quito

day started at 130am. i drifted in and out of weird and fanciful dreams on the way to logan. it didnt hit me until the plane hit a few air-pockets on route to miami that i was heading south -- far south! quito, from the air, doesnt look like a normal capital. the buildings and houses are spread all over the mountain sides, liquid like, they just curl over the land. but, in time and distance, the lands wins. the steep cliffs or alitutude indicate where man stopped and turned in another direction and continued onward with the ideas of progress. it was diesel fumes that brought me back. it was the spanish, or the insane custom lines or the "bienvenido a ecuador" signs that adorned each wall... it was the buses and cars and the fumes. they say that smell is the closest sense tied to memory -- they are right. i exited the airport pushing a massive cart of bags (none of the which were mine) for the yachay wasi center and was transported back over a decade. there i stood, a child, a young boy on the brink of understanding sense and world, a boy in a third world country trying to make sense of so much and, at the same time, wishing to simply be a 14 year old. the diesel brought me to cuenca, where i lived, to the bus station where we would depart on random adventures to random parts of the country. i could hear the bus drivers and their young helpers (often sons) yelling the name of towns i didnt know existed. i was taken to an open air market where cows hung, dis-emboweled from the cieling in the 90 degree heat. i was in a small jungle town of misahualli where we hiked with a native guide to mountain vistas before swiming in amazonian contributaries... i was taken back to youth... i awoke refreshed!