There's no single beginning of this timeline. There are just moments you arrive at: sometimes physically first or spiritually. Sometimes many lives later. However, always, better than never.
Perú is one of those moments for me.
Upon arrival at Cusco, it made sure I could feel my breath. The high altitude, and the awe-inspiring sights, both left me gasping. The price of every step increased by five times: not as a warning, just as a fact. It didn't scare me for long. It asked me to adjust. To the price. The distance. The speed. The time. Once I adjusted, there was no rush to be out of breath.
I didn't know that at the time. In that moment I was just in it. The clearest moment I carry on my skin: eyes closed, I am still there. Standing at the top of Rainbow Mountain. The people around me were moving. Talking. Pointing. Millions of years of mountain. A few days of me. The math humbles you.
Before that, Machu Picchu. Standing example of wisdom of the Incas. At one point during the guided tour through the ancient city, our guide mentioned, almost as an aside, that beyond a gate tourists couldn't pass: those were residential streets. People had lived there. Walked there. Come home there.
I stood at that gate and looked into quiet streets holding time. I didn't connect those two moments then. I connect them now, writing this. The same stillness, felt in two places, understood in a third: here, today, at a desk far from both.
The world does what it does. It projects. I found something in that altitude that I didn't know I was looking for. I don't blame the world for what it projected. I thank the verse for what it returned.
Peru is the before. Before the foundry. Before what I make. Before what I understand about why I make it.
There is time before Peru too. But the present foundry will always find its roots here. It took touching three continents for this practice to exist. They will each have their moment in this log: in their own time.
For now, Peru: A gate. A mountain. A few days of me.
Any moment I seek stillness, all I need is to close my eyes, and think of Perú, and exhale.
<3 : <3