Assorted Notes

There are those who have wondered of my whereabouts due to a dearth of blogation. Speculation runs that the great God Ixumal has riddled me with poison darts, leaving my carcass to be consumed by ants. People who know me, may reasonable rationalize that I have been incarcerated in a third world hell hole. In my cage, a bald 7 foot carib looms over me with a grin like a white pickett fence. None of this is true. Boringly, I am back in the land of the potato people. I have been back almost two weeks, since my ever changing currency dwindled to a few piddly American dollars, or 3,426 pesos. Just enough to get a chicken bus back to the Cancun airport and get one last mystery meat burrito.

Since here, I have been paddling my ass off to round up a few pennies. Not doing too good at it. The cat tussled with a Gila Monster, broke off it’s front teeth in the struggle and died from it’s toxins. Heartbreaking. A fine furry resident who lived there more than I did. Now the place will be overrun with mice again.

Kim and I have a new relationship, based on trust and love, a few of the things we forgot the first few tries. We are buying a chunk of land in Belize and will go live there forever before next winter starts. We are full of excitement, and brimming with plans. We are short about 50,000, basically all the money necessary, but have decided not to let such banal annoyances slow us down. After all, this is amerika, and something can be robbed and get punished for later. Maybe never. We are both sick to hell of the billion dollar this and that, that swirls over head like the fictional lotto winners. Never will the likes of us see a copper of this cash, only held underfoot of the belligerent banks, slaves to the monetary system. It is time to grow vegetables, fruits, fish .. get off the power grid of the powerful… barter with half naked people for small goods and services .. enjoy the thriving nature of nature. Exit concrete and ice, economic enslavement for food, warmth and shelter. All focus now is to this end, to live in love and harmony with Kim. I believe it is real. My belief will make it real.

Working on the weirdo survivalist house. A lot of almost sold hovers: an African with stolen credit cards, an Alaskan with a river full of crummy rafts, a Nigerian Mogul working through the international bank to secure a million dollar credit line for me. That for a 25 passenger hover. Everything close, but all is horseshoes an hand grenades until something explodes. Waiting .. but not waiting. Fixing more of the hover fleet. Everything’s for sale. And building mining equipment for an assault on the gold fields once the snow shrinks back a little. Even putting on a tie and groveling to sphincter pinched engineering firms for a cubical cave job. Now that would be disappearing to myself. I almost prefer the toothy guy in the scorpion nest, two fried plantains a day.

So this is my little life. Not as interesting as doing the roommate thing in the Panama Prison. That’s why the web here has been silent. If I find another of Ixumual’s foot prints, I’ll tell ya. But till then… here’s some scrap thoughts left over from the travels.


Assorted Notes

Cancun street sweepers are everywhere. Little shriveled brown 6 AM men, perseverating over a broomed square meter of pavement. The streets are very clean. Hardly any dust even. This is in contrast to the rest of the garbage pit country. Who pays them and why. Do they do it out of civic pride?

Auto and bus brakes are all bad here. They are in constant use due to the national paradigm of being in an insane hurry. The Central American Drivers manual says: “Swerve suddenly into any space half the size of a car length on either your right or left…for proper lane changing. Accelerate madly towards any intersection or pedestrian crossing if more than 20 meters of open space is available. Assume that pedestrians will scatter in terror and that panic braking in congested areas is possible.”
As I leap from curb to curb, dodging madly rushing sedans, the high pitched screeching of worn brakes surrounds me from all directions. The alto refrain in a chorus of honking horns and the mechanical mimicking of squawking corvoids.

Toilets here all have the wastepaper basket beside them for the purpose of depositing the wiped refuse. There is no Charmin south of 25 degrees latitude. Toilet paper is a rough insoluble product akin to very thin chip board. Kori is a proponent of this system, citing the fragility of third world plumbing systems. I also noticed that many systems are below the water table, confounding the flushing problem. In reality, it is quit stinky, rather like a horizontal encounter with an outhouse.

Money changing: 15 pesos to the US dollar. They call pesos dollars here. A cola .. $15, a burrito .. $50. So all numbers are on the base 15 platform. Yanks .. base 10. Maya base 20. Then this is a marriage of past and present. 14.85 exchange per US buck at a bank. 14.65 paid at a corner street shark. 20 centavos difference. Change US $20 into 300 pesos, accounts for 5 pesos difference, about 33 cents. This is like the gas station game in the US. As a rich Americano, endless thousands in debt, who gives a shit?

Vast graveyards are passed with frequency. Dormitorios del la murto – bedrooms of the dead. All the graves are above ground in gaudy colored cement boxes. The water table floats any buried coffin, sending a log jam of bones into the nearby ditch. This sea of boxes, not unlike the town architecture, cradle to the grave in sameness.

UDP – united democratic party; PUP – peoples united party – the party of hope; UPP – united peoples party. These letters spray painted large on most walls. Cheap political signs. The UDP won the last election, but despite the hollow promises, once the ruling party sit behind the desk, it is the usual graft and inaction in all matters. The military is it’s own party without need for elections. Pickup truck loads of mixed kaki machine gun malevolent careen around the narrow streets, looking for what I’m not sure. But try to be invisible anyway.

The Frigate bird. Black and white and elegant with pointed ends all, forked tail, 4 foot wing span. Aerodynamic witches hats. The pelican flaps clumsily along through the air. The Frigate bird never pumps a stroke, always gliding, banking, rising and twisting without effort.