Things from south of the South

I have been meaning to put pictures of these souvenirs on my blog for quite a while, but I never remem-
bered to take pictures of them when I was in the blogging mood. This morning I just finally decided to do it. I'm about a month overdue. Anyway, here are some things that I collected while I was in North Carolina. I came back with a lot more than just this, but these are the things I like most. Most of these items were gifts from people that I got to know pretty well. I will put them on in chronological order of when I got them.



The first two pictures are a little handmade clay doll from Ecuador, given to me by Nancy Guerra.


This is a pot holder, also handmade in Ecuador, also a gift from Nancy.




This is a knife with the Mexican flag on the handle and "Viva Mexico" on the blade. It's pretty sweet. I love Mexico so much. I want to go to Mexico City and Oaxaca and Guerrero and Michoacan, and Chiapas, and Monterrey, and Guadalajara and Guanajuato, and pretty much every other place in Mexico.



This is a wooden flute from Ecuador, I bought it from some of my friends who worked at Smiley's Flea Market in Fletcher, NC. They were real native Americans from Ecuador, and they spoke Spanish along with their native language. I talked to them often, as we went to the flea market almost every Saturday, and I was in the area almost eight months.


This is a replica of a very ancient and special artifact from Peru. It antedates the Inca civilization, but I don't remember anymore what the name of the civilization was. I will have to look that up. This was given to me by Raul Quino my last day in North Carolina. I love Peruvian people, they are so cool. I could live in Peru.

Well, that's all the souvenirs that I've taken pictures of for now. I'm rather fond of them.

Scary Dream

Last night, I dreamed that I was in a group searching for Glenn Gould and I dreamed that every step of this journey was a fight to survive. We had to cross mountains and fields and we walked probably thousands of miles, and the worst part was that the whole way there, the rocks would join together to form giants that would then attack us. In the fields of tall grass, the grass would wrap around our ankles and we had to constantly cut it off of ourselves or be dragged down and suffocated. Most of the time our feet weren't even on the ground, we were just standing on top of the grass, and every so often it would give way and we would drop below the surface. If we walked too close to a tree it would wrap its gnarled arms around our necks and feet. Everything that could possibly come alive and attack us and try to stop us did so. You don't know how terrible grass can be until something like this happens to make you appreciate the terror of the situation. I remember how desolately gray and brown the whole landscape was. When we reached the top of one mountain, we had to climb over jagged rocks to find that there was no way down the other side. We couldn't drink the water because it would change from blue to purple and things like neatly arranged leaves and twigs would appear on the surface, and several times they talked to us. We ended up finding Glenn Gould, and it turns out he was the one causing all of our discomfort along the way, with his mind, and he was actually going with us the whole way and we didn't recognize him. The whole thing was like a mix between Lord of the Rings, an Andy Goldsworthy exhibit, and death. Don't get me wrong, I still like Glenn Gould, and I still like Andy Goldsworthy, but they definitely should not be allowed in the same dream together. My subconscious almost died last night, then where would I be?