seven hundred and thirty days of sunshine

Exactly two years ago right now, we were already lost in conversation.

I don't want to make this any more philosophical than it has to be, Puji-la. The significance of that innocent direct message is, anyway, immeasurable. It didn't ask for a thing. But it begged to be answered. I knew that much. I swear to God I knew that the second I read it.

You came into my life when nothing seemed to be working. And nothing was working out because I had closed myself off to the possibility of things working out. I didn't want them to work out in their present form. In many ways I had turned my back on love. It's not that I didn't believe in it anymore. It's just that like everything else in this life, it had slowly worn me down. Its strings had dragged and ground me to a halt instead of setting me free. So the last thing I was looking for was more.

I ended up watching those elections, alone, because that's the way it had to be. The same way you couldn't have been anywhere other than in that deserted newsroom on the graveyard shift. That conversation was in the cards. That's why the timing worked out. That's why everything worked out.

That night, I fell in love with the idea of you and you of me. Same to same. I fell in love with your company. Your warmth. Your hopes and dreams. And with your words.

Every day since then you have become more and more real to me. These two years have become a beautiful eternity as time continues to slowly fill in the blanks. Some days I even feel I know you better than you know yourself. Other days you surprise me. But mostly you just make me smile. Even though everything still is what it is, I smile. I smile because you smile. 

i'll always be a sucker for a good story

We were back on that track tonight, you and I. Running quietly. Orbiting Jarry Park under a full moon and nothing else kind of sky.  

I knew we probably wouldn't be up late enough to see the moon turn red. The fact that it was there was good enough. That and the email I made you read. And the fact that another long cycle, one that took us on a set of different loops, just like the ones we had imagined in that imaginary world, had maybe finally come to a key junction. Strange too that on the way to meet you, I remember thinking that, in the end, we had both actually taken the plunge. That nameless plunge into the deep. The old moment of truth. Uptown VineRise was just a blueprint, wasn't it? The conflict of our own creation. Neither of us could have imagined just how dark it could get on the way down. We suffered. Not alone, but without each other. Not enough to have forever lost touch. We just made our peace spinning in different directions. 

But nothing happens for no reason - not in the lives we want to live. 

Maybe it's time to get back to writing that happy ending.

Cold feet

The wind whipped up the snow in every direction. The initial storm was done and now the air growled with the smell of gasoline. The snowblower provided the unintended movie magic and did a good job of hiding the tears that had started to blur the letter I had been waiting for all day. A closeup would have perhaps caught the moment. The perfect angle cropping the glow from the screen and the slight crumpling of my face. But there in that manufactured snowstorm there was only you and I and my phone as messenger. The right words at the right time. Again. My socks would have already been soaked by then. Maybe I hadn't even noticed. Somehow, a steaming hot bath was the only thing on my mind when I reached home. After the last-minute MacDonald's promise from the night before, my cold feet were in desperate need of relief. No book or no beer this time around. Just me and my thoughts and the heat. And your words. And suddenly, lyrics from the last song I never wrote. The one I could never properly explain. The one that now explained everything.

You came
And everything went down the drain
All my pain

And then one simple little question, sent back halfway around the world.

'guess i saw it my fevered sleep'

i'm not even sure which one you were. i think I may have you called you Conner. i never told you how much i liked the album. how i listened to it almost every day in Goa. how it made me cry. how it helped me cope. i guess i didn't want to sound like a fan. i wanted to play it cool. but I didn't have to. it's like we had known each other forever. i recognized it right away in your eyes. and your smile. whoever you were, it clicked right away. we were just hanging around the mothership, which was suddenly giant and never ending. we strolled past old vintage arcade games i was pleasantly surprised to see, because i could no longer remember how they had gotten there in the first place. you told me what heaters to turn up and which ones were useless altogether. you were apparently as much a landlord as you were a musician. we shared a torn cigarette. there were other people following us - my brother, Ange and others - but the conversation was really only between us two. even if they poked their heads over the skillet where you were cooking up some dal and some other dish with eggplant. even if they were all hanging on your every word. i mentioned your appearance on Q that day. you gave me one look and sigh that i instantly recognized. you had hated the guy, hadn't you? then why the sanitized twitter feed with the canned thank you? you laughed so hard i couldn't help but join in. in that fit of laughter everything made sense.  on the counter there was a picture of you and your mom. you looked a little younger there - an age i didn't recognize. this was apparently the picture that followed you everywhere. the one you looked at every night before you went on stage and played and sang your heart out. this simple picture was your strength. your honesty. just a smiling boy and his smiling mother. 

Forever lost and found

     I already knew how the book was going to end. I'm pretty sure it was written that way. And still I needed to finish it. Maybe that's the sign of a good book. Or at the very least, a book that's good for you. 

     Only Love is Real is not really my kind of book. Even the title bothers me. I don't dig New Age philosophy or too much metaphysical mumbo jumbo. The idea that this psychologist would take his patients through their past lives using hypnotherapy is not what continuously gnawed at me. The brain is a magical and powerful machine. It's not that I don't believe in the possibility of such things. I just kept wondering why Dr. Brian Weiss felt the need to constantly refer to his older books during the story. You'd think promoting older material would be the last thing on your mind after having lived through such a beautiful and fantastical story.

     But as much as I kept questioning how much of Pedro and Elizabeth's story was really real, I soon realized it didn't matter anyway. This was more than just an interesting tale of reincarnation. It was more than just a book about us. It was a book about me. I was living through it and learning many of its lessons. The idea of spending your life - many lives, even - searching for your soulmate was the reason I was sitting here, now, relating to this very book. All those strange, inexplicable feelings. The feeling you've known someone your whole life. Feeling like an old soul, lonely in your patience. Understanding that some people come to you as students and others as teachers and that sometimes, the person you are with is simply not where you are. And despite all that, having to constantly rediscover that there really is only one kind of love. That the love for your mother is no different than the love for your girlfriend, your best friend or that random stranger you think you met for only a beautiful, fleeting moment. How that love is reciprocated makes all the difference in the world.

     And the only thing you can do in this life is pray you get to share as much of your love as you can. So that maybe one day, in this life or in any other, you can breathe that final sigh of relief when you finally, finally reach home. 

A last-minute Sunday.

     The best split-second decision we made was to grab that bus to Baga Beach.
     Circumstance tossed us a no-brainer, and on wheels no less. All we had to do was hop on. It was sunny out and everything since morning had felt lighter, easier. The balcony had arranged itself. We had managed to at least partially burn the week's garbage. The paddy fields swayed lazily in an impossible green, begging to be photographed. And then the bus showed up at the intersection just as we did.
     When we first came to Goa, it took me about half an hour to decide Baga was not my idea of a good time. It had one dirty beach town vibe. Tito's Lane dragged you along a slow-moving conveyor belt of drunk tourists, bad trance and unsolicited party fliers to the abdomen; twenty-four hour neon lights over tattoo shops and Thai foot massage parlours whose doors were always shut; middle-aged men hawking sunglasses and young kids on motorbikes reeling you in with scooter rentals before offering everything but. Baga was about as pleasant as a mild headache; the reason we ended up moving inland.
     But then Tito's Lane also brought you straight to the beach. And Baga had one broad beach with perfect white sand. Mild headaches became tolerable in such perfect sand. Once you removed your sandals and stepped into the turbulent Arabian Sea, everything else faded into the background. And with it every split-second decision you ever dared question.

     

home, sweet home

The alleyway leading into Dharavi was pretty much like any other. 

I'm not sure what kind of signage I had been expecting. India's largest slum, straight ahead! perhaps? As if. In fact, I'm not even sure what I was expecting as walked in, cautiously. Puji had said something about how all of Bombay was a slum in some form or another anyhow. And I was already painfully aware of how Western my desire to visit this famous bustling bastion of picture-perfect poverty in India was; an area of nearly two square kilometres, home to more than a million. But then I couldn't help myself. It was a part of the city. It had to be seen. Besides, it's not as if I was being all dramatic about it. There would be no formal guided tour for me, sandwiched between ten other foreigners trying their best not to step on anything too gross as they snapped pics of smiling kids. As usual, the plan was to be as discreet and chill as possible. 

And Dharavi was far more easy going, friendly and beautiful than I had imagined. Bombay was no Nairobi. And Dharavi was no Kibera. The main road was paved in dull uni-stone and framed by colourful shops and dilapidated apartment buildings that towered in the distance. Every alley after that grew more narrow, more colourful and more intimate. The soft pink, blue and grey cement structures here clashed nicely with the royal blue water tanks and the multi-coloured clothes, towels and saris hanging from the lines. At times the alleys grew so cramped you felt like you might walk into someone's living room by accident. But nearly everyone of those faces peering out of their doors were pleasant ones. The smiles had no ulterior motives. Puji never had to pull out her press card to explain our being there. Gangs of kids would come around curiously, say hi and then sheepishly ask to have their pictures taken. And by the time you snapped, the crowd would have grown from three to ten without you even knowing how the word had gotten around so fast. One particular father was so proud of his makeshift purse shop that he asked me to photograph him in it. And when he was done posing he pointed proudly to his daughter, the cute little baby with the giant bindi and silver anklets who had been shifting around the tiled exterior in her bright pink walker. I'm not sure why the Lonely Planet had been so adamant about not photographing. This was picture paradise.

We plunged into cement corridors with open drains and into relatively larger clearings where crows, dogs and goats had their way amid the rotting garbage. We found a large group of boys playing cricket in some abandoned schoolyard. They urged me to try my hand as a batsman. It was a little unnerving with thirty of them now watching. But then I'm assuming they probably didn't have such high expectations for me, especially not against that one older boy, the reputed fastball bowler of the bunch. He threw a couple out of bounds and one that bounced off the dusty gravel and whipped my leg. I managed to connect on a couple as well, much to the appreciation of the crowd - minus the one poor boy who ended up getting it right in his eye. We left there with a little yellow ball as a gift. 

I had never felt so welcome in any other public place in the city. I could have walked those claustrophobic and sometimes putrid alleys all afternoon. But then it would be pretty much the same after a while, rationalized Puji. Fair enough. Besides, we had train tracks to walk.

So we did our best to retrace our steps and finally regained the main road, where men carrying fruit carts negotiated very limited time and space with motorcycles, bicycles and people. We found a Catholic temple, removed our shoes and lit the last two candles that were there. We recited one Hail Mary together. I was thinking of my Mom. I didn't ask who she was praying for. 

And so we walked out of Dharavi Slum the same way we had come in. Unannounced. 

one day, even the ocean will go still and silent

"Robbie. Feels like you've been living here forever, ya."

Like I had become part of the furniture, I joked back. Smita had been repeating that line since day one. I knew she always meant it in the best possible way. But then I'm not sure what triggered the thought on this night. It had unfolded like any other. The three of us would have our midnight meal together, without fail. Some nights we'd watch Arnab Goswami grill some pigheaded official on The Newshour, other times we'd just sit on the couch and discuss books I should read, share family stories or laugh giddily about how much weight the three of us had gained since I came to Bombay. It was a good thing too, we'd agree, over green tea. We had all found some kind of happy routine together, temporary as it would be. But on this night Smita couldn't imagine how it would feel when Puji and I would no longer be there. 

In many ways Smita had become the adopted older sister I never had. Forget that I was actually the eldest. She was far more responsible and mature than I would ever be. But we still had a lot in common. We had both just come out of very long-term relationships. We both looked to avoid unnecessary drama in our lives and called things out exactly as we saw them. So I can't say I was surprised we got along so well. I just never thought I'd have an opportunity to get to know her as well as I had. There had been several times where we got to speak about our pasts, one on one, while Puji was either sleeping or doing her own thing. I always spoke to her as honestly as possible. I never made myself out to be the good guy. And what I had written in that letter to her still stood. This is why we never felt like strangers. 

But on this one particular night she wanted to hear the story of how Puji and I met. She was, after all, a storyteller at heart. It's not as if she didn't know most of it already. But then Puji had managed to keep many of those early months secret from her - possibly because the two of them had been fighting so much at the time. And while she had never really approved of any of her sister's choices, with me there had been little protest. Just be careful. That was all Smita had said. Maybe it was a feeling. Despite her realistic streak, Smita still believed all things happened for a reason.

It felt like ages since I had told this story. I had forgotten how beautiful a story it was. And the fact that I had come to know Puji in a completely different way didn't diminish that one bit. 

I filled in as many blanks as I could, especially about Amy. She was an important part of the story. And with her birthday looming she had been on my mind a lot. I still worried for her happiness. I had put her through hell, even when trying my best to be honest. I had lied to her. I had fallen off the map emotionally and pulled the rug out from under a life we had been building up for so many years. And then I had given her no choice but to move on. I knew she would too. Maybe she already was. It was hurting less to think so. I felt free to speak about all this in front of Smita. I felt free. It was a feeling more powerful than any guilt or homesickness. All I felt that night was intense love for all concerned.

Puji and I shared storytelling duties and quietly smiled at each other every now and then. It might have been the nicest conversation the three of us had had together.

I think Puji and I had needed to hear the story as much as her sister had. Maybe we had lost track of just how incredible ours was. Smita smoked, listened and asked many questions. Was she comparing my story to her own? I knew she understood that somewhere along the line I had fallen out of love with Amy. Maybe the two of us had grown too comfortable together. And us being best friends had just made it all the more heart wrenching to say goodbye. I thought these were the kind of things only people who had lived through long-term relationships could truly understand. But then that was only half of the story. Smita also had to know that the only reason things had worked out between Puji and I was because we both wanted it to. God or fate alone would not have been enough. 

She told me how the Buddhists believed that any person incapable of learning from their mistakes in one life would be destined to repeat them in the next life. Those who harmed you would reappear in different forms. Even from a non-religious angle this made perfect sense to me. He who doesn't learn from history is doomed to repeat it. I knew in my heart that Smita would heal as she needed to. Just as Amy would. And as for Puji and I, these moments made our own insecurities seem inconsequential. It was exactly the kind of night we all needed to have. And I hoped there would be many more like this before we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways.

movie magic

I can't think of a better way to spend a cold Thursday night than to stumble upon one of your all-time favourite films on TV.

It's hard to pinpoint just what it is about Big Fish that gets me every time. Not sure if it's the fantastical fairytale side of it or the more heart wrenching story of father and son. Or the way Tim Burton is able to burn these magnificent scenes into your brain. (Yes, even a brain as elusive as my own) Like the impossibly green grass and draping lights that make up the town square of Spectre, with all the shoes of past visitors just dangling from the electrical lines. It's almost like you've walked into that same town and met the love of your life in your own dreams - except he was smart enough to jot down every detail the second he woke up from his.

This movie was huge for Jules and I when we were writing Uptown VineRise. As the album's own story was coming to life, films like this reminded us that we really were onto something bigger than just the two of us. Tonight, I let those same tears well up for what felt like forever as the son recounted his father's last tale, its beautiful and timeless lesson unchanged:

Your life is only as magical as you choose to live and tell it.

it's a small world. and getting smaller.

I'm never lonely.

Music, the characters in my books, my thoughts are my constant friends.

I love the dawn. And pine trees & clear blue skies.

I hate what capitalism has become. I feel like a corporate slave.

I studied journalism. I learned about business on the job.

I wanna fight for all the unfree people in the world.

Childhood was so simple. 

There's so much to see, so many people to meet, so much to know.

Each one of us is a child of the stars.

forever by your bedside

I don't think I was ever so relieved to get to the hospital to visit my grandmother.

I'll explain. I'm no fan of hospitals but I was just coming from a funeral home. I don't remember ever meeting Anthony. He was just 23-years-old. Died of a mysterious heart attack - not that the cause really matters. His mother was catatonic and inconsolable, denying the fact with a numbing repetition that made it impossible to focus on anything else. I watched her call out her father's name in a similar manner two years ago, the last time I saw this side of the family all together. This was a whole other world of hurt.

Then more bad news struck even closer to home. I found out my first cousin tried to commit suicide this weekend. Ingested too many pills with alcohol and then called the ambulance himself. My brain would not compute the reality - even if it had been quietly preparing for this very news for years.

So this is why I felt a strange sort of calm as I made my way through the familiar emergency room at the Jewish, straight to the elevator and up to the sixth floor. I even let myself get lost for a little bit - enough to find a decent coffee, anyhow.

When I finally did find my grandmother, she was just sitting next to her bed finishing off her dinner. Her hair was combed and golden and her face flush with life and colour. I knew it would be just me and her tonight and that kind of put my mind at ease. I was looking forward to just concentrating on her without getting distracted by background conversation - which is unfortunately easier to do with someone who has a tendency to ramble and repeat herself while storytelling.

I'm always relieved to know she still recognizes me and generally knows what's going on in my life. It makes me feel special even though that's probably stupid. I know even those details are getting hazy. (She asked me if it was still snowing outside, then gently brushed off the question) But then she kind of assured me as much when making reference to the old woman across the hall, who asked me to open her pudding cup and then couldn't even remember where her bed was or whether or not she was even in the right room.

"At least you still remember me," I joked in my broken Italian.
"Yes, I always remember you," she replied.

And then we got talking. We started with the funeral and she almost immediately wanted to change the subject. Then she told me how her mother never really recovered from losing her only son Angelo at 12 years old - the fact that she still had six daughters to raise offering little consolation. My grandmother told me the day her mother died, she stood by her bedside and heard her dead brother's name cross her lips as she reached for her light and slipped away for good.

Then she started telling me about my grandfather, who died before I was a teenager. I never heard her say much about him aside from pointing out he couldn't even make himself toast or boil an egg when push came to shove. Nothing like his brother, anyway. But as we were talking about functional and dysfunctional relationships she told me how the only times they really fought was when he would disappear for nights at a time playing cards. She somehow always managed to track him down (with God's help, of course) and finally got him to admit that cards were the one vice he could not control. In her persistent way, I think it was more important for my grandmother to be acknowledged for raising her four kids alone, for slaving over her sowing machine at all hours of the day and night and for never having to ask her husband for a cent. She was always a proud woman, though maybe too wise to believe she could change the man she was with.

She was repeating herself quite a bit but I was loving every minute of it. I kept thinking that I needed to get home to get this all down. Because this magical conversation - which was somehow everything I needed to be hearing right now - could not be lost or smudged to my poor memory.

And then she said something that blew my mind and nearly broke my heart.

She told me that even if I didn't think her words were important tonight, that I would wake up one day and realize they were. Then she took her right index finger to her right temple, her blue eyes wide and ablaze, and predicted that I would remember everything she said tonight because my brain could not afford to let it go. Maybe the pointless details, but not this. And she promised me I would even remember sitting on the hospital bed in this particular hospital room - the way she still remembered things her mother had told her with perfect clarity - when she was dead and gone.

And then she started to tear up, the way she always does. Releasing the unspoken emotion for the both of us. And she asked me for a glass of water and I gently massaged her arm and smiled.

And did my best to capture every last detail of that beautiful moment.

there ain't no END quite like it

I always get these crazy feelings when I finish a really good book. And it seems all the books have been really good lately. This time, it was a wave of goosebumps that started in my arms and shot through my entire body as I got through the dying pages of It. Goosebumps and shivers. And why not? I feel like I can just tell when an author has poured every last piece of himself into a novel. One thousand eighty nine pages of his darkest fears and deepest desires. The plot itself is almost meaningless at this point. You're simply all in because you know he's all in. And much like the story, I felt like I was revisiting a part of my own childhood by re-reading this book. Reading it as an adult for what seemed like the first time. (Ah, memory. You never fail me) And there was one line about how it is also good to be grownup and able to consider the mystery of childhood on the very last page that sent a chill that felt like a tear drop from somewhere way, way deep inside me.

i can feel death. can see it`s beady eyes

Radiohead always makes me cry. It's just the tears themselves that change.

The first time I heard Thom Yorke sing the words "now that you found it, it's gone" was four concerts and what seems like a lifetime ago. I barely even knew the song. I didn't understand pain the way I do now.

So when the opening chords of Pyramid Song blanketed the Bell Centre last night, I just sat on the edge of my seat with my head in my hands. I closed my eyes and shut out the lights, the crowd, the screens. Just me and that voice. I knew what was coming. And I just let them come. The desperate, lonely tears. The ones that you'd rather not shed because they come without warning. This is the one song I always wish I could have written. Like he took the words right out of my heart.

All my lovers were there with me
All my past and future
And we all went to heaven in a little row boat
There was nothing to fear, nothing to doubt

I thought about Jules and I thought about Tigger and Amy and my brother and my parents and what it must feel like to die alone (because we all die alone) only to have everyone that's ever meant anything to you magically waiting there on the other side, sooner or later, ready to forgive and be forgiven and tell you that it really was all a bad dream. That people never really grow apart and go their separate ways. That what felt like life was just some sort of dry run without real consequence. That there really is a happy ending.

Those would be some tears of joy, I'd cry. Some tears of joy.

staggered, in the vineyard

The last couple of weeks have taken on quite a blurry quality.
Not much is standing out right now.
I have been navigating from backyard to building, through rain and shine and at all hours of the week.
Hacking through weeds. Digging up asphalt. Shovelling and then raking and then dumping and then hauling and then filling and then backfilling that same mountain of screening in and out of various holes; and into and out of a grumpy but otherwise willing Franco.
And I've been doing it all with a peaceful calm. For the most part.
Start in the morning, skip lunch and do it until its done. And even though it's never done, sooner or later you turn around and realize you've gotten somewhere and created something beautiful. Another something to look at. Another somewhere to be.
I got a really nice feeling when my brother and I picked out that perfect little Japanese Ivory Silk tree - just realizing that I might be lucky enough to watch it grow for the next twenty five years. It was almost the same feeling I got the night before when the three of us were out in the backyard, finally planting the garden by the portable spotlight. Like we were the coolest kids on the block.

mayday, i can`t explain

I'm always going to have a soft spot for May Day.

Let's put the plight of the international workers and all the student protests and the death of Bin Laden aside for a second. Six years ago to the day, my brother Mark and I opened the first side of il Terzo Piano. It was our first jam space. Well, the first jam space we built ourselves - and a first of many hard lessons in construction, cost over-runs, sound leakage and nation building.

But when it opened, it became the coolest spot in my universe. All turquoise blue and sunburst orange. There was Vox Populi and D Open D in Room 1, Broken Palace in Room 2, odd couple Nick and Jonathan in a windowless Room 4 and Kamikaze in the deluxe suite. Humble beginnings, but with so much promise. Like Balzac had been at one time. And it didn't take much for the place to catch fire. In the next three years, it became the place to be. It was the place to spend your Tuesday mornings and your Sunday nights. It was the place I would run to from my parent's during the summer and the perfect place to have a snowball fight on a March night. It was always Franco's last stop after tour - and just a short drive to the quarry, if need be. We walked its stinky streets and admired the giant reservoirs from the roof in states few people would ever understand. We poured bending guitars into the hallways and shared our most intimate words on her cold, hard floors. The vibe was almost always positive, the pad parties were epic and those of us dedicated to the real cause all got to create some special music there. For me, the place peaked with Uptown VineRise, still months and months after our final pad party in the back section and before things went really sour with the landlords. And the band. But every musician will have their own story; their own beginning and ends.

And even in those last two years, when everything was broken and cold hard reality crept into those magical hallways; when the early wounds were torn open, the salt poured and the place left to slowly rot from the inside, I always found a good reason to go back. It wasn't always easy. But it was always necessary. Because that place was ours until the day it wasn't.

In my head, it'll always be all shiny and new.

the golden touch

my little room is as beautiful as its ever been. amy`s got such a way. i left her a new shiny red desk in a pile of scattered jackets and furniture and she turned it into home; a multi-coloured laboratory lounge kind of home. but it`s mine and i love it. this was confirmed when i came to down from Cleinfeld`s and caught a glimpse of the room again. i almost knew i was going to find Pepe asleep on the chaise, but i  still got all giddy when i saw him. we had one of those special moments and i called in Amy to witness it and thought about Tigger at the same time. and i felt the best kind of tears stir just enough. and i realized that what i really love about this room is that it`s a window into the past. all our pasts. this is where time can slow down. maybe even bend in a couple of new directions.

good Friday

We never did make it to Paraiso. But we sure as hell came close.

Now I'm by no means a religious man, but I can read the cosmic signs. Good Friday in Costa Rica, with small-town processions following pall bearers carrying Jesus to his symbolic burrial. And there we were, driving back up into the clouds after dark looking for Paradise - the small town of Orosi, to be exact, whose thermal baths had eluded us all trip. It was supposed to be the last stop before San Jose, but when we came upon that last dirt road still 20 kilometres or so out, it was decided that enough was enough. We had finally run out of time. And I was not going to tempt fate on this night.

Not that the Carribean did not provide its own glimpse into heaven. This morning we woke up to the first real clear day in Puerto Viejo. It was impossibly hot and a national holiday, so everyone was at the beach. We went back to the roughest section and got beat up by the waves as surfers avoided us. I don't think I ever had that much exhausting fun in the ocean before.

And then there were the monkeys from the day before. Those famous white-faced monkeys from our last trip. They approached us rather calmly and photogenic, but got ultra aggressive when they saw our plastic bags. They hissed, showed their teeth and started chasing everyone in sight. One German girl almost lost the t-shirt and napsack she had left by the beach. Some excellent pick pockets, these monkeys. Lesson learned. The next time we came across them, I was ready with a stick. I smashed it on the ground and yelled back. He backed off, confused at my challenge. The bigger monkey had apparently earned a little rainforest respect.

But there was something about that Cahuita National Park that was so perfectly beautiful in its own, untouched way. Like every last uprooted cocunut tree laying submerged in the water had been purposely placed there to have its picture taken.

And all I could do was obey. And snap away.

 

i always go to sea as a sailor

I hear it's snowing back home. I will try no to rub this in.

We left El Valle (and Don Pepe and his parrot Ricky; and the howling winds; and all the stray dogs that wake you up in the dead of night and all the roosters that start their shift at 4:30 in the morning) and headed for the beach. Plans had been yesterday after the zoo and before another high brow supper in a lavish secluded Villa with a courtyard pool and Enya on eternal drone. I still wish I would have gone with the hamburger and the not the Tortellini. I blame Amy for clouding my otherwise impeccable meal judgment.

We were up at seven (again) but didn't actually get to Playa del Palmar until noon. I think I have a good idea why the locals always exaggerate traveling time - and it has little to do with distance. Life just moves slow here. No use trying to charge into the passing lane.

But what an absolutely beautiful day to be at the beach.
Not even seven clouds in the whole sky.
Alright, I'm done.

Seriously though, It's funny how productive you can feel while doing absolutely nothing when you're near the ocean. Applying sun tan lotion, reading, running bear foot - real life and death stuff here. I'm kind of happy I brought Moby-Dick after all. It suddenly makes sense. And speaking of a sea misadventure, I got my first jellyfish bite (sting) in forever after not even ten minutes in the water. I cursed the fucker for another five after that and then got over it. The ten of us on this beach are now trying to decide if we've got some kind of epidemic on hand. High tide left tons of them stranded on shore like so many squirmy landmines. The Germans walked the shore but apparently decided against going in.

I kicked sand on one, made my peace and went back in the water.

we arrive. alive

Sitting here on the eleventh floor balcony of the Central Park Hotel Casino and Spa, I can finally just breathe in the sticky night air and enjoy a lucid moment in Panama City.

I'm amazed we even found the hotel at all. It's not as if they put up a sign on the building or anything. Not to mention there are no street names or addresses in this town. And nobody speaks English. Nobody. Thank God for some patient individuals and my broken Italian. What else are two exhausted individuals in a rental Hyundai Tucson to do?

All in all, a pretty smooth start. It must be said.

Perhaps the 6:15 flight out of Montreal was a little ambitious. I'm still not even sure why we bothered going to bed for those two hours. But both flights went super smooth and Amy was relatively relaxed about the whole thing. She devoured her smut celebrity mags and I forced myself to watch In Time - a terrible piece of film making with predictable dialogue delivered by a one Mr. Timberlake. Sadly, there wasn't more sleep to be had. After landing in Miami, we blew $200 on sunglasses at Duty Free. I wore mine halfway through the next flight and stared at the royal blue and turquoise ridges of a Caribbean desert punctured only by dashes of white from all the boats. Turbulence was negligible until after we touched down in Panama. Despite having our car rental price "guaranteed" online, we still had to dish out extra for third party liability. House rules - the calculations scribbled in pencil on the contract. The road into town was lined with slums, abandoned cars and piles of garbage; reminded me more of Nairobi than Costa Rica.

But the room at this hotel almost made up for all those hours. All windows, with views so crisp it made me dizzy. From where I'm sitting now I could see one guy still swimming laps in the empty pool below. If I could only tell you how long it took us to locate that pool.

After this coffee, I'm going to attempt to wake up Amy and continue this crazy marathon. Maybe hit the Golden Lion Casino downstairs.

Get lucky and move into the Penthouse suite, another nine floor above.

the shiny red guitar pick

what was it that i was desperately searching for all of last night? i think it was a shiny red guitar pick. the first time i came across it, i consumed it without any second thought, the way Mario consumes a mushroom that is casually sliding toward him. suddenly i felt different. invincible? omnipotent? i really can't say. all i remember is that i would stare into the mirror and see myself turning yellow. and after the yellow there was some slight shape-shifting. and after that this beautiful, calming feeling. a feeling that apparently had me frantically searching for another shiny red guitar pick for the rest of the night. i found many different red picks in many different places that looked just like it. somehow i knew they were fakes. but when i finally found another real one just lying there under some junk on the table, i grabbed it and locked myself in the bathroom of the house i grew up in. i ate it, stared into the mirror and waited. but i never got that feeling back.