beauty

As I uploaded pictures of Bolivia I was text-chatting with Ian on Skype. He told me about the theme of his upcoming Philosophy Collegium in Italy, which will deal with art and truth. Here are his words, explaining Kant to me, along with some photographs.

well, when i judge something beautiful
i do not actually say anything about the object whatsoever
but only that my encounter with the object
has presented to my faculty of understanding a sensuous manifold
that cannot be adequately subsumed under a concept
i keep trying to form a concept of the object
and keep failing

la paz

I am leaving La Paz for want of peace.

As I approach Isla del Sol,

he throws at me coins of light

 and I know that I am searching for something else.

Or rather that something is searching for me -

Something that will mellow my inquietude

And fill me with a glowing red love.

Something that will allow me to live from the heart

And heal wounds and souls.

The sun god cried when the pumas ate the people

but he knew that injustice had always existed.

A happy child without a future is still a happy child.

A hungry child is not just a hungry child.

Balance these two things.

You cannot.

So I drift on towards the island,

The sun god warming my core and burning my face.

Maybe that something will find me.

But I suspect the answer to all life's great questions is love.

The rest is just extrapolation and uncertainty.

arte en las calles

I now find myself lightly drifting between English and Spanish after making it through my first few weeks abroad.  I have also transitioned from language school and the luxury of living with a host family, who washed and ironed my laundry and fed me fresh fruit every morning, to working and living in a house with 15 other medical students, doctors and other personnel. In order to mark this transition my traveling partners and I all decided to spend the weekend in La Paz.

Bolivia continues to fascinate me with its diverse climates, division between peoples and distinctly cultural cities. I'm still tossing it around in my head and trying to decide how to process everything. How much should I share here? In what way - a narrative? an essay? something more artistic?

There are at least 99 ways that La Paz strikes me as being completely different from Cochabamba. One of them is the amount of art work in the streets.

Cochabamba

La Paz - this little guy popped up all over the place

Copacabana

La Paz

La Paz

La Paz

La Paz

La Paz

La Paz

parejas

 

naturaleza en la ciudad

 

palabras

A friend of mine is on a similar trip right now, practicing Spanish and volunteering at a clinic, and her blog is a beautiful account of her experience in the Dominican Republic. I had imagined writing in a similar manner, but right now I'm constantly struggling with words. Immersed in Spanish, I am constantly trying to force words into submission, pressing verbs into the past tense, twisting adjectives between masculine and feminine and stretching adjectives into adverbs.

I also find myself questioning the meaning of a lot of words. Words like mujer, rico, blanco, colonización and estadounidense. So I'm going to leave my words in my journal and in my homework assignments and floating through the air. Here are a few photos of the city. They are not very personal ones,  but I think it's a good base and will definitely be building upon them.