One Saturday afternoon, as I was swaying in my hammock I began to listen to my community, Eye of the Water, as it drifted past on the wind. A gust of the mountain air approaches from a distance. The leaves of various trees begin to tremble like tumbling dominoes in a flurry of excitment until finally i feel the fresh soft pressure on my face. As this happens, I hear a banana leaf scraping against the tin roof above my head; like a talon slowly carving the word connectivity into a dry chalkboard. I think of what the wind has said. A tree blowing in the wind makes contact with a mineral structure that has been mined, machined and hoisted into the air by man to serve as a shield against the forces of nature. Is the wind saying that if this tin roof weren´t there then the screeching noise would not have been made, that the intersection of natural existence and non-natural existence creates a hideous noise, a shriek of transformation. Or, as I think to myself, the banana leaf and the tin roof are co-existing and the only side effect, it seems, is a rather unpleasant noise which is considerably less unpleasant than not having a roof over one´s head or banana´s to eat. The thick rustle of leaves dies down and the banana tree comes to a silent stoic rest. My hammock stops its gentle sway, but only for a moment.
The dominoes fall again signaling a new gust of the wise old wind. This time, the wind carries with it the unmistakable sound of a sharpened blade slicing through the living fibers of a hearty grass. Someone nearby must be cleaning their vegtable garden. Perhaps, a farmer is cutting down the underbrush so his crops may have the space, air, water, sun, and nutrients necessary for continued growth. The iron blade of the farmers machete is forged in the furnace of reason. The machete is a tool that helps the cultivater manage his crop. Without this tool, planting and harvesting the crop would be more difficult for the farmer. The machete is a tool of subsistence. Of course, this farmer has the natural impulse to survive. And the farmer is cutting the ¨natural¨ growth for the natural desire to survive with the natural blade of reason. What is the wind getting at here? Is the sound of the farmer cutting the weeds, this connectivity, natural? Is this farmers more closely in-touch with nature than the unattended banana leaf scraping against the tin roof?
As the farmer cuts the last of the bad grass down a piercing, pounding ¨bam, bam, bam¨ echoes throughout the valley. The thunderous noise repeats with classic frequency and everyone knows this sound. I imagine that somewhere in the valley, a man is holding the wooden handle of an iron hammer. With great accuracy and forethought, the man aims the hammer at the head of an iron nail. Bam! Bam! Bam! The nail wedges its way into the sculpted carcass of an old dead tree. The tree has arrived at its final resting place where it will stand as an epitaph to the resiliance and usefulness of nature until nature itself molds the board into soil where another tree might grow. The sound is at once beautiful and tragic. It is beautiful that the raw resources given by nature are able to be molded by man in such a way as to make our modern world possible. But also, the tragic death of natural existence as the man uses an iron hammer to fasten an iron nail into a board, as another man uses an iron saw to sculpt a fallowed tree into a board, as yet another uses an iron axe to cut down the mighty tree. The wind has spoken and so has the carpenter. The death of natural existence, I begin to think, may originate in the unrestrained use of reason to shape our modern world. Did man drive the nail of reason into the coffin of natural existence?
These were my thoughts that saturday afternoon.
The very next day I read this in ¨The Epic of Latin America¨, ¨Man has cut himself from the tree of natural existence with the saw of reason.¨ This archeologists quote is terribly vague and, without context, deliriously overstated. However, the timing leads me to believe that I am on the right path of inquiry.
7.26.2008
7.09.2008
Where do I plug in this branch?
Connectivity? The spark that ephemerally connects seperate entities. A conscious conjunction of body and mind, nature and nurture. I am what they call a 21st century digital boy. accustomed to using the internet, gardgets, digital and analog machines; my mind is trained to understand logical systems. More over, the papers of the day are filled with stories about breakthroughs in post-space age nano and bio technologies, high energy particle accelerators, and missions to Mars. I consider my generation to be the great-grand child of modern electrical prophets like Edison and Tesla. A generation connected to the world through the medium of electricity. The spark of electricity, the harnessing of the electron, our modern wheel, this is my generations greatest tool, as scissors are to a barber, or a hammer to a blacksmith. Yes, there are other types of connectivity, and there is a textbook, Websters 2008, 3rd edition, extended collegiate color dictionary definition for connectivity; however, I suppose I am searching for the definition commonly held by those people of generations past, before lighting struck the key that unlocked the modern world.
Today, after I ate fish soop for lunch, I gathered my things including a machete, canteen, sombrero, a che Guevara book, and a banana, and headed to the house I hope to stay in for some time, to check out the the land. I had heard there was a tree nursury and a small vegetable garden amongst a large plot of land. I began by walking down the unpaven road towards the river. I stopped at the mini-super (bare amenities store) to buy a candle so I would be able to write once the sun set. After a brief getting-to-know-you masquerade with the tienda owner, I headed onward to my destination. I strolled past the school, which was letting out for the day. A parade of giggling kids marched by happy to be free from class. So I stopped again, said some hellos, shook some hands and quized the third graders over the previous nights English homework. I asked one bravo kid, "Como se dice Rojo en Ingles?" He responded, "Red." Correct! I ask another little one, "Como se dice Azul en Ingles?" He answers, "Bluway." Blue is correct, but he pronounced it wrong. All the children pronounce blue this way because in the Spanish language, pronunciation is phonetical to the written word. In other words, the Spanish tounge follows from the Spanish eye. In the English language, there is a only a relative connection between tounge and eye. This being that both the tounge and the eye are on the same face. English speakers do not phonetically pronounce written words. Anyways, I hadn't the heart to correct the third graders for the simple reason that they can hardly read and write in their mother tounge which is phonetic and orderly. So, in this Panamanien mountain village, the English word blue is indeed correctly pronounced "Bluway."
Onward! I took the only left in town onto a dirt trail, nearing the river Sapillo, past cinder block houses filled with waving arms and restless children laughing as I fumbled with my greetings and salutations in toddlerish Spanish. Oh well, they were laughing, which is a good sign that what I was saying was both hilarious and not offensive. Onwards! A kid followed me on his bike for a while and took the left fork as I took the right.
And there I am, standing at the gates of my future house. Undoubtedly, the gate is locked. With an ease like that of a mute in a belching contest (?), I slide past the owners poor attempt to secure the property against intruders. The back of the house seems like the most workable place to see what's around. The weeds are high. No one has been here for quite some time. I decide to clean up the yard a bit, after all, it is summer-time in Georgia which means the grass a needs a cuttin'. I put down my water, book, banana and go to work cuttin' that bad grass down with the force of my machete while wearing my faithfully dim sombrero.
Out of no where, that kid who had forked left on his bicycle pokes me and says, "Your doing that wrong. Give it here, I'll show you how to do it." He proceeds to show me the "proper" technique for chopping weeds with a half-dull machete; all-the-while eating a fruit he clandestinely picked before approaching me. He knew what he was doing. He made it look easy. I went for the fruit hanging from a nearby tree thinking that the sweet enchantment from a freshly picked fruit might be the special sauce this kid used to gracefully slice the bad grass down. I took a bite. Delicious! But, didn't help to smooth my co-ordination. We took turns with the machette and cut down most of the tall stuff within a few minutes. I begin to realize during this time that I had been asking this 8yr old which is the "bad grass" and which is the sapling, vegetable, ornamental, or medicinal. We crawl along the freshley cut vegetation in search of plants I've never heard of. He tells me about different types of trees, each with its own use, fruit, flower and season. I am short-circuting at this point. We head into the cultivated forest to explore the exotic flora inside. We pick oranges, bananas, guavas, and mamons and I pick a glimpse into the mind of an eight year old who has lived his entire life without the electricity, without the means to buy expensive gadgets, with the space-of-mind filled with knowledge of nature that follows from a life of poverty in the remote Panamanian country side. ( If there is a limit to space of mind, I haven't the slightest clue.) He talked about trees, bushes, bugs, spiders, snakes, birds, soil, rain, planting, harvesting, the sun and the moon cycles. We walked for an hour talking about our surroundings while devouring our colorful fruits like candy. At this point, I felt like the 8yr old in the woods.
We finally made our way back to the house where we planted one of the saplings that was ready in the nursery. At this point, he told me in confidence, as we were planting, that his mother was ill and in the hospital. This being the case, he was the one responsible for cooking meals for his younger siblings. There is tragic irony here. The mother is ill with lung problems, probably due to cooking over an open fire, three times a day, for her entire life. Now, this boy was suffering the same fate, having to cook for his brothers and sisters while his mother was being treated in the city. What is there to do? I walked over to the small garden and picked the only vegetable growing inside, a small green pepper, which we lavashed praise over its delicate and delicious beauty. The boy left to cook dinner, pockets filled to the brim with fresh fruit and a single pepper. I gathered my things and walked back to my host house with an old man who showed up just after the boy disappeared.
Today, after I ate fish soop for lunch, I gathered my things including a machete, canteen, sombrero, a che Guevara book, and a banana, and headed to the house I hope to stay in for some time, to check out the the land. I had heard there was a tree nursury and a small vegetable garden amongst a large plot of land. I began by walking down the unpaven road towards the river. I stopped at the mini-super (bare amenities store) to buy a candle so I would be able to write once the sun set. After a brief getting-to-know-you masquerade with the tienda owner, I headed onward to my destination. I strolled past the school, which was letting out for the day. A parade of giggling kids marched by happy to be free from class. So I stopped again, said some hellos, shook some hands and quized the third graders over the previous nights English homework. I asked one bravo kid, "Como se dice Rojo en Ingles?" He responded, "Red." Correct! I ask another little one, "Como se dice Azul en Ingles?" He answers, "Bluway." Blue is correct, but he pronounced it wrong. All the children pronounce blue this way because in the Spanish language, pronunciation is phonetical to the written word. In other words, the Spanish tounge follows from the Spanish eye. In the English language, there is a only a relative connection between tounge and eye. This being that both the tounge and the eye are on the same face. English speakers do not phonetically pronounce written words. Anyways, I hadn't the heart to correct the third graders for the simple reason that they can hardly read and write in their mother tounge which is phonetic and orderly. So, in this Panamanien mountain village, the English word blue is indeed correctly pronounced "Bluway."
Onward! I took the only left in town onto a dirt trail, nearing the river Sapillo, past cinder block houses filled with waving arms and restless children laughing as I fumbled with my greetings and salutations in toddlerish Spanish. Oh well, they were laughing, which is a good sign that what I was saying was both hilarious and not offensive. Onwards! A kid followed me on his bike for a while and took the left fork as I took the right.
And there I am, standing at the gates of my future house. Undoubtedly, the gate is locked. With an ease like that of a mute in a belching contest (?), I slide past the owners poor attempt to secure the property against intruders. The back of the house seems like the most workable place to see what's around. The weeds are high. No one has been here for quite some time. I decide to clean up the yard a bit, after all, it is summer-time in Georgia which means the grass a needs a cuttin'. I put down my water, book, banana and go to work cuttin' that bad grass down with the force of my machete while wearing my faithfully dim sombrero.
Out of no where, that kid who had forked left on his bicycle pokes me and says, "Your doing that wrong. Give it here, I'll show you how to do it." He proceeds to show me the "proper" technique for chopping weeds with a half-dull machete; all-the-while eating a fruit he clandestinely picked before approaching me. He knew what he was doing. He made it look easy. I went for the fruit hanging from a nearby tree thinking that the sweet enchantment from a freshly picked fruit might be the special sauce this kid used to gracefully slice the bad grass down. I took a bite. Delicious! But, didn't help to smooth my co-ordination. We took turns with the machette and cut down most of the tall stuff within a few minutes. I begin to realize during this time that I had been asking this 8yr old which is the "bad grass" and which is the sapling, vegetable, ornamental, or medicinal. We crawl along the freshley cut vegetation in search of plants I've never heard of. He tells me about different types of trees, each with its own use, fruit, flower and season. I am short-circuting at this point. We head into the cultivated forest to explore the exotic flora inside. We pick oranges, bananas, guavas, and mamons and I pick a glimpse into the mind of an eight year old who has lived his entire life without the electricity, without the means to buy expensive gadgets, with the space-of-mind filled with knowledge of nature that follows from a life of poverty in the remote Panamanian country side. ( If there is a limit to space of mind, I haven't the slightest clue.) He talked about trees, bushes, bugs, spiders, snakes, birds, soil, rain, planting, harvesting, the sun and the moon cycles. We walked for an hour talking about our surroundings while devouring our colorful fruits like candy. At this point, I felt like the 8yr old in the woods.
We finally made our way back to the house where we planted one of the saplings that was ready in the nursery. At this point, he told me in confidence, as we were planting, that his mother was ill and in the hospital. This being the case, he was the one responsible for cooking meals for his younger siblings. There is tragic irony here. The mother is ill with lung problems, probably due to cooking over an open fire, three times a day, for her entire life. Now, this boy was suffering the same fate, having to cook for his brothers and sisters while his mother was being treated in the city. What is there to do? I walked over to the small garden and picked the only vegetable growing inside, a small green pepper, which we lavashed praise over its delicate and delicious beauty. The boy left to cook dinner, pockets filled to the brim with fresh fruit and a single pepper. I gathered my things and walked back to my host house with an old man who showed up just after the boy disappeared.
Living in the shade of an infected citrus tree.
What is written here is a fleeting glimpse of an impossibly intricate tapestry of life which will take me years to adapt to and many more to grasp. However, sometimes I am witness to a moment, which gracefully ties together these loose strings into a veritable knot of understanding; by no means Gordian. Today, after returning to my host family's house from an afternoon spent cleaning a garden and seed bed, I sat down to dinner. The plate placed before me was of rice topped with a single well done egg. As I thankfully and quietly put down the food I noticed a slight shuffle and whisper amongst the 15 or so people present. My attention was raised from my plate to the humbling presence approaching. The boss of the house, the oldest and wisest male, the yucca-winner, was returning from harvest. Senior Timoteo arrived at dusk on horse back. The horse, the beast of burden, is a weathered mix breed, a son of a gun. It has carried two generations of Timoteos family to harvest and back. On either side of the horse, who has no other known name, are the fruits and vegetables of today's harvest; a sack of platano on the left, a sack of corn on the right. The man appears shrunken atop the beast. He looks like a simple gust of wind over the peak of a great mountain. I think to myself, as he approaches, that this must be a shining moment for Timoteo amidst his heartbreaking poverty. A man, returning from his encarceration to the land with several months worth of backbreaking labor packed into two sacks on his downtrodden horse. This food will not last more than a week for it must feed 10 people three times a day. However, this man is triumphant upon return, for he has once again defeated the deamon of powerlessness, the haunting presence of poverty that pounds at his shoulders has been lifted, if only for a few twilight hours. Yet, he also returns defeated in his struggle to tame the steep and perilous land. For his corn is small again this year, and the platano's are not yet ripe; and in the back of this poor farmers mind is the gnawing knowledge that his saving grace, his cash crop, is infected with a fungus, which he is unable to rid. Another years citrus crop must be sacrificed to the gods of fate; a peakless, troughless, horizonless fate of undereducation and resourcelessness. Still, he proudly rides atop his chariot of poverty, past the children who greet him as peasants do kings. abruptly stopping play and parting to make way for the majesty of perserverence and his beast. He strides through the open air, dirt floor house, past the dinner table where I am frozen in a thoughtful gaze, a spoonfull of his rice teetering on my spoon, as I make eye contact with humbleness. His solemn and silent presence halt all conversation, play and work. He has returned. Glory and gloom belong to this poor man who brings home the harvest.
7.02.2008
Arrival
The familiar road that I travelled fifteen days ago snaked before me as a queesy feeling of finality struck an unfamiliar nerve. I was almost there, almost to my pueblo. I have been busily waiting for this moment for nearly a year. Finally, I will be living with the people I hope to call my family, my gente.
I pulled into Cope around five on a regular Sunday evening. The fog was billowing over the sharp mountains like a nervous volcano ready to release its million year old lunch. People were strolling about the streets, saying hello's and exchanging the day's telenovela-ish gossip. The last leg of my journey lay just around the corner and up the bend, some 45 minutes from where I was standing.
I walked to the bus stop to ask about the next chiva to my pueblo. The old chinese man who owns the store next door said a chiva for me was coming very shortly. A chiva for me? I didn't quite understand what that meant, so I chalked it up to my loose grasp of Spanish. While waiting for my chiva I bought a coke. Probably the last coke I would have for some time as my pueblo doesn't have electricity and therefore nothing can be cold. So I set my bags down, and took the time to enjoy the luxuriously quenching opal liquid whose magical bubbles tickled my throat.
Inbetween the extisy of a sip, I heard a rucus emenating from some unkown place around the bend. Before I was able to investigate the matter myself, a chiva pulled up and told me to hop in for a whirl around town. I gladly oblidged, threw my stuff in the back and gulped down the rest of my home town coke. We zoomed past a store, a resturaunt and the police station. The comotion grew louder with every turn of the wheels. The chiva slowed to a crawl as we turned the final corner.
And there it was, a 15 year old girls birthday party. A huge coming of age affair here in Panama. In this single story house there must have been over 60 people. And who was standing outside the party but about 12 guys I knew from my pueblo who were returning from their Sunday baseball game. They were celebrating two wins against difficult teams in the first round of the provincial tournament. I yelled out a traditional hello. !AUWEY! As we rolled by, one guy handed me a brew, another guy shook my hand, another was yelling Auwey, and another was telling me to get into the chiva waiting to take me to our pueblo. I handed off my bags, opened the beer, and climbed into the chiva.
So, 'my chiva' was waiting for me after all. The baseball team was there so we could all ride through the pale, fog obscured dusk to my new home. The queeey feeling of finality now seems to be the queesy feeling of beginning.
I pulled into Cope around five on a regular Sunday evening. The fog was billowing over the sharp mountains like a nervous volcano ready to release its million year old lunch. People were strolling about the streets, saying hello's and exchanging the day's telenovela-ish gossip. The last leg of my journey lay just around the corner and up the bend, some 45 minutes from where I was standing.
I walked to the bus stop to ask about the next chiva to my pueblo. The old chinese man who owns the store next door said a chiva for me was coming very shortly. A chiva for me? I didn't quite understand what that meant, so I chalked it up to my loose grasp of Spanish. While waiting for my chiva I bought a coke. Probably the last coke I would have for some time as my pueblo doesn't have electricity and therefore nothing can be cold. So I set my bags down, and took the time to enjoy the luxuriously quenching opal liquid whose magical bubbles tickled my throat.
Inbetween the extisy of a sip, I heard a rucus emenating from some unkown place around the bend. Before I was able to investigate the matter myself, a chiva pulled up and told me to hop in for a whirl around town. I gladly oblidged, threw my stuff in the back and gulped down the rest of my home town coke. We zoomed past a store, a resturaunt and the police station. The comotion grew louder with every turn of the wheels. The chiva slowed to a crawl as we turned the final corner.
And there it was, a 15 year old girls birthday party. A huge coming of age affair here in Panama. In this single story house there must have been over 60 people. And who was standing outside the party but about 12 guys I knew from my pueblo who were returning from their Sunday baseball game. They were celebrating two wins against difficult teams in the first round of the provincial tournament. I yelled out a traditional hello. !AUWEY! As we rolled by, one guy handed me a brew, another guy shook my hand, another was yelling Auwey, and another was telling me to get into the chiva waiting to take me to our pueblo. I handed off my bags, opened the beer, and climbed into the chiva.
So, 'my chiva' was waiting for me after all. The baseball team was there so we could all ride through the pale, fog obscured dusk to my new home. The queeey feeling of finality now seems to be the queesy feeling of beginning.
The arrival of the alarm and the chicken
Dawn breaks, and I soon awake. My hosts have already risen, showered, and eaten. I am slower to get up and moving, half due to a nervous belly, the other half due to my acclimation to electricity. I know that soon, I shall also wake up at 4AM with the rolling rooster howl. What is this some may ask. Well, in some towns, where many people have roosters and live close together but far apart, there is a rooster roll. One rooster who is the most bravo of them all, takes a deep breath of the morning air and howls for all to hear. The next rooster then does the same, and so on through the town until it rolls back to the bravo rooster; like a ripple of water reflected off the shore line. Believe me you, this will wake-you-up in a hurry.
Waking at dawn is the only recourse for people living off the grid, without electricity. They must take advantage of every ounce of sunlight showered upon the earth. I have become so accustomed to artificial light over my short life that I have failed to ever fully appreciate the rising and setting of thesun as a natural way to wake and sleep. I find a simple and timelss beauty in this tradition; as if someone set a universal alarm at the perfect time billions of years ago so that a man living on and by the land could heard it ring forever tomorrow.
Day 2
I didn't hear that age old alarm again today. So it goes for now. Breakfast greeted me as I sat down at the table, which happens to be outside. In front of me was a bowl, full of yucca harvested the day prior topped with a single fried egg which I had bought the day prior. I instantly noticed the difference in working to grow the food and working to buy the food. The yucca was much more plentiful and delicious. Though it went well with the fried remains of the egg. And of course, a hot cup of sweet coffee which I would see my host dad roasting later in the day. During breakfast, chickens were relentlessly entering my hosts bedroom. At first, my host father cursed at them and made awful hissing noises to warn them out. Chickens never learn. The last unlucky chicken to enter the bedroom was the one whom would have to learn his lesson. This final chicken had it coming. My host dad, hearing the not-so-subtle clucking coming from atop his bed, swiftly rose to his feet and entered the room, slowly closing the door behind him. A few tense seconds passed while everyone had stopped eating yucca to see how the chicken would fare against this weathered old man. The fight was on. The man suddenly unleashed a furry of angry curse words and the chicken started clucking bloody murder at the top of its lungs. I heard feet shuffling back and forth and wings furiously flapping. Then silence. and the door swung open. Out came my host father with a chicken in his hands and a big smile on his face. The chicken had learned its lesson. Needless to say, we ate chicken and rice for dinner.
Waking at dawn is the only recourse for people living off the grid, without electricity. They must take advantage of every ounce of sunlight showered upon the earth. I have become so accustomed to artificial light over my short life that I have failed to ever fully appreciate the rising and setting of thesun as a natural way to wake and sleep. I find a simple and timelss beauty in this tradition; as if someone set a universal alarm at the perfect time billions of years ago so that a man living on and by the land could heard it ring forever tomorrow.
Day 2
I didn't hear that age old alarm again today. So it goes for now. Breakfast greeted me as I sat down at the table, which happens to be outside. In front of me was a bowl, full of yucca harvested the day prior topped with a single fried egg which I had bought the day prior. I instantly noticed the difference in working to grow the food and working to buy the food. The yucca was much more plentiful and delicious. Though it went well with the fried remains of the egg. And of course, a hot cup of sweet coffee which I would see my host dad roasting later in the day. During breakfast, chickens were relentlessly entering my hosts bedroom. At first, my host father cursed at them and made awful hissing noises to warn them out. Chickens never learn. The last unlucky chicken to enter the bedroom was the one whom would have to learn his lesson. This final chicken had it coming. My host dad, hearing the not-so-subtle clucking coming from atop his bed, swiftly rose to his feet and entered the room, slowly closing the door behind him. A few tense seconds passed while everyone had stopped eating yucca to see how the chicken would fare against this weathered old man. The fight was on. The man suddenly unleashed a furry of angry curse words and the chicken started clucking bloody murder at the top of its lungs. I heard feet shuffling back and forth and wings furiously flapping. Then silence. and the door swung open. Out came my host father with a chicken in his hands and a big smile on his face. The chicken had learned its lesson. Needless to say, we ate chicken and rice for dinner.
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