The 4th revisited

This is from an old blog that I wrote a couple of years ago. I've cleaned it up a bit and sent it off to my writer's group. Some of you may not have read it before.



AN INDEPENDENCE DAY CAROL
By Doc Walton


Last Fourth of July, after a long day of burgers, beer, beans, salad and enough Chilean wine that that country’s trade minister was seen facing France and saying “in your face,” at precisely 2 a.m., I was visited by The Ghost of 4th of July Past.

He was dressed exactly like the guy in the Samuel Adams beer commercials, but he wasn’t smiling insanely like the idiots in all beer commercials because this ghost’s pewter mug was flat empty. I took him downstairs to the fridge, got him a refill and poured myself a bracer as well. It’s not everyday you see a ghost.

“Sam,” I said to him, because what the heck I had to call him something, “what seems to be the problem?” He looked at me for a few seconds, threw back a long swig of suds and then pulled a small thirteen starred colonial flag from…somewhere; thin air comes to mind. He waved it about a couple of times like a kid at a parade and ZAP, I was transported to a room full of serious faced guys all wearing wigs. “Toto” I said to no one in particular, “I don’t think we’re in Panama anymore.”

It was pretty clear that none of the wig wearers could see or hear us, but when I started to say something to Sam, he gave me the shush sign so I did exactly that and just listened. Some of the guys in the room looked vaguely familiar and as they talked to each other, I got their drift. These were my home country’s fathers sitting around founding. They were at that moment trying to compose some kind of document to send King George that would give him a hint about what they thought of him and also be an outline for a new country they were proposing to start. One of the guys whose name, not coincidentally I suppose, was Walton and who would later be a signee on the finished product said, “Why don’t we just tell him to go eff himself?” Most of the others agreed this was a good idea, but the guy named Jefferson, who was taking the notes, softened that a bit when he wrote it down. After awhile they got around to the crux of the matter and started talking about freedom and the inalienable rights of man. I wasn’t sure what inalienable meant, but I think it had something to do with Signourney Weaver. Mostly they seemed to be talking about freedom from intrusive government. Things like no wiretapping phones, no stealing elections, no invading foreign countries without Congress’ permission, and also finding a way to make sure everyone could see a doctor and get reasonably priced leeches whenever they were needed. There was something else about the right to wear wigs whether you were bald or not but I seemed to be slipping away and didn’t get all of that. They seemed like a well meaning bunch of guys.

After a couple of time travel units had passed which were much less in real time, Sam did an encore of his flag waving thing and we were back in my kitchen. “So,” he says to me, “you see how it was.” I nodded and poof, well not really poof, more like the gradual disintegration of Star Trek… he was gone.

I stood there in the kitchen with my empty beer mug thinking I should either refill it or give it up forever. I decided to sleep on it. No sense being hasty about the beer thing, this might all be a dream.

Sometime later – again I’m not sure about the time thing, I’ve got to give Steve Hawkings a call – I was awakened by The Ghost of 4th of July Present. This guy looked nothing like a beer commercial. He was dressed in a nice suit, could have been Armani, but how would I know, wore wing-tipped shoes and carried a bible so pristine it looked like it was rarely opened. “Come with me” he said and Zappo! We were transported to a place that – I’ve never really been there so I’m only guessing – could have been The White House.

Again a group of guys were sitting around drafting a document. I couldn’t actually see what they had written so far, but the title of the manuscript was “The Declaration of Oil Dependence.” Everyone in the room seemed in agreement that this was a good idea, including King George who was present this time. They all thought they could sell this document to the public with the aid of another document which they were going to call either the “NeoConstitution” or “Neoconning-the-Institution, they hadn’t decided yet. This work had some interesting chapter headings like “Who Needs the Environment?”, “God Is On Our Side Or We Wouldn’t Be Rich”, “Up With The Corporation Because We Won’t Always Be In Office” and near the end a chapter called “Overpopulation” with the subtitle, “The Poor May Be Edible.” These were all earnest young men who thought they were doing the right thing because they had all personally met Jerry Falwell and he had given them a hearty thumbs up.

“Yo Ghost” I said to my spirit guide, “whaddya say we move along.” And we did, right to the Future.

Somewhere along the way, I was passed off to another ghost whose attire changed eerily from one minute to the next. First it was a kind of space suit, all shiny and sleek, then it was cave man furs and skins, then something from a Madonna video, I liked the cone shaped boob holders, and then, well, on and on. The way people dressed in the Future seemed to be either a matter of choice or - it dawned on me quite suddenly – entirely uncertain. That’s what came to me as the ghost and I watched the human race being wiped out by natural disasters, invaded by bugs, saved at the last moment, beamed to home planets, living underground, living in bubbles, being eaten by the rich, and, in one hazy instance, living happily ever after. The Future was clearly uncertain, up in the air, a matter of choice. It depends on what we do now. I vowed to the ghost to vote for people who were more like the old boys in the Past and less like, you know, those other guys.

As for all those Future scenarios, I personally liked the insect invasion, but when I mentioned this to my ghost buddy, he morphed into a giant tomato bug and I quickly changed my mind. I hate tomato bugs. Shortly after that I was mysteriously plopped back into my bed, all ghosts gone, hopefully never to return.

I lay there awhile thinking what was the point, what was the point and why visit me, a guy not all that bright about politics. I mean, c’mon, I once voted for Nixon. The answer continues to elude me these many months later, but I did come up with a simple course of action based on a subject I do know a little about, literature.

I would find a crippled kid named Tim and buy him a turkey.

Where is that damn dog?

Ah, The Masters. The tournament that is all about the short game. And then there is The U.S. Open which is all about staying out of trouble, followed by The British Open that requires shots not normally played on Park style courses and then the Major season ends with The P.G.A. where the goal is to make birdies and shoot way under par. Alrighty then, let's get it on.

For a while here we had a very raggedy dog come visit us on a daily basis. She was too old to be much fun for Gus, but she had a sweet disposition and I would give her a few dog cookies each time she turned up, because she appeared a bit under nourished and was always so grateful to receive them. She looked like some kind of terrier mix with short hair of a mottled, gray, black, brown color combination and she had ears that she could point straight up or flop down. Her face was mostly gray and bore several scars and she had dark, watery eyes. We guessed that she had had many litters over the years as her black nipples hung down below her all twisted and gnarled. She was really a walking mess of a little dog, but, like most dogs, she had a way about her that made her lovable. We called her Old Girl. She's been missing for a week now and we are all concerned.

There is a house positioned on the right side of the ninth fairway just short of the green at Valle Escondido and each week as we played we would be greeted by a gardener there who would sell us golf balls that he had found on and about the property at a rate of fifty cents apiece. Most weeks I would buy four or five bucks worth as we lose golf balls on this course at a prodigious rate. Two weeks ago I bought eight balls - that was all he had - but I found only a ten on my money clip and the gardener had no change. I let him keep the ten and extracted his promise to give me twelve balls the next week. Needless to say, else why would I be writing this, he didn't show. What do you suppose he did with the extra six bucks? Quit his job and retire? Move to another town? Blow it on booze and hookers? I want to believe he was just sick and absent that day and he'll be back with my golf balls next week. Of course, I also want to believe that Bush is a swell guy and really wants to enact a more equitable distribution of wealth.

Bought a new camera. With luck there will be pics attached to some future blogs.

Stuff Of Little Interest, But Somebody Has To Say It

The tree in our yard that looked so dead a couple months ago is now lushly leafed. It has become a bird magnet and I can see four species of our avian pals out there right now, chirping their heads off, trying to distract me from the task at hand. "Hold it down Worm Breath, I'm trying to write here!" Yesterday, there was a large hawk with dark wings and a pale yellow under belly perched up there and I put the glasses on him for a closer look. Beautiful. We are getting more and more birds of late and I don't know if it is a seasonal thing or whether they are just returning now that the noise of construction has stopped. No matter, it's nice to have them around even if they are bit flocking noisy.

There was a nice downpour for an hour or so yesterday and the lawn is looking chipper and the flowers perked up this a.m. as a result. RTGFKAR's homemade drainage system - he buried many feet of pipe - passed its first test. The hard rain, did though, like a good teacher, demonstrate to RTGFKAR a few more spots that need attention before the wet season begins its annual deluge. When your house is carved into a hillside, you can't have erosion.

From the here's how it works in the Third World department, are two stories I'll tell briefly. (A friend of mine used to say, "to make a long story a headache.")

I hitched up the buckboard to go into town and pay my seat belt ticket Friday. I went first, as suggested by our cleaning woman, to the Municipio where I was told that I needed to go to the Tesoro on the other side of the building. I drove around to the other side because it was a large building and I had Gus with me and he gets frantic when I've gone to some place out of his sight. There were four entry doors on the building's far side and at the fourth, the only one unmarked outside, I found the Tesoro. (treasury) I waited for ten minutes while the only person there talked on the phone. At the conversation's conclusion, the woman said, "Digame" (talk to me) and I showed her my ticket. She perused it for a minute or so and then shouted to someone unseen somewhere else. A voice answered back in unintelligible Spanish for the most part, but I did catch the word David. I need to go there to pay the ticket because it was issued by a Transito cop and they're out of David. Guess I'm lucky I didn't get a ticket from a Panama City cop.

Friday, I called my local number for Direct TV because I wanted to order the Baseball Package. After a long, struggling conversation is Spanish, they gave me the number for the home office in Pan City. It was an 800 number so it couldn't be called on a cell phone, the only kind we have. I drove to B and L's because they have a land line and called from there. Got a nice fellow on the phone who spoke English. After giving him our account number and passing myself off as RTGFKAR - the account's in his name, he asked me for my identifying number. What's that I asked and he said my passport number. I asked him to hold and called RTGFKAR on my cell. He didn't answer. He was probably outside burying pipe. I then picked up the phone and tried to explain that I wasn't really RTGFKAR but rather his brother and I didn't know his passport number and I would have to call back after I had returned home and got it. The guy was very understanding, not the least bit suspicious, and suggested that he call me because I didn't have a land line to call out from. Nice. Fifteen minutes later he did, talked to RTGFKAR and now we have two baseball games a day for the rest of the season. I will probably only watch one or two a week, but that's worth the $55. cost.

And now, this being Sunday, breakfast is in my hands and I need to get to it. I'm thinking bacon and eggs because RTGFKAR made apple cinnamon bread last night and nothing goes better with it. Yum. Tonight we go to B and L's for chicken fried steak. I have been exercising diligently for three weeks now on both the elliptical strider and our free weights and have only lost two pounds. Can't imagine why. Can you?

And, oh yeah, Go Kansas.

Update

That blog a few days ago that was a pseudo poem? I was trying very hard not to rhyme, a thing that comes easily to me, rhyming that is, and write instead a more sophisticated poem; one that expressed a view and a feeling without spelling it out too literally. Big failure eh? Not to worry, next time I'll rhyme it up. In fact I may even go back and fix that one. Gotta stick to what you do best. The thing I was trying to say, in case you didn't get it, was that I needed to be writing something other than this blog as I was getting "blogged" down. Since then I have been flooded with ideas and now have three other things underway; two mostly still in my head, but crying to come out. I guess, as Woowoo Charly is often wont to say "you have to throw it out to the Universe and see what happens.

Just thought you'd like to know.

Contemplating Introverts

Seventy-five bucks for a seat belt ticket! You gotta be kidding me. (They're not.)

It occurred to me this morning as I broke into a spontaneous dance with my coffee cup while humming "Stars twinkle high above me, la la lalala la la la la Laaa" in the center of our great room, that it is very quiet living with two introverts. Neither my wife, Woowoo Charly or my brother, RTGFKAR, have ever been known to do what I was doing at that moment. I don't know for sure if they ever have sudden expressions of joy, but I have to assume they do even if I never catch them whistling a tune, singing aloud, dancing with their shadows or talking much above a whisper. Woowoo Charly moves so quietly about the house that she frequently startles RTGFKAR and I by appearing where she wasn't a moment ago. RTGFKAR does his gardening and landscaping by himself without a radio or Walkman or MP3 player to please the ears while bending the back. In the evenings when we sit outdoors to watch the sunset over Baru, I am the one who generally turns on the background music and initiates most of the conversations although Woowoo Charly will occasionally offer a topic from politics or one of the books she's reading. RTGFKAR likes to jump in with a witticism or a bon mot and to play Devil's Advocate from time to time, but there are long stretches of staring at the view silently while we sip our cocktails and I blow cigar smoke off into space. When you factor in that even I, the one extrovert, albeit a shy extrovert unless loosened with alcohol, spend hours silently in front of a computer and that our dog is the world's quietest canine, it's little wonder that I jump out of my skin (a neat trick that) when the phone rings.

I have to admit though, that here in my golden years? dotage? days of wine and a nice cuppa tea? that I enjoy the quiet. I do wonder from time to time, however, if my companions are happy. It is very hard to tell. Of course happiness is of greater concern to we Enneagram 7's than other types, but still, everyone, I'm told, wants to be happy. My troops are not even frequent smilers, so I have very few clues to their state of mind and emotions to go by. I'm guessing they are happy because they carry on...I almost said grimly, and don't complain. Still, I'd feel better if one of them was seen to jump for joy or whistle a happy tune.

Introverts, go figure.

A Different Kind of Day

I just got out of my morning shower. It's three fifteen in the afternoon. You might think I procrastinated or was - less likely - doing something engaging, engrossing, even important, but noooo blog reader breath, noooo. We had no water. This happens on a fairly regular basis, say, once a month: I get up, turn on the tap to make morning coffee and... nada. I phone B and L to see if they have any of the precious stuff and they say nope out tambien, so I know it's a neighborhood problem. Always comes back though. Well, so far at least.

But I'm not hear to talk about today, I'm here to talk about yesterday and I don't mean yesterday in the back-in-the-day sense that I usually go on about, I mean yesterday the day before today.

Yesterday was Tuesday or Martes in Spanish for those of you who are acquiring the language one word at a time. I was up, showered, shaved and you know, all that, ready for our Martes golf outing when the phone rang. On the phone at the other end was an hysterical woman by the name of Elizabeth, pouring Spanish into my ear at Nascar speed. Elizabeth is our friends Victoria and Scott's cleaning lady. V and S are out of the country and Elizabeth cleans their house every Tuesday and Friday. I go there bi-weekly and pay her with funds V and S have left for the purpose. Elizabeth was calling to tell me the house had been robado. Yeah, that's exactly what it sounds like, robbed. I drove there forthwith, Gus and camera in tow and verified, that yes, this was a serious robbery. Much was lost, televisions, stereo, stove, refrigerator, furniture and who knows how many small things. The robbers clearly had a truck. Next stop the Policia, bureaucracy and frustration for Gringos. Elizabeth and I alerted the police to the crime and then filled out a long form. After that we sat. Well she sat anyway, I took Gus for a walk. Eventually, one of the policemen said he had to go to the "Personneria" and would be right back. Half an hour later he returned and said we had to go there which we did. They said come back later when we had a list of everything stolen. We returned to the station and waited some more. I took Gus for another walk. He alone was having a good time. Two hours of waiting passed, for what I wasn't really sure, and my short Gringo patience finally ran out. I asked if I was really needed and told no, Elizabeth could lead them up to the house and fill in whatever blanks that needed filling. Whew. I returned home, but not before scarfing a couple of bananas I had purchased downtown, five cents for the two, as I had not eaten that morning. Woowoo Charly had gone off to the golf course with Old Redneck Larry and I was going to join them as soon as I could. RTGFKAR was not playing this week as "he hates golf, it's a stupid game" and is cutting back to every other week. I got to the course and arrived just as Woowoo and Lar finished up the first nine holes. Not much here to tell apart from my posting an individual score of 33 on the par 30 course, my best ever. After golf we met RTGFKAR at Bon and Larry's house for cocktails, then left for Aura's Restaurant for dinner. It was closed. We motored on to town and ate at our new favorite place, a new Mexican restaurant named Charros. Driving home, I slowed for what appeared to be a cop investigating an accident, a couple of cars were askew in the road, and as I passed by the cop waved me over. What the? I thought as I did what he said. He finished up with the other cars and they drove off. Peering through the passenger side window he pointed at RTGFKAR's seat belt which he was wearing and then at mine which I was not. Next, of course, he wrote and handed me the ticket.

So there you have it, a day of ups and downs that starts and ends with Policia. It was as frustrating and aggravating as you might imagine and I was feeling very bad for V. and S. throughout. There were though, cocktails, pleasant conversation, a great dinner and a long putt on number eight. All in all an odd sort of day.

And now it's nice to have the water back. I can see RTGFKAR from my window, hose in hand watering the begonias. We have begonias, don't we?

First Thing Tomorrow

Maybe Kira or Bonnie who have "ears" for poetry can straighten this mess out.


I'm feeling the need to read
something I've written inspired.
I'm feeling the urge to splurge
on thoughts that are new.
But I'm stayed from the page
by an old stubborn fear
that grips me and strangles my muse.
In the night on my bed I can dispel the dread
with promise and damn good intentions.
But with the first light I awaken to fright
and I write all but what was intended.
The task is at hand
I have made a good start.
There are pages already aplenty.
I just have to go and recapture the flow
at the site where the story resides.
But I stay locked up inside and I just want to hide
from the thing I know I must do.
Tomorrow I say I'll get started again
but I blog and avoid the real writing.
I know I can't quit, I've got too damn much grit
to leave this hard thing left undone.
I'll face up to my fear and when it comes near
I'll just write it away.


First thing tomorrow.

Predictions Past, Present and Future

Now what do I do? I've successfully picked the Final Four teams in the NCAA Tourney by virtue of their wearing blue (see blog "Holes and Hoops"), but now I have to pick a winner and I don't have color to help me choose. Not to worry, Memphis it is. I'll be backing Kansas of course; my five bucks is riding on them.

And now, to prove that my sports expertise extends beyond hoops, I will give you my baseball predictions.

NL East - Brooklyn Dodgers
NL Central - Chicago Cubs
NL West - There is no NL West

Cy Young - Don Newcombe
MVP - Stan Musial

Surprise - Cardinals get Lou Brock in steal of a trade with Cubs.

AL East - The New York Yankees whose souls were not sold to the Devil by George Steinbrenner
AL Central - Cleveland Indians
AL West - There is no AL West

Cy Young - Bob Feller
MVP - Al Kaline

Surprise - Mickey Mantle gets caught NOT drinking in a late night club.

And, to prove I am far seeing, I predict that in some distant time, these will be my picks. Mets, Cubs and Rockies in NL. Red Sox, Tigers, Angels in AL

Cy Youngs - Santana and Matsusaka

MVP - Tulowitski and Big Papi

Playoffs - Rockies beat Red Sox in seven game WS. The other playoffs are just filler to provide owners with more revenue.

Full Belly Empty Mind

I strode elliptically through a Gothic castle where Vincent Price was up to no good before showering and heading to the kitchen. There I made a spicy cheese omelet, heated up precooked morning sausage, popped up some toast and alerted the denizens of this castle that breakfast was ready.

I'm stuffed. During the week our morning repast is whatever we feel like and in that case I'm usually good for a container of yogurt or a hard boiled egg. Sometimes just a muffin will suffice and none of these are consumed until after I've blogged, exercised and completed morning ablutions; the shave, shower, dress, insert coffee into veins kind of ablutions. It is often noon before I am fully clothed. No wonder I'm stuffed.

A young Indian man in shiny Sunday clothes - yellow dress shirt, blue slacks, polished to a high sheen shoes - just came up to the house and wandered about the driveway until I went out to talk to him. It is the custom here to not knock at your door, but rather, to simply walk in front of your windows until someone sees you. This, I guess, gives the householder the option of ignoring you or not. The man was looking for work and I had to tell him lo siento, mi hermano y yo hacen todo el trabajo. My brother and I do all the work. The man was very disappointed. Yesterday, another young man who had been part of the crew who did the painting on our house, came here with a puppy he wanted to sell. Lo siento, tenemos un perro and uno perro esta basta. We have a dog and one's enough. He was disappointed too. What amazes me is that we are not exactly on the beaten path. We are hard to find and even if you know where we are, it's a serious hike to get here. RTGFKAR says we should put a gate across our driveway so that we can be "a gated community." Of course, we have no walls or fences around any other part of the property so I commented the idea might not work.

I've lost track of what I was going to say. No, that's not true. I have NO IDEA what I was going to say. Let me think.

I saw the last 45 minutes of "Snakes On A Plane" last night. Lame movie, lame acting, lame snakes. Samuel Jackson should be ashamed of himself. I had been watching basketball until my eyes had began to stop blinking and go all coma on me so I surfed around the channels until I found Snake. Thought it might give me an adrenaline jolt and keep me awake through the North Carolina vs. Louisville tussle. No luck.

I've got a message on my screen that says "Could not contact Blogger.com. Saving and publishing may fail." I'm thinking this will be no loss.

Beach Daze

"God gave man a penis and a brain, but not enough blood to make them both work at the same time."___Robin Williams (This is a gratuitous quote that has nothing to do with the text that follows so don't get your hopes up.)

I sat outside in the dark for awhile last night contemplating the events of the day. Woowoo Charly had gone to bed with her book and RTGFKAR was engrossed in a cooking show, so I had the night to myself. I turned on the sprinkler to nurture our new grass, fired up a ceegar, poured a smidgen of Frangelica and dialed in 95.7 on the radio. It was cool enough out there on the patio that I wore a sweatshirt and a ball cap to fend off any chills sneaking around and I was pleasantly comfortable as I sat there mentally reviewing our day at the beach.

It's a long ride from here to Las Lajas. It's even longer when the road is clogged by a plodding bull dozer and unhurried traffic. We made it though, in a shade less than two hours after stops for chips, ice, gas, and money from an ATM. I was reminded of youthful trips to the "shore" as the beach is called in New Jersey and the long haul down the Garden State Parkway to get there. The view from our windows on this day was dramatically improved over those of the Parkway, but I couldn't say the same about the roads. Pot holes abounded. To pass the time we had brought along cards from a Trivia game about the Eighties. After an hour or so of not answering most of the questions it was clear that the Eighties had slipped by all five of us without making much of an impression. Personally, I blame the fall-off in drug usage from the Sixties and Seventies. I remember those decades much better contrary to colloquial wisdom.

We arrived at Las Lajas right about noon, parked the car, unloaded and boogied to the small surf side restaurant that's housed there. We all had chicken, rice, beans and salad except for RTGFKAR who had pork chops, rice, beans and salad, the only other menu option. Gus and the house dog growled at each other for a half minute and then ignored each other for the rest of the day. The only other people in evidence apart from our waiter/cook were two old guys at a nearby table playing checkers using beer bottle caps as the checkers. After downing our almuerzo - the food was unexpectedly good by the way and, of course, dirt cheap, twenty bucks total for the five meals and that included a good tip - we set about doing beach things.

Fill in here descriptions of RTGFKAR and Yers Trewly splashing in the surf, Woowoo Charly, Bonnie and RTGFKAR hiking on the sand, LJ the Old Redneck and I sitting in the shade drinking Coronas and almost doing a crossword puzzle that Bonnie would mostly solve later and all the usual things you would expect to see a group of people doing at the beach with the exception of we guys eye-balling young things in bikinis. This latter was noticeably absent from the day as there was not a soul on the beach as far as we could see until late in the day when a couple of other old gringos showed up for a quick dip. Amazing. Beautiful day, warm pleasant surf, serenely quiet beach with shady Palms and nary a person, thing or thong to distract us from the excellent day we were having.

RTGFKAR drove a shortcut on the way back that I had passed up on the drive there and saved a bit of time. There was little difference in the actual mileage between the two routes but the shortcut had far less traffic. The conversation was lively the entire way and we only had to stop twice for LJ and I to rid ourselves of Coronas on the side of the road.

We dropped Bon and the Redneck at their place around the corner from us, went home and unpacked. American Idol was surprisingly unblocked so Woowoo Charly got that in before heading to bed. RTGFKAR grabbed the tube in the other room so I eschewed the basketball that was on and headed to the patio.

When I was finished contemplating the day, I contemplated going to bed and followed that up by doing so. There I slept like a rock. If rocks toss and turn, dream, make funny sleep noises and get up to pee three times, that is.

It was all in all a swell day and nobody enjoyed it more the Gustavo the Wonder Dog who roamed untethered throughout it. Swell, by the way, is an adjective that needs to be used more.

Speed Writing

Return to the Beach is playing at our house today so I have to hurry. I have to write this, do a half hour on the elliptical strider - yes it's a strider not a glider as previously reported - because I am once again engaged in the quest for fitness, a thing ever elusive, after reading earlier this morning that men with round bellies are doomed to dementia - scientists don't know why yet, only that there is a connection proved by a recent study - drink two cups of coffee, shower, shave, dress, pack the car and probably twelve other things I'm forgetting, but that's no wonder, I have, after all, a round belly.

For the second week in a row American Idol was blocked from our Panama satellite box. As our programming comes from Venezuela, we suspect Hugo Chavez is yanking the show just to annoy Americans. RTGFKAR doesn't like Idol so he won't watch it on our Puerto Rican box which means no Idol at all and a deep depression for Woowoo Charly. Depression for her, dementia for me.

We have in compensation for this double dose of d's a beautiful day, warm, sunny and still. All we have to do now is shoehorn into the car five people, a dog, five chairs and a cooler full of Coronas and less important stuff like food. We'll see how that goes. Hasta Manana.

My Right Foot

Here, if I can successfully cut and paste, is what I sent to our writer's group as an example of close focus description.

My mother used to say that she had pretty feet. I didn’t get it. Still don’t. I understand beautiful eyes, delicate hands, a shapely this or that and an overall sense of beauty, but feet? Does anyone really care?

MY RIGHT FOOT
By Doc Walton

It takes a double B, sometimes a triple A, size eleven shoe. This is a narrow foot, but better foot than mind. There’s not much arch left. Years of running and jumping in one sport or another have pretty much pounded it flat, although, truth be told, the arch wasn’t all that high to begin with. This would be a 4F foot if I were a WWII draftee. There’s the usual compliment of toes that start from the left as I look down with the widest one, a kind of pear shaped digit that has a very rounded toenail – worrisome that - and ends with the shortest and smallest on the far right that leans to the left and “spoons” nicely with the “piggy” that lives there. The two toes in between vary only in that one is a smidgeon taller and thus stands straight, proud and independent while the shorter looks for support from the toes to its right. All have neatly trimmed nails because I am, of course, a fastidious, well groomed guy, but mostly because I knew I was going to write this. The “big” toe however, has a nail that is chunky and thicker than the others and sports a yellowish tint that may be a result of its having been subjected to a misspent youth in which the toe itself was broken once and the nail blackened and fallen off on several less than memorable, usually embarrassing occasions. A horse tromping comes to mind. A healthy pink shines through the nails of all the other toes. Moving up the foot towards the ankle I can see cords of tendons that lead one apiece to each toe. These are crisscrossed by large blue arteries in a seemingly random pattern that look like major thoroughfares on a road map. Barely visible through the overall pale pink of the foot are dozens of purple hued smaller veins that appear and disappear like country roads on the same map. The under foot has very little arch, it too having been flattened by time. The “ball” of the foot, the area directly behind the toe bottoms, where one balances poised and ready for action in sports and flight, lacks now the calloused, tougher skin of its hey-day, but still has a harder shell than the rest of the foot which, for the most part is smooth as the proverbial baby’s bottom. The heel appearing at the far end of the foot is the narrowest part of the whole and ultimately my personal sports bane as it made me subject to frequent sprained ankles. Where the foot meets the ankle there is a bone protrusion on each side about which I have nothing to say other than damn it hurts when you clip one on a piece of furniture. The whole foot is hairless apart from some rogue shoots on the joint of the biggest toe. Years of removing the adhesive tape from wrapped ankles, a thing that includes all but the toes of the foot, have yanked out any hair that may have foolishly grown there. I am not limber enough these days to get my foot very close to my nose, but a whiff of yesterday’s socks suggests that colognes will not be inspired.
All in all it’s a foot lacking, I think, any sort of beauty. But then, sorry Mom, most do.

I've Joined Boring Blogs Anonymous But I'm Not Cured Yet

Don't worry about a thing, I have ALL the answers. If I could just remember where I put them.

We have a large tree in our yard of an unknown type that I'm going to call the Gringo Tree because unlike the other trees here in Boquete that stay green and blossomed all year round, this one shed all its leaves and looked deader than a door nail - and you know how dead door nails get - until now. It seems to be on the U.S. tree cycle of leafless for football season, sprouted for baseball. I mention this for no particular reason other than I'm staring at it through one of my office windows and it's staring back. Not to worry though, I gave it my most bad-assed "what the hell you looking at Bark Breath?" attitude and now it's staring at RTGFKAR who is outside mixing cement in a wheelbarrow and oblivious to the prying eyes of the Gringo Tree.

I have nothing to write about again today which is the beauty of blogging because I'm compelled to write anyway. Something, a blog, from nothing, my mind, is what creativity is all about. It's also, in my case, what bullshit is all about, but c'mon, we all have to be good at something and I'm refining this skill so that when I enter my second childhood and have to go back to school, I'll be able to knock out those term papers with ease. "Compare and Contrast in one thousand words or less Denny the Dunce, Marvin the Moron and George the Bush." Okay, that's a tough one. Comparing is easy but there is no contrast.

On a diary entry kind of note, I made up a basketball pool. Woowoo Charly, RTGFKAR, LJ the old redneck, Bonnie the bookworm and Yers Trewly each picked teams from a hat, winner takes all, which in this case is twenty five bucks don't alert the IRS. I've arrived at the first weekend and I'm already down to just four teams, Tennessee, Louisville, Kansas and Oklahoma. I think Kansas is my best hope because, as I noted in another blog, they wear blue. Woowoo Charly has nine of her original 13teams left and RTGFKAR has Memphis and UCLA so he's in a catbird's seat which I'm told are quite comfortable, although I've never actually seen a catbird and I'm not sure I want to and why they have special seats remains a mystery to me. I don't know which teams LJ and Bon picked but there are good teams not on the other lists, North Carolina comes to mind, so we are all still in the hunt for the twenty-five big ones, a new car and an all expense paid trip around the world. Those last two, of course, have nothing to do with the pool but we are hunting them anyway.

I have to go now and work on that moron, dunce, Bush contrast that seems impossible so I'll leave you with this. Go Volunteers, Sooners, Redbirds and Jayhawks. And for the hoop aficionados, where is Belmont and what does UMBC stand for?

Elliptical Glider

I woke up with this old goodie from Aretha on my mind: Whenever I wake up, before you put on your make up. I run in fear and hide from you.

In my never ending quest to return to those thrilling days of a taut hard belly...okay, day, I've purchased an elliptical glider. I can now be seen gliding elliptically all over the place. I had one of these some years back, the year Dara got married in fact, which was, let me see, cough cough mumble mumble, called an Orbitrek and the odd looking contraption worked as advertised, can you believe it? Woowoo Charly hated it because it was in the living room/kitchen - we only had one other room in the cabin - and she said it was ugly. "Hey", I would point out, "that's like saying workout gyms are ugly"; a not too convincing argument. I would peddle away each morning to Sportscenter on the tube and by the time Dara's wedding rolled around, I was fit as a fiddle if a fiddle could do push-ups and jumping jacks. My tuxedo hung nicely and my cumberbun was not too snug. (Cumberbun? How do you bake cumber buns? RTGFKAR will know.)

The Elliptical Glider, yeah that's its name although I call it Fred, came in a box and required assembly. I remember assembly from high school. The Principal would come out and speak for awhile, we'd boo and try not to get caught doing it, and then some kind of program would occur. With that in mind, I called everyone I know to gather but nobody showed up so I was forced to assemble myself. In the Sixties, assembling yourself was called "getting your shit together." Maybe it still is. Anyway, tools and instructions came with the glider and, miraculously, the instructions were in English. This may in part be a result of the product being made in some place called UK. I think that's pronounced uck and they must speak English there which is lucky for them because Bush wants to invade all non English speaking countries before his term is up. Excluding Texas, of course, where they don't speak English, but they do speak Bush. I got the whole thing assembled in about an hour and a half of steady cursing and then took it for a test ride in front of the Spanish version of Sportcenter which apparently recognises no other sport but soccer. Gooooooaaaaaalllllll. I've put the glider in our guest room away from those you know kind of people who point their fingers at things and say, "that's ugly."

If anyone is getting married about six months from now, give me a call. I'll look real good in a tux by then. RTGFKAR will bake the cumber buns.

Holes and Hoops

Alrighty then. Another birthday is in the bag and put on the shelf. And a good one it was too. I'd tell you how old I am, but I've never been able to count that high. My daughter-in-law Heather turned 39 yesterday and I'm sure she's older than I am. To celebrate her birthday RTGFKAR, Woowoo Chuck, The Old Redneck and Yers Trewly played 27 holes at Valle Escondido where we defeated the Trolls, Gremlins and Leprechauns once again by playing some ferdamnshure good golf.(No need to thank us Heather.) RTGFKAR and I, playing as a team, matched Woowoo and and LJ with 32's on the middle nine. This on a par 30 golf course. Woowoo Charly and I were at par through seven on the first nine before bogeying the eighth and triple bogeying the ninth. We would have hung our heads in shame and maybe even our whole bodies had not our 34 been three strokes better than RTGFKAR and LJ. By the time we got to the third nine, fatigue was taking its toll on all of us except Woowoo Charly who doesn't weigh anything and therefore never wanes and the golf deteriorated somewhat. Still, no score over 40 was posted.

Yeah, yeah I know how thrilled you all are when I talk about sports, but c'mon, this is golf, a deeply spiritual game about which Arnold Palmer once said, "golf is the sport in which the walls between the natural and the supernatural are rubbed the thinnest", and LJ says, "*#*x***...." which, although not as lyrical as Arnie, is more to the point. Nevertheless, being a sensitive 90's kind of a guy, I'll eschew the finer details of our round and talk instead about.....basketball!

Here's the "Sweet Sixteen" I'd like to see. Mississippi Valley State, Belmont, American, Mount Saint Marys, Winthrop, Boise State, Texas Arlington, Oral Roberts, Cornell, Saint Marys, Austin Peay, Portland State, Kent State, Siena, Davidson and UMBC. (I have no idea what those initials stand for.) Yup, they're all in the tournament and nope, they haven't got a prayer.

If sport prayers WERE answered you might wind up with an all Catholic Final Four, St. Marys, Mount Saint Marys, Saint Josephs and Notre Dame. Catholics being serious kneel down and get after it prayers. Xavier might be in that mix as well. Of course, Oral Roberts and BYU fans will be praying like crazy for their teams to crash the party. All should beware of the Duke Blue Devils and I'll bet there are Demons in the field somewhere.

My own Final Four picks are UCLA, Kansas, North Carolina and Memphis, not because they are all good, which they are, but because they wear blue and I'm partial to blue. If a team wearing green sneaks in, I could go that way as green is the best color of all, but the only team wearing green I see having a shot is Michigan State. I don't think they are good enough. Oregon wears green and I'm told they're talented, but I haven't seen them play. They do have the advantage of a great nickname, Ducks.
Go Ducks, Kick Tiger Butt. Seems unlikely.

And apart from sports, the other thing on my mind is...

Oh Come On, there must be something.

A March Madness Sunday

Sometimes I type very slowly in the hope that a new sentence will come to me before I finish the one I'm on. Rarely happens though.

I've just polished off a magnificent, spicy, cheese omelet, three strips of crisp bacon and a slice of zarsamora jellied toast. This spectacular repast was prepared and served by the unchallenged king of the Sunday breakfast, a man whose culinary skills defy description due to the lack in English of words comparable to sounds like yechk and bleck, a man who carries on each and every Sunday through thick and thin pancakes and french toast, a man who, yes it must be said, would rather go out and was heretofore unheralded because of the shortage of heralds in this part of the world, a man known to all who know him, namely, Yers Trewly.

That's all right. Don't get up. Hold the applause. Oh please, you're too kind.

Mother Nature, Father Time, Aunt Jemimah and Say Uncle have conspired to present we humble recipients with a beautiful day here in Boqueteland. The sun is around somewhere, the sky is overhead and predictably blue, the grass is green and from what I can tell, nothing looks out of place except RTGFKAR who is over there building a fire to burn coffee stumps which is my job. I think he's just ducking the dishes. Woowoo Charly is out playing in the dirt with garden tools and looks darn cute in her bluejeans and white tee. I tell her every day she should wear a bonnet, but she adamantly refuses, saying bonnets are for old ladies. She clings, instead, to her baseball cap with its Jack Daniels logo. I'm over here in the office part of my room-with-a-view and I can see forever. Yes I can so, I just have to close my eyes. Gus, our noble defender of home and hearth is napping off his share of omelet and bacon in a dog bed under the desk and at my feet. He likes to stay close in case I need back-up and also because I occasionally drop edible things.

So there you have the setting and now for the plot.

Will Yers Trewly actually step forth into the great, not so great and sometimes downright lame outdoors to catch a bit of sun, a breath of air and a modicum of exercise? Or will he instead opt for the reclining sofa, the remote control, the beer, the chips, the Conference Basketball Championships and The PGA? And, more importantly, does he deserve the latter fate while Woowoo weeds and RTGFKAR burns?

Damn straight he does. He made the breakfast didn't he?

A Fair's Remembered

I remember when Fairs, Carnivals and Amusement Parks were much seedier and a lot more fun. Of course, I was a tyke then and a trip to one of those magical places was about as good as life could get. Was there anything more thrilling in the world than a roller coaster? And, given the chance, what kid wouldn't have spent a day in the fun house alone. For "one thin dime" I could gain entrance into any of the side shows which mostly, I thought, turned out to be "cheats" because the two headed lizard, frog, chicken, baby, pick one, was packed in a jar of formaldehyde and not walking around the room. Bearded ladies, fat women and giants were common then. They'd strike up a conversation with the crowd as it moved by gawking. They usually had some standard patter that was borderline "blue" material the adults seemed to like, but it was dull stuff to a kid. I guess I was asking a lot for my dime. I was too young then, or too short, to be allowed into the exotic dancers tent. No loss there though as I didn't really care much about girls. By the time I grew old enough to appreciate them, they were readily available in cages at the nearest Disco.

There were no floors or sidewalks at the Fairs, just dirt. I remember stepping on sticky stems from candy apples and the paper cones from cotton candy. There were too few trash barrels scattered about and the ones available seemed to be ever flowing over. The air was thick with the combined smells of the best foods in the world, hot dogs, hamburgers, fries, popcorn, taffy, caramel and cherry coated apples and cotton candy in three different colors that all tasted the same; a kid could live forever on this diet - and, of course, there was an over-riding scent we knew from our dad's favorite vice, beer. They sold it in paper cups in those days and lots of it got spilled.

Most of my memories come from visits to Fountain Ferry Amusement Park in Louisville and the Kentucky State Fair. I lived in Kentucky from the fifth through the eighth grades. We would usually go at night to "beat the heat" but it seems to me it was always hotter than the dickens anyway. One of my strongest recollections was of the entrance to the Fun House. There was a wooden railing in front and a suspension walkway into the building. Someone hidden somewhere would send an electrical current through the railing and give anyone touching it a mild shock. My dad would grab the railing and then reach out and catch me by the shoulder. I would bounce around like a crazed puppet at the end of his arm screaming let me go, let me go as the shock tingled and yes, hurt. My dad would let go, eventually, but not before he got a good laugh. The walkway was where the ladies had their skirts and dresses blown up to their waists by a blast of air shot up through the slats. Women didn't wear long pants then, although some did wear shorts. I liked watching the gals trying to hold their stuff down and scurry off the planks; not, as you might think, because it was in any way titillating, but because this kind of slapstick comedy was right up my eleven year alley. Dad and I both got our laughs.

And I would be remiss if I didn't point out that almost yearly I would stuff myself with all the food I could talk my father into buying for me and then attempt one more ride. Tossing my cookies is an almost accurate description of what followed. I say almost, because I don't really remember cookies being part of the nasty mix. Kids recover fast though and I would be well and pleading to stay longer when it was time to go home.

I'm sure the amusement experience is still just as much fun for kids today. The parks are cleaner, better and the rides are safer. I'll take my memories though. They're grittier, funkier and they smell better. C'mon, stale beer and popped corn? Smells as good today as it did then.

One last note. If you haven't read Ray Bradbury's "Something Wicked This Way Comes"...you ought to. It's the ultimate Traveling Carnival read. Spooky as hell.

A Fair Fair

I can tell I'm old because I've been to Pricesmart and purchased things in quantities that can only be described as "a lifetime supply." I've done this, many times.

We, RTGFKAR, Woowoo Charly, Bonnie and I, finished up our Pricesmart run and loaded our new lifetime supply of napkins, paper towels, dirt cheap wine - but only the finest dirt cheap wine - etc. in the rear of RTGFKAR's car and set off for the fair. I don't know if it has an official name, everybody just says the feria in David, but it's much like a state fair in the U.S. There are rides and exhibits and enough tents selling food and drink that placed end to end they'd reach form here to there and that's a long way. We walked and gawked and the ladies marveled at the plant exhibits and art work while I counted the baseball caps for sale at every other booth. There were twenty nine thousand twelve and twenty eight thousand of them bore the New York Yankees logo. This is further proof that under the surface of this beautiful and serene country there lies a sick and twisted society. There were no Broncos, Nuggets or Rockies caps available anywhere. I did purchase a nice broad brimmed, pseudo fedora made of straw whose price I haggled all the way down to fourteen dollars from the fifteen being asked. Can I negotiate or what? Our neighbor Dalys had said the feria was expensive but apart form the hat and a small jade plant we didn't buy anything to take home. We did, however ooh and aah over a hand carved, Nicaraguan wooden bar that was going for a mere nine hundred bucks. RTGFKAR said I should buy it, but I told him I'd left my wallet in the car. After an hour or so of hoofing around, we stopped for a cold cerveza under a crowded tent near the amusement area. We could see a few rides from where we sat and most of them were the traditional shake, rattle and rollers that have been around forever. There was one, though, called a Crazy House I'd never seen before. It was a bright yellow, old school house sized abode that sat on the ground waiting for unwary children to enter. Once the kids were all in and seated, the house lifted off the ground, spun around, dipped and dived and generally behaved in an unstable manner before settling back down to earth. It looked like a gas to me, but since no one over the age of twelve was getting in or out I passed up giving it a go. Right next to where we sat sipping were the bumper cars which I wanted RTGFKAR to include as part of our house construction budget. He opted for guest rooms and banyos instead. Because of the nearness of the rides we had to shout to be heard above the din. It was clouding up outside and one of our group said we were going to get a shower. I said, "great that will free up my Saturday" but nobody heard or if they did they were trying not to show it so as not to encourage me; a thing they often do. Our tab for the three brews and one soda was $2.50. I figured fifty cents a beer and a buck for the Pepsi. This, I'm sure, is to discourage people from drinking sodas which are bad for you. After we'd taken in the bulls, the horses, the furniture, the plants, the knickknacks, the Yankee caps, tractors and the "Hamburger and Soda $1" stands (we didn't get a hamburger we were robbed!)and I bemoaned the lack of side shows, freak shows and gaming booths, especially the free-throw basketball toss where I excel, we motored back to Boquete and unloaded our lifetime supplies. How long should a thousand napkins last anyway?

Good Lines and a Small Whine

A fellow Panama blogger, Don Ray, starts his blog, "Chiriqui Chatter" with a quote. Today's was, "Incontinence Hotline. Can you hold please?" Cracked me up. And Deepak Chopra got the jump on the whole Spitzer affair in his book, "The Third Jesus" when he wrote, "People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw scripture." Good Stuff.

I've got a birthday coming up and I'm kinda (it is so a word) wondering how to celebrate it. Life in retirement pretty much allows you to do whatever you want on a daily basis so finding something to do for a special occasion gets problematical. (That's a word too. Isn't it?) My drinking is down to a boring "moderate level" and I'm not going to change that even though my B-day is St. Patrick's Day, I'm half Irish and previous years required a dual celebration. The hangovers are just no longer bearable. There will probably be food, dinner or lunch out, but even though I like to eat, I'm not really a food guy and I just don't consider dining out a special thing to do. The company will be good for sure. I've got Woowoo Charly, RTGFKAR and teriffic pals to share the day with, but we often get together, so that won't really be a unique birthday experience. And of course, there will be golf. The thing with that is, we've been playing regularly for a while now and I want that to continue as a routine part of my week and not be a special occasion treat. This, though, is dependent on our continuing to get a decent rate from the pro shop. There are no sporting events to attend and I get plenty of movies from Direct TV so, really, what to do, what to do?

Hahahahahahaha! I'm kidding, I'm kidding. My whole life is one big celebration! I don't need to change a thing. Just give me a regular old day and wake me up to have it, I'll be good to go. Nothing special is required because it's all special to begin with. I don't need anything more.

Hmmmm. On the other hand...a hole-in-one would be nice.

Land Snakes Alive !

A Coral Snake came to help RTGFKAR with the gardening yesterday. It was a little guy, no more than 13 or 14 inches in length and about as big around as a pencil. We watched it pass through the side yard and slither up the hill and gone. We locked Gus in the house while the snake was in the neighborhood because he'd have to poke it with his nose or paw at it; two not very good ideas. RTGFKAR got a couple of photos of the striped reptile, but I haven't been able to figure out how to attach them to the blog from my mailbox.

One summer when I was a young teen, I began a snake collection in an old chicken coop behind our house. I rigged a number of cages in there and set about finding "The Snakes of New Jersey." I caught so many garter and common water snakes that I let most of them go, keeping only the largest ones. My prize was a three foot Pine Snake that I'll tell you about a bit later and I had a few other snakes I just couldn't identify as our town library didn't have many books with snake pictures. I'm guessing now that they were probably varieties of Rat Snakes. I once spent a week trying to catch a Scarlet King Snake, which is a Coral Snake look-a-like. I knew where it hung out and I spotted it everyday, but I could never get close enough to pin it. Snakes can disappear faster than Houdini.

One of the crueler things I'd do - teenage boys are not the most sensitive of creatures - would be to take a water snake and drop it in front of one of our neighbor's barn cats. Water Snakes are bad tempered and will strike and bite at anything that messes with them. Barn cats, on the other hand, are just plain bad-assed. The snakes were never a match. What amazed me most was watching the cat go right up to the coiled snake's nose, provoking it, and then backing up faster than the snake could strike. The cats would usually play with the snakes awhile, sometimes killing them and sometimes just getting bored and wandering off. I thought it was a great show while it lasted.

My collection came to an abrupt end one early summer evening when one of my older sister's boyfriends, who had come to pick her up for a date, said "sure I'd like to see your snakes." Dumb cluck had to show me how brave he was by sticking his hand in a water snake's cage. He wasn't nearly as fast as a cat. His hand came out with the snake neatly attached, and then, to make matters worse, he tried to rip it off him with his other hand which made the bite go from puncture to real nasty. My father made me get rid of the snakes after that. He was afraid we would get sued. The guy never came back though, ever. A thing that didn't help much with relations between me and my sister. Apparently she liked the guy a lot. Go figure, I thought then. Who could like a guy who was that dumb.

I let all the snakes go except the Pine Snake. Our back yard terraced down to small creek and then rose into deep woods on the other side of the water. The land there was owned by the city and kept as a game preserve and water reserve. There were several small lakes back in there and it was in that "private property" that I spent most of my summer days when I wasn't practising my jump shot. I dumped all the cages down by the stream saving only the Pine Snake. Inspired by one of my many man-in-the wilderness books and magazines, I had decided that its black and white skin would make a nifty belt. Following the instructions in one of the books, I cut off the snake's head, slit it down the length of its belly and peeled its skin off. I nailed it to a board, salted it and leaned it against the garage wall to "cure". I then threw its remains into the brook where I watched in complete creeped out horror as the headless, skinless corpse swam away. I've been kinder to snakes ever since.

NewPost

I have to click on a tab that says "new post" to start this thing. When the screen appears, it's blank. What's the deal with that? Shouldn't a new post say something? Why is it always left up to me to fill in the blank? Really, if the tab said "create a new post" I wouldn't be so disappointed when the screen turned up empty. I'd know what I was getting into. But nooooooo, as John Belushi used to say before he joined the cast of Saturday Night Dead, I have to click my mouse (and here I have opened myself up to Sons#1and#2 commenting if you click your mouse too often you will go blind)each time and confront the no post there phenomena. Ah well, such is the life of we who blog.

I don't know what it is where you are, but here it's the month of March which means the wind is blowing. It's probably June in your neighborhood, quiet and still. I wouldn't swap though. I've been to your hood and it's got mean streets and a thousand stories in a naked jungle. Or a thousand naked people in a storied jungle. Something like that. Besides, wind is good. I'm told it blows pollution to somewhere else. Your neighborhood most likely. I don't like it though. As I've said before, it disturbs my wah. (If you disturb your wah too often you will go blind)(Just keeping ahead of the boys.)So here I sit, my wah completely out of sync, trying to "new post" and it's not going as planned.

Ah well again. Maybe tomorrow when I click my mouse the "new post" will be there. One can always hope. If not, I'll blame the wind, the rain or something like that but in my heart I"ll know the truth.

It's all Bush's fault.

Three Hundred and Counting

Trumpets blare and the band strikes up "Hail to the Chump." This then is the long awaited 300th blog which qualifies me as Greatest Blogger Of All Time At The Woowoogolf Site and enshrinement in the Hall of Who Cares is sure to follow. A great day indeed, and here comes a truck up our drive delivering either my trophy or 200 four inch concrete blocks that RTGFKAR ordered.

All in all a fine close to a good week that included golf, a new lawn, an installed closet, several excellent repasts, the Nuggets knocking off Phoenix and San Antonio and now, darn, a load of bloqueas concreto. Oh, and also, my car battery didn't die.

It was raining and misty when I Jack-in-the-boxed out of bed this morning. An idea lingered from a late dream and I wanted to get right to it. Sometime during my ritual of preparing coffee, putting away the night-before's dishes, unlocking the doors to let the dog out and three point four other tasks I've forgotten, the idea slipped away. I plopped down on a patio chair to smell the rain, the mist and our new lawn while I tried to recapture it. No luck. I think it may have been simply, "get out of bed" which is an idea I have most mornings as a deterrent to the biblical concept of thy bladder runneth over. I took in the great outdoors through all my senses until the sound of coffee finishing its slow drip into the pot - a sound like muffled horse hooves fidgeting in a stable - spurred me to action anew. (I was going to say once again, but anew needs to be used more often.)I grabbed a cup of the steamy stuff and took it to the office where I plopped down and waited for the computer to come to life. While I waited, I perused a crossword puzzle that is there specifically to fill those moments in which the computer yawns and stretches and groans into wakefulness. Can anyone give me a six letter word that means "gossip down South" that possibly ends in the letters r-e-s? After that, I wrote my blog and then motored downtown where I was presented the keys to the city by the mayor in recognition of my 300 contributions to Boquete's blog world.

Kudos, I said to myself, kudos. (I don't know the exact English translation for the Spanish word kudo, but it's most often used in the phrase, "careful, don't step in the kudo.")

Not Feeling It

I don't feel like writing this morning. Truth is I never really feel like writing. Not like I feel like playing golf or feel like watching a good movie, anyway. Writing is hard. I have to engage some part of me that is part intellectual and part mystery. Whatever it is - we'll go with muse for now - it always seems reluctant to get in gear. Even as I approach my 300th blog the process gets no easier. You would think that by now this would be as facile and routine as slipping on my sweats first thing in the A.M.; something done offhand, with ease and only partial awareness. But nooooo, I've got to read and answer mail, check out Yahoo news, follow my sports teams and anything else I can think of to avoid getting to the writing. I am told by other writers that this is not uncommon. My question is, why? Do painters dodge painting? Sculpters take up magazines before their chisels? Why do we, the wordsmiths, go to our task so reluctantly? The answer, for me anyway, comes from an anonymous quote I read years ago that paraphrased says, writers don't like to write they just like to have written. I find that verdad, the truth...in part. Ending is far more satisfying than starting, but there is also a subtle joy I experience along the way, even when I'm struggling to dig out the next word. Creativity, I surmise, even on this small scale, is as necessary for me as sunshine and water are to our new lawn. And, as I don't know how to do anything else, I'll just have to keep wading through the miasma of fear and doubt and get to the task.

And there it is, done for another day.

Grass and Closets and Stuff

I was reminded of Greta Garbo"s "I vant to be a lawn" when the turf guys showed up at some gawd-awful hour yesterday morning. I tore myself free of the entwining sheets and blankets which I could hear - yes I could - softly begging me not to go. I promised to return ASAP. I then staggered over to RTGFKAR's side of the house and alerted him to the situation. He was the guy, after all, who had ordered the sod. I didn't wait to see if he got up, I just started timing the droop of my eyelids to be fully shut when I flopped down into my own bed. Welcome back it said and then I was gone for another couple of hours.

When I awoke for the second time there was a nice green, St.Augustine grass lawn looking laurel and hardy or is that hale and hearty, just off the patio. I was hoping for blue to match our house trim as there is no shortage of the color green around here, but apparently green is still the hot "in" shade when it comes to grass.
I have to say that it looks good as an outside decoration, but it is pretty deep and I wouldn't want to hit anything lower than a wedge or nine iron out of it unless I had a fluffy lie.

The second of the day's surprises came about a half hour after the turf guys departed. Our ibanista - I don't know if that is the correct spelling or even the correct word, but that's what we've been calling our cabinet maker - showed up in a taxi truck with two helpers and all the unassembled parts of RTGFKAR'S closet. He was a week late off his last prediction of dos semanas, two weeks, which really wouldn't be too bad if that hadn't been the third time he had told us dos semanas. A few hours later RTGFKAR was closeted which is a good thing because a man needs a place to hang his hat and, if your are, you know, that other kind of guy, a closet to come out of.

I spent most of the morning and early afternoon burning coffee blankety-blank bushes but crashed back down into my bed about three for a nap. There was another Denver Nugget game coming on the tube at nine that night and I wanted to be able to hang in there for it; a thing I was able to do for the entire first half before responding to the calls from the bed once again. Damn thing's getting to be a regular chatterbox.

Somewhere in the first paragraph I was going to write "sodding the lawn," but was stopped by the realization that all but one of the books I have read this year have been by British authors. Relevance you say, relevance? Well, to a Brit, sodding has a different connotation. Doing it to a lawn is either perverse or impossible.

Describe in 1000 Words or Less

I've been diddly-doing around all morning, reading this, writing that, avoiding the other.

Our latest writer's group assignment is to put down a detailed description of something, anything, as long as it's not an event. The piece is not to exceed a thousand words. That's a yuk yuk for me. Here's my entry: The book was bound in blue.
That's less than a thousand, right? Really, description is not my strong suit. My strong suit is a dark gray, pin striped, three button in a size 40 regular. I'm tempted to write,...the book, when opened, contained words in small, black print that say, "Call me Ishmael" and whatever follows that for the first thousand words. Either that or, it was an itsy bitsy, teeny weenie, little bitty, tiny, very, very, very, very, very, very, (950 verys later) small bikini. That should do it.

Odd, though, that this assignment should come up right now. I have just finished "From Where You Dream" and there is an exercise that Robert Olen Butler gives his students where they have to orally describe something in the smallest detail that I thought was far too difficult for me. Lo and behold for a thousand words, here it is anyway. One of the book's chapter starting quotes is Picasso's "If only we could pull out our brains and use only our eyes." Of course those two onlys in the same sentence show why Picasso painted instead of wrote. Ah well, I'll give it a go at some point and bore you with the result.

In the meantime I sent the group a slightly revised version of the nightmare I recounted several blogs ago. It doesn't quite fit the criteria, but our group leader suggested reading Dean Koontz or Stephen King for description examples and I thought my nightmare scenario slipped neatly into that category.

I have to go now. My mind is very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, empty. (What am I fretting about? Description is a piece of cake.)

Fucryinoutloud

On the side of a Hilary grows in Brooklyn. (I make no apologies.)

Enneagram 5's like high energy people so it's not surprising that Woowoo Charly and Bonnie the Bookworm like Papa Ricco. He's a loud monologist who has opened an Italian restaurant in downtown Boquete named after himself. We had dinner there anoche and the fare was excellent as Papa is a good chef and at six bucks an entree you can't beat the price. Papa came out of the kitchen to regale us with his now- getting-repetitious tales of tossing people out and I wonder how many times his neighbors have heard these same stories as Papa is, as I've noted, very loud. He's also profane, although his swear word vocabulary seems to be limited to the word fuck. The ladies in our group, Woowoo, Bon and Cheryl were seated together at one end of the table and all seemed entertained by Papa Ricco's colorfully told tales. The guys, RTGFKAR, Paul, The Old Redneck, and Yers Truly, had opinions ranging from mildly amused Paul, to tolerated by Ramon and Yers, and then down the road to the instant dislike of Larry the O.R. who pronounced Papa "full-of-shit." He is that, of course, full of it, but it's his "schtick" and he throws it out there take it or leave it. I'm sure we will be going back on future occasions as Papa does serve up the best Italian food we've had in Panama. Personally though, I'm hoping he stays in the kitchen.

Today is Sunday and there are political pundits - a person who has or professes to have great learning; actual or self professed authority - (I'm thinking in this case, mostly self professed) chattering away in the background. This means that Woowoo Charly is getting her weekly fix of Democrats versus the blankety blank Republicans (that's her way of swearing although she can get more graphic if a Bush is involved)and it's time for me to get busy with breakfast. I'm thinking French Toast although Botswanian toast is also an option. Anybody got the recipe? Afterwards there should be some NBA or golf on the tube so I can appease my jones as well.

I heard this next on a bad movie last night: If you catch yourself saying the word fuck at an inappropriate moment (and most of them are) follow it immediately with "crying-out-loud."

Roundball and TV

He's all Barack and no bite.

The Nuggets were on last night. Apart from highlights on Sportscenter I had not seen them play this year and it seemed unlikely that I'd catch them in action last night in that game time was at 10:30. That's P.M. as in Pastmy Bedtime. I was hoisting up jumpers, slam dunking and dishing to the open man myself at 10:40 when the phone began ringing insistently from the bedside table. Our phone never rings after 9, so I knew it was either something urgent or a wrong number. Yo creo tiene el numero equivocado senor was my reply to the guy on the other end when my head cleared enough to realize which of the two possiblities it was. Wrong number. Sheesh. Now what? I'm wide awake and...wait a minute, there's a game on. Alrighty then. I stumbled to the couch, clicked the remote a few times to get past the food channels and settled in to watch my team humble the lowly L.A. Clippers. I made it through three quarters before my droopy eyelids and the realization that it was twenty minutes beyond midnight drove me back to bed. The Nuggets did prevail, I learned this morning, but my perception of the game was that I could be a star in the NBA if I got to play against the Nugget's defense every night. Of course, going back to my pregame dreams, I don't play much D either.

We have two TV's here at Casa As-yet-unnamed which makes for a harmonious household. RTGFKAR, Woowoo Charly and I vary widely in our viewing habits. When not watching entertainment televsion shows, I prefer sports, movies, history, biography, or any show about nature. I could care less about mankind's inventions, creations, scientific achievments, technology and food peparation, all of which are RTGFKAR's staples. Woowoo Charly will watch a bit of anything, but we guys leave the room when E-TV or American Idol comes on. (I'll come back when Idol gets down to twelve people.)Also working on the side of tranquility is that we are all three readers. This contributes to our televisions being on far less than the hours and hours statistics show average Joes viewing. I'm thinking that's a good thing.

If, however, the networks want to get my viewing hours up to par, they'll have to air Nugget games earlier or convince me to follow an east coast team, because, damn, 10:30, that's late. Isn't it?

Today's Forecast

...'cause Baracking up is hard to do.

That's it. That's all I've got today.

Okay, there must be something else. Let's see, I'm an old guy; I should by all rights be able to talk about the weather.

The wind has picked up in the last couple of days. Picked up everything not tied or rooted down, that is. It's howls from last night have subsided into morning moans but you couldn't tell that from the wind chime outside my office window. It's playing a tuneless tune at a tempoless tempo.

Wind affects me phychologically. (Psycho logic means crazy logic and that's the kind I'm talking about.) I hear its sounds and see it bending the trees outside and it makes me scrunch up my shoulders and put the hood up on my hoodie. I associate wind noises with being cold and you know how I feel about that. In case you don't I'll tell you. Being cold and experiencing mysterious chest pains are tied for second behind kicked-in-the-balls agony on my list of least favorite things. Others on the list are barfing, scatological humor, Dubya (there might be some connection between those three)putts missed inside of six feet and...now I'm off the subject. Wind we're taking about, wind. I know, of course, that it does have its uses. Energy and blowing boats about come to mind. People are always talking about using wind power to generate electricity and I say, come on, how hard is that. Run my TV with still air and you'll get my kudos. Well, at least the ones I keep in a jar under the bathroom sink. Don't worry, there are holes in the lid so they can breathe. Think outside the box, I tell ya, people. You don't want to be dependent upon something that comes and goes as unreliably as wind or your mate's attention when the game is on. Still air is the answer. Wind is just a passing fancy. It's on its way to somewhere else.

And now, it appears, the wind is bringing rain with it. These are a couple of guys who should not be allowed to hang out together. They are a bad influence on each other and in tandem are up to no good. Rain coming straight down is a useful and pleasant weather phenomena when it does so in moderation. Rain riding on the wind and slapping sideways onto building walls suggests more of that psycho logic thing I've been talking about. It sounds cold. Have I told you how I feel about cold?

Yeah, I guess I have.

Burning and Books

Barack Back Mountain

Groggy. That's a fun word to say, groggy. It's funny to look at too, groggy. I slept so well last night I still feel groggy this morning. Groggy in the morning, groggy in the evening, groggy at suppertime. La la la la lala, I'm groggy all the time. Okay, that's enough of that.

The last couple of days while RTGFKAR was building his stairway to somewhere I've been burning coffee goddamn bushes and stumps. It's windy here in Palo Alto (Tall Stick) so the fire has to be watched and tended. While I do that, watch and tend, I also read a book. I've been alternating between R.O. Butler's tome on writing from your unconscious and a slow moving thriller by P.D. James entitled, Innocent Blood. Yesterday, I learned from Butler how to write a novel from short sensory perceptions obtained by sitting in front of a writing pad or computer for weeks without actually writing a sentence. You just jot down the sensory perceptions that arise. Later, you put them all on 3 by 5 cards and arrange them in some order that seems to make sense, though not too much sense because you don't want to bring your intellectual self into the process. Yikes was the first perception that came to me when I gave the thing a go. Yikes, because that's really hard and yikes that fire needs another stump. Of course I don't really see myself as a novel writer, most especially of the "literary" variety Butler is talking about, but also of course, I will someday give it a try if only to prove I'm right. I'm learning a lot from Butler that is applicable to what I do though, and I'm anxious to learn more. My question is, where was he when I first considered putting pen to paper? (Probably still unborn.) P.D. James is a writer of mysteries that unfold at a leisurely pace. Her characters are fully developed and seem so believable that at book's end the reader seems unsure he was reading something completely imaginary and not culled from reality. P.D., I think, straddles the line between literary fiction and genre fiction quite well. Tough to just put her in the "mystery" category.

Well it's tooooo windy to burn today, so I think I'll just go finish one of those books or both. Then I'll sit and access my dreamspace for awhile before starting the novel in which I will reveal all the secrets of the universe. I'm thinking it will be a tell all book because I'm privy to all the universe's dirty little secrets. For instance, did you know that the universe once had a sexual thing with... nah, I'm gonna save it for the book.

Distractions

Now we know why George H. Bush hated Barackaly.

I could just sit here and zone out on the view to my left which takes me past the nearby banana tree that competes for sunshine with an entwined coffee bush and then down to the metal roofed concrete square that houses a seldom seen Indio family and then rises dramatically in shades of green to terracotta roofed structures across the valley that seem dwarfed by first the distance from me and secondly by the mountain that rises behind them, but I'm distracted from doing so by the fly that keeps buzzing by my head and, oh yeah, the blinking cursor eighteen inches from my nose. (Hmmm. Blinking cursor. That sounds like I'm cursing the cursor while trying not to be crude.) I'm distracted by distractions.

Momentito, I'm going for the swatter.

Now, if I can just get him to land...I never miss.

Through the window to my right there's an equally compelling sunlit vista in front of which is a tall thin woman wearing a white tee, blue jeans and lavender Crocs. She's got a hose in her hand and appears to be watering the driveway. Oh, wait, that's Woowoo Charly. Probably just bad aim.

Arrogant little bugger. I set the swatter on the desk while I typed and he landed on it. He's going down, I tell ya, he's going down.

I think it's the fly season, moscas as they are called here, because, suddenly, we have them. The thing with swatting flies, I've noticed, is that you have to clean up their dead bodies right away. If you don't, other flies come to feed on them. Disgusting little shits if you ask me, even though I know they have their place in nature. Thing is, my house is not that place.

I've got the computer set so that if I look straight up over it, what I see is just wall. Sure, there is beauty to be had using my, as Bob Cousy used to say, pahwiffial vision, but I'm doing my best to avoid distractions like beauty and, ah, flies. I'm here to write this thing on a regular basis and distractions are my enemy.

That does it! He's buzzing me again and he's called in reserves. The war is definitely on!

Sometimes, I'm sorry to say, the enemy wins. Hasta manana...if I'm not distracted.

Awards and Other Stuff

And the winner of this year's best song is: Barack of Ages.

I would like to thank the Academy and all the little people who made this possible. Come on little people, stand up and take a bow. Whoops, sorry, you're already standing.

I didn't get to see the Awards. They came on in the middle of the night(9PM)and I'd hit the rack an hour earlier to read my book. Not the whole book, just some of it. I turned off my reading lamp and opened the bedroom door at nine so I could listen to the festivities and thus program my dreams along movie lines. I don't remember either, the dreams or the show. Does Bob Hope still host the Oscars? "But seriously folks." I'm just kidding. I know he hasn't done that for two or three years now.

All of the above was written yesterday. My musings were interrupted to go off in search of Dim Sum which is both a Chinese breakfast and a description of my bank balance. We found the former across the street from the movie theatre attached to the Grand National Hotel in David. RTGFKAR, who had not had the Dim Sum experience heretofore was not impressed. I like the taste of most of the offerings, especially when dipped in a hot and spicy sauce, but I wonder about the ingredients that are hidden inside all the servings wrapped in noodles and pastry shells. What are they really, and why are there so many posters in the neighborhood of lost cats and dogs? Woowoo Charly, of course, would eat there everyday. If the food is exotic she's the first in line. This may in part account for her weighing less than air. As far as my bank balance goes - which isn't far - little damage was done. The tab for the three of us was ten bucks.

After breakfast it was on to the Post Office to retrieve books K sent us. The package of same was addressed to Doc or Charly Walton. I had to sign half a dozen forms as Doc Charly Walton before they would release the books. I then had to open the package as the aduana (customs agent) stood back. Books can be incendiary I've been told, but I've never actually seen one burst into flames. Contents were then examined for I'm not really sure what and I was free to go.

On the way out of lovely and talented downtown David we perused the sidewalk stores for artificial Crocs which are a kind of shoe currently popular here among the gringos and were recently voted the ugliest footwear ever to grace the human foot. I had to have a pair. Woowoo Charly said they would make great replacement slippers for me and be much quieter than the pair I've been schlepping around in. We spotted some in a sidewalk bin, so we parked the car and hiked to it. Four or five stores later we found a pair that were large enough. $2.99 + tax. $3.15 total. Alrighty then, I'm croc-ed. As an aside to all of you who have heard the rumor that men who have large feet also have large eeah-danga-schwazoolahs, let me note that I bought a size 44.

It's Gonna Be Good

Barack a bye baby on the tree top.

The coffee fields burst into bloom last night and the bushes look as if they've been sprinkled with powdered sugar. Neat. Panama's ceiling today is a crisp, baby blue and there are stark white clouds ambling across it. If it weren't for that troubling gray stuff sneaking in from the north, I'd say it was going to be a good day. I'll say it anyway, it's going to be a good day.

I get to put books away este dia and that's a - I want to say good but I've already used the word twice so Im going with "fun" - thing. I've been looking forward to doing so since the day we moved in. With RTGFKAR's help I built book shelves last week, then I stained them and finally, yesterday, I brushed on the verathane or shellac or whatever you call that clear shiny stuff that leaves a nice smooth surface. The shelves are dry and ready now and the books are crying out "get me off the floor." Alrighty then, right after breakfast.

I've also got a CD of a book a friend of ours has written called "Nature Spirit Manifestations" that I want to get under way. I think I can read it off my computer. I suspect the book is going to be "deep" as the author, Stephan Cameron, has been on a lifelong spiritual quest. I'll no doubt be absorbing the book's messages in small doses.

Then, of course, what with this being Sunday, the day that God, The Universe and Nature designed specifically for sports viewing, there will be basketball, maybe soccer and for sure Tiger Woods in a 36 hole duel with Stewart Cink.

Yeah, It's going to be a good day. I better get the pancakes started.

Dreamland

The troops were housed in the Baracks.

A large pig-faced dog tried to come up the stairs and get at Gus' dog bowl, but I kicked it back down. It was much too big for Gus to tackle, so I handled it myself. Unfortunately, my kick woke Woowoo Charly, Gus and me in dramatic fashion as it was accompanied by my shouting get out of here or something like that. Back to back nights of kicking episodes, weird. If I'm supposed to be writing from whence my dreams are born, maybe I should try horror.

The night was still and quiet as death apart from the breathing. There was mine, shallow and rapid as a frightened bird that I tried to choke down so as to better hear the other. It was the other that didn't belong. It came from across the room where the dark was deepest and had an audible rasp like a suppressed growl. It was pacing, moving from side to side. I could hear nails or claws scratching lightly on the floor as it made its tight turn, going back and forth, back and forth. All our windows are barred as is the custom here and the lone exit door was somewhere in the dark beyond the breathing. There would be no escape. I scrunched back onto the bed making myself small in a fetal position. The breathing was louder now, the pacing faster. I knew it would come for me soon. There was only one thing to do. I coiled and waited. If I was to die I would die fighting. When the pig-faced beast sprang from the dark with lips curled back to show hungry fangs dripping saliva, I did the only thing I could. I kicked out with all my strength, screaming as I did so.

"Doc! What the fuck? Wake up. Jesus Christ, what's wrong with you?"

Road Trip

There's a guy in Volcan who buys containers of stuff from the U.S. sight unseen at apparently bargain prices, because he then sells what he's purchased dirt cheap. Of course it's not always easy to move experimental products like calcium supplements in the form of fudge or thousands of cans of chile, but I guess there's profit in it because he's been doing it for a long time. Yesterday I picked up a couple of boxes of Tylenol PM for $2.50 each. On a pharmacy shelf they'd retail for ten bucks or more. Nice.

But it's not my job to chronicle the mundane doings of we ancient gringoes as we trek through life here on planet paradise even if you, the readers, might find that an informative, interesting, intelligent and other words starting with "in" thing to do. No, it is my job to access the deeper more meaningful truths hidden in my dreams and, also, what my dog has been doing lately. To that end I can tell you that last night in the coma we call sleep there was something about a lion and later, wolves.
I woke myself up kicking at the wolves. Fortunately, there was Tylenol PM on hand and I quickly returned to sleep. Wolfless sleep. As for my dog, he stayed home and pouted as we, Sam, Judy, Bonnie, RTGFKAR, Woowoo Charly and me, the designated driver, downed plate after plate of Thai food at a restaurant in Volcan owned and operated, by a guy named Paul from Hollywood, Calif whose arms were, ah, beneedled with colorful tattoos and who, after cooking for us and waiting on us, showed most of the group around his carnivorous plant garden. "I'm a big green monster from outer space and I'm bad." Sam and I waited afuera. Gus moved from the bed to the livingroom carpet and back a couple of times before finally turning in a full circle and plopping down by our glass doors to watch his pal, a nameless very old girl dog
who hangs around our house because I give her dog cookies from time to time, while we the gringos I'm not writing about, stopped in this place and the other place before ending up in a plant emporium that was closed. Along the way we had stopped at a store that sold cheese in the town of Bambito and drove right through the metropolis of Bugaba whose residents are called bugabenos. That's pronounced boo-gah-bane-yos. I like saying that, boogahbaneyos. We also motored through a pueblo called Concepcion which had lots of babies and two pizza joints. I don't know if there's a connection. Gus was sleeping as we did this. He was next to awake from his own dreamland where something to do with chasing was going on when we pulled up the drive. He was thrilled to see us if a bit cross about our being gone so long. A juicy bone later though and all was forgiven.

So there you have it, dreams and dogs. Much more fun than writing about people.

Sensual Writing

Barack Around The Clock.

My mentor says I have to write ever day. He says I shouldn't write from my head, I should write from my senses; I should write from the place that dreams come from. I don't actually know my mentor personally, I've just met him through his book, "From Where You Dream, The Process of Writing Fiction." His name is Robert Olen Butler and I doubt he'd take me on as a student if he knew that the first thing I noticed is that his initials spell rob and that if there is a mentor can there be a womentor? I'm not sure the Monkeymind can be disciplined, but I'll give it a try because I like writing fiction. Swell Veldt started with those two words and a story emerged. That's a big kick.

Meanwhile, straight from the mind of the monkey this:

We are off on our second road trip this week. Tuesday we drove to the beach, a place called Las Lajas where Ramon took the waters, Woowoo Charly read in the shade of a coconut palm, Gus made friends with the local dogs, and I contemplated the vastness of the Pacific while drinking Coronas because the whole scene felt like one of their commercials. Today we are off to the town of Volcan, which I think is named after a Saturday morning cartoon show featuring giant barbarians and small but heroic human children in search of lost civilizations with their dog Bob, but might also have something to do with the local volcano. We are in search of rare and exotic plants to put around our rare and exotic home and also the fiendishly hidden baby back rib place for which there is no map. Friends Sam and Judy will be acting as guides as they have actually been there on a previous trek and returned safely despite the giant barbarian threat and pal Bonnie will be along to advise on the plant thing.

And now the words that arise completely from my senses. I'm a little chilly. That coffee's good though. Think I'll get another cup.

Fighting Words

Barack N'Roll!

Woowoo Charly and I had a big fight Monday. Here's how it went.

Me: Did not. She: Did to.

After that we agreed to disagree and went back to whatever it was we were doing before the brouhaha.

Okay, it was not exactly Ali/Frazier but for us it constituted war. I'll bet my blood pressure rose an entire degree and I could tell that Charly was prepared to go all the way to "oh yeah" or even another "did to." We are just not contentious types. At least, not anymore. Besides, it's hard to get riled over much when you're laid back, watching the sunset over Volcan Baru, there's a good dog lying at your feet, a cool drink's in your hand and you're making plans for a day at the beach or an outing at the golf course or just doing more of the same. Why the other day I was even able to say Bush twice without swearing or having the hair on the back of my neck stand up and prickle.

It's very fashionable of late to say of another that he or she is "competitive." It's an apellation meant as a compliment and I agree it is, if you are talking about sports or games. For day to day life though, give me cooperation every time. In life there is always someone richer, better looking, more successful, in fact, more or better in any way you care to measure. In other words, if you see life as a competition...you lose. It's best, I think, to live life, to enjoy life, to savor life than to play it as a me against you kind of thing.

Yeah, yeah,I know, I'm preaching, teaching and reaching for philosophy that exceeds my grasp. I should leave that for the world's thinkers and get back to making funny, my bag, such as it is. Either that or pick a fight with my wife.

"Hey Charly, your mother wears combat boots!"

Notes and Not Much Else

The difference between the Devil and the Republican Party (and the Libertarians if I understand them correctly) is that the Devil doesn't claim that his policy of greed and self interest helps others.

I left the following note to myself a couple of night's ago:

"Okay, so here's the deal. I'm the third person narrator. I'm suppossed to know everything."

The note, written late at night was intended to spark some line of thought in the morning. So far the only thought inspired is, huh? This sort of thing happens on a regular basis, night time epiphanies fading to black by day. If I force wakefulness on my drowsy self and then write a more detailed note, I have difficulty getting to sleep. Sleep, as I've noted before, is to old folks what food or sex is to the young; a strong motivational force. Gotta have it. "Ah well, I tell myself, because I'm a what is, is, kind of a guy, it probably wasn't that good of an idea anyway.

I don't really have a political party although I seem to side with the liberals, be they Democrats, Greenies, Socialists or even Communists in the sense that Jesus was a Communist and not the totalitarian versions that exist on the planet for the moment. I sense that there are larger things happening than politics address and it is these things, call them cosmic or spiritual or merely unexplained science that most attract my interest. I'm drawn to mysteries. Can there truly be a shift in worldwide consciousness? Are there other dimensions? Is time linear and could I take Barack Obama one on one in a game of twenty-one winner's out when I was his age? These are the important questions. The Party that can answer them is the Party I'll join.

Meanwhile, March Madness is coming up. I'll make a note of it.

Whiling Away

If I had any laurels I'd be resting all over them, but since I don't I'll have to carry on. (I wonder what my Panamanian friend Alberto, living in Canada, who reads my blog, thinks when he reads a sentence like the first one here. I mean, I'm often a tough read for English-as-a-first-language people. Ah well. Hey, how ya doing Alberto?)

The other day I did whatever it is I do in the mornings and then found myself cigar in hand and Panama cerveza at the ready listening to 95.7 on my FM dial. RTGFKAR was off doing something useful as he most often is and Woowoo Charly was either reading a book or searching the Internet for clues to the Mysteries of the Universe. Apart from Gus who was hanging about nearby doing and thinking inexplicable dog things, I was alone on the patio with the music and my thoughts. 95.7 plays Spanish ballads and love songs with few commercial interruptions throughout the day. At night it airs mind numbing Salsa and Rock with a repetitive beat that I suspect prepares listeners for the coming age when they'll all be drones with chips implanted under their skin and can be found jumping up and down in place to that very same beat while awaiting orders from their masters. You can see early evidence of this by looking at footage of our current "rock" concerts. But I digress and as I've mentioned before, you should never do that in public. So there I was in a sort of reverie, if that means a state of peaceful daydreaming and it does - I just looked it up - but I was not quite putting the music to its best use. In between my mind wandering off to explore the wonders of this and that I was trying to understand the Spanish lyrics dancing about my ears. This is a bit of an oddity when you consider that I rarely listen to the lyrics of English language songs, a thing that leaves me later singing my own words to popular melodies and listeners wondering where I had escaped from. Still, there I was trying and halfway succeeding in understanding what the tunes were all about. It wasn't until my third drink when I had switched to scotch that an actual awareness of the music caught my attention and I switched my focus from learning to listening. Who cares what the singers were saying. The overall effect of voice and instruments was a beautiful sound. Well, either that or the scotch was exceptionally good. Whichever, it was a nice afternoon and I highly reccomend 95.7. The Johnnie Walker is optional.

Return to the Quadrangle

With amulets, holy water, crucifixes, silver bullets and wooden stakes in our golf bags and priests, rabbis, shaman and the National Guard standing by, we, the fearsome foursome of LJ, RTGFKAR, Woowoo Charly and Yers Truly reentered the zone of lost egos and disappearing golf balls known as The Boquete Quadrangle located in Valle Escondido. We were determined to challenge anew the evil that stalked the course.

We started by splitting into two teams; Woowoo Chuck and I on one, RTGFKAR and LJ on the other. It was clear on the very first hole that something was different about this day when Woowoo and I birdied it and Team Two parred. Only one ball, mine, found the water. Though we changed teammates twice more during the seven hours we thrashed about the valley, little evidence of the demon's existence appeared and the film crews from CNN, ESPN and The Discovery Channel all departed and declared the whole thing a hoax. There was the mysterious loss of my Top Flite on number eight when a well struck three wood landed a foot or so from the green and we watched as the ball caromed high into the air and far into the jungle and there was also an odd force of gravity that sucked down every attempt of RTGFKAR's to clear the pond on number Nine. Each of us for certain had a shot or two go weirdly awry but these anomilies were chalked up to natural causes by the media. We who have played there often know better, but yesterday we lacked solid proof. The demon was clearly biding its time, waiting for another day. Once we realized this was the case, we took advantage, fired up our games and posted three good rounds of scores. There was nary a one over 40 on this Par 30 nine. There were three team efforts, in fact, of 33. I don't ever recall our doing better.

We're not fooled though. We know IT is still out there growing hungrier for having put off its appetite on this mid-week day. You won't find us in the clubhouse shelling out big bucks for new Titlesists or Top Flites or any ball that costs more than a half a buck apiece and we won't brag where the course can hear. Noooo, we are the wise and the wary. We know about the evil. We know that it hides and waits.

For one day though, one shiny warm Boquete day, we had bested the beast. Now with the knowledge that it is possible to play without pain, we're psyched to wrestle with the devil again. So take note Demon. We'll be back.