Hackin’ Darts & Breakin’ Hearts

Written by Uphoria Blackham, 2016 Peru: Amazon Adventure

It was a helluva time bidding farewell to my home and family in Peru. As goodbyes began, so did my process of learning to reconcile life in Peru with life in the States.

I bedded Panama City, Las Vegas, and Phoenix before ending my journey in New Mexico. During this last leg, I strained to reflect and to desperately cling to the memories created by our OG fam with the friends we’d made throughout the country.

Amidst the tears came consolation. The following snippets I had written for myself in order to better remember, and to better reconcile, our time spent hackin’ darts and breakin’ hearts across Peru.

August 19, 2016 – Panama City, Panama

Memories have begun to fade, yet as an Argentinian told me, you can’t live if you remember everything. I long to hold on…

To falling in love with all twelve of those beautiful bastards while we explored Lima,

To helping hands during our jungle trek near San Roque de Cumbaza,

To lazy hammock days up the rivers on la lancha,

To our family meals in Puerto Miguel,

To “Una Cerveza” blasting through our nights and days in San Antonio del Estrecho,

To running off with our shaman’s daughter to drink cervezas in Tamshiyacu,

To the even lazier beach days in Paracas,

To the birthdays on the beach,

To the impromptu Spanish lessons, to the people who befriended me, to the endearing pieces of the world sewn together by the travellers who want to see it all.

All we ever had are memories, and even then, memories fade. To reconcile the sadness is to allow the lessons we learned into life. We’ll always have Peru.

But where will they all be to remind me of these lessons – my friends, my family? Living their lives, as I will mine. To dwell on the past halts the development of the future. All we will ever have are the memories of life and love to take into the world.

Here’s lookin’ at you, kids,

Uphoria

That evening – Somewhere over the Caribbean Sea

Watching lightning from above the clouds grants the world a magical sense of beauty. The glistening moon, nearly full, is enough to remind one that the one life doesn’t have to be so bad. Though now you frantically write to capture your feelings in order to make up for your lack of journaling, you will find a way to take the lessons of Peru into the night.

Buen viaje

August 20, 2016 – Las Vegas, Nevada

“Imagine making love under the shining moon.” -The Pinchers

To explain the life I lived for 40 days seems impossibly daunting. The life itself, the lessons learned, the values held, the feelings felt, the people, the places. The people and the places seem far more difficult to characterize. Indeed, the people and the places prompted everything else. To them I gave pieces of myself; from them I took a myriad of things. Our conversations, our laughs, our jokes. No matter my explanations, no one will get it.

That evening – Phoenix, Arizona

“It’s all perspective.” -An Argentinian

August 21, 2016 – Albuquerque, New Mexico

My senses yearn for that jungle stank. ¿La selva, dónde estás? Te extraño.

Present – Albuquerque, New Mexico

It is now September, and I am fine, and looking at what I wrote, I am a bit embarrassed by its melodramatic tones. Peru and the people were just so damn hard to leave because every single person I met – be they Peruvian, Canadian, Argentinian, Israeli, Irish, even from the U.S. – made the world more accessible than it had ever been and made life so much more satisfying.

Meals tasted better and sleep came easier from long days of work and adventuring. The work was incredibly gratifying, not only because we created with our hands, but because we poured ourselves into it.

Yet I am compelled to reiterate the influence of the people. People are people wherever you go. They laugh. They play. They sing. They cry. They dance. Through our social relationships we construct our physical realities. It is because of this that we have arias and punk; b-boying and ballet; films and feasts; art, music, love, and laughter.

Being human seems an obvious concept. There is, however, no conceivable convention of truly understanding until one sees a foreign land. There are a literal seven billion ways of living on this planet, each of which has their own validities, all of which bear the same underlying themes and structures.

Through this program, I have become a veritable cliché of the highest standards: eyes opened, bridges built, horizons broadened. I’d never left home before, not really, and when I first got to the airport, I cried, I was so scared of being a continent away from friends and family. But here we are! A world away from where I began in every metaphysical notion.

Peru was fuckin’ dope. 10/10, would do again.