cut me open

i ventured down to kaustika yesterday to go and meet miguel, an artist here in d.f. whom i've been in contact with, and who knows friends of mine down in buenos aires. i conacted him about doing my skar, my maya kin of the skywalker.

we discussed size and placement, and he went off to sterilize his work area, and finally got to it.

after my last skar experience, i was expecting this to hurt. a lot. i mean, i love my stomach skar, and it reminds me of friends and of argentina, but i'll be honest - it hurt like a motherfucker.
but this didn't hurt. i barely flinched. miguel works fast, and this is a small skar in comparaison to my catamarca frog.



this is my maya kin. it represents the skywalker, the one whose mission is to join the celestial heavens with the earth, the one whose mission is to constantly observe, learn, and walk the roads of life.

okay, now ... it's a bit off. the lines aren't very straight and my kin looks like he's biting his lip. but since when am i a perfectionnist? it was a gift from him and i appreciate it all the more that it was free, and that now i will have something to remember my tumultuous passage through mexico. because let's face it - it hasn't been a piece of cake, and the ups and downs have been many. thankfully the ups have ended up outweighing the downs.
it also serves as a bridge between my past life and my current life - you see my maya kin has a little circle on top of it. instead of having miguel make one, i had it placed directly under an old cigarette burn, branded into me by mathieu the evening before i left for lima, when he proclaimed "this way, you won't forget me." i chose to incorporate this old scar into my new scar because it is a part of my camino, old meets new, learn from the past and go forward with your future.

a lot of you might think, why the hell does she do this to her body?


well, i like to remember things, people, places. that's one reason why my hair is the way it is - full of people i've met who have given me dreads, talismans and gifts given along the way. i describe my dreads as my photo album, they give me strength, not unlike samson. cut off me locks and you cut off me strength.

my body is my canvas, but i choose to decorate it at certain moments in time, rather spur of the moment, with things that seem appropriate in meaning and in context.. my dots i'd wanted for quite some time but getting them done coming back from ushuaia seemed like it was necessary. my catamarca frog i got done before leaving argentina to permanently bear the mark of this country that marked me so deeply, this country i had dreamed of and loved since early adolescence. also to wake up my immune system before embarquing on my trip to bolivia.

my maya kin was deciphered for me in la paz. i loved it from the minute i saw it. and the phrase caminante del cielo often came up in conversations, used to describe me. it seemed fitting, but would have been out of context to have it done anywhere else than in mexico.

the work i do to my body is for me a way of remembering who i am and what i've done. where i come from, where i'm going. in a maori meets memento sort of way, i hope one day to be able to look at my body, not only as a piece of art, but as a recollection of travels past, all the different times and phases of my life. each step taken, each cut in my skin, a constant reminder of my path through this world and through this life.

thoughts on d.f.

while diego is sick (sorry man, my fault) or working on school papers, or off interpreting for some hong kong banker, i've taken to night time wandering around the city with a young chilango named emiliano. i met him two days ago when he walked right up to me and asked what my name was. we ended up spending a couple hours together, just going for a ride.

fact sheet:
emiliano, born in london of mexican parents (with some brasilian thrown into the mix, somewhere), smokes a lot of mota and has a kind smile, with cafe au lait skin and honey coloured eyes. he looks younger than his 23 years, studies biology and kung fu, and takes me out at night to find the travestis and prostitutes, helping me see the seedy underbelly of this city, stopping every now and then at a taco stand to savor the different varieties of campechenos to which he is a self proclaimed slave.

these night time lurks have been fun, seeing parts of the city that come alive when the sun goes down.

i wrote a few lines in my notebook about the city which i will share with you , in french. sorry to the english speakers, but for once my francophone readers will have a bit of a breather!


"La Ciudad de Mexico, c'est une ville ou Paris rencontre Calcutta, d'apres la legende.
Une ville ou notre place de la Bastille a ete Mexicanisee et rebaptisee Plaza de la Independencia, ou des rues qui evoquent notre Lutece s'appellent Moliere, Anatole France, Alfred de Musset.
Une ville ou les foules Pekinoises se ruent a travers avenues hautaines dignes de Buenos Aires mais dont l'etat tristoune des maisons colorees en ruine rappellent Lima.
Des vestiges d'epoque coloniale sont stationnes dans des rues aux noms Azteques, Chapultepec, Mixcoac, Cuahtemoc. Cette ville aux multiples facettes, cultures se rencontrant au coin de la rue..
Azteque. Espagnol. Capitalisme.


Ce sont des visages de chiquitana et des nez aquilins, des trapus au visage ride par des annees passees a labourer trop dur pour une paie minime, des jeunes fardees de blanc pour paraitre d'une autre race, des levres rouges et dents manquantes, culs bondes et jambes flasques.

Une ville ou la region totale englobe le Canada au complet, 32 millions de visages, de battements de coeur, de vies en parallele.. 32 millions de reves, de peines, de joies, d'odeurs corporels emanant de tous ces ames se bousculant pour y trouver leur place, leur paix, leurs voeux les plus intenses.

Dans cette ville c'est tout, ou rien. Ou peut etre bien tout et rien a la fois."

stats

blogger stats for tuesday, december 12.
visits by geographical location...

1. Mexico 21
2. Canada 5
3. United States 3
4. Germany 1
5. Netherlands 1
6. Portugal 1
7. France 1
8. Argentina 1
9. New Zealand 1
10. Australia 1

I can account for the mexican visits as they come from Diego's much visited blog, Canada because it's 4 people from MTL and another from Rouyn Noranda (Oligau!), France as it's probably Scott and Argentina is either Ego or Carry.. but the US (Pennsylvania, Tennessee and Arizona, of all places?!), German, Dutch, Portuguese, Kiwi and Aussie visitors are a mystery! Makes me happy though to see my blog is getting international traffic from people I don´t know.

Drop me a line, ghost visitors!

completely un travel related

i don't have much to say today, except this...


vous me manquez. vous savez qui vous etes. je regarde les photos de vous, souriants et de bonne humeur, et mon coeur se fend en deux, de ne pas pouvoir partager ces moments avec vous, que vous ne puissiez partager ces moments avec moi.

je vous aime. toujours. mes amours de wankers.


happy 5 year anniversary to my crew. i feel lucky to have been able to participate in it for almost 3 years, even if now I have different priorities. Hopefully one day you guys will come along for some adventuring.


keep on making some noize, and long live NTK!!!!!!


con todo el amor del mundo,

cat speakerlove.

je hais la bureaucratie.

My passport was not stamped when I entered Mexico, so now I have to pay a fee to get a tourist card. It took me 3 hours today just to get the necessary information, and will have to go back again tomorrow to complete my request. Argh.

I can´t get the dog into Belize without paying some 40$... hence I prefer to just go straight through into Guatemala where it´s a 10$ fee, and then Nicaragua, Hondruas, Costa Rica and Panama as planned, where only health certificates are necessary.

This is a bit of a problem because I am supposed to meet Petra in Veraxcruz and go down to Belize, but right now with all of these extra fees (Tiago sick, me needing a tourist card, etc) I can´t afford it, and I can´t be bothered to fill out paperwork when I can do it the easy way. Maybe we can meet up in Guatemala instead? No clue as to what´s going on, so Pet if you´re reading this, please get in touch with me.

I´ve been feeling quite under the weather these past few days, my muscles are sore and my articulations hurt, I have a constant headache and my nose is stuffed up.. I feel exactly like when I got to Brazil so I´m freaking out that the dengue is back with a vengence, but today I´m feeling better, sort of. I don´t think the suspension is going to happen because I am sick (and also because I can´t afford it), or the scar for that matter. This is me sad, but it´s probably for the better.

At least Tiago is doing better - at least he isn´t pissing orange anymore, and his fur isn´t falling off, although he still isn´t eating as much as I´d like for him to be eating.

So I have to wait to get my documents and then I´m heading out to San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas and your Zapatista communidades, here I come.

chilanguemos!

**edit below**

The annoncement of the day is that as of Christmas I shall no longer be travelling solo with the Boli ... my good friend and fellow freetekno embassador Petra will be joining up with me in Veracruz! This means I will not have to hitchhike alone through such hairraising places as Honduras, Nicaragua and the Darien Gap. And that I will be with one of my favourite people ever, here's hoping we don't kill each other!

Welcome aboard the adventure of a lifetime, miss Petra, remind me to create you an account on this blog so you can post to it.

The other news is the vet thinks Tiago has leptospirosis even though he has been vaccinated for it 3 times. This would suck if it is what he has. I had to collect a murky orange piss sample from my poor Boli to get it sent to the lab. He seems to be doing better but still won't eat and he's getting so skinny. My poor little baby.

My poor aching finances.

(hint: click button. you know you want to help out.)

**here starts edit. read it.**

soooooo,`i`ve already seen the squatted university auditorium which is awesome - they squatted it a few years ago and because the uni is autonomous, they can`t call the cops to evict them.
fucking geniuses! i wish i`d thought of something that cool.

i was taken to see the capital of emo, el chapo, and i felt like i had been transported back to the time when velvet petticoats at the flea market in clignancourt were the most exciting thing in my life. ahh, memories of my goth adolescence. i see all these little emo kids with their big hair and identical lip piercings staring at me like i`m a freak - honey, you know my hair be the hottest thing you`ve ever seen, but honestly, you`re the one walking around with a bird`s nest on your head. that is reserved for robert smith only, so please retire your comb and for the love of whatever fashionable god you believe in, learn to apply that bright red shade of lipstick that really isn`t your colour.


then went out to two house parties with diego la gran puta, the first one was... um. teeny bopper central? diego did his best daddy yankee impression (very convincing) and then we took off to another party, where there was minimal techno and any form of boom boom is welcome these days, so i danced for a couple hours before ending up shitfaced off of 5 beers, how the hell does that happen?
well it does happen and this morning i had quite the problem extracting myself from bed. but i managed to and walked around the downtown for a while (madness) and now i need to find a supermarket so i can whip up some of my orgasm enducing vegetarian lasagna for my favourite puntita who has been so kind in letting me crash at his place, and putting up with the boli`s non stop crying.

can`t wait to see petra again. this is going to be teh awesome (tm), i think we should zip off to costa rica and spend new year`s eve eating coconuts and dancing reggaeton on some jungle beach. yes. sounds lovely.

indeed.

25 millions de chilangos, et moi et moi et moi

Arrived safely in Mexico City, with a sick Boli who managed to survive the 18 hours in the luggage compartment (pobrecito). The Boli would not eat, would not drink. He was not acting in typical Boli fashion (aka, very annoying), so yesterday I took him to the vet (aie, my pockets, the holes they BURN) who could not figure out what he had.. but he's on antibiotics and seems to be doing a bit better, albeit that he still isn't eating much, is losing industrial quantities of fur and has pus filled eyes.

My Boli, don't die on me, not yet. Please. I can't afford the vet.

This city is una locura total, oue. It's like taking the crowds of Beijing in a hectic Lima setting in a city twice the size of Buenos Aires. Yesterday I tried crossing a street in the centro and there were about 150 people on my side and 200 on the other... it was CRAZINESS getting through that, let me tell you.

I ventured off to the centro to find the artesania market and came back with 50$ worth of seeds, stones, leather cords, waxed string and such. I felt like I had died and gone to artisan heaven! Karin would have been nuts, I'm sure. So now I am broke again but full of stuffs to make more stuffs and now I'm sure I'll be able to sell more stuffs cause I will have more variety on my puesto de venta.

Tuesday normally Diego and I are off to Malinalco with Miguel to do fun fun fun things like get scarred and suspended! In an Aztec pyramid. Squirt.
Squirt squirt squirt.
I'm excited. I can't afford it, but tonight I'm going to go parchar so I can. And if nothing sells well.. such is life, friend.

I will probably hang around here for a week or so and then it's CHIAPAS to go find me a zapatista community to hang out with, then Guatemala, then going to fly through central america to Panama where I have two choices..

a) Take a boat to Colombia.
b) Attempt to go through the Darien Gap

I will say that even if the Darien Gap is reputed to be a killer, the fact that it is a part of the world that few people get to see, and that those who try don't always make it, makes me want to try. That is a pro.
The cons are that I could possibly die, or come out missing important body parts, or come out shellshocked.

Try to talk me out of it, because right now I've got my heart set on getting my name up on the short list of people who have made it across.

Maybe I need to stop pushing my luck... but I think I can make it.

past lives

in light of my insomnia (goddamn bugs), i spent a few hours looking over things i wrote over the past 3 years.
it went from hope, getting out of paris and the dismal situations that i lived in and starting my new life in montreal, to despair, in about one year.

a blog post made a few days before my 22nd birthday states:

"In 5 days I will be 22 and I can only think of what a waste my 21st year has been. What have I accomplished other than holing myself into oblivion and partying?
This year will be the year I take on South America. This year will be the year I watch the end of the world in awe and anazement.

This year I'm going to find out just what it is I'm supposed to do."


I am very proud of how far I have come this past year. in fact, i'd go far as to say i'm astonished at the progress i've made. i don't think i need to go into detail of my private hell i made for myself in 2006, but i was pretty far gone and when i see who i am now and what i've accomplished all i can think is that maybe there is hope for me after all.


that having been said, i say my goodbyes to the island today.

**edit**

as i walked back from the bus terminal, a bus full of school children zoomed by and i heard squeals of delight as a group of girls and boys yelled "QUE PELO CHIDOOOOOO" (awesome hair!), it made me smile something fierce.

i leave for d.f. at 3, by bus and not by finger, because the bus is pretty cheap and i'd like to be able to zip through. i'd hate to get stuck somewhere. i really just want to go and see diego, get my scar done, and head to chiapas.
my christmas plans of being in buenos aires are pretty much nixed by this point.. it's taken me 2 months to get to the halfway mark, so i'd say i'll probably be in buenos aires by january. in which case my new plan is to find me some tribe who have never heard of this jesus bloke that way christmas is non existant this year.

sounds good, yes?

d.f. scares the shit out of me, though. it's babylon incarnate. 25 million people? that is NUTS, how can so many people live in one city? i mean canada has what 30 million people and it's the second largest country in the world! granted 2/3 of our territory is pretty much inhabitable unless you like permafrost, so i guess it's not the best example.

it's going to be weird being back in a city, an actual CITY, after having spent the past 5 months travelling around the country and the past 2 months on the beach. even when i was in L.A. i never left Venice Beach because i didn't see any reason to go into the downtown core.. i liked my little canals and my beach and my boardwalk.
but i am looking forward to seeing diego again and being back in a hustle and bustle, maybe actually going out for a drink in a place that plays something other than banda music. i would have expected more reggaeton in mexico, alas, i have been failed.

i'm kind of scared that tiago will go nuts in a place like d.f. though, he's jumpy, and he likes his freedom, so i have no idea how he is going to react to being in the largest city on earth. let's hope he doesn't bite anyone in the crotch this time?

(she was a tweaker! she came in between me and my bag! he was just doing his job. good boli. bite all them bad meth addicts.)

goodbye isla. goodbye beach. goodbye ocean. we will see eachother soon.. but before that, i want to go back to the jungle.

quiero seeeeer tu dueno, y algo mas

ahh, banda music. it goes poom poom poom, poom poom poom, and it's slow and syrupy, melancholy or romantic, sometimes uplifting.

i can't tell the difference.


i'd rather listen to reggaeton, thanks.

tomorrow off to town for financial reasons - i get 100 pesos for running some errands, woot. then i figure out how i'm getting to d.f. to see my puntita!

i've added a new part to the blog... the thank yous. it's starting to be quite a long list, so if you're in between entries and you still can't get enough, go read it :)
i figured enough people have helped me along the way in different ways that they deserved a spot on here.. they too are a part of my journey, why not include them.

like a cold steady rain

well, at least i got to test the rain stopping capacities of a thatched palm roof - it rained last night. i also got to discover that my sleeping bag is impermeable (can you say that in english? meh, franglais works too.) but my hammock isn't - result, a slippery hammock and a warm blanket.

i am going to attempt going into town today and not getting kicked out. nevermind that i can't afford the boat back, it's 5 pesos, i can always find 5 pesos.
i don't like leaving the island much, in truth.. the island is like a little paradise away from the city, what with such large coconut groves, and the mangroves, and the dirt roads and children running barefoot, calling out to the dogs "CHUCHO!".

tiago woke me up this morning, he was singing. it's not the first time i've heard him sing, he used to do it in la paz a lot, mau would start howling and kaiser and tiago would follow.
this could usually go on for a good 30 minutes, as i watched on, shaking my head laughing. el cantador de perros.

anyway this morning before i opened my eyes i heard this, thought it was just mau howling with the dogs again so i went to turn over and put my hand out and felt empty humid ocean air, opened my eyes and saw that i was in a hammock where the pleasant peppery lavender smell was nowhere to be found - in its place, a heavy salty smell and a steel green ocean, the colour reminding me of piercing eyes.

tiago was sitting on the palapa roof, singing out to a dog who was singing somewhere further down the beach.

strange morning. strange night, too.

my self esteem and high spirits have been rather lacking these days, ever since i found out the boat wouldn't be leaving till february and the whole ideal with the cops. it makes me sad and upset, thinking that i really can'tdo this on my own, surviving just off of my meagre jewelery sales.
but to admit defeat is to fail, and i don't consider it a failure even if i have to ask for help. there are always people who extend their hand to me when i've fallen, and they are never forgotten.. they're the ones who will hold a special place in my book, i'll dedicate entire chapters to them!

i keep trying to keep a positive outlook but it's hard, i mean anyone who thinks this is glamourous needs to come out and see how i'm living...
i have no problem living with the bare necessities but you need to have an expandable stomach to deal with the foodless periods, be able to sleep anywhere no matter the circumstance, find ways of surviving even though none seem to be available, keep a smile so the charm keeps flowing even if you want to break down and cry like a child. which is how i feel these days.

i miss my friends. and my family. there are days i'm happy being alone, and others i wish i could be more sociable, which i'm having problems with these days. i keep mostly to myself, hanging around with tiago.

well, attempting to go into town today around noon. hope it doesn't rain, but i hope it rains finances.