“The belief that he [Gustave Flaubert] had been ‘transplanted by the winds’ … was to find repeated and more reasoned expression in his maturity. On his return from Egypt, Flaubert attempted to explain his theory of national identity ... to Luis Colet [his mistress at the time]:
‘As to the idea of a native country, that is to say a certain bit of ground traced out on a map and separated from other bits by a red or blue line: no. For me, my native country is the country I love, meaning the one that makes me dream, that makes me feel well. I am as much Chinese as I am French, and I cannot rejoice about our victories over the Arabs because I am saddened by their defeats. I love those harsh, enduring, hardy people, the last of the primitives, who at midday lie down in the shade under the bellies of their camels and, while smoking their chibouks, poke fun at our good civilization, which quivers with rage over it … I’m no more modern than ancient, no more French than Chinese, and the idea of a native country—that is to say, the imperative to live on one bit of ground marked red or blue on the map and to hate the other bits in green or black—has always seemed to me narrow-minded, blinkered and profoundly stupid.’
We are all of us, without ever having any say in the matter, scattered at birth by the wind onto various countries, but like Flaubert, we are in adulthood granted the freedom imaginatively to re-create our identity in line with our true allegiances.”
-Excerpt from The Art of Travel, by Alain de Boton
“Home is where I wanna be—but I guess I’m already there.”
-David Byrne
A mi querida Perú,
I awoke this morning with a heavy heart, and, upon examining my sentiments, found that I have finally accepted the fact that our two-year courtship is rapidly coming to a close, for reasons neither you nor I can control.
Yet I feel compelled to assure you that your varied charms (your scents, your voluptuous curves, your flavors!) will all remain imprinted upon my soul as long as I walk this earth.
I love you, as Pablo Neruda once wrote, “Without knowing why nor how—because I know no other way”: though you say I will forget you, you cannot fathom how profoundly your rhymes and rhythms have affected the deepest parts of me—you have struck a chord in my essence.
I love your hot, arid, wind-swept North, where great electric-green expanses of rice crops pop in relief against the sun-baked tans and muted browns of an October afternoon. Where the mighty, swelling depths of the Pacific can be heard, day and night, pounding the shores, its briny presence like the breath in my chest—on days when I stop to consider it, the very constancy of its rhythm provides a calm to even my most tumultuous inner storms.
I love the towering heights of your cordillera, where hulking stone reaches for the heavens, crowned by cloud and snow, with icy, azure lakes and verdant pastures hidden among its folds, all set amidst a holy silence the likes of which I have found nowhere else on this great blue globe.
I love your cloud forests, where scores of ancient ruins lie hidden beneath lush vegetation on the magnificent slopes and valleys surrounding Chachapoyas. The imposing grandeur of Kuelap. The eerie, otherworldly quality of the tombs high on the cliffs at Karajia, their faces forever gazing eastward toward the rising sun.
I love your cities, in all their disparity, as much for their general lack of artifice as for the poetry hidden beneath the ordinary: there is a certain special attraction to the stink and heat, bustle and bulla of a crowded market in Piura—a powerful allure to the cries of vendors, the piles of exotic fruits arrayed in multihued splendor, the engine smoke, the disparate galleries of so many lined, sun-weathered faces.
But above all of these things, I love the people of my pueblo—mi hogar—a tranquil place, a campo place, whose citizens took me in, a foreigner, and allowed me to be a part of the workings of the community for a time. I left a wonderful family and incredible friendships behind to come courting you, Perú, and you showed me that the terms “family” and “friendship” can encompass and embrace much more than I’d thought possible: you have given me a family here, and it aches to be leaving them.
Perú, I love all of these things about you, as well as all the charged, come-hither mystery present in the parts of you I have not yet seen: The shrouded depths of the jungle! Arequipa! Puno! Apurimac! Huancavelica! Cajamarca!
So while I bid you a fond farewell for now, it is, to be sure, an hasta lluego, an hasta pronto, but not a goodbye. No, mi Perú, goodbyes are for lovers with less in common and less water under the bridge—goodbyes do not apply here.
I will be back, God willing, to dance away the hours of the early morning once more amidst the thumping bass and brassy trumpets of your best orchestras. Play on Caribe. Play on Harmonia. Viva la cumbia. I will be back, God willing, to sit on a porch one black night far from now during one of your all-night rain storms, the deluge soaking the earth and pounding with all its might on the calamina above my head. I will be back, God willing, to lie on your beaches, to hike your slopes, to shovel in as much ceviche as I can get my hands on, to join the drinking circle once more.
Perú , though I leave you today, you will be in my thoughts tomorrow and in all my tomorrows until I see you again. You, Perú, help me to dream. You, Perú, have stretched me beyond what I once was. You make me feel well.
Encantado,
Greg
