When I get to the airport to fly back to the U.S., my plane home has already taken off without me.
The change of my flight times was buried and unread in an e mail from the airline so I am left grounded and have to purchase another ticket home. The airline assigns the blame on me and I’m not getting any sympathy.
I get online, book another flight to get home, sit around the Cuenca airport for half a day before boarding my new flight, left to try and get a refund through their Customer Service department.
In the sky, miles are chewed up quickly. This new plane flies at 35,000 feet and over six hundred miles per hour, standard for commercial flights but nothing near the speed of a fighter jet. It is dolled up on the inside like a modest economy car and is full of passengers who will make connections to reach multiple destinations.
Above the clouds, life is peaceful. The clouds have multiple designs and swirls, loop de loops and pilings on. Occasionally there are glimpses of terra firma, often vast reaches of brown or green broken by freeways, lakes, rivers, or mountain ranges.
When my third plane of this return trip reaches Albuquerque,home shakes my hand and asks , ” What took you so long to get back? ”
My ultimate satisfaction will be not using Travelocity or American Airlines on future trips.
I’m not going to blame myself for my screw up.
Finding everyone else accountable and responsible for making your life perfect is the new American way.
There are dining opportunities available this morning.
This girl is carrying, on her head, confections to sell in front of the New Cathedral to afternoon crowds the day after New Year.
The mounds of whipped cream with ice cream cones stuck in the top, look like curlers and wiggle as she walks.
This treat doesn’t melt, tastes good hours after it is made, and doesn’t cost much for consumers- little kids and old timers.
By the end of afternoon the mounds of treats will be more than half gone.
It will be as if a giant reaches down, with his right forefinger, and scoops up a sample, gives an appreciative nod, and rumbles off towards the mountains for an afternoon nap.
Walking in the Cuenca Historical District wears your standards down.
This is an old part of Cuenca and you gradually become accustomed to deteriorated appearances.
After a few weeks you don’t notice worn doorknobs, peeling paint, plaster coming off walls, windows with no curtains, roll down steel security doors with graffiti. You look instead at flower pots on balconies, colorful flags flying from hotel entries, mannikins in doorways wearing hip fashions.
You accept old and un-maintained as old and charming.
On a turn through town,sidewalk chalk paintings are beautiful in their delicacy, their colors almost camouflaging them against the brick sidewalks.
” Support art and culture, ” the words say.
The chalk is going to vanish in a matter of days, walked on, washed down and swept away by women cleaning sidewalks in front of their shops. The drawings are light and little can withstand the sledgehammer of a modern city on the move.
I am careful not to walk on the faces. They are cheerful, hopeful, and fresh.
Supporting art and culture are good goals, anywhere in the world, any time.
The 31st of December begins quietly.
As the day moves forwards it changes like your favorite radio station whose volume keeps increasing as the variety and quality of the songs gets better and talk gets more inflammatory.
As night falls there are effigies being burned, in front of a hotel, by the flower market, on your corner. There are satires performed, bands play, and revelers dance in the street. As dark comes, city folk in masks and costumes parade the streets in gangs looking like escapees from a Michael Jackson Thriller video.
New Year crawls in and the Old Year creeps out.
This year has not been bad so I don’t have joy in seeing it burned up.
The old year goes with a whimper and the New Year lies before us like a baby in a manger.
This affair starts early.
Usually, people wait till dark to do their exorcisms, but this bunch has already laid their body in the street in front of a business and are stuffing papers down its pants.
In a world of camera phones, nothing goes un-noticed and un-reported. These participants don’t care if people are watching. It is probable this is a replica of their boss and they are, as a group, telling him what they think of him. It takes a few matches before smoke comes with fire close behind.
There is something eerie about seeing a body set on fire, even if It is a make believe body.It calls up images from the Mid East where real people are set on fire, heads cut off, and people blow each other up with explosives..
This bloodletting will be over tonight and tomorrow shops will close, streets and sidewalks will be hosed down, and people will spend time with family.
Exorcisms are best finished quickly, and remembered for a long long time.
Ecuador doesn’t celebrate Halloween but they have New Year’s Eve to take Halloween’s place.
Today there are bad spirits about.
They are atop cars, seated in chairs in retail stores, looking down from balconies, slumped on curbs and grouped near churches. Some are fully dressed and have ears and noses and eyes and mouths. Others are misformed aberrations that somehow have survived termination. The tradition is to stuff them with messages, good and bad, light them on fire in the street, then jump over them to make your wishes come true.
The effigies have been appearing early. In a spirit place like Cuenca, with churches and crosses in every part of town, one has to accept that there are Demons as well as Angels.
Getting rid of bad has good consequences.
In a place where there were only five murders last year, there is still a reservoir of pent up anger that has to be released.
We need our rituals and traditions.
Certain things in our certain world are unpleasantly uncertain.
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