Good morning. I hate to tell you this. I am a narcissist: I think there always has to be – me. I am looking for a cure. If you can suggest one, I’m open to everything non-narcotical. What I could try, metaphorically, is taking a sharp cutter and hollow out the eyes of the soft-skinned shiny fish called my language, the word “I” and become a blind fish but a nice fish. Alas, that won’t work of course. Excerpt from the lamentations of a narcissist.
Twenty-two hour bus-ride to Santa Cruz on endless dirtroads with big holes. Passport control tree times in small aduana-huts. Many soldiers on the Bolivian side, doing nothing but waiting there in their uniforms holding their rifles and laughing about the tourists that passed. I felt for them and touched my temple. One soldier imitated my gesture absent-mindedly and by doing so, he conquered a place in my memory.
Santa Cruz. The town seems crowded as I walk out of the bus terminal. As always, people say it is dangerous to walk. I walked to center, nothing happened. Extreme cautiousness doesn’t make us more beautiful. Instead of the killers, rapers, rippers and Reapers, I encountered an Easter Procession. The streets of the center were full of people. A group of about twenty well-dressed men carried a man-sized Jesus figurine in a baroque cage on their shoulders, moving it slowly left and right to heavy brass rhythms. Walked with the procession. Had some icecream, found a cheap hostel called “Oriente”, took a shower and walked around some more. I saw the Cathedral at the central plaza. A calm atmosphere. Then a wifi café, they have them even here. A waiter shew interest when I told him I’m a writer, and showed me his website.
This is the day I also lose one of my lucky necklaces. It is the necklace with the small cupper figurine, called “small luck” that I had already lost twice during the ten years of its stay around my neck. This time I think it has decided to leave me permanently. I think it is somewhere in Asuncion, or happy around the neck of someone who found it. At least we parted without an argument. To be honest, I have another necklace, called “big luck” and that one has to do all the work from now on. Big luck has an amazing story that I am not going to tell you right now. If I keep alluding to that story, my readers will get
Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales is in Hunger strike as I write this. He wants to force the parlament to pass a law that will allow him to be eligible in the upcoming elections – elections he is very likely to win.