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Friday, February 25, 2011

Approaching Abuelo Barú

Most of my days are spent writing. One would think that living in France would be inspiring - to be in the land of Baudelaire, Gide, de Maupassant, Camus, Rimbaud, Saint-Exupéry, Yourçenar, and so on - but no, I wrote nothing of significance the whole time I was there; if I hadn't translated my novel Rats Live on no Evil Star into French, I would consider the time (as far as writing is concerned) virtually wasted. But in the first month alone after arriving in Panama I completed seven stories and four poems.

Every now and then as I work on my writings I hear a low-pitched meow from outside the door. I know who it is; it's my friend, the orange cat. He's not quite a year old, not fully grown. I don't know with what humans, if any, he lives, but he is always clean and friendly. He is kind enough to accept my humble offerings of meat and milk.

Then he will sit in my lap and clean his fur, emitting a loud deep purr, and sometimes wander around my casita just to see what's up. Then he disappears until the next time he condescends to call on me. I hope he appreciates the many cats who spent years training me to be a good servant.

* * *

As they come to me to be written, new chapters will be added to this blog, so stay tuned! But the blogs up to a certain point are now chapters are now in a book.

So, to read more, you need the book A WRITER IN PANAMÁ.

The book is available in three formats:

HARDCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (smaller size edition, no interior photographs)
E-BOOK (all versions available, including Kindle and Nook, no photographs)

To browse or order, CLICK HERE!


The book is also available through Amazon (USA, Great Britain, and continental Europe) and other major book retailers.

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Wake Up and Smell the Coffee

I like to say - adapting an old Americanism to the situation - that here in Panama I can really wake up and smell the coffee. The hills around here are dotted with coffee farms. My landlord, Wulf, has his own plot of coffee within just a few yards of my front door.

Every morning I brew myself my daily ambrosia made from beans grown in that plot.

There is no other way to put it than bluntly: the coffee here is so much better than any I ever had in North America or Europe. After hearing me remark about the coffee here, several locals have quietly let me know that the coffee they sell abroad is inferior, and that the best of the crop is reserved for here. I can believe it.

One morning I had the immense pleasure of helping to pick this season's crop of coffee beans. The small white flowers on these plants (somewhere between bush- and tree-size) exude a delicious aroma, and the beans themselves have a soft white pulp that is surprisingly sweet and delicious - and full of caffeine, so don't eat too many!

There was something satisfying about this simple, pleasant chore. After watching onion harvesters at work the previous day, and being tempted to join them for a while, this was a treat.

I wondered as I gathered the beans who it was who first said, "You know, Bill, I've got a great idea. Let's try gathering these beans, clean out the stems, wash them, skin them, let them ferment, then let them dry until they're black, roast them, grind them up, and finally put them in a strainer and pour hot water through them, and drink the results."

* * *

As they come to me to be written, new chapters will be added to this blog, so stay tuned! But the blogs up to a certain point are now chapters are now in a book.

So, to read more, you need the book A WRITER IN PANAMÁ.

The book is available in three formats:

HARDCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (smaller size edition, no interior photographs)
E-BOOK (all versions available, including Kindle and Nook, no photographs)

To browse or order, CLICK HERE!


The book is also available through Amazon (USA, Great Britain, and continental Europe) and other major book retailers.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Gringo Weather

Everybody tells me that the weather here used to be reasonably predictable, but that it is no longer. And everybody - the gringos, the Panamanians, the Native Americans - offer the same reason: worldwide industrial pollution. I arrived here in the dry season, and it has been, for days at a time, extremely rainy. I've been told that last year's rainy season was the worst anyone can remember (hence the neighborhood meeting

about directing the rainwater runoff), and that the way this dry season has been suggests the coming rainy season will be even worse this year. Most days this dry season are lovely, however, yet somehow people have a sense - and I see the workers striving hard to bring in the harvest.

Predictability has long disappeared from the Northern Hemisphere. The ice cap is melting. Horrible snowstorms. Intense heat waves. Long weeks without rain or long weeks of nothing but. The locals here in Panama tell me that they, at least, enjoyed good weather and knew with confidence how the weather would be in a day, a week, a month, even a year. No longer, they say. The gringo civilization has destroyed that confidence. I have arrived here in time to witness the invasion of evil consequences from the pollution of the industrialized countries.

Of course, to some degree the Panamanians have contributed - trucks and automobiles here are badly tuned and emit a lot of poison, factory emissions are virtually unregulated, and many farmers use DDT and other equally horrible chemicals. But, then again, Panama, like so many third-world countries, has little choice in these matters because its economics are not strong enough to provide any choice - and that, once again, is the fault of industrialized countries. Moreover, the fact that the economy has changed, now necessitating trucks and cars, even if poorly maintained, is the effect of industrialization coming from abroad.

* * *

As they come to me to be written, new chapters will be added to this blog, so stay tuned! But the blogs up to a certain point are now chapters are now in a book.

So, to read more, you need the book A WRITER IN PANAMÁ.

The book is available in three formats:

HARDCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (smaller size edition, no interior photographs)
E-BOOK (all versions available, including Kindle and Nook, no photographs)

To browse or order, CLICK HERE!


The book is also available through Amazon (USA, Great Britain, and continental Europe) and other major book retailers.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Through the River and Over the Woods

What one sees in the roads – the likely possibility that the locals deliberately leave them in minor disrepair to discourage the gringos – seems also true at the river. When I first arrived, I could find no simple way to traverse the Chiriquí Viejo other than dancing across on the stones like the locals do, and hope not to fall in. The bridge that had straddled the fording place, someone explained, had washed away in the last rainy season, and nobody had gotten around to putting up a new one.

This fording place is, however, a frequently used thoroughfare. I have grown accustomed to seeing local people dance across on wet stones surrounded by roiling white rapids, clearly familiar so with the crossing that they didn’t hesitate but seemed almost to fly over the waters. In my desire to visit the other side – which looked fascinatingly wild from the Paso Ancho side where I stood – I was building up my courage to try to emulate them, or perhaps adopt the coward’s route and take to the water with pants legs rolled up and my socks and shoes in hand.

But then one day I came down and found a new bridge had been built.

In its own way it rivals the engineering marvels of the world – the Golden Gate Bridge and the Brooklyn Bridge, even. But it was not built for gringo traffic: it consists of three logs, one sagging in the middle, braced at either end by piles of unsecured rocks, and two lengths of barbed wire for handholds. It must have taken a lot of effort to drag the rocks and logs hither and angle the logs across the river. And now, as they did on the stones, the local folks now walk across this span as comfortably as if it were a promenade in the Bois de Boulogne.

* * *

As they come to me to be written, new chapters will be added to this blog, so stay tuned! But the blogs up to a certain point are now chapters are now in a book.

So, to read more, you need the book A WRITER IN PANAMÁ.

The book is available in three formats:

HARDCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (smaller size edition, no interior photographs)
E-BOOK (all versions available, including Kindle and Nook, no photographs)

To browse or order, CLICK HERE!


The book is also available through Amazon (USA, Great Britain, and continental Europe) and other major book retailers.

Gringos, Ruts, and Native Americans

Many of the gringos are very nice people, and actually learn how to fit in reasonably well here, gaining the respect of the local people. All gringos (even me, getting by on a retirement pension so small that it was impossible to survive on it in North America or Europe) are by local standards well off, some of them rich even by gringo standards. But unfortunately there are some who live not only ostentatiously with their money, but nastily. These ones I rarely encounter directly; when I do, they look down their noses at me, even though I’m American, simply because I don’t have their kind of money and smug pushiness.

There has always been class consciousness here; there’s definitely a distinction between Latinos and Ngäbe Buglé. But relatively new is this strong emphasis on social stratification, in which certain groups perceive themselves as better than those they deem “below” them. So harsh is it that certain rich gringos think they are intrinsically better than not only all local people, but even the poor gringos like me.

There was a neighborhood meeting to discuss how best to direct the deluges of rainwater that pour down some of the village’s dirt streets during the rainy season,

flooding cellars and causing the dirt roads to erode badly.

* * *

As they come to me to be written, new chapters will be added to this blog, so stay tuned! But the blogs up to a certain point are now chapters are now in a book.

So, to read more, you need the book A WRITER IN PANAMÁ.

The book is available in three formats:

HARDCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (smaller size edition, no interior photographs)
E-BOOK (all versions available, including Kindle and Nook, no photographs)

To browse or order, CLICK HERE!


The book is also available through Amazon (USA, Great Britain, and continental Europe) and other major book retailers.

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Walking Zen

I decided from the start that I would walk daily. In a community such as this it is the ideal way to meet local people, as opposed to gringos. The expatriates seem to prefer electronic encounters, in chat groups online or by telephone, though they occasionally get together for “community meetings”, musical events, or hikes, at which English is the common language, though some of them are primarily French- or German-speaking.

Still, I have lived with Americans and Europeans all my life and, while many of them are very good people, this land is not part of that worldwide “America” – not yet anyway, not from lack of their trying to subsume and destroy this land too; that “America” is close, in those congested cities on the two seacoasts. This still is the local people’s land, and so I want to know them more, not necessarily the Americans. There are bars and restaurants up on the highway (one of only two paved roads), but none in the village proper, and not all that many local people have telephones, and fewer have internet access. (You can pay I think it’s twenty-five cents an hour for computer time at the little local grocery.) If you want to meet the local people, it must be on their terms and on their land – get out and walk.

By walking daily I am becoming acquainted with the people who have lived here for many generations, who know with their very being the spirit, the language, the music, of this land, and can help me to begin to learn it. Moreover, they will get to know me and, I hope, decide that I am a decent, respectful person as gringos go. If they see I am making every effort to speak in their language and to live in a way harmonious with their ways, and not insisting on keeping my North American customs, perhaps they will look out for me, putting the mantle of protection about me, even helping me if I am in trouble, or at minimum leave me alone. If hypothetically any of them is motivated to rob me, thinking I am another rich gringo needing as the Bible says to be “sent empty away”, such an individual will soon hear that I am polite and respectful and liked by many of his friends and neighbors, and I hope choose instead to leave me alone. Indeed, I have walked everywhere and not once felt the slightest fear; I believe I am far safer here than I ever was in the United States or France.

* * *

As they come to me to be written, new chapters will be added to this blog, so stay tuned! But the blogs up to a certain point are now chapters are now in a book.

So, to read more, you need the book A WRITER IN PANAMÁ.

The book is available in three formats:

HARDCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (smaller size edition, no interior photographs)
E-BOOK (all versions available, including Kindle and Nook, no photographs)

To browse or order, CLICK HERE!


The book is also available through Amazon (USA, Great Britain, and continental Europe) and other major book retailers.

Paso Ancho, in the Mountains, that much nearer Heaven

La Ciudad de Panamá, a tangled nest of superhighways and skyscrapers, was beautiful in its ultra-modern ugliness. I stayed at a very pleasant older hotel recommended to me, the Veracruz; it was quiet and the staff was friendly; everything was wonderful except for the oppressive heat that hardly lessened during the night, making it hard to sleep.

The next morning I took a small commuter plane to Davíd (dah-VEED). From the tiny porthole I looked down on wrinkled forested hills and sharp mountainsides, hardly able to focus on the newspaper I’d taken aboard to see what was happening in my new homeland. David, when I landed, was more like what previous experience had led me to expect in a Latin American city, the one we read about in Borges and Allende, with its shabby storefronts, doughty farmers’ markets, and old haciendas trying to shake off the sweat and dust.

My new landlord, a German named Wulf, plus his delightful Panamanian wife Olivia, picked me up at the airport. Wulf is a retired cop whose career was in the United States, so his English is superb if, like his wobbly Spanish, it has a German tang to it. Olivia, who comes from a very poor background, has excellent innate intelligence and judgement, plus a deliciously acerbic sense of humor.

Davíd and Panamá, being at sea level and only eight degrees north of the Equator, have the climate you would expect: one of considerable heat and humidity throughout the year, with thunderstorms thrown in during the Rainy Season. They also have a high population density with the inevitable crime, drugs, and traffic accidents. And they suffer from what I call the “Gringo Factor”: prices always seem to be higher where there are enough well-heeled gringos who still find those higher prices a bargain compared to back home.

But Paso Ancho (“Broad Pass” in Spanish) – in the western highlands near Costa Rica, under the watchful eye of Barú, the country’s tallest mountain – is in what is called a microclimate, an ecological niche. You might think you were in the Adirondack Mountains minus the winter – though once in a while it actually does snow a little bit on Barú’s upper slopes. In fact, the clean scent of pine and spruce in the air reminds me of “home”, of the northern New York community of Theresa where I spent much of my childhood. Here, as in that village not far from the Canadian border, evergreen trees easily outnumber deciduous; the difference is that here every now and then one is surprised to see a particularly hardy palm or banana tree managing to live at this altitude. The temperatures are uniformly springlike; it is rarely hot in the afternoon, and can get cool enough for a sweater or even a jacket in the evening. At night it can get into the low 40s Fahrenheit.

Travelling up to Paso Ancho is not merely a physical trip through space, up a highway into higher altitudes; it is also a voyage through time.

* * *

As they come to me to be written, new chapters will be added to this blog, so stay tuned! But the blogs up to a certain point are now chapters are now in a book.

So, to read more, you need the book A WRITER IN PANAMÁ.

The book is available in three formats:

HARDCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (smaller size edition, no interior photographs)
E-BOOK (all versions available, including Kindle and Nook, no photographs)

To browse or order, CLICK HERE!


The book is also available through Amazon (USA, Great Britain, and continental Europe) and other major book retailers.

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Escape from France, Escape from Stress, Escape from Snow

France! When an opportunity presented itself to move thither I seized it immediately. France, land of many of my most cherished artists and novelists, composers and filmmakers, poets and philosophers; surely it would be a land to inspire a writer! But I was reminded often of Mark Twain’s quip, what a pity it is that the wonderful culture of France, its language, literature, and cuisine are wasted on the French. Twain was pointing to a tendency toward boorishness and snobbery. I point rather to the loss of everything that is truly French in favor of Americanism.

In short, I found France had become – not the political entity “The United States of America”, and part of neither of the two continents by the name, but rather America – the occidental culture (or lack thereof) that has each person pulling what he or she can out of as many other people’s pockets as possible while trying to outyell those others in a quest for attention – the culture of multinational firms that have far more power in the world than presidents and kings – the anticulture that has blanketed much of the world in strip malls, superhighways and fast-food restaurants, and infected billions with the economics-based æsthetic of everpresent cacophony of garbage television, mind-rotting electronic foolishness, and talentless little singers who all sound, look, and behave alike: badly.

My home was an old country farmhouse, with exterior walls in exquisite disrepair, the stucco in places furred with ivy and elsewhere cracked away to expose the underlying brick or stone, and within an astonishing number of dark, cold, humid rooms in deeply stained and shellaced wood. The house, with attached barn, was set in the midst of pastures in which I enjoyed strolling and visiting with the horses, looking up at the vast snow-covered Pyrénée Mountains looming to the south. Often I went south into the mountain villages, and sometimes played my guitar at outdoor farmers’ markets. For a few euros I bought a used bicycle and rode around among the farms and forests to see the fields and forests and meet the neighbors. These were delightful, especially Marie-Christine, who often popped by with delicious tarts that somehow she’d made to spare, and old Monsieur Plonchon, a veteran of war whose stories were fascinating accounts of living history. And I was thrilled to join a group in Toulouse, headed by Bertran de la Farge, one of the most brilliant scholars on the Cathar movement and a delightful human being; the group was striving to recover and strengthen the region’s ancient Occitán culture. I developed some wonderful friendships, especially among the African Muslim commuity, including two transplanted African couples each with a brace of adorable and delightful little daughters.

Yet France as a whole, even in this relatively rural region far from the Paris megalopolis, was superhighways and gigantic malls selling overpriced trash. There were pockets and nodes of genuinely French culture, but they were being squeezed down to nothing. And the often disturbingly racist French frequently blamed those new resident African Muslims, who were determined to fit in and contribute to their new homeland, rather than the real culprit, the ultra-rich executives seeking to make another fortune at the expense of the plebians. What would the great French revolutionaries have said to see this débâcle?

* * *

As they come to me to be written, new chapters will be added to this blog, so stay tuned! But the blogs up to a certain point are now chapters are now in a book.

So, to read more, you need the book A WRITER IN PANAMÁ.

The book is available in three formats:

HARDCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (large-size edition, photographs on nearly every page)
SOFTCOVER (smaller size edition, no interior photographs)
E-BOOK (all versions available, including Kindle and Nook, no photographs)

To browse or order, CLICK HERE!


The book is also available through Amazon (USA, Great Britain, and continental Europe) and other major book retailers.