Getting in Touch With ... Shite

LOCATION: La Paz, Bolivia
DATE: 18/2/5
PARENTAL GUIDANCE: Longish with long words. Occasional use of "shite" and "poo".

If i were 5 again, i would have tugged at my mum's skirt & asked, loudly, "why do those people smell like poo?"

Mum would have shepherded me away, embarassed, blushing, apologising & telling me off for being rude.

Whether i was rude or not, the fact would still remain that the people smelled like poo.

....

My father is a doctor, & in my childhood i'd been exposed to many unusual things. I've seen (in detail) operations such as wart removals, or men being "sterilised". I also joined my dad on numerous trips to visit a dying patient, shrivelled, shrunken weird smelling, with cancer eating away part of their jaw. I used to sit & talk. Dad said it made them happier.

Yet even now, at 26yrs of age and after all that experience, I find the smell of poo (or shite, as i'll call it from now on) unbearable.

.....

I boarded the bus at the station in La Paz, excited that i'd been 2hours in the station with nothing yet stolen.

I had paid us$7 for a 7hour trip to the small mining town of Potosi. It was only us$3 more for the luxury line, but i am a cheap backpacker. The cheaper ticket also came with a mystery prize - humanity.

As i wandered up the aisle to my seat, there were families laden with gifts on their way to visit relatives, sisters with blankets across their knees, sharing a headphone each from their discman - lip-synching blissfully, little old ladies with all their goods wrapped in the multicolored blankets typical of this region, hoisted high up on their backs - the loose ends clung tightly underneath their chin.

One in particular, looked about 80 but was probably only 55 (women here seem to age really quickly) was fussing her two poorly dressed & snot-nosed young boys into the two seats opposite mine.

With unusual care, She untied her blanket-bundle & let it down on the seat next to the boys. It gurgled - yet another child. She then set about making herself comfortable in the middle of the aisle, as she had only enough money for two seats.

It was around this time that i began to smell shite. I checked the soles of both shoes, mentally noted that i'd had a shower that morning, then began looking elsewhere.

The little old lady in the aisle stood up to check something then sat down again, ...releasing a cloud of unmistakable shite-dust in my direction.

I gagged, not knowing what to do. I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed. But no, the sisters were still singing and the family in front was still trying, unsuccessfully to put their bags in the overhead compartment

The bus hadn't yet left the station. I still had 10 hours of travelling ahead. I felt like screaming.

I took off my beanie and stuffed it over my nose. I even managed to swap to the window seat, enduring the near-freezing temperatures in a desperate struggle for fresh air. I looked out the window into the night, trying to think of something else.

......

The reason I had left Australia was that i was looking for experience; something raw, grounded in reality, a wake-up call.

And possibly at that moment, the man upstairs was trying to tell me that part of my experience was that i had to get in touch...with shite.

The shite of unusual situations, of unusual places. The shite of the lives of people who are immeasurably poorer than me, have no opportunities, and may even smell like shite, but who are still people.

.........

I'd like to close - in typical high school style - with an extraordinarily long quote that both increases my wordcount and has lots of long words that make me feel really important.

But bear with me. Im quoting it cos it actually is important, and i couldnt possibly say it better myself. (from one of my favourite books from one of my favourite authors)

"The objection to shit is a metaphysical [ooooh] one. The daily defecation session is daily proof of the unacceptability of creation."

"Either/Or: either shit is acceptable (in which case you dont lock yourself in the bathroom!) or we are created in an unacceptable manner."

"It follows, then, that [there exists an] aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being in a world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist"

"This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch....."

breathe

"Repeated use [of this word - kitsch], however, has obliterated its original metaphysical meaning meaning"

"Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both literal and figurative senses of the word;

"Kitsch excludes everything from its (pur)view which is essentially unacceptable in human existence"

....

The fundamental reason why im now travelling is that kitsch is exactly what im trying to avoid.

Amen

ps. promise, back to the fun stuff soon!