THE RUBY EYE

Cyber Smoke

2011-08-07T10:24:00.000-07:00

Readers of this ... so sad, a sinious spike of 20 amps bored out the circits of my computer. What is a writer without their tools. Reversion to ink and paper in a climate that dissolvs all carbon based materials in 2 months is a weak alternative. so I figgure to dump whatever I can salvage from past, reaching out into space and snathing the electo radiation back as it hurtels into oblivion. At least this will perserve a few shreds until the 2012 EMP. Kinda looking forward to that finality, as only a nihlist can.

So here's a few stories of the past, maybe not the pultizer type, but part of the quest, trails off the road of life. Charlie.

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DETONATOR

My name on the playa is “Detonator”. Here on a fossil lake bed at the head of the great basin, a vast city emerges for a week a year. 30 thousand domes and shanties, peopled with exhibitionist youth, blanketed in alkali dust. The masses sham worship a 50 foot wooden idol representing commercial materialism. They collectively spend approximately 11 million on entrance tickets and another 30 million on supplies, tents, gas, etc. It is the biggest private party known on earth.

Born of a few hundred angst driven post 70’s hippie/activist drug crazed megalomaniacs, the gathering has devolved into a tightly police controlled encampment of Kelty tents and Winnebago’s. The yearly temporal population grows to 45 thousand. In the illusion of freedom, the masses dress sparsely, suggestively displaying their sexual organs in retro or futuristic minimalist garb. There are no politics on the playa, no angst other than sexual, no animals, no old or very young people, few drugs, few exits. The burning man is a thinly veiled excuse to gather in a mood of mock hedonism and slutty public nudism.

There are no crimes. No sex crimes. In this Orwellian world, the slightest report of sexual misconduct has a phalanx of Gestapo police descend upon the orgasmically frustrated loser and hauled off with grinning police arrogance. So it is also with a thousand other crimes that might dispel the party illusion of the 20 something revelers. No fireworks allowed. No motorized vehicials but those designated as “art cars”, no public sex, no public masturbation, no loud raving (ravers strapped down and hauled off under the pretense of dehydration). Only excessive exibitisionsm. Women with out shirts, tight bare behinds below 3 inch skirts, men in dresses and sarongs, or nothing at all. Males strolling, patrolling, with light stick cock rings on their flaccid flopping parts. No erections, least the Playa police cuff the night stick beaten fool in the blink of his vouristic eye. The mantra here is .. “On the playa, the women make the rules”. This is a perfect matriarchial society.

But it was not so in the beginning. Then was a time of testosterone gun slinging, a time of no police and no rules, where car crashing was a sport, and drive by shooting at effigies was standard. Wilder, dangerous. All saturated in desert drugs and whiskey, where local authorities cared not what maniacs did deep in no-mans-land. Now the corporate children meet at the corporate controlled campout in false sincerity, with out angst, without statement, without clothes. To cover their banality, “names” are bestowed upon those who actually do anything other than touristically consume. Names like “Green Tea”, “Playa Player”, “Burner Bob”, “Giving Gwen”. First year “Burners” are called “virgins”. Virgins rarely get names. They do nothing other than gawk. I am a “Virgin”, but I have earned a name. A secret name. An illegal name. Detonator.

Arriving in the predawn amid a fifty mile centipede of taillights, 30 hours unslept, we are greeted with 20 foot concentration camp fences, fifty sheriffs, deputies and municipal malevolent’s. With their reflective sunglasses in our headlights, another hundreds of brown shirted “Playa Rangers” search our truck for contraband drugs, guns, smuggled revelers. In the distance, the towering effigy of “the man”. Maybe 2 miles distant, lit against the night sky in brilliant green Krypton gas tubes. “What the hell is that?’ I speak. “The Man, The Man” they eagerly reply. A red dawn rises among thousands all around setting up camps of domes and Chinese plastic, squabbling over every bolt and bungee with their camp commandant, his dominate self a recidivist “Burner”. My camp is but a simple affair of plastic and pickup, co-habituated with my cousin. Also a virgin. My tiny tribe.

Later in the afternoon, unable to sleep, unable to connect with the 20 something’s, I stagger into a neighbors camp of shade. There paces a megalomaniac. Denouncing the corporate camp of materialism, of loss of purpose, of freedoms vision gone awry. I’ll listen. Here is an amusing man. Short and sinewy, blazing eyes beset beneath a shaven head, bad teeth, prancing on his toes in frenetic energy.
“This is all bullshit. This is not what it’s all about. This is a tourist ritual. I was here for the first five Burning Man’s ten years ago. This makes me sick. I’m gonna do something! Do something!”
We climb atop a bus and survey the unfolding of the ‘city”. Black Rock City. BRC ominously logoed on the pockets of the brown shirts. There amid the hammering of constructions and tents are Reno rental Winnebago’s. SUV’s and Subaru’s mix with the tents as far as the eye can see. The city is 5 miles across, semi circular, centered on the fifty foot burning man effigy.
“Fucking Winnebago’s. What the fuck is this? I was here when this was free. When we had guns. When this MENT something. Now the BRC LLC with their 47 pages of rules for a $280 dollar ticket. This is bullshit. This is a phony corporate carnival. I’m gonna DO something. I’ll show these assholes. They’ll know how shallow they are.”
“What do you propose?” I venture. Barely acknowledging me in his verbal onslaught he continues.
“Going to do something. Going to show these assholes. Have everything ready. But I need a detonator. I need something to set it off. I’ll show those corporate bastards.”
Not wishing to know more information than this, but marveling at the ravers intensity, I suggest
“Well I have a huge bag of fireworks. Maybe there’s something in there you can forward your cause with?”
“Huh? Fireworks?” coming out of his pedantic haze, he eyes me curiously. “Lemme see” he demands in the style of the unmannered. Clambering back down the roof top buss we pause in my humble camp. From beneath my army cot I pull the bag of pyrotechnics. At first I give him a dozen bottle rockets, then a string of Black Cats. He thanks me weakly, still hopping from foot to foot in manic motion. “Need a detonator. A detonator.” Unwilling to see the proper application of high explosive go unrequited, I open a shoe box sized mortar kit. Aptly named, the Mad Bomber. On the box in Chinese graphics is a wild man not unlike he who fidgets before me. I hand him one of the stars, a composite firework.
“Maybe this will work?” I venture. “The base is a charge of black powder for ballistic thrust which ignites a chromium peroxide mix for the star effect. Very hot. You need only ..”
“I know. I know. I know all about these things. This will do. This will do nicely.” I can see inside his brain. A tangle of packages, fuse connections, tie ropes, cigarette lighters, all swirling into an engineered pyromania. I am hoping he doesn’t hurt anyone, torching a camp of drink and sexual sombulesants, but I see something greater in his mania. Anger, yes, but not malevolence to man. He has a statement to make. Far be it from my creed of actionism to deny a fanatic his day. Too pacified by the ravaging of time to participate in a “something”, I can only aid and abet from the safety of my anominity. Like the words of the devil as John Brown stood at his flaming gates “There’s no room for the likes of you in heaven or hell, John. Here, take this piece of fire and go start your own hell.” I am the fire hardware store.
“This will do. This will do just fine.” The fanatic cradles the bomb gently, then holding it before his eyes like a large gem. “This will show those bastards. Fuck the LLC. I’m gonna DO SOMETHING! Heh heh heh, this will do fine. Do fine.”
With out a thank you or goodbye, he slips oilily between the Subaru’s and tents, vanishing in the maze of the 5 mile encampment. “That was amusing” I think. “Hope there’s more people like him here. People of substance.”

That night, the lunar eclipse. 95% of the 45 thousand have arrived and set up their camps in irritated frustration. To pack and get here from many states away, no one has slept in 2 to 4 days. Exhaustion is absolute. In the 2 AM full moon, the edge of the glowing orb is nibbled away. Silhouetted against the dazzling lunar disk, a tiny solitary figure shinnies hand over hand up a guy wire to the chest of the Burning Man effigy. As the moon occludes, the brilliant white playa is shrouded in darkness, the shadowy figure lashes and ties, setting his work. When the eclipse is at it’s apex, unnoticed a tiny sparkling of a fuse. Unnoticed a figure sliding down the guy wire. Then a flash and a truncated burst of red stars in the effigy’s chest. Flaming napalm vomits down it’s body, erupting the Burning Man in fire. The Burning Man burns. A week early. Blasphemy is afoot.

The law abiding revelers at it’s feet recoil in Horror. Where is the ritual? Where is the schedule? Where are the other 43 thousand to whoop in pyrotechnic mania? But who is that hurriedly slinking away? The blasphemer! Get Him!! The mob surges the grinning and cackling maniac. Too stupefied at his own illuminating spectacle to register the flight mechanism in his legs, he is overwhelmed by the irate mob. Beating and screaming as the fire roars overhead. The culprit in his own private nirvana, oblivious to the pummeling of the weak media fed children. Soon the brown shirts move in en mass, pushing aside the indignant, saving the real burning man from the crowds increasing courage. Cuffing and chaining him in the terrorist extreme. Hauling him off to the prisons of the exterior. Fire trucks shoot their inept loads, extinguishing their idol, their charred and un-illuminated idol.

Red dawn again on the playa. The burnt man in his carbon dress looking down on the awakening horrified. They missed it. They are cheated out of their ticket price for the show. The spin goes around of an electrical fire in the Neon/Argon tubes. Later in the day, the local paper reveals the true nature of the terrorist act. The masses are confused, indifferent, obsequating to the party line of a disturbed man. An Oswald Burner. A man with a grudge for no reason. The Burner’s point is missed. The statement of corporate party is lost in the sea of the self satisfied. There is no angst among the crowd to sympathetically relate to this act. Down with corporations reads their SUV bumper stickers, but they cannot see that they are a vital cog in the wheels of the BRC LLC. The huge cash cog. The message of spontaneity and freedom is lost. The message of political action is not understandable. The fanatic has only himself to congratulate him.

By Tuesday eve, the charred remains are pulled down. Construction labors day and night in some hidden place to make a new Burning Man. By Thursday he is resurrected. The corporation has instantly restored the icon with a percentage of it’s slush fund, about a hundred thousand of it. The new burning man is properly attired in new neon, crisp lumber, fire effects. The show must go on. The masses hardly notice the saga that has passed before them. It is their entitlement to party in the largess and excess of the Black Rock City Limited Liability Corporation.

=======================

The Dead Cat Crime

Following this narrative, are letters sent to local municipal bureaucrats, in an attempt to save my ass from further destruction. The “cat incident” was given to me by the cosmos at a time of intense other complications. Murphy was God.

I borrowed 12,000 dollars to start a hovercraft charter business, consisting of a 6 passenger hover. At the modest speed of 45, the boat exploded ½ hour into it’s maiden voyage. My two passengers were sucked through the non-existent floor to the briny deep. After a few minutes of my horror, they floated to the surface with minor lacerations and funeral preparations were narrowly escaped.

I was being evicted from my shop so the building could be torn down after spending over a thousand dollars to bring the place into a habitual state. I had a hull half built and two employees of dubious character.

My employee was suddenly extradited to a small County jail in the unconsolidated sagebrush territories after a routine traffic check had found numerous warrants out for his arrest on parole violations stemming from a grand larceny charge. Must have missed that on the resume.

My current client proved to be a flaming alcoholic who wanted his boat finished 2 months early. That means that any profit had to go into additional labor who would then work proporanitly slower. First I had to pay the Country Judge $500 to spring my welder, as hunt’en was upon us and his Honor was look’en forward to that new gas grill for the “elk camp”.

My other job decided to make me Temporary Boss of the department. This consigned me to a 25% work time increase, of which 50% of the time was meetings. Much to their horror, I collapsed into a narcoleptic snore almost immediately when forced to sit listening to a monotone in a warm windowless room. Reminds me of the cabby turning the heat on full blast to pass out the late night drunk before rolling them.
A fellow employee who’s seething jelosey took a laundry list of my crimes to the director in an attempt to have me fired from what she perceived as her august position. I was called to the carpet to explain complete dis-organization of all paper work and staff (maybe true), using County computer resources to run my own business (only half true), and sodomizing the janitor (no… not true).

When I went downtown I received 3 - $20 tickets for illegal parking. This after moving the car each time to comply with the law.

At my lovely home, my daughter decided to take 19 credits at college in a manic moment and was nearly hospitalized again for the resulting accompanying suicidal/depressive stage of her Bi-Polar syndrome cycle. My son signed up for Advanced Marijuana consumption class hosted by the local toothpick chewing gang and went into a state of mood swings he must have learned from OJ Simpson. My wife of 24 years got two jobs. To celebrate her newfound independence, she piled all my clothes in the front yard and said she’s keeping the dog. Don’t come back. Don’t call. This was an unexpected reward for years of artistic encouragement and financial support.

If the sun shown, I was in shadow. If a bird sung in a tree, it defecated as I walked underneath, if I bought a scratch lottery ticket, it said I owed them $2. My skin had broken out into hives which I scratched as vigorously as any fresh mosquito bite, I was chain smoking so hard I could barley breathe, and my teeth were permanently clenched into an 880 PSI bite. Thought I had the later stages of Tetanus. The jaw muscles on the side of my face were so tight they blocked my escaidia tubes and caused me to go deaf in one ear.

Went to the Emergency room. Filled out 3 hours of paperwork and got a plastic wrist band. Ugly people with scabs sneezed virulent spray on me. Dressed in a butt-wagging robe and laid on a stretcher, I was wheeled into a blue ceramic room.
“Now Miss Underhill” the scrub surgeon said, “We’ll finally explore here, .. and find if it really is your appendix that’s causing this discomfort that you imagine.” The scalpel glinted menacing in the light beam. As the gas mask closed on my face, the nurse got suspicious of the beard and checked my wristband. Miss Underhill was clutching her side in the other wing of the hospital, getting checked for an ear infection.

The tooth pressure of my dead man’s grin had shattered a few of the back molars. My tongue thought it was on glass clean up after a Wrestle Mania tailgate party. Emergency charged me $400 and told me not to stress so much, go see a dentist. Went to the dentist. Dentist in a rush, working 4 chairs. Finally pries my jaw open, knee on chest, hands dripping with some other guys shredded gums. Calls in everybody to look and have a laugh. UPS man wants to know where he can get those Halloween vampire teeth. Doc gives me a script for Valuim, no refills, don’t come back. I eat a handful. Wander out onto the arterial, screeching cars swerving all around, billowing smoke from braking tires, flailing arms flipping me off. Isn’t this nice, all the pretty cars. I am Jesus walking through traffic. I love everybody. Later I turn purple in Safeway near the noisy chip bags. I NEED to kill them all. Behead them, gut them, must wallow in gore and death. Hate, kill, dismember. I limp my brain out to the parking lot and lock myself in the car. Just narrowly got past the steak knife display. Kinda yin/yang these little yellow pills, from comatose to ax murderer in 50 minuets. Maybe should read the dose on the bottle.

So then the following happened, which is conveyed through the letters which were associated with the “cat incident”. (written in large print for the aging myopic prosecutor)

=================================================================================

Dan Van Thiel
Attorney At Law
No. 10 Sixth Street, Suite 204
Astoria, OR 97103
November 27, 2000

Dear Mr. Van Thiel,

Thank you for your offer to discuss the “Cat Case” with me, Report # 20001781. I am writing to you instead of visiting, in the expediency of time and so that you have a record of my statement.

I feel that I have been wrongfully caught up in somebody else’s business and put under great hardship for an issue in which I was only trying to act as a good Samaritan. I was unaware of the surrounding situation. I request that you throw this ticket out of the books and release me from this legal entanglement. At worst, I would ask that the ticket be reduced to a minor misdemeanor with a small fine in the $100 range, in contrast to the exorbitant fine, which has been levied. I apologize for having this issue a reality at all, and for wasting the valuable resources of yourself, and the court system. If you can waive or reduce the violation, I would greatly appreciate it, and request that you do so before Nov. 30, 2000 – 5:30 PM. At that time I will be appearing before the Judge and entering a plea of Not Guilty, as you have previously advised. I will also enter my statement at that time, if allowed.

As I may have told you already, I also work with the government. I am an Engineer for the Roads Dept. in Thurston Co., WA. and supervise a crew of inspectors working county-wide. I am familiar with process and violations. We deal with each situation with some measure of individuality, particularly when the issues are minor and there is no threat to public or private safety or a threat to property. In Astoria here, I own a house, am putting two teenagers through the high school, my wife is employed with a respected organization, and I run a business manufacturing hovercrafts for government use. I have had this business for about 5 years here in Astoria, and spend considerable money in town both for parts and labor, frequently employing two area craftsmen. As a small business, I am constantly on the red line, (currently forced to move out to a higher rent shop), and as such would be completely devastated by the fine as it stands. I would be forced to close up shop, put my tools in storage, and fire two employees. Please prevent this one minute incident from having deep and lasting effect on myself and on the community. I am hoping to turn Astoria into a manufacturing, training, and touring center for hovercrafts. I have had considerable difficulty to date and am unable to handle one more blow.

Thank you for your consideration of the facts in this matter. I can be reached anytime between now and the arraignment date at (360) 481-1662. Please call and let me know what you think can be done, or how I should proceed.

The following is the sequence of events as they took place the morning of Nov.13, 2000 :

• When I pulled into the yard area of the Bumble Bee Shipyard, I saw Officer Brian Sloty alongside the entry way and slowed to 2 MPH attempting to make eye contact and see if he wished to discuss any thing with me. As I received no acknowledgment, I proceeded.

• I pulled into the building and observed a dead cat in the entryway.

• At this time, John Overholuse did not come out of my shop to discuss any issue with me as he was wearing hearing protection and was unaware of my return.

• At this point I acted impulsively and moved the dead animal to clean up the public entryway and hasten back to the needs of the fellow working for me. I believed that this “trash” would remain in place indefinitely, as is the case with all other trash dropped by other locals about the facility. I frequently have customers coming by who do not need to see a dead cat.

• After the “incident”, the Officer came down to my shop and inquired as to the whereabouts of the dead animal. I then took about a ½ hour assisting the Officer in attempting to retrieve the thing and even offered the use of a row boat for the retrieval, which was refused. The officer then asked for my Drivers License and took additional information. I resumed work.

• The Officer then returned in approximately a ½ hour and cited me with the $3,600 ticket. I was surprised beyond belief.

• After the Officer left the premises, The dog owner retrieved the dead cat from the end of the whey’s building. The animal was taken to the Animal control department where they would not issue a receipt for the same.

• The Dog owner then went and informed the Officer (Sloty), who also would give no written acknowledgment of the animal retrieval, nor would he retract the ticket. He was noted to be chuckling and giggling over the fact that I had been issued this ticket.

• Since then, it has been noted that the Officer wrongfully imagines that I had, and have, an “attitude” in spite of my citizens efforts to assist the Officer. He expressed this to the dog owner at the police station and to the buildings owner, Johnny Terribocia on 11/19 with the statement in reference to myself, “This guy doesn’t like me”. I have never given any indication to that effect and am confused as to the origin of the comment. I would hope that the Officers personal self image is not an influence in this issue, which is more of a life or death issue to me, rather than one for humor.

Thank you for your attention to this matter. Again, I request that this matter be kept out of the court system, and dealt with as a minor misdemeanor at most, or not at all. Please contact me with your conclusions with all haste.

Thank You,
Sincerely,

Charles Beyer – West Coast Hovercraft Inc.
865 Jerome Ave.
Astoria, OR 97103
Cell Phone (360) 481-1662
================================================================

My cries for justice went unanswered. As the last of my back teeth fractured, I appeared in court and took a pew next to the bald dog owner, gold hoop in one ear. The bastard had the Animal Police murder his dog in the hopes that he would get a lighter sentence. So much for dog’s best friend. What an asshole. The judge is a huge man with a dog face. His Honorable Judge Limerick. My turn on the docket comes up, alphabetically. I talk through my teeth, incoherently. “ If you request an abatement, please make a statement”, spoke his honor.
“It’s all a hideous misunderstanding”, I whimper. “I meant no trouble, only cleaning up, not my dog, no proof that the dog did it, I offered my row boat, am a respectable businessman, have pictures to prove it, the prosecutor said he would plead my case…”, whimper, snivel. His brow furrows at the mention of the attorney. I instantly know I’ve made a grievous error, mentioned his nemesis, I panic, fighting off the urge to evacuate myself.
“Ah Ha, the prosecutor, wee shall see,
before wee makes, our judicial decree”.
There is a loud noise as the Judge sucks in all the air in the room. He stands to his 12 foot height, 7 feet wide. I am beneath the mountain of municipal magnificence, face to face with his shoelace.
“The final court date is now delayed
The fines incurred are briefly defrayed
Into the river did you callously fling
The disgusting carcass, dead cat thing
Now to this court, your punishment unpaid!”

He deflates. I leave a slug trail out of the room. Two weeks later I’m down to gums in the back. Court is now in session. The prosecutor is accidentally there to hang some scum, who bought Vodka for children, then played nude musical chairs. The Mayor I think. Lucky for him it’s only a mistamenor in this town. I am called alphabetically. The Prosecutor speaks eloquently on my behalf, I know not why, some kind of lawyer’s lapse into public service. The Judge is hard to convince that I won’t lapse into recidivism, dump additional corpses into the river, like a cheap Mafia mammal movie. To keep me honest, I am sentenced to $100 and 10 hours of community service.

“Serve the time for the community good
help the people in your neighborhood
When you are done you will feel better
Send me the details in a certified letter
Do the right thing now, as you should”

“If you fail in this tasks I’ve given
For all the good, for which I’ve striven
Then the full fine, Oh you must pays
Plus 15%, for delinquent days
Debt my boy, ain’t much of a living”

Hence… My letter to the Judge.

=================================================================
January 29, 2001

Judge Limerick
Municipal Court
Astoria , OR

Dear Judge Limerick,

This letter is in response to your request that I notify you of volunteer community service that I have performed prior to February 1st.

My name is Charles Beyer, a resident of Astoria and an active community member . I was involved in an unfavorable situation with a dead cat back in November, and after much travail, came before you to discuss the details of the neighbors dog, killing a cat, a misplacement of the corpse in the river, and a resulting phenomenal ticket presented to me. The last judgment made in this matter by yourself awarded me $100 in court costs and 10 hours of volunteer service in the community. This letter then, is to report on that community service.

As recommended by your court, I called the Woman’s Center and offered my services as clerical worker, phone answering, odd job labor, computer training, or any other need they may have had. My request to volunteer was treated with suspicion, it was inferred that this was an attempt to further abuse misfortunate women. My phone number taken, and a statement made that some other person would be contacting me. This was early December, I have never heard from them to date.

Next I called the Senior Services Center and offered the same services as I had to the Woman’s Center, along with driving services, yard work, wood chopping or any other manner of mental or physical labor. Again I was answered with suspicion, con men and thieves had proceeded me. A cool statement was made that they would look into it and call me back.

Over the Christmas Holiday I drove out to Warrenton and wrote down the number for Habitat for Humanity. I then called this number repeated times, leaving my contact numbers and a small verbal resume’ of my construction experience and carpentry skills. I have heard nothing from them. Despite their large sign inviting volunteers, I must assume they are fully staffed.

Following the advice of my wife, I then contacted a local mental counselor of great popularity, who deals with a wide range of clients from old people to Vietnam Vets. Following a ½ hour talk with the receptionist (who is a friend of my wife), I was assured that the counselor would contact me with some small chores in which I might assist. Apparently my confession of operating under the court system caused them to evaluate me as crazy as any straight jacket walk-in. The phone line on this end remains silent to date.

Undaunted by such rejection of my skills, I learn that there is a state volunteer agency. To this I go this, mid January now with the clock ticking, state my request for 10 hours, and am given 5 pages of forms to fill out. There is also a book of jobs to volunteer for, and I write many of these down. The secretary deftly files my paperwork and informs me that it will be sent to Salem. Once the paperwork is received there, I may or may not be approved to volunteer ,….. in three weeks.
I entreat that I merely need 10 hours and I ask…is there not something that does not require criminal screening that I can help with?
The secretary says … that she’ll talk to the director of the program and call me back.
Three days later she calls me back and informs me … that the director believes I can be put to immediate use at the Community Action Center or the Food Bank.

I call the Community Action Center, long distance from my job in Olympia. The volunteer coordinator is highly suspicious that I ask for only 10 hours of work. I explain that I have had a minor infraction for which I am mitigating. The coordinator then insists that my clearance through the state board of criminal clearing house be confirmed, including fingerprinting. I must wait the 3 weeks.

I call the food bank. Here is a kindly person who is dedicated to distributing food, on weekdays only. I say .. I would be quite happy to come in on a Monday, my day off.
Yes… but…she says that they are very amply staffed on Mondays.
I suggest that I can catalogue all the materials on the computer and write tracking and record keeping programs.
Well… they have two donated computers but nobody knows how to use them.
I will train them, I say, even if it takes 50 hours.
Well… things have been working pretty well without them, kinda complicates everything, maybe I should try some other volunteer leads, they say.

I call the Gray Elementary school. They have listed that they want reading helpers and assistants in the computer room. I ask to talk to the principal.
She is no longer with us, they tell me.
How about the current principal, might I speak with that person?
No….but they would be happy to take a message.
I state that I can be of great value in the computer room, or alternately helping kids read.
The school secretary is very hesitant and suspicious. Do I have state clearance, she wants to know?
Pending I say, never been a criminal before.
We’ll call you, she says. I can visualize the message on a pink post-it note, “Jeffery Daumer called and would like to help the children access pornographic sites on the internet,… interested ?”
Silence reigns from the elementary school.

I call back the state volunteer department. “What is the status of the paperwork?”, I ask.
“Oh You…” they say. “Well, we never actually sent that in, because it was so easy for you to volunteer at the Food Bank or the Community Action Center.”
“Well…could you send in the paperwork now?”, I ask.
“No…we just threw all the forms out because it will be so easy for you to get 10 hours of volunteer work. Everybody needs volunteers.”
That’s just great….another two weeks lost, deadline approaching fast.

At this point, I am feeling a little disillusioned and skeptical of the incessant public cry for volunteers that is blasted through the media. If seven public volunteer agencies cannot use a strong willing male with transportation, tutoring, carpentry, computer, and engineering skills, what exactly are they looking for?

I have at this point spent well over 5 hours and additional long distance phone time trying to rustle up some volunteer action. I take a new approach. Calling the Astoria High School, I somehow manage to get through the gatekeepers and am put in touch with the physics teacher. I volunteer to give a demonstration of an operating hovercraft and explain the mathematics of the same to the honors physics class. Luckily, my name is associated with my children there at the school, who are very good students. The teacher wholeheartedly accepts my offer and we arrange it for the January 29th, 2 hour class. I do not confess to my criminal infraction, which may negate the deal, given past experience. I then spend an hour preparing the hovercraft, 1.5 hours preparing a cirriculum, a half hour making copies of relevant equations and handouts, ¾ of an hour loading and unloading the craft for demonstration, ½ hour reloading and re-storing the craft, and the 2 hour class it’s self.

The class is wonderful, the demonstration kinetic, the students are attentive, interested, the lights are on in their eyes. The questions are adept, near the point, and the teacher is pleased. I tell the students of the many opportunities opening up in this field and that I will mentor anyone of them or their friends wishing to learn more of the business and operation of hovercrafts. I also tell many stories from the Human Fly to the great hovercraft sinking of 96'.’This then …. Has been a success.

Returning then to our original agreement, your Honor…. 10 hours of community service. I am not sure if I have fulfilled the appropriate hours in the appropriate way, but I surly have attempted to do so through all the normal channels, and ultimately by my own design. At this time, I have been requested by my job to work 5 days a week, so henceforth will only have the weekend in which to further volunteer in Astoria. I will continue to encourage the youth, as I do frequently with demonstrations rides and explanations regarding hovercrafts. My shop doors are always open for any interested party, young or old, to learn what I have to teach about this technology. Hopefully my High School demonstration will result in Future Seniors mentoring with me in the study of hovercraft Technology.

In light of these facts, I request to be released from my obligation to the Astoria Municipal Court System.
Thank You.

Sincerely,
Charles Beyer
865 Jerome
Astoria, OR 97103
338-6668
AKA “Kat Killer”

Footnote: By the time the letter was received, Judge Limerick had been fired for alcohol consumption on the bench and retreated to Lincoln city to do sleaze private eye work in recreational condos. The court had no record of my arrangement with the Judge. I pleaded that I was also picking up trash along the highway, which was a lie, and on March 23 I received a letter releasing me from all municipal encumbrance. To date I struggle to keep clear of the law, and aside from a few minor infractions, like carrying a grocery sack of picilociban mushrooms out of the woods in to the waiting arms of the state police, I am a law abiding citizen and standing member of the community. I avoided the drug dealing charge by telling the pigs I was going to eat the whole bag and see god.

========================

Puerto Rico

The iron clenching grip on my intestines pulsed twice in it’s spasmodic dysentery delight. She doesn’t give a shit, I think, as I spray a quart of foulness in the toilet. She’s really thinking about going back to “him”, the macho bastard with all the big screen TV’s, computers and sports cars. My ass is strangely clean for all the vileness it expels. I sand it down for the 20th time with what seems like nettle toilet paper. Splashing my sweat covered face in the sink, twisting the exhaust fan onto high turbo, I pull myself together and go back into the computer room. As I walk in, a screen of chat suddenly disappears.
“who’s that?’ I ask
“What? What do you mean?” a nervous note in her voice.
“Who you were just chatting with. Who was it?’’
“Oh all these liars are always tiring to chat with me. I didn’t really notice.” She replies
Who knows a god damned liar better than the sneaky ass pathological queen of lies herself. I can feel that she’s full of shit.

“you don’t have to go , ya know”. I say with a low growl
“What do you mean?”
“You could go stay with your mother. Or go back to HIM!” Save me about a thousand dollars, I’m thinking.
“I don’t want to go back to him” she whines “I came here to be with YOU.”
She lies. She’s probably dissing me on the net with him 7 seconds ago.
“Just giving you a way out … if you want it. It will be hard ya know. I wanna hack through the jungle and shit. We’re talking bugs and branches here”. Silence follows my statement.
Finally she un-committally says. “I wanna do that too.”
“I need an enthuastic partner, ya know. It would be good if you were into something!” I snap back.
She hasn’t been into jack shit since she got here. A steady diet of coffee, cigarettes and clandestine chat on the computer. Read no books. Blabbed constantly about the injustice of her old boyfriend. Sleeps all the goddamned time. Like pulling hair to go for a walk around the block.
“I can get into things. I’m interested in stuff. I want to learn.” The whiney tone again.
“What are you interested in?” I demand
“I made a list of hotels there. I dunno. I’m just in a sort of a slump now.” Yeah, heard this before to explain no electrical activity in the cranium. What’s with the hotels. Does she think I’m Paul Allen. I want to sleep in the jungle. Commune with the tropical jungle. Breath the primordial life. Dodge the snakes and spiders. Find the lost Spanish treasure. This ain’t happening. She thinks this is a vacation to beach hotels, $20 drinks with an umbrella served by a obsequesent dark skinned person. My ass feels like an air hose has been rammed into it. It’s time again.
“Squooze me. Gotta use the room.”

Puretro Rico. The Ex-patriots dream of easy living. Everything cheap. Tropical beaches all around to live on like Robinson Crusoe.. No Federal taxes. A hideout from the Northern chill and the teeming urgency of a commodity driven society. I promised my self I would go. Maybe never come back. I promised to take her too, a few months back when things looked brighter. When there was love. Where is the love now? We disrespect each other. To me she is a lazy millstone. An arm ornament at best. At 10 years younger, she still has a porn star figure. Wild and disrespectful hair. She is beautiful. Exudes sexual excitement. Acts affectionate. But there is no touching now. I am gray, overweight, starting to ache and make groaning noises when I get up. A typical older man. A Mark. A guy with some cash to blow. A guy with a vacation to adsorb. I know she’ll dump me like a stone in a cold river when we get back. I repulse her now. No fun. Grumpy in the knowledge of my withering demise. My impending dumping. And now, the trots. One big stinking asshole, crawling with bacteria. That’s me. About as appealing as licking a dog turd. I feel doomed. I’ll take her, but I know my fate here. Hopefully I can find a refuge there where I can hide from my country, the insidious police, Homeland Insecurity, my dis-functional family, the friends that I don’t have. Maybe I can find peace, find love. I must try.

Land is in sight now after interminable hours of open ocean. Thought the pilot took a left and was headed to Morocco. Below me is the Island. Island of hope. The housing looks queer. There are hundreds of shacks with various rusty mismatched corrugated roofs. They are densely clustered and mis-aligned to each other. The disorder reminds me of street confetti after a parade. Swampy areas meander through the windrows of roof rubble. San Juan comes into view below. The buildings are bigger but do not exceed two stories. They also are flung on the land in disarray. Streets run in random between like looking at a worm ball the dog coughed up. There’s the runway. Grass sprouts from the cracks in it. Black rubber streaks are where they should not be. Banking the plane at too low an elevation (in my opinion) the captain begins his final approach. A few moments of terror filled screeching tires and the roar of reverse jets, the plane slows and regains control. A cheer and clapping erupts from the Puerto Ricans packed in the plane. What is this? Is a successful landing unusual here? I join in the cheer. I’m glad to be on the ground.

Inside the airport the walls are lined with arcade games. Men and boys vigorously play these, thumping the sides appropriately to maneuver the ball. Baggage signs are in Spanish and have multiple arrows pointing in different directions. At least there’s some directions. We follow the mob. Down we go to a lower level. The floor is tile and covered in water. It is slippery as hell. Has there been a flood? It is musky and humid.
“I think this is condensation” she says. Adept I think. Makes sense. I do not praise her observation. Our luggage is last on the rotating machine. No one checks a damn thing. I could have taken the nice luggage and gotten some new polyester pants. Mine have leak stains now. I know I stink, but there are a hundred new stink odors. I can blame it on them. Must find the bathroom. Praise the international symbols for man and woman. The sign cryptically says “Cabolleros”. I’d have thought this was just for bullfighters. Inside is 1950. More dripping tile. Bespattered mirrors. Pull paper strewn. No sparkling urinals with radar sensors for when you zip up, only old partially rusted
plumbing with a germ covered handles. I secure myself in a stall on the worn seat. No time to worry about the cultures growing there. I am my own voracious ecosystem of seething bacteria, no doubt excluding any microscopic encroachment attempts. Explosively reliving my self, I pause here, resting my head in my hands as my guts clench and knot in it’s new found space. Eventually pull myself together and head for the sink. Only cold water, which is like warm. No soap. One empty soap dispenser for 10 sinks. I scrub my hands in the unknown water, and look for the paper towels. Empty. She is waiting outside, looking fearful.

There is no sign posted for our cheap auto rental place. I huaranng a few bus drivers and determine where to wait. Eventually a battered buss careens out of the 4 lane traffic and jerks to a stop at our location. The ride is my first taste of automobile operation here. The driver cuts in front of people and lunges headlong into traffic from a side street to make turns. I am impressed. So much so I tip him a few dollars. He gives me a bewildered look but then smiles and happily pockets the money. Our car is red and has air conditioning. This I check out right away. There is a large dent in the rear bumper, a decent scratch a meter long down the side, and the side mirror is cracked. They ask me three times if I want the collision insurance. Why should I want that? I’m a great driver.

We make our way to the old quarter of San Juan. Massive walls surround the place to ward off the ghosts of long distant pirates. The streets are 7/8th of a car wide. I see now why the mirrors are hammered. I kiss a few parked car mirrors, gently of course, but most are cleaved off already giving clearance to the tiny red car. The mirrors hang as if eviscerated eyeballs on their optic cords, glinting in the slanting light. All signs are in Spanish. After a few excitements, I determine which ones mean “do not enter” and “one way”. Everything is one way, but at random, such that many blocks must be passed to find one going in your direction. Police are everywhere. There are police and military standing on corners, going by in vans by the half dozen, police cars meandering around with their lights twirling and flashing. Apparently this means nothing, and they do this just because they can. No one pulls over. There is no place to pull over. Cars tailgate the police, the police tailgate everyone and all are honking to get things moving faster than the 10 MPH crawl around these canyons of antiquity. The uniforms are a mis-match of blue issue and personal camouflage pants or hats. All have guns, some rifles. Sinister automatic looking things. The pistols are of individual choice, generally being huge nickel plated of large caliber. These are prominently displayed, coming half way to the knee and well above the belt. I’m feeling a little paranoid and have to evacuate again. Time is running short. If one of them gets behind me with the lights going, I’ll crap for sure.

We find our place. It is a door way off the street with a sign the size of a cigarette package. Incredibly there is a parking place 20 feet away. A rusted iron gate made of ½ inch bars spaced 2 inches apart is ajar. We go in. A tile and marble staircase leads up into darkness. On the second landing a glass door is open and a rotund balding fellow is shuffling about. He has what used to be a white t-shirt, now stained with food and lathered in sweat.
“Hello. Hello. We’re like a room please” I attract his attention.
“Como?”
“A room. A room for the night. El rento.” that’s stupid and I know it.
“Ahhh. A room. Uno noche?”
“Yes .. one night.” Guessing what he said.
“Si. Hoe K then. Want to see room?”
I don’t give a shit. Just want to shit. “Yes please” She says. What the hell are we going to do if she don’t like it? There’s no other place around. It’s getting dark. We’re starved. I’m sick. We have to take it. We walk down some corridors and he unlocks a rusty padlock on a 10 foot tall door. Inside is a spacious room about half the size of a gym with a ceiling 20 feet up. The walls are made of 14 different types of paneling and plywood. A single cloth wrapped wire runs up from a cracked switch that promises a shock in some foreign voltage, to a distant paddle fan. Proudly he twists this and the fan slowly begins to turn.
“Seee. Aero condition.” He proudly announces. It is about 103 in the room. The air dead as oil in a bucket. I wonder if this technology marvel will increase the room cost. A solitary double bed stands in the middle of the room under the fan, twisted iron bed posts, a raft in a sea of elaborate tile work. Two sets of doors that are really large shutters open out onto a deck with iron railing. This is cooler out there with the updraft from the street. The porch hangs out from the building, suspended in space. I like it. This place has character. I feel like I’m Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. She has a bewildered look. A mix of horror and astonishment.
‘We’ll take it. It’s wonderful” I blurt out. An icy stare drills me from the woman.
“Eeet iss fine then. Come with me.”
Forty five dollars later and ample instructions in broken English on the bathroom and the keys for the front gate, the room padlock, and the mystery key, we are issued a half roll of toilet paper. Back in the room I marvel at the ancient tile work paving the floor. A mix of Spanish and Moroccan design. Then out onto the porch where the people move about below uncaring of my eagles perch, the cars cram bumper to bumper at a crawl up the narrow street, honking all the way. It is delightful. All the foreign and exotic I could have wished for. The pastel three and four story buildings lean over the skinny street in either direction, iron designs and odd corners jutting out everywhere. The ceiling fan paddles a draft of molten air on her, laying pouting on the bed, saying nothing. What the hell is with that? Where is the excitement, the commentary, the enthusiasm? What a pisser. I head down the hall to the Caballero’s bathroom. Wet white tile paves the huge room. A battered sink, a toilet all alone on the other side of the room, a makeshift shower in a bathtub with one water handle. No soap. My body wrings it’s self out again like a kitchen dish rag. Roaches skitter in all directions like the people of the street.

Hunger. Four in the afternoon. Thinking a quaint café with crafted iron work and different pastel walls. A nice menu in English announcing ethnic dishes of …. What? I have no idea what the hell they eat around here. Haven’t seen a single café anywhere. No Mom and Pop corner bistro, no weirdo burrito stands, nothing. Just beer. Huge billboards decrying beer with ample white women barely clad cuddling a can like a breast. Every two blocks, a open air beer cantina. A counter, a few tables, a few chairs, lacking two walls, and 20 skinny shifty looking men drinking beer. All standing. Need food. Cranky.
“You’d think there’d be a Denny’s or a Shari’s around here somewhere. I don’t see any family restaurants.” I comment
“All I want is a steak. Medium rare.” A light whine in her voice.
“Do you see any goddamned steaks out there. I haven’t even seen any cows.”
“Just because you haven’t seen any doesn’t mean there aren’t any.”
“Does it look like these people eat steak? Looks like they eat dog to me.”
“You don’t have to be such a racist. We’ll just eat what they eat.’ A decided pout in her voice.
“Yeah well, you just tell me what the fuck they eat!”
“I don’t have to tell you shit!”
“That’s cause you don’t know shit.”
Death silence. Frown lines cutting down her chin into the neck. Straight ahead stony look.
“There’s a damn McDonalds. You want a burger?”
“Yes”
So again, another meal in the ubiquitous Micky D. Same crap, different planet. Nobody speaks English in these places. You have to flail your order to a near comatose teenager. At least that’s the same.
“Quatro cheese burgers, uno dinero menu.” Pray the broken Spanish works.
“Como?”
“ummm , carne. Cheese burgers?” Pointing wildly at the menu now but might as well be pointing out the star Sirius. Holding up 4 fingers. Get out 4 dollars and wave them around. Now a spark in their eye. Rich Americano. Eventually the manager comes out of the back to translate the piddly order. We scarf the mush in the car and feel better. Back to being polite now, till the next crisis.

Thinking fruit and vegetable stand here. Or grocery store. Nary a one in sight. Haven’t seen a single grocery store and we’ve been over 70% of the roads on this weird Island. Where the hell do people get their food? What the hell do they eat here? Oh, for just one Safeway deli. Where’s the food? The Chinese take out. There’s only these strange ramshackle roadside stands. They are built of an assortment of odd boards and sheets of tin. Not unlike a kids first tree house. A typical stand is hollowed out of the right-of-way brambles. Looks like a green cave. Trash is festooned in the bushes all around. Plastic bags and fast food wrappers waft languidly with each passing car. The wares are only an odd assortment of plastic milk jugs partially filled with colored fluids. What is this stuff? It exudes bacterial contamination. Who buys this stuff? What are ya going to pay for a glass of this mystery fluid? Twenty bucks for an obvious tourist maybe? Twenty five cents to a local, I suspect. We’re not thirsty. The proprietors leer at us as we pass. Need something to grind in our teeth.

Another stand goes by, lathered in snagged plastic bags. Plastic bags waft playfully in the air currents of the highway like lost balloons at the fair. Plastic bags are all over the beaches and floating in the water as dead jelly fish mimics. The bags hung like fruit on every highway bush, drifted into aero-terrestrial mounds on the edges of all parking lots, flapping in the breeze in trees. This is the true Puerto Rican flag.

I’m looking for the goddamned fruit trees. Everything is jungle and stagnate saturated heat. Every kind of Gooba wabba plant all around, big leaves, verdant greens. I see no avocado trees. No orange trees. No tangerine, grapefruit, papaya. Disheveled banana plantations pass by the highway, but there are no bananas in the trees. Where’s the Harry Belafonta song about “picka de beeanna … daaaay oh”? All I got ringing in my head is “yes .. we haves no bananas”. What refugee from 4th grade English coined that?

With much inspection, by slowing my car and rubbernecking out the window to a serenade of swerving, honking Puerto Ricans, I do notice that there are Mango trees. There is a rotting mango mush under each of these trees. The fruit to high up to reach or to far gone on the ground. Never really cared for that slimy stuff any way. Sort of a cantaloupe with a glandular problem. A melon with the day care flu. The rind is attached like a carp skin. By the time you get it off, you have a mucus mud slide mess in your lap with an alarming sticky quality. So, screw that crap. At long last, I spy a citrus tree of some sort. I am nearing a mountain pass on the windiest narrow road since Hannibal went over the Alps. Parking at what I perceive to be the edge of the road, I triple lock the car and scurry back down to the tree. Pick ups and sedans tear past at 60, about 40 MPH past safe driving speed. At the next blind corner in 200 feet, their tires shriek as they swerve wildly into the oncoming lane. I stand on a mashed over road barrier and pull a branch down. Small green oranges? Un ripe tangerines? Green lemons? I slice one open. Yes, clear juice, tang in the air, citrus for sure. Hmmm green interior. A bite. Limes. A tree of sourpuss limes. Not bad though, in spite of the lack of Tequila, a refreshing tart taste. I load a half dozen into my shirt. This will balance my McDonalds scurvy compatible diet.

A massive horn honking is coming down the hill. The berserker is flat leaning on the horn. BBLAAAAAAAAAAAA. BLAAAAAAAAAAA! A restless deluge of sound. Accompanying this orchestra is the squealing of tires and minor horns bleating against the din. I cannot see ahead through the curves and trees what the approaching monster is. An elephant stampede through an office hallway seems safer. Finally I see it. A fuel truck that is twice the length of any curve radius. The wild eyed driver looks less than 16, baseball cap on backwards. He is careening the truck around the corners with one very busy arm, the other working the horn like a ping pong paddle at the Japanese Open. I see that my fragile rental car is parked right on the curve, and that this impending doom uses both lanes and an ample percentage of the shoulder. My god, no time to move the car. Should I get in and be slapped off the edge by the Shell brand crocodile tail? Sure death, that plan. I run to a short straight stretch and cling to a barren banana tree. My attention is riveted to the mechanical tsunami’s approach. Right at the curve, the driver realizes there is a car parked in his sonic shock wave. He dynamites the breaks with a rendering shriek and small cumulious cloud. Then off the brakes and back on the horn. Still traveling at 50 into the 20 MPH curve. Skillfully he spins the steering wheel, careening the truck across the entire road and diving into the curve. The paint on the rental is scratched from the air pressure of the near miss, the sides miraculously not crumpling like a bad memo. Then he is past. Stress factor 9 is gone. His massive horn recedes down into the valley below, doing the Einstein relative sound shift thing. I sneak my pitiful limes into the rental and speed the hell out of there, at 60, but with the windows down to hear the next truck.

All the crazies are on my ass like a fat woman on a bicycle seat. No matter what speed I drive, some son-of-a-bitch zooms up behind me and sticks on me like a thigh pimple. In the rear view mirror is the pop-eyed intense freako of who I can only see hood, windshield and eye whites. Can’t even see the bashed in car grill. Bastard can’t be more than 7 inches off my license plate.

I swerve halfway onto the median and the maniac punches it, flying past at 70. No thought to oncoming traffic. That’s some other fools problem. The oncoming swerve wildly to the road edge as the auto rocket roars up the center line. What the fuck’s the pricks hurry? There is no business to attend to. There are no appointments. There is only beer. Get to the beer. This is what is important. This is the mission.

Cars streaming by are a parade from a stock car race. They are all smashed up. Some are “T-boned” in the side doors, but most are diagonally mashed. Fine one eyed crunchings that appear to be 15 to 25 MPH impacts. The entire headlight or rear taillight systems are missing, crumpled into a used baked potato wrapper. There is no repair. The car still works just fine, 20 to 60 in 4 seconds. These scraggly tetanus traps have killed and will kill again. Bold alley cats have their ears in ribbons because they won’t back down from a snarling swing fight. Timid felines have abscesses on their rump from running in terror. The cars to stay out of the way of are smashed in front, the Loco Gatos.

Intersections are an anarchist cowboys dream come true. There are no signals, signs, or markings. There are no rules. The boldest, horn-honking, accelerating reckless maniac rules. Courtesy is for wimps. Wimps are pushed sniveling to the side.

Getting the local flavor of Puerto Rican traffic rules, I find my self sheepishly attempting a left intersection turn. To cross a 4 lane intersection the procedure is to charge out there in the fastest most aggressive manner possible, breaking only at the last possible second before collisions. Luckily, there is a more brazen maniac operator in front of me that hooks his vehicle into the oncoming traffic lane at a rakish diagonal and slowly squeezes the pre-smashed nose of his car into the traffic. This causes the incoming to swerve frantically in to the jammed lane to their right, which is speeding by at bumper to bumper 60. His mechanical foreplay is accompanied by commodious honking and fist waving. Full moons of bulging eye whites in the oncoming traffic blend with their locked tire smoke. Their hesitation horror creates a split second hole in the sea of iron. I burst ahead, careening the car into the gap, plowing chicken into the impeding collision. By some temporal miracle of chaos theory, another hole appears to shoot through. I hook the sidewalk for a little more maneuvering room, scattering pedestrians, bolting for their lives. Through the mousetrap, I blast down the side street to the thumping noises of impacting metal and blaring horns behind me. My whiny passenger has sunk her fingers into the dash board and oddly appears to have lost her tan. I’m feeling very Puerto Rican.

Ahhh ... the jungle. A sea of turbulent green. Weird creatures hoot and whistle in the deep of it. The cochi frog altos it's refrain, over and over. It's touted as the beloved mascot of the island, known as an invasive pest elsewhere. We are at a dead end road. Dead end because a mud slide, now dried, has gooshed over the pavement 20 feet deep. No municipal rush to clear this it would seem. We stroll the road a few hundred feet before I have to leap into the brush and evacuate. Two different plants attach their sticky and velcro seed pods all over me. So efficient that they stick on my skin like tiny leaches. At first I think they are leaches and scape the little attachments with a fervor. My brown paint slathers the exotic foliage. I feel good about bringing dysentery to this Island. With any luck this will wash into the village water system and spread an epidemic of some new virulent strain. I contracted this from wastewater of a EPA lab, so there is hope that it is some indestructible genetic modification, poised to wreak havoc in these peoples already miserable lives. Possibly they all have it already. That's why they are so skinny.

I trample a thick patch of 6 foot grass to put up the tent. She does not help. The tent is budget. Tiny. When our blankets are in, it becomes apparent that I only fit diagonally. She is smaller, she'll have to adapt. It is still a hundred something,the walls of the tent instantly dripping with condensation and running onto the floor,and sponging up in the blanket. Night comes suddenly and punctually at 6 PM. Twelve hours cooped up in here.

Outside the tent a fog of mosquitoes gathers, attracted by our CO2. These are minuscule creatures, 1/3 the size of an decent mosquito. Fast and vicious,they pack a poisonous bite. I am covered in welts from setting up the tent as she cowered in the car. Dengue fever, Dengue fever, Dengue fever keeps going through my mind as a mantra. No known cure, a life of half lidded tupor for the rest of your years. If it's out there, I got it.

I had envisioned this as a blanket under the tropical stars, toucans calling in the tree tops, cool air on our naked bodies as we make love in the resonance of nature. But here we are, huddled in a over sized plastic bag, sticky with sweat and microscopic organisms. Penned in from the ravenous hoard of insects foaming at the proboscis for our blood. A thousand feet below us are the local villages with their incessant mamba music wafting up to us. Occasional shouts and gunshots. They are drinking, as they are always drinking. But it is night now so there is justification. The babe is fetal, holding her knees and rocking back and forth. She is terrified that a car load of these revelers will come up here and rape us to death. She looks raped already.
“We're fine” I assure her, but I get my knife ready to slash the first throat through the tent wall.

Midnight something. The party's still going on the valley floor. The frogs continue their weird whistling. I scramble out of the nylon to relive my self. A huge firefly looms by. As big as a thumb. Acts like a tiny flash light on a helium balloon, rising and falling and wafting away.
“Hey. Get up, get up. You gotta see this”
“Uuuhhhh. What?” a classic groan
“It's really cool. A giant firefly”
“Oh.”
Quick. It's moving on”
Uuhhoo. OK” She drags he self to the tent screen, doing me a favor she thinks 'Where?”
“Well .. it gone now”
“Oh great. Get me up for nothing”
“that was not nothing. You were doing nothing”
“I was trying to sleep! Ohhhuuh” She collapses back into the humid nest.
Pathetic, I think. How the hell can she be so tired. We have done nothing except eat off the dollar menu. It is clear out now, the air cooler, the mosquitoes gone off to be frog food. I see the constellations in the stars, all twisted and crumpled from this low latitude angle. Now we should go for a walk. Discover the mystery's and wonders of the night. But she's afraid of the dark. Won't go out in it. What the hells with that. Aren't you supposed to grow out of that at age 7? I stay there with her. Wouldn't want to miss out on the raping. Probably do my asshole some good.

I fall into an exhausted sleep. She cowers in the 3 square feet left to her, fitfully imagining all the horrors of the six o'clock news befalling her. The morning is cool with a hundred new songs in the forest. A light mist obscures the valley below. The energy of the jungle is humming it's music. The locals quiet below, only the peace of the dripping environment. I want to hike up a creek, be off the trail. Adventure.
“Lets go hike up that creek just next to us. Be fun” I cheerfully suggest.
“let's not and say we did” Great. And always with some worn out platitude.
“Well .. why not?”
“Coffee. Need coffee”
“But we're here now. This is the time”
“This is not the time” She's not the movie star now. Her hair is tangled and stringy with sweat. Her skin a fevered pallor. I feel chipper. The gut is unusually quiet.
“Commme ooon, A little walk will do you good”
With much conjoling I guilt trip her out of the car seat after I have packed up everything. I jump off the road into the dangling lianas, flailing spider webs with a rotten stick. She timidly takes a reluctant step to follow.

Every step is a psychic prodding to get her to follow. Now down onto the rocks of the creek bed. They are covered in slime. Impossible to get any traction. Feet dancing like a hokey puck on the smooth stones. A broken bone poised to happen. With the labor of Hercules I get her to follow a few hundred feet. There is a beautiful pool of crystal water.
Oooh. Look, a lobster of some sort. It is wild looking, all striped in reds and blacks and white. About the size of a dinner plate. I rush to capture it with a stick but it hides under convoluted bolder.
“Did you see it. Did you see it” I excitedly express.
“no” She is bland. Bored.
“Hey, lets go for a skinny dip. It will feel good” I'm thinking I can get amorous, all clean and fresh in the warm water.
“No way!”
“Huh? Why not?”
“There's that crab thing in there”
“He lives there. He's no danger. He's scared out of it's little mind. Comme ooon. It's refreshing” I say as I splash my self with water.
“No”
“Dammn. Kind of a chicken Aren't you?
“Yes. Chicken” Shes not moving any more. Took an hour to drag her these few hundred feet. I'd like to continue on for a mile or so. It is obviously impossible. Come 7000 miles and she won't go a few feet.
“OK. Let's go then” I am resigned to her selfishness. Pissed, but resigned. Soon back in the safety of the rental. Our one connection with American civilization. Jungle behind us. Back in the maze of crappy housing. Groups of cadaverous men lurk on the street corners, eying us like roast turkey. A few lunge with sinister intent tword the car. Murder is in their eyes. I gun the gas and scatter them, running a red light at the streets end. She is ashen. Sunk down into the seat so that only her brow clears the dash. Eventually we get tiny coffees the size of water cooler cups. Buck each. She orders 4.
“Ouno. Ouno caafa?” The bewildered mc Donald teen says.
“Four. I want Four, danmn it! I want a lot of coffee” She holds up 4 fingers
“Ahhh .. Quatro Caafaa” the light dawns in the youth like the discovery of DNA
“Yes. Quatro. Si. Grasias” This is the most verbose she's been in Spanish since we got here, though I had insisted we learn the language. I might as well have suggested Mongolian.

The rest is a run for the airport. 72 hours of confusion, hard seats, bad coffee, public bathrooms, and cell phones, we are back in the NW USA. 8 hours later she leaves me for the bald bastard in California. A mix of heartbreak and good riddance.

======================

SECRETS OF THE OWYHEE DESERT

“Thank you for calling the 911 emergency hot line. Currently, all of our lines are busy assisting other victims. Your emergency is important to us. Please hold and an operator will be with you shortly.”
A robot voice. “Your…current…wait time …..is….twenty. two…minutes”. Then it cuts to whiney lite rock. As if somebody is supposed to sway and tap their feet to happy little thoughts while they bleed to death for 22 minutes or slither from room to room avoiding a maniac with a gun.

I put the phone under my coat collar to muffle the nasal music, hoping to hear the operator if one should come on. I turn my attention back to the car wreck beside the Washington I-5 freeway. There is a well dressed man in the mangled rental car. He appears to be in expensive clothes. I smell gas and burning wires. Not a good combination. There is a tree about where the car radio should be. The man’s upper leg is badly slashed. Blood has filled the seat, pooling below around the brake pedal in a thick puddle. He has been mashed between the steering wheel and the tree, some part of the dash board slicing him. With difficulty I drag him from the car to a tree 30 feet away, and lean his back against it. Quickly removing my belt, I make a crude tourniquet around his leg, cinching it tight and stopping the incessant spurting. The man groans at my efforts to make him comfortable. Suddenly, he becomes lucid.

“What happened?” he says in clear English.
‘You’ve been in a wreck, sir. Sit still. Help is coming.” I lie.
“Listen to me now. Listen to me.” He sputters with urgency.
“Stay calm sir. You are hurt. You need medical attention.”
“You think I don’t know that, stranger? I can see what’s happened here. I have to tell you about a treasure before I go. I have to tell someone.” My hearing instantly improved 300%. My memory went into photographic record mode. This is what happened in The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, my favorite Western movie. To my disappointment, he begins to talk of his life

“I was born in San Francisco, growing up in the Hippy times of the youth culture. I took every drug that there was to be ingested. Eventually, I became addicted to 3 or 4 of them. I stole and I cheated to get another hit. I was a bad person, not worth the spit on the sidewalk. When I wrecked a BMW into a school bus in a toxic stupor, I was lucky enough to re-evaluate my life. With much difficulty I got into college and threw myself into the sciences. I cursed the years I had frittered away rotting my mind. The learning was not easy. In a few years, I had ideas, wonderful Ah-Ha ideas. I built strange gizmo’s from scratch and capitalized on them. I met a woman that I loved with all my heart. We were married and lived in love on a second floor in the Mission District.

Within a year, she was with child. When we had two children, old demons came back to haunt me. I resumed occasional drug use, which accelerated until I was back in full swing. My reasoning power gone, I dealt drugs for a living. My activities were not lost to my children’s observation, or my wife’s. The kids became involved in the seedy levels of society. Just like their Dad. My wife grew to hate me. In their teens, my son was shot and killed in a gang war, my daughter murdered in the course of her whoring activities. The wife promptly divorced me. She left, never looked back. I have never seen or heard from her again. I cried a river to pale the mighty Sacramento. Into a depression I fell, so deep that it lasted 3 years. I stopped all drugs and moped around a dark and foul smelling apartment.

One day I noticed it was Spring outside, trees were flowering along the streets, People were smiling. The sun was fresh and bright. Some Ah-ha ideas for medical equipment suddenly came to me, seemingly from out of the blue. With renewed vigor, I built prototypes that exceeded expectations. Soon I was making and selling a thousand units a day with 15 employees. Business thrived, but my heart remained damaged. It has never recovered. I amassed a small fortune which I converted to gold and silver bullion. This I have buried in the Owyhee desert of Idaho.”

Ahhhh… here it is. The good part. But no…. again he continues about his life.
“I have been a bad man in my life, hurting people, selfish, sometimes even evil. But I have been paid back in like coin for my transgressions, suffering along with those that I abused. For these things I lament and beg forgiveness to those who will listen. I am so sorry. But I have also been a good man, loved with all my heart, helped and cherished those around me, saved thousands of lives across the world with my industry. For this I have been proud to be alive. Proud to have alleviated the suffering of my fellow humans, proud to be regarded with esteem. If not for the mistakes and the stupidity, maybe I would not be here now, dying without love, in the rain and dark, telling of my soul to a stranger. Do not waste your life, stranger. Find what makes you and those around you have joy. Find my gold and infuse your life with love and happiness. This is my last request, presented to another man, unknown to me.” Tears were streaming from his eyes while these emotions overcame him. Some sobs convulsed his crumpled frame, choking in his chest. Men crying around men…. I was involuntarily embarrassed.
“I will sir….. I will.” I said. This seemed to comfort him a little. He coughed a few times, a broken painful cough. His lips reddened with blood, contrasting to his pale and drained face. Sensing his end, he began once more.

“You must head east, stranger, east on Interstate 84 to Idaho. About 25 miles after you cross out of Oregon and into Idaho, you will come to the town of Nampa. Take the third exit and head south on Hwy 45 to the Snake River. You will cross the Snake at a place called Walters Ferry.” Oddly, he paused in his directions to tell me a little story about this place.

“Walter was a huge 7 foot 4 black man who had escaped slavery in Louisiana in 1860. How he came to this place on the edge of the Owyhee desert is not known, but he built a ferry and a stone house which remains to this day. Walter was a little touchy about his heritage. He did not take kindly to derogatory slurs. People that unkindly called him “Boy” and the other popular words of debasement for Blacks, usually did not make a successful crossing of the river on Walter’s ferry. In 1910 when the ferry had mysteriously stopped running for a month, his stone house was entered . They found his massive rotting body slumped over a grand piano, his fingers decaying into the gaps between the ivory keys. The entire house was packed with elegant European furniture, no doubt gleaned from the unfortunate slurring pilgrims.

The dying man coughed twice and blood flowed from his mouth, dripping down his chin. He breathed in shallow wet rattles with obvious pain. I thought this was the end of his story, the blood loss and crushed torso overwhelming him. Mustering his ebbing strength, he continued.

“From Walters Ferry, head NW on Hwy 78. You will pass through the town of Marsing, which is of no account. About 10 miles past this at mile post 19 there is a turn off to the north to the town of Wilson. Take this road and travel the 2.5 miles into the remnants of the little burg. There is a road off to the left called Linda Lane. Follow this 4.5 miles to the junction of Linda and Rabbit Creeks. Back track one gulch on the north side of the dirt road. This is Cha lee’s gulch, named for a Chinaman who fell in love with the lily white daughter of a local rancher, Linda Lowper. Linda also loved Cha Lee. When it became apparent that Miss Lowper was gaining size, the women of the local grange grilled her extensively at the knitting bee. Finally she cracked under the pressure and revealed all. The love, the Chinaman sex, the plans to elope. A justice party was formed up among the cowboy ranchers. Linda begged the possy to be gentle with the man she loved. Cha lee was hunted down in the gulch that bears his name and shot 47 times with high caliber rifles. Left to rot and be picked apart by coyotes, the desert soon carried him away to the sand from whence he came. Linda gave birth to a healthy boy 6 months later, and Cha Lee’s son grew up to become the first territorial Sheriff of Owyhee County.” The man paused to search my face. Proud of his storytelling, even with his last few breaths, he wanted confirmation that I enjoyed them. I was seething with anxiety that he would die before revealing a more exact location, wasting the last moments repeating a bad Zane Grey plot. I nodded and smiled in appreciation, unwilling to speak and prolong the detour from the treasures location. Finally, he continued.

“Proceed a few hundred feet into the gulch. Facing up the gulch there is a small ridge to your right. Climb to the top of this ridge where you can see for 50 miles in every direction. Walk the hog back a few hundred feet in either direction until you find a large white cobble of bull quartz, about the size of small football. From there ….”

Here he paused again as though the effort of the climb had been too much. Again, more wet hacking and more blood slobbing from his mouth. I tried to gently wipe some away with my sleeve, ignoring the blood-bourn pathogen scare that’s so imbedded in our times. The man’s eyes were closed and he was still. The breathing was shallow now, almost non-existent. Sitting there with him, the rain drizzling in the dark, death lurking in the near shadows, I wondered what dreadful fate had brought him here.

“This is the 911 operator. What is the nature of your situation?” The squacking bureaucrat suddenly erupted in my collar. Fumbling the phone out, I replied.
“There’s been a car wreck on the interstate, about 2 miles north of Johnson’s Loop exit. A man is dying here with multiple injuries. Send an ambulance FAST!”
“What is your name sir, and what is your social security number?”
“Whaa?.. What’s this Homeland security shit? Just help this man, would you?”
“We’ll need your driver’s license number and proof of insurance also, sir. What is your reason for being there?”
“Goddamn it. I just stopped to help this poor bastard. Get him a fucking ambulance, will you? I’m not the one bleeding to death here!”
“An officer is in route sir. Please identify yourself.”

I hang up and turn my attention back to the apparently dead man. I gently touch his face, as if that will let me know if he is gone. I feel so sorry for him, dying here, alone from all who knew him. He gives a few weak coughs and opens his eyes. He seems surprised that he is still here. Still beside the callous rushing freeway, in the dark, in the rain, next to a stranger. He resumes right where he left off.

“From the quartz cobble, the treasure is straight down the slope to the east, a drop of 6 feet in elevation. Here is where I’ve buried the gold and silver. Fifty ounces of gold and 200 ounces of silver. The spot is not marked, so it will look like the rest of the desert. Sage is all around. It is set up to find with a metal detector. A few inches below the surface are two steel rings. Six inches below that are 3 railroad spikes. Another 6 inches deeper is a larger mass of iron, 3 rail clamps which should set any detector off. Keep digging. Another foot below that is a steel can with the precious metal in it. It is all that I have accumulated in my life.” The exact co-ordinates in degrees and decimal minutes are:

43* 01.692 N
116* 38.228 W

He gave a long sigh. The damaged body relaxed. In a barely audible whisper, so faint that I had to lean my ear next to his mouth, he continued.
“Find the gold stranger. Sell when it goes to 2000 an ounce. Live a better life than I.” As though he had been holding back the blood in his lungs, he exploded in a dozen violent hacks, spraying me with flecks of blood and what appeared to be scraps of lung tissue. A horrible death gurgle followed. His body went limp. He was still. I felt for a pulse, but could find none. An odd feeling came over me of his spirit rising out of his body and circling around. Then it was gone. He was gone.

Multi-colored lights flickered on his face, red light illuminating the fresh blood. A police cruiser had pulled up. Over a loud speaker came the arrogant blast of the late arrival officer.
“You there! What is your business here?” A search light wandered around the wreckage and then fixed upon my face, blinding me. Ten hours later I was released from the machinery of the police state, their being unable to pin the man’s demise on my doings. A grey dawn was outside, a mist filling the air, cold and gloomy. Exhausted, I slumped in the drivers seat of my car, my mind swirling with the nights events. Then … as if directed by another’s hands, I turned the car east out of the police parking lot, heading for the dry Owyhee desert.

A Jungle Story

2011-06-24T16:05:00.000-07:00

A Jungle Story

The crimson sun rose in the haze of the Maya morning. The great buzzards, the Janco’s circled slowly over head. The thatch and stick village nestled in the limestone mountains was quiet. Deathly quiet.

Far to the north in the Dakotas, a tall white man of Scandinavian stock, awash in self doubt, questioning the meaning of his existence, struggled to please his stern recriminating father.
“By golly, you’ll never amount to nothing Clark.” His father would say. “You better farm and try to make summtin of yourself, other than being the worthless gangly Swede wit you are.” Hurt and confused, Clark pondered what he could do to change the world, his world. His psychology leaned toward the grandiose plan.

Clarks physiology was the product of generations of beef and hog, corn and potatoes, his bones long and generously covered with muscle. He was raised on a picket fence farm, publicly schooled in the American iconography of Columbus, French fries, new math, and movie stars. He was part of the greatest, smartest, richest, most superior society ever to live on earth. Through wise investments in soybean production, (to sell to the Chinese), his parents were able to send him to NDU where he dutifully majored in corporate Agriculture. A fine job awaited him upon graduation with Montesano Chemicals. Here he was a top salesman of fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides in loads of 10 thousand tons … to the 10 thousand acre corporate farms. Every spring, this chemical layer would wash downstream, into the Missouri , then the Mississippi, then into the Gulf of Mexico, creating a dead zone the size of Montana.

Thirty one latitudes to the south, in a country bypassed by modern civilization, lived the descendants of Maya. The great palaces and temples of a thousand years ago crumbled on the hills beside their villages, great blocks of cut stone fallen into back yards, surrounded by chickens, waiting for the resurrection that would never come.

The villagers had been starved for protein for 900 years. Competition for this refined product was intense here, every mammal, land crab, bird and betel consuming all fragments of carrion within the hour. Then each other they devour. This lack of nutritants effected the garden of homo sapiens, failing to let anthropomorphic the fruit flourish. The Mayan man rarely measured over 5 feet, the women a foot shorter and bowlegged for the rapid production of replication. These people, beaten by the sun and rain, confined by the thick tangle of jungle, beset with poisonous bugs, devolved to a dark and leathery race. Plodding in their poverty, each day was as tomorrow, and the yesterdays reaching back beyond their time. No School or books were in the village, no time was lost to literacy. The education of rocks and brush, vines and village taboos was passed from one to another in an ancient language all their own, sounding to the outsider like an ox walking through a pile of dried sticks. They grew a runty corn in random patches, hacked and burned out of the jungle, this also devolved from the Aztecs 2000 years before. In a year or two, the emaciaciated ground was abandoned, new acreage carved out of the forest sea, the former plot abandoned to the green wave engulfing it. Homes were dark after nightfall, there being no power, only an occasional candle casting a weak and amber beam between the gaps in the thatch walls. The bathroom was outside, anywhere, the children barely taller than a chicken wading through the hookworm heaps with oblivion. The women did their laundry on a rock in the river, which ran crystal clear through the filtering limestone. Nervous wild pigs came to the rivers edge to drink, shrimp and bony fish patrolled the emerald water. Every creature avoided capture from everything else, as had these Mayans, first from each other, then the Spaniards, the British, and now the descendants of slaves who call themselves the government..

The sapiens bred fast, with 70% of their population being under 16, but also died fast of struggle and venom, rarely reaching the ripe old age of 40. Never numerous or prosperous enough to expand, to tenacious to expire, created hundreds of tiny villages with twenty score souls speckling the foothills of the Maya mountains. Hidden from each other and the world by the thick vegetation, they exist in harmony with the unpolluted virgin forest.

Clark left the Heartland of America after two years selling RoundUp and banking a tidy sum in commissions. He was an expert in chemical farming. He located 10 acres on the edge of a remote Mayan village for which he paid $1000. Employing the local labor pool for $10 each a day, he had them build him a small house and plow up the other nine acres. Constantly he was obligated to chastise the labor during the building, as the wood was cut short or long, the tape measure not intelligible or previously known to the natives. “Why is this door frame not square? This is a sloppy half assed construction if there ever was one.” The locals never used door frames and were at a loss regarding their purpose. To them, the stick house was weird in general, made of materials trucked in from the coast. Their homes were made of jungle sticks, vine twine, and palm thatch roofing. Termite food, they called Clarks construct.

Equally confusing was the farming. After the usual chopping and hacking, all was let lay for a week and then burned. So far so good. But then the crazy white guy has them digging up and removing all the stumps. This is unnecessary and demeaning hard work. At this point, if Clark had wanted to plant something, the Mayans generously pointed out the method of stabbing a hole in the ground with a stick and dropping in the seed. From there the gods prevail. “Quick thing” they would say. But no, Clark has them dig the earth down to a foot in depth, mix in bags of chemicals, and form the ground into rows at right angles to the slope of the hill. Whatever a “right angle” is? A hill is a hill.

Towering over the short sweaty Mayans, barking orders as though they were unruly children in a classroom, Clark forgets to be thankful this cheap labor pool. He does not notice that he is emulating his father. That he has become his father.
His attitude, ungratefulness, stature, and niggardly distribution of what appears to be an endless well of wealth from his pocket, grates on the local people. Every day Clark strides among the labor, extolling that this is the proper way to grow corn. His close spaced rows and planting is superior. That the ancient ways are nothing short of stupid, a waste of effort, proof of the ignorance they live in. He informs them that their yields are pathetic, puny, and that they are destroying the environment with their slash and burn practice. They should be thankful of his agri-missionary zeal, bringing them the salvation to their hunger, their toil, the great white visionary as the liberator of their suffering.

The Mayan suffering is not diminished by Clarks grueling directives. They must work longer and harder, applying chemicals, weeding, convoluting unnecessary dirt works. Instead of a group planting, full of chatter and comraderie, the work is solitary, dangerous and scrutinized. A normal work day is traditionally started around 8, a few hour break around noon, then home to the family by 4. For Clark they must slave from 6 AM to 6 PM, dripping in sweat the whole time. No Mayan ever sees the boss breaking into a sweat, except when he is in an apoplexy of ranting to have things done in his bizarre white way.

The paltry sum they earn from him is just enough to buy an extra bag of rice, hardly worth the trouble. As the super crop nears completion of planting, the Mayans begin to drift away. First a few, then most fail to show up for his labors. Clark is furious. He corners his Forman Chocoul for questioning.
“Where the hell is everybody?” After an impatient pause
“nuh-hna”
“Why aren’t these lazy people working?”
“Hunn-na?”
“ What the fuck does “hunn-na” mean. Why can’t you answer me in English? Where are those brown little bastards?” Silience.
You tell those sons-of-bitches to get their ass back on the job! You hear me?’
“Guunuk”
“I want this corn sprayed today with the di-methel-clorohydrate. I don’t want my corn riddled with weevils and ants like the crap you bring in from the jungle. How can you eat that garbage anyway, by Golly?” Silience from Chocoul. “No wonder you bush babies are still living in the stone age. You can’t learn, you can’t think, you can’t work … all you can do is make more little monkeys that run around naked in the jungle. It’s disgusting.” Silence.
“Answer me, you idiot”
“hummmm”
What kind of unintelligible answer is that? Don’t you ungrateful worms see what I’m trying to do for you? Don’t you see I’m helping you out?”
“ Mr. Clark …. ?” Chocoul sheepishly says
“What. What? Spit it out!”
“The people are not so pleased with your farm” This is a couched way of saying that everybody hates him.
“I’ve got the best farm in this whole country. That’s obvious. You little bastards are just jealous. You wish you could be like me.”
Yes, Chocoul thinks, rich and stupid. Never having to lift a finger or break a sweat, always giving orders. We hate you white man, but we’ll never tell you that to your face. Sure your corn is plentiful and tall, but you have put thousands of dollars of chemicals on it which we could never afford. We would never put all that poison into our forest anyway. Our maize god gives us all the corn we need using our old ways.
“Yes Mr. Clark” is all Chocoul can respond.

Chocoul says he has to go get a pair of pliers from his house around 10 AM.
“Quick thing. Pliers done.”
“Yeah, Ok. Clark says “You probably stole them from me in the first place.”
By noon, the Swede is pacing back and forth on his porch overlooking the corn experiment. A few scurrying Maya women pass in front of him from the trail leading back into the bush farms, their head bowed, furtive glances toward the seething white devil.
“Tell that Chocoul monkey to get his ass back here!” he shouts after them, lending acceleration to their steps. No one returns. Clark is alone in his empire. With a sigh, he mixes his imported chemicals and heads into the corn rows with a sprayer.

Six weeks go by. Every morning and evening the Mayan men pass in front of the white mans house on the trail out to their wild corn patches. Every morning and evening Clark cat calls from his porch, deriding the passer-bys with his greatness.
“See this corn, you idiots. It’s twice the size of your pathetic jungle crap. Just look at it!”
The Maya refuse to look at it. Finally, in frustration, Clark grabs a 12 inch ear of corn off one of the plants, and plants himself in the middle of the trail. Chacoul is returning to the village with a few men and some women, each carrying a child and surrounded by a half dozen more.
“Look at this you moron. It’s three times the size of your corn. Three times as healthy and nutritious. Why don’t you fools want to grow this? What the fuck is wrong with your stupid brains? Answer me!”
“Let us pass, Mr. Clark”
“No. You take this. You eat this and tell me how much better it is. Go on, take it.” He taps the ear against Chocoul’s chest annoyingly. With hatred in his eyes, The Mayan brushes the thing aside knocking it to the ground. “Why you ungrateful bastard …!”
With a spontaneous eruption of frustration, isolation, and revulsion all mixed together, Clark slaps the leathery face with the flat of his hand. The women yelp in surprise, which starts the babies crying. Chocoul drills the looming white mans face with his smoldering eyes. Says nothing, and pushes past the intruder with his troupe.

The evening darkness now. Clark lounges in his hammock on the porch. Laughter and talk can be heard from the village below. He feels alone now, self shamed by the striking of the Mayan. What did he do wrong? He brought the new worlds bounty to the starved jungle, taught them how to make ten times the corn. And there is so much more to teach them. But they ask no questions. They are disengaged. Could it be that they don’t like me? What has that got to do with anything? Maybe I’ve been too hard on these children of the forest? Why don’t they invite me to their village. Why don’t they invite me to have dinner with them?

In a moment of lucidity, he steps outside of him self for a moment. He see’s his overbearing father, chastising him over something he cannot understand. He hears the insults about stupidity and laziness, coming from his fathers mouth, his mouth, he is the father. What was him, is now he. What he hated and despised, he has become. Now Clark knows why. Now is the epiphany. From here, things will be different. I’ll tell them that their corn is good, not that mine is better. I’ll give them all the corn to eat and sell. I’ll have the heads of the village over for dinner. I’ll get solar lighting for the houses. I’ll change. I’ll be a better man. I won’t be my father, the bastard, I’ll be loved by my community. I’ll marry a Mayan woman and raise a super specie of combined brains and monkey. Things will be better now. Things will change.

The light of dawn filters through the jungle trees like liquid diamonds, glittering the dew on every leaf. The sky is turquoise blue, unmarred between horizons, except for the twenty black kites circling high above, their 5 foot wing span casting fleeting shadows on the ground. The Janco vultures. On Clarks porch, another 20 of the mammoth birds jostle clumsily about, hopping about on the blood soaked boards, bulling each other for a scrap of meat. Clark is dismembered. Chopped to pieces in his hammock. Feet from the legs, hands from the arms, the arms and legs from the body, the body halved, his head atop the pile with an astonished expression, eyes open in horror. Four birds engage in an avian wrestling match over a hand that has fallen to the floor. The gore drips and dangles from the hammock, now swinging in a macabre way from the weight of the shifting Janco’s strutting back and forth on the body parts, tugging randomly, losing their balance. Clark has changed. Clark has saved the Mayan pride. Clark has redeemed his abusive ways by being the recipient of a midnight hack fest by the indignant locals. No more will they have to listen to his insults. No more will their morning walk to the fields be fraught with the sourness of indignation. The problem is solved. Nobody did it, and everybody did it. “Thing done” they will say.

In a day, rumor of the deed reaches the coastal town. A pickup with 6 kaki clothed police men drive up to the porch, crushing the precious corn on the side of the trail. Some vomit at the now putrid sight, the rest charge into the house grabbing the laptop, the phone, and any other electronic device. The textbooks on agri-business are leafed though looking for hidden money, then cast into a heap in the center of the room. Trashed and looted, they set fire to building. The village men are gathered and questioned in a surly manner. No one knows anything. No one saw anything. This is all a surprise to the villagers. Unable to connect anything to anything, the police leave with their booty. This is an unsolved murder. Only the whispering of the wind in the crumbling temples knows, knows of the Aztec violence genetically ingrained in the mountain Maya people. Clarks corn rots in the field, unpicked.

Hovercraft video in Belize

2011-05-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

I realize that there may be those amoung you who gag and sputter on excess verbage. I have a shred of sympathy, because most conversations down here sound like gagging and sputtering. To coddel the dislexic, a video link is presented here, which will give you a jaded view about how wonderful everything is. Which is really ... mostly the truth, but the contents of the video only occupy 1 X-10^6 of my time.

More wordage later, this time an easy ride. Captain Cha Lee

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nX-Orpk27DY&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

Worms

2011-02-11T14:26:00.000-08:00

“The Hoose Eye” The rasta guy repeated with some irritation for the third time. Still unable to interpret, Kim comes to the rescue. “Horse fly?”
“Jay ya .. Hoose Fry”. His dark and bony hand slowly creeps up on the yellow and green insect patrolling his leg, seeking a place to sink it’s proboscis. The hand approaches the emerald eyes of the bug, not an intuitive choice for a sneak attack. The fly cannot see it for some reason. At about 4 inches out, he snaps his palm onto it in a flash. Now, with pride, he holds the mildly thrashing fly by the wings and gloats over it’s distress.
“Dis-a right ear” pointing to the flys 5 millimeter nose “gots de worm” Caint see de worm, but puts ia der right inna de skin. Gotts-a dake iddy-bida tatcco ands stuff id in de ole.” Loosing interest in the mangled fly, he drops it and demonstrates shredding a tiny fragment of cigarette tobacco and pantomime packing it into a tiny hole in the skin. “de tatacco kill de worm.” Because the communication is so difficult, I don’t bother to question what becomes of the dead grub buried in ones flesh. It can’t be good. In fact, I can hardly believe a shred of this story. After tales of hurricanes that level the town shanties, snow an inch deep on Christmas, snakes that jump 6 feet to sink their fangs in your neck, and Malaria in every mosquito bite, I’m a little numbed to these jungle legends of environmental horror. The stories seem a bit contrived to terrorize the plump white skin of the First World invaders. If you were to believe every one, a body would have to keep themselves sealed in a concrete tank. What kind of tropical paradise experience is that? But then there are the scorpions. Wouldn’t want to forget about them crawling the walls.

Thirty years ago, I heard about the worm. A confederate of our adolescent associates, fed up as we all were in the Nixon era, disgusted with our fathers working for Boeing, craving the frontier experience leading to manhood, Thorr Jensonal traveled to the Yucatan. Here he dressed as a peasant, in white slacks and shirt, his Nordic blond hair flowing long over his shoulders. Blistering and peeling, the melanin deficient skin traveled on foot between unknown Mexican villages, a tall red and white stranger in the short brown peoples. The locals insisted that he wear a hat. But a hat is hot and concealed his beautiful flowing locks which the children all ran to touch and fondle. So he did not. The angst of conforming to northern protestant morays still tortured Thorr, even though immersed in a world so different and alien. He decided to cross the Yucatan peninsula on foot, a spirit journey, transcending from the commercial comforts of his youth to a jungle hardened, accomplished man. With minimal knowledge and a poor sense of direction, he set out.

The jungle is a labyrinth in which to be lost. And lost he became, wandering for days, through twisted thickets, ever the oppressive green crushing in on him, crossing streams which appear and disappear in the ground like spider webs in the wind. At time he would swim lakes of quick sand to reach some further distance in the green hell. His clothes soon became filth rags, torn to tatters, the insects feasting on his exposed flesh. Ants of a dozen kinds rained from the trees on him, every one a biter, mosquitoes swarmed in a frenzy, ticks attached, and fly’s of every type swarmed his face and golden hair The flies crawled through the yellow locks, caught a drink from his eye, insanely crawled in his ears. How long he thrashed about out there is not known. A few week? A month? Eventually he stumbled out of the green maze into a clearing of some thatched huts. Tall and skinny to begin with, now bones covered with thousands of raw sores. He was delirious. Raving about the “brain eaters”. The locals washed him, watered him, and put the feverish youth to bed.

In a few days, he had recovered enough to travel back to the cities of civilization. His head was covered with lumps. He could feel the insects eating his brain. His eyes were sunk in blackened sockets, the brilliant blue of the Norseman blazing out in frenetic panic. Thorr finally got to Mexico City, to a doctors office, where his condition was quickly appraised. He has worms in the head. Seven worms. Because he wore no hat, the flies landed on his fair noggin and bored their worms into his scalp. Now a few weeks later, the worms have grown to the size of peanuts, each packed tight under the roots of the fair hair, each an abscess an inch high. With care, and in Spanish, the doctor sliced open the festerings and squeezed two inch worms off his skull. The seven of these grubs lay in the dish beside Thorr, the indelible image adding to his horror driven madness.

Returning to the Safety of the USA, to the TV’s and stereos and drug obsessed friends, to the relived but aloof Scandinavian parents, Thorr was not the man he had wished to become. He was haggard. Fearful. Emaciated. Obsessed. He was convinced that the Mexican doctor had not removed all the worms. That there was still one worm which had bored through his skill and was laying a billion eggs on his brain. Madness and death was the only option. No surgery could extract the creature, no doctor could find the malignant marauder. He was convinced he would soon die. With grim countenance, he gathered his boyhood friends to his postered room in the suburb house. “You must take this” he says, handing his stereo to a closest friend. Then his stamp collection to another, his radio to a third. “I am going to die soon, you must take this.”
“No,, no” the assembled cry “ you are not going to die. You are fine. You are well. We won’t take this stuff.”
Angered in a Viking manner, his tallness towers over them, insistent, intense, wild eyed. “I’m going to die ... can’t you see that? The worm has bored into my brain and I’m Insane”. The friends, nodding in agreement, looks of pity on their face, one by one get up and leave without the commodities of the American endowed teenager. Undying, Thorr eventually recuperated and drifted off to Texas to sell home owners insurance.

On weekends we prospect for gold, here in this forgotten central American country. I have come across a collection of old British military topographic maps along with assorted “geologic reports” which are little more than speculation as to what lays under the inpenatratable jungle mat … 100 meters thick. I pour through all this information, trying to find a more passable way to points interior than hacking with a machete at a mile a day. Points are picked off the maps where rivers converge, their co-ordinates entered into my GPS, these aquatic nodes for sampling and determining which branch to follow. There is a really big river, the Sittee, which snakes west deep into the Maya Mountains, 30 miles to the crest with 30 tributaries. Having hiked miserable muddy trails on previous weekends, penetrating a maximum of 4 miles to where the green walls consume even the creeks, I devise a new tack. The interior will be assaulted through the unused aqua highway of the mighty Sittee, using the hovercraft.

A day of preparation. Gas and more gas, peanut butter sandwiches, tools, three kinds of knives, cigarettes, lighters, flashlight, and a roll of mosquito netting should we have to bivouac for the night. The camp will be in the soggy boat bottom, wrecked as we may be, it would be suicide to sleep on the swarming ground. The launch site a twisted dirt road down to a river bar under the highway. The highway bridge is a temporary construct of jungle logs and boards, the former bridge swept away 2 years ago in an apoplectic 3 day downpour. A new bridge is being built by dreadlock workers, who stop every thing to line the high banks and watch the launch. The river is 100 feet wide here, promising an easy run up it’s current. Everything loaded including Kim in her designer life jacket, we roar up stream to their collective amazement. This includes a throng of Maya women pounding laundry on the rocks, their children standing in the water, frozen in gape jawed awe like so many tiny brown gargoyles. In a half mile, the river narrows to little more than boat width, great ramparts of rock rising vertically out of emerald pools. Rapids on either end, choked with boulders to be maneuvered frantically around. Up and through the hovercraft goes, climbing the turbulent water stairs to the next pool. Fish dart beneath us, birds of all sorts dash between the canopy wall above, brilliant white egrets herd ahead, to stupid to leave the surface of the river.

We stop at a great outcrop on a little beach and jewel pool to pan a little. Now three miles out, there is not a trace of human imprint. Only the rustling jungle crowding into the rivers gap. No small towns with auto parts stores, no bordering fields, no roads or trails, only the buzzing billions of bugs. The bugs descend on us like rain. Tiny ones crawling through my hairy arms, mosquito clouds feasting where they can, and innumerable flies of unknown sort zeroing for an unseen snack on the flesh. Panning for gold is interrupted to swat at the chomping larger ones. It would be preferable if I could do this underwater, completely submerged. The pan contents disappointing. No black sand, no garnet, no gold.

On we go deeper into the interior, the river winding and climbing small rapids regularly. We come to a junction of two same sized rivers, a 200 foot sand bar below their union. Here I fiddle with the GPS, determining which branch to take, how far in we have penetrated. We are at the start of the Coco branch, the one with reports of gold. Up this aquatic avenue we proceed, at first deep pools hemmed in by vertical rock, then opening to stair stepped riffles. The river is now a creek. Huge trees overhang the way, lianas hanging down to the water which must be avoided by the propeller, not with entire success as the chopping of the blades attest. In about two miles a huge log 4 feet in diameter blocks the whole span of the creek. We are stopped. I check the bashed propeller, which is unraveling, separating layers like a phone book thrown on the floor. The tip I wrap in electrical tape, trying to prevent further disassembly. For an hour we wander about the area, finding pools full of tadpoles, dodging figs hurled by iguanas in a tree above. Good bedrock outcrops are here, with fossil gravels of fine color mud. A half a dozen pans are washed, but none with the tiniest point of gold. Some hematite’s, abundant quartz, but none of the yellow metal we seek. A steady battle with biting flies continues, mixed with mashing of blood gorged mosquitoes. It is now 2:30. Time to turn around rather than risk being in the dark, on the river, in the wilderness. No goddamned gold anyway, what the hell would be the point of going further?

The hover is running badly on the way out. No thrust with the damaged propeller. Only the downhill slope of the rapids allow us to make headway. Vibration shakes the entire stern of the flying boat. Half way out of our journey, the thrust stops. The belt has jumped off the pullies. We are in the rapids where the current twists us and jams us into the rocks. I try to pull us to the streams edge, but before I can, the still running motor grabs the flailing belt, wrapping and shredding it, jamming it against the engine, stalling the motor dead. The damage assessment shows that the fan and prop have not been destroyed. I have a spare belt. There is hope. But the bolt holding it all together is gone. Rattled loose. Disappeared. The tool box is rummaged extensively for a replacement, but no luck. I contrive a twisted wire contraption that may work to hold the tension. As I go to monkey wrench the thing together, I see the bolt down underwater, under the boat. With much gyration and Kim’s narrow arms, we retrieve it. The hover reassembled, it fires up and lifts out of the rocks, limping drunkenly to the streams edge, to the sanctuary of a sand bank. The skirt is drained. I feel a bit drained, the fear of maroonment, the quart that has become airborne by the local insectivore residents. In another hour, the launch site is reached. The Mayans continue their gape in piling position as we pass, the construction workers all stop what they are doing to watch us with intent. We have gone 12 miles into the interior and back in 9 hours, the first to do so in this land with a hovercraft. In this country, a mile a day is the norm for travel without a helicopter, of which only the military has but never strays from the coast. My arms are peppered with red spots, a proboscis pox.

Life too rapidly returns to normal in our village world. The Guatemalan employed day after day as we hammer together the great form of our house foundation. Bureaucratic paperwork still hangs in the ether as always, waiting for an approval from some lackluster petty official for some annoying permission. The most of the jungle bug bites vanish into my immune system, a few festering to a zit from the poison, which is dispatched between finger and thumbnail. But a couple itch like hell. I scratch them when I’m thinking or not. When I’m sleeping. When my nails are full of jungle dirt. In a few days they are finely infected. One on my wrist and another on the forearm. They are so accessible. I can’t stop fucking with them. Sometimes I get out my pocketknife and dig and scrape with that .. after I have cleaned my nails. Kim is horrified. “Stop that! Stop squeezing and digging on that. Let it heal!” I am making it heal, me thinks. I can now squeeze a fair gob of pus out of the things every time, surely that can’t be left in there. I have to squeeze them. In a week the sores are as big around as a half dollar, the skin red and hard as walnut shell. A tiny Mt. Fiji stands up a ½ inch from each, easy to get a grip on for more investigative squeezing. “Stop that, goddamn it” says Kim.

“What the hell are those?” the neighbor asks, turning his head in disgust but keeping his eyes riveted to the now mountainous miasmas. “Just some bug bites” I say “There’re getting better.” I want to believe that. The landlord Chet see’s them. “WORMS! ..You got the worms. You need to pull them out. I had seven of them in my head back when I was the platoon commander of the British Jungle survival course back in … etc, etc.”
“Well how the hell can you tell?”
“Don’t you see that little hole in the middle? That’s where they put out their breathing tube. Never heals. Never get’s better. Can’t you feel them chewing in there?”
“And you know how to make it better?
“Of course. I know everything.” This is so conversationally apparent I’m under whelmed by the humility. “You have to get the worm drunk by pouring British tea in the hole. When the worm puts his head out to get a breath of air, you grab it. They don’t struggle so much when they’re drunk.”
“Yeah, right.” This conversation is over. What a bullshitter. He continues ..
“your neighbor had 27 in his head .. the asshole” he adds “made a tea of Juaca root and soaked his head in a towel for 3 days. Whole top of his head swole up like a hydropsallic and the drunken worms fell out on his ears and shoulders.” This is enough for me. No worms will rain into my ears. I have infected bugg bites. Nothing more.
“Got to squeeze them out.” He adds. I have to squeeze this guy out of my life. He’s annoying at best.

Kim bandages the sores that evening, applying antibiotic cream, our last few American Band-Aids, some tender care with a slather of athletes fungicide for good measure.
“No more squeezing. Let them heal. I’ll kick your ass if I see you squeezing them again.” As if her 100 pound frame could …on a good day. In the morning the Band-aids are rubbed off. The sores look no different. Is that chewing I feel? I want to squeeze the volcano’s, but fear the wrath of Kim. She is giving me an evil scolding stare, scrutinizing my intent. Off to work with the Guatemalan, Louise. As we load tools in the truck, he sees the festers.
“Ahh, animalioto’s! Esa Animalito’s” He grabs my arm in a backwards wrestlers grip and mashes the mounds with his work hardened steel fingers. The usual pus and gore. I let him. It is what I wanted to do anyway. “Squeeze it for check it” he says. “Mi haber siete en mi cabeza una vez. Mi check it” Some more mashing. No worms come out. There are no worms. Why are there always seven worms in the head, or some multiple of seven? I take my sore arm to the job site.

Still bad in the evening. Now apply more household medicines of dubious quality after I swab everything with mouthwash it being the closest thing to alcohol without sacrificing any Belizean rum. Need to drink that for courage. The sores are wrapped in masking tape. This will slow down my manipulations. Two days later the skin is dying under the tape. Itches like a son-of-a-bitch. I work my pocket knife under the tape for a little relief, trying to be good and not gore the bulging bumps. The evening inspection looks no better. A rum wash, mostly down my throat but some on the festers. Maybe there is something to what they say? I dismember a cigarette butt and try to pack a little tobacco in the hole. Not really possible. The hole is tiny. Piling a small mound on top, I re-wrap in the masking tape. The next day they are burning, heated up. Something is happening anyway. The arm is almost too sore to work with. Tiny sensations analogous to a rock being rubbed on a file are deep under the skin. The affixation of the epidermis is driving me mad with itching, sharp pains, discomfort of the 9th degree. I rip off the tape, enjoying the agony of the hair removal over the nagging of the problem points.

In the afternoon the hotel owner James comes by seeking drugs or amusement of which I have none. I have to show him the arm, now, not excluding the worm theory.
“Ahh !! Beef Worms! Have to suffocate them. Poison them. Squeeze them out. My dog had 14 of them on his balls.” Thank whatever gods there be that this is not on my balls. John is the local self appointed medicine man, another know-it-all in the herbal department. “Make a mixture of garlic and soft wax and cover the sores. The garlic will poison them and the wax suffocate them. Have to plug up their blowhole so they Can’t breath. Kills them. Then you can pull them out with needle nose pliers.”
“Thanks John, I’ll try that.” Not really thankful for the information, but give this guy a little more credibility than the rest. Sounding more and more like it’s real, but still can’t imaging a worm lunching under my skin.
“Beef worms!” he says with pride and a huge smile “Fucking beef worms in there.”

That night I mash a pile of garlic, try to mix it with candle shavings. The shavings are stiff and crumbly, so I mix a little gasoline in with it. That makes a soft paste now. Pack and slather the stinking goo. Wrap with the masking tape again. No pain. All the nerves are dead in these areas. I vow to leave it alone for 2 days. Day one … the garlic has gone into my bloodstream. I reek of it. I taste it in my mouth. I hate garlic. Some kind of Germanic genetic necessity to ward off vampires, the ancestral necessity I had hoped to evolve from. There are different sorts of pains in there now. Needle stabbings, imagined thrashings. Somehow I leave it alone. Day two. Mostly quiet on the arm-bone front. The tape is driving me wild, as usual, things itchy, but normal in a way. In the evening I can’t stand it anymore. I have to look.

Under the tape with the last of the hair on it, the mounds are white and soft, slightly stinking. Squeeze I must. I do. Squeeze the easiest most accessible Vesuvius on the forearm. A small white rod appears out of the hole, about the diameter of a pin. Not zit goo, as it is not soft. “My god! My god! Kim .. get the tweezers. Quick!” Whatever it is, I don’t want it disappearing back down the hole. “See that! Grab that damn thing.”
“I can’t see it very well.” Fine time for myopia.
“Give me the tweezers. You Squeeze.” She squeezes. I clamp the white thing. Pull. It get’s longer. Then longer. I get a new grip, careful not to crush it and cut it off. Pull. Now out about a half inch. A flexible white rod. It stops coming out. Pull steady and insistently. A sharp stinging. Then an emerging of a body through the tortured hole. A body as big around as a pencil, a grub attached to the tube. Black and white striped with some kind of earwig type clampers on the back end, still clutching some gore. Almost a half inch long fly thorax of undescribed uglyness.
The animalito is dropped on a piece of table paper.
“Holy SHIT! What the fuck is that?”
“Oh my GOD!”
“That is a horror. A horror is what it is. Guess there really was a worm. Unbelievable. Do you agree to squeezing now?”
“Yes.” Is all Kim answers.
We sit in repulsed amazement for a long time before I get the camera out. The stories are true. I am reluctantly living the story.

The second worm is more hesitant to give up it’s post. I drip liquid wax directly on the hole, feeling no pain. The next evening the dead creature is extracted with the same practice, a little less panicky. This one comes out of a different hole, the creature having drilled 4 breathing passages to escape suffocation. Over the next week a hundred zits surround the area, the worm poisons and defecations working their way to the surface. Never thought it could happen to me, a civilized man of shopping malls, video stores and Chevron stations. Stories don’t really happen.

When I go back into the jungle, and I will go back, I think I’ll wear a hat and a long sleeved shirt, even if it’s 120 degrees out.

Janitors of the Jungle

2011-01-26T12:05:00.000-08:00

Work

We are an experiment. An experiment in tenacity, stupidity, poverty, hope, society and sustainable living.
The hope allows the tenacity in the face of seemingly insurmountable problems, the stupidity plows us forward in the face of poverty.
Society teems all around us, of which we are a part, but then, not really. There are no invites to loud barbecues down the street, or dinner at the white neighbors, but the masses know us, calling me Mr. Charlie and Kim “Mum”, we being a confusing mix of the northern “haves’, yet living low to the ground in a building without walls, in mottled work clothes, and working … an oddity not seen in white people. To work then, does not endear us to the masses, as it would in North Dakota or Montana, but instead alienates us further. The white should not work. Their class is to be the aloof employers, the pressed slacks and shirt of the Colonial overlord. To labor and sweat is a slap in the face to them, the elite mimicking their enduring toil. Now, as greeted ever on the road, my besmirched and torn clothes staggered from the work site, I am called only Charlie, the deference gone.

Envy I, their simplistic toil. Each act an end in itself, carrying the poles, mixing a bag of cement on the ground, encasing the wood of a form. An almost Zen like quality to the full focus of the deed. There is no worry of speeding up or slowing down. Time is but a stream in which they wade effortlessly, with no deadlines, no panic before the plumber or electrician shows up.
Each moment, each day is much like the other, do as the boss says and nothing more. This frees their mind for endless chatter and levity. Often singing a few lines of some Mexican melody, frequently bursting into laughter over some sexual incompetence or conquest, the work is just there, like skin, not unwanted but not any matter of urgency either. The afternoon “lunch” lasts over an hour and a half, lounging in the dirt around a smoky fire made of something jerked from the jungle. Tortillas and plantains are languidly roasted, a dab of some paste applied, and each bite a long savoring suckulation of the moment. What would take a McDonalds patron 40 seconds to devour is stretched to 15 min. After the hour lunch is digestion time for the ¼ pound of beans and corn. At least a half hour of dozing in the shade, the foreman snoring in a swinging hammock, flies ignored. The evening is a singing shower under a hose, then a search for beer at the local “cool spot”. All thoughts of the days endeavors are forgotten and tomorrow is of no concern. Fifty dollars today, fifty tomorrow, and on and on into the endless horizon of time.

Contrast this to the stress saturated “whitey”. Even should the labor be of grueling manual nature, still a hundred other endeavors pollute their mind, churning it into a frenetic frenzy of future think. This cannot be dug until the measurements of that are determined which is based on the size of the garden and the flow rate of the well. Then over dig the well and pump it up to a cistern, which changes the support load, thereby increasing the column dimension and thus consequently the footing. But what of recycling the wash water and the collection of rain? Will not this determine which side the second storage tank is put on, declaring reinforcement on that side too. Of course this should be on the garden side, which s determined by the woman. What does the woman think? Put the garden in the sun .. stupid! Well, that much was obvious, but what are the dimensions, that relates to the volume of the tank, and the supports .. etc. etc.
Such a storm of calculation considerations drains blood from the circulatory system, causing the white man to slump in the shade in stasis. This is a serendipitous sestia, but with out the somulesenance, the rest of the refried workers next door. The brain is in turmoil, the eyes starting from the head, something must be dashed off to purchase, like a laser level, to quell analysis paralysis.

The urgency to be environmentally correct in a sustainable living paradigm is overwhelming. The water system must be filtered through carbon that is made sustainable of refuse from the place, but the only way to do that, is to bonfire a thousand cubic meters of endangered jungle for one cubic foot of charcoal. The wind power system needs to be erected and operational, but the moist jungle air has corroded the regulator so that the power varies between 2 and 200 volts. The inverter gets fried trying to adapt to this variance, so screw that, run the gas generator, and order parts through the internet shop that we drive to, waiting the 6 weeks for delivery by high altitude jet. The sustainable way to garden is by composting, recycles everything and is holistic for the earth. But after 6 weeks the stinking pile is no bigger than a suitcase and crawling with scorpions and 20 species of biting flies. The crap mixes in with about a square meter of acidified jungle soil, enough to grow one tomato plant producing three or four stupid green tomatoes. Why tomatoes? Why not beans? Because beans can be bought for pennies to the pound and to be sustainable it is necessary to have exotic North American salad food. Nothing is growing anyway in the acid soil, so the hell with that, lay on a ¼ inch lift of Montesano packaged fertilizer flown by plane to this place at 3 times the normal price. By the time all this is done, it’s cheaper to dine out in the local restaurants, screw the homemade insect dung heap. Sustainability for the white man means a pension fund kicking out 10 times the local wage rate.

Janitors of the Jungle

Evening comes to the tropical ghetto in long rays of red. The sky transforms from amber to orange to rusty rouge, putting abounding flowers aflame. Busses roar on the sea bound highway. Minions trudge in their 20 foot shadows. Bicycles dart between machines and man on the narrow dirt roads. Parrots return from their day in Guatemala in a chaotic cloud to roost in the Jungles of Belize.

Abruptly, the warm glow of twilight turns to black. The sun sets like a hammer on a light bulb. This is the dog hour. The dog hour lasts from 6 PM to midnight. Every passing pedestrian erupts the lathering chain bound beasts in barking. Straining in their chaining, eyes bugged out in madness, lips curled above their whiskers, they announce the destruction of every passerby. A destruction they cannot effect. Adding to their rage and madness.

Sitting as we do with the evening drink, trying to live a shred of civilization, we can barely hear each other over the din of dogs. Our own canine joins in explosively from under the table, alert to some particular note of animal exasperation. This results in much cursing and kicking from us, our attempted composure defiled. The inky air is all around us now. The dog paces from one side of the walless room to the other, blasting it’s canine verbage into the jungle foliage at some imagined threat. The pacing, the restlessness, the hour ….it is time for the “Crab Walk”. This is the last chance for the quadruped to piss and crap before being sealed into the tent for 12 black hours. The duration of the dark. This tent is the only mosquito free zone from the minions patrolling the night air in malarial intent.

Out into the street we go, the dog bounding, the hairy cat following in furtive dashes, a family promenade down the dirt village street. On one side are crumbling two room concrete bungalows, crammed with Creoles, 10 or twelve to a casa, cursing, crying, cackling. The other side of the street is an 80 foot wall of undeveloped tangled jungle. Within this green wall are rustlings, movements, micro sounds of unknown origin. The dog alert, attentive, intense to their presence. All thought of gastric relief is erased in the dog brain. There is only one thought … crabs. Land crabs.

The crabs are the size of tea plates, blue, wielding an asymmetrical claw of hedge clipper proportions. These creatures are nocturnal, scuttling about the darkened streets consuming refuse relish and dog shit. There is no dog crap here. These crustaceans consume every fragment of every pile… every evening. The dogs in the yards, the wild and loose dogs, the indigenous people who shit without shame beside the road, all is devoured in alien mouth parts before dawn. The dog launches into the thicket with a single 6 foot bound, thrashing through blinding brush, searching for the scuttlers. Tiny squeaking sounds peep from the pursued while dashing for a hole, their lairs. But a crab too slow, too tangled in the viney mat, fails to escape the olfactory juggernaught, leaving it’s grotesque appandage brandishing in the brush. The claw. In a shriek of pain the dog explosively emerges back onto the road, the mega clamp connected to the soft tissue of the nose, it’s 3 pound body dangling wildly, desperately, off the snozz. Crazed and yelping the canine flips the attachment as a flag in the wind, frantic for release. We rush the inter specie encounter, trying too terrorize the crab off it’s nasal grip. Finally with a flop, the blue appendage detaches, making a mad dash back into the safety of the botanical confusion. Momentarily stunned but otherwise oblivious to the nasal wrenching, the stupid dog instantly resumes it’s intensity to capture the crab. We hold the dog now, chain it to our leash, it’s pulling and persistence pissing us off. How stupid can this muscle bound tube of hair be? The dog undeficated, it is jerked home and locked in the tent.

But why molest these cleaners of the pestilent land? They do us a great service with their mindless consumption of excrement in this seething microbial world. Without their efforts, the infection of typhus, dysentery, cholera, and hepatitis would be rampant among us. Happily do they consume the offal of our anthropomorphic intrusion. What waves of slime would inundate us without their service? Freely we foul our environment, only to be exonerated by these lowly, ugly, scuttling saviors. For them we must cry hooray!. For them we must declare their indispensableness to us. We must morn the mashed one on the highway that the crows will not eat, must encourage their cultivation among us. Shit in the street? Yes! Feed our concentrated fuel to the appreciators of such protein. Create an NGO suffering from white guilt to protect their habitat, preserve their services. Apply the Environmental engineering of the erroneously educated First world to design sewage treatment plants, swarming with these dutiful, loyal, devourers of disease. The hell with the useless jaguar and howler monkey. Let us celebrate the real keepers of our world

The night proceeds with barks and foliage rustling. A clear moon now bathing the drama of the streets. The dog loudly lapping at it’s injured nose in our enclosure. Outside the recycling of digested debris ongoing, relentless, imperative. The unsung work of the Janitors of the Jungle.

The Forgotten Land

2010-11-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

The Forgotten Land
Dawn as black as the inside of a body bag. Our bio clocks say we’ve slept enough. Roosters crow in the neighborhoods around us, busses screech their brakes and accelerate as they maneuver the highway topes, collecting workers for the days labor on some dirt and brush project. Different bird talk comes randomly from the trees. Each sound is clear, distinct, unencumbered with the white noise that deadens sounds in the Northern urban. Soon a dog barks. Then another to answer that. And another to answer the second. Then a panic of barking coming from all sides, from 30 yard chained creatures, some desperate, some piteous, most angry, all in loud discussion of their plight and might.

The graying of the day finally. Stumbling amid our unloaded things from the evening before. There is no laughter, though there should be. No joy in the dirt and mud pit we find ourselves in. No expositations of awe at the wonder of the muggy heat, the cloud of mosquitoes, the vegetation crowding all around, the glory of the jungle. The cats are now free. Adapt or die you little furry bastards. Fifteen days crammed next to you in the truck has weakened out pampering pussy love. Weakened love all around. You’re on your own now, assholes, is the general attitude. With eyes as large as quarters, the cats tiptoe around this weird vegetated place, smells of monsters all around. The dog on a rope after the third time of going over and working the rich widows chained dogs into a foaming lather with her plump city scent.

I find the little gas camp stove and get us some Mexican instant coffee hot in questionably clean cups. This feels better, but the bodily urges are stirred, an intestinal relaxing from days of truck cab compaction. It’s the woods and shovel program. My venture first through the spine covered brush. How fast can this happen before the mosquitoes puncture my delicate parts. Not fast enough. A six stab shit has me scratching in all the wrong places. I secretly relish the malevolent thought of Kim’s perforating sojourn. How long can she hold it? A second cup of coffee is mixed to contemplate the days labors ahead.

Presently, the dog erupts again in an apoplexy of barking. A tall skinny fella approaches us on the trail out of the jungle. We do not berail the dog it’s sonic exclamation. This is what we want the dog to do. Terrorize everybody. Let them know there are gnashing fangs associated with this pile of white people stuff. Good morning-morning ..sueahh. Good morning to you. We reply. Ahh comes heah every day to be right wit jah. Dis is my jungle place. Yes, well it looks like we’ve taken over this place. Dis all right, I just sits heah. He nestles into a dirt pile a dozen feet away. He is smoking a huge brown cigarette with the distinctive ganga smell. Ah sits here and watches the day goes by. Ah only wishes ah had some papers. Has to use dis banana leaf. He puffs a few, a blue cloud of smoke enveloping his head. Ah ams Orlando. I de only ones wid da weed arounds heah. Dem das wants de weed gots to sees me. I offer him a cup of the Mexican coffee, which he accepts, then launches into a long mostly unintelligible dialogue about how he went over to gets some weed, but the lady and the man was a-fighting. Den she called the cops on de man and he was deported back to Nicaragua and de woman stills a bitch buts she unloaded the rest O de weed on Olando, so he’s right wid Jah. He opens the ubiquitous small black plastic bag of south America, which contains an ounce or more of some dark raw looking plant. He generously gives me a few grams. I take a puff off the banana leaf, to be ceremonious and assure him I am not a prig of some kind. Maybe it’s the overall exhaustion or the underlying stress of our situation, but the puff immediately disorients me, forgetting where my coffee cup is, what I was to do next. So I sit down with the guest, content to bullshit randomly in half understood language. Presently I become aware of the quick and heavy steps of the woman. If it was a plywood floor, it would be booming like a drum. This is the standard body language of the pissed off woman. What can it be? Always the detective work to discern the mind of the female. Hmmm .. Ok, I get it. Sloth. My sloth!. But I’m just being cordial. Why couldn’t the tude be about theft or murder?. Why always these indecipherable picayune whims of improper moral turpitude? Ok, Ok .. with a groan I rise and set to work getting the chain saw in operation.

Now early morning. The plan is to make stairs and get all the crap up on the 10 foot concrete platform by the end of the day. Now that the truck is empty, it’s off to the lumber store, Nancy’s it’s called. Orlando has newish plastic sandals, a walkman which he is intently adsorbed in regga music, a clean newer shirt, is saturated in ganga smoke, and for all intents and purposes, seems reasonably harmless. Then there is the dog, who I hope would spring to the aid of Kim if attacked with some malignant intent by our guest. Off to Nancy’s lumber. The lumber here is not far removed from trees. Still green and cut generously but irregularly, a 2x4 looks more like a porch post. The truck is loaded with some boards as heavy and hard as concrete, and two huge beams for the stair sides. Back to the platform. Orlando as been giving Kim a botanical tour of the surrounding jungle while the dog runs amok. There are cashew trees, lime trees, and dozens of medicinal plants that cure everything from malaria to cancer. Some are poison woods, who’s sap burns the skin like acid, or worse yet, blinds you if you rub your eyes. The story is told of one white man who sat on a recently sawed poison wood stump for lunch. The acid burned a meaty abscess through his posterior and killed him. Oddly, the antidote tree always grow close nearby. A thin red barked tree, crooked and rarely bigger than your wrist, it is called Peely Bwana because the red peeling bark, similar to paper. It reminds the locals of the burned red white man who’s skin peels relentlessly. Orlando points out that the bark can also be used to roll ganga.

Setting to work with the square, felt pen, and chain saw, I lay out the stairs. My god, the wood is as hard as plastic and cuts about the same. It is tremendously hot.. Sweat sheets off me, dripping as though I just stepped out of a lake, but without the cooling refreshing quality. My pants are soaked with the effusion and I feel like I’m about to keel over, but still I must toil on. Must get the camp set up on the platform and all the crap up there before the night thieves pack everything away. Orlando sits in the shade, puffing endlessly. He helps only if I ask him with some ridiculously heavy part. Late in the afternoon, the step supports are up and the steps nailed down. Finally on top. It is breezy and airy up there. Sweep the leaves and accumulated debris off the sides, set up the tent, and start hauling all the thousand things up. Orlando sets up one of the camp chairs on top and lights up a fresh reefer as we toil everything up the new access. Numerous people are passing by. Larry’s place is on the main trail cutting thorough the jungle. Workers from the rich widow come by and get emphatic about the poor connection of the top of the stairs to the platform. Bali wood no strong. Ita cracka. Must have support. Will crong bong down, asmacha. Mucho mas. I am polite, but not energetic to do any thing about it. I feel rather a-smasha already. In fact, I am roasting and semi delirious. The largest worker fellow had been going on about the “T” brace that needs to be under the stairs. Finally he rallies a few others and they build one, fitting it tightly under the middle of the span. I am most grateful. These people are alright, me thinks. I try to take time to converse and be cordial. Kim is getting frantic to get all the stuff up on the platform. It is getting dark as it always does .. to early. Kim, I explain, we don’t have to get every little thing up here. Just the most liftable. The most obvious. We do have the dog, which is barking viciously at everybody. Finally, dusk descended, she acquiesces and sets about puttering on top.

Now dark, and the situation of how to dislodge our comfortable guest. He is apparently content to sleep in the chair in what could be construed as our new living room. Of course, the job falls to me, with the scowling woman in the shadows. Some how I convey that we want to wash up and go to bed and that he should trundle on off back into the jungle leaves from whence he came. Finally, we are alone, our empire of American commodities secure, just us to contemplate where the hell we are. We wash in a bucket from “well” water, which is a rain water hole in the ground below us. I am fairly dubious of it’s microbial concentration, advising Kim not to get any in her mouth. Certainly, not toothbrush quality. As a final act of glory, I get one of the LED lights hooked up to a battery and life is illuminated. The bedding has dried a bit during the day. The nest is an oasis of rest after a roasting day of labor. A mild feeling of contentment come over us with this hard won peace. Kim is smiling. The cats are on jungle prowl.

Morning comes with a troop of parrots squawking and fighting in the trees around us. Wonderful it is. And of course the morning dogs, answering miscellaneous roosters in the distance, to which our dog must answer, and soon the sweet talk of the jungle animals is drowned out in colophony of frantic barking dogs within a mile radius. The plan today is for me to go all the way back to the border to get the hovercraft. A necessary plan, though filled with worry about leaving Kim alone on the jungle trial. But after coffee, I’m off with the satchel of paperwork.

The country is beautiful though not particularly interesting. Reaching Belmopan before noon, I am surprised to find my boat license ready to pick up. I feel dreadful, hot and cold and weak in the legs. I pull the truck under a tree and sleep for almost 2 hours. Still feel awful when I wake, but must go on. A few miles past the cutoff that bypasses Belize City, there are some uniforms that are waving me down. Not knowing what legality this is, I stop. A black uniformed thug opens the passenger door and jumps in. Another 6 clamber into the pickup bed. Ok, this is it. I’m screwed now. This must be the Belizean equivalent of the Mexican police mugging. I’ll be directed to some side road and whacked for everything, the swamp and vines overgrowing what is left in the mud. But it turns out these are hitchhikers. I was passing the prison and these are guards getting off work. The frantic road waving is the central American method of asking for a ride. No thumb. My surprising guest if friendly enough, as most are here. The half dozen settle around in the truck bed as though they were getting ready for the superbowl game on TV. I am roasting with fever now. My legs seem paralyzed. I have to lift my leg by the pant leg to step on the brake. On we go through the mundane flat land with my cargo of turnkeys. We come to a police check point and are waved through, the uniforms recognizing their professional brethren. A few stops at side roads to let out passengers, and now dusk again. I roll into the town of Orange Walk, about 60 miles south of the northern border crossing. Burning up now, stopping at the first hotel I see, Hu Wangs. I can barely get out of the truck, and shuffle along the sidewalk, holding the wall like a drunk. The Wang,s are barely able to communicate with me, but finally the paperwork is filled out and a bar of soap and a “wowel” is given to me. The room is upstairs, which is a lengthy process to ascend to, each step having to manually lift my leg. I am in psychic agony about the paralysis, something bizarre and unknown to me. Mrs Wang is concerned, which is nice, but irreverent. The room about the size of a large closet, a ceiling fan paddling the torpid air, just a sheet for the bed, bars on the window and the evening bedlam outside. I collapse in feverish exhaustion. The next 12 hours are a writhing of sweat and bizarre dreams, the secret bodily process trying to burn out the invading microbe or what ever Dengue drudge that has assailed me. The morning finally comes, the body wrung out like a bucket mop. A shower in a space the size of a vertical coffin, no room the retrieve dropped soap. A search for food in town proves hopeless until I at last locate a Mayan fruit seller. The wild oranges are reviving as the chemistry greedily adsorbs the vitamin C. On again now, to the northern border.

The road is a plague of bicycles going in all directions, but eventually they thin out as the cane fields dominate the landscape. I arrive at the border around 9, thinking I’m an hour late. But not much to my surprise, the gate has not been opened yet. Eventually inside, looking for Leroy, or whatever the hell his name was. Nowhere around, although he claimed he was there every day. I eventually hook up with another customs agent and the customary hours of wait commence. The papers are here, the papers are there, this official needs to sign them, that one needs to stamp them .. how anything gets done here is unknown to me. I use the time to hook up the hovercraft trailer. Using my bumper jack, I draw a small crowd. The jack is the most coveted item in central America. Some offer to buy it off me on the spot. No more tossing it in the back of the truck, it is number one on the klepto list around here. Inside the hover is all manner of rotting putrid food. The cooler is like opening an overdue casket from Calcutta. Important papers are mixed with all this, mold mountains of illegible text. Amazingly, there is a trash can where I can donate all this biology. When done, the flies move on to sweeter pastures.

Around 11:30 the customs agent informs me that all is in order. I had thought that all was in order when I left 3 days ago, but evidently mistaken. The bureaucrats would hate to miss a chance to obfuscate the process. Now to the pay-out-the-ass window. I’m sweating if I have enough money, all is in Yankee dollars. I get out of there with about 50 bucks. The thieves have charged me about 900 US to bring the boat in. Then to the insurance guy, a minor fleecing for a days insurance on the trailer. Now the road in earnest. 6 hours of daylight and 6.5 hours of driving. It’s pedal mashing time. I pick up no hitchhikers, I’m on a mission to get back to Kim. If everything is … as has been going, she will be raped and murdered, laying in the few things that were unable to be carried off. I’m stressing. I’m stomping the gas, passing like any good Mexican, irresponsibly, trying to get to Punta Gorda before night. I don’t make it. Blackness envelops the myriad standing on the roadside, the bicyclists, and the dogs alike. I can’t see spit. Some times I see a silhouette of some masses riding or walking beside and in the road, but often I only catch a glimpse as my headlight illuminates them instantaneously … 4 feet from my 50 MPH bumper. What the hell are they doing out here anyway? Shouldn’t they be in their smoky hovel slapping around a tortilla for the 30 family members? Maybe this nocturnal migration is coming over for dinner? I am terrified of hitting one of these people, though so burned out and ripped off I would enjoy bouncing a few off the grill. I think my tires can take running over a bicycle, they have pretty thick rubber. What the hell would I do then? Flee? Not a really great way to establish residency in a foreign country. I slow the truck to around 30 giving me a small margin of panic with each dark phantom.

At long last I arrive “home”. Parking on the road now and hiking in the ¼ mile to the platform and Kim’s presumed remains. But I can’t walk, though better, my best is an interminable shuffle. I’d lose the 20 meter hobble at the geriatric Olympics. In 15 minutes I get to the bottom of the stairs and call out. Kim answers, She is fine. The dog barks. I crawl up the stairs pulling my self by my hands. Sweet home! Rest. Food. I ask, are you alright? What has happened? Has there been a hoard of visitors? People passing by? Has Orlando been here from dawn to dark? No, no .. she answers .. Nobody coming and going. I’ve been here all by myself. Moved the rest of our stuff up here. Just one visitor. What’s wrong with you? Why did it take so long to walk from the truck? Paralyzed .. I answer. Oh, that’s to bad. Followed by silence. Not exactly the sympathy and massage I had in mind. Who was the visitor? I ask. Chet Schmidt, the hostel owner. He says that we have to clear off of here by Monday morning. He has a crew coming to finish building on this place before Larry [the owner] shows up in a month. He says there will be 6 guys hauling cement and gravel up here, Spanish music blasting on the radio, a flurry of activity. Everything must be cleared off and out of here. The bastard, I think. This place has sat here in the jungle, descending into an archeological ruin for two years with nothing happening. Now suddenly when we need rest and release from kayos the most, he decides to start building. It is Friday evening. Monday is not far off. And just where the hell will we go?

Saturday morning a beautiful mosaic of sunlight through the jungle trees. A half dozen parrots fly into the trees nearby, like a moving monkey fight, defoliating the tree in a raucous argument. Other unknown birds are also aggressively announcing their position in the canopy. The dog wanders off to get the neighbors chained canines in an apoplexy of verbal expulsion. We brew the coffee and sip with extreme relish. One teaspoon, add hot water. In this land of coffee, there is only instant from Mexico. Around 7, a thin malarial white man comes walking through the jungle trail, approaching the rain of dog barking without fear. He talks rapidly in a monotone, giving a usual greeting, some compliments on our camping ability, then launching into a social economic monologue about how the workers must be kept busy or they’ll return to Guatemala, how Larry has left him money to work on the place and he’s done naught to date, how he made a bad investment that has cleaned him out (unrelated), and a few newbi stories of how the ground is swarming with deadly snakes and venomous bugs. He is never still, flitting about the platform, snapping his head from side to side as though a rock had just whizzed by his ear. He says he has a place where we could move a block away and begins to talk of monthly rent and power bills. He said the workers left the city water on for two days and it cost him 1200 dollars. It’s no use exaggerating to an exaggerator, I can smell the crap in that story. But city water sounds good. The cesspool dug in the jungle floor below us is not fit for the animals to drink. I tell him that we are robbed and penniless, but that I have skills and tools which I can use in trade with him. He seems satisfied with that as he jerks his head suddenly to the left. I’m wondering if ghosts are sneaking up on him. We go over to the place a bock away. It is a construction site with the proverbial unfinished concrete building. Two stories, the lower level a dark obiliat of stacked construction supplies, but the second floor is of wood, with an expansive metal roof and some walls without windows. The back of this place is on level with a wall of flowering jungle trees, very airy and beautiful. This will do quite nicely, I think. But don’t tell him that. He is rambling on non-stop about how this is not finished, that is done wrong, this is rotting from neglect, if then … then that could happen. We settle on my task of installing the sewage drain piping to start, then the toilets and water supply. Later still, the electrical wiring of the place. I’ll keep a check on the Guatemalan water use and we’ll worry about the electricity later. Down stairs and in a hovel on the side is where the workers stay. An outhouse of disgusting factor 12.6 is in the yard. The filthy seat is loose on the rotted tilted throne. It is dark and decayed, the walls seething with black biting malignant insects. Who can imagine what’s lurking in the hole, licking it’s incisors, waiting to clamp into a looming soft white ass. Apparently this is motivation to get a working toilet installed. Yes .. I am motivated. Another 5 minutes on breathless jungle Streptococillis, mahogany wood, squalid workers existence, and loud Mexican music, then he’s off in a panic to some other imagined appointment. So this is it. Evicted and re-housed all in one sentence.

I return to the platform, convicted to do nothing for the rest of the day. Sunday we’ll move. I tell Kim of our luxurious new living apartments. There is minimal excitement. Back to the Mexican coffee and bird calls, sinking in awe into an American camp chair. Contemplating this land, so far down here at the last of the road. From here, one must take a boat to another country, this humanity hemmed in on all sides by the Jungle. Here the Mayans have lived un-molested by the Spaniards and the rest of the world, and also unaided by any government, the British or the current Peoples Parties. Pirates used the coasts and islands to hide their treasure, slave ships unloaded Africans, Chinese, and East Indians here, Europeans mixed with the Arimi Indians .. then this place was left alone. Forgotten by the world. Left here to stew in it’s poverty, interbreeding, becoming a semi rebel land populated by the unwanted. Have we gravitated here because we are such people also?

Sunday I get the hovercraft off the trailer and it runs well in spite of it’s holes and torn skirt. I’ll use it to shuffle the mound of possessions across the rich widows lawn to the truck on the street, then ferry it to the new digs, packing it all upstairs. This process takes a week, where we had unloaded in 2 hours, now it seems endless. No workers show up on Monday, but the downstairs of the new place is a bustle of activity, making rebar frames for Larry’s place. Mexican music blares form below. By Friday we are re-entrenched, our tent set up inside for bugless nights, some semblance of order to our discordant belongings, the LED lights emplaced, and the cats exploring every nook and cranny. Chet comes bustling in, blithering non-stop about the Hurricane. A force 5 tempest is heading straight for us. His place on the waterfront will surely be leveled he exclaims. He must move all his 20 years work of precious papers in the next 8 hours. Also boats, furniture, household everything, his empire must be secured. He is frantic. We must figure where to go also, he says. Fill the truck with gas. Lock everything down and flee.

Flee? What do you think we’ve been doing for the last month? Flee where? This is the last place. If this is our burial mound under a pile of ripped apart lumber and concrete, then so be it. We ain’t budging. A piddly hurricane vs what we’ve just been through? It’s maelstrom is but a walk in a spring shower … with flowers. No way we’re fleeing, we’re digging in and gritting our teeth. Come what hell or fury you have to throw at us … Belizean hurricane, there’s no way we’re moving back into that truck.

The hurricane passes with no wind, raining torrentially over the next few days without cessation. I am grateful for the roof, drubbing like a jungle drum, but this storm is a punk. It will take a lot more than this to kick our ass.

Epilogue
Now this exodus two months past, we agitate into this new life of raining flowers, idyllic temperatures, sea breezes and millions of biting bugs. Adjustment sickness takes it’s turn with all of us, next Kim, who we haul to a primitive clinic for pills (all free), then the dog languishing for days with tick fever. Another punk hurricane comes and goes. We hack, chop and burn our acre of jungle, clearing enough space for gardens, getting to know the trees and insects before we destroy them. The colonial paradigm of a mansion centered in a groomed estate is strong in our blood, despite our new age sentimentalities. The scorpion infested thatched hut in a tangle of vines is not to our tastes. A three story tower of my mad design will soon rise from the jungle floor. The hovercraft is repaired and repaired again, tropical attrition decaying every part enthusiastically. Skipping over the blue sea in the hovercraft is magic. The secret rivers traversed wind inland for 50 miles, cloaked in thick tangled growth. The local police are searching for me due to neighborhood dust infractions, a consequence of driving it down the street to the launch site.

The people are still nice, some getting nicer, others showing their deep contempt of first worlders. Kim is pragmatic about her existence, so much about the kitchen and laundry and site work, it seems that temple looting never enters her mind. But I am plagued with such questions, how to make a few dollars to offset our endless expenditures. When will the time be found to search for Karnackna Ku’s golden statue? I build a shrimp trap, a charcoal making machine and have plans to make a plastic melting machine. But to what end I question? The connection with wind power moguls of the North fades, the hover business plans seem to crawl along in an insurmountable bureaucratic morass. Where will be our place here in this society? What can we do to insure our sustainability, as well as give back and uplift the struggling around us? It is a race to create a life of meaning, of security, of importance before the money runs out. In the meantime, I join with twitching Chet, the local political provocateur, as his ghost writer, for he writes like the insane prisoner, scratching the wall with a spoon. With myself in the shadows, we instigate a Mayan uprising, refining rhetoric to readability. Maybe the god Ichmal will have pity on me and give me his ruby eye, or at least a gold earring the size of a truck tire.

To the End of the Road

2010-10-14T19:09:00.000-07:00

A Mexican rabble, who is our “guide” rides on the bumper, shouting directions up to me of which way to go. It is of course, not obvious. Have to stop at a fumigation station, where they do a thorough job of spraying both sides of the truck and trailer with some green goo. 80 bucks Belize. Finally we’re led to huge gate, locked, second in line. How that other guy got in front of us is unclear. A vendor sells breakfast burritos off his bicycle, but we’re on the cigarette diet.

Behind the gate a hundred yards is a huge warehouse of boring proportions. It is hot as we wait, truck on, truck off. It is 8:45 by our Mexican time. We realize that Belize is an hour earlier so the gate ought to open soon. Set the clock back. Wait and wait. As the time approaches 9 Belize time, an exceedingly slow and fat fellow wattles out to the gate. He appears to have as much interest in his job as shoveling hippopotamus crap. Languidly he unlocks the huge gate and settles into his booth. So things are an hour behind prescription it would seem. He informs me that I have to pay 125 per document to the Customs broker before leaving. I can just pay him, he tells me. I chose not to, waiting to see how things shake out. Through the gate and into a big yard surrounded by a 12 foot fence that is buttressed all along it’s length with various wrecks. Here we must wait.

Lester come up and tells us that an inspector will verify our VIN numbers with the titles. He wears a lite blue shirt with dark blue trousers. He’ll take the titles now to get the paperwork started. They are reluctantly handed over. An hour passes. Finally a rotund white shirt-black pants fellow comes out. Goes to the first guy and spends what seems like a week with him. Evidently old friends. Then back into the warehouse. More waiting. We’re dozing a little in the truck when there’s a rap on the window. The inspector. Does the VIN check. Has me pop the hood and looks over the engine. Then back into the warehouse. Lester tells us we can do the animal quarantine paperwork now.

Into the warehouse. It is a vast gloom with various offices around the edges. We go into a tiny one on one side. The little room is air conditioned, which is nice. A Quarantine official reviews our paperwork as we explain that some other necessary part of it was faxed down to them previously. He wears green pants and a lite green shirt. He goes through a few piles of papers on his desk and can find nothing. Then makes a call to some other office, speaking in some mix of African and Spanish with an occasional English word thrown in. No hello or good by, just start talking and then hang up abruptly. They must have told him the paperwork went by their office and it must be there somewhere. He consults a superior who points out a folder pinned to the wall behind him. Digging through this, our animal paperwork is miraculously found. Another half an hour of making a few copies, signing in all the appropriate places, filing out some other form, stamping officially, and getting some hefty payment from us.

The entire bureaucracy here in Belize is very dear to these people. Based on some south African model, influenced by east Indian bureaucratic excess, and originating in British Colonial corruption, the “cover your ass factor” has mushroomed into an almost endless miasma of signatures, stamps, triplicate of triplicates, verifications, and indecisive stalling. The computer has not infiltrated into this system yet and all summations of payments are done on a small Casio adding machine. There is no reduction of paperwork act here, no efficiency analysis’s, no customer service consciousness, only grinding paperwork that is shuffled from one desk to another and treated as though it were sweaty gym socks. Every one is color coded for position. Specific colored shirt, specific colored pants. I’m sure some of the epaulets that decorate their shoulders connote their rank. I have seen this in the South African mining system, where each status level has a different uniform, and the wearer is even obligated to move to a different house with each promotion or demotion.

Lester glides over to us, now leaning against the concrete warehouse wall sweating, hoping to suck some coolth out of it. We get our titles back and the news that all is in process. Soon he says the inspector for our truck load of crap will come out to verify some damn thing, and we ought to pull the larger things off the top so it’s interior can be penetrated. He floats off with a lilting step like a adolescent unsure how to walk in public. After each foot is planted, it is bounced up on it’s toe, giving an over all pogo stick gait. Lester is unfazed by the contorted convolutions of paperwork he must expedite, a passive look on his face, one would think he were wading in a seashore sunset.

We hotly pull the bikes and some other junk down from the truck, then do the AC thing inside, for us and the melted animals. We wait. Wait some more. I get out and talk to a guy next to us with two 100 pond pit bulls. He takes them over to the shade of some fence wreckage where they bark and bark. Sometime afternoon we locate Lester again. What the hell is going on? What is the interminabdle delay? The inspector came out, he says, but couldn’t find us and the truck was not ready. What the hell? We pulled crap off the truck. We’ve been waiting in the truck. The inspector will come back later. We pull more crap down. Then go in the building to see the inspector. Tan shirt, brown pants. She is a huge woman, sitting behind a desk bullshitting with some cronies. Hard at work. We say we’re ready now. She grunts and say’s we were not ready. Maybe, but we’re ready now. She shrugs the shrug of dismissal and continues her perlather with the others lounging near her desk. Kim is getting furious. I can see the fat inspectors power trip maturing. The more we bug her, the longer this is going to take. We wait, sitting on the concrete against the wall. In an hour she waddles out with a clip board and goes to some other truck, giving us a withering look. The fat power bitch look. Then back in for another half hour at the desk. I am called into an inner sanctum office and sat down with a white shirt, black pants. He has been surfing the computer and says that the value of the hovercraft is astronomical. I protest that I built it out of scrap parts, cost almost nothing. Also that dozens of these things are selling for 1500 to 2000. After much back and forth, it is valued at about 4000. The truck is valued at 6900 US. 900 more than I paid for it 10 years ago. I have a Kelly Blue book print out showing it’s only worth 1500, but he says he has to go by the GET guide book the government uses. Everything is 3 letters in this country. An anthropomorphic compulsion to conform to numeristic of theological trinity. My paperwork is thrown in some random heap and I’m back to waiting against the wall. An hour later, Rita, the corpulent inspector wanders out. She strikes up flirtatious conversation with a swarthy Guatemalan in some unintelligible language. I sense that he’s shining her to get a benefit of her assessment of value for his load. Seems to be working. I’d rather court a 200 pound tick. You’d need a garbage truck to take her to the drive in movie, if there was one. After she assesses his load, gives him her cell phone number. Goes back inside. Rita is fucking holding things the hell up, large. In another half an hour she comes out, with a huge sigh of reluctance to have to do her job, she comes over to inspect and assess our truck contents. It’s all over in 30 seconds. She could care less. Everything down as miscellaneous personal items. Value .. 400 dollars.

Back to Lester who is floating a few inches off the floor near the big bosses office. A crowd of hot and irritated cargo carriers are barraging him. He has a Buddha like smile of benevolence. A cool mist seems to be coming off him, as if the freezer door were opened on a hot day. Eventually he gives me his attention. Everything is in order, just waiting for a signature of one of the big bosses. There is no problem with the boat. Back to waiting. In another hour we are presented with a new mound of paperwork. Go to the cashier and pay the duty. A line. Old friends or realitives blathering endlessly at the window with the cashier. Finally get to pay a massive price, about a grand US. Then must pay Lester about 150. Oh but there is a problem. You must have a license for the boat. But I have everything registered and titled. Yes, but you must get a Belizian boat license. Have to go to Belmopan to get it. The boat must stay here and there are overnight fees etc. can’t leave the yard with it.

Still blazing hot. Unhook the hover and trailer, wedging it in next to some dilapidated cars who’s owners chose to never come back for. Their overnight charges must be in the millions, judging by the tangle of vines growing through the windows. Ok .. can we go now? Yes, all is in order, you can go. Finally. To the exit gate, sans hover. The guard analyzes the paperwork. You cannot go. You have not paid the duty on the contents of the truck. Back into the maze. Wait at the cashiers for the fellow to take a half hour crap, then his cousin has to catch up on happenings in OrangeWalk. In an hour I pay another few hundred. Back to the gate. Cleared to go this time. Then to the insurance company, conviently the fist biz on the right. Dinked for another 50 US to drive the truck in Belize. Finally cleared and on the road. Now the dark thing. It’s about 5 in the afternoon. No way in hell to get 350 miles south on unmarked roads. Corozol is 15 miles away. The road goes through the center of town. A standard vintage town, no building over one story, somewhat colorful, but shabby. Signs are in English, which is nice. Through town. No Visible hostel. I see a sign for the Miracle Hotel down a dirt road and head off the highway for that. It is an old Victorian house, alone in a field, rasta people lounging all around the outside. Albert the proprietor is nice enough, though he looks like he can fall over at any time due to the huge multi colored bag on his head. There must be enough hair in there to make socks for all of china. The room fair whit a weak AC unit. Albert doesn’t mind that we have a menagerie of animals. Dog romps in the fields around the place, a thousand new smells and skittering things to make a symphony of delight. Animals settled, fed, chasing lizards in the room, we head for the bar. No food. Have to drink dinner. In casual talk with Albert, the subject of Ganga comes up. Presently he reaches under the bar and hands me what appears to be a dried rat without the tail. The light is bad, the rum is kicking in. On inspection, mostly by nose, it is determined to be a huge bud of marijuana. This is nice, but no thanks for now. I have enough problems. The crime here is 6 month in jail, or 1000 US to pay your way out. Not too many of these bubble heads appear to have a thousand US Dollars. The Prison must be crammed with pot smokers. We take beers back to the room, which clatter on the tile floor. The small cat is all over the room like an electron trying to catch a fast lizard. The bed and the exhaustion catch up to us. A nice night with regga thumping downstairs and tropical birds chirping out the window.

The relief of night over too soon. A lounging rasta claims he’s been watching the truck all night, although he wasn’t there when I came down with the first load of animals. I give him a few bucks anyway. Back on the road. But now we feel safe. The land not hostile, pavement fair, directions easy, as there is only one road. A dozen miles past Corozol, the road devolves to dirt, then huge rutted and mud holed country road. Sugar cane is 15 feet on both side. To far we go on this before we realize we have gotten on a parallel road to the highway, having stupidly gone straight where the unmarked cutoff was. The good news is that the road rejoins the highway in another 20 miles. We decide to tough it out, but regret the decision more than a few times before we find pavement again. Back on the slab. Barreling along. Local instructions are to cut a right after the police check station to Barrel Boom, thereby bypassing the nightmare of Belize City.

Do the check point, pulled over and questioned at length, but with no dire result. The turn off is 10 miles past this, rather than just on the other side as informed. Eventually to Belmopan, where further bureaucracy prevents getting the license for a few days, needing signatures and the usual delays. On down the road, now into the “forgotten land”. The Maya mountains are beautiful and lush, palms and mysterious trees leaning over the road. On and on it goes, through villages in abundance, bicycles populating the sides, the people ever standing along it, waiting, waiting, for what unknown. Places are kept well in Belize, garbage at a minimum. On and on we go, ever south. And now, the evening upon us again.

Finally into Punta Gorda, the end of the road. We stop at the property we bought and hike into it. All is wet and dripping. Kim is quiet, peering into the dark of the jungle trees. Where is the Ocean? What is this? Disappointment is all over her. We are a block from the sea, I explain, but this does not appease the reality of the dank twisted tangle of vegetation. The dank moisty air. We head over to the hostel of my friend. His wife grumpily greets us. Yes, there is a room, but no animals allowed. This we cannot do, the animals need out. Back to the property. I ask the neighbor for permission to drive across her lawn to get next to the place. Larry with an adjoining property has a house started with an elevated floor. Now the dark is on us. We hastily set up the tent under this elevated cement floor. The bugs are rampant, biting the hell out of us. The bedding soggy, the tent a sour pit full of animals, of which we are as they are. Tomorrow will be better. We’ll build stairs to get up on top of the platform, off this bug ridden ground. We sleep in exhaustion, again. Now at the destinations end, in this strange land, this strange place, discomfort still on us like saran wrap on a microwaved burrito. Creatures without rustle and squawk all around. This first night in our new land, a grumpy dud.

To the Belize Border

2010-10-07T16:23:00.000-07:00

Toll road is somewhat of an ambiguous thing, as most else in this country is, the toll that is. There seems to be a toll booth about every 40 miles or so, sometimes less. I can’t figure if these are controlled by the mafia or who exactly. There are billboards extolling the wonders of the government who have brought us this fine road, but they could mean anything and probably not what a body would think. The road is good, made of concrete rather than the 9 layers of half ass applied asphalt. Pot holes are few. A steady pace of 50 MPH can be maintained with all the maniacs passing to the left at 90. I am thankful to be out of the perpetual village phenomena with all their asshole bumps, road sharks and rip off pigs. There seems to be no pigs whatsoever out here, the toll deemed sufficient extortion.

Toll booths are confusing because I can count to ten and no higher. Even to ten I can’t understand what they are saying. So we just hand money out the window and hope for some change. On occasion, a number flashed on a marquee in front of us, giving us a clue what to pay. At every one is a big deal about how many axels we have always resulting in the booth person having to get off their ass lock the toll booth, come suspiciously around and look under the trailer. Each extra axel doubles the toll. Soon we catch on to this and proclaim Una to their quizzical look, but hey never believe us and have to get out and check. I’m sure this costs us extra. There are always some sort of para-military goons around. The hover attracts them like files to shit. The longer the inspection for axels, the more congregate and I can feel their minds working up infractions. A few times I drive off with out the change, before the mental cusp is reached with these marauders. I notice that when a particularly toll is charged, it doesn’t show on the lighted board. At one booth, the fellow speaks some English. 300 pesos he want’s. Not on the board. Paid and beyond, we conclude we’ve been fleeced again. Getting smarter now, we see that the fares are posted going into the toll booth. This allows us to only hand over exact amounts, like we knew what we were doing. Yeah, that’s better.

After the booth there is often a check point, military or federallies, but who really know who the hell they are except their mother. We are always pulled over without question. Then the questions. Transmigriantes, we plead, handing over the documentero’s. After some scrutiny we’re allowed to pass, unfleeced. Sometimes we have to get out of the truck as a young uniform hops into the back and rummages around a bit. Not sure why we have to get out and smell the machine gun oil, but it is un-nerving, it being the first step to being shoved up against the bullet ridden wall. On and on this goes, the road still good, the toll booths and check points frequent.

Both sides of the road are flooded in this long stretch to Villa Hermosa. People with their baggage on their heads walk along the roadside, going where is unknown. Flooded shacks can be seen everywhere. At times we cross mammoth rivers of swirling mud, their banks undefined, merging with drowned fields as far as we can see. I see scraggly abandoned horses, still tied to their roadside grazing places, chest deep in water. Why does no one cut them loose? I should feel pity for these inundated people, but I don’t. Somehow, I think if this whole country washed away, who could possibly miss it. Come on God, you have a fine start here, Just another 20 feet of water ought to do it.

Kim has found in the yuppie “RV camping in Mexico” guide another possible campground. It is vaguely described as being 40 or 60 miles this side of villa Hermosa. We haven’t seen a single RV anywhere. The detailed directions tell us the place is on the other side of the freeway and one must somehow see this, then take a returno, pull in at a gas station, go around behind it, park, bang on a gate, walk up a hill to the office, etc. etc. I miss the obvious motels of the west with some curry soaked East Indian grinning behind the desk. We’re out of the damn pesos again. The last one we had to dig through a pile of aluminum and brass coins to pay. I stop at a Permex gas station that advertises a bank. This is only a cash machine, which is no use to us, our credit being left in shambles back in the states. No, nobody will change yank money. Maybe try the gas jockeys. Yes .. one sharp looking fella will do it, at the rate of 1000 (a mil) pesos to the hundred. The rate is 1300 in an airport, 1250 on the street, so this guy is making about 30 bucks on a hundred. I change 200 US and get enough funny looking money to stuff the glove box again. There is 3 different kinds of hundred peso bills, some have clear cellophane windows in them. This must represent the national plant, which is a plastic bag stuck in the roadside brush.

Now the dark panic again. The sun setting in an aura of menstrual mist. Gotta get off the road. On the far side of the road we see Wangderro’s RV sign. It is folded over, broken and crumbling, a wrecked car upside down in front of it, a fallen down barbed wire fence all covered in tendrils of vegetation. Immediately there is a returno. To quick to react from the far lane. Maybe there is another returno. I doubt it. The place looked abandoned to me, what about you. Looked bad alright. Well the hell with that anyway though. But now we’re charging straight into The city. It’s fleecing hour. It’s past fleecing hours, they’re all home pigging empadas. Never-the-less, we’ll be driving for an hour in darkness before we hit the big town, and that solves nothing. Only complicates. Have to get off the road. We’ll sleep in a gas station. Groan. Getting pretty dark now. The road worsening and we’re hitting some road craters at high speed, feeling the agony of the frame twisting underneath with the drubbing. There’s a Permex on our side. I’m getting off the now dark road. Pull into the far back corner. Stopped at last, but on a concrete slab that is remarkably unappealing. What to do? I piss the dog and tie her to the trailer. Walk with kim over to the gas station where she barges into the bathroom not asking if the traditional 3 peso fee is required. Inside the store is dark. Nobody ever turns the light on around here. A few senioritas are gossiping behind the counter who eye me witheringly, particularly my ragged shoes in which I have hidden gold bars. If only they knew. Buy some beer and back to the truck. The dog has been barking desperately, feeling abandoned in this no place. We sit behind the truck in the soaking bedroll, drinking the beers, which are a little comforting. What to do? 12 hours till dawn. Have to wait it out.

A concrete wall next to us is covered in lizards, attracted to the buggs under an erratic mini street lamp. That’s pretty cool. The air is thick and muggy. Mosquitoes take up 10% of the atmosphere. They are biting the hell out of us, injecting us with Malaria, Dengue, Elephantitus, and every other exotic tropical disease known and unknown. Ahead of us to the east, the sky flashes continuously with some massive storm headed our way. Blast after blast of white light, seeming to reveal our skeletons in their intensity. It’s as though we are trapped in the control room of a warp drive after a Klingon discinto ray has put it on a pulsating pattern to destruction. No mater how we cover ourselves, the little disease vectors continue to stab us mercilessly. It is incredibly hot. Has to be over a hundred something. We pack back into the truck, starting it and blasting the AC. Crammed in here, our spines pre-fused from endless hours on the road, upright seating only. Turn the truck off and it’s a foggy hundred in 4 minutes. We are relatively miserable. An hour has passed .. 11 to go. Suggest we set the tent up and fling the cats in, give us more room in the truck cab. This is a unanimous vote. We do so, putting the soggy cat box in there with them. The little crazy one escapes again, but is distracted long enough by the lizard wall to be recaptured. The furry creature seems to be intent on becoming a Mexican cat, or more realistically, a gato taco.

A little more room in the truck now. We share leg space, trying to straighten them for a brief time to return blood flow. Truck on. Truck off. The storm nears slowly, now with accompanying booming behind the flashes. 4 hours in and no sleep yet, just writhing. Sweltering inside with the truck off but we don’t dare let the blood sucking hoard in. already there are a few micro devils sucking us that have slipped in, who we thrash for. Truck on for a few moments of icy air. Truck off, can’t leave it running all night. About 1 AM the storm finally hits, with ear splitting blasting instantly on top of the blinding lighting. The dog erupts barking in terror. The rain pummels the truck as a thousand hammers would, each drop the size of a golf ball. This goes on for about an hour. Then stillness. The air a fog, the mosquito’s have all survived and are back to business. I sleep fitfully for a spell, in and out of odd dreams. When I awake, Kim is sitting stoically beside me. Not complaining. A resilient girl, although I see she suffers and does not sleep. At last the graying of dawn. 5:15. Not a lovely sunrise, just a slowly brightening of the grey.

We stagger outside to pull the program together. The cats are OK although not speaking to anyone. The hover trailer is only 2 inches off the ground in front. Too low to go anywhere. The hovercraft is full of 50,000 gallons of rain water. I try to bail it out, but it is an impossible task. With much reluctance, I take the big bar and stab two holes through the floor. This will do it. No point in hauling Lake Erie around. Soon our sodden crap is all packed away again. A lot of heavy things that were in the hover are put in the truck. Back out onto the road. No coffee, no food, just cigarettes.

The road degrades as we approach Villa Hermosa in inverse proportion to the increase in traffic. I’m expecting a rip off station on the outskirts of town, but it is the morning rush hour. This place is huge, with some miles of industrial districts on the outskirts. Still the two lane highway plows into the city. Soon we are in the edge of downtown. Here the 3 lane road is mosh pitted with 6 cars abreast and multiple diagonal drivers too. Cars are less than inches away and are aggressively squeezing from one lane to the next. I see no lane lines, just this sea of frantic cars all trying to squish through. I can’t understand how we’re not hitting anyone, as if we were a clam in its shell but not touching it. The only saving grace is that everything is moving at 3 MPH. For a few miles we crawl along in this car constipation, until skyscrapers are all around us and the masses mob the off ramp to their office endeavourers. The road becomes less packed, almost drivable. Still the two lane toll (?) road with a boulevard down the middle. We pick up speed, happy to be through the city, on our way to the east. Nothing happens. No police fleecing blockades. We’re out in the country now and traveling fast. The usual toll booth at their frequency, now all followed by military check points. They are searching for revolutionaries, who are common to this area. One captain tries to trick us up in well spoken English, trying to get us to tell different stories about where we’re going, how long we’ll be there, what our purpose is. Anticipating this, we have rehearsed our intent and the fellow is unable to make headway on incarcerating us.

On and on we go, making good time. The road is improved and there is little traffic. We are out of the flooded areas now, traveling through lush fields. Now heading North, crossing in and out of the state of Chipias with associated military check points at every border crossing. At one check point, the road is a mass of chuck holes, dust seems to be on everything, the military are intense, having us get out while they rifle through everything. Bunkers on the road side have bullet holes sprayed in them. It would seem this was a site of a recent assault by the revolutionaries. But we are not they, and eventually pass. The blood pressure factor is much lower now, goons with guns being so commonplace. Hardly warranting a ceremonial cigarette after a scrutiny. The last town comes at last. Escarcega. From here it is due east to Chetumal the border town and entry into Belize. The road degrades to a one lane town road, right through the heart of the small city. This is the perfect arrangement for the fleecers. But something is different here. The town is gaily painted and strewn with banners and flags. This is the city closest to dozen of famous ruins all around, and they are apparently capitalizing on the tourist trade to those sites. El Tigre, Becan, Calakmul and many more rise their temples to the sky, wonders of a vast civilization come and gone. We pass through town without a hitch, not even a sideways glance from anyone. We are on the last stretch of the highway to Belize. The road is great, no traffic, and we’re stomping the gas.

We blaze across the Yucatan panhandle. No temple stops for us. Racing the clock as always. Coming into Chetmal we get into an argument about where Santa Elana is, the border crossing. Kim seems to think is down this dirt road that ends at the river some 40 miles south of the highway. I contend no way, that there is only one, the one in town. But I humor her and head down this road anyway. It is soon the usual village with topes every 3 miles, donkeys in the road, etc. No way, I say. Turn around. Argue back to the highway. Ok, we’ll ask. Pull onto a mechanic yard with 4 rough looking beer swilling types. Nobody speaks English. After they figure out how pathetic we are, there is much discussion, ending in directions to continue down the dirt road. Okaaa. Back down the road. Now 20 miles in. I say no way. Stop and ask some street people. Oh no, Santa Elans is out of Cetamal. Must go back to the highway and continue into town. Yeah. Figgured. Back again, on down the road. This double diversion took 2 hours. Follow some confusing signs, go through an abandoned looking gate, then up a lonely road straight into a military encampment. Not good. Soldiers surround us. Apparently this is an unused bridge across to Belize, but we ain’t getting through here. Much explaining why we’re trying to smuggle drugs through here in broken Spanish, then I have to back the trailer up for a ¼ mile before I can get turned around. Now getting dark. People driving here without lights, which multiplies the possible crash factor. We are sucked into the town. Shit. Pull into a gas station where we meet a Belizean who says he’s headed for the crossing and we can follow him. A gentleman. Now pitch black. We follow with difficulty, being the tortoise and him the hare. The roads are confusing, with ¾ roundabouts, odd ball left turns, nothing marked except one sign that says substitute route. Eventually a little town, money change booths, and then the border/military fortress. Ok what the hell, we pull in and are stopped. We’re identified as transmigrantes, cargo people. A higher official is called to explain to us. The office is closed. We are 3 hours too late. It is Friday and it doesn’t open until Monday morn. Screwed, basically. We are escorted out but have to pass through a military check post where we’re scrutinized, even though just making a U turn. I was given some abstract directions to a place where we could wait it out. A parking lot? A hotel? The road out threatens to suck us back into town, but I make a variety of blind left turns, go around a few roundabouts, a blind right, and somehow heading back toward the border. A hotel on the right with a huge fence around it. Into that. The proprietor is a Belizean, working for an Iraqi who owns the hotel, here in Mexico. Ishmael, a nice enough fellow, but some how distracted although the Iraqi was watching his every move. Allows us to have the pets. Directs us to park around the back. Stopped finally. Animals unloaded into the room, Ok by equatorial standards. Has an AC unit. We collapse. We’re here, but not here. Out of Mexico, but still in it. Safe, but not across the border. A few days rest will do us good.

The border town of Santa Elena is pretty cute. Only a few blocks long but packed with corner grocery stores and cubby hole cafes. We walk the half mile down there in the morning and have some odd food at a tiny table halfway into the sidewalk. The café is about 6 feet wide, disappearing into the interior of the building, with an open window in front. There are a half dozen hot bowls with towels over them and an ample supply of flies flitting about. We discuss at length how we want a vegimintero something for Kim. This is not easy. Everything is geared to chicken. All the fly slop has chicken in it. At last we convey beans, salad, avocado etc., ultimately by pointing and trying to grope some wayward vegetable on the counter. I am satisfied with chicken/fly goop. Our repast is served in a bread bun, fresh and recently made locally. What ever the hell it is, it is food, the likes of which we have not seen since time began. We slather everything with various hot sauces, from green chili mild to the peel paint stuff. It’s the best thing we’ve ever eaten. I could eat 6 more, but my stomach has shrunken to the size of a walnut. I’ve lost over 20 pounds on the trip down here. A fair start. I’d say this is a fairly guaranteed weight loss program … stress and starvation. I should start a fatty clinic. Here’s 200 bucks US, a battered car with Iowa plates, no instructions, start here in El Paso and email me when you hit the Guatemalan border. We’ll try to get your thin traumatized ass out of there.

Then over to a little park, buying some fruit off a wooden box vendor. Oranges, bananas, and I stupidly get a half a watermelon wrapped in cellophane. It’s decidedly overripe, and I can just about see the micro organisms seething under the plastic, but I eat it anyway, have to get all these intestinal parasites a-tuned to my gut chemistry. Some belly boil afterwards but all part of the process I figure. We lounge. The hotel is nice, with a huge lawn for the dog to crap in, palm trees all over, flowers everywhere. I find a 4 inch green grasshopper on a stick who kicks lie a mule when I try to pick it up. There are land snails as big as lemons in the grass, in the evening fireflies play everywhere. The cats constantly try to escape the room, the dog barks excessively when we leave. But nobody cares. The small crazy cat finds a 2 inch lizard in the room that affords hours of chasing and hunting for it. The water system goes off for 8 hours. The power for 5. We find an internet shop and it is hard to connect out of Mexican Google. The @ symbol is a matter of big discussion, finally revealed by another customer as alt-Q. I spend my time writing, writing, Kim reading and puttering. It is nice to relax, the pressure of night situating not upon us. Now the only worry is getting into Belize, the animals, the vehicles, the sodden crap.

Monday morning eventually comes. Again the reluctance to leave this sanctuary, Ishmael and his ghost like gliding along the halls, the brief peace. Now there we are, the first in line waiting for the official to review our cargo. Over the line actually, which excites many, and we are instructed to back the mess up to the proper place. A lot of payments to various officials, a sign off with a quarantine agent, a lot of palaver with “custom brokers”, a guy named Lester designating him self as ours. The inspector for our cargo looks like “Doc” in “Back to the Future” on a bad New York heroin addiction. He is indifferent about all the crap. The stolen vehicle permit never comes up and I don’t mention it. Just wants the paymento. Bunch of hundreds of pesos, who can keep count? Then, the moment of glory, across the river into Belize. We’re in, never to cross back into this a-cursed country again.

evasion

2010-10-01T17:50:00.000-07:00

The morning as beautiful as the evening, with a brisk walk and fumbling through the wreckage of our water destroyed crap. I have a briefcase that has spent the last week submerged, all the cardboard boxes are dissolved, their contents strewn into a garbage pile. I pick Kim’s earrings and other jewelry from the exploded kitty chow, oatmeal, and kitchen ware. It is like an archeological dig, the treasure mingled with the offerings of food for the gods. In a micro moment of inspiration, I devise a method to tweak the trailer. Placing blocks found about here under the front frame, and putting a board up on the tongue, I drive the truck up the board and bend the tongue down, thereby giving more elevation to the trailer front. Works fairly well, get some bendage, then the blocks crush to powder, as they are made of a bad mix of limestone. Well, everything helps. Sorted, packed and loaded, we press on. I would like to stay another day, but there is the issue of the animals, who have only a 10 day vaccination pass. We are on day 14 or so, past the time limit, but have it from the quarantine people on the Belize border that an overage of time is OK. Out into the highway, and off into the deep unknown of Mexico.

We have perused the map extensively at this point. According to it there is a windy road through the coastal range that cuts off before Veracruz where a main boulevard travels west to mexico city. The 101 coastal route dives straight into the Veracruz city. Ok, dosen’t take brain surgery to figure what that’s gonna be like. A major local police fleecing roadblock as we enter the city, then likely one on the way out, possibly one in the middle. Who knows? Who wants to find out? This inland route may take a little longer. But the worst driving is better than the best fleecing. My nerves just can’t take it anyway, not to mention the rapidly dwindling money reserves. Of the three types of road blocks, two are actually benign. The military check points are heavily armed, often with machine gun nest emplacements. If they should decide to shoot you, there is little Bonnie and Clyde chance you’d ever get out of there in a hail of bullets looking anything different than swiss cheese. But they’re just about finding out who you are, and if you have a load of AK-47’s for the Zapata’s that will eventually shoot back at them. So no reason, if a body could in these situations, to think you’ll be intimidated into paying these kaki full uniform itchy finger troopers. The Federallies, are again benign, and equally sinister in appearance. Often they wear black ski masks and are always in full flak dress, weighted down with grenades and numerous murderous paraphernalia hanging off them. They must be roasting in all that garb, enough to take on a frontal assault at a moments notice. I worry that the irritation of this preparedness will have an effect on our encounters, but it never seems to. They are generally business like, and perceptive that we’re not on Mexico’s top ten list of desperadaos. Although I always feel like I am, and of course my imagined guilt crosses all the language barriers. The local police are a different story.

How the government of Mexico can be intent to shoot a pack of well meaning revolutionaries or some enterprising drug dealers who are holding the economy together, is beyond my cognition ... while letting these uniformed bandits run wild on the public streets, intimidating cold cash out of the innocent population. It is beyond disgraceful and criminal. On the main thoroughfare of every major town, they set up and wave not only the obvious easy mark like us, with all our crap and stupid Amerikan license plates, but also most others, big trucks and equipment, poor bastards just trying to get to work. Then they’re robbed. For what? What recourse do they have? None? Pig with gun .. hello … what the fuck are you going to do? Pay. That’s what. Sick as it is, this (literally) highway robbery is an accepted social condition. Why don’t the revolutionaries gun these fuckers down? I’d join that cause. Why doesn’t the Military or Federallies stop these bastards? So we learn a few things. Always there is some sort of infraction for which a “tickito” is in order. There is no paper exchanged for the tickito, except for the bucks you hand through the window. I’d like to ask one of these bastards for a receipt, which would never happen. So they usually want to see your drivers license, as if they are doing their job, but that is more like a hostage situation, ie: you don’t get it back until you pay. I’ve heard to never give them your passport, as they will ransom that for 500 or more. So then the invention of the crime. Dog in the front seat. No flags on the trailer. Driving through town. No sticker. Parking in the wrong place when pulled over. All crap. All payable instantaneously with out the hassle of paperwork. Often my annoyance overwhelms my reason and I commence to argue with these assholes in broken chopped Spanish. No, no tickkito. Todo Bueno. Rarely this has any effect, but in some cases negotiations are a bit fruitful. So I wouldn’t exactly call it reasoning with them, but more like if your bravado can overwhelm theirs, they’ll accept a lower price. The Transmigranties who move stolen cars down to Guatemala on a regular basis, have this all worked out. It helps to be able to argue in Spanish, and they claim they rarely have to pay more than 20 pesos, about enough for a beer, at any one of these fleece spots. They weigh this against a longer less direct route and calculate the graft as being less than the cost of gas. I sure wish I had that local ability. The smoothest ride would be a rental car, Mexican plates, nothing visible inside, a good line of Spanish bullshit, and for me, maybe some skin dye.

We veer off before Veracruz, getting on a boulevard/freeway thing heading toward Mexico City. Where the hell is the road south. No signs, nothing on the map in the way of connecting roads. These maps are made by elementary students. I have never seen such a cartographic catastrophe. I am used to the detail of US maps, every side road and loop delineated, maps made by people who care about detail. We realize we’re being sucked into the wrong direction and take a “returno” before things get too weird. Heading back toward Veracruz, we see a paved unmarked road off to the south, which we cut into. Through a village in a gully, then into the mountains, as an after though a bent over sign says #127. We have found it by luck, once again, the bypass road around Veracruz. This road is the windiest narrowest yet. Snaking through lush hills, climbing for miles and miles, the vegetation changing to more flowering trees with coffee bushes growing underneath. Every small casa seems to have a dozen coffee bushes on the edge of their place, small paradises of flowers and fruit trees. These mountain people seem to have nicer well kept places, the fruits of the land treating them better than the rats that infest the sides of the main highway. On and on we go, winding and winding up and down. In the deeper canyons are shrines cut into the hillside, often with some christian bent, but obviously there to revere the spirits of the gully, with offering of fruit lain before them. We skirt the edge of a city somewhere there in the middle, now at a few thousand feet elevation. Coffee warehouses are along the road, the traffic piles up ahead and behind at various times. Then a long and endless descent back down to the plain.

After 4 hours, we come to small town we think is near the Toll road. This toll road will take us across the bottom of Mexico, into the city of VillaHermosa, out the other side, north again to Escarcega, and then a straight shot east to Chetumal, the border town with Belize. We are anxious to find this and get on it. No, this was not the connecting village, but a pre village of a pre village. On we go, not sure if we are on the right road now. Finally we see a sign indicating Fortin is ahead, the place of connection. Weird name for here. What you would expect to find in the Midwest. Traffic is backed up behind us as we plod along. Suddenly, I see in my mirrors a police car has somehow muscled it’s way in behind us. Here we go again. In short order, the lights come on. Pull over. Don’t even try to get out, as that threatens them. As he gets to the window, I have my wallet out, making a show of getting out my license while flashing the 200 pesos in there. Some blither commences about how we need these triangular flags that stick out the sides of larger trucks. Infraction? Quanta Costa? (how much). Tres Cinto. 300 pesos. I try to hand him the 200, explaining it’s all we have. Some back and forth about that but he’s not budging from the 300. Ok. Kim would you get a hundred out of the glove box. She pops it open where a lot of loose bills are stuffed. Cover em up, I try to whisper, but as always, we are exasperated. She hands me one, which I add to the others and hand over. The pig steps back in surprise. Passo? I queri. Si, Si passo. But we must stop down at the next road block to get the triangle flags. Yeah right. On we go. Even though the traffic is thick, the cop vanishes with his car. How much did you give him, she asks, 200, what did you give him. A 500. What? That was way too much. You told me to grab some money, so I grabbed some. How the fuck was I supposed to know? We gave him 700 rather than 300. Well goddamnit, I just grabbed the money like you said to do. It’s OK. It’s Ok. We’re past him. That was about 75 Bucks US. Now look alive, we’re coming into this village. Ahead we can see a road block of about 5 police, a few cars, all drooling as they look up the road at us coming. We can see the toll road behind them, the elevated freeway whizzing with fast cars. This blockade is where we’re supposed to get the “flags”. Fucking fleeced and filleted is more like it. I’m sweating. What to do, what to do? “QUOTA” Kim shouts. What the fuck? TURN RIGHT! Quota Road! I am already partway past but crank the wheel maniacally. The lumbering load makes the turn, partly in the oncoming lane. We were a block away from the check point. Quota means toll down here, and although there was not a single other sign indicating any other city or direction, clever Kim picked up on this and saved our ass. Down under the freeway where we hit a massive tope in the darkness, seeming to rip the back of the truck and trailer right off. Recovering from that is the on ramp to the quota, also totally unmarked. We’re up and on it. Big clean 4 lane freeway. Two all to ourselves. I see the police down under the bridge, wondering where there victim got off to. And off we are. We’re outta here suckers. Now hundreds of miles of freeway, unblockaded (we think), a fast route to Belize now.

Trapped

2010-09-27T12:42:00.001-07:00

The tinkiling of the travel alarm clock wakens me so soon, tears me from ogers and demonds who fillet me in the dark. I am about 4% rested, which is to say, not at all. Kim is rousted, glaring at me from the couch. I gather the few bags and announce we’re leaving. I can tell she doesn’t really understand what’s happening. At the truck we remove the stinking cat box, let the dog stretch and piss, then we’re off into the black of night. A violation of all the rules, Mexican night driving. What’s to keep from running into animals and people now? No body has blinky bling or reflective clothing, only dark and sordid rag blending with the night. Not another car on the road, what was a half a dozen hours ago a compaction of compacts. On we go, driving modestly. The idea is to get on the cutoff under the bridge and head out the Guatemala way, at some point circling back toward the coast. Quite quickly we reach the bridge. There is no way to turn left excepting that dirt road that might have connected to the right. Too late, past that. On the other side of the road are still 4 police cars, all their lights flashing, a dozen transmigraintes pulled over. I plow on by, steady, unwavering. This is the trap of death. The highway is separated here and there are no bandits working our side. On I go, checking the mirrors every few second for signs of pursuit. There is none. Thank god in Himmel, I have made it past the incarceration station. On we go in the black. Slamming into unseen potholes. Pass the town of Hernadaz, no blockade here either. I figure now to backtrack to an intersection 30 miles north and head west toward Mexico city. Eventually this will connect south to toll road that cuts across the southern states of Chipias and the flooded zones of Villa Hermosa. In another few miles, a massive vibration starts up back in the trailer. Reminds me of a flat, but what can I do, narrow black road, no shoulder, all outlaw land. I must go on. Presently Kim speaks, somewhat pleasantly. Oh, but don’t you hear that screeching of metal back behind us. Yes, I do, but choose to ignore it. Nothing to be done about it no matter what is the worst. On and on we go, nerves further abraded on the ends of the numb ones. Hands clutched tight to the wheel curves and hills and holes bashing mercessilly. Finally, a gas station. A Mexican State owned Permex. Light. Flat. Sanctuary. I pull in and around to the back. With out the roar of the road, it is plainly obvious iron is dragging on the road. In the back, where the gas station is still under construction, I stop. Get out and look at what’s going on back there. The tire on one side is gone. We have been driving on the rim for the last 10 miles. The rim is mashed into an octagonal shape, not a trace of rubber anywhere. The weight and loss of tire elevation has dropped the front of the trailer to the ground. It is worn away in a wedge shape, along with the bottom 3 inches of trailer jack. A spare tire used to be bolted under the trailer, but it too is gone. Ripped away from the frame by the great road dragging. Only its holding bolt remains. To the casual observer, the trailer is destroyed. There is a casual observer, a diesel pump man. Nice enough fellow, although we cannot communicate worth spit. Nessitito Mechanicio. No shit. This I get. He indicates somehow their may be hope. He calls someone on the cell phone. We gesticulat some more, of which he’s not to interested in doing, then wanders off. A hot rain sets in. Kim and I sit next to the diesel pump, under the light, out of the deluge, smoking, smoking, and watching the 3 inch cockroaches scurry about. It can’t get any worse than this, can it babe? Kim ventures to say. Though grimly true, her brief words are comforting. Nothing to do now but wait. Wait for what .. unknown.

Thankful now for the things that didn’t happen. The police didn’t drag me away (though I still fear they will find me), the trailer didn’t flip and mash the hover into particles, all the animals are still with us even though frantic to get out of their kennel, and now, the enduring mechinery of our globe slowly rotates us back to face the sun. In the grey of dawn, a well dressed Spaniard and his daughter (?) come to talk to us. He is the Mechanicio. We can communicate little, but the situation is obvious. We need dos rutas’ (two wheels). There is much hand shaking, and blubbering gracias’s from us and then they depart. What now? Waiting is the only option. Around 8 a team of 20 constrocto’s show up to work on the gas station. I have to put the thrashed rim back on the trailer and move the thing to the other side of the lot. It is hot again, as always, and we turn the truck on and off to cool the interior and roasting creatures. We haven’t eaten anything in days, just some chips, bottles of water and colas. There is no food here either, just some more chips. I have a few minor inspirations, one is to buy a map and figure out not only where we are, but how to get out of here should occasion arise. The other is to charge the hover battery off the truck for future disasters. It turns out we are 20 miles north of Pozza Rica in a town called Alamo. The local map is much more detailed than anything we’ve previously seen. This is highly encouraging. Even more encouraging is what appears to be a small freeway, a toll road, completely bypassing Pozza Rica to the west, although the actual connection to it is unclear. If we can get on this, we can wiz around the bandits. The police do not work the toll roads, that being the territory of some greater more powerful mafia.

Around 9:30 we are basting in the truck, dozing fitfully, watching the constrocto’s mix cement in their way. It is a group effort of a half a dozen piling the materials on the ground, adding water, and all stirring and flipping the stuff until the proper consistency is attained. Then it is shoveled into buckets and packed over to the wall or what ever they are making, where others fuss over the placement. I discuss ditching the hover and trailer here. Going on. Or unhooking and going into Mexico city for the wheels. Neither is a great idea. Bad ideas actually. Suddenly there is a knock on the window. Outside is a 20 something stocky fellow with a greasy torn T shirt. El Mechanico?, I venture. Si, si. We look over the damage while talking in gibberish to each other, neither understanding the other. Dos Rutas? Can Do? Jabber jabber, si. 14 inch rims? El Datsun rutas. He seems to understand this. I write the number 14 down and he is also understands this. I want to make sure we get both the tire and rim, and draw pictures accordingly. He gets it. Two. Dos. Mil con dos cintos. One thousand two hundred pesos. Each. I make that I understand. I offer him the mangled rim, so that the bolt holes will line up. No nessitio. He taps his head, indicating that all the information is up there. How long? Quanta Houra? There is some confusion about that, but he leads me to believe he’ll be right back. OK. He’s not asking for any money up front. I thank him profusely, and he jumps in his little wreck of a car missing a door and tears off. Well .. that was hopeful. What will happen now, anybody’s guess. We return to the truck cab and the analysis of the map. Wait.

In less than a half an hour, he is back. Back with two brand new tires of the right size on Datsun rims. I am agog. This is some kind of roadside miracle. I jack up the trailer and he adroitly installs one of the new tires and rim, under the precariously jack balanced trailer which can fall and mash him at any moment. Seems like fairly common practice for him. The rims are newly spray painted black. I’m wondering if there is some other fellas mini truck sitting amputated in the mud somewhere, the back tires jerked off. But, like I could give a shit, I got mine. I try to give him US hundred dollar bills, but he looks so forlorn as he fingers them. Banks are foreign to him, and not likely friendly. There is no where the money can be cambair (changed). I have all the bribe money I changed at the hotel and dig all that out. I pay him 2500 pesos. He points out the hundred overpayment, but I let him know it is for bueno service. He lights up entirely. This guy is a great Mexican. With some further handshakes, he dashes off again.

Now here we are.. fixed. Hardly even 10 AM. I can’t believe it. We can go on with all our crap. I’m a little in shock to have gotten out of that one. Ok, some final tie down and we’re off, back in the direction of Pozza Rica, but not all the way to the trap. At the first cutoff into the town of Herandaze, we cut off and into the town. Narrow streets, rutted and broken, starved dogs everywhere, people everywhere. A ¼ mile in, there is a white shirted policeman waving us over. Show him the transmigranties paperwork. He’s not really interested. He’s all about an infraction, tickito. For what? Driving off the state highway. Ok sure. 100 pesos. He is insulted. 300. I can tell he’s not really into it. A glimmer of pity for us seems to have him somewhat hesitant, non-committal. He is not in a cash frenzy like the others. I open my wallet, showing all. I have 220 pesos. I pull it all out and shove it at him. Toto. Es toto. (it is all). No no, tres cintos. No, no toto. We are poor, I say, robbed, suffering. Some of this comes across. I sympathize with him that he cannot rob us of more. Finally, he accepts it and we part friends. Passo. His side kick behind him scowls. We are instructed to go down to the end of the street, get on the side highway, and return at the main highway at the end of town. We pass another grouping of police, loitering for a fleecing, but are ignored because their confederate has just nailed us up the street. Robber etiquette. Get to the back highway. Proceed to the main. No. No. This will not do. This leads to the nest. I won’t go there. I U-turn the rig and head back up the highway in the back of town. It is out of sight of the police pods. On through the back of town, then the road climbs. Up out of town, climbing to the top of a major hill. Some indecision here of what to do, but after a pause, we continue. Now winding along to the NE along a lane and a half wide road. People with carts, herds of goats, old men hobbling along. On we go, winding through green farms, going slowly, going into the unknown. It is not on the map. After a half an hour of this, we go under a freeway. Cars race overhead. Wahooo! We found it. Although no way to get up on it. We continue on for another 10 miles, hoping we will not come to the medium sized town somewhere at the end of this. At long last there is an entrance ramp to get on, but in the wrong direction. In a mile there is a returno, a place where we can cross over the freeway and get going in the other direction. This sure as hell wasn’t in the woodchuck guide. Now we’re in the clear. At last. In an hour we are well past the cursed Pozza Rica area. Safe. Safe from THAT horror at any rate. Eventually the road ends in a toll booth. We have to scrounge coins to find enough pesos for this. What happens if you don’t have enough pesos? Do you have to go back? Just past this is a sign to the Esmerelda Coasta. Take the left. Sort of corresponds to the map in a general way. There is a checkpoint. A multitude all dressed in black. Many with masks on. Of course we’re waved over. I feel shock coming on again. The extra mean guy comes over. Hand him our transmigrante papers. No habla espanole, we explain. He has a glimmer of kindness in him. He is not the local police, but the federallie, the government police. We are nothing. Carpetbaggers. Of no interest to them. They are looking for revolutionaries now, the Chipias Resistance. We totally don’t fit the bill. He looks through the papers, then politely hands them back, and waves us on. Incredible.

We come to a larger town. We’re out of pesos, again. Need pesos. No, the gas station wont change them funny looking dollars. Have to go to the banko. Where the hell is that? A vague wave down into town. Ok. I drive the truck and trailer down into the narrow streets, looking for the bank. It is extremely dense. We pass a police man who waves for us to pull over. Don’t think so. No where to pull over. Traffic on the front and back. I drive just a few miles per hour faster than the pig can catch us walking. He walks after us for a few blocks, where we turn a corner and disappear deeper into the warren. There are a few banks. I park the huge rig half assed part way in the street, then jump out and go back to the banks. I try all three, but none will change the money. Some gibberish about politicio something. A bank that won’t change money. Assholes. Three of em. Ok, got to get the hell out of here and avoid the walking pig. I take a left down an alley and start out into a cross street. Screech, smoke, my brakes dynamited, A huge van ground to a halt in front of me. A one inch near collision with a maniac barreling down the cross street. No signs, stop, one way, right of way, nothing. How the fuck was I to know? Pissed off but unblemished, the maniac van tears on. Another 20 cars barrel past at 40 in the one lane. pedestrian packed street. Eventually I inch out, get down a few streets and find the lane out of the mess back to the highway. Ok. New rule. No more entering towns. Fuck towns. If we need to go in, we’ll park somewhere outside and walk in. We avoided the walking pig.

On we go, soon on the beach road along the coast. Everything here is for the tourists, things not so shabby, but deserted. There are no vacationers here. To get here is impossible, as we have demonstrated. Of course, now out of pesos again. Dark approaching again. No water, no food, need to stop and camp. But where? All is hotels. On the second try, I am able to change some dollars for pesos at a ripoff rate. Get water, chips, some bean dip. Seeing that we’re running out of coastline, and that the road will soon veer inland to the next rip off city of Veracruz, I pull into a hotel. It is nice. All that the urban legend of hammocks, pools, drinks with little umbrellas embodies. No. No camping there, but there is a place just a clik down the road called the Cabanas. We find this. All is well. Friendly. Cheap. Here is where the story started so many pages ago. Here is where we dry out, eat our bean dip on a blanket on the beach, where the dog runs, the cats sprawl out in the tent. Where the soft sea breeze revives us. Where the horrors of the past days can be relaxed from.

South of Victoria

2010-09-24T18:32:00.000-07:00

…. and pull into the inner city sanctuary of Annie/Maria’s through a rusted gate.
This is some sort of colonial archeological site. If there were ever happy travelers in RV’s here, playing cards with Marie to mariachi music, the memory of it is lost under a carpet of rampant growth and neglect. A huge rotted colonial house sits to the right, the vines and trees gripping it’s crumbling sides and pulling it geologically to the ground. Beyond is an acre with exotic trees, apparent slots for RV’s, and a winding road that become almost a trail from the land crawl grass. We all immediately piss behind the truck, including the dog which craps also, hopefully unnoticed. Timidly we approach the relic house in a rock jumbled yard interlaced with creepers. Hellooo! Halloooo! We quietly call. Billy! Billlieeee! We hear back from the second floor of the mansion. Billy! Get yer ass downstairs and see who’s there. Where the hell are you boy? Unna, Unaa, here ma. A gangly awakwardly lurching 40 something stumbles out of a lower doorway tword us. He has the eyes of the insane, distant, and rolling around in the sockets, never looking directly at you. It’s as though his world of vision is painted on a constantly moving sphere. Can we get a camping spot for the night? Maaaaa! I’m mua-mua-muooving the car. You Idiot! Get outta that car! We look up and see Marie on the slanting second story porch. Hello there! Are you Marie? We’d like to rent a camp spot for the night.
Yes .. Yesss. In a spider like tone. I’ll be right down. In the shadows, she appears a dark blob, appearing and disappearing in the hanging vegetation of the porch. Billlieee! Fetch the book!. Billy has been standing stupidly next to the car waiting for further instructions. Marie appears all smiles into the tangle of what was once a patio. She is short, cylindrical, in a complex design full dress, not unlike a Mexican monolith carved with the secrets of the past. She does speak fair English, and we exchange pleasantries. A few gun shots are heard out there in the streets, followed by a crash of crumpling metal, then a symphony of honking and yelling. It is no more noticed than a bird chirping in a tree. For 200 pesos our signatures are recorded in the guest book. We can camp anywhere, it doesn’t matter, drive anywhere. With mutual thanks and smiles, she recedes back into the covered gloom of the house. Billy steps between us before we can reach the truck. I know American, he says. I watch TV! Barrack Obomba. Hilly Clinton. CBS.NBC. FOX. Afghanistan, middle east, Iraqi, Pakistan, whitehouse, congress, tea party, homeland security, Iowa, Hollywood, Swartzinigger, credit defaults, mortgage crisis, international monet….. BILLIEEE! Oh.. mama call. Gotta go.
Damn, not a moment too soon. We hurriedly move the truck to the farthest corner of the property and set about putting up the tent and a tarp over it. It is getting dark almost instantly. The tent up, and the bed roll rolled out, cat box inside, then free the cats , fling them in the tent, and zip it up. Mosquitoes and other unseens are chewing the hell out of us. The dog on it’s rope mixing into everything, hooking it’s food bowl and spilling contents wastefully. All it wants to do is run and bark and be an asshole.
Then a moment of magic. All over the now black lawn are little glowing moving lanterns. Huge fireflies are everywhere. I walk out among them, hoping Kim will be as interested as I. A streak of light, another the opposite way. Beautiful to me. One is stuck under a flap on the tent. The small cat is leaping wildly at it from the inside. Camp more or less squared up, we decide to walk down to the grocery store. The Dog barks desperately as we walk off, leaving it tied with the half inch line to the truck.
Outside is the kayos of the city. The boulevard traffic is still bumper to bumper 60, with pedestrians dashing back and forth across it, motorcycles weaving in and out. Walking along the side of it is pretty hairy. We make it to the intersection after skirting heaps of garbage, mud holes, swerving motorists, and leaning clusters of low eyed men, lounging, listlessly. At the intersection, three armored humvee type things loaded with Black dressed masked soldiers erupts in a scream of sirens and lights. They swing their pivot guns on any nearby traffic and barge into the intersection, roaring down one of the avenues. It is a fearsome display.
Finally to the grocery store, I want some authentic fast food. A quickie counter there, with 10 items listed. All undisquingisable. The biggest discussion ever had commences about vegimintaro (vegetarian), no pollo, no carne. They have never heard these words since the earth was created. Could we get a burrito. Frijole burrito? (bean). They have never heard of a “burrito”. Finally, some glimmer over taco. Kim gets a tortilla the size of coffee cup, wiped with some strange paste. I get two chicken tacos, which two more of these wiped with a thin layer of some other pate’. More raving to get a drop of hot sauce. Then to pay, 67 pesos. I know they are ripping us off, but don’t know how to argue it. Works to something like 2$ a taco that barely covered my tongue.
The grocery shopping a little better, cant read anything, but an apple is still an apple, bread … bread, just take our lumps at the register. The way back we find is in the center of the boulevard, a path through trees, A few unsavory types in the shadows, but nothing unusual. Back at Maries, a locked 8 foot chain link fence barrs the way. The hell with it, we’ll climb it. My pants hang on top and do the butt cheek rip, but we’re over and into safety. Out of the darkling gloom guilds a black spindly figure. America! It announces. Land of the free .. Home of the …. BILLIEEE! Screamed from the moldering balcony. He spins on his heels and heads dutifully into the black. This is without doubt the central American version of Psycho. Mom’s not quite a mummy yet, but I can envision Billy wielding a steak knife quite nicely.

The air is dead and heavy at the tent. At least 75 pounds per cubic foot. 95 degrees out and humidity so thick as to almost be a fog. Huge flashes of lighting light the sky a vast distance away, the pounding of the hurricane 50 miles coastward. In the tent, it is a clammy sauna. 10 degrees hotter with all the bedding soaked from downpours on the road. Everything smells like cat piss. We melt in misery. Not a breath of movement. Fireflies blinking against the tent walls. In a few hours, yelled to an awaking. Charliee! Do something!! The tarp has blown off. Dripping from sweat and slime from the cat piss sponge, I leap out into the night naked. Yes, the wind is now flapping and tearing at everything. The hurricane edge. Everywhere I try to sink a stake, there is concrete underneath the veneer of vegetation. Kim is all pissed off and yelling one thing or another which must be ignored. Finally some semblance of cover is made, and the first drops come. Over the next hour, 70 billon gallons fall out of the sky. It is now 300% humidity. The water comes in the walls, through the covered windows, just is … everywhere. Now like living in an outhouse. Blinding flashes and skull tearing thunder claps play upon us through the gusher. The dog is totally neurotic. We are no better. Then everything stops. Utter blackness. Dead calm. The temp is only 90 now. Wallow till day break, seemingly 400 hour long night.
In the morning, everything is so much wetter than the wetness before. The urgency to get on the road is on us. Have to make Tampico and beyond. We are bitchy. I roll up the bed which is now over 300 pounds, 200 being water. The dog runs off, which gives us an avenue to scream and abuse something. When we get the hog tied canine back, we find the cat has escaped from the truck. 2 inches of window down is enough to squeeze it’s peanut head through and leap. A calling calling thing. I see a wisp disappearing around a corner, and she is captured in an abandoned cabana with much squalling and flailing resistance. Everyone mashed into the truck. Out into the mad cap traffic of morning. The gas station appears to be a black zoot suit police encampment. I get gas there anyway, still too stupid to fear them properly. There is debate how to read the map and hook up with the highway south, which is unmarked anywhere in reality. Finding some unmarked intersection on the edge of town, one line of argument says to head north. I don’t like it. The road is empty. Feels bad. Up ahead a road block of machinegun toting irregulars can be seen. Not good. Amazingly, there is a turn around just here, about a ¼ mile from the doom. I do it. Heading south now anyway. Get through the intersection and find some indication that we are on the road south. We think all is grand now.

It appears we are on some alternate highway that will at some point connect up with the main 101. Conveniently, they name all highways 101, in this way there is no confusion. The land is amazing. Huge lush valleys surrounded by towering mesas. Fields of Agave tall and pointy, waiting to become some soured minds solace in swilled mescal. Climbing to the top of the mesa land, the whole of Mexico seems lain out before us. One can imagine blue jade clad Olmac priests here, surrounding a smoky fire, paying homage to some giant head god … 8000 years ago. But down we must go, to skirt along the coast to destinations deep and beyond. The road down takes over an hour for it’s 25 miles, twisting and clinging to cliffs. But we have the place mostly to ourselves, which is pleasant. Finally we are on the flat, ratty sugar cane all around, and the connection to 101.

The road now becomes more frantic. The traffic is pretty steady both ways, causing many hair brained passings. Also the road is only exactly two lanes wide, with shoulders that are an 8 inch pavement drop off into a jungle swamp. We plod along at 50, unwavering, 90 KpH if we should care. Almost constantly there is some wide eyed intent driven psudo wreck, plugging my mirrors, wallering out into the left lane every minute or so checking for passability. The general result is almost always of the maniac snapping back in behind me like a spooked hermit crab. I have to ignore this drama or be driven insane with visions of the impending wreckage. The road can barely be 20 feet across and is made of up to 4 layers. There are potholes every where. Some are single divots right in the tire lane, but most are clusters spanning 2/3 of the lane. A few can be avoided with a judicious swerve at the last moment, but the wheels are predominantly doomed to slam into the hole at 50 MPH. Between the holes is a patch work of broken layers of asphalt, concrete, and loose rock. Holes start around hat size, average about the size to hide a basketball in, and proudly surprise you with some craters sufficient to disappear an ice cooler. As the road is such a mosaic of lithified crap, it is hard to tell what or where a hole is. Compounding further is beautiful shadows from the overhanging jungle, making holes appear to be where there are none, and concealing others. Some indication of the shock to come can be gathered by watching the truck ahead dynamite the brakes and swerve drunkenly. Why should I be so concerned with this road? The truck is overloaded. The hover trailer is overloaded. Each shock reverberates up through the frame, rattling all those thousands of parts critical to keeping us going. How much of a beating can the Chevy suspension system take? Are these ragged edge pocks taking chunks of rubber out of our tires? There is no hope of being able to pull over. When will the punishment stop?

Every 5 to 20 miles is another village. No, these are not picturesque adobe walled streets with sombrero sleeping burros and people in colorful serape’s. This is a trash strewn road, lined with 8x8 foot stick shacks made of plastic bags and other garbage. A third or less of the shacks are occupied with malevolent looking people in rags, holding up a slimy looking plastic bag of some fruit guts. In two to three places in these town are “Tope’s”. This means bump. Not a little bump either, but about a foot high all across the road. The lower latitudes solution to velocity control. And it works. Almost everybody slows down to 2 MPH to cross these, or risk having the transmission splattered. There are huge gouges in the topes as testament to this process, often with a oil stain the size of a double bed. The tope sites are armed with vendors who don’t bother with the malarial looking shacks. Here their clientele is somewhat captured, having to slow to the 2 MPH. Out they rush, yammering at your side window, while the sagging trailer scrapes over the bump. On rare occasions, the tope is signed, first with “tope 100 meters” and then a sign that resembles two reclining breasts, just adjacent to the protrusion. But these are rare, and one must rely on that knowledge that there will be tope’s on either end, and in the middle of the village. Usually they are painted, but in the general deterioration of this world, the paint has often been long obliterated. This causes many emergency slams of the brake, in which the hover slips ever forward on the trailer and the abs system lurches us to an emergency stop. About 30% of the time I slam into a tope because I’m rubbernecking the situation. People are everywhere, but mostly standing on the edge of the pavement like moths waiting to be charred by the light bulb. They are not going anywhere, not waiting for anything, not crossing, just lurking like bad sign posts, occupying a square meter of space enhanced by the modern world, and as if, by standing there, they become a part of it.

So I’m trying not to mow down any of these loiterers, nor the starved rat dogs meandering about, or the chickens (which look the healthiest), or clutches of children, bike riders, hobbling 200 year old Mexicans, horses tied to the road edge, and assorted broken machinery. So my attention is drawn to the myriad detail before me as we enter a village. Then suddenly beside me “BUMP” is yelled, the brakes stomped, the cab lurched skyward, then the truck butt, then the smash of the trailer body bottom slamming the tope and dragging it’s screeching metal across it. If I cross one at 1.5 MPH, I can avoid the metal screech slam, but almost every one gets us.

Tampico is a highway bottle neck along the coast. All the roads go through this one point. For a few miles, Hwy 101 … becomes one. We hear much of the “tickets” handed out here by the local police. Sounds kinda bad, but much is written about the “Bypass” to avoid the center of town and the worst of the ticketing agents. Turn at the big boat. On and on we go, into the jaws of Tampico. Around noon we come to the top of a hill on the town limits. There are 10 or more police stopping almost everybody. We are stopped, obviously. We shove all our papers at them. Much excited waving of hands and proclamations of tickito, more excited babbling. Get out of the truck .. amigo. A few minor types look all around for what they can see in the back of the truck. More wrangling, but we are all on the level. The boss is called over, who lectures us in fragmented Spanish that the dog can’t be up front, has to ride in the back. This is an infractaion. I offer no money for this crime, nor agreement, nor co-operation of any kind. After some additional scare face time with the boss, he waves us on with a flourish of disgust. Dismissed .. don’t look at him. OoooK. We go. The cat is lost. Where is the cat? Fuck the cat, if it has run away during the “inspection”, it’s on is own. We’re outta there. Into the teeth of Tampico now. The road lined with one and two story ramshackle buildings, people and cars everywhere in no discernable pattern. We pass a mini police station. On the edge of the road is a short fellow half dressed as a police man, kaki pants, odd assortment of medals all over him. He is athoratativly waving us over. Yeah Right! He has no car anyway. I pretend I don’t see him and roll steadily by. I can see him hopping mad in the rear view mirror, waving his stubby arms wildly, the medals flashing in the sun.

Some how I get the truck and trailer into the right hand lane. Suddenly we are at an intersection. There on the far side is the huge boat. Turn! Turn! I crank the wheel at the last second, getting onto the bypass road. It is a good road, a toll road actually. After a dozen miles we come to the toll booth and pay some huge fee for the few miles. We did it! We think. Skirted Tampico! We cross a couple of low bridges and then come into another crappy village. There are police everywhere, all dressed in black, all packing black machineguns, sinister looking bastards. We are waved enthusiastically over. A fierce burnt red haired police woman comes up to the window. Jabber, jabber. Ahh . no habla espanole. Jabber ,jabber, now with a maddend tone. We hand the paper file, which she digs through. Vehicial permitio? Si, Si, handing it over. Now an eruption about that, while reaching in and tapping a spot on the window in front of me. Apparently I was supposed to place one or both of the stickers in the window. A violation. After a few more harsh words, she disappears with the file. We have kept the passports with us, hidden, so that is a small comfort. Soon another male police shows up. Now he has the papers. He greets me with a hand shake like we’re to be the best of buddies. Indicates to get further off the road, which I grudgingly do, knowing that the involvement is increasing. Now a barrage of words, un-understood. Basically he claims to be making some sort of “deal” with me. Has me get out of the truck. Have deal.. yes .. or no? Well, yes .. of course. But what is the deal? No deal, then let’s go! He indicates he will now haul me off to the prison. Yes, deal. Deal? Si. Ok, ok, tres cintos. What? A hundred. Tress! Tree! Oh no. We are poor. Cannot do! OK LETS GO! Now handling his pistol and ushering me past the truck to a prison pig car. Ok oK, Deal. Si three hundred in the truck. In Truk? Si. I go back to the side of the truck and dig out 300 pesos. No pesos, dollars. Oh no, it is pesos. NO! Dollars! Let’s go, let’s go. He writes out 300 $ US on a piece of paper. Let’s go! Feigning toward the police car again. To leave Kim and the animals crammed in this broiling cab, here on the side of the road, her unable to even drive the thing even if she knew where to go, is unthinkable. The word is that if you can go to the chief at the station you’ll be cut a better deal, but everything else has been harsher that predicted. And where the hell might that be and how long would that take? Days at a minimum, with some jail time for nothing involved. No way in 3 hells is that an option. I have it, I have it, I tell the thief. Ok ok, then an expectant pause. I have to dig it out. More of the pause. In the launcha (boat). Ohhh… such soothing words of wisdom to the pig. He takes this opportunity to escort an older senora and some children across the street. Such a magnanimous Spanish gentleman he is evoking. Then back to me to complete the rip off. I have the three 100 bills, hand them to him as he body covers the transaction. Inspecting the bills, he finds a small tear. Nother one. No good. Nother one. NO Way! I erupt back before I realize what I’m doing. Ok Ok lets go. NO. Done. That’s it! No more. A quiet on his face, a sort of resignation, then a casual wave of the hand and a body turn to address some other pulled over bastard. Passo? I say. Si .. passo. Don’t have to tell me twice, I grab the papers from his hand and leap in the truck, carefully starting the engine and pulling out into the traffic without politeness. Kim grills me about how much I had to give him, the 300 is a shock. A blow to our resources. She goes through the returned papers. The vehicular permit is gone. Because I didn’t remove the stickers, it is in pristine shape and the red bitch will sell it on the black market some how. Now we are in violation. Now we are bonified bandit bait. The cat has been hiding under the seat.

The bypass is torn up, mostly massive rutted dirt road with chuck holes the size of bathtubs. This goes on through swampy low land for 10 miles, us and other “bypass” fleecee’s grinding along at 20 MPH. Eventually something more akin to pavement is reached, but it is also in dire condition, allowing a speed of only 40 tops. The usual maniacs blast by at 60, apparently in rental cars and insensitive to the thousands of potholes. A village every 5 miles it seems, invoking the crawl over the town topes, the picturesque rotted dwellings strewn with garbage and laconic population. At one point, a toll bridge. Some stupid amount of pesos. What a bridge. Bombed bridges on the Mekong fare better. The entire surface is ripped apart into 1 foot or more relief. A flat and boring design, the side rails are crumbled off in places. Traffic from the other direction is trying to squeeze past us. 10 MPH tops. Below us is a surging brown swollen river of Columbia proportions. Wild, untamed in any way, deadly. I wonder how it allows the insult of this bridge to stand, barely as it is. On the other side the bridge pavement breaks off to a gaping hole in which the cars and trucks have to skirt with tires up on remaining dirt ridges. I follow the pack, the truck and trailer listing to steep angles one side and another. Kim is quiet, but with eyes as big as 50 cent pieces. Alaskan roads look like race tracks to this. Eventually the road tumult quiets down, back to the trashed 40 MPH style with hidden topes. On and on we go, in traffic fore and aft, for there are a lot of transmigriantes traveling along here too. I recognize some of the derelict combinations from the yard. That seems so long ago. Although it is dog eat dog out here, I take some comfort in the presence of these other desperate travelers.

The road takes us through a larger town, 30,000 the sign says, another maze of confusion. A red light is noticed and stopped at. Two kids rush the truck, one leaping up on the hood and going into a bucket and wipe window cleaning routine. He is quite adroit, although unasked for. The light changing, I give him a peso, about nothing, which reflects in his disgusted face. On out of this urban nightmare. A sign points to the Esmerelda Coast, our destination of all desires. On we go, the trailer rasping across every tope now. In another 30 miles, an unmarked turnoff to the right, then to the left, made good by observing the beaten path and the convoy of transmigranties. 40 miles about to Poza Rica. Two hours of light left. Always the travel terror, the dark. Must get stopped and off the road before dark. Kim reads in the RV camping guide to Mexico about a place on the far side of Poza Rica. Other than a few semi usable map details, this boujois out of date piece of crap is designed for massive fortified motor coaches with zillions to spend. We have not seen a single one in all of Mexico. An RV of this type could never make it over these roads, it’s axles ripped from under it long ago. We are carpetbaggers, our plow on top, the cab stuffed with farm animals.

We feel the lengthening shadows of dark. 4 miles to go to the town. We’ll make it. A cutoff sign for 127. This is the preferred route to Guatemala where the majority of transmigrantes are going. Ahead I see the connecting over pass. Below it is a swarm of police. There are two lanes and oddly I’m in the fast one. A semi lumbers in the right. I adjust my speed to pass the flailing police in the visual lee of the semi. There must be 50 transmigrantaiess pulled over here. A feeding frenzy of pig greed. I can’t see any pigs taking notice or pursuit of our rig, so feel kind of clever to have blown by disguised by the semi.

In through the outskirts of ever increasing density in to the town. Finally the Warren can be seen thicking into confusion of cement pastel painted buildings, crumbling and rubbalating out into the edges of the street. Suddenly, there is a check point. Two police are waving me over. Grudgingly we stop. Window down. Offer only the transmigration papers. They are extremely excited. Almost yelling at us. Volation. Infractionie! No alto pesca blither blither. I gather that thay have been in radio contact with the fleece stop under the bridge. They are furious that we blew by. That in it’s self is a major crime to them. Ok OK , tickito. I pay. I offer 200 pesos. No nO, no pesos. Yes pesos, no dollars. Must turn around. No passo [into town]. Must passo. Reservations at RV. (a lie). No Passo. 200 US Dollars. Holy shit. This is a drubbing. I try to hassle with the bastard a bit more, but he is getting more and more excited. He talks on his radio with enthusiasm for a miniut, apparently to the bridge robbery zone. At length, I have to hand over 200 US. No Passo. Must follow back to bridge. Must follow. He leaps into his pig car with the dwarph egor he got and cranks out into the other lane, stopping traffic with his sirine and lights. When he’s sure I’m following, he pulls ahead. I am going slug slow. He gets further ahead. Then another pig car pulls up beside him, and like two dog at play, they crank on all their lights and sirines and speed off. I crawl. Feeling doomed. I know they will rip us for hundreds if not thousands if I follow to the bridge. I feel my self slipping into catatonia. Going slower and slower. Ther on our right is this massive new building. A holiday inn Kim says, though there is no sign outside. Not seeing the police ahead of me, I turn slow motion into this and up behind the building where we cannot be seen from the street. It is like the OJ Simpson escape, only without the helicopters. We stop. We are terrified. What to do? what to do?. Night approaching fast. Kim is bitched out to the max. LET ME OUT! I’m about to burst. She pisses behind the truck as I look at the back trailer. It is only 2 inches off the ground, all the topes and potholes has broken the main supporting truss, hence is dragging over every thing. Animals are going crazy in the truck. An employee comes over and offers consolation. Why don’t we stay in the hotel. It iss bran new and only a mil a night. One thousand pesos. About a hundred bucks. Kim goes to get her brush and wipes from her bag in the hover. It is gone. Stolen by the window washer gang. Now she is insane furious. CHARLIEE! It’s getting fucking dark. Do something. Lets got the fuck on. Can’t go on. Trailers broken. Pigs are waiting for me. Can’t go back into town, another dozen pig traps there. Trapped here. What to do? What to do?

Charleee! do something. Fix the fucking trailer then. This is no small task, but it’s something to focus on. The pigs can’t figure where I’ve disappeared to, nor would they bring their fetid carcasses near this luxury hotel. I can barely move with the pig horror hanging over me. I feel like I’m on the green mile, walking to the execution station. Each step tinier than the last, to prolong life, even if in shock. Charlieee! What the fuck are you doing. Thinking. Thinking. It is true, a hundred scenarios surge in a kaleidoscope in my mind, none taking any form. The trailer junction is mangled. The puny bolts I welded in there before are crumpled up, like fixing a bridge with toothpicks. I need iron. Big iron. Where is it. Pull apart the fence. Can’t. Tight. Management standing around. Use some garden tools in the truck. Buried. Wrong size. Need cutting. No way to cut. CHARRRRLIEEEeee! Hey wait. Here’s part of the hover trailer, the brackets for the ramp. Made by the criminal Ernie so long ago. Over built. Big iron. Rapidly I unbolt one of these. I can make it fit. Make it work. Get out the jack. Jack up the trailer tongue. Tires swivel and the thing crashes to the ground barely avoiding killing me. There is about a 42% preference for this option. I jam two chain hoists behind the tires and get it jacked up again. It is hotter that five hells. Sweat is pouring off me in buckets. My pants are soaked, I can’t see, the dark is upon us. The hotel management is standing all around. Wants to know how long this will take. 15 minutes I say. Bullshit, cries kim, a fucking hour. The management confers. I make some indication that we might stay at the hotel. They have 98.7% vacancy. Then I ignore them. Turn the truck around soit I facing the trailer hitch. Bonk the hood for 30 times till it pops loose. Open hood. Hook up jumper cable to ground and to positive on the hover battery , which I’ve also pulled. Break open the kit. Hook the leads of the welder to the pos and neg of the system, clamp the Ernie iron in place, and start welding. The management comes closer in total awe. Lighting has just been produced out of a box, from nothing. Where is the machine? What is this wizardry? The Iron fits nice and I slob massive weld on it where ever I can get to it. The metal sizzles as my gushing sweat pours onto it. It is black dark. Finally I’m satisfied and the hover battery is drained flat. Reverse all operations, putting everything away. Turn the ruck around and try to communicate how to get the trailer on the ball, in the dark, unable to see each other and unable to communicate due to pissed off factor 400. then the cat escapes. Panic extra. Calling calling. I see a tail disappear around a cement wall and try to sneak up on it. Kim screams at me for “chasing” the cat. Some how she cuts it off and captures it just as it’s going over a fence into never-never land. Finally get the trailer hooked back up. Now what. What to do? What to do? Can’t drive off there in the dark, into the seething pig trap 2 miles down the road. The hotel does not let animals in. Everyone’s fried. I’m basted from welding without a shirt, glazed in 80 layers of sweat.
I say we stay the night here. Pay the money. Leave the animals in the truck. What! Unheard of. They’ll fry. They’ll make it, they’re animals. FINE! A black of all black salience’s. We’ll leave at 4 AM, surly they’ll be off the road block in the early morning. FINE!

Water is put out on the floor of the truck. The old mean one is let out of her cage, the cat box put on the seat. Who knows where the dog will fit, but who can care. Into the hotel. It is plush. We are filthy. The zillion dollars paid, we are led up to the room. Kim goes catatonic on the couch, pulling a spread over her. No Words. There are extra beds, a desk, TV, bar, ect, etc. Luxury. Wrong place, wrong time. I can feel the tendrils of the illegal law out there waiting for me. Excited to jail my ass as a hostage for every dime, for no crime. If ever impending doom has lain on a neck n a chopping block, this is it. I know my number is up. I can’t understand why Kim is gone into hyper bitch mode. Why is she not comforting my soon to be incarcerated ass. Her fate hangs tenuously also. I clean up. The bath is an elaborate affair. I clean thourally, nails, teeth, all the usual neglected parts. I lay out my best clothes. It is as if I’m preparing for my own casket viewing. Everything impeccable. Then I go down to the office. Get the number for the American consulate, even though in DC, but maybe some help. I change out another 200 to pesos so there is some additional bribe money. Back at the room kim is still frozen in the fetal position on the couch. I make notes of who to call, stash money in various places, set the alarm clock for 4 AM and set to a fitful almost sleepless night of worry and brain torture. This unreal calm, soon to be a memory of the last freedom. This night and day of hell forever brain damaging me. Fear stabs me in sharp pain, like a spear in the chest. It is 12 midnight.

Belize or Bust

2010-09-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

Although travel Blogs are the modern boring equivalent of the former slide show, where the guests are struggling to stay awake after 3 drinks and dinner, I feel compelled to relate this experience. If not for my vicarious family and friends, then for my own cathartic release and those idealistic fools, like us, who think the world is possible, and with guts all things can be done. Which thoughts we still hold dear. My apologies to all
else.

************

The emerald sea purrs it’s relentless surf against the blue sand beach. A lighthouse on a knoll beside, sweeps the horizon. A delicious costal wind blows steady over us. Clouds of butterflies, yellow, iridescent blue, fill the air. Huge willowy pines play their tops in the breeze. The temperature is perfect. No mosquitoes. Little crabs shyly poke their heads from holes in the sand to see if we are still too close.

A paradise. A rest from the insanity, the road, the sweat and the cramped truck cab. Myself as driver, Kim mashed beside me, a cat carrier with the matron grumpy cat, the dog squashed into the passenger floor well, and the little insane kitty (Rubes) wandering free range. Only the AC keeps us from total melt down, but the discomfort level is still close to maximum. Here, for a night on the beach, tent pitched on the soft sand, no other campers … 10 US bucks a night. Yeah .. I could live here. The locals up by the road play their loud Caribbean music late into the night as is their custom, but it is tempered by the surf. Only the deeper conga coming through. We sleep the sombulesance of babies. Paradise.

But the price has been dear to get here. Robbery and torture are tame descriptors. For now, these indignities escape my mind as the beautiful wind dries my sweat, our bedding, cleanses our souls.

Kim is happy. A funky Banyo shower from a pipe washes away her grimy misery. The dog runs a hundred miles per hour up and down the beach, the cats sprawl free a yard long in the tent. Delicate dreams for us in the heavenly air at last, aqui en la Costa Esmerelda.

Why this place exists in the center of a thousand miles of Barrio and corruption in either direction is not comprehendible. Sad that it is impossible to reach or leave from, as we know that more horror lies ahead, as it has behind. Too soon we must leave, return to the prison of the road, the terrifying unknown ahead. No other tourist are here along this 40 mile stretch of hotels, though all are paradigimic icons of the American myth of paradise. Pools and hammocks, camping or luxury if your want it. Food of all kinds and flavors. A crystal ocean to swim in, sunrises and sets in Max Parish colors. But impossible to reach.

In the days behind and ahead, the events were thick. This is the story.

I am accidentally living the story of Mosquito Coast. Accidentally because of my disenfranchisement in the corporate capitalist paradigm. We tried to be good Amerikians, Kim and I, her harder than I, working as wage slaves, giving every dime to the mortages and the money mongering banks. But they denied us life in this process. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Maybe the first in that we still eat and crap, but not the other two. So now, like Harrison Ford, I despise every aspect of this American “culture”. We invent our way out of the maze and head for the rivers and lost temples of the mosquito coast. Like Harrison, we leave the dishes unwashed in the sink, the TV on the floor in the back room, dog crap on the rug, and walk out into a new beginning. We close the door unlocked at my shack in the desert, books full on the shelves, canned food and peanut butter in the pantry, the bed unmade, an offering to the mice who will caretaker the place, flip the main power breaker, and drive away.

A thousand details for escape: from buying gold to thrashing vet vaccinations. Finally our lives reside in the bed of a truck. The vehicle is crammed with every imaginable device to begin a new life in a new world, from a gas powered refrigerator, to an invented wind power machine. Finally the hour of departure arrives after multiple midnights of packing .. down into the bowels of Utah we roll. Here the northern ice caps the mountains white, freezing us to the bone at night. The first kiss of winter in this northern world.

Travel troubles come in threes in this calm world, and we think at the time that they are large, though now paling in comparative magnitude. Running out of gas in the Zion rock cathedrals, the trailer breaking apart in Arizona, and a presumed cat escape in a desert KOA. The first is foiled by parsimonious gas fumes, the second rectified by hooking the truck and hover battery together and welding the trailer frame with a coat hanger and a handful of bolts, and the cat, the beginning of the stress hormone hurricane. While walking in the morning sun, we hear a huge cat fight eruption back in the direction of our tent where the two felines are confined. Then a dashing fur ball bolts by, through the fence, into the scrub land beyond. For hours we search for the cat, wandering amid saguaros, the Yucca, and stink weed, calling, calling, ever calling. The heat rises to it’s usual hundred. Still going up. No cat to be found. We know the animal will fry out there today, if not tomorrow. Kim’s heart is broken. Her spirit animal of unruly impish behavior has vanished, apparently clawed it’s way out of the tent in the fray with “ratty”, the older less interesting bitch. Kim steels her heart. We must go on , she says. I tell her of the cat “doughnut” who ran away at Niagara falls in an infant family exodus, but it is not story time. Reluctantly, I begin to disassemble the tent. Under the folds of the bedding hides the cat. Joy is returned. We push on.

The west is pretty huge, taking us forever to reach El Paso. Though the previous days have had drug lord gunfights in the streets, all is the usual quiet of USA Inc., everyone shops, drives pell mell for somewhere. Then Texas, as big as it boasts. 700 miles of near nothingness. We cross the Pecos. Now east of the Pecos. We are no longer in the west. Still 500 miles to the Mexican border.

Arriving in Brownsville in the late afternoon on Friday, we find the Los Indios border crossing down an improbable road. Kim has called ahead from our previous world and discussed “transmigrantiaes” with a customs broker at place called C.A.T.S. Driving into the one lane road leading to the kiosks, we reconsider and turn around at the last second, back to a gas station. I ask in the mini mart if there is any custom brokers near by, but they know nothing of it, nor can understand me. I crap the dog in a field while Kim looks up phone numbers. She calls a place called Peters and Sons and receives directions. Back onto the freeway to Brownsville and out into an industrial area. Can’t find it. Call again. More instructions. More wandering in the fenced warehouse land. Call again, then finally located, their sign overgrown with bushes. It is a staging area of huge trucks. Wandering the loading docks, we find an office with many Mexicans who ignore us. Finally a fellow talks to us, that they do not do this, we need this, we must wait 72 hours, and other bad news. He gives us directions to the transmigrantes street, apparently lined with those who provide this service. It is about impossible to back the trailer out, it jackknifed and the hover crushes one of the tail lights. Out of there, we dig out the paperwork printed from the computer for C.A.T.S. Rainstorms have welded the stack into one brick of paper. The top page is peeled off and the runny ink phone number deciphered. I call. “Transmigrantis’, a woman says. Can I speak to Onhell? Gibberish, gibberish. Sound of speaking to someone else. Some rustling and bumping, then a dial tone. Call again, no answer. We resolve to follow the directions to the place.

Weaving through Brownsville, we find the road paralleling the border. The 20 foot steel barred fence stands off to our left, not looking so very hard to climb over. We are hot and irritated, confused, crammed. The caged cat is yowuling, the dog thrashing, the little cat leaping between surfaces. On and on the country border road goes. Finally we see a transmigranties sign, half fallen down, overgrown, in front of a mostly fallen shack. Think not. A little further, another. Down the road we see C.A.T.S. We pull in there, it is a huge dirt yard with junk yard cars all around the perimeter. A trailer has an open sign in the window, But the door is locked, no one is around. Back to the other place. A couple of shady swarthies in the shade hovering over a fancy car. Into that trailer/office. A few very rude mexicians who don’t speak English and just want to get rid of us. We are to understand that Tuseday would be the soonest they will talk to us. Monday being labor day.

Dejected and rejected back into the parking lot, a dapper swarthy comes over. Habla ingles? Si, he says, and goes on to tell us how he’s been there for days, has to wait till Tuesday, and then a 72 hour computer search will commence to clear the title of his car. Es nice carro, eh? He says, obviously smuggling the stolen black 2010 BMW over to a drug lord. It must take less time to make the new title and cook the paperwork, but 72 hours is the official hoop to jump through. He is insistent that we will have to do this also.

Back out onto the road. In a ¼ mile we come to the gas station just before the Los Indio border crossing. How they cannot know about the custom brokers down the street is unfathomable. Knowing that the distance to the first Mexican town is too far away to reach before night fall, we try it anyway. A toll to get out, across the Rio grand, and into a nest of ridged machine gun sentries. An Officer inspects us suspiciously. After a half hour of broken communication, No passer, no documtaros. (no passing, no documents). Back across the Rio to USA. Pay a toll to the bankers. We glean that there is no reason to keep us out of Mexico, except that we need all these various fucking permits. The main Matamoras crossing is open 24-7 for documents. Resolved to attack again in the morning, it’s an expensive motel 6 night, animals, catbox, and crap smuggled into the room.

At dawn, we are at the other crossing. No toll booth here, just seething homeland security. They fall on us like bears on a wrecked honey truck.. After frisking and fiddling, they decide I’m running guns to the drug lords. We are led (truck, hover, and all) to a huge concrete building where us flesh and bones are told to wait off to the side, both cats in carriers, the dog confused on a leash, the humans chain smoking. They X-ray the whole truck and hover with a massive machine. Eventually we are retuned to the yank crossing post. Now they decide I’m delivering cash back to the drug lords. How much do we have? Where is it? Let us see it? We have the stuff stashed in a dozen places throughout the load. We don’t know how much we have. I tell them 15 grand. 10 is the limit, unless paperwork is filled out to inform the bankers that some one is taking their money. We have to dig it all out. In the carb of the hover, under the battery, in cooking books, in physics text books, some in the door, on and on. Finally there is a huge pile of cash in their Kiosk. With relish they count and re-count it, jabbering in Spanish the whole time. Other uniforms rifle through all our crap, pulling apart one thing after another. I have two gold bars under the soles of my feet which I’ve failed to mention, along with another 7 ounces stashed through out the load. At one point they talk of shoes among them selves, this pair cost this, that … that, American talk. I sweat, but put on the face of an interview with Stalin. They are distracted by finding two social Security cards of Kims. Is she going to sell one to the drug lords in Mexico? No, No No, She’s been married 4 times and this is just residual. 5 times a charm !! They offer cheerily. Yeah, hell yeah. But hummm .. Senor there is a major discrepancy. You said 15 thou and we only count 10,237 dollars. Where is the rest? Fuck, I don’t know. Maybe that’s all I had. They apply their 3rd grade education and consider that we couldn’t have spent more than 1000 getting down here from Idaho. Where is the rest? The Easter egg hunt through the truck resumes with vigor. After a spell, they are defeated. Nothing more shows up. I am lectured long about the dangers of Mexico. How I will be murdered and robbed, or maybe robbed and murdered. No night driving. This and that, wash behind my ears. After 4 hours we are released. All that just to get out of this land of liberty. Back across the Rio Grand into Mexico where it really get’s weird.

Oh yeah, pull over here. Officials everywhere, but now, all in Mexican gibberish. Qui carga this, nessito documetaro, permito, ect. Ect. A cat makes a flying lung for the open window, but is snatched out of mid air by my left hand. El Gato Loco? Whatever. What now? We take our passports in and get human permits and stampa. Now the vehicular confusion. A greasy pissed off juvenile bureaucrat abstractedly is the gate keeper. An insurance rat is hanging out and speaks some broken inglas. I am led to his office the size of a bed where he make copies for me for some enormous price of 20 bucks. Back to the punk. Eventually, he enters everything into his computer, behind the bullet proof glass, between stunning moves on his Black Ops action game. I am shoved over some blue paperwork. Into the pile. Back at the truck, I announce I am willing to pay the taxes. Though I had determined that taxes were to be paid at the concrete bunker a hundred feet in front of me, now it is no. No paymento. Ok where. A lot of jabbering between two of them. No aqui! Quatro Puente. Calle Santa domingo. TLC! What the hell are they talking about? After a one on one Spanish to English and reverse gestating language lesson, I say Los Indios? Si .. TLC. Quatro Puente. Ok.. I get it. Forth bridge crossing at los Indios. Transmigrantes TLC. I ask , donde esta TLC? No intelligible reply. The transmigrantes is repeated over and over. Puente Los Indios. Hmmmm. Been there. Then comes the kicker, permissimo dos animilotos. Soooorree. What? Only two animals allowed to cross? We have three. Zoological Sophie’s Choice! Kim is now yelling at the proud official, thankfully in English which the zipper head can’t understand. I’m rolling the truck after the guide car to turn me around. Kim is in a horror. Back across the Rio to the motel 6. Fourth crossing now. What to do with the Sophie’s Choice. Whack the cranky old one is the thought. I let her say it. She is depressed. We are exhausted from all day in the pig world. I suggest we check out the transmigrantes services anyway, what the hell. If they smooth the trail by one bump, it’s worth the price. We get to the main one, CATS just before 3 PM when they close. In luck, we find Onhell, the fellow Kim previously talked to on the phone. He is leaving. It is quitting time. Come back tomorrow at 8:30 and all will be taken care of. No problemo about the herd of animals. Just sent a lady over with five dogs yesterday. All paperwork will be fixed. HOT DAMN. We happy now. All is saved. At the motel we order $20 delivered pizza. Tomorrow we get into Mexico. The motel TV is all excited. A huge hurricane is approaching and will slam the coast exactly where we plan to stay the first night in La Pesca. 90 MPH Winds. This is going to get interesting.

We arrive at CATS at 8:30AM and are directed to a slot at what appears thankfully to be the front of the line. Onhell soon appears from somewhere and gives us a variety of instructions. We produce a list of all our crap that is looked at with awe, or maybe disgust. Item by item we go through it, showing him this and then that. He records everything in Spanish on some forms, then disappears with our passports and titles. Wait, he says. In an hour, a runner comes back with the passports and titles. Wait, he says. I converse brokenly with another transmigrante who is heading to Guatemala. There are dozens of us travelers here, all apparently going to Guatemala. Some are big shabby trucks loaded to the limit with unknown cargo, tied redundantly under a tarp in 30 different ways. Most are small pickups with another in tow behind. Chevy luv being the peferred truck. I see that all the hitches are of personal manufacture. These also are heaped fore and aft with the unknown, a few bicycles sticking out in places, some with used washing machines. I ask if we can join their convoy, but no, no, and a subject change. He points out a small truck stuffed with washers, dryiers and the like. He says that the fellow who owns that was coming to meet it on a bus, but the bus was attacked by drug lord bandits. After gun point robbery of the passengers, the federallies showed up and a major fuseilage began. The bandits using the bus as cover returned excessive automatic fire, resulting in a high caliber response from the uniforms. The passengers had to lay on the floor as the windows and walls were blasted to shreds, some taking a few winging rounds, as was the case of the laundry cargo owner. Eventually the bandits made a break for it in their SUV, the machine gun chase rattling off into the night roads of Mexico. He says this happened at one in the morning just across the Rio, a major reason not to travel at night. Somehow, I am convinced.

Around 11, Onhell returns and says he has to have a contact number of a friend in Belize to complete the paperwork. What the hell, On ell. But this is nessiticto. I know Chet, the hostel owner, not all that well, but have no idea how to get a hold of him. Luckily, they have WiFi in the office, so I take my computer in there and search for him in the web. Videos of him, interviews, lots of tourist info, but can’t find his number. Finally, getting desperate, I find a blog reviewing his place, some loving it, others calling it dirty. An afterthought in there gives the street location and the phone number of the hostel. Back out to the truck. A few tries with international dialing and country codes and I reach him on the phone. WoW. He remembers me kindly and is glad to be my point of contact. He says to call him if there is any trouble in Mexico. Yeah, right. Then launches into a long winded story as he loves to do at a buck a minute. Eventually he concludes to my polite urgings, and I give the number to Onhell. Ok, wait.

About 12:30 Onhell comes out with the papers, a huge stack some 3 inches thick. There is 4 copies of the main document, listing a thousand things in Spanish. I pay the $230 fee, not feeling particularly compensated for the money. Ok.. you go now, he says. Ummm, any better directions than that? Get some addition vauge comments with irritation. Off we go, into … what?

We veer off to the right of the toll shack, getting into a massive double line of transmigrantes. Wait. Eventually a scary looking police something comes down the line looking at our papers disparagingly, grunting and sending us on our way. The line ahead has vanished somewhere. The road splits. We take the right which leads to a fence, wench I have to get the trailer turned around by driving on a questionable lawn. Take the other. We are directed in a loop de loop and into the tool booth. They take money and tell us that the next booth is the inspectors. If we get a green light we can proceed. If we get a red light we have to pull over and have the truck load torn apart. We approach the booth in high anxiety. Most are getting the red light. Our turn. A woman yaking and flirting with another booth member. Takes our papers. A snickering consultation with the other flirtee. A sigh and with indifference, she hits a button. Green light. Oh thank Dog who art in haven. Fifty transmigranties are pulled over waiting to be pulled apart. Through confusing corridors of road cones we come to another booth. I confess we have 2 bikes and a TV we need to pay tax on. The official, about 4 feet higher than my window scribbles something on a yellow sticky which he slaps on our papers. Where is the tax office? I ask. A vague arm waving in the only direction available to us. On we go. In a hundred feet we come to a few farmer looking types with their hands out. Fumagation. We give them money. They give us a sticker. Another 50 feet and stopped again where some crippled looking fellas spray the side of the truck with some light green fluid. One sprays, the other apparently supervises. Only one side is done and we’re waved on.

Waved into a large parking lot where a sucatto speaking kid, dressed rather shabby, assaults us. He blasts at us loud and fast, but friendly, with ample arm waving. We only catch a few words, like immigration, casa, and permitento. Kim engages him with many smiling “si’s”. We get out of the truck, locking the panting animals in tightly and head to the second building. The first in front of us is an imposing concrete cube with a redoubt on top with a very bored mean military guy, sunken down in his sand bags behind a gun the size of a canoe. I have the feeling he really wants to use it. I ask Kim what she thought the parking guy was saying, as she answered him with such conviction. She says she had no idea. We must skirt around a lower machine nest with another scowling soldier, his gun only as large as a small Christmas tree. Into the second building where there are 2 or 4 lines, as it is indistinct. Slowly we inch with other transmigrantes toward the cageas (service windows?). When it comes our turn, both Kim and I advance, which is breaking the rules. On inspection, we are already stamped and permitted, so waved vaguely on to the other line. Waiting there for 15 minutes, I finally reach a cagea. Showing all the papers it is again determined that I already have everything. Now to pay the tax. There is a tiny office on the corner the size of a Volkswagen bus with 2 irritated officials and some computers. When my time comes I present the pile of paperwork, of which they are only interested in the sticky note. Paymeinto blah blah casa, ..gestating randomly towards the other building. Go pay there, I gather. They hold my passport and drivers license. Over to the other building. Kim returns to the truck to start the AC so the animalitos can breath. The machine gun nest must be passed close, feeling the beady eyes upon me. In the building it is completely bare, a vas dimly lit void with a 25 foot ceiling. A cagea is on one side behind thick bullet proof glass. Presenting him with the scrawls of the tax people, I pay 15 bucks with a hundred, getting the rest in peso change. Back to the tax box. Have to wait in line again. Hand in my receipt and get my license and passport back, skirt the gun nest, back in the parking lot with Kim. I see a van disgorging white people, about a half dozen. They are very fat and pasty, some professor looking types, dazed and scared. Immigration is that building over there, I offer. Where are you going? They say they are driving to Costa Rica, but little else. I know I am a mark for these Mexican land sharks, but they are as good as in the belly. A wave of pity for these sheltered people washes over me, but what can be done? Their fate is sealed. We must move on. The rapido talker is still rambling wildly at Kim, who nods and encourages him as you would a clever dog doing tricks. I give him a 10 peso bill, to his delight, and ask the way out (with hand gestures), though I can see it clearly. He becomes still more exuberant, blocking traffic for us and dancing and waving our way forward. Out of the parking lot, which turns into a shabby two lane highway. No mention of vet papers or any other animal documentaros ever came up. We could have brought in elephants. We are elated. In the first mile are a hundred crappy one story adobe, block and rusty tin buildings, all proclaiming money exchange. I stop and change out 300 to pesos, a rate of 12.3 to one buck. I have a huge wad of cash, of which I’m very self conscience and hold concealed. The practice is to watch these transactions from afar, then mug you down the road. Buy some fluids for Kim and I, climb out of the mud ruts and onto the broken highway. We did it! We are into Mexico at last. On our way to paradise.

We are all traumatized at one point or more in our lives, of which consequence shapes our future reactions in a paranoid spasm of terror. For myself, I decline to mention. For Kim, it was being the helpless trapped passenger hurtling towards doom. Her drunken father used to load the family into the car for a “drive”, which careened around Alaskan mountain roads, scooping the margins next to precipitous thousand foot drop offs. She used to yell furiously at me on the tame and controlled Boise freeways if some laconic potato head cut in front of us, more from their inattentive stupidity than from intention. Now she is thrust into a Mad Max Mexican stock car race.

The road is two lane with an 8 foot paved shoulders. On this shoulder dives the slower transmigrintes, towing as they are, while the wilder unencumbered cars and trucks race around, partly in the oncoming lane. This is also occurring in the other direction, making the road into a 4 lane freeway. But the middle lanes are 12 feet wide, so it is also possible for some maniac to pass the passers by gunning it up the middle. Hence a five lane road out of two. Efficient as this may seem, Kim somehow failed to see the scientific purity of the situation and clawed the dashboard apart while screaming CHARLIEE!, as if to influence my conviction to do as others do in this foreign country. The situation is exeracerbated by ample chuck holes, arrived upon at the last moment of knowledge, and swerved around at the last instant. Thus the view from the front window was one of 60 MPH cars, trucks and junk heaps weaving wildly all over the road, passing on the left and right, and even on the left of incoming traffic. Yes, it is a bit un-nerving at first, but I plod along at 50, taking my pot holes with aplomb, letting the others do as they must in their frenetic velocity.

Between desperate gasps for breath, we must consider our route. The crappy general map shows the turn off to La Pesca at some indistinct place called dos pueblos. Can we even find that? All the signs of course are in Spanish and not particularly plentiful. I am still recalculating kilometers per hour into MPH so I don’t break the speed limit, as if this was a matter of concern with the rest mashing their foot to the floor. But we are anglos, with the US plates, sure bait for any official who could see. Though we see no looming black horizons of the hurricane, we decide to stay to the inland, getting to [the city of] Victoria before dark. This is the preferred drug lord luxury residence city, much as Sedona is for Arizona. Here is the heart of the cartels. Hmmm .. weighing that against driving in the dark out here with chuck holes and maniacs, with an assured hurricane camping spot which we can’t reach before dark, against a few cocaine crazed drug lords. No contest. We’ll camp in the narcotics capital. Kim reads in the junior woodchuck guide book under Victoria camping, that there is a nice walled RV stop in the center of the city. Anna, she says the proprietor is, but later changes her story to Maria. Maria is a super welcoming warm person, speaking English and inviting all in to play poker. This sounds good. By the time we have figured all that out, including confusing directions, we are long past the other turn off anyway, although there was no trace of it. Kim shuffles through two dictionaries, trying to decipher the few signs that there are. This keeps her eyes mostly off the road, leaving me to do the majority of white knuckling. I find the driving and translating quite stimulating for the mind.

In 30 miles we come to a very scary federallie check point. Herded through a tight blockade, we are stopped and all the papers checked by a humorless Police dressed all in black with blacker machine guns, grenades, pistols, everything. In five breathless minutes we are through. Calls for a ceremonial cigarette. Another Military check point awaits us another 30 kilometers down the road. They surround us and climb into the back of the truck, looking for guns or criminals. Through that also without incident. Flashing the transmigrante paperwork at them seems to help. Another ceremonial cigarette. The sky reddening, we reach the outskirts of Victoria and roll slowly into town. The woodchuck guide give remarkably accurate directions to this, cross the bypass, Right at the main boulevard, backtrack at the fourth returno, (a U-turn spot in the boulevard), right through the walled gate of Annie’s. The traffic is thick in this evening time and a carnival of some sort further jams thing up. But we do so, and pull into the inner city sanctuary of Annie/Maria’s.

Assorted Notes

2009-04-24T12:56:00.000-07:00

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.

Future Found

2009-03-30T08:10:00.000-07:00

A sixty foot mountian mouth yawns before me, it's cave entrance festooned with a thousand stlagmites. A frozen fossil shark in the 500 foot limestone cliff. A crystal river pours out in emerald hues to cascading pools of inviting cool from the jungle heat. mayan children shriek and slide from one succulent stone to another.

I decide to live here amoung the paridise of growth and climate, it's people gentel and sincere. An acre I find of 300 foot old growth mohogany trees, fern palms reaching for the light. Friends also here, educated, motivated, activated. A hundred oppertunities leap to my mind, solar power, wind power, LED lighting, hovercraft coastal transport, Archetectural designs, marine mechanics, Iguana farms, fish farms, pearl oysters, electric bikes, coffee shops, archeological excursions and excavations, and many others. A house on stilts in the jungle canopy, powered by the sun, watered by the sky.

The world is new again, plans and hope abounding. Realizing now, that I am the ruby eye, plucked by paridise.

Communications

2009-03-28T18:27:00.000-07:00

Them that are here, that were there (americika), talk like they’ve been stranded on an Island for 2 years. Not only do they blither insistently with such a ferocity that precludes interaction, they rave. Every other sentence shifts subject sonorously, to lambaste government policy, proclaim national pharmaceutical farming, or expound on tourism unrealized. The declarations, denouncements and dissertations begin to lay on you like the heat of the day. You become torpid, indifferent to interaction, much less argument. What can you counter to the ministry of Agriculture’s secret plot to give Mayan children tapeworms? To what can you add to the construction of shabby hotels for laundering drug money, staffed with thorough bred thugs, killing the night club scene with gun battles. Where do you interject on that subject.

All these ex-pats are ranters. Is it because you are fresh mental meat? Their surrounding population dulled by the struggle for some chicken dollars, carrying the bags of a 1st worlder, wondering if an alley bushwhacking is possible.
The ex-pats are experts in descriptions of “I”. I ran the greatest business. I went to Zambooligia Creek. I was the MickdeMofo there. I this, I that. Pedantic. Boring Annoying.

In contrast, the Spaniard never bothers to engage you. No eye contact, no smiles, no words. As though you were invisible .. two will yammer together like the sound of hail on the roof. Entirely unintelligible.

The Carib is polite. Looks right at yo a nd says something nice like “Ow you be doing dis day siahh?” This could be genuinely polite, but usually the lead in to a tap for a few bucks. Sometimes you give in to their incessant “Plaheezz Mahn Plaheezz Mahn Plaheezz Mahn”. It sounds so desperate and sincere. Other times you tell the begger to bugg off with a breathy snarl. But the beggars are a tiny proportion. Many other interactions with fine people is more the rule. It’s obvious t5hat they clean up their language quite a bit in your company. In fact, they often repeat themselves. He asks … “How are you today Diane?” “ Be fine, be fine” and back “ How you do Mr. Larry, Mr. Larry” Like there was two of him. When two consider that they are out of English range, their lips erupt like they were spitting flies. “Oh beabya bee beep bahhabantan beyu, ball be.” Not unlike bubbles blown from beneath, rising to a froth of musical sound.

There are other communications here, fists kissed in mid air, the full box of chicklets smile, the passing nod. Even the non human talk, the screeching whistling crow relative, the lizard darting and bobbing, and even the busses.

What at first appeared to be New York cab etiquette, honking maniacally at every nano second delay. Soon a pattern emerges. 2 honks says I’m passing you at 75 on this 40 year old 10 foot wide lane. I don’t care what’s ahead. One honk says, Yeah, go ahead, I’ll let ya plaster yourself, thanks for letting me know. # honks from the panicked passer says “I can’t make it due to the oncoming fuel truck. Collision and explosion are eminent within seconds. I’m falling back.” A solo honk from the passee may respond. 4 honks is generally reserved for obstructions in the path .. like people. Frequently and excess of 4 honks is used when speeding through town at 75. They seem to be saying .. “Get the fuck out of my way! I’m insane and out of control. I’ll kill you all!”

Fireflies, lizards and Tilapia

2009-03-26T07:46:00.000-07:00

A fine day in the last frontier. Belize. Here in the southern edge, I meet friends, the jungle, ideas. Working in the morning with big Larry, a displaced Canadian pharmacist, we clear his lot of hacked jungle brush. The Trade Winds play in the palms, curious lizards cling to mahogany trees, while this gentle overweight man sweats profusely. He talks of his dream here, a house on stilts in a jungle lot, as leaf cutter ants carry off his fledgling tangerine tree. He talks of his greedy consuming Canadian wife, carrying off his small wealth like another busy bug. We stack the profuse hacked vegetation, insects scurrying for some new protection, others working on a meal of leg or arm.

Then lunch of Creole beans on a cafe veranda, the sea beside us with it's beautiful endless wind. We talk of Mayan civilization, so close to us here, it's ghosts of kings and temples all around. Big Larry has a truck. I talk him into driving us into the interior tomorrow, to find the lost temples, the caves filled with jade idols. Large Larry is not hard to convince, for lonely Larry lacks sincere company. Company that is not out to extract his Belizean bucks. So HELL YEAH!!! Ruby eye here I come.

In the evening a power outage. Belize blackout. Who knows how big, why, where, or when or if it will be fixed. For hours, the hostel owner and I sit and talk of the Belizean economy. He is a self proclaimed "planner". A thousand planes woven within plans. Plans for sustainable development, Mayan land rights, agricultural development, and a thousand curses to colonial conceit controlling the country. We talk power and politicians, the poor and ponds Tilapia ponds.

The fireflies dance their blinking beauty all around us, strobing from one spot to another, flying in and through the open everywhere house. Incredible. I am transported by this luminous light show, and squeal in delight as a bright one flits by. To the local, I am obviously loco, that is of no concern of mine.

Tilapia ponds are twenty feet in diameter and a breeding pair produces 2 1/2 million offspring a year. The excess fry are fed to chickens, who's shit is flung on the pond making alge for the fish to eat. Which comes first? A pond is made by laying banana leaves down, covering with pig shit, then another few layers of the same. A glutinous impervious seal is made. Larger fish are transferred to other ponds to grow with some fin room, and sold for dollars a pound everywhere. Be-fouled pond water is pumped on gardens where the nitrogen saturated fluid blasts verdant vegetation from the jungle floor. This to feed pigs ... to make more ponds ... and round it goes to the Belizean bank.

I see other ruby's now. The opportunities’ of economy. The chance to help poor people rise from their crushing poverty with sustainable systems. Wind power in excess unthought of, undeveloped. Cyclic farms, tourist transits, and my own tangerine tree. A chance to do great things in this frontier, change myself, change this world. The ruby gleams bright tonight.

Sea to sea in a day

2009-03-21T14:54:00.000-07:00

First of all, thank you beautiful Kori for your words. Yes, let us dance, dance in life.

The boat ruide across some vast gulf to Guatamala is wonderful. Beautiful flat azul sea. Tide rips. Huge mountians laying a black ragged shadow in the sky. One of the engines craps out midway. the captian kills the other so he can hammer on the agrived motor. Adrift in the Carribean. Sorta romantic. I`m the only one with a bottel of water, so I get the first pick of who to eat. Eventually he fires them both up, and just to show who`s boss, opens tham both wide and blasts across the water. The top speed of this displacement nightmare is about 30 with 400 HP.

Soon we hove into punta Barrios. Well named. The shore is a hozontal garbage pile. A hustler directs me to immagration 2 blocks away for a stamp. These guys could give a shit. i could have 20 kilos of white powder in my pack. I could have walked in without bothering their perpetual siestia. Then through a dozen blocks of destitute slum to the bus station. Open fetid sewers, crumbling one story rathole houses, starved sore covered dogs cowering along with us. This is a hungry place. I give Antonio 10 Quetzels, about a buck 25. He did me right. Hope I did him similar.

20th, I think. Maybe Friday. On the bus through Guatamala. Buss stopped at a cafertiera, 15 min. I havent eaten in a day or so. I get 3 somethings with sauce. Most delisioush shit I can remember. About 50 other things I`d like to eat there too. Parinoid that the bus will leave without me. Just rained, now warm and muggy. Nice, really. Along the way, people living in holes carved into road cuts here. A 4x4 back in 5 feet, part of a tarp for a veranda, three kids and a male, sitting, staring .. idle. I see this eveywhere. Poverty. Stupor. Everyone just lazing around doing nothing. Waiting. For what? It reminds me of jail. But at least there, a relief could be coming.

A huge beautiful river in this wide valley. The side creeks we cross are full of quartzite and quartz. There is a rounded bolder of quartz half the size of a car in one village. I know there is gold in the hills. Apparently they do not. Sitting on one of the most geologically turbulent places in the world, the crushing zone between 3 tectonic plates, rotating, grinding, and upwelling. Where worlds collide. All the treasure of the deep squezzing to the surface. I am blowing past the blue jade zone. I can communicate no better than an ape. People people everywhere, but not a word to speak. Rolling again. The mountians are magnicifiant. I would love to be in them, teasing out their secrets. But on to Curiad de guatamala. To what fate there I do not know. This is suposedly the most thug infested place in central americia. I am basically terrified.

Cactus now outside. Must be around 2000 feet elevation. Stuccato spanish all around me. I don`t have a clue. Guatamala city. 30 miles in every direction. Sprawling one story bungaloes, many made of scrap trash with smoke billiowing out of rotten board and sheet metal overlaps. Cooking some perro inside a haze, if they are lucky. Mobbed by hustlers at the final stop after weaving through endless lefts and rights of barred stucco. I pause to put together a few phrases. The bus to where I want to go is across town. Helpful bus ticket people connect me to a reputable cabby. I struggle with words with him as he tears up one street and down another, zigzagging apparently at random. He works the stick shift like an icecream churn, accererating madly at every chance. Miles and miles of endless city, crammed with teeming people. 10 near pedistrian murders, as they wrench back in horror from the speeding auto. 20 hairs breath collisions avoided with a prayer, lunging out into traffic, cutting in front of anything, blatent lane changes. For 50 Qetzels, about 8 bucks, I couldnt ask for a wilder thrill ride. I am laughing my ass off out loud, which gives him greater courage, it seems.

We enter a rough looking area of dismanteled busses, repairs ongoing on the street. Then into a jam of 10 busses, hundreds of people, cars wedged in the cracks. "Ahh, Pacificio" he utters in relief. "Su buss, Su Buss". Apparently he has been trying to beat the clock and get me here before it leaves. He blocks the bus with his cab. I am disgourged. My pack handed between scoundral types till I grab it back and climb into the conveyance.

I get a seat. barely fits me and the pack, no room for knees, shredded vinyl all around. They load as many people as are seated again. Totally mashed. I am admonished to share my tiny space, so I crush in more adjusting the pack ontop of me, enough to give a nice young fellow a square foot of butt cling seat. About 5 dozen standing, three to most seats. The horn is blaring. A pull chain for this. The bus inches forward, the knot of busses and cars slowly parts as more people climb on. Then in release from the crush, madcap through the streets, accelerating and tramping the brakes. Another many hours of insane driving, winding through this and that barrio, endlessly. Stopping every quarter mile to let people on and off. I particurally like passing into an oncoming fuel truck. Lots of these combinations for some reason. I can`t care. Must imagine my self as one of Calvins toys in the fated sandbox.

As we desend from the highlands, a massive volcano looms to our right. A 5000 foot perfect cone. Red lava glowing in the now night, smoke and ash dribbling down one side. Very awesom. Must be a lot of earthquakes here. On and on into the night. At one town we are hurridly off loaded and re-loaded through the emergency exit of another bus. Chinese fire drill sort of thing.

Now on the flats again. Palms trees all around. Sprawling civilization and heaps of trash. I am used to coming into a western town, there you are, main street. Here you go on and on through miles of packed miscallanious dwellings and gawdy businesses. After the usual 30 right and left turns through nameless streets, the bus stops. Here you are. This is it. People are nice though. One asks if I`ll be all right. I think so ... let`s see, dark, have no idea where I am, where anything is, how to get anywhere if I knew where to go, and can`t understand jack shit. Yeah .. I`m OK. With my lumbering pack, I trudge away. Make a note .. next to the ICE beer sign .. in case the bus will take me back from here.

Main street. A continious swarm of motercycles, scooters, bicycles, cars and pedistrains. Hundreds and hundreds teeming by. A fiesta in progress. A stage and a band a few blocks down blasting away. I stop at a food stand. loaded tacos for 12 bucks.. 1.50 US. With relish I sit on a stool and consume. Wonderful. No hustlers here. Everyone smiling. Nice. Accepting my weirdness, my ailen-ness. A little loath to face the melee. Coulden`t I just sit here and eat these tacos. Smile at everyone. But I get up and begin asking for a hotel or such. Donda hey casa de, in shitty spanish. Everyone can only understand hotel. My words incomprehensible. Every one directs me in a differnt direction. All indicate like it`s just a few inches this way or that. For 2 hours I walk in circles around various blocks, finding nothing. I gaze down another main street. ICE signs are every quarter block, as far as I can see. I am lost. Sometimes I am part of a Jesus suffering march, a huge idol on a cross, wailing music. Other times I think I suddenly hear gunshots, but find to everyones joy, it is exploding fireworks overhead, randomly shot, stars in the sky to the cheers of us all. Through all, constantly dodging motercycles and cars with the occasional fuel truck deciding to stampede. the only traffic control is to be in control.

A freindly motercycle guy with a kid on his lap directs me more than once in a specific direction. At last I find a big fancy hotel. 4 star. Not my way, but sure as hell going to stop here. 490 quetzels. shit. 60 bucks. Visa pulls through for me. Hell yeah. slam the card. AC .. spanish TV, light, water, bed. I lived .. and like Dan and Kori say ... with a story.

I have no idea where the sea is or how to get out of here. But that`s why they make tomorrows.

Pearls Before ...

2009-03-17T07:40:00.000-07:00

Today, the second time, pink perals leap out at me from far corners of the map. In a sidewalk crack on Park Avenue, downtown Manhatten, there is a cherry pit sized pink perfect. Some $1000 a square inch elite princess is sobbing somewhere over the loss. Now here, on a Belizian beach, a lumpy beauty presentsit's self. If I keep traveling, pretty soon I'll have a necklace.

The trade wind blows a steady 15 to 20 something. Soft with it's oisture, pelicians hanging in it's arms, rays the size of tables gliuding just under an azul surface. Fine white sand of powdered coral penatrates pleasently between the toes. Flowers and Palms rustel all around. Feral dogs pad happily from tourist to tourist, presumptivly presenting their smilein exchange for a pat and a morsel.

This is the madision avenue ad, selling everything from underware to roof shingles. Paridise. Always the palm, the white sand, usually with the perfect body maiden, leaning partially clad on a vacume cleaner .. All this can be your life if you buy this dream.

But what of living the dream. Them who were born here. No skills, no education, never a job, no oppertunity, no way out of paridise, little hope beyond begging off the opulent NortAmerikino's.

I walk the beach. Dripping form a sealife swim. A young negroid carib woman takes up the stroll with me.
"Havv yo beeen swiming?"
"Yes" I'm surf thrashed
"Where are you staying?" a polite tone
"At Thomas's" like he was an old freind, not a cheap hotel
"Do you have a wife?"
"No"
"Weeil you have sex with mee?'
"No"
"I haaff four kids. I am looking for a donation."
Of what I think. Maybe she's had enough "donations". I wonder if she get's the connection. the reason she has 4 kids.
"No, sorry. I have no money on me."
She angels off up to a bar. I am an obvious mark. White. Male. Alone. I feel very sorry for her, weather she has kids or not. So many mixed breed humans here. Going nowhere. No hope or even knowlege of elsewhere. Stuck in paridise. Paridise for those with the money.

Wax and wane

2009-03-15T18:38:00.000-07:00

I see the ruby eye, glinting at me through the jungle. Then the dark green vegetation closes in again and I must re-find the path. Millionaire meetings in the mornings, followed languid lunch, where the dabloon bedangled captain downs 8 beers ... in 40 minutes. The entourage hauls him to his feet, where follows an afternoon of staggering for grog between bars. The red beacon is extinguished. A new approach for a new day must be designed. In the light of morning, the clear eyed captain, again shows the jewel, brighter yet again, seemingly closer. So close the fingers could touch it, but not close enough to to pry into my vine tangled pocket.

The only actual activity here is drinking, constantly, copiously. the tropical sun squeezing the sweat from the sweltering brows. I cannot determine the true intention of this vast plan of which my sobriety is alone. Alone with my numbers, designs, ideas, and moxie. Doubt racks my mind. Do I step into this morass of mad mindlessness? To do so may mean massive riches, or ruination recycled. Hoe many times does ruin precede riches? One would think my share has been meted out, but then, he who steps in the fire will feel it's nurturing heat .. or burn.

San Pedro to Cancun at 60 MPH in two sleek hovercrafts, impervious to the wailing trade winds. This is the plan. Worth many millions and a million more a year. How long before dabloon daddy's liver explodes, taking the beautiful bubble with it?

But i must try. A life of expectancy for this dream, the paradigm path to hack before me, the luminous light leading me to it's bloody glow.

Random Wind

2009-03-12T07:40:00.000-07:00

The air is moist and warm, playing over your frozen northern body like a sodft kiss.

I ask a cur dog, obvious sickly stray of the transmorgified form.. short hair, weezely, 25 pounds. "Como sy allama, el perro?" It comes over in obvious attention. "Oh this misery, that misery. Ispend all my time avoiding fierstias. Anything to eat el jefeh?" I point out some pizzia on the street a block down. The dog speeks better spanish than i do.

All the trees are painted 4 feet up from the ground. Black bugs the size of walnuts that look like plastic. Black birds in tree riots, making ewvery sound from screeches, twitters, to caws. I think they minic traffic. Waiting for the bano to open. everyone sleeps in and in, which id¿s not suprizing as all were up till 3 making a marvelous noise.

I head down to Belize city today. Tomorrow, on the sea. My blood, my calling. Wandering way good here.

The Eve

2009-03-09T09:03:00.000-07:00

The eve of exit. Temperature 15 outside. Water ruined. In 20 hours, the airplane door will open to a new world, a new eco system, climate, sociology, language. I’ll be a dumbfounded Columbus. Columbus in Awe. I am.. actually … frightened of the unknown.

To make a blog, gives me reservations. It seems such a narrsistic endeavor. But I am instructed that there are those who would be interested in the “I” statements of a wanderer. Told that this would be a good way to be in contact. But is it contact? Is it not a another one way cyber conceit? How, if the heart is told to many, can one hold it close?
To all of you then, I apologize. Apologize but proceed. Proceed with endless “I”.

It is unknown from this eve, how much will be written here. Obviously, one must stop life to blah, blah bout it. One must find some net connected place, charging Quetzels or Peso’s, and fight your message through the wires of the world. What can be the message, that others have not lived or watched on the travel channel? It is only different because it is happening to me, because it is new and unique to me, as I have never strayed from the sage of the west. So I will try to limit the consumption of burritos, the muggings that I anticipate, the transportation in confusion. I will try to keep your attention with the stories that swirl around me, other stories that I make, things unseen to me before and the philosophies of connections.

I spent too much on credit cards. For this irresponsibility, I am rewarded with a plane ticket to Cancun, as far south as the airline goes. But hotels and beaches interest me not, so the plan is to Chicken bus it south, into Belize, then beyond. I have a meeting with Captain Sterling Vorus on Ambigius Cay … along the way. He a treasure hunter extraordinary, a hovercraft client on that other road to world conquest. Google has some interesting things to say about him. Then down into Guatemala, down to the southern coast, there to live for 2 weeks with a family, take Spanish courses in a shoebox school on the shore. From there, not sure. Possibly into the jungle to find the Ruby Eye, maybe south more still to Costa Rica. Maybe such news will show up here.

But now, now I fret in the face of the unknown. Soon the future will heal with reality. Know that I love you all.