My Cuzco

Recently, I have been reading The Motorcycle Diaries by Che Guevara. Normally I race through books, but this one I have been reading slowly, enjoying every second of such a fantastic trip. It is hard for me to believe that this book was written in the 50's because I guess I always picture those "free-spirit wanderers" to be from my generation. Anyways, the reason I blog...

Che writes about the city of Cuzco in Peru. He ended up staying longer than he planned because of the feeling it provided. He not only terms it "evocative", but goes on to sum the city up in three descriptions.

"This is the Cuzco inviting you to become a warrior and to defend, club in hand, the freedom and the life of the Inca."

"This Cuzco invites you to be a hesitant tourist, to pass over things superficially and relax into the beauty beneath a leaden winter sky."

"This is the Cuzco asking you to pull on your armor and, mounted on the ample back of a powerful horse, cleave a path through the defenseless flesh of a naked Indian flock whose human wall collapses and disappears beneath the four hooves of the galloping beast." (pg.104)

I loved this because this is what adventuring is. You feel different things. You want different things. What is appealing, what is offered, the result, the consequence, the memory, just everything is different and yet, as scary as that might sound, you want to pursue.

Sometimes I feel like I have different descriptors to where live could take me. Sometimes I want all of those things. There is always that dream of settling down and raising 12 kids... the dream I have had since I was a little girl. Sometimes that passes (more often now than not) and I dream of living in a bustling international city with a job writing and living the single life to max with fun. Then, there is part of me that want to be still and quiet. All of these are attractive to me. While I know, I will probably never "achieve" all three of these, I feel like my life right now is a small bundle of all three. And that my friends, makes me happy.

I have found my Cuzco and I wish to stay as long as I can.