We all have our gods, perhaps less ethereal and enlightening than the days of old, gods waging war in the sky, ritual sacrifices for the rain to come. Steve Caporizzo, news channel 6 weather man doesn’t have to kill a goat on air to solidify this weekend’s sunny holiday commute.
Our gods still exist, we pray to them, make sacrifices whether we know it or not. They set us straight with a tender hand or a stinging wrath. We question our faith, or whether it ever existed when the rules don’t seem to add up.
Diarrhea is a god of traveling. He pokes his head up at the fruit stand as you examine the coloration on a mango. He giggles, a small child hiding behind his mother’s skirt as she pulls chicken out of a bucket sitting in the sun onto a flat top grill. He swoops in after you’ve had a majestic day hiking to a remote Incan gate that overlooks the valley and towering Andes mountains. Whether you know it or not, he will have to humble you eventually.
That day in particular had such a drastic swing in fortune I had to wonder If I had angered some spiritual force. My birthday, waking up before sunrise to hike several hours up a grueling path to the most beautiful outlook I’ve ever seen. Only on the return did I feel the gurgle, as I began to see the town reappear. It grew as I hit the cobblestone streets. It started screaming as I rushed through the alleys past merchants and loitering tourists, praying for the merciful toilet. I made it barely, only to start my gastrointestinal rebirthing.
I went through this process many a times. Starting to eventually see some karma in my matrix of decisions, bigger than simply eating spoiled food that handed me this unfortunate but temporary fate. Finding yourself in a new location, tied to the toilet, you slow down and reassess.
Watching the enormous moths dance around the candlelight in a porta potty deep in the rainforest. Listening to cars zoom below as you shiver in a tiny apartment in an Andean town, sitting at an angle because your knees don’t fit in the space between the wall and toilet. Dripping sweat in a beach bungalow as you swat away mosquitoes.
No Amazon prime, or CVS, or calling into your primary care. You are in the elements paying the natural price. Momentum swings to a halt to force reflection. We’re reminded how little control we really have despite our western conditioning to the contrary. Fate changes much faster than your conscious awareness. Accept your gastric meditation. Thank the gods for allowing you safe passage to your rebirth, and not greeting you on cobblestones in front of cute families walking their kids to Sunday mass.
You believe in higher powers when life is this abrupt, comforts are gone, and beauty and destitution sit hand and hand smiling at you every day. The intersection of fate and control is in much sharper contrast. Coming down to the Sacred Valley on a steep treacherous road, one very tight curve was strewn with flowers and placards. I could only imagine the awful fates at this very spot.
I watched a woman say a prayer as we decelerated slightly towards it. I could have stared up at the looming peaks or the lush river valley and never noticed. I could have felt the thrill without any grounding, chatted with the soccer team heading to a game, listened to the loud reggaeton coming from the front. But this tia, she has done this every time she takes the bus from Cusco for work. It wheezed up and down these mountains, breaks faltering, frame rusted to the core, and necessity and collective good faith allowed it safe passage. Some buffer against a huge indifferent universe.
So, with lack of empirical evidence and beast gurgling within, you turn towards the heavens and wait. You buy some pepto and beg a tia to make you rice, wondering how you angered the God, but grateful for this opportunity for reflection.
Wanderthoughts 