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El Salvador

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El Salvador

WHAT I DID Thursday, March 26 El Salvador has taken me out of myself, and I’m glad for that. It’s been a different type of writing, too. Exacerbated proximity, and my notes have nothing to do with Me.

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WHAT I DID Thursday, March 26 El Salvador has taken me out of myself, and I’m glad for that. It’s been a different type of writing, too. Exacerbated proximity, and my notes have nothing to do with Me. I’m going to tell you something about Network States. Not here, though. Different forms. I don’t want to write too much, now because I am writing something different about all of this. I am doing some reporting , for once. In San Salvador, there is the hacker house - it was other things before, but this is what it is now. Orange art deco, white car at night streaking down the highway, coconut stands and pupuseria and low visibility closer to the airport. “The fast foods signs here remind me of idiocracy (2006),” David is saying, as we near Zona Rosa, a reference to the cartoonish nature of this one low strip, though we pass through the land of the Big Food Boom quickly, then it’s moss and hills and dewy air, quiet night. Then, there’s the turn through San Benito, the roads up through El Escalón, the guards at the gate but there’s not much need for that anymore, and you could blow right through those flimsy gates anyways, on foot or, with a car if that is what you really set your mind to. It’s mossy roads up Calle Norte, plants on the side of the road that are pink and vibrant green. Like animations, almost, I tell David. It’s like a compound when we get to the house. Smooth high walls mountainside compound or, it could be like a compound if it wasn’t all so opened up. An open air compound and it’s all built into the hills. The living room opens up onto the terrace. Stone fountain wall beneath the arched stairway, stone stairway into the hill. I can drift into the pool that extends out over all of it, over the edge of the garden, yes, but it feels like it extends over the whole of San Salvador too. Drift into the pool and you can think about spilling over the edge. You can think about what would happen if the tile walls levitated away and water merged with air; you were taken out too far. Logical conclusion in these moments over ridden by a very strong feeling of; there would be no splattering on those rocks below. The strong feeling suggesting: you could just float away. “There was heat lightning last summer over the volcano,” I tell David’s friend. “Heat lightning isn’t real,” David’s friend says. “Distant lightning from storms over the volcano that you could see in the dry heat,” I corrected myself. No heat lightning now, but you can see the population density of San Salvador, even the areas beyond San Salvador, quite clearly from here. It’s mapped out in clusters of light, they become more sparse and shimmery the further away you look. They disappear entirely by the mountain’s eventualities and then, it’s a big moon hovering above all the rest of it. You can still see the outline of the mountains cast in the glow of the moon. And then the rest is my journalism . I’m sorry. The rest is still secret, the rest until we’re on the coast. On the coast - and I am on the coast now, it’s diet coke and coconut water and ceviche at Le Garten. We go to the Bitcoin Farmers Market first. They’re keeping all Quiet Tension contained in Tecoluca now. El Zonte is coming to life. Hippy Dippy Crypto Optimism. Even Bitcoin Berlin is evangelizing here. There are kittens up for adoption, and a small dutch woman selling lemonade except it’s just butterfly flower and water and lime. No seed oils here. No network spirituality once we sneak past the restaurant and down to the black sand beach. The currents here are crazy. The undertow could sweep you up and spit you right back out somewhere in the Pacific, somewhere down the coast, it could turn in a U-shaped formation and it could grind you into pulp on the rocks. From the black sand shore, the rocks are shrouded in mist. It’s like a fairytale, really. David marched right into a pack of wild dogs last night and they all lunged viciously. Stem Cell therapy at Mizata down the coast, and we just might go. They had their first conference here, also, I am told. There will be people to talk to. There will be people who can tell me how to make things last forever. How to become a genius . I don’t want to be immortal but if I did, it wouldn’t be so I could act in opposition to all the forces of bodily and neurological degradation and come out unscathed. In my immortality purgatory, things just stagnant, then. Complete harmony with the powers that be and in the place of time you find: stasis. I missed the book club in New York. The book club on the seven volume Danish series wherein, time freezes but our lady continues on. The same day over and over and over but our protagonist’s hair and nails grow and, presumably, she could even get wrinkles. Aspirations towards a journey towards immortality feel very combative, to me. Test fate when you can and emerge victorious. This feels like an urge I can understand, one I would understand better if I were a boy but I still get it now. You won’t win, though, and in the meantime, my hedonism, hedonism for me, makes me feel very very sad. After they told me at Garten Hotel that the cabana was not for me, we moved to Boca Olas. Boca Olas in El Tunco. El Tunco being, where you party . I ordered a blue margarita at the swim up bar. I am on vacation now. My notes are good. The sculptor liked the concepts of Palestra last summer, because when weird people seek exile together, then special things happen. He liked these concepts too, because he is a futurist, and because he says he was cancelled on the premise of prejudice against force and form . David’s friend says that the second anyone starts showing delusional and insane tendencies you need to cut them loose along with anyone who doesn’t see things clearly. He speaks in language that is intentionally obfuscated sometimes. I am unsure what clarity means to him. On vacation , after I order a blue margarita, David says, “that’s a real drunk bitch drink to get.” I say, “it’s just that I like anything that’s blue . This is a weird entry. I am omitting too many details and then randomly inserting others and I’m sorry if this all seems crass. I was not writing in this way this week. I was writing something else. Bitcoin missionaries. I was writing about The Network State. It’s the end of the high season. Plane back to New York. WHAT YOU SHOULD DO In El Salvador - In San Salvador, I stayed at a hacker house in the hills, except for one night, where we stayed at Il Buongustaio . Il Buongustaio is where we stayed the whole time in August - Roman looking white marble arches in a sweet garden, and a formal-ish dining room that bleeds into the open air, humid breeze. The rooms are very nice, each one quite spacious and sparse in a chic way, and each one opening up to a private garden. I saw a jaguarundi here. Nature is healing, they told me back at the airbnb, when I first relayed this jaguarundi story. - In San Salvador, I grilled ribeye from the market outside, under infrared light, on some nights. On the drive from the airport, the taxi driver took my friend to Pupuseria Suiza because her family was from El Salvador. Welcome home, he said. At the mall ( Metrocentro San Salvador ), I was asked many times if I had tried pupusas yet. The national dish, I was told. I said yes, I had tried them. I liked the ones with cheese and pork the best and I liked all the pupusas a lot more than I like most bread adjacent foods, because the dough is made with rice and not with corn and not with wheat. - My favorite restaurant in San Salvador is El Xolo - one of my favorite restaurants in the world, really. It’s hidden behind a car park, listed on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants . It doesn’t have a Michelin star but the food is significantly better than at most of the restaurants that do have Michelin’s in places like New York. Open kitchen and slick but not stuck up interior, inexpensive enough that if you go in a group of eight or so you can order every single thing on the menu, a few drinks each, still spend less than $100 per person. Ingredients are sourced from indigenous communities across different regions of El Salvador. It’s a really special experience. Very magical and rare. - Other restaurants that I like in San Salvador include Monarca - an elegant steakhouse with a garden that feels like its out of a different era. Il Buongustaio (hotel) is good for just dinner, too. Delikat has nice breakfast and smoothies and trees growing through the patio and vines and flowers growing down from the roof. Casa del Cazador is a German Korean BBQ style restaurant where you grill your own food on hot plates inside an old fashioned looking farmhouse, also decorated with a lifesize status of Mary and Jesus and a few other biblical / historical figures. I never went to i4Tavolini , but I heard you reach this spot via long dirt road, and I also heard that the aesthetics are reminiscent of the houses in a Francis Ford Coppola film. - Driving down the coast, there is El Tunco , with a boardwalk and a duel hippy and nightlife vibe, lots of surfers, smoothies, oysters the size of your arm, casual beach clubs that stay open late enough and a rock formation resembling an upside-down pig (“el tunco”). Further down the coast, there’s El Zonte which is quieter, black sand beaches and strong currents, Bitcoin beach and the Bitcoin farmers market on Sunday, the only place to eat in a sit down capacity is Garten Zonte , but lunch here provides beach access, too. The sunsets are quite magical, and I like it here best to stay. There are further places down the coast, and there is Costa Del Sol, too, but I didn’t venture this far. New York weekly itinerary coming tomorrow…

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