Bare Feet and Civilization

It is a lot like Hobbiton here, the delightful community in J. R. R. Tolkien’s fiction. The locals, many of them, especially the Native Americans, walk barefoot – and prefer it that way. Horses and donkeys, carts and wagons, are their preferred transportation system

(though when they need to they do take the bus into Volcán), and even in the larger cities one is not surprised to see someone in town on horseback to run errands. And they live in small, partly earth-sheltered homes that are small, clean, unpreprepossessing, yet comfortable. Flowers are everywhere: cultivated and wild, alongside roads, bushes and vines in yards, and in farmyards as well – coffee and onion and squash, to name three. The sense of growing things, some orderly in farms and others in a beautiful natural profusion, is palpable. The Earth is very much alive here.

The Lady of the Seasons, as some traditional nations call her, is very much present. The hills, mostly to the south of the village, are round like a woman’s breasts. Streams often join beneath hills, where they are nestled under trees and bushes, looking to me like the Lady’s beautiful genitalia. On the larger, steeper hills to the north one sees lines of coffee bushes sculptured onto steep flanks that are nearly cliff faces. The air is cheerful, and her breath, the breeze, is sweet and timeless.
However, to continue the analogy to Tolkien, Mordor encroaches – in the form of ultrawealthy gringos and their unnecessarily outsized mansions blotted into the middle of some otherwise transcendent vista, driving around in their big silver SUVs with tinted no-see-in windows.

* * *

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.

Darkness and Wealth

Here I learn the fragility of life. My home is gone lost to me because of my poverty. My children are incredibly far away. Here I must survive by speaking a language in which I am not entirely comfortable, in a land where I am not yet quite at home. The country in which I was born is becoming impossible to live in - both because of the economy, which is devouring the middle class, and the new ultra-conservative rulers, who are making it just about illegal to be anything but rich and white.

I understood this sense of alienness and fragility well when I was in a small restaurant in Volcán that caters not to gringos but Panamanians. I was with a few friends, speaking in Spanish. I think at one point I said something in French, and a man seated alone at a table behind me came up babbling joyfully in Italian at me. He had mistakenly thought I had spoken in Italian, his own native tongue. As it happens, I do speak a little Italian, and he was overjoyed to hear the language on someone's lips other than his own. He embraced me and kissed me on both cheeks. He called me friend and brother, and went out into the night almost dancing with his joy.

But this land in which now I live is warm and welcoming in ways I have never experienced before.

One cannot imagine walking down the street in a typical American community, and walking up to the door of some stranger's house at suppertime, and being immediately ushered in and asked to partake of the evening meal. But here one can. One does not abuse this generosity of course, and one extends it as well. Yet here it happens.

* * *

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.

The Gringo Effect

There is a strange spot between Volcán and Paso Ancho where it seems like cars and trucks roll uphill.

Some people insist that it is an optical illusion created by the immediate surroundings, and others are quite as emphatic that it is magnetism from ore within the mountains pulling the vehicles along the incline. I do not know, myself, which it is, or if it is something else altogether. But it is an odd feeling, to say the least. A gringo friend of mine taking me somewhere demonstrated this spot, pulling to the side of the road, coming to a complete halt, and putting the car into neutral. The vehicle began to move - and the optical illusion, if that's what it is (as I think), is certainly quite convincing. I may just take a paperclip with me to that spot and see if the paperclip is drawn along.

But I'm not going to solve as easily a quiet controversy as to the effect of gringos (often called transplants, expatriates, and the like) on the village of Paso Ancho and a thousand just like it in Latin America and the world.

A respected friend of mine here, of European origin, points out persuasively that, when he first came here quite a few years ago, "There was nothing." By that he means there were no paved roads, no supermarket, no public water supply, not much electricity. The arrival of the gringoes, he insisted, meant two things: an inflow of capital, improving the collective wealth of Paso Ancho, and the opportunity to learn new, marketable skills.

* * *

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.