Open Letter To Snorers: Please Don’t Stay In Hostel Dormatories
July 15, 2009 by rtwsenior · Leave a Comment
Three months ago, I was staying at the Freestyle Hostel in Ushuaia, Argentina, down there at the End of The World…Tierra del Fuego…Patagonia. All that fresh air and gorgeous mountain view was very memorable and I wrote about it in my journal. But, not so lyrical was my last night there when a snoring woman became my roommate. That memory returned in all its horror today when I came across the following account in the journal I’m typing up for my next book.
Please Travelers, if the shoe fits, at least pay a little more for a private room. Walls may only serve to muffle your sound, but at least, the rest of us won’t know who to blame in the morning and we might, possibly, get a little sleep, to boot.
“What a long and hard night it was…with a snorer in the room! Some time after dark, while I was in the shower, a new roommate checked in. I had shared the dorm room with only one person the night before - a nice guy from Washington State and Hawaii. He was a very good roommate and a silent sleeper, as all but one of my previous roommates have been. Just one, on my first night in Bogota, was a snorer, and he had some plug-in, oxygen device that fitted over his mouth and nose when he slept, which actually worked very well. He was a young guy who knew he had a problem, but wanted to live the backpacking hostel life, so he invested in this machine and dealt with its bulk, out of consideration to us….and who knows, maybe not wanting to die of sleep apnea, as well.
My new roommate, from France, did not. She’s an older woman; a bit heavy, with a steel-grey, pageboy hairdo. She speaks English and we conversed pleasantly while getting ready for bed. In fact, she was complaining about the noise in the hostel which was running very high. The young man at the front desk had the stereo on full blast and everyone sitting around the tables had to shout above it. Doors were slamming; footsteps were pounding; pool balls were clacking. There was more nervous energy in the air than I had noticed before.
So, Dominique says that she’s paid up for two nights. “If it’s too noisy, I’ll just go somewhere else tomorrow!” and she made the defiant gesture of smacking her right hand into the crook of her left elbow, raising that lower part of her arm. It must be a French or European signal that probably means, “Up Yours!” But, I did approve of the fact that she obviously valued peace and quiet. However, she wound up creating more disturbance than the revelers in the lounge, who finally went to bed at midnight. Dominique sawed away, all night long, and I could tell that my fellow-sufferer roommate couldn’t sleep either, by his restless stirring. I’ll be up most of tonight, flying to Buenos Aires, and it would have been so nice to get some rest last night.
Instead, I lay there for hours, analyzing things about snorers. How utterly wretched it would be to marry someone, after having carefully observed the moralities and proprieties and “saved yourself” for your wedding night, and then learned what you had gotten yourself into. How many women (or men) have passed the nights of their lives in lonely desperation, with nowhere at all to escape to? Many don’t have the luxury of spare bedrooms, or unused recreation vehicles stored in their backyard, a solution a friend of mine was once driven to. That’s a desperate measure and not always comfortable, either.
I thought of my dark, silent bedroom at home, which I will again occupy a week from tonight. What a true luxury that is, without even anybody, ever, sawing logs inside my really quiet house. But what about people sleeping near a snorer in an adjoining apartment or hotel room, or a house built close next door. What do you do then? Snoring is noise pollution but you can’t call the cops to complain about it. And, the perpetrator isn’t doing this on purpose and can’t fathom why you are so resentful and unfriendly in the morning.
What they are guilty of, however, is “Domination.” They dominate every second, and every square inch of that darkened room, or sometimes, every square inch of a whole house, with their SOUND EFFECTS. “Whoownk! Whooosh! The poor victim’s attention and focus gets stuck squarely upon that sleeping tyrannical individual who has stolen their sleep so completely, and who simply won‘t/can‘t give it back.
I have been sleeping in hostel dorms with silent strangers for four months now, so I’m an expert on the differences between silent sleepers and “Those Others.” When someone is quietly sleeping, you pay no attention to them, other than to try to be considerate not to make noise yourself: like not rattling a plastic bag when you dig out your toothbrush; or not bumping into something on the way to the bathroom. Those quiet roommates are, essentially, only sleeping lumps in a bunk bed, like you plan soon to be. They don’t impinge, one way or the other, upon your consciousness.
But, a snorer! They take a center stage position and carry on a performance all the night long. Once in awhile, they tease you with a blessed silence and you start to drift off into grateful sleep. Then, they pull that motorboat cord and roar back into another dreadful animal imitation of a bear, a wolf, or a very big dog. Your mind plays with that for awhile, and then returns to performing psychic operations on the offender’s head. A pillow pushed down? Nope! I’ll try that on myself. Doesn’t work! Neither do earplugs.
The imagined measures grow more desperate; the dreamed up inventions for a cure, more complex…until finally, you realize with a start that she is silent. Oh Joy! Forget it. Now, it’s morning and she is simply awake….and snagging the bathroom first, after having had herself a long and sound night’s sleep.
Later that morning, I talked to my poor, dragged-out roommate. His sentiments matched mine, exactly. We both check out today, but he agreed that he would change rooms if he had to stay there another night. That was BAAAAAD! I asked him, cautiously, if I snore, since we had already weathered three nights together before the Log-Sawer checked in. “No, you do not!” he said. I commented that this is the very best argument for sleeping with somebody before you marry them, that I had ever heard.
Since he’s still single, he heartily agreed.
Just before I left for the airport, I saw the baggage of several strangers on the bunks around Miss Chainsaw’s bed. I tried so hard to find out who those unsuspecting roommates were, so that I could whisper a warning and allow them to request another room - far away. But, my good deed went nowhere because I never identified those who were innocently heading straight for sleeper’s hell.”
I Took Part In An Ancient Andean Despacho Ceremony
June 26, 2009 by rtwsenior · Leave a Comment
I had company last week and haven’t blogged for awhile. Now, I’m back to typing up my travel journals covering my four month backpacking/hosteling journey down the Andean Cordillera, the spine of South America…nay, the spine of the whole planet….and just now, I’m working on my notes for Peru, written last March, 2009. I spent a week in Pisac, Peru, in the Sacred Valley, just an hour north of Cusco, as a guest at Paz y Luz Healing Center where I took part in several wonderful ancient shamanic ceremonies. This entry describes a Despacho Blessing Ceremony:
“About a dozen of us gathered in the circular glass house often used for meals at Paz y Luz, but designed also for classes and ceremonies. We sat on blankets on the floor and from within our glass house we could see the low afternoon sun, golden on the green encircling Andes heights. This was a special time of the year because recent rains had given a lush green covering to otherwise brown mountains and fields.
The Despacho is a ceremony in which wishes and intentions of everyone present are placed artistically into a bundle and burned so that the smoke carries our prayers up to Heaven. I understand that the bundle is sometimes buried as an offering to Pachymama or Mother Earth, but a large fire was being built to receive our offerings this day. The shaman and his wife came down from their village very, very high in the Andes to perform this ceremony. Their tribe still speaks an old version of the Quechua language and customs have not changed for many centuries, as their people had taken refuge on the heights when the Spanish Conquistadors ravaged the Incan civilization in the sixteenth century.
This couple was colorfully dressed in jackets and hats of lime green, pinks, reds, and yellows, over black felt knee-length pants for him and a black full skirt for her. They were short of stature, with strong sturdy bare legs and feet, well-muscled from climbing these mountain heights. What sort of shoes must they wear to do that, I wondered? Surely not barefoot, as they were now. They appeared to be naturally joyful and perfectly tuned to each other as she assisted him throughout the hour-long ceremony. It was a quiet, worshipful tribute to the Earth and all of her gifts, offering thanksgiving for prayers not yet answered. I was thinking to myself that there was no way to do justice to this event in words. “Indescribable” was all that I could think of when faced with the question of how I could capture this in a blog.
Each of us were given a small pile of fresh coca leaves and were told to select fifteen and then place them in sets of three. Each set was to represent our prayers and wishes for a certain outcome. I made sets for my family members’ health and happiness and then some for the success of my current plan: the healing of this planet using the spinal column analogy comparing the backbone of the human body to the Andean mountain cordillera throughout South America. Our blown breath carried our conscious intention into the leaves.
Upon a square of clean white paper before him, the shaman arranged a beautiful design of seeds, sugar, llama fat and coca leaves, as well as small candies, flower petals and chunks of animal crackers representing all of the kingdoms of creation. Our own human hearts were placed there within our little sets of coca leaves holding our prayers for the well-being of those we loved.
This beautiful despacho design reminded me of Native American sand paintings, or Buddhist sand mandalas offered to a watchful Deity, both of which are always destroyed after the ceremony. In fact, all ancient cultures living close to the earth … whether in these sacred mountains; deep in the Amazon jungle; throughout the vast plains of the world, or the unexploited regions of North America before the conquering, smothering influx of European culture… all must worship in a similar fashion. This quiet native thanksgiving to God and their humble way of offering prayers is in such contrast to the religions which replaced their tribal way.
There’s a strong matriarchal acknowledgment to Mother Earth, Pachymama, here. She is the source of all life and the people hold a deep appreciation of women as a whole, considering them the basis and foundation of life. Therefore, their whole approach might represent the feminine, in contrast to the masculine emphasis so strongly found in Western religions. It’s true that men are the shamans here, but they have a wide-awake awareness of each participant in the ceremony and a gentle concern to include every one. They seem to see themselves as facilitators for the inclusion of every individual present, and yet the women in attendance are singled out for special praise.
Gee, this is sounding like some psychological seminar or anthropological analysis which is nowhere within my small range of skills. Rather, it represents some of the small thoughts drifting through my mind as I was realizing that I couldn’t describe what I was seeing. Throughout the three ceremonies of this day, I was aware that I was taking part in something very, very ancient, which might have looked just this way many hundreds of years ago. Those ceremonies, however, wouldn’t have required translation to Spanish and English, but would have been understood in the Incan Quechua which the shaman and his wife were speaking.
There was no formality except in the quiet reverence with which the objects were handled and the uttering of soft prayers throughout the ceremoney. We were comfortable, quiet witnesses who took complete part at the same time. When the paper bundle was filled, it was folded within a square of reddish woven cloth. Each one of us stood, in turn, while the shaman moved this packet up and down our bodies, drawing off all negative energies to go into the fire with the offering. Then the shaman’s mesa, a cloth bundle containing objects of spiritual significance to him, was passed over those same parts of our bodies to infuse us with fresh strength and energy.
We were then invited to bring our own mesa, if we had one, for prayers and blessings. Most of the participants had already been to other such ceremonies and had accumulated their own objects, wrapped with cloth into a bound bundle. I did not have one, though I did have several Peruvian things bought in the Pisac market, including a necklace and a ceramic bull given to me by merchants who were grateful that I didn’t haggle. The shaman held our precious objects, prayed over them, blew his breath upon them and gave them back to us.
Soon, we all moved outside to the fire pit where the special packet was placed upon the flames, creating a moment when The Goddess would enjoy the gifts; during which we all respectfully turned our backs to the fire. A few minutes later, we were laughing and talking and warming our hands over the ceremonial fire, preparing to walk to our next event a mile or two across the village. It was to be my second Ayahuasca Ceremony of the week. I’ll cover that in the next blog.
