The Last Waltz - Day Seventeen

in martin scorsese's THE LAST WALTZ, LEVON HELM talks about his experience with NEW YORK CITY, being a small town boy from ARKANSAS.
"... it´s kind of hard to take the first time. you have to go there about two or three times before you can fall in love with it... you think ´it´s great to be back in NEW YORK.´all these friendly women walking up and down the street. it was... it was great. yeah, NEW YORK, it was an adult portion. it was an adult dose. so it takes a couple of trips to get into it. you just go in the first time and you get your ass kicked and you take off. as soon as it heals up, you come back and you try it again. eventually, you fall right in love with it."

BOLIVIA is a lot like that.

the minute you step off the plane, you can't take your eyes off her gaze. she levels you with a high altitude of rough exterior and a warm heart. you try to adjust to her frequencies, confident that you can handle any condition she lays out. it never really matters, because deep inside, you knew that in her condition, she will end up striking and bruising you no matter how much you give.

a few years later, you've recovered and you're ready for more.

when you come back, its love at first sight. immediately you play hard and push yourself to the point of burnt-out-exhaustion because you didn't realize how high you were. the second you realize that a "time out" might be in order, its too late, she has already burned you. and now, you´re blistered from head to toe from a hard days work.
there are times when all you want to do is break up. in her violent fits, she throws rocks at you because you don't want to give her any money. minutes later she tells you a story of when she was freed from slavery, and in tears of sympathy, you're right back in there again.
ready for more.
there are time that you don't understand her and become lonely and confused. on those chilly nights and even colder mornings, you fall off the wagon by reading a book about the holocaust with chocolate wrappers at your bedside. this counterbalances your soft depression and once you're finished this small memoir, you realize that reading all that pain and eating all that garbage was worth it.
finally, you go home and continue with the life you had; making documentaries in first world conditions with reliable resources.

a few years go by.
you look through your pictures and read about her hardships with the international community, and you sigh. in this moment, all you can remember were the good times of that long rocky affair... the 20 cent fresh carrot juice every morning and afternoon, the thousands of sexy brown bowler hats which struted her streets every morning, the kilometers of lush markets that you could never get enough of and her beautifully lush body of water that never laid still.