Zé do Rock was born a damd long time ago in Brazil,
livd 6570 days, drank 1357 liters of alcohol, playd 940 ours of flute and 648
of soccer, hichhiked 200.000 km in 1457 cars, planes, ships, tranes, ox carts
and tracters, visited 116 cuntrys and 16 prisons, fell in love 8 times, made a
film, invented an artificial languej, created simplified spellings for sevral
languejes, rote 3 books, didnt studdy eny enything and he’s stil alive,
spending moast of his time in Munic, Germany.
In case this is tu short, reed the folloing pajes.
BEFOR BIRTH
The father of my fathers father came to Brazil as a
baptist pastor from Lithuania. My fathers mother was a grandauter of german
immigrants. My mothers parents came from Russia. All my granparents wer
farmers, my father was an acountant and my mother a housewife. On my mothers
side of the family, my great-granfather was stabd to deth in Russia, my
granfather died of cirrhosis, an uncle was kild wile hunting by a frend who
said he didnt see him, another uncle died wen he was six, playing with a gun,
and my mother was kild in a hold up. Brazil isnt less dangerous than the US,
but such a family history isnt normal even in Brazil. In Europe thay ar
atacking foreners, in Brazil there is no discrimination, thay atac foreners and
nationals regardless.
0-5 yeers – YUNG KID
I was born and ferst lernd seeing, smelling, eeting,
walking and speeking, aultho i’v never really managed to speek properly.
5- 10 yeers – OLD KID
I went to scool, lernd piano, playd soccer, etc, and
later forgot it all.
10 - 20 yeers - YUNG YUNG
I kept going to scool and then i finished it. In my
free time i was quite a rowdy, i did a lot of shop lifting, left bars and
resterants without paying, threw stones on cars from bridges. At the age of 15
i could stil walk reasonably after drinking a liter rum with 50% alcohol in 10
minutes. I also tried a lot of drugs, but like President Clinton i never
inhaled. Thay arested me sometimes, and sometimes i went voluntarily into
prisons because i was travling and didnt hav the money for a hotel. In between
i werkd in offices: personel department, travel agency, perchasing department,
and as encyclopedia salesman. I studied theater, body expression, english,
dance, german, russian, flute, chello. Wen i was 17 i left my pairents house
and my cuntry. I wanted to hichhike around the werld to be shure that the werld
is really round, but after a yeer i was robd in Ecuador and lost my passport,
so that i had to come bak to Brazil. In the Amazon i was arested for 2 months,
because the military suspected me of being a spy or a terrerist.
20 - 30 yeers – OLD YUNG
I made a mistake and married. I werkd for a wile as
translater for german and english and then i went with my wife to see the big
werld. Of corse we just hichhiked. On cars, truks, ox carts, bikes, tranes and
eeven planes. We had some littel jobs in the US, in Germany, France, Norway,
and in Europe my wife got fed up with travling, so i went alone to Africa. In
Africa sometimes i had to walk hundreds of miles without a lift, because thair
was no trafic. I was in prison quite offen, for nothing. After a yeer i got a
leter from my wife telling me that she had fallen in love with an austrian gy.
So i was forsed to fly bak and try to save the marrej and the onner, altho i
didnt hav the money for the flite. In
Germany där vas nott mutsch tu save ennymohr, butt ennywäi wie still livt
tugedzer für 2 Monaths, der austrian Gei und me. Up to this Point i
had werkd as a masheen washer, asembly line werker, truk driver, mooving
company werker, TV-tower assembly cheef in Africa, clerk, coorier driver,
jiggolo, gide, kichen helper, film extra, cammera helper, etc
30 - 40 yeers – YUNG ADULT
In Germany i made a lo budjet film on video with a
frend. The titel was NO ELEPHANTS, becauz thair wer no ellefents in the film.
It was shoen in one sinnema for a few weeks, had a good public reseption, and
later was shoen in festivals. The revews wer good, aultho thay aulways mentiond
the bad tecnical quality. No wunder, without money, equipment or cru.
I went bak to Africa. I travveld thru Maroc,
Mauretanie, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinee, Guinee-Bissau, Senegal, Gambia, Algerie,
Tunisie, Niger, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroun, Gabon, Congo, Zaire, Zambia,
Angola, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya,
Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt. In Djibouti for exampel evrything is
imported and thairfor quite expensiv. A littel can of beer cums from Germany
and costs 5 dollers. The toilet paper cums from China, and thair u realize that
eeven tu produse toilet paper u need sum kno-how, and the chinese dont hav it.
The choclat is from Brazil and dusnt taist as good as swiss choclat but much
beter than the chinese toilet paper.
Then i went on tu Asia and Australia. In Australia i
lernd evrything u need tu kno tu servive in this cuntry: hunting boomerangs and
throing cangaroos. Hunting boomerangs is easy, especially if thay’r lying
around in a corner. Throing cangaroos is a lot harder, especially throing them
in a way that thay cum bak agen.
Tuvalu, a tiny republic in the South Sees, is 30 km
long and 300 m wide. Wen the cuntry has lo tide it is twise as big, because it
is twise as wide. Thair is oanly one resterant and wun street, very easy for
taxi drivers: the passenjer cums in, the driver asks: for- or bakwerds?
I eventually arived bak in Brazil. Aultugether i had
had 35 difrent jobs, visited 102 cuntrys (now 116...), hichhiked 200.000 km
(the same as 5 times around the werld, duing it at the Equater, wair the Erth
has its big belly). The trip took 13 yeers and i had a lot of trubbel with
robbers, poleese and wimmen.
This is the story of my ferst book ‚fom winde
ferfeelt’, wich shood be cauld ‘Eezy Riter’ in english. Or maybe “Pissing in
the Rane”, “The last samba in Kyoto” or “Winds up”.
I stayd haf yeer in Brazil but ended up going tu
Germany agen becauz of a wooman. I rote my ferst book, ‘fom winde ferfeelt’. It
was publishd by Edition Diá, Berlin. Thair wer mor than 100 enthuziastic revews
and around 40 TV feetures/intervews about it. Insted of selling millions, it
sold “just” 30.000 (and is stil selling a few hundreds a munth, after 8 yeers),
becauz wen the book was publishd, the publisher had a financial crisis, so that
he coodnt aford eny distribution eny mor. Peepel had tu order it and had tu
spel the titel the “rite” way (“fom winde ferfeelt” insted of normal german
“vom winde verfehlt”). In the middel of the meedia boom the publisher went mor
or less bankrupt. Later on an importent publishing house, Gustav Kiepenheuer
Verlag, Leipzig, baut the coppyrite and anuther big publishing house, Piper
(München) made the paperbak, but the meedia boom was over.
By the way, the book ends with a luv story. I didnt
get the gerl i wanted, but got anuther wun, hoo was fine tu. Later she gave me
a lot of trubbel, wich is wat usually happens wen peepel stay tugether (and
we’r stil tugether – a reccord), but thats not in the book eny mor...
40 - 50 yeers – OLD ADULT
My seccond book is cauld ‘UFO in der küche’ (UFO in
the kichen) and apeerd 1998 in the Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig. It is an
autobiografical siense-fiction. The biggest part of the story happens in the
yeer 2019, wich was quite a hard yeer for me. The story is about a kidnaping by
a UFO and the kidnaping of the moast famus literary critic in Germany. It is
ritten in ‘wunschdeutsch’, wich we cood translate az ‚wish-german’ or ‚faverit
german’: in my shoes (shows...) around Germany and the uther german speeking
cuntrys i’v askd 18.000 peepel tu vote on spelling chainjes. It has far less
chainjes in spelling than ‘ultradoitsh’, but stil 10 consistent chainjes insted
of 10 inconsistent chainjes, wich is the case of the reesent german reform.
Enyway it is the oanly really democratic reform propozal with consultations far
and wide.
In 2002 my folloing book was published at Kunstmann
Verlag and it was cauld DEUTSCH GUTT SONST GELD ZURUCK (sumthing like ‚german
gud, odawize moni bak’). It is a colection of tru and invented storys, made az
a teeching and reeding book for SIEGFRIEDISCH and ‘Kauderdeutsh’. Siegfriedisch
is a german languej with oanly germanic werds, wich meens that a werd like
‘Tisch’ (tabel) has tu be replased by ‘Essbrett’ (eeting bord), sinse it cums
from latin ‘discus’ (az dus english ‘dish’). ‘Zwiebel’ (unnion) cums from
latin, so it has tu be replased by ‘Heulgemüse’ (houling vejetable), ‘Bus’
becums ‘Vielwagen’ (Menycar), ‘taxi’ becums ‘Zahlwagen’ (paycar), etc. The
uther languej of the book is ‘Kauderdeutsh’ and it is a super internationaliset
deutsh, it is a mix de varios linguas, aber meiste wordes come del english.
Besides i rote for 11 antholojys, along with Günther
Grass, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Stan Nadolny, Patrick Süskind (The Parfume). And i rite for aul majer german newspapers,
like Süddeutsche Zeitung, FAZ, Die Zeit.
I was aworded the
Munic Litrature Award 1996, the Schloss Wiepersdorf Stipendium 1996, the
Pfefferbeisser Satirepreis 2001, the Literaturstipendium des Märkischen Kreises
2002, amung uthers. I performd around 300 litrature shoes in majer german
opera houses, theaters, TV proagrams, etc.
And how
wil my ajing continnue?
50-70 yeers – YUNG OLD
70 - 80 yeers - OLD OLD
80 - 90 yeers – YUNG AINCIENT
90 - 100 yeers – OLD AINCIENT
Over 100 – THE POPE, MAYBE
Wel, i dont beleev that i’l make it that far if i keep
this rithm.
Zé do Rock
EXERPTS FROM ‘EEZY RITER’
Coppyrite Zé do
Rock, coppyrong also Zé do Rock
***
CHAPTER 1
THE MAMAS & THE
PAPAS OF THE MAMAS & THE PAPAS
He came, came, and
left. For a long time she stood in
the doorway, her eyes still fixed on the spot where the road makes a curve and
disappears into the Lithuanian countryside. Nine months later she realized that he had really come and
left something with her. One day,
this little being was to become a big man, get married, and spawn many more
little beings. Among them was my great-grandfather, who, in turn, spawned a
couple of children of his own. Then he was converted. Before, he had been a
Catholic; now he was a faithful Baptist. Without going into the advantages of
this decision and the moral preferences that influenced it, I would have to say
that this forever altered the course of my life. It never would have occurred to him otherwise to take a job
as a minister in a dinky little burg in southern Brazil; to settle and preach
the Gospel in a small town with square garden plots and a neo-Gothic church. If
he had stayed in Lithuania, I never would have been born. But if I was born there, I would now be
standing in the bread line and complaining about the Russians. You can do that in Brazil too, but it
won't do you much good. I mean,
it's not the Russians' fault that things aren't going well for the Brazilians.
In Brazil he spawned many more children. One of them
was my grandfather, who grew up and got married too. My grandmother, like my
grandfather, was a little slow, but I just got to know them when they were 80
and maybe they were a bit quicker before. She was Brazilian, but the most she
could say in Portuguese was "thank you". Her maiden name was
Schmidtke, a very popular Indian name meaning
"dances-with-anteeters". Because my grandparents were strictly
religious, they neither drank nor smoked on their farm. Their main crop was tobacco.
It
was in this environment that my father grew up. I don't know too much about my
mother's family: her ancestors came from Russia, her great-grandfather was
stabbed to death, her father died of natural alcoholic causes, one of my uncles
got killed playing with a pistol when he was 6 years old, another uncle bit it
when he was out hunting (his friend allegedly confused him with a deer).
***
In the beginning
there was no word. Then a man wanted to sit down on the floor and sat on a
hedgehog. He said „shit!“ , language was born and the man couldn’t sit for a
few weeks but swore for many years.
There is no record of what the hedgehog said, but it doesn’t matter. For
us at least. For us it matters that the languages grew to be very complex
systems. At some point in history, as the vocabulary kept growing, the grammar
began to get simpler again. In some languages more so, in some less. Some
apparently stopped their evolution thousands of years ago, and some others,
like English and Chinese, had a very fast development and are almost completely
naked of „grammatical clothes“.
Thank God the international language is English and not Chinese, because
Chinese has a simple grammar but also a phonetic system that is as easy to
learn as martian and a writing system that is probably more difficult than all
the other languages of the world put together.
English has been
the international language par excellence in this century and will probably
remain so for a few centuries to come, even if the main English speaking
countries lose their importance. I suppose, as do many people, that Asia will
be the central point of the world in the relatively near future. Even if their
inhabitants don’t become richer than people in the west, they don’t need to be
so rich to be so powerful. Having half of the world’s population would mean
that at least half of the world’s wealth will be there. The only country with
enough mass to dominate the world economy would be China, but no foreigner can
learn the language, not even other Asians, so they will be forced to use a
lingua franca to communicate between themselves, and that will be English. This
happened to Latin, too, which survived many centuries after the fall of the
Roman Empire. I don’t know what this English will sound when most English speakers are from
Asia.
Unlike Latin,
English has a very simple grammar, even if there are quite a few tricks to
speaking it really well (eg the use of prepositions like in, by, on, etc). Any
foreigner can learn enough to make him or herself understood, but it is not so
easy for him or her to speak it perfectly, as there are quite a few difficult
sounds, eg the th and the many vowel
sounds you don’t find in other languages. The greatest problem in this language
is the spelling, which also creates problems for pronunciation (for instance I
used to pronounce ‘answer’ with ‘w’ until a few years ago, and I know English
professors who discover very often that they’ve been pronouncing a word the
wrong way their whole lives). No language in the world (except for Chinese and
Japanese) needs a spelling reform as urgently as English. Some languages have
an almost fully predictable spelling, like Italian, most of them have a few
sounds that can be spelled in 2 or 3 different ways, but english has usually
more than 10 ways to spell a vowel. Think of the word ‘late’, that could be
spelled ‘late, lait, leit, layt, leyt, laight, leight, laet, laot (as in gaol),
laut (as in gauge), leat’. A word like ‘anticipate’ has more than 1000 possible
ways in which it could be pronounced (you just have to multiply all the ways
the single letters can be pronounced). Look at the words weird, their, veil, forfeit, height, heifer; or at the words police, notice, device. If you
want more: wore-word-women-woke-won-wolf-womb. One spelling, 7 pronunciations.
G. B. Shaw went into a restaurant and wrote what he wanted on a piece of paper:
a ‘ghoti’. Of course the waiter didn’t know what that was: he wanted a fish. GH
as in ‘laugh’, O as in ‘women’ and TI as in ‘nation’, thus ‘f-i-sh’. No other
language in the world has had so many people trying to „repair“ it – even many
famous people - and no language is
so difficult to „repair“. There are studies showing that Italian children aged
7 can spell as well as English or American children aged 9. That doesn’t have
to do with the teaching quality and it doesn’t mean English speaking children
are stupid. It just means that you need much less time to learn 26 information
bits than 26,000. Italian is regular, English completely chaotic.
CHAPTER 9
A LITTLE DICTIONRY TO BREAK UP
THE MONOTONY OF THIS BOOK
baby-sitter - people who hav the bad manners to use
small kids as seats
baroque - modern music playd in pubs
beatnik - order to hit Nicolas
belly - with many bels, eg 'this church is quite
belly, isnt it?'
blakout - sign at the dors of racist pubs
bodybuilding – hall for corpses
bookkeeper - person who doesn’t like to lend his books
boycott - bed for male children
cannibal – clever globe
caraway – vehicle theft
carnation - USA
carpet - animal that is easy to carry in a motorized
vehicle
CHAPTER 10
MISFIRE
In my zinglish i proposed that
spellings wich corespond to the coloquial language should be at least as
oficial as spellings coresponding to the formal language, so i used to spel ‘i
wanna’ insted of ‘i want to’. But later in the discussion groups we found out
that this would lead to very different spellings in different cuntrys, since
slang tends to be regional. English is the oficial language of mor than 40
cuntrys, and it is the great advantage that u can read the same english
everywhere in the world. We cant prohibit people to spel acording to coloquial
language, but we wont encourage it either.
PHASE 2 – GH/PH – One of the
most activ members in the Society, Masha Bell, rote a book shoing where the
main problems in english spelling ar: redundant double consonants, long ‘e’
(lead, meet, receive, believe, people, etc), and a few others.
But here we wont work by the
order of importance, we’l work the sounds alfabetically. The exeption is GH/PH:
acording to Masha, corecting the gh/ph-anomalies isnt a big relief for lerners,
because gh’s and ph’s ar not very frequent. Stil, it is the first change people
think of, since it holds the most absurd spellings, like ‘though, hiccough,
rough, plough’, etc.
I said it befor: we only change
if the resulting word is the final RITE form. But in the case of GH/PH, we
change it anyway, and make all the necessary changes to make a RITE form of it:
‘though’ is easy, it becomes ‘tho’. ‘Hiccough’ is speld usually ‘hiccup’ anyway.
‘Eight’ is speld ‘ate’, and ‘right’ becomes ‘rite’. ‘Thought’ becomes ‘thaut’.
PH becomes F. We’l spel ‘ruf’
for ‘rough’, but sometimes we’l double the F, as in ‘laffing’ for ‘laughing’.
See the ‘a’-change later... or leave it, if u dont care.
***
At the age of 15 i hichhaik thru
Argentina , Chile, and Uruguay. These cuntrys and suthern Brazil constitute
european South America. Argentina was one of the welthyest cuntrys in the
world, la opera in Buenos Aires was alredy world famosa at the beginning of the
20th century, even then they had a subway sistema. To this day
Argentina has a haya per capita número of doctores than almost all cuntrys in
the world. In suthern South America la populación is almost exclusivamente wait
(white...) and there is hardly any illiteracy, besaids la rate of meat consumo
is probablemente la hayest in the world. In Buenos Aires there ar mor people
aut on la street at 2 in la nait than there ar in London at 5 in la evening.
Argentina and Chile can be as hot as the Sahara and as cold as Escandinavia.
To finance my trips, i hav to work in between. My father doesn’t giv me
money for travling around. With 15 i work at a travel agency, with 16 i work in
the office of a construction company. One day 3 gys come running in, they hav
little pistols and big ies. They want our money, is this a joke? Wel, beter to
just do wat they say. I hav 100 dollars in my pants pocket, 10 dollars in my
jacket pocket. I giv them the 10 dollars, maybe they'l be happy with that.
Evryone put their money on the counter and i hope that they wont serch me,
because then they mite get mad. They rummage thru all of the drawers - but miss
one of them. It is payday, and in that very drawer ar the pay envelopes for 200
workers. They go to the safe with the boss, there isnt much for the taking
there either. We all get forced to squeez into the lumber room and there isnt
much room, because there was a lot of people visiting the office. The robbers
take off, drive too fast, draw the atention of the police and get chased. By
the time the shootout is over, one of the robbers is ded and 2 of them hav been
arested.
After that i work as a bying agent, then taking poles for Gallup. Good
evening, ma'am, wich do u prefer?
Peca-Cola or Copsi-Cola? - I prefer Poca-Cola. - Wy? - Because it tastes
beter. - But wy does it taste beter to u? - Uh, go fuk yurself. Then as an
encyclopedia salesman. And i’m constantly spending mor money than i ern.
Nevertheless, i want to go from Brazil to Brazil, around the other side. I want
to find out if the Erth is really round.
From São Paulo to Campo Grande, about 1000 kilometers, the roads ar good,
from Campo Grande to the boliviano border they deterioran to little mor than
beaten paths. From the border to Santa Cruz de la Sierra there is no road at
all, there is no choice but to take the tren. And thats no great luxury.
There’s an enorme número of suitcases, crates, cloth sacos, chickens, and
people. U habe to keep yur ies open to make sure that no pig or child pees on
yur nek. The landscape of smels is oberwelming, the best plaza is riding on the
roof. There is almost no room to sit there either, but at least u ar breathing
fresh air.
From Santa Cruz i can start hichhiking again. I stay in a hotel one nite
a weec so that i can bathe. Evry
other nite i sleep on the street.
Bolivia is like a staircase, the farther west u travel the hyer up u ar.
Santa Cruz is way down in the swamp, Cochabamba is at a middle altitude, and La
Paz is way up hy. Hichhiking is a bit complicado there. The few carros that there
ar dont stop for me. The truc drivers stop for me, but wont take me along
unless i giv them moneda. Yeah, and wat am i supposed to do? If i pay, even if
it isnt mucha moneda, then it isnt hichhiking any mor. So wen trucs pull over
for me, i asc the driver if they'd take me along for free. Some of them say
yes, some of them say no. If they say no, i dont go with them. I dont get upset
if they say no. They need to suplement their income with the money they make
off hichhikers. And if they take me along for free, then the other pasageros
mite complain. Sometimes they let me ride up front in the cabine, other times
in bac in the cargo area. I prefiro riding in bac, because i’m usually tired.
I’m frecuentemente on the verge of falling asleep, and if i sit up frente i hav
to entretener the driver. In Bolivia a lot of truc drivers believe that fatiga
is transmissible. If the pasagero falls asleep, then the driver mite fall
asleep too. There is a cierta lógica to that, since the driver doesn’t hav
anyone to talc to. But these drivers believe that sleep is a condición as
infecciosa as the flu.
The villages ar pretty poor. Sometimes u run into turistas, and they
speak of these villages as if they wer the only Soud America. Yeah, yeah, Sud
America is very primitiva. They could go to Buenos Aires or São Paulo, but
they'r not interesados in that. I could sey, in Europa ther is nothing but hard
times. The poverty that u see ther is incredible. It gets cold as hel in el
winter and the heating doesn’t work. U cant get enything u need. No bred, no
meat, no beer, and wen u run out of maches u hav to stand in line for a haf
our. Even educados people ern little mor than a pittance, but thats not so bad,
since Europa is cheap and there’s nothing to by enyways. And wen i sey Europa,
i dont mean that i hav landed in Paris or Berlin. U can go to suthern or eastern Europa too. Then u can talk
about Europa el wey europeos talk about South America after they fly to the
Andes and then tel evryone at home wat South America is like.
U mite argue that the cuntryside is mucho bigger than the city. But most
people liv in the cities. In Brazil it is around 80%, and the mor populosos
cuntrys in South America arnt very diferentes.
The landscape gets mor and mor biutiful, and i become less entusiasmado
about riding in bak. The road goes uphil, uphil, and uphil, and it gets awfully
cold. It isnt too enjoyable for my nose either, a lot of the time the truks ar
fild with fish. It gets so hy up, that dogs and cows hav fur like very wooly
sheep. Then u drive for ours along a neverending plateau, with sno-capd
mountens on the horizon, and all of a sudden u come to a gigantesca cratera
that looks as if a meteoro had smashd into the Erth. Down in the hole lies La
Paz, the hyest capital city in the world (minwile, there is nowadays a city on
the top too, around the cratera).
La Paz means (the) peace,
but unfortunatly there wasnt much peace in La Paz. It's not as if the
bolivianos ar constantemente declarando war contra other cuntrys - they'd
rather no. They alredy lost a good pieza of land to Paraguay and their accesso
to the oceano to Chile. As is often the caso in Latinoamerica, the wars ar not
faut between cuntrys but rather internamente. The powerful people contra the
resto of the populación or a few powerful people contra a few other powerful
people. Usually the winners ar the
ones that hav the CIA on their side. On average, Bolivia jas jad little mor
than one presidente por year since it gained independencia in 1825, even tho
the presidente is supposed to be electo to a 4-year termo. Good república. Lots
of presidentes.
Wel, it’s gon calmer now over there.
Peru. I visito
Cuzco and Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu is the moust
magnificente inca ruina ever found.
It is at the top of a steep montaña and is a great plaza to cometer suicidio. The clifs ar
precarios, deth is garantida, and the landscape is, as i said befor,
magnificente. Unlike the hichhiking here. Once i had to ride in the bak of a
truk por 3 days, it was like being in a wolk-in freezer with sevral fans
blouing. The truk was fild with cacao, so i ate nothing but cacao beans por 3
dias. They taste like chocolate without sucar. Kind of bittersweet, but just
entirely without azucar. On this truk i couldn’t shield myself from the wind.
Thank God the driver rarely drouv very fast, because the roud was sou bad.
On this viage i soon lern how disapointed people get wen i tel them that
i am brazileño. How monotono, he's from a
nabering cuntry and wont even be rico (with lots of monedas) like the reales
gringos. They want to meet people from far away, from the USA, Europe, or some
plaza like that. So i tel them that i am deutsh. I dont hav any beter idea of wat to tel them. I could say
that i am ruso, but then they'd just think i'm a spy. Or i could say i'm americano. But then a lot of people
would be able to tel that english isnt my nativa lengua. Only deutshis would be
able to tel that my deutsh isnt the real thing, definitivamente no, but they
arnt so many. Befor long a peruano asks me if i was in the war. "Wich war
ar u talquing about?" i ask. "About the Segunda World War,
naturalmente." I’m 17 years
old, with the face of a 14-year-old, and we ar in the middle of the 70s. How could i hav possiblemente
participado in WWII? "Wel, i
mean, u'r deutsh..." I find
myself having this conversación quite frequentemente, and eventualmente i come
up with an anser that is apropriada to the level of the questión. "Hav u been in the war?" "Wich war?" "In the Segunda World War."
"No, no, i only faut in the First World War. I was too old for the
Segunda."
Evrywhere on the Altiplano there ar coca leaves for sale. The first time
i herd someone yelling "coca, coca!" in the plaza del mercado, i was
mor than a little shokd. The
leaves ar available in big sacos, by the kilo. I hav tu try it and go up
tu a salesman. I by 1 kilo of coca leaves and start chuing away. It's a pretty
tiring afair. I chew, and chew, and chew, and nothing happens. It is supposed
tu keep u awake, but as tired as i am, i hav no chance tu tel how efectivo it
is.
On the costa del Pacífico in the norte the towns consisten almost
exclusivamente of villas. Somewhere or other there should be some huts or at
least normales houses, but ay dont see any. Ay hed to Guayaquil. During the trip
ay'v been eating watever ay could scavenge: warm milk strate from a cow,
avocados, carrots that ay stole from fields, crab cakes, patata cakes, meat
pockets, melones, chicha (an indefinible pink drink), café, beer, rice with
goulash. That evening in Guayaquil, ay feel sik, dam sik. Ay look por a toilet,
but there arnt any in Guayaquil. None of the bares or restaurantes has one, and
ay cant find a publica toilet to save may life. None of the hoteles let me in
unless ay take a room. Absoluto desespero. Ay hav only two opciones: shit or
day (die...). In the middle of a boulevard there’s a tráfico isla with a hedge
around it that is meybe 30 or 40 centímetros (meybe a little mor than a foot)
hay. Ay pley va-banque and relieve mayself of a couple of kilogramas on the
spot. People stop to look at me, incluyendo two policías. They come over and
ask me wat ay’m doing. "Wy, shitting!" Of corse they notify me that this isla de tráfico is no a
shitter. "Then please, can yu tel me where ay could find a shitter in this
town?" They hav as little a clu as ay do and so they leave me alone. Ay
think the hole town is a shitter.
From Guayaquil ay meic may wey norte up la costa until ay araib in a
godforseiquen plaza cold Esmeralda. La gran mayoría of la populación is of decendencia africana and la taun jas a
respectable amaunt of naitlaif. Ay luc por a hotel, but ol of them ar itha ful
or tu expensiv. Ther’s no otha choice for mi but tu slip on la bich. Ay asc a
passa-by if ther is a hotel in la vicinidad. Hi cant direct me tu a hotel, but
ther’s a neibi bilding just ouber ther. Los oficers ther luc cul and just mait
let me spend la nait. Ther’s a couple of drunquen seilas siting in frente of el
geit, ay thinc abaut it por a segundo and decido no tu asc - ay'l just slip on la
bich after ol. Ay faind mayself a spot and ley daun. Ther’s stil a lot of pipel
woquing araund, sou it isnt such a gran plaza tu slip. After a wail ay gou tu a
restaurant on la bich tu sit, drinc a bir, and weit until things calman daun.
There’s only 2 people in the restaurant, the waiter and me. We talk a
little bit and he offers to let me sleep in the restaurant. The long benches arnt as soft as the
sand, but then again they’r not as sandy either. And it seems a lot safer,
since the gy has to stay up all nite.
I sleep like a fallen log. The next day i wake up and soon realize that
evrything that was worth anything in my bakpak has vanished. I go to find the
waiter, but he’s vanished too. There wasnt much to steal, but my flute and my
camra ar gon. The flute was covered by my fathers insurance. My cash reserve
was so wel hidden that the thief never found it.
The owner of the restaurant and the police come. The owner tels me that
the waiter just has got out of jail 2 weeks befor. The owner wanted to help him
get a start on an honest life. It was actually a good thing that i never woke
up - not only did the waiter take my stuf, but some of the restaurants stuf
too, including the gun.
I send the form that i got from the police bak to Brazil and hav to wait
in Ecuador until the money for a new flute arives. So i go to Quito. I thum a
ride from an american couple. They invite me to stay with them in their giant
villa. The garden is almost as big as Texas, if u'l permit me this
exaggeration. I got a bedroom that is as big as a hangar. There is room on the
bed for me and 10 women. A bar with evry imaginable kind of bottle is there
too, and on the curten there’s a bel that i could ring to call the maid or the
butler. Evry meal is a banquet. Sometimes i get bord in my room, so i go
downstairs to get something to eat or to chat with my hosts. Wile stil in my
underwear and slippers i got to meet some ambassador or maybe the director of
United Fruits. Helo, how ar u
doing? Hows business? The hole
thing has just one cach: my hosts ar such radical rite-wingers that Jesse Helms
couldn’t see them with a telescope, thats how far to the rite they ar. And it's
not like they wer racist or anything like that, they couldn’t care less about
race. No, they ar sectarian capitalists. Not only do they make a lot of money
logging the ecuadorian jungle, but they belong to an atheist cult that takes
capitalism to be the hyest form of morality and ultimat justice. They hav
brochures like the Jehovahs Witnesses and ar of the opinion that there’s
communist infiltration evrywhere: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon - evry last one of
them a commy in disguise.
O wel, but life is good in this house, i try to enjoy it and just keep my
mouth shut. But the arguments start to get nastier and mor frequent, so i end
up moving out. From miserable riches to miserable rags. I find the student
housing complex, make frends with Ramón, and move into his room. I sleep on the
flor. U'r not supposed to stay too long at a frends place without paying, but
wat else am i going to do?
I do my eating in the kichen. Unfortunatly i dont hav a meal card, so i
hav to make frends with the kichen staf. I dont get anything normal to eat,
just watevers left over in the pots. I eat a lot wen there’s a lot left, i eat
very little wen there’s very little left. One time i ate 2 kilos (almost 5
pounds) of fruit salad. Then i drank about 2 liters (2 quarts) of strong blak
coffee to wash all of it down. U can imagine how that ended up, i wont go into
detail in case u'r in the middle of brekfast rite now.
Ramón thinks I'm fun to hav around, but he tels me i should maybe take a
shower evry so often. Wen i come
home late, he notices my arival even if he doesn’t hear me or see me come in.
Thats a problem. The dormitry doesn’t hav a bath or a shower. U hav to go to
the public baths around the corner. And it is fucking cold there. Beter to just
be a pig wen the outside air temperature rarely gets abuv 10°C (50 F), i say,
and the water isnt much warmer. But eventually the social pressure to bathe becomes
too great and i cave in.
One flor above us livs Pablo, a short gy with a dark complexion and a
very nasal voice, whose glasses ar so thik that u'd almost think he'd be beter
off blind. Together with him and his frend Joaquín, who looks like a skinny
viking, we climb Mount Cotopaxi, 6000 meters (20000 feet) hy. At least we
intend to. On the second day we ar in the middle of a cloudbank with sno under
our feet and we cant tel if we’r going forwards or bakwards. We dont even kno
for sure that our next step wont be off a clif. We lose site of each other and
stil manage somehow to get down and come bak home. The next day i run into them
in town, they act as if nothing happend. Random gys, yes, they ar.
Then we travel north, and on the way bak we run into a police chekpoint.
I didnt bring my passport with me, and so it takes me some time befor i can
convince the cops that i can be an exemplary citizen even if i dont hav a
passport with me.
In Quito i do a couple of translating jobs and become a little bit less
poor. Soon after that the insurance money arives from Brazil. I by a used
flute, a used camra, and am redy to hit the road. But Ramón wont let me go. He
insists that i come with him to visit his parents' farm. I dont want to, i dont
want to, i just want to get away, but i end up going with him. This time i’m
not stupid, i take my passport along. We take the bus to Riobamba in the south.
I lose my passport in a bus where the driver is also the owner. Big businesses
ar easy to find, but there ar hundreds of small bus companies with only one
bus. My frend doesn’t kno wat kind of bus it was either, but that is no
problem, since u’r required to enter yur name on a passenger list. There’s a
carbon copy of the passenger list, the original is given to the first police
chekpoint wen the bus leaves Quito. The other copy is given to the last police
chekpoint, rite befor u get to Riobamba. So all i hav to do is go to the first
police chekpoint, find the list, and i'l kno the name of the owner and his
adress.
The police sort the stak of lists by date and time. We left on saturday
morning, now - the lists for friday evening ar there, so ar the ones for
saturday afternoon, but there arnt any for saturday morning. Officer, wats the
deal here? Where is the list for saturday morning? The policeman looks thru the
pile, doesn’t find it either. This cant be, i mean hundreds of buses hav gon
thru the chekpoint on saturday morning! He explains: sometimes they run out of
toilet paper. I go to the other police chekpoint in Riobamba, they ar totally
disorganized there. I get a big sak cramd full of lists. I dump them all on the
ground outside, the police station is too small. After i get thru 1 kilo of
lists it starts to rain. By the time i’v gon thru them all, i’m so wet that i
could swim in my own skin. I look so desprat that even a little boy comes to me
and givs me a sweet. I’l never find my list.
I call the brazilian embassy and tel them that i lost my passport, wat
should i do now? The man at the embassy tels me i beter find it. And wat should
i do if i cant find it? Then i need to bring them 8 fotocopies of my ID card, 8
copies of my voter registration card, 8 copies of my military ID, 8 copies of
my income tax return, 8 copies of my marriage license if i'm married, 8 copies
of my deth certificat if i'm ded. Then i'm supposed to pay them a couple
hundred dollars and wait 5 months. Nowadays u get yur passport on the same day
or the next day, but in the 70s the military was stil in power and they wer
pretty paranoid.
I hunt hy and lo thru all of Ecuador, sometimes i think i'v pikd up a hot
trail, then it turns out it was the rong bus. It's hard to find a bus in a
cuntry about as big as Oregon. Especially wen all i kno about the bus is that
it's green with blak stripes. After a week of uninterupted serching,
practically without sleep, i giv up. Ramón tels me it was stupid of me to bring
my passport along. They only chek
in the north of the cuntry, but never in the south, where Riobamba is. Great,
now he told me. Wel, i gess i had never askd befor.
So i could either hang out for 4 or 5 months or go bak to Brazil and get
myself a new passport in much less time. I arive at the final decision: bak to
Brazil, get a passport, work a little bit, and hit the road again. The only
problem is that Ecuador is one of the 2 cuntrys in South America that dont
border on Brazil. I hav to go thru either Peru or Colombia illegally. I call
the embassy and ask them if they cant giv me temporary papers, a
laisser-passer. No dice. We brazilis ar kind to one another and ar always redy
to help a cuntryman in need.
If i had found a hotel in Esmeralda, i wouldn’t hav had to sleep on the
beach. If i had decided to spend the nite with the navy, i wouldn’t hav slept
on the beach either. If i hadnt decided to drink one mor beer at the
restraurant, i wouldn’t hav gotten robd. If i hadnt been robd, i wouldn’t hav
stayd so long in Quito to wait for the insurance money to arive. If i hadnt
stayd so long in Quito, i wouldn’t hav gon to the north without my passport, i
would hav been travling alone with my baggage in the direction of Colombia. If
i hadnt gon to the north, i wouldn’t hav gotten chekd. If the police hadnt
happend to chek me, i wouldn’t hav had the unpleasant experience of landing in
a police chekpoint without a passport. If i hadnt told Ramón that i was just
going to take off, i would never hav gon to the south of Ecuador. If i hadnt
travelled to the north without my passport and gotten chekd, i wouldn’t hav
taken my passport with me to the south either. If we had taken a bus belonging
to a bigger company, i would hav found the bus and probably my passport
too. If the policeman hadnt wanted
to take a shit and used my list for toilet paper, i would hav also found the
bus. So now i had to go bak to Brazil, where my life had taken a sharp
u-turn. The probability of
evrything happening just as it did is rufly a million to one. So mor likely
than hitting six numbers in the lottery. But not much mor likely. And that happens
all the time. To many people.
I hav to get thru Colombia illegally, get into a shared taxi, and hope.
Most of the people in the shared taxis ar people who liv on the border, so they
probably wont get chekd too intensely.
My baggage is in the trunk, so by myself i'm not too conspicuous.
Peris and ecuadoris always warned me: wach out that u dont get mugd or
pikpocketed wen u'r in Colombia. I hav a lot of paranoia. Even the dogs ar
looking at me in a funny way, as if they wer just waiting for me to turn my bak
on them so that they could quietly naw open my ruksak and make off with my
jewels and credit cards. In Cali i figure it's beter to be safe than sorry.
Befor anyone gets the chance to steal my hole bakpak, i leave it at the luggage
chek at the train station. Later on i pik it up, leave town and realize that my
camra is gon. They stole it at the luggage chek. The road goes down, down, down
to Puerto Asis, on the banks of the Putumayo. The Putumayo is one of the major
sources of the Amazon. From Puerto Asis quite a few boats go down to Brazil. But
it is a fairly dry season, the river isnt navigable. There isnt enuf water, so
there’s nothing to do but drink tea and wait.
I meet 2 USis (u can say it az the plural of ‘use’), who ar also waiting
or who ar just hanging out there. The one of them has a glass ie and wil cach a
flite soon. The other one, with whom I spend quite a wile, is named Ken. He
doesn’t hav a glass ie. This is where i become aquainted with magic mushrooms.
The area is ideal for them: humid, warm, and full of cows. The fungi gro in cow
shit. They told me that 3 big ones ar enuf for a trip to cloudcuckooland. Wat
they didnt tel me is how long it takes to feel the efect. I eat 3 and dont feel
anything. 10 minutes later i eat a couple mor, and a couple mor, until i hav
eaten 12. I keep waiting until i finally notice that i hav wings. I never had
noticed i had those befor. Wel then, if i’v got wings, i’d just fly a little.
The planet becomes too boring and i fly further away. I fly faster than the
lite, leaving the Erths surface, i look at the lite coming from the Erth and
follo its histry bakwards, until i see mammoths peacefully grazing, a
pterodactyl, and stone-age birds squawking madly. Later on i come bak and meet
Ken on the paddle boat. He just returnd from a stroll around the Andromeda
galaxy. In the here-and-now it is time for a movie. The screen is 360 degrees
around us, the sound isnt too loud, but all the mor impressiv. The
projectionist is God, just like the movie. The world is intelligent, the world
is concius.
This hik town in the colombian primordial rain forest is pure sience
fiction. It's going great for us. But sometime in the evening i want to get
some sleep and i cant. All these questions ar being askd of me, but i cant
anser so many questions, even in a state of hyer conciusness. At nite the
questions keep coming, i dont even make an effort to anser them any mor. Wy am
i lying there at all, with this body that ways tons? The next day i’m redy to
finally fall asleep, but the sho must go on. Another day goes by, the pictures
and questions keep on coming. I'd like to go chek on Ken, but it is impossible
for me to put this armored shel, my body, into motion. Ken doesn’t come to me
either, it doesn’t seem to be going much beter for him. On the third day things
calm down a bit and i start to get hungry.
"Some food?" "Yeah." We cruise over to the pub. "Some smoke?"
"Yeah." We cruise a
couple hundred meters away from the village and twist ourselves up some.
"Some beer?" "Yeah." Bak to the pub. "Some
mushrooms?" "Yeah." We go to the meadow and get some. But no mor
than 3. "Some beer?" "Yeah." same procedure. "Some
pussy?" "Yeah." And we cruise over to the brothel. In the
brothel nothing is aroused in me, as loaded as i am. The room, altho primitive,
is majestic. Under ordinary circumstances i would describe the flor as solid
gray, now i notice how colorful it is. It is not that i’m having a
hallucination. I dont think that it's colorful, i notice it. And
there ar so many intresting shades of gray. The girl is lying there not fully
comprehending wats going on with me. She is a miracle of nature, a double
miracle even. First of all, she's an insanely complex life form, and second of
all she's a woman, wich means even mor complex. She blooms forth like a plant
in the springtime, wich shows off her genitals for all the world to see. It may
be that men do not reincarnate, but women do for sure. They carry so much
wisdom in them. The hor is glad to ern her money without doing any work. Ken is
waiting outside and asks me wy i took so long. "Some food?"
"Yeah."
Colombia
is like a gigantic Rio de Janeiro, the hole cuntry is hy life. And by hy life i mean really hy. The famly that smokes together stays
together. A 14-year-old boy makes frends with me. He proposes we hav a joint
together. "Okay," i say, "where?" At his house, he says.
His famly livs there and i think we’l about to disapear into his room or into
the basement, but no. The hole famly smokes with us. Practically evry business
in the village is a front. Dope is the main export of the cuntry. Altho i bet
that no mor than 10 percent of the colombian population has anything to do with
dope, after all.
Pedro is colombo and is frequently acompanying us. He's the kind of yung
gy who doesn’t work and is always on the lookout for some kind of deal. He
talks and smokes a lot. He wants to smuggle cocain to Brazil with the two of
us. Ken is supposed to provide the venture capital, Pedro the kno-how, and i’m
supposed to translate, since Ken only speaks english and Pedro only speaks
espanian. Pedro is ded certain
that we'l be able to pull this deal off. U send the package over, riding along
in the ship. The parcel is adressd to a non-existent person. If evrything goes
acording to plan, u get a fake ID made and go to pik up the stuf. But if Pedro
is ded certain we'd be able to pull off this deal, i keep thinking mor about
the "ded" part than about the ‘certain’. I stay out of it, even if i
stood to make 10,000 dollars. I value my time far too much. I can always make
money one way or another, and if i lose it, i can always try again. Money loses
value with inflation, but time doesn’t. The time i hav left to liv cant be
extended with money, exept maybe in a good hospital, where they can keep you
alive for years, but then a life in hospital isnt the big hit, is it. I'd
rather be out 10,000 dollars than 10 years. All the same, i translate. One time
we’r walking down the street, i'm walking sloer than the others. Ken is having an animated conversation
with Pedro, sometimes they slap each other on the bak, they’r getting along
famusly and i think to myself: wy the hel do i need to translate anyway? They
dont need my translation at all! With a bit of good wil u can make yurself
understood anywhere at all in the world. But then i come nearer. One of them is
talking about the deal in Colombia, the other is talking about his family in
Oregon.
In Puerto Asis i want to resolve my illegal situation. I go to the mayor
and tel him that all of my papers hav been stolen, would he be so kind as to
giv me a statement confirming the theft, so that i could at least make it to
the brazilian border? He directs his secretary to issue me a permit that would
get me to São Paulo. He mite as wel hav given me a permit to cross the United
States to New York, i just dont kno if a cop in Philadelphia would accept a
permit given by a mayor of a colombian town, insted of a visa.
Evry day i go to the harbor to try and find out wen the next ship is
leaving. Nothing. A couple of weeks later i'm walking along the bank of the
river and i see a ship disappear around the bend. I run to the hotel, get my
gear, and run thru the jungle after the ship. I'm in luk - the ship stops 1 or
2 kilometers farther down to load a couple of cows on. I’m perfectly willing to
pay, but no one asks me for money. Not even the capten, who must hav seen me
bording the ship in among the cows.
They think i borded later so i wouldn’t want to pay. Wel, i wont pay if
no one asks me to. At one point the capten says i could at least help out in
the kichen, if i'm not paying anyway. Okay, capten, no problem.
On the ship they get their meat by either hunting or fishing. Monkeys,
piranhas, turtles, one time even a crocodile. There’s a blak gy who does most
of the hunting. He has a rifle that looks like it must hav come from the conquistadores
in the 16th century, heavy as a cannon and loud like a King-Kong fart. He got a
flamingo in his sites, shoots, the bird falls over, and we go to get it with
the dingy. It is stil breathing and doesn’t hav any bullet wounds. It just
fainted from the shok the noise gave it. The blak gy rings the flamingos nek,
breaks off its leg at the nee and pulls the tendon bak and forth. The birds
foot opens and closes and he lafs: "o-ho! o-ho!"
The water is very shallo and the ship gets stuk in the sand a lot of the
time. We tie one end of a rope around the mast, the other end around a tree on
the shor, and pull the ‘propellers’ around the mast, so we turn around the
mast. We’r making the chain shorter, and since the tree cant come to the boat,
the boat goes to the tree, out of the sand. I’m tuf going, i join in and put
some rhythm into it:
"Uno! dos! tres! HAAAA!
uno! dos! tres! HAAAA!"
From now on they call me "El Tigre". And not for no reason. I mean,
i look like a tiger. Yello skin and spots all over. The comparison falls short
wen it comes to my speed, tho. In that department i'm mor like a duk out of
water. Now, after all these years, i discover my tru calling: slave driver.
Altho i hav to push tu.
Up until then we havnt been travling at nite, the capten doesn’t feel at
ease about the shallo water. Now the river is getting wider and deeper. We’r
redy to giv it a try. The wonderful sunset is over, now we’r enveloped by a
peaceful darkness. I sit all the way up front and we can see 20 meters in front
of us with the spotlite. Suddenly a giant tree comes at me out of nowhere. I
jump bak and there’s a loud crash. The tree sweeps a couple of tons of frate
into the river and then it’s behind us. Or we’r in front of the tree. Wat was a
giant tree doing in the middle of the river anyways - now there’s a hole in the
ships hul, it's sinking fast. The lifeboat only has room for 100 people,
apocalypse now, the piranhas ar tying on their bibs alredy, some of the
passengers ar singing "Hallelujah" or "A strong fortress is our
God", others ar singing "But it's aaaaalll rite...." No, no,
this isnt the Titanic in the North Atlantic, just an anonymous boat on the
Amazon. A little bit of panic breaks out, but the crew is litening quik to pach
the hul with cement. Good work
boys.
A few days later it’s late at nite, the capten is having a look around
and sees a blak hed swim past in the water. Was that a mirage or reality? So as
not to take any chances, he cheks with the blak famly on bord. The mother
notices that one of her kids is missing. So the rescue team goes out into the
nite with the motorboat. Now finding a blak gy in the river in the middle of
the nite is dificult to start with. On top of that, the 8-year-old boy cant
swim and there ar piranhas. After
a length of time passes, the boat comes bak, no blak kid in the boat, the
mother colapses with sorro. The boat pulls up to the side of the ship, there he
is, lying on the flor of the boat. Not in tip-top shape but stil breathing.
One nite 2 gys invite me to join them for a beer. There’s no bar or
canteen on bord, but there ar plenty of cases of beer, wich u'r not supposed to
help yurself to but can anyways. One nite a group of gys from the crew invites
me to join them, we steal some bottles and drink. A few days later evryone is
agenst me. I’m accused of drinking
a couple cases of beer, and they want to deliver me to the police at the
border. The timing couldn’t be worse, especially since i hav no passport. I
discover a few inconsistencies in their story and provide an alibi to defend
myself with, playing the star attorney. I prove that it couldn’t hav been me
who drank all of those beers, until the capten interupts me. He decides in my
favor and wants me to shut up. Good. I'm shutting up. It was a plot on the part
of the crew, who wanted to make a scapegoat out of me. So they hav to come up
with another story to explain the disappearance of the bottles.
At the border town u'r supposed to report to imigration, i quikly
transfer to a smaller boat and disappear over the border insted.
CHAPTER 11
FLYING AND SITTING
FAZE 3 - /ae/ - ‘a’ as in ‘cat’
is speld ‘a’: the man with the plad hit the bad cat with the bat.
***
I’m very glad to hav made it
thru Colombia without a passport, and now i’m bak in the cuntry where i dont
need one. Wonderful. But things dont go as i expected.
I want to surprise my famly.
Now i’m in a bit of a hurry, since i havnt ritten in almost 2
months. They'l start to get
worried. The brazilian border town
really only consists of a barracs and a couple of stors that ar there to supply
the barracs. Supposedly an air
force airplane ocasionally lands in this town that takes people along for free. I go to the comanding officer and ask
him if i can fly on the next plane.
"Yes," he says, "next tuesday." We chat, i tel him a
little about my trip, we hav a couple cups of coffee together. Then i bid him
farewel. Befor i made it outside,
a soldier comes in and makes a comment about how full my ruksak is.
"Yeah," i say, "clothes, books, stuf like that." The comander perks up his ears wen he
hears the word "books", he wants to hav a look in my bakpak. He finds
an english translation of "Das Kapital" by Marx. I baut it in São Paulo, in english so
that i could practice my english. Now it turns out not to hav been such a good
by, especially because i cant prove that i baut the book in São Paulo. And
there ar sevral books from other authors that the comander isnt familiar with,
all of them in foren languages. Then he finds my notes about my language. He
asks wat thats all about. I can only tel him the truth: it's a language i
invented that could be a world language someday. Bad news. He thinks it’s a
code. People who invent their own
languages must seem pretty fishy to a military officer in the Amazon
region. Plus i hav leters from not
altogether normal frends of mine, like Ski, who talks about the Kabala or
quotes Wagner in his original language. This is also completely
incomprehensible to the comander. And to top it all off, after spending almost
a year in espanian-speaking cuntrys i cant speak proper brazilian any mor. And i dont hav a passport. I explain wy
that is, he doesn’t believe me. We ar in the Amazon region, where a handful of
gerillas is stil activ, since 1968. The military is especially afraid that the
jungle wil be captured by other cuntrys, their motto is INTEGRATE IT SO WE DONT
SURENDER IT. The comander makes
his decision: "I dont kno wat we should do with u, because from out here i
dont hav many ways of finding anything out about u. Next tuesday u'l fly along
to Tabatinga. Thats where the hedquarters for the region ar, they'l chek u out
and let u go if u'r innocent."
They place me under arest and on the next tuesday, i fly in a Catalina, a
seaplane that is almost as old as Abraham. The plane flies very lo and slo.
There is a link between the airplane body and the wings on the top, the
navigator sits there usually but there is no navigator, so i sit there. I can
open the windows, and so a lot of the time i’m able to stik my hed out the
windo. One of the soldiers who is riding along makes a comment about how old
the airplane is. The pilot givs some words of encouragement: "Last week it
was a close call. One of the engins conkd out. We had to thro all of our
baggage out to liten the load. But then the other engin gave up too. We wer
just about to start praying, wen both engins started working agen." The
soldier is thrild. I am too.
In Tabatinga i’m detained for a couple of days and interrogated. The sergeant looks like he has a case
of Down's syndrome. "I see in
the report that u wer travling for almost a year. A long time. Wy?"
"Wel, i wanted to see
cuntrys and people with a different cultur." He doesn’t say anything, so i keep talking.
"Thru getting to kno other
people, I can understand myself beter."
"How come? Dont u kno
yurself? Dont u kno wat u want? Yur abilities?"
"Yes, of corse. But as
Einstein once said, we only use 10 percent of our brains capacity."
"Wel Einstein mite, but i
use 100 percent of mine."
Yes, that seems altogether
possible in this situation. My 10% tel me I'd beter not continue the discussion
with this sergeants 100%. I’m not
in a cel, just an open room that has a bedframe but no matress. For 3 days and
3 nites i hav to sit. There’s always a soldier at the dor. On sunday there’s
one there who’s constantly fumbling with his nitestik and complaining about me
and how i spoild his weekend.
The military men cant prove anything against me, but they also cant find
anything that speaks in my favor. This time they send me to Manaus. I got
lodging, transportation, and escorts, all paid for by the brazilian government.
In Manaus i’m put up in a jail belonging to the military police. A cooly
smiling gy interrogates me and givs me food to eat at the same time. He usually
asks wen my mouth is full, he’s really only trying to get me to break down. He
fires unrelated questions at me about my trip, about my frends, about my
relatives, and is constantly telling me how i tangled myself up in
contradictions, and wen i try to contradict his telling me that i had
contradicted myself, he goes bak to my invented language. After 2 ours of this
he dismisses me with the warning that the interogation wil be resumed tomorro.
Only without the good service and not so nice this time. Because he’s not going to stand for any
mor of my lies.
The next day, no one comes, nor does anyone come on the day after that.
The days go by and the only people who visit me ar the gys who bring me my
meals. I ask wats up with the boss. They tel me he’s gon. The next time i ask
wen he’s coming bak. They tel me he hasnt come bak yet. I wanna talk to the
boss, dammit! They cant just leave me here to rot! After 2 weeks of this i’m
almost at the end of my rope. By now the rite time for me to let my parents kno
that i'm OK has come and gon. My mother has a hart condition, surely this wont
be good for her. I rote them a leter, but i hav no idea if it is even going to
get mailed by this people. I take constantly cold showers to keep my hed and my
body cool. I get closer to insanity and start a hunger strike. Maybe something
wil happen then. Nothing happens, exept i’m really at the end of my rope. It
hurts me to the bottom of my soul to turn down good food. And that is the only
diversion that there is. After 5 days i giv it up. But i dont stop being a
nuisance to the people who bring me food. At some point they get sik of it and
take me to the fedral police. New interogation, i spil my guts to them. "U
hav to listen, i’v done nothing, really nothing, i mean, i kno i hav a couple
of things with me that mite hav seemd suspicius, but i can explain evrything. I
alredy did explain evrything sevral times, but it seems to be that evryone
thinks they can put a gy behind bars, wile no one has the authority or the guts
to set him free." The gy from the fedral police is fatherly and tels me:
"U wil hav to explain evrything all over again. Dont try any dirty triks,
we'l chek up on evrything. I'm
going to send inquiries to all of the proper authorities in Brazil, until we
find out if u'r wanted for anything. If yur record is clean, u'l go free."
There i hav roommates and i’m not completely isolated. But then it is
really a hygienic disaster. It’s not a prison, but rather a holding cel in the
basement of the fedral police station. Directly above us is the toilet, and the
drainage pipe goes down thru our room. The pipe has a leak, and so wen someone
flushes the toilet, we get a minor flood. Nothing solid comes out, to be sure,
but it is stil pretty unpleasant, especially since we dont hav any beds, only
ripd-up matresses. There is no cleaning lady and no wisky. The food is bad, and
the one-ied atendant who brings it tel us idiotic stories that spoil our
appetite.
At least there ar three of us to comfort each other. There is a blak gy
from Guyana who has been strugling as a musician in Brazil, and we hav a blond
perian (peruvian...) hippy who grew up in Alaska, and there is me. Both of them
ar being held until their deportation, because their visas hav run out. We make
music, i lern a hole lot of different caribean rhythms, and not even the
brazilian national anthem is spared. At that point we hear from upstairs wat a
crisis of nationalism that is.
To wile away the time, i invent a kind of superchess. Modern and megalomaniacal. With 400 houses, airplanes, tanks,
bommers, missiles, soldiers, spies, ministers and presidents. One round takes
at least 2 days. But we hav the time.
One day, after many translations, explanations, and inquiries with the
proper authorities, i’m freed.
Befor leaving, i’m permited to take a proper shower first (the tap in
the cel wasnt much), and i realize my hole tan is not a suntan but rather a
dirt-tan. I’m suddenly wite like a
mozzarella cheese.
I go bak to the air force, maybe i can stil get a flite to São Paulo for
free. Somehow i hav a rite to one,
after being held for so long. Completely by chance i run into the gy from the
military police who interrogated me and then disappeared. Wy didnt he take any action on my
behaf, wy did he leave me to rot?
I want to ask him, but he just says helo and disappears behind a dor.
The air force cant or doesn’t want to giv me a lift. All the same, in the end it was a
luxury stay. Not even 2 months in
jail, wen some people in this world spend their hole lives in jail for no
reason at all (in some cuntrys, like the US, sometimes they'r
executed...). I also never got
beaten and didnt get tortured. I’m
in luk that by 1975, the truly repressiv time in Brazil is over. Torture is no longer sanctiond. There ar isolated cases of torture even
in todays democracy, just as there ar stil unexplained deths in prisons, but it
is not the system behind it. And keep in mind that Brazil was one of the first
cuntrys in the world to abolish the deth penalty, in the 19th
century. It is also to my advantage that my brown skin came from the sun (and
later from the dirt), and not from my genes. Most of the time in this cuntry,
race is equated with class, skin color with social standing. To be sure, some
blak people ar rich (one soccer player, Pelé, and one singer, Milton
Nascimento), and some slum dwellers ar blond (i dont kno any of their names),
but as a rule of thum, the liter the color, the hyer the class and the fatter
the pocketbook. U hav to giv a middle- or upper-class kid some respect, who
knows if he doesn’t kno good lawyers, who knows who his parents kno at all.
Onward to São Paulo. A truk
brings me as far as Porto Velho in the state of Rondônia. The next driver is a neffew
of the president of Parlement in Brasília. He drives me to Brasília, 2000 kilometers to the southeast.
This strech of road starts in the jungle and ends in the savanna. Sometimes u
see indians on the side of the road selling souvenirs. The driver suffers
greatly on my acount. Ever since i got out of jail, it has been going badly for
my digestive tract. It is an endless burpery, and the gases ar absolutely
inhumane. Evry time i burp, he
wants to die: "God dammit, Zé!
U just farted again! Roll
down the windo!" "Dude, i didnt fart at all, i just burpd. U dont wanna kno wat it's like wen i
fart."
We stop at restaurants along the hyway, the gy only orders the best and
lots of it. At long last i could
hav some decent food, but i cant keep one bit down. Evrything putrifies in my
stomach. I think i hav malaria. He thinks so too. In Brasília the gy bys me a
bus ticket to São Paulo (1000 kilometers). Thank u kindly.
Once i arived in São Paulo i take the subway. I get off the train and see my sister, who is just getting
on. I get bak on, she sits down, and i sit down next to her. She hasnt noticed
me yet. I come on to her in a sleazy voice. "Hey baby, how about it? Do u
hav anything goin' on this evening? Hey baby, i'm not wat u think, but i’v got
wat u like..." At some point she has to turn around to face me and tel me
off, she sees me and is mor than a little surprised. With good reason. They
suspected that i had been either swalloed up by the colombian jungle or made
into goulash by the indians, and suddenly i'm sitting there rite next to her.
Wen i get home my father is pulling the car out of the garage. I’m
wearing an eskimo parka that i can hide my face in, only my ies ar visible. The
parka looks a little out of place with the 30 (86) degrees and the humidity, i
walk up to the car and my father is wondering wat this wacko wants from him. I
sloly pull down the zipper and on his face i see a smile that i wil never
forget. He baut a plane ticket for
the next day, so that he can try to trak me down in Colombia. He would hav to
look for quite a wile. My mother
cries a lot, but wat can be mor butiful than tears of joy?
Author travling
New York is very racially mixd.
Blaks, puertorikis, vietnamis, iris, blaks. Hichhiking is a complicated afair. If
u want to leave a big city, u hav to find out where the hyways begin and how u
get there. If u leave New York on foot, u hav to walk for 2 ours befor u can
hich a ride. Once upon a time i
did that, nowadays i take a bus or a trane to the next smaller city, in this
case New Jersey.
Now i'm not of the opinion that drivers who dont giv me a ride ar
assholes. Of corse i prefer drivers who giv me a ride, but on the other hand,
it is an entirely personal decision. Evry person has the rite not to trust a
stranger or just to want to be by himself. Hichhiking is an oportunity for me
to come into contact with people. It's only cheap if u liv cheaply, since in
general u take a lot longer to get where u'r going. U hav to sleep in a tent or
a sleeping bag and eat sparingly. That is no longer the case for me, i sleep in
hotels and eat like a normal human being. In the US that means hamburgers,
cheeseburgers, double cheeseburgers, woppers, and double woppers. In short,
evrything that the diverse american cuisine has to offer.
I used to go up to people wen they’r filling their gas tanks. Not any
mor. Forget about the fact that most people simply ignor u, others discourage u
with a hate-fild look, and most of them just lie ("i'm only going a couple
of miles" or "it's not my car, i'm not alowd to giv anyone a
ride") - going up to people like that misses the point. I want to ride
with people who want to giv me a ride, not with people who giv me a ride
because they cant say no or because they’r not quik enuf to think of a lie. I
dont even feel like hichhiking nowadays. But it is my goal to hichhike around
the world, and i wil see it thru to the end. I could take a bus or fly, but
that would be as if u ar climing a mountain and after putting in a weeks effort
to do it, u let yurself be carried by a helicopter for the last 20 meters.
I go to Washington, DC. Here liv only blak people. Statistics say that
blak people make up only 10 percent of the american population. But wen u ar
walking around in a city, especially at nite, that statistic strikes u as
inaccurat. They say of the US that the wite people liv in the suburbs. I only
see blak people in the suburbs too.
Today i go siteseeing in the government district. The americans hav
delusions of grandeur. I look for the Wite House and find many wite houses.
Unfortunatly none of them is the rite one, but then each one is even bigger
than the one that comes befor it. The National Art Gallery is bigger than
Nederland and Belgie put together. The Capitol is about as big as the EU plus Jugoslavija,
if u alow me that little exaggeration. The sole exeption is the Wite House,
wich is not much bigger than a modest villa. Even here they offer tours, as is
the custom in the US. No wonder the americans hav such bad governments (altho
not worse than ours...). How ar u supposed to get any work done, wat with all
those scoolchildren and japanese tourists standing around gigling in the
hallways? The Pentagon, the CIA, and the FBI, until now only abstract concepts
for me, become bildings that u can visit in tourist groups. The subway stations
ar named acordingly: Pentagon Station, CIA, etc.
Author travling
The day befor yesterday i
hichhiked 1000 miles, from a northern snostorm to a suthern springtime in full
bloom, wich mite as wel be summer. Yesterday 70 miles, today 400 miles thru
Florida. The Florida section of the I-10, the suthernmost east-west freeway, is
simply swarming with queer retirees who hav nothing beter to do than to drive
up and down the hyway on the lookout for willing hichhikers. Many of them ar
shy and/or prefer indirect come-ons. If someone pays me mor than 2 compliments
in less than 10 minutes, it's clear wats going on. Others look between my legs,
stil others ar direct: "How's about we pull over up there by those bushes?"
Wat they all hav in common is that not a single one of them wil clearly tel u
where he's hedded. They just keep driving until it dawns on them that they dont
stand a chance. Or until their target warms up to them, asuming the target can
be warmed up. The one driver must hav taken me at least 150 miles. Then he
drove bak home to Jacksonville.
Author travling
A blak gy asks me if i wouldn’t
like to stop off for a refreshment at his house befor we get bak on the road.
Later on he gets mor to the point: he’s wondering if i happend to hav a sperm
clog that mite need to be cleard? Later stil he apologizes for making such a
crude proposal. He explanes that his mother died 2 months ago, and now he feels
so alone. Oh, now i got it. And here i'd been thinking he’s up to no good at
all.
For 2 days it's been pouring rane without an interuption. Today i
abandond my principles and started aproaching drivers personally. I cant take
it any mor. First victim is a gy from Switz, his wife, and his mobile home. He
couldn’t think of a suitable excuse fast enuf. U cant say no to a haf-cuntryman
in distress, he thinks i'm deutsh. He lets me off at the middle beltway of
Houston and i fite my way thru the rane until i make it into the city. Then
this gy brakes rite in front of my nose. Like, tires squealing to a stop.
Policeman? Hyway robber? Wy is he staring at me so intensely? He must way at
least 450 pounds and is wearing a hedband with corian riting on it. A ninja? A
dangerous samurai looking for innocent victims? My bak is cold from the rane
and from his gaze. He hollers: "D’u wan a ride?" I tel him, it's all
rite, i'm just hedding around the blok to a cheap hotel, he shouldn’t worry
about me. He tels me that he knows of a cheap hotel, and can drive me there. Wel, all rite, then... i get in the
car, no time for a quik hale Mary, he tels me how to get bak to the hyway from
the hotel and asks me if i'm a cristian. "No, not exactly...
yurself?" "I'm a
cristian, but the churches ar full of shit. They tel u cant smoke. And meanwile
u cant find anything in the Bible that says u cant smoke. If living an unhelthy
life was a sin, then we'd all be damd to hel." He givs me a pamflet that
tels of a minelayer who died, experienced a fiery hel and the devil incarnate,
came bak to this life and became a cristian. Then he lets me out in front of
the hotel.
Author travling
U can alredy start to get
acustomd to Mexico wen u make it to Texas. Houston is bilingual, after driving
south for an our it gets monolingual again, because english is a foren language
here. I want to speak espanian with them, but they’r the only USis who kno that
brazilis dont speak espanian and speak english with me.
Say wat u wil of the USis, they hav an inexaustable creativity with
names. U can visit towns called Alexander, Alfred, Anton, Carlos, Charlie,
Claude, Fred, Helena, Irene, Jean, Joaquin, Katy, Louise, Lucas, Natalia,
Patricia, Ricardo, Sebastian or Vera. The only one i havnt seen yet is Zé. U can travvel the globe in a day, as
long as u stay in Texas: there ar towns called Athens, China, Edinburgh, Egypt,
Geneva, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Liverpool, London, Malta, Milano, Moscow,
Münster, Nederland, New Baden, New Ulm, Oldenburg, Paris (ahh, u kno it?),
Sebastopol, Sydney, or Sudan.
Texas has simply evrything: if u'v got small shoes, drive to Bigfoot. If u'r in
the womb and someone wont let u get out, try Birthrite. If u'r a racist, take
yur pik, u can go to Blak or to Blanco. If u'r tired, try Blanket or Goodnite.
If yur travlers cheks hav run out, chek out Cash or Dinero. Thirsty? Coke is
it. If u'r bord, go to Impact or strate to Cut and Shoot. If u'r late, rush to
Erly. If evryone around u is speaking nothing but espanian, go to English. If
it's monday, try Friday. Feeling down or depressd, then get to Energy, Joy, Smily,
or just Happy. Hungry? Oatmeal is wat u need. Gotta get out of the city? Then
how about Pampa or Paradise? Maybe Tarzan is in the naberhood. If yur car
brakes down on the road, theres Tool, and then u make it to Mercedes, so u can
vote for Reagan. But maybe u'r not sure and want to try Uncertain? Or far, far
away, to Venus. But Venus is hot and u come bak to Erth. Erth is stil too big a
place, so u go bak to Sweet Home. But first to Telephone to let them kno u'r
coming. By Telegraph u find out that Unity has arived at home. And u thaut
Utopia is far off?!? Anyway there's stil time for a hedline in the paper, since
there is a town called Fertile and another one called Climax: FERTILE WOMAN
DIES IN CLIMAX.
At the border i’m confronted with bitter disapointment: the mexikis wont
let me in. I hav to get a visa, today is sunday, the embassy is closed. The
USis stole haf of Mexico, marchd into the rest of it a couple of times, make
mexikis get visas to come over, and hav thousands of police posted along the border
to hunt down mexikis. The mexikis say that they feel nothing but hate for the
gringos. But the gringos can cross the border into Mexico without paying 1
cent. The brazilis havnt helpd mexikis out that much, tru, but they never
occupied it either, Brazil would never make mexikis get a visa (they just ask
visa from cuntrys that ask visa from brazilis), and to top it all off we call
each other brothers. And wat do we get? I hav to shel out 25 dollars. The rich
get by for free, the poor hav to pay up. Third world cuntrys discriminating
against third world cuntrys.
author travling
In Mexico at long last. The border gards ar very unfrendly. The cars ar bigger
than in the US, ocasionally a little bit older too. The food taists beter in
the mexican restaurants in the USA than it does here. The hotels ar a bit
cheaper, but much mor expensiv than in a typical third-world cuntry. Mexicanos
look like Sancho Panza: short, fat, dark-skind, and with mustashes. But there
ar also mexicanos who look different: no mustash, tall, thin, and lite-skind.
The only thing mexicanos dont hav is sombreros, at least not in the english
sense. In the mexican sense they do, since in espanian the word simply means hat. All mexicanos hav one: a cowboy
hat. One mite be tempted to conclude that USis, for their part, wear mexican
sombreros; not so. The yanquis wear baseball caps. Sometimes mexicanos wear
baseball caps too. It is very intresting to be able to report on the cultures
of other cuntrys.
Hichhiking
is easy in Mexico. I start off at the border in Matamoros— thats Killer Of Moors in english. In Swits
there used to be candies named “moors heds” and “nigger kisses”, but nowadays
they call them something like “choclat drops” and “cream fluffies” in order to
avoid any potential acusation of racism. If this city was in Swits, its name
would hav to be changed to El Choco.
Farther
south evrything becomes mor normal. The cars ar a normal size, the people ar
normally frendly, even the food gets beter. I’m talking with one of the drivers
about famly. I ask him if his parents ar religious. “No,” he says, “they're
catholic.”
Guanajuato
is a butiful city surounded by steep mountains. There is an up-and-down here
like i hav rarely experienced befor and wich reminds me of towns in Italia. Evrywhere
there ar very cute tunnels, if u can call them that. Many of them ar actually
underground streets with benches and entrances to houses. The tunnels ar not
really all that old, but they look very old. They go very wel with their
suroundings. There ar sevral mines, including one with a café on the 13th flor
belo ground.
Something
really unusual about Guanajuato ar the mummies. OK, so there ar mummies in lots
of cuntrys, at least in museums. But brand spanking new ones? The city had no
cemetery plots left. The city government had no choice but to remove the
skeletons whose relativs cant pay rent. Wen they went to dig them up, tho, they
didnt find skeletons but mummified