Curiosity Roving : V.21 : Cycle Closer
Curiosity Roving
The Grand Adventures of L Rose Goossen
V.21 : Cycle Closerin which the mischief has been managed
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Greetings and Salutations!
Welcome to the twenty-first volume of Curiosity Roving and thank you kindly for joining me today. If any of my past editions failed to reach you, they are all preserved in the letter archive: https://tinyletter.com/curiosity_roving/archive
In the time that has been spent since Volume Twenty broke upon your inbox, I have completed the esoteric to-do list that I started assembling in the early months of this year, and now I am taking a great big breath, resting on my laurels, and letting the mysteries dance at my perimeter. These words come to you from the frothing churn of the Caribbean coast in northern Colombia, where I am contentedly celebrating a tropical, and solitary, holiday season.
pelicans over CañaveralWhere did I go? What did I do? Well:
I took a bus to Mexico City and immediately made a jaywalking foray into the night to hear Manuel Garcia play the glorious Teatro de la Ciudad; nothing like a red carpet to make a girl feel welcome. I made big plans for the weekend, and then, on a fated Friday, found myself at an otherworldly funk and disco event that ultimately rendered all those plans impossible. I didn't mind.
I had my first unambiguously bad Couchsurfing experience; I was gone and in a hotel room and off to my first Lucha Libre show with other, better people within thirty minutes. For those who aren't in that circle, Couchsurfing is a social network for travelers to connect with local people and find accommodation and friends on the road. I've been using it for thirteen years, and I've seen many changes in that time. Important note for anyone who uses that network: I tried to leave this person a public review that detailed my experience and it doesn't show up on his profile because the references have to be mutual. Creeps and weirdos can continue with impunity as long as they keep their own mouths shut. It's a sad truth that my attitude toward all strange men in this part of the world has now been reduced to a wholesale "guilty until proven innocent", and I often don't give them a chance to prove anything at all.
all-seeing, all-knowingI flew to Bogotá the next day, where I was reunited with three of my very best friends and bandmates from Taiwan. Two of those friends are now married and they organize a beautiful event called Festival Ritmos Del Mundo, where we four, plus five more incredible musicos Bogotános, performed as La Cumbia Del Sol. Our band enjoyed a great season of accomplishment in Taiwan, many years ago now, and to bring our music to life in the ancestral territory of cumbia music was a real piece of magic. We spent two weeks in a soup of togetherness, vacillating between English, Spanish, and Chinese language depending on who was in the room, with Japanese honorifics and pleasantries thrown in the mix for umami. It felt like coronation, it felt like homecoming, it felt like the grand benevolent forces of the universe were spotlit at center stage. Sometimes it happens that way, and it's nice when it does.
A note of public gratitude is appropriate here. My participation in this event was sponsored by my old buddy old pal Max Farrell aka. Max Power aka. Maxie who, in an act of true chaotic good, decided to help me purchase the trumpet of my daydreams back in August just because he believes in my work in this world. It was the first time I walked into a music shop and just bought right something off the wall. Hey Max, guess what? We did it! Mischief managed! Great success! High five! Thank you!
The man, the legend, and his work in the world:
lottery ticket feelingIn between these major landmarks, I also stomped the muck at Rock al Parque, which is one of the largest music festivals in Latin America and also free (thank you, cultural patrimony of Colombia), consumed a formidable selection of tacos and arepas and patacones and galletas and cazuelas and tamales, swigged aguardiente from a water bottle and chica from a wooden bowl, sampled three flavours of Bogotá nightlife, gasped for thin air at 3000 meters above sea level on the cliffs of Monserrate, pointed out the planetary parade to anyone who would listen (last night at sunset we had Venus, Mercury, the moon, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars all lined up across the dome), attended two African dance classes that changed how I took my seat for days afterward, swam the rivers and waterfalls of Minca, left Tayrona National Park with the standard-issue sunburn, and offered my blood as a gift to some small mystery insects that clearly wanted it more than I did. I absorbed the World Cup season from various street venues and watched Argentina win the title on a hot and dusty morning; I was looking for breakfast, but the whole town stood still and attentive for an hour or more while they played out the overtime.
plateau cityI've been meditating on the idea of Serious Fun; the kind of fun that requires effort and investment, that doesn't "just happen"; the kind of fun that looks a lot like work. For example, traveling with a trumpet for four months, practicing in one hundred unusual locations, and then playing a show with a band with which I share seven years of history, or training for a lifetime and then winning a prestigious title on the cusp of retirement, or planning an event for an entire year with the understanding that the slightest random adverse weather pattern could render the entire endeavour an irredeemable loss. Risk and reward can be a fraught calculation, but the greatest risk might be to risk nothing; to arrive at the end of life to find that it was only half-lived, that life itself "just happened".
During one of the closing ceremonies at Festival Ritmos Del Mundo, our firekeeper told us that the winter solstice is the time to ask for what we want. This has always been a challenging task for me; initially because I didn't have enough of an individuated sense of self to be sure about what I wanted, then because I didn't feel deserving of things that I wanted, and then because I subscribed to the approximately Buddhist understanding that generating desire would result in suffering, and now because I am experimenting with a maximalist sense of desire, in which I am terrifically greedy for knowledge and experience and resources and connections and Things. Sylvia Plath already said it, but let me tell you again: it's funny how wanting everything feels very much the same as wanting nothing. On the tasselled bus that brought me to the beach, there was a palm-treed poster with the reminder that, "Con ganas, todo se puede". It's been a theme.
in the flowHaving completed this five-month course of self-determined geographic prescriptions, I'm not much closer to knowing what to ask for in the Big Picture, but I do know this: the things that I am having are most definitely the things that I want. Reader, I hope that you can say the same.
Today: I will send this newsletter and I will watch the light change and I will drink another coffee. I will carry on with this careening trajectory of existence in the evolutionary spiral as it brings me closer and closer to the perfected expression of my true form - same as you. I'm off to Medellín this evening, where I will lay low for two weeks and provide care for a dog called Ramón while his owner is away. Phones are open from December 29th until January 10th if you'd like to catch up.
day's endIn the spirit of the giving season, I'm also leaving a link for my friend's fundraiser. This is another person with whom I collaborated over a period of years in Taiwan. He's fighting for his life. I'm far away and I don't know much and I'm actually avoiding knowing too much because it's horrifying and not precisely my business, but if our positions were reversed, I would probably want him to share my damn fundraiser. So here it is: https://gofund.me/303ff4e4
Among his many projects, Chris makes a very good podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6JoQGCbQkVpZd0uKjDMcQH?si=fFiwEHS_RAi3_pTBnHHqqQ
Our interview that became Episode 16 is a very fond memory.
Reader, life is fragile and precious and it happens just once. I'm glad we get to exist together in this lifetime. Whichever hemisphere you are in today, enjoy this season of extremity with all the trimmings. In fact, get yourself some extra trimmings and put them on my tab. You deserve it.
Until next time, stay curious. -- Rose
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