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The days went on. Subtle wake up calls from carpenter birds on a dry tree. Early morning love and sweat. Natural breakfast from the soil. Heat and heat again under the rain. Pendulums of embraced bodies, hammocks, lingering, and juices of new fruits. Long walks penetrating deep into the humid welcoming forest. Traces of animals avoiding humans for a reason. Birds singing to each other about the strange travellers and flying over our heads. An eagle hunting in circles. The “ghost tiger” lake and its stolen virgins shinning under a perpendicular sun. Sounds of steps on skeletons of gigantic fallen leaves. Marks of native pain on crying rubber trees. Salty eyes of water for the pleasure of hidden bears and jaguars. Heavy raindrops, shadowed jungle, fresh air. Fished purple diamond glittering piranhas hanging and released again. Mosquitoes but no people or cars or noise. The friendly erudite native guide and his beautiful dreamy wife. Small communities of men and women living in reality, with other simple lives, other worlds, other words, along an ancient river without the bad news of the west. A thousand year-old tree flowering green at the top of its giant trunk watching the equator every summer forever. Our rapt eyes, up there, against a mythical green ocean of trees and a hiding disc of gold saying goodbye from the horizon. The different sounds and creatures of the night, the hidden red eyes of small, playful caimans, a singing calmed Shaman, a sacred drink and spirals of dreams. Visions of unseen animals and lived memories, a cradle of ancient songs and mixed, caring words, innocent again for a second, hand on a woman’s hand. Lying back against the side of the peque*, the moving river touching our hair, we watched the stars and the moonset and the powerful silver belt of the Milky Way. That green ocean sunset and those lucid stars, with me until the day I die.
Carlos Peralta - July 2004 (from memories of October 2003).
* Peque: small boat used for short distances in the Amazon region.
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