When the plane went down she may have been hurt and I haven’t seen her since.” The nurse looked at me with mock concern.  Did I get it right?  Shit, this was bothering me.  I put one finger up and told her to hold on a second, and pulled an index card from my pocket.  I read it and shook my head in recognition, and then addressed the nurse again.  

“Forget about my wife - ummmm, I don’t even have a wife. But I think I’m having a heart attack.”  I looked at my index card again.  “Yeah, definitely a heart attack.  My name is Igor Federov and I am a Russian businessman and I’m having severe chest pains and my arm is numb.  I require immediate medical attention and I am allergic to codeine.”  The nurse looked annoyed – my gaffe had caused her additional paperwork and she had better things to do on this Saturday morning.  She scratched out “lost wife” and start filling in “possible heart attack” on the airplane crash survivor report.  I sat back calmly and looked around – there were plane crash survivors on gurneys, requesting translators, and looking for lost family members, all with straight faces and bad accents.  I hoped this would be finished soon so I could go down to the bar in King’s Cross to watch the horse races and drink a few beers.  

It was all just a drill.  Sorry – I couldn’t resist.  Quantas Airlines was running an emergency plane crash response drill and needed volunteers.  I was doing some work with the Red Cross in Sydney, mostly on landmine awareness in war-torn countries, but then they offered me the opportunity to help with a harbor rescue drill so they got me aboard.  Everyone was preparing for the upcoming 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, and mock drill to test the readiness was in order.  About fifty volunteers were rounded up and taken out to the center of Sydney Harbor that sunny morning and dropped onto lifeboats and abandoned.  We’d been briefed on the procedure and each of us had an index card that listed our name, country of origin, and any special circumstances to report. There are two things I learned that morning – that I never want to be stuck on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean with a bunch of complaining tourists, and that I am not a good actor.  I only had one line on my index card and I still got that confused with someone else’s card and messed the whole thing up.  My attempts at a Russian accent sounded like a constipated Ivan Drago.     

When we were done I headed down to King’s Cross, a funky neighborhood in the low rent area of the city filled with hostels and backpackers, pubs overflowing with Victoria Bitter Beer, and tattoo parlors.  It was where the action happened, where you could get blindly drunk while rooting for the Australian rugby team or watch a chick fellate a live Boa Constrictor in a sex show at a strip bar, all within a four block radius.  I preferred the rugby matches.  It’s also where I found a cheap hotel, and money was getting really tight on by sixth month of traveling around the globe.  And King’s Cross was the place you could see Aborigines, if you really were looking for them, passed out drunk in alleyways or selling trinkets from the shadows of the street.  No one looked at them, nor talked openly about their plight, nor acknowledged them in passing on the street.  It was almost like they were an invisible people.  

I passed a man sitting on the ground under a tree.  He was painting,  a few jars and brushes scattered around him and several canvases for sale.  I walked up to him to take a closer look at what he was selling.  He was dark – his skin so black that he even paled most African, and his curly hair fell in thick brown rings.  He had rounded features and was roped with muscle, wearing only a pair of red running shorts and walking barefoot on the sidewalk.  He smiled and introduced himself as Neville Oodgeroo Dingo and showed me what he was painting.  The colors jumped out at me – a kaleidoscope of reds and oranges and yellows snaking around the page.  There were no lines or forms, just a series of little dots in circular patterns, but if I zoomed out a little it also looked like a map, or an eagle’s eye view of a mountain range, with a kangaroo in the middle.  Everything was interconnected, yet its own separate form, so you couldn’t find where the painting started or finished, but it told a story in its entirety.  It was brilliantly colorful and yet so simple.  He mixed and stirred a series of paints traditionally made from smashed ochre, clay, animal blood, and wood ash.  Although the Aborigines had been painting on rock caves and dried bark for thousands of years it looked eerily familiar.  I saw traces of Indian art, or even the roots of symbolism and movement that I recognized in modern artist, like the New York graffitist Keith Haring.    

I complimented the Aborigine man on his painting, and he titled his head slightly and looked right through me with his ancient, sunburnt eyes.  That was the first time I saw The Dreaming, and it was the start of my spiritual journey.

The Aborigines may be the most ancient people on earth.  The oldest human skull ever found dated back 40,000 years (sorry Creationists) but there is evidence that descendants of the Aborigines dated back 125,000 years.  To put it in perspective, that is 3 years longer than Bob Barker was the host of Price is Right.  Of course Australia is an island, albeit a huge continental land mass surrounded by smaller islands like Tasmania, so its thought that the first inhabitants migrated over from India when the two landmasses were closer.  For eons they had the run of the land, living in loose tribes with no need for a formal government, economy, or laws.  They lived in harmony with the land, which makes sense because of course they are the earth just as much as they are on the earth – it’s all perfectly interconnected in one reality.  At one point there were about 750,000 Aborigines speaking 250 languages and dialects, but then the white man came.  The British helped themselves to New South Wales as a penal colony in the late 1700’s.  By penal colony I don’t mean they were all dicks, though that may not be too far off, but they used the island to ship their criminals for a sentence of isolation and harsh conditions.  Disease and mistreatment by the white settlers thinned their ranks to only about 90,000 in 1900, threatening to extinct the race.  Nowadays the Aborigines have regenerated to about 400,000 people – roughly 2% of Australia’s population, but they remain a permanent underclass in modern Australian society.  Many of them in the cities are subject to the diseases of alcoholism and drug addiction and live in extreme poverty.  There are few jobs, schools, or opportunities for the Aborigines, and until recently they had no real political or social voice.  But in the 1990’s a movement of consolation and reprisal started healing those wounds.  At least they plight was brought to light, much of it through mainstream exposure to their culture and art. 

We were coming off some crazy and dangerous experiences in Central and South America, and I thought that the departure to a more “civilized” country would make us safer, but I found the opposite to be true.  Jesus Christ everywhere we went in Australia we got into fights.    

The white dudes there are very racist, very anti-immigrant, and sexist pigs, and love to swill massive amounts of beer and display their toughness – not a good combination for the rest of us.  Within a four-day span we got in at least three altercations.  One of our first nights in Australia we were chilling at a disco in King’s Cross when Shane, who was always smooth with the ladies, saw a chick he wanted to meet on the dance floor.  He went up to her to say hi and touched her on the arm to ask her the time or when the place closed or something.  Out of nowhere this diesel psychopath with a shaved head and prison tats ran onto the dance floor and threw Shane back about ten yards.  He started screaming that no one was going to touch his girlfriend, and was ready to fight.  I ran up behind him and got him in a great chokehold.  I have no idea where it came from, but I had his head, his neck, and his whole right arm completely immobilized like a dangling puppet.  I guess I should have hit him – I have a bad habit of not taking the cheap shot in a fight, and I thought it was going to cost us dearly.  The dude kicked and thrashed, ripping my shirt, but he couldn’t get free.   By now the commotion brought four HUGE bouncers, all rugby-playing Maoris (think Samoans), who made me let the guy go and ushered us to the door.  As we all marched outside I thought for sure I was going to have to fight one of the Maoris, and I began mentally preparing to eat my meals through a straw the rest of my life.  But they were cool and just wanted to clear the imbroglio out of the club.  Once we were on the front street the psycho guy huffed and puffed and yelled and jumped up and down, and then charged at Shane, who stood their cool as a cucumber and didn’t say anything.  As the guy came at him Shane executed a flawless side step and rode the guy’s momentum into a parked car.  His head hit hard enough to create a dent and set off the car alarm, and from there they went down on the pavement and punched and kicked a few times before the bouncers broke them up again.  Nice work Shane.  We walked off unscathed.

But the antics continued.  I had the good fortune of meeting a really cool girl in Australia, a Filipina named Monina Applebum.  We crossed paths in a park one day and after I mustered up the balls to approach her, we hit it off famously.  I found her adorable because she was this petite pretty Filipina but spoke with a thick Australian accent, like the Queen of England was coming off a bender.  Monina and I explored the city, hanging out the gorgeous Bondi beach by the day and partying at the casino at night.  But I noticed everywhere we went there were always some ornery white boys ready to talk shit about her being Asian.  I found out that those Australians were extremely rough around the edges, xenophobic to the point where they went out of their way to insult or pick fights with anyone who was of color or an immigrant.  I felt bad for the Aborigines, who were forced to coexist with those assholes for 300 years.      

Their beautiful ancient culture was almost wiped out by the British migrants, an integration into modern society (or attempts at genocide depending on who you ask) called The Stolen Generation, or The Stolen Children.  For one hundred years, from 1869 until as recently as the 1970’s, the Australian government alongside with the Christian Church forcibly removed Aboriginal children from their homes and placed them in special Missionary schools (or prisons depending who you ask) with the rationale of converting them to Christianity.  They ripped families and cultures apart and basically kidnapped these children to create a permanent underclass that mimicked their Western/Christian belief system.  

And then at 18 years old they were turned out, lost without the support of family, or an understanding their true culture.  Even their names and language were changed in this white washing.  The damage to the psyche of the Aboriginal people was devastating.  Many of them went directly to the cities, where they faced crime, poverty, drugs and alcohol with no chance of advancement or a good living.  Their identity, their lives, had been stolen from them.  

I was beginning to understand how important that was.  When I started my trip around the world I had been looking for hot beaches, hotter parties, and smoldering chicks.  But after a while that held less and less appeal to me.  I was at a crossroad of conscious, for the first time asking myself some important questions.  How could I not after everything I’d seen?  I began to truly comprehend just how lucky I was, to be born to a good middle class family in the United States.  I had plenty of love, support, food on the table, and never worried about safety or a roof over my head.  I was luckier than 99% of the rest of the world, and yet I saw so many warm, kind people with so much appreciation and happiness in their lives.  It was humbling to see people sleeping on the street, children going hungry, voiceless victims of other’s greed and cruelty, and those with no opportunities for a better life.  I began to understand the “beautiful struggle” of life, as Talib Kweli describes it.  We were all temporary and all on this earth just for the blink of an eye, but our spirits, how we lived our lives to help others and the legacy we left behind, could transcend and become eternal. What did I want to do with my life?  I wanted to serve.  I wanted to give a voice to those people – to help the underdogs who no one else would help.  Most of all I wanted to leave this world a better place.  I didn’t have all of the answers, but at least I was starting to feel that I was pointed in the right directions.  

But there in Sydney random acts of violence kept stunting my spiritual journey.  It was uncanny how trouble found Shane and I no matter where we went.  We were walking across the street, at a crosswalk, when a car pulled through and clipped Shane.  I was pissed, and went to the driver’s window and banged on it for him to get out.  Shane was Ok, just a little shaken up, but the driver sped off before I had the chance to smack him around.   

We decided to attend an opera at the historic Sydney Opera House so I went to buy us tickets that morning.  I got my tickets and was looking at some of the colorful pictures of past operas at the side of the big entrance hall when I heard a commotion.  I turned to see a man, a normal-looking tourist in his 40’s, screaming at the top of his lungs at the gal behind the ticket counter.  I have no idea what he was upset about, but judging by the way he was foaming at the mouth and waving his arms frantically, he was out of control and about to get violent.  The poor girl was petrified, but she was stuck behind the open counter within arm’s reach of the lunatic.  Everyone in the place stopped and stared, frozen.  His rage escalated until I was sure that he was going to attack her and I had to do something.  I walked over and squeezed in between him and the counter, blocking her.  I asked him what was going on and told him to calm down, and gave him a look where he knew I was ready – that he’d have to go through me to get to her.  This brought him somewhat out of his violent trance, and his mind for the first time started registering consequences for his actions.  He took a half step back and continued to yell, but now the gal was safe, and he didn’t come at me.  The police ran in from outside and came up behind him and wrestled him to the ground and cuffed him.  I advised the cops that I thought he was schizophrenic or mentally ill but off his medications.  When I turned around the gal was in tears, and looked me in the eye and thanked me as sincerely as I’ve ever seen a human being say those words.  In retrospect I should have parlayed her gratitude into a hot date that night, but back then I wasn’t nearly as opportunistic as I am now.

With all of that behind me I returned with Shane to the opera house that night.  It was a classy affair, most of the men wearing suits or tuxedos and the women wearing cocktail dresses.  The opera was Turandot by the Italian Puchinni, a dynamic explosion of color and movement set in an ancient Chinese Emperor’s court.  Of course it was in Italian, which added to the majesty but made it impossible to understand.  There was an electronic viewing screen where they translated the singing into English, but our seats were so far in the back that it was out of view.  No worries, I sat back and enjoyed it…  until the Eurotrash dude next to me started in.  He was some swarthy self-important Italian with his Froggy French girlfriend, and upon the opening scene he started whispering to her.  I thought they were just getting settled in and it was only mildly rude, but soon realized that they planned on talking the whole time.  He was translating the opera to her – word for word.  Are you kidding me?  I “shhhhd” them once, softly.  They kept on.  I shushed them again, a little more vehemently.  They only got louder.  So I told them to shut the hell up.  They kept talking, but did quiet down a little, and I resigned myself to watching the opera next to the most inconsiderate people on earth without letting it ruin my experience.  Once the opera was finished and the curtains closed and the lights came on I turned and walked away without looking at the Italian.  I know my temper and I didn’t even want to go there.  To my amazement he grabbed me by the elbow and yelled at me “Don’t you shush my wife!”  Oh boy.  Here we go.  I was shocked that he put his hands on me and I saw red, but I tried to be chill about it.  I told him something eloquent, like “then don’t talk the whole way through a Goddamn opera next time.”  We went back and forth a little bit, and I told him that if he ever touched me again I’d knock him back to ancient China.  I tried to simplify the problem for him so any third-grader would understand, that we all paid a lot of money for these seats to listen to the opera, not to hear him talk the whole time. 

“Well if it’s the money you want, then I pay for your whole ticket!” he exclaimed, turning up his nose at me. 

“Ok.” I responded, holding out my hand.  He was stunned by my reaction. 

“Ok dude, give me the money then, I accept your offer.” I said.  He hemmed and hawed but of course didn’t reach for his wallet.  A couple people around us chuckled that I had called him on his bluff and made him look like a fool.  It was going nowhere, and the next step was for me to smash his arrogant Euro trash teeth in, but Phil pulled me away.  I knew I couldn’t do anything, not because I’d even have to break a sweat to mop the floor with him, but because my mom, my dear sweet mom, who is a huge opera buff, would be heartbroken if her son got in a fight and arrested at the Sydney Opera House.  Love ya mom!  

  

I wanted to experience a more tranquil life, to have my environment match the newfound spiritual awareness that was within me.  A short train ride away from Sydney found me in the Blue Mountains, where I spent a week at working farm.  It was quiet and it was beautiful, and I thoroughly enjoyed my dawn runs through the groves and eucalyptus tress, the misty paddocks wetting my sneakers as I chased after kangaroos that bounded away when they heard me. 

I watched the Aborigines on the farm placidly going about their work.  They seemed most at home, at peace in the natural beauty of the mountains, like they had an extra hour in the day or knew a secret that no one else did, where I was grossed out by the sheep sheering and struggled to milk a cow, hoping it wasn’t a bull. 

I talked to them a little bit and began to understand what they called “The Dreaming.”  In the Aboriginal belief system the world was created in the “Dreamtime,” where nothing else existed until their ancestors, called the First Peoples, walked the land, creating everything and naming it all as they went.  The aborigines have always kept history through passing down oral traditions and lore, and their “religion” is really a spiritual connection with the earth and a reverence for the time of creation, The Dreaming.   But it is also the present day reality, for there really is no difference between past, present, and future, far and near.  Everything is interconnected, in space and in time, and mother earth is one living organism.  We are all small, insignificant dots, but if it weren’t for every one of us there would be a void in the painting – the fabric of reality would be torn and not exist. The Dreaming means that nothing in this life is truly real, and everything you can not see or touch is just as tangible as the rock and the tree and the sky around us – it is all just a journey, with no beginning and no end: if you walk about for long enough you end up back right where you started.

Less than a year after I left Sydney the 2000 Summer Olympics went off without a hitch.  No Russian businessmen named Igor Federov had a heart attack, nor did he misplace his wife.  No Quantas aircrafts crashed in the bay and needed to be fished out.  It was a historic event, christening the millennium and shining a light on a part of the world that was both ancient and new.  Watching it on TV from the safe confines of the United States, where no Aussie meat-heads could take a swing at me, I saw that an Australian woman, a sprinter named Kathy Walker, was handed the torch and lit the Olympic ring at the Opening Ceremonies.  She went on to compete brilliantly, winning her 400 meter event and becoming the first person ever to light the Olympic Flame and go on to win a Gold Medal.  I smiled and got goose bumps thinking about the colorful dot Kathy Walker just placed in her own painting of her existence, her Dreaming, for Kathy Walker was a full-blooded Aborigine.