A couple days ago, standing upon Sacsayhuamán overlooking Cusco, stretching my eyes to the clouds in the distance, I felt awake in a certain way for the first time in a long time. I was on top of the distant mountains I looked to and overcome with strong sensory impressions like those I experienced all the time when I was little. Everything was whole. I felt myself pulled to the sky by a thread running through my spine and the top of my head. I said I could stand tall because there was no ceiling above me—Jasmine said it because I was not surrounded by tall buildings.
I wanted to return the next day, so I got a full sleep and prepared. However, I had the most terrible stomach issues. I thought I could thug it out, but eventually, I could only walk a few steps in the sun before I had to stop and rest until my stomach settled. During these breaks, I meditated, took deep breaths, and was approached by tour guides and people selling horse adventures. Thankfully, I was supported by a miracle crew who looked after me along the way—Grace, Jasmine, and later Emma, who brought me a roll of t.p. and a banana.
The second day inspired an old idea in me: perhaps just as much as it was the space itself that inspired awe in me, it was the me that came to it: fueled by an alpaca burger, but not yet feeling the wrath of what was probably the previous night’s shawarma. If my experience of Sacsayhuamán was only like the second day, I would not have been able to take in its beauty. However, the second day allowed me to pay a particular kind of attention too. My sickness forced me to not hurry by with a “no, gracias” and stop and consider the tour salesmen’s offers, and think about where they were coming from—I learned one man lived in a community of 150 families with 80 horses, just over the hill.
So how to be critical of our experiences? With a great meal and a beautiful sleep, surrounded by my lovely classmates, I might come to the Corpus Christi festival, for example, uncritically in awe of the costumes, the dancing and excitement in the air. However, having read from Carolyn Dean’s Inka Bodies, I might be able to identify how the festival’s representations of Indigeneity serve as an other to be continually symbolically triumphed over by both Christ and the Spanish conquest. So I think there is a balance—to be able to embrace things and feel them wholly, and to reflect and be critical. I want to strengthen my ability to critically interrogate spaces, events and feelings when need be. One way could be to take a step back and reflect on the conditions of your experience. You can find this in a book. You can also find this in your last meal. Of course what you find in the past is irreducibly tied to your current state. I want to hear about how you all have managed to negotiate this balance.
3 replies on “V: Conditions”
“So how to be critical of our experiences?” If you ask me, you’ve delivered the big question of the course! (And that is my only comment on your blog. There is much more to say, but I leave this work to others.) 🙂
Duuude, I loved reading this blog. You touched the treasures of this time and I was reminded of the miraculous moments… I hope to integrate into this current state; the space we trust from, listening to the body certainly provokes that patience. You reminded me also of taking in experiences, who’s essences we are able to settle into. Whether for the purpose of ‘simply’ feeling or investigating/assessing. I think this balance is done best when my mental perceptions are not dominant, allowing the body to balance and be felt into for guidance. Being ok with what is in front of me, curiosity may continue questioning, thought knowing might just kick into a bliss out.
I think also to teachings of Mi’kmaw Elder Albert Marshall~ Etuaptmumk – Two-Eyed Seeing. (A integrative mind to layer our ways of knowing)
Beautiful blog, beautiful writing, and two beautiful days. Thank you for recounting these hours that were so special to me. I feel very blessed to have been part of the miracle crew, but more so, I feel very blessed to have sat in stillness with you in those moments of meditating through the pain. (It looked rough dude, but you were thugging it out hard).
It’s been hard to negotiate this balance, personally. It has been the little things for me–the easy potential in the over excess of photos, selfies, and posts, or the attentions I pay to the tour guide vs. the other tourists in the vicinity. I find it difficult to not be critical of others’ experiences, but perhaps I need to look inward to more wholly achieve the balance that I seek. I think that’s part of why I am so grateful to have gone to Saqsaywaman on both days, I was challenged to look inwards and to the past in those quiet moments of meditation, groundedness, and attempted calm. I sat, I looked, and I thought — and for that, I am grateful to you, your stomach, and that infamous shawarma.