Street view

Another government office to wait in, this one mercifully with air con. I've spent quite a time now getting my official entry processed. Now I wait in the customs for a stamp on a form so I can leave Aisling in the marina whilst I travel to Argentina for 2 weeks. I've got the girl with the switch on smile again, she seems to be taking a while. I find my thoughts ruminating about the absurdity of such burocracia and how fragmented we are as a species. How we make little effort to trust or collaborate or to develop our shared sameness, we are all human, yet we divide ourselves so deeply. We create nations and races and divisions like trees in the wood and fail to see the forest. Setting up our different camps of fragmentation. Walking through the old quarter, I feel like I should be getting something, but I am lacking. The wave of colourful merchandise and restaurants and ornate buildings breaks with a lack of enthusiasm on the shore of my expectation. Perhaps I have traipsed too many times the streets of cities worldwide, perhaps my once culturally starved desert has been satiated, perhaps I am, travel weary. On every city street there are some people who live between the worlds of affluence and scarcity, these young guys are sitting smoking crack, hanging around in doorways, their definition as people seems blurred, no more so than to themselves I am sure. They are random and bound over, occupying a never never world between bare existence and insanity. They are harmless with their sacks and blankets, skimpy vests showing brown skinny limbs and dark hair and unwashed faces. And then I find myself in a church where the trouble was taken to paint iconic masterpieces onto the ceiling, 30 metres above, the wooden boards now cracking apart as though the paint was applied to the side of a crate. Every corner of the building stuffed with gold and stucco, every surface adorned. To the rear of the church up high, the coving cracks and the paint peels where the water leaks in. The creation of a temple without, a poor replica of a real temple within. Voices on the street, whistles, a dog barking, a horn tooting, brakes squealing. The mid afternoon sun is brutal, it drove me into this place, for the price of a few pennies, I get to sit in quiet and solitude. I find churches the best refuge from the busy street, the irony always strikes me, this place of worship is guaranteed to host the least number of people. For that, throughout the world, I am grateful. My mind is distracted, something calls me, a mosquito drinking the blood from my ankle, I brush him off and wonder when the itchy pain will kick in.