Nostalgia

Jul. 17th, 2014 02:29 pm
shapeofthings: (fight)
I miss you so much but the time's not yet right to go home.

_LW6

What is home anyway? )

Setting

This journey's far from over.
shapeofthings: (fight)
Mariposa1

A butterfly gets a salt fix from my sweaty guide Russel (pronounced roo-sell) on our walk through part of the MABOSINFRON conservation concession just out of town in Puerto Esperanza, Purús Region, Peruvian Amazon.

Mariposa2

Guarded

Jun. 27th, 2014 12:10 pm
shapeofthings: (Default)
Guard duty


Hmmm...
shapeofthings: (fight)
Rupac ruins hike


This path, slow trod, unknown
of terminus, winds through fine
worn desert dust and far icy
crowns of Andes...

Terraced slopes for stepping
up-and-down-and-sideways:
I fall, get up, keep going,
climbing, breathing...

Worn thin by many passing
feet of others going seeking,
bearing in a pilgrim heart the
brilliant ache of living...

(joy and sorrow seep from same
deep wells plumbed firmly
in the psyche) and I will
always go on walking.


P.S. Desert prettiness at TheShapeOfThingsToCome - go look!
shapeofthings: (Macchu Pichu)
This hill? Oh, it's nothing.

Just a thousands-of-years old mud-brick temple from the pre-Incan civilisation that formed in Lima and the nearby river valleys. Nothing special, there are dozens of them all over the city and out in the valleys.

Of course you can go walking on it, stupid foreigner...

Huaca San Marcos

Huaca San Marcos


From the sign...
The lower Rimac River valley contains a large quantity of prehispanic relics, one of which is the Maranga architectural complex from the Lima culture (0-600 AD), which covers an area of 1.5 km from north to south,and 1 km from east to west: a zone now contained within the avenues OR Benavides in the north, La Marnia in the south, Universitaria to the east and Faucett to the west. ...the Maranga complex consisted of 16 buildings, and of the 7 which are found within the University grounds the Huaca [pyramid temple - T] San Marcos was probably the principal building. Construction likely began in the late stage of this culture, when maximum development levels were reached.

These archaeological remains were described and studied as much by travellers as by archaeologists such as Hutchinson (1873), Meddendorf (1894), who developed a plan of the buildings, identifying them by number, Max Uhle (1905) and Jijon & Caamano (1025); the last studies were carried out under Doctor Ruth Shady (2000).


Huaca San Marcos

Huaca San Marcos


The Lima culture was characterized principally for its monumental architecture, constructed using cobbles, earth and sand, forming superimposed structures and building walls and floors using clay and mud-brick. The oldest structures were made of hand-moulded mud bricks, but by the end of the early-intermediate period they had incorporated rammed earth.

In much of the ceramics, decorations were geometric, consisting of red, black and white patterns, which can be divided into two phases: the early phase known as Playa Grande or Interlocking, where the basic design is interlaces stylized fish with triangular heads; and the second, later phase called Maranga or Cajamarquilla, where the design uses simple dashed geometric patterns made with an orange paste and fines (Nieveria style), with the latter foreign elements related to the southern coast and highlands (Lubreras 1974).

In much of the textiles, the designs are similar to those used for ceramics. Burials in the Lima culture were of bodies layed out on litters or the bare earth [in contrast to Inca culture where bodies were placed into the foetal position and wrapped in textiles prior to burial - T].

Although the archaeological complex belongs to the Lima culture, the huaca contains material elements from later times, such as the Ichma culture [Also pre-Inca, 1 110 - 1 440 AD - T]


Huaca San Marcos

Huaca San Marcos

(phone camera, as I wasn't planning on stumbling across an archaeological site when I went to work that day)

Also: http://shapeofthingstocome.org/2014/05/07/six-months-in-lima/
shapeofthings: (Macchu Pichu)
This started off as an LJ entry, since it's more personal and emotional than what I'd normally share on t'other blog, but then I thought that no-one much reads here any more, and that the themes of the post were relevant for my little Sustainability Blog, designed to make other people think about their lifestyles by telling stories of my own.

So anyway, I wrote a thing about my day yesterday: Economic Whiplash

WYSI(N)WYG

Feb. 26th, 2014 11:08 pm
shapeofthings: (Macchu Pichu)
The world is beautiful/horrifying/amazing/appalling/inspiring.

Doors are closing/opening. Brain is ticking, ticking, ticking...

So much to take in/dispose/hold on to/let go of.

I need to sleep more. I need to visit the mountains.

For now... For now there is sweetness to be wrung from Lima.

So many lessons, if I can stay open to them.



Good things: kayaking in a green oasis in the middle of Lima, roseate spoonbills, cycling, the real world of Chorrillos, friends (Isotta, Daniel, Yeselia, Peter, Ruben...), teaching myself the quena, important lessons, planning big adventures (Amazon in May, Patagonia in November), kitting myself out with gear, learning to let go and move on, Neruda, love in all it's crazy forms, running English conversation classes at work, sowing seeds that change the way people think, presenting new possibilities, valerian root tisane (take that, insomnia!), lucuma season, china-town missions, skim-reading in Spanish, home-made pad thai, endless cups of tea, seeing parrots from my window, art that eloquently captures my thoughts, hummingbirds, learning to imagine a life outside of the system, serendipity...
shapeofthings: (Default)
Lima... How will I survive 8 more months of you?

I am not a city person. Never have been, never will be. My joy lies in the wild places, so close and yet so hard to get to from here.

Oh to have wings.

shapeofthings: (Default)
Just a quick note to say that I never have enough time to write down everything I should, but I'm still blogging away over at http://shapeofthingstocome.org

Stop by some time, ok?

Floating...

Oct. 1st, 2013 02:38 pm
shapeofthings: (rumblefish)
"You are so young… and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

- Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet.

Mags
shapeofthings: (rumblefish)
I am dreaming of the River.

The rains have come at last and I long to hear its song.

Carpet River Love

Cathedral Rock Trail (8) Cathedral Rock Trail (5)

River5 River4

Litchen Mist
shapeofthings: (Wandering)
Peru 2.0

Wellington Somewhere

Two worlds, one heart.

Cusp

Jun. 3rd, 2013 08:31 pm
shapeofthings: (Default)
Taking a walk through the parks of central Hobart as the seasons slide from Autumn into winter...

Cusp Cusp

Cusp Cusp

Cusp Cusp

Cusp Cusp

~~~

May. 28th, 2013 10:27 am
shapeofthings: (rumblefish)
Restless.

Feeling the urge to be moving, wandering.

To be stretched and challenged.

Change is calling.

Hoy dia
shapeofthings: (Hug?)
I am sitting in my house, with the strongest feeling of wanting to go home.

...I don't even know where that is any more.

Autums

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