week6—endings; the making and unmaking of [insert something profound here]— experience blog #6 – Last days in Peru. Where do I begin? At this point, I am back in Vancouver and I have never felt cleaner or slept better than in the last 12 hours. Even given that, I would sacrifice this level of clean […]
week6—one more thing off the to-do list— reading blog #11 – Mark Rice’s Making Machu Picchu “The historian Alberto Flores Galindo once observed that Peruvians are often “in search of an Inca” to forge symbols of a new Peru.15 Perhaps it is time we lent attention to the influence of tourists also in search of […]
week6—Land or Death! What Mariategui wanted to say… but did(n’t)?— reading blog #10 – Hugo Blanco’s We the Indians Reading Hugo Blanco’s We the Indians was like reading a less pretentious version of Garcilaso de la Vega’s Royal Commentaries of the Inca. Though both have their biases and influences, of course, but Blanco’s writing isn’t […]
week5—Man as Tree; a return to Depth, Height, and Volume as necessity for the future— reading blog #9 – Pablo Neruda’s The Heights of Macchu Picchu I don’t know where to start. I like Neruda’s poetry and his writing. I think I am still processing it, which is taking longer than I thought. I think […]
week5—the Nature of things Posing for Posterity; —scend at Machu Picchu— experience blog #5 – This week, we went to Machu Picchu. Coincidentally, the day we went was the day of the Winter and Summer solstice. Winter solstice in Peru (southern hemisphere) and Summer solstice back home in Vancouver (northern hemisphere). Machu Picchu was one […]
week5—[Melancholy amidst] the Excitement of Nostalgia— reading blog #8 – The Motorcycle Diaries “How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?” I immensely enjoyed The Motorcycle Diaries. It is hands-down one of the better movies I have watched in recent history… This idea of a coming-of-age through exploration of familiar […]
week4—a Cat inspired me to write; animals of Peru interrupting, grounding, and fleeting— experience blog #4 — I am enticed by how community works here. As I am writing this, I have been graced—and interrupted—with the presence of a stinky, cuddly, inefficient, and adorable cat. This sentence alone has taken me 20 minutes to write. […]
week4—the necessity and fluidity [of fault lines] in Andean Self-Understandings; un/making through Reciprocity— reading blog #7 – Irene Silverblatt’s Modern Inqusitions “The puzzle I want to explore is the following: how some Andeans, after about one century of Spanish rule, began to see themselves (somewhat) as Inca descendants and as “Indians”; or, in other words, […]
week4—against abstraction; a challenge of concrete action and wasted breath— reading blog #6 – on Mariategui’s Seven Interpretive Essays on Peruvian Reality. I think this was one of the most interesting readings we’ve had thus far. Coming from a Canadian and North American context, thinking about Indigeneity and the ‘Indian Problem’ as an economic one, […]
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week3—Stars, Cusco, and Me—
week3—Stars, Cusco, and Me— experience blog #3 – My last night in Cusco, we went to the planetarium. We met the staff at the park—which is a common experience, I’ve now learned—and our group, along with the rest of the tourists were herded into vans. We drove up the windy ways up to Saqsaywaman and […]