Fools Rush In

The surf is charging, 10'+ and clean. It keeps me up all night, and before dawn I wax and rewax my board, waiting for enough sun to light my way down to the beach. A friend joins me on the short walk, helpfully armed with a video camera and ready to capture the swell of the season. Past the first beach, a lovely, light offshore blowing spray off the backs of the waves, low tide incoming slowly, perfect for my favorite break. Macaws squawk and drop almond shells from high above as a troop of colorados chitter and chomp on sweet orange jobo fruit. The final push along a narrow trail, watching out for the sharp spined plants jabbing in from both sides, checking that the rustling in the underbrush is the usual anole or skink hunting bugs and not some more worrisome reptile. A slow scramble over the small tree that fell in the night, careful not to ding the board, my 6'6" Christensen "Charger," lovingly crafted for a day like this.

The path opens to the playa. The waves are as I dreamed, hollow and double overhead. Two guys beat me there, and one of them drops into a monster that shacks him into one of the cleanest tubes I can remember seeing here. It’s like a surf magazine brought to life.

Eyes locked on my target, I surge forward, maybe 100 steps from the water, about to leap from the sandy path to the beach.

At which point, I kick the shit out of my left foot and toes on a hefty rock, half submerged at the mouth of the path.

There’s the usual, one second delay as the pain travels from point of contact to point of consciousness and recognition. The usual doubling up into standing fetal position, shaking lightly, trying to compress my body back into itself, some atavistic way of coping with all those fiery neurons sending their dread signals to my core. Hopping on the good foot, sort of the equivalent of blowing on a burn, some other mechanism to dilute the insoluble.

Finally, looking at it, to see what your mind already knows. The blood, the smashed nails, the joint twisted askew. The middle toe’s phalanx is dislocated, of course, blood bubbling from below the eponychium (cuticle); the big toe’s nail plate is split down to the lunula, and the hyponychium is pulled back like a burst blister. It’s a fucking mess.

For about fifteen minutes I can’t do much more than sob softly to myself. My friend has the decency to say nothing, although in retrospect she should have filmed it for later laughs. I know I have to set the toe, but grabbing it and pulling it is a start and stop affair. Grab, gingerly, but no pull. Deep breath. Do it. There’s a mild hope it will offer some panacea, but it doesn’t. It hurts more, and honestly I don’t know if I did it correctly, but at least it looks straighter than before. I huddle there again, cursing the gods, or at least my clumsy haste. After the initial, unbearable rush, the pain settles into simple agony. I look again at the waves; they’re getting better every second as the tide fills in. My window is now.

I gather up my board and rash guard that I had dropped immediately after impact, check quickly for any further damages and find none, no insult to injury. Must be a sign. Despite initial appearances to the contrary, I announce my intention: I’m paddling out regardless. Again, my friend says nothing, just watches and readies the camera as I limp to the water’s edge, study the horizon for a lull in the sets, and leap into the roiling surf.

It doesn’t feel any better in the water, but the paddle allows me to focus on other things, like the set I hadn’t seen trying to push me into the rocks that come into play anytime the surf is above 6’. There’s that familiar moment when adrenaline treats time as its bitch, and bends it to the task at hand. The body gives you the chance to survive; you just can’t miss a step. Duck diving, holding the board like a lover as the wave tries to tear it away, pushing through to the other side.

Once in the lineup, I show the guys my foot, like a newly acquired excuse for any kookery in the session. Chuckles all around, plus some reservations about me chumming the water with all that blood. Not to worry, I only want to get one or two, and then I’ll go in for some ice and treatment. A solid set comes into view, lighting up the indicator rocks on the point, prompting the usual realignment of the pack, the jockeying for position. I select the third wave, out of deference to the two guys there before me, and also because I rarely take the first waves in a heavy set, given that if I screw up on the drop or anywhere outside of where I’d like to end my ride, I’ll have several more waves waiting to pound me back into the impact zone. No bueno.

In the instant of catching the wave, there’s no pain, no distraction from the mission, which is dead simple: make the drop. Since I’m a regular footed surfer, my right foot is my back foot, and after I negotiate the plummet from crest to trough, I lean on it to make the bottom turn which sets up the ride. The fins carve the surface and set my line. Now the front foot, the wounded one, must work. It can’t. Can’t press on it hard enough to snap the nose back to the desired trajectory, in this case down. I’m pitched, thrown out from the lip and back onto the flats, and then hammered. Down, down, to the bottom, resisting the natural urge to fight my way back up. You just have to chill. Couldn’t move the mountain of water on top anyway, and the water, turbulent and aerated as the wave cycles past, lends no purchase to the fine art of surfacing. Don’t fight, don’t waste energy. Let go, lie limp and be shaken until it releases, like some dog with a chew toy who eventually gets bored and drops it. The pressure will ease eventually, and hopefully you’ll have enough air inside to get back up to the surface, to gulp a fresh breath and locate the board now dragging you shoreward along the wave train (appropriately known as “tombstoning”) into further hardship. Pull it back to you, and reposition quickly for the next wave that, inevitably, is just about to smash on your head.

Even though I know now what will happen, I paddle out to do it again. This time I take a more modest route, not trying to go top to bottom on the wave, but wanting just to outrace the section and then cruise. It’s still a thrill, and allows me to avoid the ignominy of paddling in when there’s a wave to surf instead. It wants to take me to the rocks, and, accepting defeat, I turn to the beach instead of going up and over the back for more punishment. The last gasp of the wave explodes behind me and I drop to my stomach, buoyed by the foam and force to the beach. It’s a tricky exit, a steeply angled slope that has a deep trench right at the shorebreak. The wave reforms and wants to drive you into the sand or suck you back out to sea. Time it right, get tossed onto the actual beach, and you’ve still got problems as ostrich egg sized rocks pin ball around, cracking ankles and shins. Or in this case, my toes again.

I stagger up the beach, my suffering limned in the camera. There will be no more surf today, or the next. Or for a week or so after. I’ll be limping, and the change to my gait will set off a cascade of tendon and muscle ailments from ankle to hip. All over a busted toe or two, breaks that you can’t do a thing about except grin and bear. Hardly a warrior’s injury. Instead, another lesson in patience. Keep the ultimate goal in mind, but keep your eyes on the path.

The Tooth of the Matter

I always thought I had pretty good teeth. As a little kid, I never had cavities. I brushed, flossed, and didn’t eat sweets (I’m all about salt, not sugar). What a shock, then, when I went in one day as a 13 year old and was told I had eight cavities consuming my molars. My dentist, Dr. Otis Beck, Sr. was on his last legs, literally tottering into the room, filling what were probably the last fillings he ever filled with the leading technology of the time, the amalgam filling. I was bummed, but, I also thought it was sort of cool, a bunch of silver in my mouth (I actually thought they were real silver, and thus making my teeth, and me, more valuable), protosuburban gangsta style, and never really thought about them again. I never needed braces, and my wisdom teeth came in fine, so I missed out on those rites of passage with a mixture of pride and jealousy (if you didn’t have braces, they seemed a lot cooler than if you did have them). When I go to a new dentist, they always marvel at their form and my full complement of 32, an unusual sight in a world in which appendixes, adenoids, tonsils, and wisdom teeth are plucked from us at the first sign of trouble.

In my late twenties, I started having some troubling health issues. Specifically, I was twitching. You know the type of twitch you may get under your eye, or on your lip, just a bit of a pulsing sensation? Like that, only everywhere. It would hit random places on my body--behind my knee, on my shoulder, bicep, chin, anywhere. It traveled. And it was visible; I could say, hey, look at my quadricep, and the muscle would be contracting markedly. A nice party trick, but less cool if you can’t control it and don’t know why it’s happening. Eventually, I went to doctors of the Western variety. They poked and prodded, and even stuck me with amplified needles, searching for sounds, and further, for noise between the pulses, which could indicate something truly awful, like MS. After a few weeks of this, they came back with a diagnosis: “Benign Irregular Fasciculation.” Translated, that’s, Harmless Random Twitching. Seriously? I went through all that for them to tell me, in doctor jargon, the same thing I had told them? The salient distinction, of course, was that I didn’t think it was benign. You don’t twitch without a reason, but since it didn’t fit in any of their boxes of illness, it was benign, obviously.

I turned to the East. Dr. Fu Zhang stuck me some more, acupuncture of the large needle variety, with electric diodes attached, to further release my muscles. I can’t say it helped, but he at least offered an idea: my liver was fucked up. “But I’m not drinking,” I said. He nodded and said, basically, that the liver can be fucked up from plenty of things other than drinking. He blamed stress, and told me to think about changing jobs. At the time I was involved with a broker dealer affair, sort of my own boiler room, and it was easily the most stressful thing I’d ever dealt with. Curiously, when I was in Costa Rica, before I started my many projects there, I didn’t twitch. Or, I didn’t twitch as much. So stress seemed a reasonable diagnosis. He suggested I get some teas to help calm me down.

The greatest herb store in NYC was just around the corner from my apartment, Angelica’s Herbs on 9th and 1st Ave (sadly, now gone or relocated, I don’t know which). Angelica herself was this very serious, taciturn woman who doled out her herbs with a modicum of communication and patience for any questions. Just take the tea like I told you, and don’t call me in the morning. Fine. Please give me something to relax. She did, and warned that it might also make me depressed, so she gave me another tea to help with that. A few weeks of this and I was still twitching, although a bit less. I came back to Angelica and she offered to do a health consultation for $50. Now, since Angelica looked like 40 year old, but was actually 107 and wrinkle free, I figured she knew some secrets. Let’s do this.

She took me into the back room and stared into my eyes until I became uncomfortable. Then she looked inside my mouth. That was it. She delivered her diagnosis: “You are not like most of the people who come to see me. You are very strong, great vitality. The only problem is inside your mouth. You have to get the mercury out of your teeth.” Seriously? Mercury? What are you talking about? “Your fillings. They are filled with mercury.” I thanked her politely and left thinking she was a complete kook. Surely my teeth were fine and mercury free.

Luckily, the internet had been invented by then, so I did some searching. Lo and behold, type in “mercury amalgam filling” and everything that jumps up speaks of toxicity. I wasn’t necessarily sold on the conspiracy theories surrounding it, but I did take note of the fact that they’d been banned in Norway and other sensible societies. Maybe there was something to it. As I looked further I could feel my teeth sweating, these little fillings slowly leaching toxic Hg into my body, setting me up for horrible diseases which would make the twitching seem like tickling.

I had to get the bastards out of there.

The dentist she recommended was in some UWS apt that doubled as a medical facility. The first thing Dr. Daniel Sanders did after checking in my mouth and telling me that my fillings were well past their life span, was inform me that the only reason he was removing them was because of that fact, and not because of some alleged mercury concern. In fact, if we didn’t agree on that, he couldn’t do the work. Why? Well, because the ADA would disbar his ass if he went around promulgating such nonsense. I swear he winked when he explained this. Fine, I get it. The ADA doesn’t want actual dentists confirming the conspiracy theorist accusations for fear of massive lawsuits, which pretty much proves the conspiracy. I was pissed, but I agreed. Just get them out. He smiled, and got to work.

Removal is a chore. You have to vacuum up the mercury as you take it out, or else you’ll ingest it and then you’ve got an even bigger problem. This is uncomfortable, to say the least, choking on tubes while a guy takes a hammer and chisel to your mouth. Then, you have to see what’s actually going on under there. In my case, the fissures in the old fillings had allowed bacteria to do its thing, which meant more cavities. Decay all over the place. What I assumed would be a relatively simple affair turned into 3 months of twice weekly appointments, in which he cleaned out the decay, made impressions, and finally installed the new crowns. When he asked what material I wanted, I didn’t hesitate, I went for gold. Sure, porcelain looked more like teeth, but gold lasts damn near forever, 50 years or more. I was never going through this hell again.

Dr. Sanders did good work, or so I thought. He had great jewelers and they carved sweet crowns that almost justified the astronomical price for that summer of pain. I even read a few chapters of his self-published book, a mystery novel centered on the Torah. Let’s just say it wasn’t as good as Chaim Potok’s “The Chosen.” But whatever, I liked his style. He even relented when I went gold with one of my more forward facing molars, giving my smile considerably more of a gangsta lean. Fuck it, I had a hip hop label on the side, why not?

For a time, I enjoyed my fillings. My teeth didn’t hurt anymore (a low grade pain I had gotten used to, apparently), and my twitching was becoming less and less pronounced. Then one day, as I was flossing assiduously to protect my new grill, a filling popped out. Luckily, I didn’t swallow it, and spit it out into my hand. They’re a lot heavier than they look, gleaming on the top side and a dull grey on the bottom. And not much good in your hand.

I called Sanders but he had split town. Gone to Israel, presumably to write more mysteries. His replacement, Dr. Scholnick, was an affable guy, a wine lover and curious about finding some natural cleaning products in the jungles of Costa. He gave my teeth the once over and declared that Sanders had fucked up royally. “Yeah, these are great fillings, but the walls of your teeth are too thin to support them. The fillings don’t have enough purchase. He did inlays and he should have done onlays. This is going to keep happening.” Terrific. Scholnick had designs on doing new work then and there, but I opted for a wait and see approach. Just stick it back in. Oh, and please use some non toxic adhesive. Not that they make that, but, you know, try and find some. He did, and I returned to see him, as predicted, to get the fugitive fillings put back in. Finally, after about 10 visits at $300 a pop, he brought me into the adjacent room to show me his new toy. “This baby makes a crown on the spot. It’s all computers and lasers! It’s great!” He had this little box which could take a die sized piece of porcelain polymer and carve it into a computer matched fitting in about an hour. Price? $1500. Two visits later, I capitulated. Anything to stop this bullshit. Computers verified the topography of my tooth and sent the data to the machine, which churned out my new crown in the promised hour. He popped it in, sanded it to a satisfactory bite tolerance and sent me on my way. It sure seems solid, and you can’t even tell that it’s fake, since he matched the color to my other chompers. Score one for technology.

All well and good. Unfortunately, I’m not in NYC much these days, and I still floss. The other day, I popped out another one. Given that I wasn’t going to be around a US dentist for another few months, I had to go to town, to the one dentist there. Rolando. I know him from the surf, charging it on the bigger days with his tall frame and surprisingly smooth style. I also watched him invite a much bigger guy to the beach after a disagreement. The guy declined. Apparently Rolando is on some kung fu shit and can fuck you up quickly. My kind of dentist.

He did nice work, and by nice I mean he ground the hell out of my teeth and the filling for an hour, cleaning out more decay, before finally deciding the two could get back together again. He agreed the fillings were beautifully useless, but he didn’t have a laser box in the next room, his bed was there instead. He numbed me from my jaw to my chest and sealed me back up with a solid dose of cement. I didn’t bother asking for something non toxic. I’m far less healthy now, and frankly, I just want the shit to stay in. I don’t twitch much anymore. The yoga helps. When I do yoga. When I don’t, and the stress mounts as it always does, a little twitch resurfaces, under my eye or in my forearm. I breathe. I think happy thoughts. I think of the Man Upstairs, and that he’s tapping me lightly, telling me to ease up, calm down, and take a closer look at what I’m into that could be the root of this. I try not to ignore him.

I try to smile.

Victor, Victorious

To give a product my stamp of approval, it needs to have three things: Simplicity of form, efficiency in function, and a kick ass logo. The Victor rat trap embodies these criteria perfectly. It's made from simple materials--a small footprint of light wood with a neat metal loop bent back over a coil, and fixed into place by a thin bar positioned delicately against the bait holder. The lightest touch of the bait, and the trap springs into action with lethal efficacy. In fact, if the Victor has a flaw, it's that setting the trap is a highly treacherous affair, which you're aware of if you've ever had the need to play with one. One false move and you've broken your finger and forgotten all about the rat you were trying to kill. But, I can't dock it points just because it has a steep learning curve; so do motorcycles, guns, and alcohol, among other things.

Form, check. Function, check. Logo? Triple check. Bloody brilliant. A blocky, capital "V" which cleverly incorporates the silhouette of a cute little rat's head inside it; they even put in two little dots for eyes and cut outs for ears so you wouldn't miss it. Naturally, the head looks toward the bottom, or inside, of the letter; the bottom of the V defines the rat's nose, much as, in real life, the rat looks to the inside of the trap, nosing his way toward doom. Finally, the V is, of course, in red, symbolizing the blood of the rat about to be spilled, and the grim raison d'être of this killing machine.

Despite all these wonderful attributes, many folks with vermin issues choose not to go with the Victor. I suspect the degree of difficulty in setting the trap is the main impediment, but then again, some people just don't want to be bothered with the issue at all. They call an exterminator, who usually puts out some poison and then comes back later when the client complains of an awful smell emanating from the walls where the rat, after eating the poison, has gone off to die. If that wasn't bad enough, since vermin live amongst us, eating our food, poison is obviously a poor choice, unless you're a fan of adding toxins to your quarters. I am not. Glue traps are an option, because they're easy to set and your dog (usually) won't eat them and die. They have a huge drawback, however: when you wake up in the morning to find Mr. Rat stuck in place, you still have to kill him. This is not an easy proposition. Rats, at least the ones in your house, are not the big, evil looking guys you see trundling through trash bins and scurrying into city sewers. They're actually pretty damn cute. So now you have to deliver a death blow to something that your kid might want to keep as a pet. No bueno.

Here in the jungle, rats aren't really much of an issue, as the hawks, snakes, and countless other predators keep them in check. But recently, one enterprising little bastard found his way into my kitchen, and availed himself nightly to the mounds of fruits and vegetables we keep on the counters. Find a few delicious avocados, loaves of bread, juicy tomatoes and other glorious foodstuffs nibbled on every morning, and thoughts of murder percolate rapidly. We'd even seen the little guy during the day, when he was bold enough to venture out for brunch, but chasing him down proved impossible. He was basically taunting us. I put up with this for a week or so, and then discovered he was also gnawing on the insides of my cabinets and drawers, doing permanent damage. Time to bring out the big guns.

It took 3 days. He didn't like potato scented with coconut oil as much as anything else in range, and apparently Gouda wasn't on the menu as well. But a little bit of actual coconut? Irresistible.

You can't argue with the results. Beautiful. The loser is the rat, and the victor is us.

"Do the Right Thing, I Guess..."

I don’t know what I was thinking. Must have been the rain. Whenever there was some sunshine, I picked a movie and told the DVR to get to it. What made me pick “Monster’s Ball,” I don’t know. It’s not a happy flick. I mean, it’s the kinda movie you see once, and then you don’t see it again. Ever. Who wants to go through that twice? A bunch of Jackson, MS crackers holding down the black people in their hood, Puff Daddy playing an artistic convict, Mos Def playing the righteous neighbor of a racist ass Billy Bob, poor Heath Ledger killing himself and foreshadowing future suicides, and Halle doing maybe the worst Southern accent ever, but winning an Academy Award for it. One imagines it was because she showed her tits and more without asking for a spare $500k, a la “Swordfish.” “Make me feel good!” she demands. Well, alright then. It’s still a top notch, albeit slightly demented, shot on the floor through a doorway sex scene, and you can’t watch it without feeling dirty. But it makes you feel good, too, don’t it?

So maybe that’s why I watched it again. Halle unbound. Billy Bob and the grey hairs in action. Two opposite points of the divide coming together. Pleasure from pain. But, along the way, I got the gist of greater themes, of sons following fathers, and rejecting them at a critical point, of the travails of aging and of a history we can’t escape, of the wanton need for a fuck (even if it’s a saggy, fake titted hooker bending over the nightstand), and the atavistic, visceral need for a good mechanic. Lord knows, I can empathize.

The whole movie was shot from some awkward angle. There’s sin, and people trying to put it right. Nothing is really in the frame, and we struggle together to find a focus. Yeah, it took too long for Billy Bob to tell his father to fuck right off, but he does, eventually. And to see that old bastard (Buck, rhymes with…) get his just desserts is thoroughly satisfying, no matter how long it takes. (“Hey Dad! You just screwed up my hot sex relationship/chance for love and a new beginning!” Old coot says: “Aww son, you just wanted to split the black oak! You’ll get over it.” Son says, “Fuck you! I’m sending you to the old folks home!”)

“You must love him very much,” says the black secretary at the home. (Yes, yes, terrible irony, the racist being cared for by the “porch monkeys” he hates.)

“No, I don’t,” says Billy Bob.

At the end, they sit on the porch, monkeying around with ice cream, the forbidden fruit that led to the fat son’s undoing (in a way) and the couple’s original meeting. Halle is cursed with the recent knowledge that her new guy helped kill her old guy, state sanctioned though it was. Everything in her looks ready to recoil, to take off into some uncertain future, but she stays as he talks of future expansion to his (and her) empire.. She eats that ice cream and looks heavenward with a sly smile. Maybe she’s numb. Maybe it’s the shock of it all. Or maybe Billy’s on point when he says,

“I think we’re going to be alright.”

Bye, Pop. I’m not bleeding for you anymore.

My Bloody Alarm Clock

Nothing says good morning like gouging your shin on the edge of the bed. My fault, I suppose, for thinking I could get some extra zzzs after the dogs woke me up. No snooze button on this alarm clock.

Retarded Signs

"So, like, if there isn't any toilet paper in the bathroom, don't get too upset. These people have bigger problems to worry about then your stupid ass."

I guess that explains the safety cone in the grass.

The Road to Recovery, Part II

It’s been pouring. The rainy season begun in earnest, thrashing us day and night, testing structure and will alike. The house leaks in new places. Out back, where a gentle spring used to ooze, a raging river now forms, complete with a waterfall. I consider making this a feature in the future, hollowing out a swimming hole below the precipice. But who wants to go swimming in the rain?

I need to go to the farm. Some people in from the World, looking at property, plying me with promises of filthy lucre. I never, ever, wanted to sell this place, but the last two years have beaten me about the head and face and I find myself making compromises all the time. Integrity gets put on the line, and I find myself wanting.

So despite the weather, or because of it, we’re off to the farm. They follow in a lesser vehicle, one not equipped with snorkel and appropriate tires. A few trees have fallen, but we creep past. Driving through a primary forest has its thrills, although now it has anxiety as well. The ditches are bloody with clay. Wind and rain whip against the Defender. We’re not far from the first test, a river without a bridge, one of several along the way, but this the deepest of the bunch. A steep hill leads down to the crossing, with a small house on the right. Figuring that the rain may increase, and not wanting to be stranded assuming we can’t get back through, I stop in and ask the cuidador, Miguel, if we can leave one vehicle there. He says no problem and suggests we use the lower entrance. The guests/clients/bullshit artists pull in while I stay poised just above the river. Looking pretty untenable, this crossing. Through the rain I see a figure wading through the river, clothes plastered wet, pants sagging in ultimate plumber crack mode.

Naturally, it’s my mechanic, Johnny.

Johnny, I say, can we cross? He shakes his head wearily.

“No, Señor...y...necesites hallarme del rio.” Pull what? I don’t see a car.

He points upstream. Apparently he tried a slightly different route.

I stiffen, because I know Johnny has just recently sunk my Defender in one of the rivers on the way to town, destroying the amp and most of the speakers, a charge he denied briefly and then copped to. Worse, somebody told me that he sunk it while pulling out other people, which might explain why my winch was looking a bit kinked. So, he was making money, using my truck, and at the same time cost me cash. It’s a testament to his skill as a mechanic that I didn’t immediately fire him. I’m kinda fucked without him, so I have to put up with some of this crap, although he agreed to pay for whatever damages he caused--even though I know I’ll never know the full extent of the damages or the truth of what really happened. People are liars, generally, and here it seems lying is a national pastime. The Gringo Tax is heavy.

Johnny, I say, tersely, which car, the white one (the Defender for the lodge)?

No, es Sherman.

Sherman being my boy Whiddy’s 1988 Toyota Landcruiser SUV, so named because of its tank like engine. Sherman, which he just brought down after getting it spit shined for the journey. Turns out he had a shitty mechanic as well, and it arrived here with exactly none of the work he paid for done. He’s already had to replace the carb, gas tank, radiator, and several other key items. He’s going to be thrilled to know his car is currently having a nice swim.

I tell the couple in the other car it’s off, we can’t cross. They are relieved and head back to town. I figure I have a 50-50 shot of seeing them the next day to try again. Definitely the worst time to show the place. “Hey, you want to buy my piece of paradise? Did I mention it was inaccessible half the time?” In truth, it’s rare that the rivers are so swollen, or that one has to wait more than an hour or two to cross. We just happen to have had 20” of rain in the last week, and that’s when they showed up. I doubt I’ll be able to convince them this is an extreme event.

I pull into the lower driveway/parking area/mud pit and ease towards the river. HOLY SHIT! Now, when he said he was stuck, I imagined he was stuck at the edge of the river, like he’d gone in, seen it was too deep, and then couldn’t back out. No. He’s actually pointed upstream, dead center of the river, water coming up to the windows. Whiddy’s girlfriend’s dog, a miniature Doberman/Chihuahua mix unfortunately named Sassy, is shivering on the front seat, like a passenger without a lifeboat, waiting to drown. I’ve got my iPhone and would really, really like to take a picture, but there’s no time and it’s pissing rain. The car will be a submarine in a few minutes.

I set the emergency brake on death grip and unspool the winch cable. I’m not getting too close, because the embankment is a muddy sluice of clay and water. Johnny has to swim out to attach the cable to the tow hook. He’s only got one tow hook, as it turns out, on the right side of the front bumper, which is less than ideal. Johnny gets back inside, water flooding the compartment as he does so. Amazingly, the engine is still running, even though the hood is almost under, and the rear is fully submerged. Smoke from the exhaust boils the water as he gives it full pedal to the floor gas and I start reeling him in. The Defender is gallant in resisting the pull towards the embankment/mud slide, and slowly the Toyota breaches the surface and approaches the safety of the river’s edge. But, now there’s a problem. We’re pulling it sideways, not up and out, and the rear tires aren’t getting any traction. The truck also isn’t equipped with posi-traction, which would allow it to transfer power to the non-slipping tires, so it’s turning into a mud bog mess that would make a Southerner grin in appreciation.

I stop winching, signal for Johnny, who is gunning the engine to the red line by now, to get out and reset. A bemused kid who has been watching the whole event makes himself useful with a shovel and starts digging out the rear and underbelly. We throw rocks, wood, branches, anything we can find under the right rear to give it purchase. Johnny is needlessly blaming the lack of tread on what I know to be very new tires. I’m thinking, really? The tread is to blame? How about you driving the truck into the fucking river? Where does that rank on the blame-o-meter? The edge of the river is slippery as hell, and naturally I bust my ass a few times, get muddy water inside my boots. I probably have a little ass crack showing as well, but Johnny’s is pure comedy, had I the time laugh, as he bends over and, I shit you not, tries to clean mud out of the tire treads with his fingers as the torrent rages down on us. He then decides it would be a great idea to tie off to the other side, but there’s no hook there. He loops the cable through the frame and attaches the hook to its own cable and looks at me with a smile like that’s a good idea. I veto it immediately because it will cut the cable the second we put pressure on it, but he has the temerity to argue his point for a half second more before my eyes suggest I’m going to throw him under the wheels for traction if he keeps talking. Instead, I thread the cable past a tree that’s big enough to angle the truck a bit when we start the hauling again, reattach to the original, legitimate tow point, and hope for the best.

I decide I’m too close to the river’s edge now that the truck is much closer than before, so I back up some more onto more level ground, spool out the cable another 30 feet, and we’re off and pulling again. The scary thing, of course, is that the cable might break and snap back and kill me, but there’s no cover to speak of except inside the car. The problem with that position is I can’t help guide the cable back onto the winch spool, which means it will start to bunch up and stall the whole mechanism. I know this because it’s happening. I have to get out and unspool, then guide it with my bare hands. This results in an immediate gouging of my palm. For good measure, a loop forms in the cable and I have to do the unspool, reel in thing again, this time with a little blood for lubrication. Maybe it will counteract the muddy grit that is slathered all over the line and is being wound into the core of my winch. I try not to dwell on the damage being done.

Johnny has his best Richard Petty impersonation going, gunning the engine again like a moonshiner outrunning the cops on some Tennessee mountain road, mud is flying out the back, little Sassy has a look of sheer terror on her face and at any moment I’m convinced my life will be ended by a cable which is visibly frayed. In a way, it’s kinda fun. Manly shit. Here we are, in the pure jungle experience, hauling trucks out of rivers, getting soaked, muddy, bloody and scared. It’s part of my job description, which may be written succinctly as “be prepared for anything.” Everybody who lives down here has to deal with stuff like this. You got a tree down in the road? Find a chainsaw or work at it with machetes. No public works dept. is going to come out and help. Hell, we build our own roads, police our own community, put out our own fires, set our own breaks. If we relied on some government assistance, we’d quite simply die waiting for it to show up. I mean, there may be a guy with a tow truck somewhere within 100 miles, but since there’s no phone service here, and no time if there were, I have to put on my tow truck driver hat. There’s just no other way to do it down here.

The trucks have played tug of war to a standstill. Johnny is signaling for me to get in the Defender and back up. I fear he’s right this time. Only, I’m going to have to do it blind, because even with the protection of the cab, I’m in the cable kill zone, so I’m keeping my head down. My dogs are in the back, strangely calm, and I’m worried for them as well. I ease off the e brake and clutch and press on the diesel. For a split second, I’m the one who is losing, and I’m going down the incline towards the Toyo and the head on collision that will wreck my vehicle and put Whiddy’s back in the drink. But some lucky arrangement of roots or grass or superior tire tread suddenly gives me the leverage I need, and we inch back up the hill, pulling Johnny along with us. One last stab of power on both ends, his and mine, and he’s out, water gushing from the doors. Truck, dog, and idiot savant mechanic saved. I smell the charred remains of my clutch and add that to the bill I’ll be giving Whiddy to give to Johnny.

I unhook and reel in. The hook falls off because somewhere in the excitement the cotter pin fell out, and now I have that to fix as well. Johnny is smiling like he did something commendable, and I’m thinking ahead to a warm shower. Of course, there won’t be a warm shower because there’s no solar, thus, no solar hot water. It will be cold. But it will be clean. And after all that mud and grime, cleanliness will be damn close to godliness. As will the bourbon I’ll be having when I’m all dry, a little toast to the git’er done hick in me, and to the pioneer lifestyle we live in our jungle, in our frontier town at the edge of something that looks, tastes, and feels suspiciously like freedom.

The Karma Chameleon

Karma, as they say, is a bitch. Usually this is said right after some eerily coincidental occurrence, such as the slumlord who eventually ends up homeless, or the player whose wife (who he really, really loved) leaves him for his (clearly not) best friend. When this same woman is left by the ex best friend for her (now) ex-best friend, well, that's karma too, apparently. These are but prosaic examples, but you get the idea. The Law of Karma is a constant: what you give is what you receive. Typically the Law is invoked on the negative side, because, let's face it, most of us are bad. Literature and the movies love Bad Karma, but Good Karma, frankly, doesn't really sell tickets. We all want to see the bastard get what he deserves, and what he deserves, ideally, is pretty painful. (This, of course, doesn't help our own karma.)

Of course, there are some loopholes in the Law. How many rich people are good and sweet? Damn few, that's how many. Life is filled with rich dicks who screw over countless people, have no shame, and still live long and happy lives. Perhaps they're secretly miserable, or their kids turn out to be junkies, but I'd call that a push, at best. And life is also filled with genuinely good people who work selflessly for others and then die of ass cancer at 42. Innocent children who haven't even had time to do any bad shit die in horrible ways, every day. This is explained by some as the influence of their past life, or, perversely, as a good thing--they are clearly in some Heaven right now, enjoying an endless parade of delicious milkshakes with God. Religion is rife with karmic teachings, in various guises (what is "The Golden Rule" other than the "Law of Karma" writ with consequences?), and as can be expected there are those who buy it hook, line, and sinker (the devout), those who struggle with the concept but grudgingly think it has merit (the agnostics), and those who reject it all as a bunch of malarkey and find rational explanations for every instance of perceived divine intervention (the atheists). Those who actually live by the Law, be they atheist, devout, or somewhere inbetween, are an exceedingly rare breed (the Saints), which may be why most of us are doomed to die of cancer in some form or another. There's a teleological lesson in here somewhere (not to mention an epidemiological study), but I'll leave that for finer minds.

My small, small point, is that we've all heard of karma, and feared its repercussions, while not necessarily embracing the positive flip side (remember if you're good...ah the hell with it...nobody's good). I remember walking back from the beach at night with some friends when one said, apropos of nothing as far as I can remember, "I *totally* believe in karma!" A nanosecond later, I stubbed the shit out of my toe. At that moment, it felt like a metaphorical poke in the eye from some Universal Body, not enough to kill me, of course, but enough to get my attention. Somebody with a capital S was watching, and in time, I'd be forced to pay for my deficit of love, compassion, humility, selflessness, etc.

In yogic teachings, karma is a particularly tricky beast, because it has looooong incubation period. You must do good things for ages before seeing positive results, and you may not see the negative results of your unenlightened behavior until way down the line. Which, presumably makes it even harsher if you've been an asshole for years, enjoyed success, and then have it stripped away from you right when you've given a ton of cash to some orphanage. WTF! you scream as the ex cleans out your cupboard. I've been good! Well, no, sorry, you haven't. I was once a pretty devout yogi, but I always struggled with that conceit, feeling it was a bit of a fudge, a handy separation of action from consequence that was used to cover up obvious examples of people getting away with evil deeds. No doubt my analysis needs work, as I'm sure there are subtleties I just don't understand, but I think I reflect the general sentiment that we all expect a shorter trajectory between cause and effect, sin and punishment. I will say that my life was a lot "better" when I was doing yoga daily, but I can also explain that easily in rational terms, rather than couching the whole thing in some sutra. But, as evidenced above, I'm far from enlightened, and I'm not even going to broach the topic of "manifestation." Some other time, perhaps.

So anyway, the example of karma that sparked this post: The other day, one of my good buddies, an absolute stand up guy who doesn't talk shit, always helps out, and leads what I would consider to be an upstanding life, had his jetski ripped off. (Note to the cynics who say, "Aha, see! That's the problem right there! He had a fucking jetski!!--you probably drive cars, fly in planes, pollute and eat processed food. So stop being self-righteous. Every now and then a jetski is a great tool, particularly for say, tow in surfing. And it's a four stroke. So there.) As anybody who's been ripped off knows, the loss of the item is a drag, but the loss of your sense of security is the thing that really rattles your cage. Some motherfucker came in and stole from me! Somebody I trust probably helped them do it! It is witching hour in the dark night of the soul when you start thinking like that.

This being a tiny town, there are only so many thieves, although proportionally it feels pretty high at times. Anyway, a big job like that, breaking into a bodega, hauling off heavy equipment...really there was only one guy who leapt out as the suspect, a guy named Minor. Minor was a little fuck who has ripped off nearly everybody with anything to steal in this area. He worked as a mechanic in a town a few hours north, and he also had an outpost here where he would come down to fix things occasionally, and then usually depart quickly with something he'd fixed on the previous visit. He wasn't even a very good mechanic, so basically he stole from you twice.

I had a sweet old green Toyota Land Cruiser truck that I bought years ago with the idea that it could be a work truck on the farm, but it proved to be too fragile for that sort of effort and repeatedly broke down. I decided to sell it, and put it out by the road, although just inside my gate, with a "Se Vende" sign on it. I was cautioned that this was a dumb move. "Somebody's going to take it," said my cuidador. "How can they take it?" I asked. "It doesn't run." My logic notwithstanding, somebody did, in fact, take the truck, or at least many of its vital organs. Transmission, battery, radiator, the fucking windshield wipers...a host of things disappeared in the night, and there was evidence that they were coming back to take more (various bolts had been loosened, but I guess after hours of disassembly they ran out of time). So, I dragged the truck to a more secure location and was duly informed that it was Minor who was to blame. My thoughts ran to murder, naturally, but instead I went to the cops, and they did exactly squat. Basically, I was told everybody knows he's the thief, but nobody catches him red handed or with the stolen goods, so he never gets punished. I toyed with the idea of retribution, but eventually wrote it off as just another example of the Gringo Tax (cf. some future post) that's levied on every expat down here in one form or another. The price of paradise. Let it go. Breathe. Be a yogi about it. Fine. Well, about a week ago somebody came back and stole my turn signals (!!), which was right around the time my boy's jetski went missing. This time I was going to get some satisfaction, so I started making calls. Or rather, I asked my cuidador who I should have listened to the first time. He said he would make some calls.

Today, I found out that the jetski (and likely my turn signals) showed up in the very same town ol' Minor had his shop in, Quepos. "Well," I frothed, interrupting Carlos, "I'm going to get that bastard now!" But there was more to the story: Apparently Minor had taken the jetski up there to sell, but it was broken. I knew this to be true, as does anybody who owns anything that floats and has a motor. The shit is always broken. Minor, having secured a buyer, set about fixing the ski, and then took it for a test drive to prove its capabilities. As it so happens, the swell lately has been kick ass, really solid. Quepos has a port that is largely protected, but Minor decided to hit a little open water. Hell, he was probably enjoying himself. And that's when karma, or some reasonable facsimile thereof, struck with a vengeance. A wave lifted the ski and banged it against Minor's pea brain. The impact likely killed him, but just for good measure, he drowned as well. I was incredulous, and dubious. "He's really dead? Minor? Dead?" (Ahogarse is one of those Spanish words that, as a surfer, I don't like to focus on, so when Carlos told me that Minor "ahogó"--he drowned-- I fumbled for a bit before understanding it.)

Now, if I was, or ever had been, a good yogi, I would have felt something akin to sadness. We are all equal beings, and the only reason violence exists is because we have violence in our hearts. Think of his family, particularly the five kids by five different women that Minor (a major player, obviously) had, and the pain they were feeling. Think of his mother. Think of the circumstances that had driven him to a life of crime. So many mitigating circumstances, certainly. So many reasons to show compassion.

But I can't. All I can do is smile. He got what he deserved. As, I'm sure, will I.

The Road to Recovery, Part I

In the winching game, they call it "recovery," the act of getting a vehicle unstuck. Now, most people I know who drive big wheeled 4x4s have a winch that is glistening with disuse. It sits there on a big bull bar and speaks to potential unfulfilled. All show, no go, as my old wrench used to say, disparagingly. Here in the jungle, a winch is something altogether different. It's a damn useful tool. Even so, I'd gone a long time before using it, mainly because I don't drive like an idiot and I'm not exactly itching to offer assistance to those who do.

The other day (well, several months back), things changed. I was going to a friend's wedding up in the hills/mountains of central Costa, tooling along the crap road that promised to be the last before arriving, when I came upon a group of girls standing beside a Toyota Yaris that was well and truly hung up in a ditch. As the light was fading, I offered the girls a ride (my, how gallant) to the wedding site, and told them we'd deal with it in the morning. After a night of booze and music, I awoke on the ground, covered in leaves, with a dim and grudging memory of the task at hand. After fashioning a tightener from a rather limited list of essential ingredients and firing up a spiritual that one of the stranded girls had brought, I signaled it was time to do the deed: Winch out the wenches.

We drove the half click back to their car, silently, in contemplation of the rigors ahead. We got there and it looked worse than before. They had really got it stuck.

--Why a Yaris? I asked. I mean, it's a city car, a freaking sedan, and here we are in the mountains. Did they not have a 4runner or something?

---We didn't think we'd need it, and it would have been twice the cash!

Good answer. Plus, the groom had lied about the road. Or rather, it was a good road compared to the ones he was used to, so really he wasn't lying, just caught in a bout of relativism. I looked again at the stranded vehicle.

--Please tell me you guys swerved out of the way because some bunny jumped in front of you, because otherwise I can't figure out why the hell you got so far over to the left.

Lots of embarrassed stares at the ground. OK, I'm not going to press the issue. Just get them out of there, and then I can go about making a parrilla to cook the 100lbs of meat I brought up as a wedding present and that I'd been aging for 3 weeks especially for this moment. My first time doing that, and I had a gnawing fear that there might be hell to pay, as in it would taste like ass, or worse, I'd give the crowd food poisoning. I decided I'd be very happy if nobody died on account of my meat/gift.

I got the car into position. Ideally, I would have pulled it out from the front, up the gentle slope of the ditch and back onto the road. That would have been simple. In the recovery game, though, things are rarely simple. To wit: there was no tow point/hook to be found up front. Actually, there was a little hole designed so one could screw in a tow hook and then use that for exactly this situation, but, in their infinite wisdom, the good rent-a-car people had neglected to include the hook with the car. We checked every damn Yaris at the wedding (and there were quite a few) and none of them had hooks. I imagined some desk jockey making that decision: well, we told them not to go offroad, so if they do, fuck 'em. Muy amable, Señor. So, it had to be from behind, and worse, from below as well, with the looming danger being that there was an even deeper ditch, around 3m or so, ready to swallow the car entirely and leave recovery by helicopter as the only viable option. The gauntlet was thrown: get these ladies out and be a hero, or get them into deeper trouble and look like an ass with expensive toys that you clearly didn't know how to use. Tests such as these define the man. Right, here we go.

A winch is a simple thing: a spool of steel cable with a beefy hook at the terminus, powered by (in this case) a 9.5hp motor. It can only do two things, pull in or reel out, a binary relationship mandated by the thankfully very long lead wire and controller attachment. A simple toggle switch that goes up for out, and down for in. I was parked 10m behind and below, and had attached to a bit of frame on the right side of the Yaris that I felt wouldn't peel away under pressure. Slowly, I reeled in the wire until there was some tension. Stood way, way off to the right, appropriately concerned with any possible break in the wire that would send it screaming at my head. With visions of my imminent decapitation looming, I got semi-protected behind a thin tree and started to winch in earnest. The car pulled back and there was the awful sound of stone on metal as it ground over the berm. Still, we were looking good, even though all 4 wheels were now off the ground, a classic high side pin. The only other male around, who we'll call David because that's his name, got in the car and found reverse. The Yaris is a front wheeled little bitch, so the tires were spinning and not much was happening except it tilting more and more to the left, ie. the front end was about to ram the stone embankment they had narrowly missed before. I started calculating damages and wondered at the extent of their insurance. OK, fuck. Start over. Reposition my rig, find a new tow point, build up a purchase for the front tires, stones, boards, branches, and get some people pushing. By now a taxi that was trying to leave the wedding was forced to stop and the diminutive driver rushed over to offer his assistance/opinions. I told him to get behind the wheel and go easy at first on the gas, then hammer it once he got some traction. David was pushing from up front. Another partygoer, a rather intense Israeli probably fresh off some secret commando shit, showed up and immediately decided we had no clue, so he got up on the trunk and started bouncing to push weight to the rear. I winched in the line of fire. The wenches stood off to the side, obviously bummed that this had turned into such a production.

The car moved, tracking a straighter line but still flirting in earnest with the dropoff into sure destruction. I couldn't get a better angle, so if we didn't get those wheels to grip, I'd basically have pulled their car into a total disaster. David groaned, the Israeli bounced, and then the front wheels caught. It was right then that I thought, fuck, David is in the wrong spot, but before I could warn him--ding! a rock we'd placed under the left front wheel spit out and nailed him on the knee. He collapsed in pain as the car surged back, cresting the berm to relative safety and freedom. Car recovered, we checked our fallen compatriot. I'm sure it hurt like hell, but there was nothing broken, other than some skin. The girls comforted him. I'm pretty sure it was worth it.

We were all sweaty and adrenaline charged, and pretty satisfied with our utility and chivalry. The Israeli sort of rolled his eyes at our high fives, like if there wasn't anybody being hauled to safety under sniper fire then really, nothing much was happening, and moved on. We left the car locked and pointed the only way it should ever go, out, and went back to the wedding for a much needed beer or three. How nice the beer tasted after a hard morning of winching! A proper reward.

The rest of the day was a blur of activity. Went to town gathering supplies to make a grill. 100 pounds plus of meat, remember, and even though duly advised of this, there was no grill on premises. Fine. We'd buy one. But, nobody sells that kind of grill in the sticks of Costa. Fine, we'd build one. Rebar and cinderblocks placed around a deep pit filled with wood. Some crazy man, a wiry strip of muscle and hair, surveys the mass of beef and tells me the only way to do it is with an earthen oven. I don't know what the hell that is, but I trust the maniacal gleam in his eye. OK, let's do. We get the fire blazing. Meat goes on top of the makeshift grill and banana leaves cover the meat. On top of that, cardboard boxes torn into flat pieces. On top of that, a mountain of mud, the crazy man tossing it on with his bare hands. One guest, a doughy, big guy from MN, is helping out when his wife comes up to ask what the hell he's doing, exactly. Apparently the wedding is about to start, she's sunburned, and peeved because one of her cousins or sisters or something has fallen ill. "My family is getting sick helping out other people!!" she bleats. He bows his head and follows her to the ceremony. This is sort of an ironic, cautionary tale against marriage and the dangers of emasculation, so we naturally ignore it and keep building our oven. A stick pokes in the holes to allow oxygen to feed the fire. The whole thing smolders satisfactorily. "OK. That's it! Now we just have to wait 4 hours. Maybe more." Alrighty then. Let's watch these guys get hitched! The bride is beautiful and the groom is witty. It's a short, sweet ceremony, among good friends, just as it should be. Then it's dinner time and of course, we're nowhere near done. There's a one legged cook who's got the rest of the meal under control, but shrugs his shoulders occasionally at me like, where's the beef? Of course, the day before he was the one telling me he would be cooking it, but plans change. Evolve or die. Or at least go without some tasty beef. People finish eating and music and dancing begin. I watch a smoking mound. Finally, crazy man sees something I can't see and shouts, it's done and starts tearing into the oven with his hands again. Dude is nothing if not committed. Perhaps he should be committed, but if this beef is edible I owe him big time, so I'm happy to have him free and helpfully unfettered. It seems to have worked; the meat is nicely charred and piping hot. We haul it over to the serving table. What the hell, meat for dessert! If you haven't guessed by now, this was a hippie wedding in the middle of nowhere, and 3/4 of the crowd is vegetarian, or worse, vegan. But a strange thing happens. People start lining up for a taste. People are saying things like, "I haven't eaten meat in 20 years, but I heard the story of you and your cow, and I think it's a noble sacrifice by this animal, so--let me eat some of that meat! No, give me some more!!" I carve meat like I'm one of those guys at a Brazilian churrascaria. It's perfectly cooked, medium rare, juices oozing. People are saying things like, "I'm from Texas, and I love meat, and I have to say, this is the best I've ever tasted! No, gimme me some more, dammit!!" I serve and serve. Vegetarians are staining their shirts and souls. My hands are literally burned from working with the steaming stacks. I snack little pieces here and there and decide that, while not the best I've ever had, it's pretty good. Maybe I'm too close to my work. Some kind soul keeps feeding me beer. David comes over and silently we clink bottles, take a full swig, exhale. A full day. A winching. A marriage. A half a cow cooked in the earth. Blood spilled , blood shared, and blood consumed. A time for latter day Vikings and vegans alike to find common ground.

What your IP says about your language

Typing this now from the wilds of Costa Rica, yeah, the trendy place that all you yogis and surfers like to check out in between trips to the local organic juice bar, shala, and Patagonia. And where all the SoCal and Argentinian kooks show up to and imagine they've discovered the place and are thus, entitled to every wave. Whatever. It's where I live, when I'm not in NYC bemoaning the business climate there, or traveling to some place and annoying those locals in a bit of retribution.

Anyway--my IP is from Panama. You guys in the civilized world, by which, I mean the world with Internet above 1Mbps...you have it so easy. You call your Internet provider and they show up in some semblance of a uniform between 8am and 4pm (this is your only sacrifice, being sequestered for a day waiting for the Comcast guy to show), and then get blazing fast 'net for about $30/month. You also get somebody to bitch at when things don't work, although it's usually your fault for not resetting the modem, as they helpfully remind you. Or you go to Starbucks or the laundromat and log on with your latte and suds. Or you steal that shit from one of the surprisingly high number of neighbors who doesn't know how to password protect their router. Whatever the route, you get it, and once you do, it's fast. Fast enough that you can download a CD before turning around and finding it on your shelf. It's actually preferable to any search, the instant gratification of google and go.

Here, it's different. I have a microwave antennae on my roof, picking up some beam that shoots 10 miles or so across the Golfo Dulce from its hub on la Frontera, where it is split into fractions of itself and sold at a value approaching unobtanium by an unresponsive and uncaring "provider" with no known phone number and a 4 week appointment lead time that is, as of last count, 15% attended by the service rep. I get, on a good day, 800Kbps downstream and about 110Kbps up. On a bad day, an email takes 5 minutes to send, if it goes at all. And what do I pay for all this? $150/month. This is actually down from $375(!!!!)/month, all because Instituto Costarricense Electricidad (ICE), the state electric/internet/phone monopoly has entered the fray with a 3G system of about the same speed for the shockingly low price of $25/month. Unfortunately, it doesn't work for shit, but it has put the fear of G-d into "That Asshole Ronald," my internet guy, so I thank them for that.

My point, in all this, is that when, after a 2 year hiatus, I log into my Blogger account, I find it speaking to me in Spanish. Because it thinks I am a Panamanian, and doesn't really want to give me an option to chose otherwise. That's cool. I guess. I mean, I do speak Spanish. But Internet Spanish is different from what's spoken by the people, with its own colloquialisms. Suprimir, for example, means delete. Why don't they use "eliminar" which is what any person actually speaking Spanish would use? And "borrado," which means erased as far as I know, seems to mean saved, or maybe I'm wrong and this whole post has actually been deleted by the whim of Blogger Español. No se.

I guess it's a test of fluency, and I'm tooling along with a Gentleman's C.