25 August 2005 | Vol. 5, No. 2

Echolalia Three: Colombia

by TODD FREDSON & SARAH VAP

[Introducing Echolalia]

[Echolalia One: Gathering in South America]

[Echolalia Two: Peru]

Since you've got a girl thats a friend, I haven't heard much of anything from you and had assumed you dead until Toni mentioned something about vancouver. Yeah he told me the story, said you weren't allowed to hang out so he didnt see much of you. Are you under wraps? He'll be coming here shortly, should get ugly.

I passed my thesis defense about two weeks ago, basically the day I got back from Burma. I lost interest in my thesis and school a couple months back, I can't ever go back to school again. I learned more in 48 hours in Burma than I did in 5 years at university. Nobody in any university knows as much as this old burmese dude I met in this bar and he didn't know much. Like those cool folks we met in that bar in Zinguichor, Senegal. So what I'm saying in a long , laborious, like wiping your ass with a q-tip kinda way is that I'm done with school and damn glad.

I got offered a job with the Center for Disease Control in northern Wisconsin after hours of interviewing but I've managed to put off my intent to accept up until now. I'm not sure if its the gig I want. Still looking around a bit and weighing coming home versus never coming home. Where are you going in South America and what is your plan, do you have some objectives linked to school or are you just going to get kidnapped.

Its 1:30 pm, I'm going to the bars.

Winnie Mandela

Bogota's Museo del Oro—the gold museum:

Grimace... mid-flight. The gold-spirit through water. Gold masks have

gold masks hanging from their septums—solid-gold fishhooks

like tiny j's.

        Disco girato... the ring that spirals down the finger. The nonchalance,

        where El Dorado came from.

One Sunday in June, the boy does cartwheels for stopped

traffic for dough.    Breakfast beneath the half-diamond sunroof. Sleep

beneath the red-wool panda blanket. Paramilitaries, tooth and nail,

they try too hard.    Headlong-octopuses. Self-appointed pyramids.

Museum centerpiece: gold raft, gold figures    throwing the golden

into the lake.

The Salt Mine Cathedral, La Catedral de Sal.

Several miles of salt mine & stations of the cross... the cathedral at the end—

enormous cool cavern.        Blue lamps light the way from cross to cross,

light the baptistry-pool, the pews, the altar...        echoes

of tourists. Distance, darkness, perspective—impossible to tell: scale,

god's little trick.

Statues of dimly-lit angels, periodically. Crosses in relief, or solid—their size,

these tunnels. Black rock, blue light, I expect the hidden

to jump, cowled & with lightsaber.

Thirsty from inhaling salt, I do. I lick the walls. Afterwards,

lunch along a lakeshore, between "yacht" clubs. On the flooded valley floor, a town, its steeple a few years below the water's surface. The replacement town built six kilometers up the road. Grilled trout and beer.

Soft cheese with burnt-sugar syrup. We take photographs of Genie and Daniel at the picnic table. They take photographs of us leaning up against a tree, the background lake...like high school portraits, senior pictures.

Todd wearing Daniel's pajama bottoms...

Sarah and I, each with a backpack of dirty clothes, and a month since a full load, washing bits and pieces in our hostel sinks—if the altitude was low enough for it to dry and if we'd be there long enough...

Hi sweet pea, Just wanted to let you know I have two boxes, shipped from you guys to Norman, at my house. I can keep them here, or take them to your apartment—either way is no problem. I love you, and think about you so often—xo, Laura

The Vargas House.

Habeñeros and rose vines twist around each other up the backyard's brick wall.

Daniel and Genie kiss us every morning, every night. We eat lunch, then a couple of hours later we eat onzes, elevens... for the 11 letters of aguardiente. Late dinners, then aguardiente and wine by the fireplace, music... Amalia Rodriguez from Portugal, Celia Cruz from Cuba, Jorge Negrete from México. Daniel translates Spanish to English... Carlos Vives, Juanes from Colombia... tests our English as the song plays. Pleonasm?

Children's books, and evidence of their children, now grown

and living in Ohio, London, Cyprus, Florida,    all over their home. Their daughter Carolina... her poetry notebooks lined on shelves in her bedroom. She calls each night from Ohio... reads us drafts, lines that she is working on.

Roses, mostly pink. Fuschias, geraniums, a vine with pastel-orange blossoms. Yerba buena, wintergreen... lemon leaves and coffee bushes. Daniel and Genie are waiting for the plants to cover the new loops of razor wire installed on top of the wall.

Daniel suntans in the afternoons. Genie is a beautiful laugher, laughs at Daniel... laughs at herself for still laughing at his fart jokes. After all these years I still laugh, she can barely say, for laughing.

We take a walk through their neighborhood in Niza Antigua, listen to the construction of Bogata's world class transit system—Todd and I discuss teeter-totter trust, swing at each of the little parks along the way.

So, Iris is much happier now that I'm back. She hasn't left my side since yesterday. Michael said that she doesn't like him when I'm gone. I find that hard to believe b/c Michael bribes her with the tuna. Love you Sister, Molly.

Sarah, Iris says hi. She has been particularly pathetic the last two days. She greeted me when I got out of the shower with several meows and then hopped into the tub and licked the shower curtain for 20 minutes while I got dressed and brushed my teeth. Love, Michael.

Dear Todd Fredson and Sarah Vap in South America,

I did indeed kiss some goats for you—I know you'd love Cleo, the sleek brown girl with a plump Victorian beauty. She's extra-sweet and has the most human expressions... She has four of the sweetest babies, too: Sinead, O, Sally O'Mally, and little Troden—the smallest and sweetest goat of all, though she's the oldest, too. She loves to be held. So does Sinead, but Sinead bites hair. Love, Tessa Amara

dear endearment...

panda-lovestock, love,

panda-lovestock.

From an agribusiness point of view, a dry and barren cow is an economic abomination. But from the viewpoint of the peasant farmer, the same dry and barren cow may be a last desperate defense against the moneylenders. (Cows, Pigs, Wars and Witches, Marvin Harris.)

Botero Museum: Lluvia—rain; or radioactive        fallout,

to keep the bitterness from sorrow. Geysers Behind an Obese Mona Lisa.

See-through cherries over the enormous female nude. Huge fruits—

overripe to the splitting (bright-green walls, a fly on her butt).

Carrobomba—carbomb.

Bare-bulb over the sleeping president. Esmeralderos... emeralds in the mud. Buzzard. El Ladrón,

the thief, climbing roofs like Santa Claus.

Red sack, his black cowboy hat.

Babies have faces like grown men. And women, and of course—a fat Leda and a fat swan. Our discomfort

about where things come from. The stems on the still-life with fruit, a little obtrusive.

An abomination of roundness, smoothness and shine. Not flush

like spring/summer, but a different contraction;

opposites kissing, like the center of an hourglass. Contraries, perversions

of the reflected being, how we see ourselves, how we

look out.

Still life: naturaleza muerta (with ice cream). Salvage series...

churlish. Enormous pink man and an enormous pink woman: Matrimonio.

Study of a boy, inclined vase. Color coming out of its well.

Not to fake or to expose, but no, not quite to love. Cardinals, seated. If you carve

water and earth—they're the same.

In hair, distorted buns. And hips and boobs and holes.    Botero celestina, undressing

the feathers on her hat (versus the small bird on her finger).

The fox draped around her shoulders (and the poodle at her feet).

Little cherry on the cheek, to do something more than real. Disfigure, unhinge:

wherever there can be more shape.

Cartagena. Slip-stream, streamline, grieving a wilderness. The horses on cobblestone...

...monkeys chained to trees in Africa, gotten drunk, food flicked at them, hanging from a branch by their collars, a jump they could easily have made. All of us with our dive instinct.

Cartagena's ramparts, fragile cannons. Firing would break them apart. The moon is not quite showing. Layers of clouds and ocean mist, the white break turning. Dark, invisible collapses—

this could be a description of my drink, drinks—at this table, surrounded by other tables

that are covered with blue tarps, chairs tucked under. Finding our way.    The surf,

concurrent versions:

blue orchid, wings of the column streaked with blue;

barbs, points—tack-strips along the wall, at the carpet's edge;

shuttle, not the object, but the burning around it.    Pattern of entry and exit, orchestrating

the scruffle of palms. Silent lightning.

An incredibly soft, almost imperceptible rain at midnight. We leave our hotel,

buy grilled maize on a stick, squirt melted-butter from a ketchup bottle, powdered salt.

Warm, slowly getting wet on the corner, eating and watching.

Three prostitutes share an alcove with the soldier on patrol, wait for the rain to stop. Familiar company.

Taxis pass, we order sausages and fried yucca,

a heavy drizzle of ketchup, mayonnaise. Tourists stumble home, the man in the wheel chair,

wet in the square. A few men stop, talk to him for a moment, then continue... one of the girls darts

out to a taxi. Gets in.

Everyone knows that the man in uniform watched—a safety-feature. Or

complicity.    No funny-business...roundabouts or single file, my dear.

A whole day in our hotel room under the ceiling fan.

On the bed to dry, into the shower to cool. Repeat, repeat.

The shower's a pipe from the wall,

next to the toilet. Founder is someone who establishes groundrules. Foundation.

Founder is hoof-disease that kills who eats too much, used of horses. Laminitis.

Lament I this. You see how it goes,    ripply green and swampiness. Butterflies, fluttery

the garbage along the road; sundown, these thin horses pull tourists

around the old city. Shod hooves on stone eventually crack the shins. Local history museum—headquarters

for the Spanish Inquisition. Roomful of torture devices for Indians

and women, potential witches. The scale decides: not witches!

if they hit the secret weight.

You-K and Todd-K

floated up to the shore of my answer-phone messages—one I saved about 100 days ago—the one where you are sitting on the gift ledge, wanting to be put on Tania's pillow in place of a pretty piece of chocolate...it was like you two were whispering in the hallway. I love you. Mary-K.

Subject line: Wet Cat. Sister, We just gave Iris a bath tonight. She was an absolute angel. I hope you're enjoying the jungle. I miss you. Molly

Lulo juice. I can't stop saying it.

Standing on the Avenida Daniel Lemaitre, we had a beautiful rain. The green-and-white Metrocars, the air-conditioned buses, pass every ten minutes for the local station, the terminal zonal. Non-international routes, northeast along the coast...

I wiped sweat with the hem of my shirt, taking off my sunglasses, wiping my eyes, the top of my nose, which always beads first—just for something to do, like the heat was another thing that would pass. Four Metrocars, full.

We looked for a taxi. A few drops came down. Pedestrians disappeared. We crossed the street, rain and sweat in our hair, globs pause at the tips then drop, gather at our chins—then streaked down our necks. We leaned down to the taxi's window.

Gangs of rain, half-way up the wheel wells.

Two packs of kids throw stones back and forth, our taxi driver panics—drives over submerged curbs.

Santa Marta to Tayrona.

The Tairona civilization existed 500 years before the Europeans came—their descendants live(d) in the Sierra Nevadas of Colombia.

...their societal ideal is to abstain from sex, eating and sleeping while staying up all night, chewing hayo [coca] and chanting the names of ancestors. Each week the men chew about a pound of dry leaves, absorbing as much as a third of a gram of cocaine each day of their adult lives. (One River, Wade Davis.)

The next morning we found the bus that serviced El Zaina in a market in the middle of Santa Marta. The aisle was stuffed with cargo and luggage, but the windows were open. The coolness felt nice. With a warm Gatorade, skewered meat-and-potatoes, and grilled corn, the end kernels black.

The road ran along the edge of Tayrona National Park. As we passed degrees of hills, varieties of green, a few people descended or got on, but there were few villages, mostly individual residences. Some with nurseries, and some with little restaurants out front—open to the roadside, lapped planks, vertical and uneven across the top like teeth.

The voceadore tapped us, "El Zaina," and we got off at one of the restaurants. Across the road was a road running perpendicularly into the forest, canopy-covered, a green tunnel. The trailhead at its end—to Arricefe, the campground where we'd stay. A cold can of Cerveza Aguila first, perhaps that would be best.

"their uniforms look exactly the same, except for the badge..."

At first I thought the Americans might be useful. Six of them, five men with the tattoos & stubble-growth of our extreme-sports generation, shirts advertising an intimacy with mountain biking or climbing products, a few board sports. And that blasé-cool, laissez-faire intensity that comes with technological advances, knowing the right equipment should render any deathtrap a manageable thrill, then back to the office. Basic SUV commercial. And one woman, not sure how to complicate the eager velocity of the conversation.

—"and his gun!" One making sideways, cocked wrist, gun-pointing gestures—our image of inner-city gangsters. Another ran across the road to a vendor, returns with a sachet of airy fried doughballs, shrimp-flavored, texture like pork rinds. "You're not going to eat that..." —Oh yeah.

The men are excited, flashing back to childhood, to primetime Miami Vice. The cartels, modeled after Pablo Escobar—to the Colombia filmed in Mexico. The young Colombian at the end of their table looks disinterestedly at the black lamb Sarah coaxes toward her.

"Man, when he flashed that, I was like..."—they ask, and the guide nods, says, "si, gueri