Thursday, January 05, 2012

Sucre (4): Coming Clean

Sucre is the administrative capital of Bolivia, and if I have the hang of this travel writing genre, this is about the right time and place to interview a political giant in the land, someone on par with my status as a world renowned writer of pithy pieces; and it will be my exercise to ask questions of passing import of a deputy minister of wasted taxes about this and that, the real point being to show off my dry cynicism and cool indifference to the shadow of power, me being worldly and generally unimpressed by such petty things, having seen it all before. My goal in interviewing this titan of the twisting to his will the Public Good for the Nation, this Haephestes of Bolivian politics, would be to-- basically-- show off for my readers, lending this account a “You were there” significance that is meant to have us all feel superior to a mere mover and shaker in the Andes somewhere. But there is interviewing such a man, and then there is my other plan.

For close to three weeks I've been living in the cold, a room in La Paz in which I swiped the bedding from an adjacent room to add to my own blankets, tossing my leather jacket atop all that in my futile attempt to sleep warm. I turned on my laptop for an extra bit of heat, and eventually burnt candles around my bed to cut through the frost. My one and only shower during the time resulted in a severe case of bronchitis, which I still carry, and the thought of doing my laundry in the shower was out of bounds. So, Stinky Fellow tried to stay away from enclosed spaces in the company of others.


For close to three weeks I've been living in the cold, a room in La Paz in which I swiped the bedding from an adjacent room to add to my own, tossing my leather jacket atop all that in my futile attempt to sleep warm. I turned on my laptop for an extra bit of heat, and eventually burnt candles around my bed to cut through the frost. Y one and only shower during the tie resulted in a severe case of bronchitis, which I still carry, and the thought of doing my laundry in the shower was out of bounds. So, Stinky Fellow tried to stay away form enclosed spaces in the company of others. Yes, I could have gone to a laundromat but-- I couldn't find one. Nor did I turn over my laundry to the landlady to wash and hang in plain view of all in the courtyard, she, though I will never see her again, being witness to my personal person in the flesh, as it were, and my pride refusing to allow such a thing to be open to examination and inevitable horror. Dirty laundry? I think of it as something close to Medieval.


By now the astute reader will have gleaned that I hate hippies. This hatred is not due to their being stinky: it is due to hippies lauding a romanticised “authenticity” of the Middle Ages, “a thousand years without a bath” as French historian Jules Michelet puts it.

Two weeks without a proper shower is, I hope, my extremest limit. I look back to my ancestors and yours and see such things as a time when Jewish converts during the Inquisition were tortured and killed for showing up at church on Sunday bathed from the previous Friday afternoon. If the Jews had bathed, then obviously their conversion to Christianity was insincere, and off with them to the auto de fe. Not that a ritual bath meant much in the days, soap being unknown. My own, washing their woolens, used amonia, which is to say, urine. Silk and cotton having a tighter weave kept bug travel to a minimum, thus being a favourite of the upper classes, the rest of us itching to get filthy rich. The famous philosopher of his time, Carl Leibniz, finding himself at a wedding and being told he was supposed to give a gift to the bride, gave her valuable advice: “Now that you have a husband, don't stop bathing.” And we might well pass lightly over the bottoms of Dutch girls of early New York City, notorious for contextual reasons. Until recently mot people were filthy and stinking, even if they didn't really notice it among themselves. I do now, as do most of us today, notice stinky.

I could, because I'm a totally medium famous writer, interview some local politician and slyly humilate him on this page by portraying him trying to blow flourescent smoke up my arse, telling us how all his wondrous plans to transform the nation will soon come to pass if only he has more power. But instead I found a fellow who took in my laundry. I pass on the politician in favour of clean. That, dear reader, is cosmic progress. Long live that revolution.

3 comments:

truepeers said...

So I take it you would consider this a load of... hooey?

Good to see you writing again. What happened to sugar posts 1-3?

Man, isn't is supposed to be summer down there? What's life in July?

Dag said...

J. Greco is wonderful!

I have some terrible connection problems here, so much of my writing is committed to paper so far. I was so damned pleased with a hot shower and a couple of loads of laundry( still not back, though) that I jumped the gun by posting out of sequence. I have about a hundred pages to put up, being busy at this, and will try to do so when I get a solid connection. That might be soon as I have to leave the high Andes where it is the rainy season to go to Paraguay. I have my first headline written long ago, though it might now be inappropriate:

Livin' Latina NoKo.

Paraguay used to be a horrible place, though I expect to enjoy it today. Or next week. More to come for those who care to wade through all this.

Dag said...

The link I got first took me to something other than the post on cleanliness. I see now your point.

Regarding cleanliness, I have some serious trouble dismissing post Imperial European habits in favour of pre-history.

The first known sewerage system was created in India some many thousands of years ago, and there are the famous baths of the Romans, not to mention the Japanese. But my focus in on my own kind, i.e. Europeans, and those recent enough to resonate with my understanding of humanness.

Having written that, I can relate very nicely to modern Bolivians and Peruenos, but I am having a very difficult time dealing with the "hostel culture" European kids I meet today. Modernity is not just living today in the West, it is an understanding of life that has to do much with integral family, work, and the 19th century grasp of what we call progress, of making life better for others by making a living for ourselves. And more, of course. Being clean is part of that, I think, in that it is an expression of doing good for oneself and thereby for others. But that for another time.