Saturday, December 31, 2011

It's OK I have recovered from one coma and about to fall into another...

First of all, Feliz Año Nuevo, Aith-bhliain Fe Nhaise Dhuit, Hauoli Makahiki Hou! I have somehow managed to survive Christmas without the peeps I love, the sweet swell and the scorpion bite and Chico's. I'm not sure about tonight but in the MZ tradition, tuanos! I should be making siesta right now but I am all bound up with notes, words and thoughts. It was starting to look like those eight journals I packed away {a gap of time between entries that look like some of the smiles here} I figured I'd just prop the leg up and have a cocktail so it's fresh mango, tonic and 18 yo rum for me and a few thoughts and issues for you:

  • Ticos celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve so it turns into a 48 hour Feliz hora and Chico's was disco balled and rolling the whole time. They did close for a few hours so everyone could go home and open their stockings or drop their knickers. The cabinasgansta's decided to have the day on the hill so everyone brought something, there was a pot luck, there was a pot luck and there was Poon juice. So nice having a 100mt walk home. Just can't figure out why it took as long as it did. It is interesting how people here, both extranejos and Tico's want to make sure that you are celebrating the day. Don't worry we did. Actually got two big Christmas presents, that 18 yo Flor de Cano Black Label and the scorpion bite on Christmas Eve. A swell time indeed...
  • Four days later my right foot and cankle are still sore and nasty looking. So now it's two snakes and two scorpions I've seen on the road at night. Unfortunately I saw one too late. It was just a collision of two shits in the night and it tagged the inside of my unshod foot { I work more on getting rid of my gringo feet than learning Spanish but that must be the vanity thing}. Fortunately for my Buddhist self I didn't kill it but after a week of this I think I would. Tico's tell you that you soak the bitten part in a strong mix of vinegar and water it reduces the swelling and the eventual itch. I always love shit that gives you two forms of discomfort, the pain and the itch. So now it's antibiotics but that probably is a good thing after a night in San Jose regardless of the scorpion.
  • Montezuma is jammed now with as many Ticos as there are Eurocanagringos. They camp on the beach come into town at night. The start of summer and the holidays are a great time to make party. The boats from Jaco make the beach look like Normandy. Not a room or space anywhere and there and it's like Portsmouth in the summer, you hate the crowds but love the money it brings. I can handle another summer of it in Portsmouth and I an handle it here until after the 6th of January because the government opens up again so everyone goes back to work.
  • The puppets are here! AJ brought all the stuff I needed to replace, get, have him find in the container for the things I had stolen, broken or forgot { the puppets} so even though the boys won't be playing tonight, I will be carrying Zoomey and two stick puppets this wonderful French lady makes. She was in film/theater as a mask maker and set designer in Europe and Hollywood and now sells in the organic market in the park on Saturday. She has made two masks for me that will be used in the Titire Teatro which will be in January. I'd like to do it while my daughter is here so she could lend a hand {I know cheap I'll use a pun whenever}. So after the first fire dancing session, after the Organico musica session with Mel Gibson thinking of playing some {shh don't tell anyone if it's true it will be a shit show} and a lot of picture taking cause he also brought the new lens, I will mask and puppet up and bring in the new year in the center of the universe tonight...
  • Surviving NYE will be a daunting task as it's NYE here until noon tomorrow. Chico's is open until early January 2nd and I'm taking titire to this party in Delicias, yes there is a place and this house party is supposed to be exotic. Two DJ's one who owns the casa and the other is my next door neighbor. Mr Black's casa is supposed to be something, a middle earth kind of place both inside and out so we shall see. It's a private party { that means no more than 75-100} and it's got Poon. HW is everywhere...
So I should be finishing making my siesta but I'm making my third mango and rum, fresh avocado with lots o' lime and fresh bread. I won't have to worry about the scorpions because if it's not light by the time I'm done in Delicias {love that expression} and walking up the road then I missed my turn and it's tomorrow night at Chico's. So for now kids;


New Year's is a harmless annual institution, of no particular use to anybody save as a scapegoat for promiscuous drunks, and friendly calls and humbug resolutions.
Mark Twain


Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously."
HST
just sayin, TmyO...

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

another road trip with the Rocketman...

I share the blaghosphere with a lot of peeps and like me on Facebook I don't spend a lot of time in other people's blaghs. One of the people out there is Charles Laquidara progenitor of Dwayne Ingalls Glasscock and an icon in Beantown radio land. The Big Mattress made me think about road trips back then, major ones and minor ones. 
We used to listen to WBCN 24 hours a day from back in the late 60's. I lived on Bay State Road across from a BU women's dorm with Bielitz and his crazy Ocelot who was the night stalker. Imagine living in a two bedroom apt across from a bunch of parading chicas {this was the 60's, they were not wearing a lot} with a 30 lb 3.5 ft long cat with black teeth. He was cool and would lay out on the fire escape in the sun with you and was a fabulous chica magnet:
    she: "is that a cat?"
    me: "yup"
    she: "can I come over and see you and your kitty?"
    me: "yup #80"
They loved to come over and hang out with us and I thanked the cat for years. You just couldn't be menstruating around the Ocelot cause it made him weird so we always had to either ask the question or just watch the fun.
BCN was king then and there was very little commercialism and a lot of music and controversial conversation from the on air peeps. You could work or go to school during the day in Boston and walk barefoot, smoke reefer and camp out on the Commons at night. Life was good except for the 800 lb gorilla in the room, the Vietnam War.
Rocketman and I decided to go to the People's Peace March to End the War in April of 1971. I had contacts through my work volunteering with RESIST, the national resistance to the war. I was involved with their planning and strategy group in Boston and got us a ride to Washington on a school bus that had all the seats removed so we could fit people in and the idea was to live in it while in Washington preparing for the march. 
I will admit to some cloudy moments over the three days involved around April 24, 1971 but I do remember that it was one of the most amazing times of my young life. Sure there were a lot of drugs and sex and rock'n'roll but there was enthusiasm and hope that this may have an impact if all these peeps do come to Washington. What I do remember:
  • the Rocketman was over the top for the three days and it was incredible being there with him. The school bus ride was a collection of all types and all ages an a joyful, spirited ride through the night
  • looking out at 500K people from the steps of the Capital Building with Country Joe and the Fish leading the Fish cheer, "give me an F"
  • believing we could make a difference
  • not getting arrested
  • the Krishna's feeding thousands Saffron rice with raisins out of trash cans full of rice. we were all "Hare Rama ring" that day
  • camping out on the Washington Monument with tens of thousands of others listening to a concert with Leslie West and Mountain and others
  • doing Peyote wandering around with some anti war wench while the Rocketman was spending the night in the bushes shagging some chica
  • Krishna's blah blah blah
The bus ride was a lot quieter on the ride back but the enthusiasm was still there because we still believed that the people determined the course of the country and not the White House wankers.
So I can read Chas's Big Mattress and remember how it was and who knows maybe he will read mine and just wonder??
As I'm on the Road this year without the Rocketman it has evoked memories of other road trips with him. April 22-25,1971 was one of the best. Just sayin. TmyO...

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Deep Descent

Deep Descent

D-Lux
D-Light
Thank you for the musica
tonight.
Just lissin...TmyO

Internet on the road...

It wasn't there the last time we were on this road. There were still IBM punch cards that we used to fuck with and mix up so that the holes didn't line up and the professor would get pissed. And of course one of us "who will ever use the computer?" kids would make sure that he or she dropped the box with every one's project cards. So my project is now part of yours and yours part of someone else. Who will ever want to deal with computer cards???
On the Road now it is as major a highway as the Pan Am highway only it connects everywhere. It is the main source of communication and news. There are no Bruins scores in the Tico Times although I do know what the Jaco Ladie's Garden Club is featuring as centerpieces for their gala.
The issue with the computer is not the cards, it's connection. I moved into cabina cinco and the Internet didn't work and it had been an issue before me. El Jeffe was tired of our collective whining so he had amigos come over and bury cables and put in routers and bingo all cabinas got connected. Yahoo!
Not perfect though cause every time we lose power which I've learned is frequently you have to disconnect and re-connect the power source and router connections. I have  nothing in my casa that flashes 12:00, 12:00 every time the power is interrupted so if there is no Internet it's out back I go. The hookup and works are on the back side of mi casa and I keep a chair there permanently to make the corrections or so someone else can do the same. That will give you a start when it's Howler monkey morning time and there is someone in the window by the bed.
There are three phones in MZ and 10 places to get WiFi so you can stay in touch with the world. Thank you Chico's for not having WiFi for public as that would be another reason to hang out and I would be googling liver transplants.
So when the Internet is your only source of news and commentary you wind up with:

  • Newt Gingrich takes his fourth ‘no-adultery pledge’
  • Saint Paul: Inside Ron Paul’s effort to convince Christian conservatives that he’s their man
  • Rick Perry pushes against 'political correctness' in new TV ad 
  • Fukushima Monkeys to Track Radiation
  • Clark Gable's grandson pleads guilty in laser-pointer case 
  • Lindsay Lohan says has learned from mistake
You get my point. You learn a lot of stuff when you have the Internet in your hand. A lot that you would never spend the time to read in a newspaper.
You begin to realize the further the distance between you and the motherland and the crazier it gets in an election cycle that as HST said, "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Lindsay tells Playboy that she is "accountable" for the choices in her life and then does a 10 page spread {it's what they call it not me}.
There is no TV in my life and hasn't been since 03.11.11 and the only radio has been in Spanish and it's always loud with some fast talking Tico yelling "MUSICA" or "JESUS".
OK I can go to Chico's Sunday evening and watch futbol with the locals but there is no news or current event source other than the Internet. So that's where you spend the non beach time here. If you want to download anything here it is like shitting a piece of coral, slow and painful. It seems I use that expression a lot these days. Rocky Horror took me three days before I was able to complete the download and I'm a week into the HD version of A Tribe called Quest. 
So that last great Road trip me and the Rocketman didn't have email or the Internet to keep in touch. Just the snail mail which 40 years later is no better here. The Internet, when I have it at least let's me continue to read the Portsmouth Police Log:

11:14 a.m. - A man told police he had a sexual encounter with a woman, left his phone at her apartment and she was using it to send “nasty texts to all his buddies.”


He's lucky he's not Newt Gingrich and he shoulda slept with Lindsay Lohan. Just sayin, TmyO...

Sunday, December 11, 2011

Cancer sucks rant...

It sucks. There are way more erudite ways of saying it but when it all comes down to gut wrenching moments, cancer sucks. Friday Sarah Fox died in Concord Hospital after a "valiant and courageous battle" with cancer.
Yes she did and so have many, many, way too many others just like PFD 173. Sarah was a FF/Paramedic on the Portsmouth Fire Department, a great clinician who was just the best person to have in the back of a rig when the shit is flying and peeps be dying. Like so many other people in Portsmouth I got to know who she was after she started her battle with fucking cancer. The world was gifted by another four years as she survived and return to the fire/ems service.
"PORTSMOUTH — Rest in peace, Sarah Fox.
One of the lights of the Portsmouth Fire Department was extinguished Friday, the news devastating to the community.Fox, a veteran of the Fire Department, lost her four-year battle with cancer at about 12:30 p.m. Friday at Concord Hospital. She was surrounded by family and friends. According to reports from those at the hospital, she died peacefully.Fox retired from the Fire Department on June 30, because her cancer had been deemed inoperable. She retreated to her Canterbury home to spend the time she had left with her husband, Matt, and her young children, daughter Patia and twins Anika and Alexander.The Fire Department and the community had rallied around Fox. Numerous fund-raisers, intended to help the family defray the exorbitant treatment costs, were held.Fox will be remembered as a loving wife and mother, and as a well-respected firefighter and paramedic. Also on the minds of mourning loved ones are her incredible courage and determination to live for as long as she could." In the end she died, it sucks, there is nothing good about it. Cancer sucks! If cancer writes my obituary let it say nothing about a valiant fight, cause I know I would be a pussy, rather let it say that it fucked with my life but I died while living. I have nothing good to say about it. It has been an efficient assassin in my parents families and it has snatched some good peeps that I knew.
The cynic in me says that if we put enough effort and intelligence and useful financing into it we could probably figure out a solution to most of the:
...200 different types of cancer that can affect the human body. A large percentage of people will be affected by some form of cancer or other in their lifetime. Some types of cancer are more serious than others. Some can be treated more easily than others, and the survival rate varies among types.There are two general categories of cancer. Carcinomas are cancers that develop on the surface linings of the organs. Sarcinomas are cancers that develop in the cells. Sarcinomas affect solid tissues such as muscle and bone. They can also develop in the blood vessels.The human body is made up of tiny cells. Each of these cells contains genes. Proteins inside these genes regulate the division and multiplication of the cells. If a gene becomes damaged, the cells can continually grow and divide without stopping. If too many of these damaged cells form together, they can grow into a tumor.Tumors can either be malignant or benign. Malignant tumors are the serious cancers. They can multiply and spread throughout the body's tissues and organs. Not all types of cancer form tumors. Cancers of the blood, such as leukemia, attack other areas of the body through the bloodstream. 
I told you it sucks!
So I rant out of frustration and out of the loss of another good person to cancer. And in April I will have the dermatologist check my tan ravaged skin, I will have my next to last Medicare checkup and have my PCP's finger up my ass and I don't smoke tobacco or eat meat or fuck without a condom so FUCK YOU CANCER?
I know it has fucked with your life and that there was at least one valiant person in battle with it  so I would ask: What are you doing about it?
Just rantin, TmyO...




Thursday, December 8, 2011

Random thoughts not Reggae Night...

Thursday night is reggae night in MZ and there are fire dancers in the street and peeps in the street and it's Tico Street. Every local dude has a fresh lid and Red Bull supports surfing here. Summer is here now {sounds so sweet} and every Thursday night, Reggae Night, gets better. Better is the best way I want to say it. Busier sounds negative I guess and better is always relative. In two weeks every college and university in North America goes on break for at least a month and oh yeah here comes NYE. So it will get rolling and every night will be someone or some group of chicas going away party. Five nights a week and Reggae Night is the queen of the prom. Disco ball goes on at 2130 and the resident DJ drops into a night of tunage.
I was content to hang tonight instead of paying $8 for taxi, the usual Chico's tab, avoiding two snakes and a scorpion. I have nine more Reggaenights in front of me so hanging with my good friend JJ, his girl and mine MJ, and internet all the fucking time now, WHOOT. Pura Vida sorta. So a night of random thoughts, not reggae:
  • For thirty years I read texts, papers, journals, studies and little anything else. I have been homeless and on the road for five weeks and I just finished my fifth book...
  • Its cool when you meet some specie on the road at night. Whether the head lamp picks up glowing eyes {never knew that there was a moth, a big moth, that has "eyes" that glow red} or the moonlight or quiet dark catches a sliver. So far all the species involved in encounters adopt the WTF!! approach. They slither or scatter to the side of the road and I walk brisquely down the road with a head on a swivel...
  • once again I know all the bartenders in town...
  • I am looking for driftwood body parts on the beaches to make a puppet for the NYE "Montey&Zumey presente Titere Playa, performance of Frankenpuppet. A mix of Frank, young Frank, Rocky Horror Frank and social commentary. Right now we have two natural stages on the beach behind Chico's and the ability of using the Guinal or glove puppets, shadow puppets and the Frankenpuppet that will be a lap puppet on the titeritero. Local icon, Don Casi Perfecto, is a sublime carpenter and shadow puppeteer. We are cross pollenating with fire dancers, musicians and probably a couple of local curb guys. So I could possibly debut on NYE as a titeritero and a curator. Then figure out how to get the Frankenpuppet across the line??
  • everyone has a back story here and there is always someone else to tell it to you...
  • 35 days and 150 to go...
  • I have had the quiet of my own company these weeks but now its time to get busy. A dude from P'town here in this town  for a month and AJ, Ginny, Libby, Casey and Justine coming in and I am calling Marie to double chica check...
  • Rocketman was all over the soul map today. Went to Santa Terasa and walked the playas and sweated the dusty road to Mal Pais. Wondered about our conversations then and tried to see him in the waves and the dust today...
  • Been here long enough that now I have the "is it bedbugs" thing. It's funny enough when you turn on the light at night that everything in the house dives for cover like they do on the road. Some of my kids were amazed I would wasn't to spend these nether years in a hot buggy ass place. Take malaria meds as I have mentioned and I  haven't seen a CR moskeetO yet.
  • Reading the credo and writings of mad men and frauds is almost as entertaining as watching porn...
  • A week from today my mother would be 93. Wow, could I handle another 27 years?
just sayin, TmyO...

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Acote After Dark

Acote After Dark

just sayin...

caer como piedra- to fall like a log...

So there will be no motorbike. Reason grabbed my brain shoulders and shook the idea onto the sand. My balance impairment is more serious than I realized or admitted. I have given up being a stand up guy on a surfboard {but not in life}before I came down here this winter and will grab my love of it on my belly for as long as I can, the boogie man, but that’s just the water side of this issue.
I used to run on the rocks on Long Island Maine during the summers I spent there. It’s a kid thing I know, the goat feet movement over uneven ground and I’m cognizant that it diminishes as you age. I have already admitted to the occasional lurch, stagger, unplanned side step and fall {a stagger on steroids}. So there will be no motorbike.
 There have been a couple of great falls in the last five years with the flying down the stairs at Rogers Street in 2007 being the epic fall with life time consequences and if it hadn’t been for Nate & Justine this would be a very different story.  The focal infarct on my brain, from or before the fall, seems to have a bigger impact than I thought. Twice in the last ten days I have slipped or tripped and broken one rib and one expensive camera lens. The rib will heal and someday Nikon will realize that plastic lens mounts to a metal body are not that strong. At least the first time it happened I wasn’t the catalyst as my camera bag fell off a bar stool, which I never have.
It still is a step in the direction of getting older physically in my life. At 66 I know the stats say I have another seven {I like to spell it as it seems longer} to go and I’m thinking longer if you look at my mom’s side of the DNA. So how am I going to walk my way through how many miles there are left for me on the road? That is a part of it. I look at the next seven as being on the road. I have ideas, plans but I’m very dynamic about when I can go where next. For now I just have to be able to work out the wobble, stumble, stagger part of it.
After the neuro tests with MRI/dye testing and an expensive neuro consult that medicare {the curse of care in the US for me} didn’t cover, it was determined that I had a “slight drop in my left foot, a reduction of sensation in my left side predominantly in the hip and continuum of the lower left side”.
I’m surely not saying that my body is rushing to feebleness and that I won’t be able to do the many miles to go on this road. I’m just sayin that now I have to start thinking about how I do it. TmyO...

Friday, December 2, 2011

Monkey mind and monkey bridges...

I remember Suzuki talking about our monkey mind and breath as a way to quiet the monkey mind. How our thoughts try to keep us busy and unaware. I sit here at the table in the early morning hours when there is very little going on that involves humans. The Howlers start at 0500 and call in the day. You can hear the males talking as the troop moves through the bush. The howling goes left to right as I sit at the table and write. Three hours later I know they will be making the big jump to the tree across the fence one by one and then they are gone for the day, making their big loop until it’s 0500 again. Listening to them my own monkey mind sits still not daydreaming just listening.
The Howler is a part of this tropical bush life here there and everywhere where the bush is. I remember the Howlers from a long time ago and then again in Belize when Ginny and I first started going there in 1980.
The Howlers and some other of the peaceful critters who climb in the bush trees have a problem here in Costa Rica. A 2007 study done by Ronald Sanchez of the U of CR shows that CR lost HALF it’s monkey population between 1995-2007. A great majority of these deaths are due to electrocution. The growth here and I imagine in the rest of the fast developing isthmus has spawned thousand’s of Km’s of electric lines. They are uninsulated so monkeys crossing from canopy to canopy and making contact either die, get burned or stunned and fall to the ground where they are vulnerable to the shitload of dogs here. The solution is to insulate but that takes money and process. The federally owned provider, ICE, won’t spend the money and all government here is a cacophony of endless process. A cheaper way is the monkey bridge a safe avenue over the dangerous wires by way of natural hemp rope lines that the monkeys can navigate. {check out Montezuma’s monkey bridge on You Tube}
Mary Lynn Perry is founder of Rainsong Wildlife Sanctuary just south on MZ and has been working with someone from the Cobano office of ICE to raise awareness and get more bridges built so less monkeys and other arboreal climbing canopy critters get electrocuted. Find her and read about the Sanctuary. I’m going to go down and volunteer for the 23-26 of December and see the place firsthand.
The Howlers fill the time when I feel the most in touch with me so far this winter. In the early morning and the sunset both in Panama and here in Montezuma they are the background music in the time that  means the most to me right now in my life.
Suzuki spoke about the breath as a gate that moves back and forth quietly, peacefully, quieting the monkey mind. Would that all the Howlers could move as peacefully. Just sayin. TmyO...