Pieces fitting a red puzzle

 

Children’s street

 

A line of light. : )

It was strange, that old street in Lampa city seemed one owned by children. Like a secret.

Symmetry of two

 

 

In the ancient Peru when a building was finished in its construction it has dual figures in the top, and other two figures (as twins) buried in the underground. They represent a kind of thanks and a wish of good luck and fortune. If they are not in pairs then they are not supposed to work.

When Spaniards came in that hurtful event the bulls they bring showed such power that the animals used before were replaced by them. These bulls are called “Bulls of Pucará”, pronounced Pooh-kah-rah. So it is the culture evolving and adapting. Change is important in life.

Waves in green and yellow

 

The waves in the landscape… A hidden road to the red castle and a sky so blue behind the clouds of a storm that did not become to be.

Stitching experiment

Today was a busy day, and it seems is going to be a busy night…

This is a stitched photograph but the program I used to stitch, Microsoft ICE, filled the absent gaps in this way… for some reason I like it. It’s not a photography as it doesn’t represent what was in the reality, but I like the movement and dynamism of the composition so I’d say is a happy accident.

Clouds flying over the city

 

The sky is so close… I feel like I could touch it with my hands…

El cielo se siente tan cercano… como si pudiera tocarlo con mis manos…

Sit down, I’ve many stories to tell…

Book review

I ended to read “Did You Read That Review?: A Compilation of Amazon’s Funniest Reviews”, you can found it here. Navigating the internet I read comments by internet trolls, the usual stuff, so one guy wrote that instead of deleting them moderators should just grouping them as Amazon did and sell them as a book. I couldn’t believe that could exists because I love to read comments and reviews, and if they are smart much more; one of my favorites Borges’ tales and fictional essays are those that are reviews of fictional books, as “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” So I purchased the Kindle copy as just 1.49 bucks and I ended enjoying it a lot XD. Also I had read a lot of history and serious books so to balance (in my culture balance and symmetries are important) I needed something light. There are quite funny reviews as deep analysis of movies with Shaquille O’Neal, music by Hulk Hogan; reviews of watches and pens that cost thousands and thousands of dollars and articles like bananas slicers (haha, banana is one of the words in English I found so funny!!! How can you say it without laughing!?) And so on. I’ll do as usual my serious review, this time it will be a “review of reviews” XD

A spyware called Google

Speaking about Amazon, today I deleted every app in my tablet downloaded with the Google Play market and replaced by the same downloading it from the Amazon Appstore for Android. Every month it’s just harder to use Android because Google wants me to join Google Plus, and I don’t want anything if it’s forced to me. Before I used to comment actively reviewing my apps or commenting in Youtube, but that ended when they forced to have a Google plus account, I’m not against google but against force you to don’t have options and just do what they want you to do. Today I wanted to play some game but I couldn’t because there was an advice with a stuff similar to “this game needs google play games” and after that “you can have more advantages having a google plus account” and after several messages interrupting me that was the moment when the volcano of my head erupted in a lava of irritation so I just deleted them. Now to me Google is simply a spyware hard to get rid off my devices. If you have the same issues as me I suggest you to use Amazon, they don’t have the same number of apps for your android but at least you aren’t going to feel the heavy pressure of the hands of Google around your throat in search of get your data to share it in a world were some people lives to hurt you using that data.

First spring day

In the last story today starts the spring. It was a quite hot day! My time to eat ice-creams ended so know starts my season for hot teas and chocolates.

Two friends in the open

Topography in blue

Traditions and authenticity

Now that I made a temporary come back to books, music and movies I’m remembering which ones I’ve already read, heard or saw taking advantage of the Facebook (for security reasons I don’t share it) utility to add lists of interests… For now I’m around 728 movies, 226 groups of music and musicians, 178 TV series, 356 books of literature, history, philosophy, arts, architecture, etcetera, and near one hundred artists (they’re mixed with several likes…)  and the list is growing… so many things I’ve seen… to me it’s almost like I had spend my life in objects that sometimes are repetitive. I know that that number just says the number of my ignorance but also I think life is so short to spend in the creations of others instead to create what our self wants to say. So I’m more focused in build my own art and knowledge, at least these moths.

I add a book or movie or musician when I remember them, among the movies today I remembered one of the most powerful and emotional I saw in my whole life, Le Grand Bleu by Luc Besson. I don’t know what say the critics, I think much more important is what do you feel so I can say that when kid it was a giant touching movie. It starts near my home, in the lake Titicaca, a free diver exploring the lake in a way I would be afraid to do because the cold waters I know (every time I go there I’m afraid to fall to the deep waters…) and it was like that gentleman was truly much more native than me, a six years old kid. Since then I loved that spirit of freedom in the waters I saw in the film, the two competitors were around the world in a competition that also was a competition against death and their will was so powerful that they could felt the sea and the lakes as a kind of true home…

What brings me to being a native… I think native is not and issue of race, more it’s about a feeling. I feel myself for example closer to Borges, I think he’s a true American man, because I understand him when he talks about the infinite horizon of his dear pampa, and that sentiment that makes him say that he feels Buenos Aires like a place that hadn’t foundation because he feels it eternal. Instead other authors, that I admire, like Vargas Llosa or García Márquez are to me actually Europeans living in America, because every time they speak about the jungle or the highlands they write about it like a mystery just natives known, and is evident that their traditions corresponds to a certain nostalgia of Europe.

Instead I’m against traditions. My definition of tradition is just the laziness to don’t think to just follow conventions based in another ways of life. Yes, I heal my wounds with special earths I select; yes, I can read the eyes; yes, I pay to the Earth and climb the hill when it’s needed; yes, I follow the ancient etiquettes; yes, I know to read the signs in the sky and seeing above my city the clouds I know how is the weather in far cities in other countries like La Paz or the cities in the desert of the coast. But those are parts of my culture I chose to follow, I don’t follow traditions that I consider should be learned just to don’t be made again, for example the tradition of peasants to kill our endangered species as our rare native cats, our Pumas, even when child we were taught to kill toads with stones, I dislike that because I don’t see the merit to take lives when in our modern world we could put special fences to avoid the pumas and instead to kill our rare wild native cats we should use modern breeding technics and adequate building spaces. An animal shouldn’t pay for the ignorance of a human.

I don’t follow the tradition to follow rules and just get stuck in the inadequate adobe house, I follow the Incan tradition haunted but knowledge. The genetic investigation was triggered by the regular “el niño” (the warming of the Ocean that brings periods of excessive rains in some places and droughts in others) so our ancestors developed in kind of laboratories thousands of vegetable species resistant to the weather, architectonic systems to fight the desert and the earthquakes, urban and regional organization so the Empire would be connected across their thousands of rich cities. I know there is a romantic idea that we were like some kind of hippies (nothing against them btw) or a wild civilization visited by aliens (lol) but the reality was, is, more complex. I’m against that vision tourists have, even national tourists, that we should be in poverty to conserve that “traditions” so we still should use clothes made for Spanish peasants and to live in homes without services, internet and TV’s are a sin it seems because that “fakes” us XD The time advances, I want to have the comfort of tomorrow and I design according that, my last designs implies in the technical side a hybrid solar/public-electric system and in the architectonic side it’s the mirror of a electrical engineer.

Returning to the beginning that’s the reason I felt so connected with the characters of that movie… I could sense a kind of brotherhood in the man diving the Titicaca… being native doesn’t mean to have a race or following without thinking archaic traditions; but to have a bond, like Borges had, with your earth and sky and city. Feel that your place perhaps couldn’t have a foundation date but it is with your spirit an eternity along.

Lampa: The vermillion city of the blue windows

 

story of a murder

Lampa is an old city near my own city, in Lampa’s Province, in the heart of Puno’s region in Peru, at 3930 meters of altitude (12 893 ft.), it’s quite old but Spaniards re-founded it in 1678. This is called “The Pink City” or “The City of the Seven Wonders”… pink city for the color of the walls but to me they are more vermillion so I titled that way this article; it’s a small city so I don’t know which are those seven wonders, lol.

These photographs were took in 2007 with my first camera I was still one year away to end the university and I had the Hewlett Packard camera that my older brother gave me. So if you don’t tolerate noise I caution you to don’t continue if you care about your eyes XD

THE CITY

door to magician home

walking beyond the city surely we’ll find a heaven

caressing  your vermillion skin

to squeeze my nose

let’s go

waiting…

man with monocle

walls before the long night

It looks empty but that’s because the population works in Juliaca and sleep there, so today it’s more a bedroom city. When Spaniards founded it the population was white, but after the Tupac Amaru’s revolution whites left the city and went to the coast.

SANTIAGO APÓSTOL TEMPLE

let’s build a church made of colors

The church is a colonial building dedicated to Saint James, sadly the complete name is “Saint James the Indian Killer”, and Spanish descendants consider us as “Indians” Of course I couldn’t adore, reverence or respect a figure meant to kill us o.O!! But the building is nice.

a closed door

In fact I saw the facade analyzed by an Italian architect in a classic text at university, the arch unifying the diverse elements under it.

gentle light upon the old stones

fields of happy green

a last bit of light

unlimited spaces surrounding the building

There is a mystery, although I think it’s more a secret, about why the tower is so far from the main body of the temple. I guess for some structural reason, but that’s just a thought.

intimate garden

My road of infinite geometry

ART AND NATURE

European echoes

The city hall has a copy, supposedly the only one on the world, of the Pietà of Michelangelo. That day everything was closed so I photographed from the window. I’ve seen it before when I was a kid, I liked it so much.

falling into infinite lines beyond the light

I found this green beauty inside the city hall. I like the idea of infinite.

sleeping Venus

This is a Venus found near Lampa, it seems we occupied it from several thousands of years ago. Our society, the native side at least, is a patriarchal-matriarchal one.

Fight!

c’mon! you want to climb me :D

These trees are a native species that in Aymara we call “Qiñwa”, in Spanish it’s called “queñual” and in English you would call it Polylepis. I climbed them once, they’ve such a texture! :-)

END

And well, this was part of that afternoon. We, my parents and brothers, took a bus to come back to Juliaca city.

a sky so close to us