Zapadora

Okay, so yesterday's photo ended up where it was supposed to be. The result of hard work and insightful thought? Nah, blind luck. My favorite kind.

Today's photo, should it choose to appear, looks like a model of a house under construction. It's not. It's an actual house. The person in the foreground, however, is a model of RTGFKAR. We have stationed it there to keep the workers busy and also to keep crows off the property.

Yesterday, after touring the house site, we drove to Potrerillos, a neighboring wannabe town with pals L and B. There we found a warehouse in which we found, you guessed it, wares housed, under the business name of Zapadora. This, I thought,was a terrible thing to do to Dora and I wondered why they disliked her enough to suggest this to us. The wares there were furniture, lamps, doors, decorative bricabrac and, of course sundry because sundry is in great demand these days. Woowwoo Charly, RTGFKAR, and B wandered through the building oohing and ahing at this and that while L and Yers Truly feigned interest and wondered if we were missing any good sports on TV. In my own defense I would like to say that I'm sure everything there was very nice and possibly even buyable but how would I know for certain, I have no taste. Also, speaking for both L and I, we like sports. Another thing I learned was that all the items in Zapadora were from Egypt, India, some Middle Eastern countries and Mexico. Apparently the people there didn't want them.

On the way back we stopped at Art's Bambu where more furniture was on display. I actually liked some of the things there, but as I've noted, I have no taste so my opinion is uncalled for and should be left in the good hands of people who have pictures of stuff in glossy paged magazines. Either that or my wife, even though I find her opinion suspect since I've learned she thinks recliners are tacky.

Following that short stop - shortstop? okay,now we're talking - we drove home only to find there were no sports on the tube worth viewing unless you like mesomorphs throwing beer kegs and lifting cars. Ah well, maybe tomorrow...which is today.

I better go look.

Picture This

"A picture is worth a thousand words." Who said that? Bit of an exaggeration if you ask me. Forty or fifty words maybe, but a thousand? If you think a picture is that valuable ask a mute. See if he draws you a picture of his answer or just smacks you a good one upside the head.

The reason I bring this up is because I've added a picture to yesterday's blog. I wasn't trying to add a picture to yesterday's blog but there it is anyway. What I was trying to do was add a picture to this blog, but you know, gang agley strikes when you least expect it. Now I'm stuck with cranking out a thousand words. If the quote creator had said a reasonable "blah blah blah a hundred words", I'd be done by now. Oh well, might as well get to it.

One excellent afternoon this week was spent playing a game of Scrabble with RTGFKAR and Woowoo Charly while simultaneously watching the Red Sox and Rockies games. I won the Scrabble match with a clever usage of the word "spinets", the Sox got an almost no hitter from Curt Schilling and a 1 to 0 win over Oakland as the Rockies triumphed over Houston on a Tulowitzki walk off single in the bottom of the ninth. ("Bottom of the ninth" being a redundant phrase after saying "walk off", but a little redundancy is a good thing when you are in search of a thousand words.)

But enough about sports, let's talk politics. Who is Obama's team, why is he keeping it a secret, and can a true Liberal vote for Hilary knowing she's a Yankee fan? These are the questions that need to be answered so we can we go to the polls and cast an enlightened and educated vote. And while we are inquiring, wouldn't it be nice to know if soccer moms know anything about soccer and who are they aligned with politically, the polls fail us here, and what about deck shuffleboard moms and full contact karate moms. Don't they count? I remember when there used to be serious investigative reporting. Now it's all sound bites which leads me to ask the obvious, how, actually, does a sound bite?

I have an eyebrow hair growing near the right side of my right eye that must be close to two inches long. Is this normal? Should I cut it? Is there a category in Guiness for this? It's not really all that noticeable because it kind of curls up and is real light in color. I like to grab it though, and twirl it on my finger. I'm sure this is not normal, but I can't seem to stop doing it. Should I seek professional help or just ask a mute?

Alrighty then, there's an even thou. Tomorrow I'm going with the picture.

...maybe too quiet.

It is so quiet here this morning my thoughts seem loud. Hope they don't bother anyone. I can here the clock on the wall ticking off the seconds until the next hour and then the hour after that and so on for all eternity or until the battery dies, whichever comes first. You gotta watch out for a ticked off second, it might have a mean streak. (And now you know why I like to keep my thoughts quiet.)

I read a long interview this morning with Christopher Hitchens the author of "God Is Not Great" and wondered why it took a whole book to make his point which is, essentially, God is not...period. He could have just noted that if there was a God would we have AIDS, George W and the Yankees? I mean, c'mon Chris, cut to the chase.
Actually, I found the interview quite interesting and will surely one day read the book. The inherant trouble with a book like this though, much like a books on politics, is that no one reads them but the people who already agree with the author's position. A thing, in this case, which I do. (Religion bad, Reason good.) Few, if any, minds get changed by the publication. Ah well, I suppose if you feel strongly enough, you have to try to move the mountains.

When I feel strongly, I pump irony.

And, on a related topic, we played golf yesterday at the, ha ha, country club where we now have to pay a couple of extra bucks for a kid called a bandelero to run up to the ha ha, green and put a big stick in the hole to serve as a flag. If you are wondering how this is related, I should point out that we do this religiously. If, however, there had been a God present yesterday, I'm sure I would have been hell bound because my game was an abomination. (Now there's a word that some Republican pundit will surely turn into "Obamaination." Remember, you heard it here first.)

That's all I have for today because in trying to quiet my thoughts I've chased them away completely. And now there's that damn clock ticking again.

Monday A Fun Day

I feel an attack of serious writing coming on and that worries me. In order to write seriously one has to know serious things and truthfully I can't think of a one. Wait, I take that back. Humor is a serious thing. I take humor seriously. What, after all, has seen us through dire times more often than a good laugh. Well sure Johnny Walker comes to mind, but I'm talking besides that. And you don't even have to laugh aloud to get the full benefits of a humorous moment. As long as you are chuckling inside when G.W. Bush says anything at all, your day will have been better spent.

Yesterday was a funny day. It was a "Monday" which comes from the word "mundane" which I believe is the opposite of "greatdane" and the reason why people wishing a balance of the two are always insisting that we "have a nice dane." RTGFKAR and I ran errands about town while Woowwoo Charly read an entire publication about a Vanity Fair that should probably have been called Vanity Fare because vanity is expensive. One of our stops was at Global Bank which isn't really global, but the bank is expanding to a location across the street and although that isn't exactly like having a new branch in Hong Kong or Tokyo, they are moving up. Look out Wells Fargo. We were there to open a new account for RTGFKAR. In order to do this money is required, so RTGFKAR went over to the bank's ATM and took some out. He then gave the money back to the bank which, I suppose, puts it back in the ATM. It was then I realized what economists mean when they talk about money circulation. After that, or maybe before that, these busy days are so confusing, we went to Romero's Super Mercado to buy milk and wine, one of which is a renowned heath food so we got lots of it. After that we went home and played a game of Scrabble with Woowoo Charly who came up with lots of funny words like "unto" but ultimately lost to RTGFKAR because he takes Scrabble seriously. I know this because he doesn't read magazines and watch sports while he plays which, if you ask me, isn't fair. Later we watched the rain and drank a few glasses of health food.

All in all it was a pretty funny day.

You Are A Winner !

Congratulations you are the first reader of the 200th Monkeymind blog and winner of a brand new absolutely nothing! Which is a shame. Anyone who has read them all deserves something for their forbearance, tolerance , patience, and high pain threshold. Go ahead, give yourself a treat. Eat an ice cream cone or buy some snow tires. It's your choice and you have my blessing.

I've won a few things in my life. I've twice won turkeys. The first one was in a raffle and the second I won by bowling the highest score in a league during Thanksgiving week. I have won basketball tickets in a free throw shooting contest and a case of beer and a t-shirt in a closest to the pin hole in a golf tournament. I was also on a team that won a golf "Scramble" which is a type of tournament and we teammates each pocketed about fifty bucks for that achievement. The big luckies like cars and houses and Reader's Digest millions have thus far eluded me. Maybe next week.

I do believe in luck, joss, buena fortuna or whatever you choose to call unexpected happy happenings even if they are only the avoidance of downer deeds. Chance seems to play a part in our lives even if most of what occurs is a result of our own doings. The short list of my winnings noted in the previous paragraph shows all but one were actually earned awards. That one, though, the raffle turkey, was pure chance and maybe luck exists in roughly that ratio of earned to random good fortune. I also believe that some people are just, flat luckier than others. Multiple lottery winners come to mind and lone survivors of this disaster or that accident seem to bear me out on that point. Years ago I wrote a bit about a guy who had achieved everything in life, fame, wealth and happiness but as he walks up the aisle to accept his award as the Man of the Century he trips over a blind man's cane, tumbles into the orchestra pit and is impaled on a drumstick. The podium then topples onto him from the stage and the man ends his days in a rocker sucking his thumb and humming show tunes. I have no idea where that story is now, but it goes to show how lucky you are. If I could find it, you'd have to read it because I'd make it a blog.

And that, I suspect, would be pushing my luck.

Bugs Must Die

"Hit it right out of the air!" The big green fly with the Vincent Price head, I'm talking about. Damn thing's been bugging me, pun intended, for two days. It wouldn't land and give me a clean shot so I knew I'd have to get him in flight and I just did that. I'm not feeling an ounce of remorse either. Usually I say something like sorry old sock when I snuff out a bug, because I'm a big hearted "we are all one" kind of a Zenmeister dude, but not this time. This time I had the revenge factor working.

A short while after hosing down Nikita late Thursday afternoon, I shucked my wet blue jeans for a pair of dry old sweats. Unbeknownst to me these cotton comfys were temporary shelter for a bug of some sort. I'm guessing spider, but that's not beknownst to me either as it somehow made its escape without being detected. Before departing for, I'm guessing again, some other article of my clothing, said insecto took a nasty chunk from the back of my knee right atop one of the tendons that runs along back there. I did not sleep well Thursday night. There was a burning, itching it's got to be scratched sensation that conspired to keep me awake for much of my scheduled dream time that was to include slam dunks and a hole in one. Still, I got through Friday morning with nought but a sore leg and more of the annoyingly hard to ignore itching. It was late Friday afternoon when a pain moved up my thigh from the knee and a fever arrived. I mentioned this to Ramon and he told me he had watched a show about spiders on Animal Planet only the night before and, considering my symptoms, he gave me two hours. Luckily, England was playing a friendly with Brazil on the telly so I knew my last hours would be well spent. The two national teams tied and I survived all the way until the third inning of the Red Sox Yankee game before the fever and assorted other symptoms drove me from the couch to my bed where I thought to make progress in the book I was reading before my demise.

And that, of course, is when the fly made its first appearance. 'jever try to read with a fat noisy fly doing a passable impression of a Japanese Zero kamikazy-ing about your head? It requires more will than I had at the moment. Add in Gus snapping his jaws when the bug blew by and to my fevered brain I had already passed and was paying the price for all my sins. Okay, maybe just that one back in '67. I was finally forced to turn out the lights which calmed the fly and, blissfully, induced my own sleep. I awoke a few hours later in a puddle of persperation, fever gone. It was then I vowed revenge.

The fly is just the beginning, ha ha ha ha ha. Be warned you entomological pains in the asses, I am on the hunt. No more Mr. Nice guy, ha ha ha ha ha. I have my swatter, I have my Raid and I have thick soles. Bugs must die, ha ha ha ha! Bugs must die!

I may have a few lingering symptoms.

Golf and the Bench Press

There used to be a theatre on Colfax Avenue in Denver that featured XXX movies. I think it was called the Bluebird. It was worth a weekly drive-by as the movie titles on the marquis were usually parodies of actual first run features and thus good for a chuckle. I mention this because I was about to say something about pumping iron which is a euphemism for weight lifting and the title of a 1970 something documentary featuring Ahhhhnold and I am compelled to tell you that to this day I am unable to say the phrase pumping iron without thinking of "Pumping Irene", one of the Bluebird's better titles... and now you won't be able to either.

And I did pump some, uh, iron yesterday. Still sore from my two previous bouts with the inert objects lying about waiting to be lifted, I nevertheless engaged in what has to be objectively viewed by those not so inclined as a what the hell are you doing that for waste of time. I didn't really have a good answer for that until yesterday. Before engaging in the aforementioned less than mentally stimulating endeavor, I had accessed the deepest and most profound corners of my mind which just happen to be in Woowoo Charly's head and asked it to look up weight training for seniors on the Internet. There at number 10 on a list of ten, after the usual blah blah blah about good for the bones, cardiovascular stimulation, long life and improved chances of getting it on with Hale Berry was the answer I was looking for. To wit, weight lifting can improve your golf game.

Well alrighty then! This would have to be put to the test.

I got my man Marco on the phone and asked him if it was raining in Puerto Armuelles. He said something in Spanish that I took for a no, so Woowoo Chuck, RTGFKAR and I loaded up Nikita and set off to our as still unknown named Country Ha Ha Club.

We stopped first at Pricesmart to stock up on our diminished booze supply and when we loaded the box of vodka, scotch and wine into the car it occurred to me that if we had any kind of accident it was sure to be reported as "alcohol involved." We also got a giant box of those little cheesy fish shaped crackers whose name I can't recall but it might be Little Cheesy Fish Shaped Crackers. The last one in the store.

When we got to the CC it was, you might have guessed it, raining. Not much though and we hadn't driven all that way not to play golf. Of course, even if we had, all would not have been lost. We had, after all, scored those fish. We teed up in sprinkles at the first and by the third the rain had stopped. I've described the course in previous blogs and it was much the same apart from being greened up considerably. The horses were absent this time so the fairway grass was a bit higher than usual. That last a sentence to give new readers a sense of the course's splendor. Dark black lines had been added to outline the fairways - this side of the line was fairway, that side rough, a thing nice to know even if the grass was exactly the same height on either side - and we all got around, if not nicely, eventually. Yers Truly hit the ball particularly well for the most part and I can only attribute this to one thing and we all know what that is.

Pumping Irene!

Morning Coffee

RTGFKAR returns with this entry:


Coffee. You know, that brown ubiquitous liquid found all over America in cafes, restaurants, Starbucks and Peabodys everywhere. Probably not a home in a thousand doesn’t have a Mr Coffee or a Braun coffeemaker at the least, these days maybe more likely a cappuccino maker with steam doohickeys and milk scalders and cinnamon infusers galore.

Coffee here in Panama is everywhere. At least in the mountain region around Boquete. The most recent crop of Geisha coffee sold for $130 a pound at auction, other Panamanian coffee goes for a mere $7 a pound. Doc buys our Ruiz coffee at about half that, direct from the coffee plant. By which I mean the coffee processing place, not the actual plant. The actual plant is everywhere here. If there’s a piece of land bigger than six square inches, someone has planted coffee on it. And it doesn’t even have to be level! There is coffee growing on land nearly vertical. The pickers must start at the top and freefall through the plants, grasping at what they can as they fall by.

Our property has coffee galore. The half acre was 90% coffee. A few plaintains and bananas and the odd limon (lime) tree completed the inventory. The builder sliced a notch into the hillside to level a place for the house, leaving a plateau overlooking the remaining quarter acre of coffee.

Coffee plants are OK. They have pretty, glossy leaves and I hear they have fragrant, orangeish-smelling blossoms before the coffee bean berries come out. But our soon-to-be patio looks out over the lower half of the property, which is a sea of coffee trees. I would like a little variety. Especially after seeing several friends’ landscaping on similar pieces of land.

Garden design was in order. We were supplied with the land plot, which showed nicely drawn lines with neat numbers attached to them, but looking out over the jungle of coffee, they meant little. A bit of hands-on was called for.

So, last Sunday, being an off day for the house laborers and having the site all to myself, I procured the household machete and a sharpener and wandered off to the site. Now, in Denver or Brooklyn perhaps, walking along the street carrying a sixteen inch wickedly sharpened blade might draw more attention than the occasional “Hola” or “Bueno”, but not here in Boquete.

Reaching the property, I elected to start from the bottom up, clearing a way from the driveway to the plateau to get an idea of the lay of the land. I hadn’t taken machete 101, but how hard could it be?

If you remember the old Juan Valdez commercials, Juan walked his burro through neat rows of shoulder-high coffee plants, picking only the finest, ripest beans for the best Columbian blend. Juan was nowhere to be found. Nor were neat rows of shoulder-high bushes. These plants had been planted years ago and the thick, rich volcanic soil had been very very good to them. Many towered over my head and joined together into bowers of impenetrable greenery.

Now, in a battle of machete vs. coffee plant the machete is hands down the favorite. Singing steel, flashing blade in the morning sun, a storm of flying slivers of leaf and limb of rubiaceae arabica everywhere. Within minutes I was lost. Sure I was only fifty feet away from the road and probably less to the plateau, but the clever coffee had cunningly closed in behind me and cut me off.

I didn’t know if I was on my land or the neighboring Indian’s or our landlord’s acres, destroying his $7 a pound crop with every swing. I stopped and let the flying flora settle around me and became aware of another factor that I might have taken into account had I thought about it. Friction. The machete fits nicely into one’s hand and each satisfying “Thwack!” clears a limb or two away, but the wooden handle also rubs a little on your skin with each swing.

I retraced my steps through the debris, nursing the small blisters that I knew would break and annoy me for the next week or so. “I demand a rematch!” I snarled at the unaffected wall of greenery. Suitably chastised, the plants knew better than to answer. I went home for a cup of tea.

Small Miracles

I am writing this on my own computer. I don't know why it chose to allow me into the blog after months of lock out, but here I am. The only reason I even attempted entry was the near death of our household computer. Yesterday while finishing the blog on that computer, the screen suddenly turned pink and remains so this morning. It is difficult to see through the pink haze to the typed words so I thought I'd give this puppy another chance and even though I had to slip in the back door through "comments" here I bloody am.

"Ramon" I said to my bro seated at his own computer, "why would my computer screen suddenly turn pink?"

"It's because you've just become gay," he replied.

"Don't be silly," I said, followed by "but damn you look cute this morning."

Of course now that I am here I really don't have anything to say. I didn't think I'd be writing this morning. I thought instead that I'd be reading the news - Sox won fourth straight, Rockies streak at seven, Bush still an idiot - and then move on to weight lifting 101. Blah blah blah gang agley again. Now what do I do?

Our dog Gus is tired of rain. Every day he looks at me and says make it stop, so I give him a cookie. Then he says let's go for a walk and I give him another cookie. Somewhere around the fourth or fifth cookie he just takes them from my hand and drops them on the floor. After that he looks at me and says god what an idiot, so I give him another cookie. I mean talking dogs should be rewarded. On the few mornings without rain, we have been able to take short walks up to our new house site - we take the long way by the road going there and the shortcut down the hill through the jungle going back - and although Gus doesn't get all the exercise he needs from this jaunt, he does enjoy riling up the dozen or so dogs we pass along the way. They bark, growl, show their teeth and look menacing and Gus responds in kind, pulling at his leash and saying let me at 'em. When we turn onto our sirvedumbre, our property access road, I untether Gus and he leads us (Ramon is usually in tow) dutifully to the site by jumping into every mud puddle to either warn us they are there or invite us to join him, I'm not sure which. On site we talk to the capataz, the foreman, and together we bemoan the rain for awhile before saying "...talwaygo" (hasta luego)and heading back. Gus likes this part best as he gets to run amok through the coffee plants and other jungle flora in search of stray chickens. There are a couple of Indian dwellings hidden in this part of the woods and they all have uncooped chickens they keep for eggs and Gus' entertainment. Once Gus has forced a couple fowl air born he's a happy camper and he returns to the trail to lead us home. There he gets a shower from the garden hose and a quick towel off before being allowed back into the house. I promise him that once the rain stops for a goodly while I'll take him for a looong walk and he seems happy with that. He then looks at me with his best puppy dog eyes and says, you guessed it, where's my cookie?

Just thought you might like to know.

Gualaca and the Beast

Gualaca. It's pronounced Wah-lah-kah as in Gualaca to play golf as often as possible and it's where we went to re-register the Beast ayer. I used ayer there because it means yesterday and is easier to type than yesterday. Of course I have now, counting this next one, typed yesterday three times while explaining that to you. It just goes to show that the best laid plans of mice and men oft gang agley whatever that means and causes one to ponder just how many plans do mice make anyway? Truly a mystery for the ages if you ask me, and you probably should because I know a thing or two about ages having been several of them. Mysteries though,I've always found baffling. Baffling, for those of you out of the loop, is the decorative underside of a copper cornice. You do know what a cornice is right? That's okay, I don't either.

On the way to Gulaca we stopped at our mechanic's to see how the Beast's recovery was coming along. It was supposed to have been released into our custody sound as a dollar the previous Monday, but further tinkering with valves, injectors and some apparati needed to start diesels that are called, I think, glow worms was called for and all dictated that the car should be left behind and dollars traded for euros as quickly as possible. Tomorrow, or manyana as we say here in Paradise With Rain, only we don't spell it that way, was our mechanic's answer to cuando which means when, but I don't have to tell you that, because you are bright, intelligent listeners, the very best in the blog reading business and although some would say I am sucking up, I mean it...really.

The reason behind the re-registration of the Beast, shhh don't tell it, is that we want to sell it and that can't be legally done without the car having passed inspection and obtained new papers. Those of you who have followed the trials and tribulations of the Beast, okay just the tribulations, the car was never really brought to trial this time, not enough evidence to convict is what they said, but if you ask me, and you should, because I did time with the Beast on an earlier rap, it's guilty on all counts. As for the tribulations, well, you can either take the pills or seek out alternative medicine.

Truth is we've bought another car. It's a newer, sleeker, younger model named Nikita and although not exactly a Trophy Car, it is a step up from the Beast. It could even be a whole stairway up from the Beast, but that only time can tell and you know how fickle and close mouthed time can be. Unless you listen very carefully, sometimes you can't hear time at all.

So far though, I thought as we drove Nikki to Gualaca without incident, time seems to be on our side, philosophically speaking like Mick Jagger that is, and I won't feel bad at all if we can find the Beast a good home with nice parental drivers. If we can't, I do have the Beast's signed consent for its parts to be left to science or Marcos the Mad Mechanic who has reassembled the Beast on several other occasions and is familiar with her idiosyncratic moods, which are not the best kind for a car.

Gualaca? It's a nice little town. Warm and friendly.

Sunday it rained...again.

I blame Al Gore. After he invented the Internet he just couldn't leave things alone, so he invented global warming. Now the weather is all screwed up. Makes me wonder if it's raining in cyber space.

I tuned in to watch the Red Sox game yesterday but it wasn't on. Damn Al Gore. Luckily, the alternate game featured The Rockies and I got to watch my new favorite player drive in the winning run in the tenth inning. His name is Troy Tulowitski and he is my favorite player because I like saying Tulowitski. But then, who doesn't. The Rockies have won five straight. This doesn't rank with the parting of the Red Sea or Joe Namath's Jets winning the Super Bowl, but it is close. One or two more wins and they might escape the basement.

When I wasn't watching the rain or baseball I was reading a book whose events take place in post war Vietnam. I had quit on the book I was reading prior to that and its setting was post World War 2 Germany. I am really hoping now that my next book will be set in post war Iraq. I'm 400 pages away from finishing this current book so somebody has a little time to invent the peace. Not much though, I'm a fast reader.
Better get Al Gore on the job.

One of the things I had planned to do yesterday was pump iron. Who would have guessed there is such a big difference between planning and doing? That's probably a good thing though, at least in this case, as all my body parts from the waist up were still sore from lifting the day before. NFLers are strength tested by seeing how many times they can bench press 225 pounds. I was going to give myself the same test but then I remembered the words of a wise man who said, "Yo Pencilneck, get a clue before you hurt yourself." It could have been Al Gore.

Off and Running

It's a bright, sunny, Saturday morning here in Palo Alto, Boquete high atop the Serracin Builing and this broadcast is being brought to you by the good folks at Cafe Ruiz, the number one coffee in all of my house. Out back, a Panamanian with a shovel and a radio is doing his thing with the latest slide and from a distant wing of Casa Serracin come the sounds of people stirring.

Today's agenda will start with a visit to an estate sale where books and art works galore are reputed to be available and end with either a televised baseball game or a DVD movie. In between there will be stuff.

Here then, without further ado because too much ado makes your hair greasy, is Zendoc to get today's show off on the wrong foot.

Bueno Dias Ladles and Germanmen, I thought I would start off with my thought for the day and that was it. Any questions?

The wife of a friend of ours says the friend's favorite word is sensuous. She says he says "sensuous up get me an other beer" several times a day.

But this is no time for jokes, this is first thing in the morning, okay not the FIRST thing, that would be, you know, but probably the second or third thing when matters of world seriousness should be considered while the mind is fresh and alert. Ha ha ha, okay it is time for jokes. Remember the one about the farmer's son? Me neither.

Woowoo Charly and RTGFKAR are now up and drinking coffee out on the patio and, I surmise, enjoying the morning sun reflecting off the wet leaves of Panama's intensely green flora, creating droplet diamonds that sparkle everywhere and especially on the unassembled but equally aesthetic weight lifting apparatus that is scattered about at their feet. Nature and the work of man in perfect harmony.

More or less.


And now for your further entertainment, singing a medley of her favorite tune, Heeerres Charly!

Tales from David

Woowoo Charly withheld her approval as I loaded the weight bench, bar and weights into the back of the car. "Where are you going to put that thing?" she asked, and before I could respond she supplied a partial answer to her own question. "It's NOT going in the house." I've had half a mind to buy a set of weights for some time and half a mind is usually all I bring to any decision, so when our friend Bonnie pointed out the weights hanging around in front of a pawn shop, I had to make the grab before some other aspiring Jack LaLane beat me to them. "Don't worry," I said. I'll keep them on the patio for now and then out back when we move to the new house." Woowoo Chuck remained less than thrilled. "C'mon, I added, "if you don't have three or four abandoned pieces of exercise equipment laying about, you're not really trying." Oddly, this didn't seem to relieve her anxiety. Truth is, I am woefully out of shape, a thing that has only occurred once or twice in my adult life and then only after injury, illness or accident. Until the last half year I had always done SOMETHING to maintain at least a vestige of conditioning, a vestige being I could walk around the block without breathing hard, but now, although thin, I was getting a bit, what's a good word here?... soft. I had learned, to my own regret, that I could lose weight on the Sonnaffa Beach Diet without exercising. This was not a useful lesson. I needed to get back in the exercise groove and for that I needed motivation. The weight bench, I surmised, was just the right thing to supply that mo. Of course, as a veteran of many types of workout programs, I have learned that whenever one begins anew, it is best to start slowly. That being the case, today I will remove the weights from the car...slowly.

We were in David to visit our friend LJ who was in the hospital for tests. He was testing the hospital, they were testing him. LJ had gone to see his friendly neighborhood, sanctioned by the AMA, and I suppose, the PMA, witchdoctor to have his U.S, prescriptions rewritten and refilled. The doc put a stethoscope to his chest, threw a cup of bones on the table and sent LJ forthwith to Os-pee-tal Chiriqui. An elevated BP and racing pulse can have that consequence. We were there the next day to see LJ and check his test results. He had gotten a C which means "average man who is going to die prematurely if he doesn't quit smoking, cut back on the booze and start exercising. I told LJ I had bought a set of weights and although that didn't cheer him much, I felt a lot better.

Our other notable purchase made on this David excursion, was a new dog bed for Gustavo. For those of you who might think a set of weights for an old skinny guy a frivolous buy, consider this: Gus sleeps with us...on our bed. As Woowoo Charly threw the faux sheepskin lined dog sleeper big enough for a bear atop the weights in the back of the car, I was forced to say, "That thing is NOT going in the house." This time she WAS amused. Can't blame her. I'm a funny guy.

Fantasy Based

I'm fantasy based myself. Reality based people have to deal with terrorism, global warming, AIDS, The New York Yankees and other bits of nastiness they probably brought on themselves. Faith based people are here to make both we fantasy and reality types look completely sane "Don't worry Dear, God will fix everything." Yeeehaa!

For those of you unfamiliar with fantasy types, allow me to present an example for your edification. Fantasy types never grow old. I for one, have been 32 for many many years now. I call it the Reverse Dorian Gray Syndrome. Hidden away so it won't be tampered with is a photograph of me at age 32 and in it I remain perpetually that most excellent of ages. Sure I walk through life with a face and body that daily succumb to the passing of years like Dorian's portrait, but those are just clothes I happen to inhabit. Inside I am still the guy in the photograph. Inside I am still filled with hope and plans for a rosy future. Inside my heart swells with music, song and dance looking for a mike and a floor. Inside there is always love, frequently laughter and no end to possibilities. You could, if you were fantasy based, win a race, write a book, climb a mountain. You could, if you were fantasy based, do whatever you set your mind to. You could even, like me, drop out, retire and move to Panama to live happily ever after. You could, really. Of course it's best you be no older than 30 or so. People stuck in reality and blind faith, people getting on in years that is, don't do so well here when it rains... or shines.

Fantasy based. We need more pub.

In Search of a Blog

In search of something to say I typed in search of something to say. Didn't help. Well sure there are subjects just waiting to be examined at length by the monkeymind, subjects of great import like American Idol where that Seacrest guy insists on saying ah-MARE-ih-kin Idol instead of ah-murr-ih-kin Idol, and TV in general which I don't watch on a regular basis these days apart from baseball which does have regular bases and where by now CSI Hoboken and Law and Order Traffic Division have probably achieved top ten status on the Leslie Nielson ratings. And for sure there are the political races to consider, but, really, it's too early for that and truth is they don't actually race at all. If they did, that Obama guy would be a shoo in. I mean he just looks fast. Fred Thompson is throwing his hat in the ring I'm told by reliable spouses and that might get interesting. Ah-MARE-ih-kins love to vote for show biz folk, surely a worrisome thing, but again, it's too early to go down that slope made slippery by the oily contenders. I could, I suppose, knock out a few paragraphs about global warming, recalentamiento global, but I'm not feeling up to a heated debate at the moment. Besides, here in sunny Panama global wetting is the real concern. It's raining as I speak and it apparently rains whenever anyone speaks so the less said about that the better. And finally, there are always currant events to peruse but who, really, wants to read about berries. Truth is I don't know much about berries. Don't even know if it's BARE-ease or BURR-ease.

Tomorrow though, I'll have a subject because I am a subjective kind of person. In fact, if you've read this far, you've been subjected to my blog. See you tomorrow.

Progress Report

The NY on the Yankees cap stands for Next Year.

The house we are living in, like the one we are building, is carved into a mountainside. You dig vertically into the mountain creating a flat spot upon which you put a house. Nice. This does,however,leave you with a wall of earth directly behind the house. When it rains really hard, as it has been doing off and on for days, there is the danger of erosion and small landslides that can cause - and here I will go into my extensive Spanish vocabulary to find just the right word - got it- problemas. Por ejemplo, this house, the rental, has a trench dug behind it that diverts water that streams down the hillside over to a quebrada, a small creek, that runs down the side of the house. A couple of days ago a small slide filled the trench with dirt and the rainfall's progress to the back door was not impeded. Alrighty then. We called that Brown guy from Katrina for advice but he just started screaming "I didn't do it!" so we were left to fend for ourselves. Old towels shoved under the door slowed the water's flow to a managable degree and mops were employed to gather up the rest. The next day, before the rains began again, our neighbor,a young college student, was hired to redig the trench and all is now well. Well, that is, until the next rain, the next slide.

At the new house site there was only the lesser problem of our foundation diggings having been filled with water so that concrete could not be poured that day. Because the house site is near the summit of the mountain, far less water accumulates behind it as much of the water runs off in the opposite direction. Still, at some point we will have to address a retaining wall or something of that sort. Gradual erosion will occur, though I doubt we will ever have a slide.

The timing of the house construction is all wrong, of course, the rainy season is not a good time to start, but that is just how things worked out. We will have to be patient and just put up with the continual rain delays. Once the foundation is poured and stable, the M2 walls will go up very rapidly and a roof can then be added. Roofs, I'm told, are a good thing to have when it's raining.

A Rainy Night

I was going to write "it rained all night", but then this thought jumped into the monkeymind: How do I know? Was I awake all night? I mean maybe it quit for an hour and then started raining again. I wouldn't want to write something that was blatantly and obviously inaccurate like, say, the resident president is brighter than a breadbox, would I? Of course not. So let me tell you what did happen last night for sure.

I went to a wedding. I don't know who was getting married, but I was an usher and I was affiliated with the groom. I had to wear a suit jacket and some kind of satiny shiny pants. I disliked the pants so much, I waited until the last minute to change into them. I was wearing hiking boots at the time and it took so long to get them untied and off that I didn't have time to put them back on for the wedding. The bride had dark hair and was a little overweight but still looked good. I don't think I knew her. After the wedding, when everyone had gone to the reception - we weren't invited to that and I remember saying to Charly, "we came all the way from Panama just for the wedding?", I couldn't find my boots. I found my pile of regular clothes and a new pair of cheap sneakers in my size along with new arch supports but no boots. Ramon said the guy who took my boots must have felt bad and left me the sneakers. We piled into Ramon's car and headed off to somewhere but were quickly pulled over by a cop in a very lit up and colorful vehicle. He made Ramon get out and take the roadside sobriety test which to the cop's chagrin he easily passed. When Ramon got back in the car, I asked him how he passed the test knowing that he had been drinking throughout the wedding. "Alcohol doesn't affect me" he said. And now I have to believe him.

I really sleep well when it rains all night.

You Can't Win 'Em All

A quick explanation for what is to follow. The new blog didn't work out - I couldn't get into it either - so I've pasted its content onto this page. I'm back at RTGFKAR's computer, mine being a lost cause as far as blogging is concerned.

Problem Resolved...I Think!

The last two words of that title "I Think" may be a bit of an exaggeration at the moment because I'm too mentally exhausted to really put the old gray matter to further work. I've spent hours trying to find a way into my monkeymind blog to no avail and disgusted, distraught, disturbed and demented I've finally just decided to move along. Here then I give you, Taa Daa! the new improved, exactly the same except for the name, blog of a different color, Boquete Monkeymind whose initials BM pretty much describe what I do here anyway. From a literary standpoint that is, and I can standpoint with anybody. I came to the keyboard hours ago with a ready formed blog just waiting to be spit out - spit out being another way of describing my output - onto monkeymind's pages. It was to be a natural, logical, follow up piece to those that proceeded it. Of course after punching, kicking, cursing and finally sledge hammering my way to cyber space's version of nowhere, I've completely forgotten what I was going to say. Fear not, however, gentle reader, for I am not stopped by the small things like a mind devoid of inspiration or even a mind devoid of mind, I'll just tell you what I wasn't going to write. I wasn't going to write about the day the TV went off, the Internet went away, the car died and our hot water turned to cold because that would be depressing. Well, for me anyway. Since I'm already gloom struck by having to change my blog, I'll start with the TV. Who knew that if you didn't pay your bill, the tube would go blank? Not me because I always paid my bill... when I got one.

(Here begins today's contribution.) I got the bill yesterday. Ten days after I paid it and fourteen or fifteen days after my programming was turned off for failing to pay it on time. Guess you can't win 'em all.

The water problem was resolved quicker than the others, but not before a few cold showers were endured. My neighbor, Aurelio, showed me that there was a series of storage and filtering tanks on the hillside above us. The second of these, the one closest too our large, blue, this is the final stop before entering our house container, had a leaf flattened against its exit pipe. One small leaf for man, one giant leaf for mankind's woes. How the leaf got into a sealed concrete tank remains a mystery unsolved, but, you know, as I once heard a guy say, you can't win 'em all.

Somewhere, someone, I'm told, dug up a bunch of fiber optic cable thinking it contained copper that could be sold. Said cable being destroyed is the reason, I was further told by our friendly neighborhood Internet provider, affectionately known here as Cable and Worthless but actually entitled Cable and Wireless, that we were unable to access the worldwide web for some ten or eleven days. Alrighty then, I guess you can just put this in the category of... you can't win 'em all.

The Beast's demise, as noted on an earlier blog, is not certain. It is at the moment on life support systems being attended to by able physicians named Marcos and Paulino, otherwise known as The Car Guys. Should it recover to any drivable degree, it will be sold to the first buyer offering money or, oh I don't know, mangos, guava, zarsamorra or doughnuts. That it should come to this right after I had spent a small fortune to insure the car's welfare gives further credence to that oldie but goodie homily that says - all together now - you can't win 'em all.

It's a nice day today though. Nice that is if you like rain. If you don't, well, what can I tell you? As someone once noted....................

RTGFKAR Joins the blog

Ramon The Gringo Formerly Known As Raymond or RTGFKAR has joined Monkeymind in the blogosphere. Here is his first entry:


A Typical Atypical Morning
It’s 5:30. Awakened by some noise or internal clock, since I have been going to bed extraordinarily early the last week or so, my efforts to return to sleep are fruitless. I arise and try to quietly make my way to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee without the flushing toilet, the squeaking door hinges or the banshee-like howl of the unplumb doors screaming as the wood rubs against the tile floors.
Surprisingly, having wakened no one, or, if I did, they groggily wrote it off as the remnants of a nightmare, and drifted back to sleep, I take my cup of coffee, and passing two more angrily vocal doors and the jangling of searching for the correct key to open the last barrier to the exterior, I gain access to the patio.
It is dark. Or almost dark. No moon, but the night is giving way to day as the Earth turns us in to sunlight.
But I don’t notice the light, or lack thereof. My other senses are drowned out by sound. In the bedroom, a few loud calls sifted through the slats of the jalousie windows, but nothing like this. I am standing at the side of a rushing river; no, a rushing river plunging over a cataract. The noise is astounding.
I close my eyes, and , after a few moments, the sound does not diminish, but clarifies into a thousand bird calls, overlapping, echoing, complementing, conflicting, blending into the roar that mimics the loudest riparian rush I have ever heard.
I make my way in the dim light to the center of the yard, and, standing on the concrete lid of the septic system, I turn full circle. I cannot distinguish the stand of coffee trees twenty yards away from the mass of Volcan Baru several miles away, from the bulk of the low hill across the road, several hundred meters away. They are all silhouettes in deeper shades of gray, like images from a southwestern painting come to life, cocooning me in a bowl of sound.
Above the roar, I begin to sort out a few landmarks from the fabric of sound: here a “Caw”, there a “Whit-whit-whit Woo” like a rock or log in the river creating a unique current or backwash. As I concentrate, I can separate the background fabric into threads of different chirps and coos and tweets that interweave. If I don’t concentrate, they flow together.
The sky lightens, and the hills and trees begin to coalesce into their own identities, but the sound remains and I notice… there are no birds flying! No soaring, no swooping shapes flashing by. The sound comes from the Earth itself and the trees and rocks that are growing out of it.
Another voice joins the chorus. More shrill, and distinct, it is one I can identify: “Aw-Aw-Ca-Aww”, strident, loud enough to be noticed, but nothing like the “Cock-a-doodle-doo” it is supposed to sound like.
Here, it is ever-present, not just the wake-up call at sunrise. I can pinpoint the fowls in the various yards around our casa, and some from farther away.
I look around again, and notice the grays are resolving themselves into discernible shapes, and suddenly the sound has dimmed, and as I turn, shapes begin to flit from tree to tree and soar overhead. The river of sound is dissolving as if evaporated by the light. Echoes and splashes of sound will color the day, even through the heaviest rains, but I will have to wait 'til tomorrow to hear the torrent rushing by again.

Car Wars Continued

This is being written on the computer of Ramon the Gringo Formerly known as Raymond. If I choose to do so, I could also write this on the computer of Rolando the Panamanian Still Known as Rolando because I have his computer to use while he's away in Spain furthering his education in robotics. What I can't do is write this blog on my own damn computer. For reasons I don't understand, I am unable to get into my blog to write although I am able to go there and read old entries. This is a thing I am not particularly inclined to do as old entries are about as thrilling to me as old food. Ramon suggests that my computer, having been forced to host over 180 blogs against its will has finally said enough! Maybe he's right. We will see how long these alternative laptops can tolerate the monkeymind.

When last we met the Beast, our ancient Toyota Landcruiser, had rolled across a restaurant parking lot with neither driver nor passenger. Like my computer's refusal to allow me blog entrance, this seems to be an act of mechanical will. For those of you who don't believe machines have minds, I say put your ear to an ATM when you try to access money from an account with no funds. That's right, you will hear it laughing. As an act of contrition, I drove the Beast from its personally selected parking space to an insurance office where I purchased coverage in case it, the Beast, should decide to collide with something on its next driverless outing. As an act of gratitude for not having done that so far, I then drove it to Pricesmart where I had two shiny new Pirelli radials mounted on the Beast's rear wheels, the two stops combined lightening my already meagre bankroll by a little over 400 dollars. Amazingly, the Beast's earlier starting problems had resolved themselves and after a few more errands were run and retired, M.E. and I pointed the Beast at Boquete and congratulated ourselves on how much we had accomplished that day. It was perhaps our failure to include the Beast in our back patting that pissed it off and, if I really think about it, I'm sure that during its coughing and sputtering, I could hear it say why do I bother with these people just before it spit out a huge cloud of black smoke and died.

Luckily, for every machine that gives up the ghost at the worst of times, there is another that if treated with love, affection and homage, lots of homage, will come to your rescue. In this case, cell phones were withdrawn from pockets and calls were made. A friend was soon en el camino to pick us up and in no time at all M. E. and I were taken to our separate homes where we did exactly the same thing...drink heavily.

The next morning, bright and early, a thing everyone always says, bright and early, whether they are bright or not and who can really say what's early considering the subjective nature of the definition, and there goes the monkeymind so I better wrap this up, I engaged the car morticians to take the Beast to the morgue where it was declared dead but not done. Apparently there is a way to revive newly dead cars that doesn't require human sacrifices and black magic. I am not quite sure of the details, but it starts by opening the hood and throwing in large amounts of money. About this, I'd need to think.