By jade on Monday, September 15, 2008

Poodling down the amazon in your little canoe, the outboard whirring like an egg beater and the jungle looking like green wool, all knotted up with sticks and tree stumps, it{s easy to think you have arrived in the {real wilderness{. You think that as you drape your fingers in the muddy water - Amazon mud - Amazon water, and as you watch big chest-beating clouds gather ahead for a yodelling session of Pantheon proportions, as you dodge the plate-sized butterflies and the fork-equipped bugs. You think that until somebody cuts the engine.

Then! Then you realise that you are not in the wilderness until you are in its silence. Being freed of the engine fast-tracks you out of what you thought was {peace{ into what IS peace. And the biggest surprise of it, the thing that{s a little sad about it, is that it{s the sort of peace we have forgotten to remember. Silence without the buzz. Without the engines of thought, tv, worries, schemes, doubts and all... a silence so delicate as to be lost eclipsed entirely by an errant idea, but so gargantuan and everlasting that it stretches toward infinity in all directions, the home base of everything that was ever born, in flesh, in wood, in water or wonder on this planet and all the others.

...

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By jade on Monday, September 08, 2008

Watching the girls set off for home with their woven baskets, beaded necklaces, sandals, hammocks, urns, plates, pyjama pants and allergic reactions as a tropical storm spilt over the edges of a Simpsons cloudscape last night brought tears to my eyes... and it wasn´t because they looked so..... different to when I first met them. 

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By jade on Monday, September 08, 2008

A farewell sonnet for Natalie, Renee and Chloe... read this poem the wy I am, with a massive purple sky hanging down over El Cyber Cafe, thunder booming in across the Amazon, and a quiet place inside which understands the words as the password to another world.  with love, Jade xxx

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By jade on Monday, September 01, 2008

Life is full of strange coincidences and spooky timing, is it not¿

Miss Jen Duffy, you are the Madonna of the meaningful synaptic bleep, and it is a true delifght and a wonder to see traces of your good self here on my blog. Huaraz is not the same without you. Mind you, all of South America is not realy the same without you ... haven´t seen a Smurf (for one thing), nor any sign of green vomit or Kermit and the devil. That could all change soon though, because - just for one more time - I´m back to Vilcabamba - just can´t get enough of that cocktail with the cactus and the chuppa chupps in it! 

What news oh acrobat of the waterfall¿  Still Asia-side¿ No plans to swing by this neck of the enchanted forest? It´s almost been too long...

Jade xxx

By jade on Monday, September 01, 2008

If you want an unpredictable, streamy, dreamy ride through the smoke and mirrors corridors of the universe, then hitch a ride from the Andes to the Amazon, it´s the Bermuda Triangle of Chaos ... where strange things disappear and even stranger things are simply just true.

I was reminded of Alices´adventures in Wonderland by William on the plane (thank you William, this was just one illumination you gave me and I hope we get to meet again so there may be more) ... for reasons involving tea parties and madness ... and today I feel like I have slipped another notch down my own rabbit hole to find yet another eccentric dimension of reality - one that had been missing for a long time back in the more solid reality of Sydney. For one thing, I won an egg and spoon race, with a small child attached to me, and for another, I won a dance competition with a 7-year-old at a slum town festival, and based all of my technique on a tango class I once had beside a rockpool in the deep Aussie bush, and an old Gidget film. ...

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By jade on Saturday, August 30, 2008

My green slime and I havejust watched the Andes slip away under the wing of a tiny plane on our way our of Huaraz and onto the Amazon.

: (

Not sure how the team feels about it, but I was sad not to have more time in the mountains, and another chance to trek... even though the Huayhuash has left me with a blistered eyeball, burnt lips and a deeply imbedded green slime situation which has given me unusual expertise on the quality of Peruvian tissues (mostly only good for one blow, no sneezing, and a touch rough on the skin which is why I have lost about half a pint of blood since coming off the hills). Not that I´m complaining. I love those mountains, and that crazy rubble-strewn town with it´s chickens in all states of life and death, and it´s flowers so incredible they look fake. Could eat the avocadoes and the potato chips as long as the elastic in my pants holds out.. and wouldn´t mind givng it all away to live Peruvian, if only it was with the blue skies and the sweet ocean of home. The mountain...

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By jade on Thursday, August 28, 2008

It´s about five hours since our team of sweaty, greasy, sun-struck and wonder-lusted Girls on Top made it back to the beeping, bleating, tooting, spitting town of Huaraz with its miracles including laundromats, taps, pillows, coffee and vegetables. The shock of ´reality´ has jolted me, as it always does, into a sort of sleepy overwhelm and shopping madness... the man-made world seems so insane after the infinite silence of the hills where everything necessary is so much quieter, and subtler, and gentler. In a mad scramble to make it all make sense the best thing to do seems to be to spend money - or walk fast -or look at magazines - it´s simply just Too Much to stay moving at mountain pace and watch the helter skelter of the built world in all its chokey, smokey, sexy, sad'eyed panic.

Avalanches are quieter than traffic.

Sheep love each other.

The girls are in their own little frenzies of adjustment, shaping mountains out of washing, fleece and separating out from the merino and feathers clothes...

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By jade on Friday, August 15, 2008

There are hamsters on the menu.The question marks are upside down ¿People are herding sheep up the main drag.Your room looks like a military line-up of empty 2 litre water bottles and you´´re still thirsty.There are condor on the clouds. And vultures on the roadside.You buy your $5 watch and feel proud and out-doorsy.Your socks are not to be left in the open air.The girl who sells you a soccer ball is wearing a large green iguana.Ladies in bowler hats and wide, woolly skirts are selling you the world´s best avocados for 30cents each ... and a bunch of roses is $1.The 'supermarket' is all outdoors, undercover of cheap plastic sheets that crack and whip in the mountain winds like limp sails on a harbour of spectacular horrors. The Veggie section is radiant with the gloaming of real fruit ... fruit that glows with the true colours of tomato, of strawberry, of apple ... colours we have forgotten back home. The carrots, potatoes, corn and grains come in more varieties than even I have metaphors for, and look like they...

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By jade on Tuesday, July 15, 2008

By far the most common thing that people say when I meet them at high School reunions, parties or wherever ... and the conversation swings to Girls on Top is something like; "Wow! Pick Me!! I would Loooovveee to come... Wonderful! Fantastic! If only!! And then there is a dialogue which usually opens up that great perplexing question of What We would Do in Life - If Only! Most often men, women and children all say that they admire our work, and all the girls, and that surely this journey is one that we all dream of, and that would be so life-changing and inspiring...

When I speak with our brave and wonderful girls through their journeys of fundraising and preparation - of Getting Real about the fact that they have signed up for this very same Wonderful Adventure .. the most common thing they say along the way is.... "Ouch! It sure does take a lot of guts to do this." And you know what - the things our team learn and share a little on the blog about what it really tak

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By jade on Monday, July 14, 2008

By far the most common thing that people say when I meet them at high School reunions, parties or wherever ... and the conversation swings to Girls on Top is something like; "Wow! Pick Me!! I would Loooovveee to come... Wonderful! Fantastic! If only!! And then we explore that great perplexing question of What We would Do in Life - If Only! Most often men, women and children admire our work, and all the girls, and that surely this journey is one that we all dream of, and that would be so life-changing and inspiring...  When I speak with our brave and wonderful girls through their journeys of fundraising and preparation - of Getting Real about the fact that they have signed up for this very same Wonderful Adventure .. the most common thing they say is....

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