It's All In the Playing (29 page)

We dispersed to our rooms and dealt privately with whatever would make us comfortable until 7:00 in the morning. The security forces searched my room, looked under the bed, and left.

My idea of comfort then was a hot shower, some yoga postures, honey-roasted peanuts, and some fruit. I read a Lima travel magazine until I fell into a strange sleep for about two hours with my passport in my hand.

The wake-up call came accompanied by a waiter bringing fresh fruit, mud coffee, and a basket of toast and rolls. It was the first day of decisions about what to eat in Peru.

In the lobby the crew congregated, our gallant band of illusion makers, having the personal courage to be uncivil, mumble-mouthed, sleepy, and somewhat pissed off. John, of course, headed the list of pissed-off ones, but that was only because he was better at experiencing
any
situation. I reminded him that he was an unknown, thin, New York stage actor who loved struggle. He said, “No, that’s what John Hurt is.” John was the kind of guy who made you want to hug him, pinch his cheeks, and kick him in the rump at the same time.

We hung around in the lobby until security said we could go. Then we piled into a bus, each of us lugging our own hand luggage and valuables.

The airport was another world in the bright light of day. Long lines of people waited for news about flight departures. The airline personnel themselves had no idea what was happening.

I went to the newsstand. I spotted an
International Herald Tribune,
a lifesaver, the best newspaper in the world in my opinion, and one that has always enabled me to feel that the human race and its events are available for me to know about, wherever I am in the world.

I can go into a peaceful reverie even when I’m in the middle of chaos if I have a news magazine or paper to enthrall me. That’s what I did with the papers I found. Colin and Simo chatted with people.

Three hours later the plane for Cuzco decided to take off. It was as though it had a mind of its own, the people being too bureaucratically disorganized to make any lasting and trustworthy decisions.

And so, looking down at the magnificent terrain of Peru, we were finally on the last leg to our destination: Cuzco. The snowcapped splendor of the Andes below us seemed so gracefully feminine to me. And of course it made sense. The Andes were the gateway of the feminine energy on the planet; the Himalayas, the gateway for the masculine. My old stomping grounds had been the Himalayas in Bhutan, Sikkim, Kalimpong, and Nepal. As I looked back on it now, that was a time when I was more comfortable with activating, manifesting masculine attributes. I challenged authority, went to the barricades with my political beliefs, was angry and outraged at injustice, and aggressively calculated how I could effect change in the society where I lived in a forceful fashion. I was operating with yang energy, emulating the very power structure that I found fault with. I was exemplifying the establishment techniques that I abhorred. But that was the old days.

The new days would be smarter, more centered, more effective, and frankly, more personally rewarding, because I was beginning to see that I had been responsible for creating all the unrest in my old reality as a mirror through which to see myself. Now I felt ready and willing to see myself as a more peaceful candidate for harmony. Hopefully I would no longer
need
to feel deep, hidden anger, or flaming outrage, because I would have already lived through that part of my scenario. I would have tried on those feelings, acted them out, and would have resolved most of them. Flash-flame would occur
every so often but it would be largely superficial. And eventually I would learn; I would not need even that anymore.

That was the wisdom I was beginning to feel.

So the Andes moving slowly below me represented the gateway to the profoundly feminine aspects of myself I hadn’t yet been willing to trust and touch.

I put my hand around Mary the icon in my purse.

Just before I left America, my friend had presented me with a small reproduction of the icon, which was closer to the original than her photograph. The monk from Canada had sent it to her to give to me.

I knew it was, indeed, a talisman of sorts. But talismans work in human understanding because we ascribe magic to them. And magic works wonders. The loss of magic is the denial of unlimited possibility. I had kept it by my bed as a reminder of the feminine vibration I was trying to transmute in myself—I would
need
reminders.

   As we landed, Cuzco was sunny, crisp, clear, and inviting. It was also 11,380 feet high.

The company was ensconced in two hotels. The “above the line” talent (actors, writers, producers, etc.) were at the Libertador. The “below the line” talent (camera crew and grips) were at the Savoy. Neither was the Ritz, but both were comfortable.

My room at the old Libertador adjoined Simo’s, so he could field the calls and whoever might walk in looking for small talk. It was originally a suite with a step up between the rooms. My room had a window onto the cobblestone street below. Simo’s was a closed-in box. But he set up a hot plate and soup kitchen to make it seem like home. There was a small sitting room off my room which, stripped of furniture, I saw immediately would work, for my yoga and a massage therapy table.

We had brought a massage therapist with us. I figured massage would be beneficial for everyone at the end of the day.

Since the hotel would be our home for at least a month, people were doubly concerned about their rooms. Mine seemed to be fine. The carpet and bedspread were clean. I was just a little concerned about the picture of Jesus bleeding and in pain hanging from the cross over my bed. The maid removed it and put up two men under a sombrero instead. I went with Colin to look at his room.

We opened the door. It was stuffed with piles of dirty laundry and twenty-four used mattresses.

“What are they trying to tell me?” he said. They had given him the wrong room number.

Colin settled, we sought out John Heard. It didn’t take long. His door was open and he was expressing articulately how he missed the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan streets. Nevertheless in no uncertain terms he announced that the traffic outside was more than he could “fucking” stand. So they moved him to a room next to mine. It was either divine justice or John managing, as always, to experience everything to its utmost. The two forces could be the same, of course, so as matters developed, I felt justified in thinking it all probably served him right….

That night was one that will go down in my book antisleep-wise. Part of the construction crew that had preceded us by weeks decided to have a party. And they had it in a private dining room located right under my bed. The floors and walls were not exactly reinforced, so I heard every toast, every joke, and every rowdy, raucous dance number—backed by drums that could have soloed at any first-class Independence Day parade.

It was the one night we had to catch up on sleep, and the production company had warned us to go to bed immediately in the high altitude so that we’d be ready to work early the next day.

I turned my sound machine on full blast. Thank goodness the current was correct. But it made no difference. The sinking of Atlantis couldn’t have been louder.

At about midnight Simo went to the production office and complained. The American secretary who had sent out the memos warning us to get to sleep immediately said, “Oh, she should tell us when she’s sleeping.” Simo marked her name in his little black book and finally called the hotel manager.

An American film company listens to no one but the director and sometimes a temperamental star. Neither was present in our case, so I did the best I could. What I also didn’t know was that Cuzco power sometimes suffers an upsurge in energy which often blows out electrical equipment. So, of course, my sound machine blew. What was interesting was that I didn’t. I sat up in bed and said to myself: It’s all happening for a reason and everything will be fine. At 5:00 A.M. I fell asleep.

At 6:00 A.M. a trumpeter attached to an army barracks near us began to sound reveille, followed by a military band joyously rendering a rousing march, fortissimo, to accompany the soldiers as they went out on maneuvers. First they had to practice marching in the vicinity though, until around 7:00 A.M. So I slept from 7:00 to 11:00.

I got up saying to myself: All of this has already happened. It’s an adventure I’m simply reliving: It all took place in another time.

Simo, however, put in a distress call to Los Angeles for two more sound machines. I couldn’t depend on alternative realities to get me through the movie. And I didn’t want to look like Marjorie Main playing myself.

After all that we went out to look at the Inca city which would be our home for four weeks.

   No one really knows how old Cuzco is. As with all pre-Hispanic cultures, the facts are diffused because of the tradition of oral history. But modern archeologists now claim that Cuzco had been inhabited by unrecorded pre-Inca cultures. The word
Inca
is a Quechua term used
to describe just one person—the ruling emperor himself. Quechua is still the language of the Inca. The creation myth of Cuzco goes like this:

In the beginning there were wretched barbarian creatures who lived in a land of darkness. The great Sun lord sent his son to earth to bring enlightenment and culture. His name was Manco Capac. The great Moon goddess sent her daughter to be his bride. Her name was Mama Occlo. They emerged from the waters of Lake Titicaca and began a long odyssey together which culminated in the fertile valley of Cuzco. Applying the test of the Sun lord, Manco Capac plunged his golden staff into the ground. When it sank and disappeared, he knew this was “the navel of the earth,” and founded an empire upon the spot. So Cuzco was more than just the capital city of the Inca Empire. It was a holy city, a place of pilgrimage with as much significance to the Quechuas as Mecca has to the Moslems.

The Incas built their city in the shape of a puma. Within that animal form I marveled at the Sun Temple, the Plaza de Armas, the Wailing Square, the cathedrals, and the palace of Pachacutec.

The cobblestone streets of Cuzco wound and beckoned to us with new colors, sights, and sounds. Each junction was ancient history. After many earthquakes, it was the Inca structures that remained. There were craft shops selling rugs, baskets, bags, jewelry, sweaters, gold, and paintings.

Later on, Colin and I met and went to look at some of the locations the production crew had selected. Although my actual experience in Peru had taken place in Huancayo, which had entirely different terrain, it wasn’t possible to base our production company there because of the requirements of accommodations and surrounding locations. I could feel the art department strain for my approval because they knew it was quite different. But they did a superb job in the main in scouting out places
which were reminiscent of what I wrote in the book; except for the “hotel” where I actually lived.

The original experience was more primitive than the movie version. I had lived in a mud hut called a “hotel,” with a dirt floor and no windows. That was it. No running water, no heat, no nothing.

Maybe it was difficult for them to believe. I don’t know, but instead of going with what I wrote, they found an actual hotel, rather quaint, almost European, trimmed with red paint and sporting a courtyard abounding with flowers. Zsa Zsa Gabor would have been happy honeymooning there. They had, however, confirmed to the man who ran the hotel that they would muddy up one whole wall and the courtyard. He looked on in disbelief at what was happening to his treasured hotel—which he believed the company had chosen for its charm. Mud was loaded into the courtyard, splattered on the walls, and even dumped in the room interiors. He had suspected Hollywood was insane, but this was proof.

In the end we just couldn’t make it look primitive enough. So the company paid the man, restored his place to normal, and went searching on the other side of the tracks for a better way to purvey our celluloid dreams. I hoped the hotel owner’s feelings were not too badly hurt. No doubt he took the whole Hollywood madness in good stride.

Since we had shot the interior mineral bath sequences on a Hollywood sound stage, we needed to get the exterior shots in Peru. That meant digging a huge hole and duplicating a natural phenomenon that did not occur in Cuzco. The water also needed to bubble and emit steam.

The hole was no problem. There happened to be a giant one deep beside the Urubamba River. But where to get the water to fill it with?

Someone said the mayor of Coija had a heated swimming pool with freshly chlorinated water in it. Chlorination
was essential, they felt, because John and I would be in it for days.

The art director went to the mayor and asked him if I could use the water in his swimming pool for my movie. When he said yes, they moved the shooting date up on the schedule because things were going so smoothly.

However, when the company backed up the fire truck to drain the mayor’s pool, they found that he had already drained it to make room for cool, fresh, un-chlorinated water for me. The art director tried to explain I hadn’t wanted to use his
pool
—I wanted to use his
water.
The local fire department, which consisted of one truck, was brought in. The guys lost count of the trips that truck made to fill our hole with 80,000 gallons of water which then needed to be heated and fitted with artistically primitive surrounding rocks so that the whole thing didn’t look like a manicured rock-garden special from the San Fernando Valley.

But once the local fire department’s water was in the pool, the pool sprang a leak. Fifty thousand gallons of water leaked into the Urubamba before it was stopped.

They then put a liquid rubber sealer on the bottom, filled the pool again, and brought in the heaters. The heaters melted the sealer, which appeared on the top of the water as floating rubber scum.

Someone suggested throwing dry ice into the water so the steam would camouflage the rubber.