April 30 2010:  Camden, Arkansas, Mom's house

April 29 2010:  Camden, Arkansas:  Mom's house

April 28 2010:  7002 Amherst, Little Rock, AR (Momma Lynn's house)

April 27 2010:  2218 Calvert Street, Baltimore, MD (aka the Grey Metropolis)

April 26 2010:  Mango Hotel,  San Jose

April 25 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

Here we are in the final moments of corvine contemplation.  It is an unsettled peace in which I find myself unresistingly restrained.  I made it to Golfo today to visit the Snow Hare.  he had the corner bed in a six-man room and was physically much improved over the last time I saw him, though bandaged heavily.  He was catheterized with his little bag and unable to walk.  He called this morning speaking of a change in plans and of his desire to take a taxi to San Isidro to pick up his truck.  He occupies a world where reality is like a coat that you check at the door.

April 24 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

A little bit of Internet research and I was able to turn up the steel beam deflection formulae for point and distributed loads and then beam characteristics.  A process I had been dreading came together fully with just the slightest scholarship, and it all came back quickly to me from Mechanics of Materials, all those huge numbers (modulus of elasticity in psi and dimensions raised to the third power to get the numerator into nine digits, all canceling out to arrive at deflection values with a precision of .01 inch.  There is something that awakens the cosmic awe through the the scales involved, but the neatness of it is addictive.  The room for error is great because of the need for dimensional consistency, and one of the cool things is you can pretty much tell looking at your answer whether you hit is or not.  If it's in the same order of magnitude as what you are expecting, then you can pretty much assume that you at least have the formula workings down.  I am going for W8x30 beams for horizontal load bearing components and am going for the nearly equi-dimensional W8x69 for support pillars and their T-tops.

I am off to visit the Snow Hare tomorrow.  Visiting hours are from noon to 2:30.  I am taking him a cell phone.  That will be a surprise.  I am sure he will not be ready, but I am going to spell it all out for him and get really serious with him.  He should be a captive audience.  But I will not hold my breath for any structural changes.

I like that word . . . structural.

I am prepared for my trip.  I have done what it takes to be nominally caught up.  There are a few soft edges that will need an extra bit of attention and management to keep them from becoming softer in my absence, but you can't have everything.  Lalo called me today, one week to the day after walking off the job.  Wanted to know what if I was going to recognize him something for his year of work.  I hung up when he started raising his voice to tell me off.  I want to feel angry about it and outraged, but getting myself astrally beyond my body to examine it all with a bit of objectivity, there is a balance of emotion that should rationally tilt toward the empathic rather than the angry.  Lalo is dealing with Lalo-space in which only one set of data exist, and I cannot allow myself to be angered by what is simply a human limitation in someone else.  It doesn't mean he's going to get any money from me.  But it does mean that there is no gain in my taking any of it personally.

April 23 2010:  El Nido del Halcon, Uvita

The elegant curves	Copete, the bull	From chaos, order	Has been observed on site

The El mockup is amazing.  The photos don't do any justice of course.  But in person the curves formed in the rebar bring it to life.  Copete's talent is incredible.  And just yesterday he came to me wanting to form a company together, a partnership.  I am a little humbled at the proposal and likely not adequately worthy.  Yet, it's out there, out of the bag now.  He wants his own web site and marketing director.  He's no dummy.  And the Weech has still not returned from the border.  He seems to be a complete write-off, leaving me with a new shop manager and a new dance with the Fat Man, who I have on jobs from tomorrow through next Friday, one after the other.

Field Office	Road building	When the machines have gone	Potty mouth

The Snow Hare has called me again.  He sounded nearly completely normal, out of his narcotic craze, down from his manic self-assurance, but sounding somewhere above his morbid depression.  I will go and visit him on Sunday.  He had three requests for me, all of them, unlike yesterday's, eminently reasonable:  1)  contact his mechanic to tell him the circumstances;  2) tell Katerina to go and visit him;  and 3) to let Marnee know where he was.  I can do those things, even though I don't have his mechanic's contact information, have already told Marnee, and am not too pleased about tracking down Katerina as she uncomfortably owes me forty rojos and is in the middle of her own full blown addiction.

The approach toward Tuesday's departure is under management and within reach without an abandonment of duties and responsibilities.  We'll see if I feel that way Tuesday morning, but from this vantage point, this is actually starting to take on the feel of a vacation.  How outré! 

April 22 2010:  The Crow's Nest, Port Jim

Went in prepared to have three root canals in one sitting--five roots--and in the end did not require any.  Three fillings later my mouth is shaping up nicely.  The work today ends my compulsive obsession to have toothpicks at all times, and I am about to go test out the chompers on a smoked pork casado.  Tomorrow at seven I have one final ornamental semi-cavity taken care of, and my smile will be mega-restored.  This is fantastic!!!

Secured a deal with a welder to work the shop.  The Weech called from the border today after a full week escondido-ed.  I went and changed the locks on the taller and expect to see him in some phase shift between hung-dog and defiant this afternoon.  I doubt that we can overcome this thing and work together.  But maybe.

The Snow Hare finally got his hands on a telephone and called me.  Of all the many things that he could ask for help with, what he most needed was for me to send someone over to sort through the debris left from the fire that he set in his hotel room six days ago to recover any of the cash or credit cards that may have survived the fire.  "It was an alcohol fire," he confided.  "It went up fast."  Right, go six days after the police and hotel owners have gone through the the hotel room--itself a crime scene on private property--to see if there was any cash or credit cards left behind. 

I have the invite from the Perla owner to stop in and discuss the water supply report tomorrow, on my way up to the bridge job site to see how Luis is coming with the mockup and trailblazing.  I got a contractual agreement on a lease for Playa Lapa last night and for Amapola this morning, and my man Johan is still interested in Kitty's aerie on the Matajambre Ridge.  I have a new shop foreman, a professional welder to manage the shop and a full week of jobs lined out for Pana, culminating with the Playa Lapa solar install while I am cooling my heels and dreaming big dreams in Arkansas and preparing myself for my Great Atlantic Seaboard Road Trip in a rented mini-van.

April 21 2010:  The Crow's Nest, Port Jim

Nicuesa

April 20 2010:  The Crow's Nest, Port Jim

Went to the dentist today and had three cavities filled and one premolar that was broken off filled.  On my return from the States, I will have a fixed bridge fill in two missing teeth in my upper right quadrant.  The day after tomorrow I replace three fillings that have fallen out.  I am told that the thinness of the remaining hard part of the tooth, what separates it from the root is so thin that in cleaning it this is likely to be breached and require root canal(s).  So I have four hours set aside for three fillings and up to three root canals in two molars and a canine tooth, and I kind of hope it requires the root canals because that will be a story that I bet none of you will be able to match.  How many people do you know that had three root canals in the same day . . . ?  I have three other very minor cavities that I will take care of in a third trip on Monday, and except the bridge work that will have to be done when I get back will be all set with a fixed up mouth for my upcoming trip.

The embassy is now in the loop on the Snow Hare's case.  Some of his burns are apparently third degree, and he is going to be in the hospital for several days it looks like.  Another reprieve from the daily terrorism of what is about to happen next.  There is going to be a psych evaluation done this time in the hospital.  The patient is not expected to be much of a happy camper.  He is surely hating his life right now. 

Wicho is missing in action.  I gave him $300 on Thursday to go to Panama to get a driver's license and passport.  That is the last we have seen of him.  We know he made it to the border but that he did not cross.  Cope thinks he headed for Nicaragua to go and try to straighten out things with his ex-wife.  Erick thinks he went to Perez to try to get a Costa Rican driver's license.  I worry that he is holed up in a shithole fleabag hotel going through my $300 one bottle of guaro at a time.  The Khan Man is none too happy with the development but on balance wonders if maybe it is not for the best to get Guaricho and Lalolico out of the picture in the same fell swoop and start from scratch with new, less bibulous, personnel.

Am procrastinating the energy analysis on the Tamarindo home.  It's not an adventure.  It's just work.  Guess I'd better launch into it now and knock it out.  I said I would have a final offer by tomorrow evening as the client arrives then and meets with the architect on Thursday morning.   He said that Inti Tech is out of the running altogether, that they quoted $40,000 plus and then could not answer basic questions by the client.  I am the only other one in the running and was invited to his office.  I think I have a good chance at this, and it is work that emerged from my yellow page advertising.  I need to convert.

Am chomping at the bit, ready to get on that airplane and head north and leave these comedies, tragedies, and dramas to await my return with batteries recharged by the grand illusion of life among the free world's presumptive exemplar.

April 19 2010:  The Crow's Nest, Port Jim

As the Snow Hare drowses in sedation in the Golfito emergency room with burns to his "privates" according to the nurse answering the phone on that floor, the Khan Man returns to a bizarre array of orderliness and logic.  Therein lies the perversity.

The intrepid ruby racer emerged from the driving rain of Mogos today as the odometer nears 300K.  The operative word is "intrepid" and the honorific is henceforth one with identity.  Hello, Intrepid Ruby Racer.

!!!

Let this be done.

April 18 2010:  Hotel Irazu, San Jose

April 17 2010:  The Crow's Nest, Port Jim

Bags are packed and ready for an early morning departure.  Finished the Perla de Ballena subdivision water supply report and got it in the mail this evening, leaving me somewhat wiped out but content.  Am scheduled for a ten a.m. meeting on the mountain with Luis for surveying and final design plans for the El.  Then I'm off to the Hose probably up the Costanera and a night at Adventure Inn in order to be johnny on the spot for my Monday appointment with the architect that says he wants to finalize details for a solar package for a Tamarindo home that he is already pegging block on.  For those of you unsure what "pegging block" means, it is spanglish for "pegar block," laying cinder block.  My trip north is nearing precipitously.

I have yet to send in the final bill on Ninfas electrification and can still hardly believe that the job concluded with the happiest denouement imaginable, an installation with no buts, nothing to explain, just a deliverable delivered.  Also have yet to send the Hausers billing on the panels that I paid for and the taxes.  Took Johan out to view Kitty's property today, finally, and he is interested, so that opens another chain of consequences and obligations.

Lalo did not like my displeasure at his slinking off and being weird today.  After I failed to find him at the Taller where he told Katiana he would be working, I ran into him on the street and voiced my displeasure and sense of being jerked around.  It was not a pleasant casual conversation and was undertaken in the street under an unrepentant sun, and I cut it off and told him that after he got accommodated and did whatever it was he was going to apparently do, now that it was ten thirty in the morning and my day's objectives for him were no longer in reach, to stop by the office to figure things out.

He opted instead to take his keys to Katiana and inform her he quit.  I chose not to question him about the look in his eyes but it was clear he had been drinking, and Katiana mentioned also that he looked boozy to her as well.  I imagine he is having trouble sleeping tonight.  Personally, I am not at all unhappy about being shed of a labor commitment with limited capacity, little ability or willingness to learn, and a prickly and delicado nature that puts him at odds with Pana on jobs always and surly and a pain.  Nobody can deny that when he works he works very well and hard.  But his talents have never exceeded an intimacy with the shovel and machete, and wielders of those particular tools are as easy as pickup players on a Harlem half court.

I am not at all displeased that he took this choice and bailed on me, his pride injured at my rebuke while trying to cloak the fact that he had snuck off to drink guaro and duck me while I was tied up with the morning's hurlyburly.

The Snow Hare squared his bills today and unhocked his tools and delivered them to the Juanita's house, and I now have them in the Crow's Nest, removed from any temptation by the flood of humanity that ebbs and flows in that house. 

With Wicho returning on Monday, possibly outfitted with a driver's license and passport, I am in the odd position of being able to divert the financial commitment I had in Lalo, raise it by 50% and possibly secure Wicho as a personal foreman.  If I can keep him from wallowing over his sundered family and drowning himself in the nearest spirit handy, I may segue from a pedestrian yesterday into a motorized tomorrow, all without pain or any real cost . . . how cool would that be?

For now I sign off to complete my browsing of the online news in order to get to bed and be fresh in the morning.

April 16 2010:  The Crow's Nest, Port Jim

April 15 2010:  The Crow's Nest, Port Jim

Turns out maybe the Donners did not eat one another after all, and Jack Kevorkian inteviewed by Anderson Cooper comes off sounding not unreasonable, despite how creepy he has always seemed to me.

Pana and Pepe Trueno knocked out Verdemar, restoring the upper pressure cutoff, and it's a good day to cap a good week.

The Khan Man is hot for the well-rounded CNN weather-lady, Jennifer Delgado.

April 14 2010:  El Nido del Halcón, Ballena

Houston, we don't have a problem. 

While I have still to head up tomorrow and run through a series of tests for final efficiencies and spec reports, Erick has a wide and broad smile on his face.  We are powered up at Ninfas, more on the subject tomorrow.

At Perla de Ballena, we walked the entire upper six lots and all the way up the mountainside to the upper road.  The field findings make the final design self-evident, and everyone is all smiles.  A little local job done tomorrow, and a return to Manuel Antonio with o-rings in hand for tomorrow and on the heels of the hydroelectric rollout in Barva to kick off the road trip, it has been quite a ride. 

April 13 2010:  Cabinas Gato, Uvita

April 12 2010:  Cabinas Gato, Uvita

April 11 2010:  Hotel Verdemar, Manuel Antonio

April 10 2010:  Hotel Verdemar, Manuel Antonio

A long day of hard driving could not have ended better with heavy rain blowing up just outside of Quepos and accompanying me all the way into Manuel Antonio and then an hour later back out to eat, even.  It has quit now, leaving the night to enunciate its freshness with the rustle of happy leaves by a cool breeze and the reports of thousands of water drops falling onto living plants in the understory and finally upon the decaying humus of the forest floor.  At Kapi Kapi, my $30 fusion dinner of two appetizers was disappointing.  The salad was a mixture of greens with a parsimonious smattering of goat cheese crumbles and an excess of "candied" pecans.  The dressing was a balsamic vinegar reduction of some stripe, the tartness insufficiently modulated with something sweet and inadequately offset with seasoning to disguise the bite.  The whole proved a simple amalgamation of its parts, except for the cheese which was only macroscopically present, not there for the palate at all.  The malbec was very good and I was in a good mood and willing to overlook small flaws, knowing that the seared yellowfin slices to emerge in some wasabi fusion concoction and I don't know what else was going to knock my socks off.  But the waiter goofed and served me not what I ordered but the other kind of seared tuna, featuring fried avocado fritters and a sparing white sauce for the tuna that struck me as little more interesting than mayonnaise.  I resisted the inclination to be disappointed and decided not to report this to the waiter as I was not in the mood to be told that it had been me that had ordered wrong.  The avocado fritters were interesting, and the tuna itself was very fresh and delicious.  But the totality of the meal was a disappointment.

April 9 2010:  Dunn Inn, San José

Erick Lam y Pepe Trueno	White Horse	Lily of the Valley	Es mi clima	Field Office

April 8 2010:  Hotel Alajuela, Alajuela

I have the second story  corner room looking out over the square in downtown Alajuela.  The trees in the park are huge, and the view of the cathedral, across the square from me, is almost completely obscured.  You can only see parts of the lower walls because it is all lit up, punctuated by the thick trunks of the intervening garden of bicentennial trees.  The streets are moist from twilight's cloudburst, and your humble correspondent enjoyed a fat plate of mixed bocas with Pana and sidekick Pepe Trueno on an outdoor balcony and swilled grog in a climate that stimulates happiness and conversation.

I picked up the latest load of equipment in Santo Domingo, and it was all there.  The turbine, controllers, battery, load diversion heating element, and my CafeNet inverter and mate.  Had confirmation that all the new purchases, the Playa Lapa panels and batteries, and the refrigerators and the two filtration systems and my CafeNet flexware, all of it made it in time to go on this week's boat, and it sets sail from Miami on Saturday morning.

Tomorrow at six we head out for the Barva dairy for the hydro install and get to see if they have everything set up and ready for us.  I do a survey of a bigger job on the same finca while Pana and Pepe set up the pelton and load diversion, and I will probably spend the night at the Dunn tomorrow to be able to make rounds at Hidrotica Saturday morning to pick up the pump electrode controls for Hacienda Uvita and possibly a water pressurization system for Simon's job up in San Gerardo. 

It is encouraging that I am getting all these many calls about little things, little jobs here and there.  This is wonderful punctuation between the big jobs.

April 7 2010:  Hotel Los Crestones,  Pérez Zeledón

To bed angry following an email that rubbed me the wrong way in a hot room in San Isidro, caught me off guard at dinner at Bazooka's and ruined my evening and it was minor.  Should rein it in and not blow a gasket.  The White Hare spent the morning on the telephone angry with his US bankers, unable to lay his hands on any money.  I blazed a trail noon-ish and stopped in at ICE Dominical where the receptionist was actually very helpful, like the technician Byron has been.  I still cannot believe the level of absurdity in excess protections they are insisting upon for a 4 meter length of buried cable.   We are going subaerial after all the fuss, but I will bet dollars to doughnuts that by the time they undersize the feeder cable under their control, the overall connection will be less efficient than the one have already installed underground.  But if logic ruled the day's progression, then it would be a bit sterile and possibly even boring.

April 6 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

Terrible Tuesday blossomed this morning as a glow over the gulf, as a shadow of light cast against my curtain, as birdsong finding its feet and the rumble of trucks, the milkman I like to imagine from the Rockwellian confines of my pre-awakening Americana.  At six a.m. the world's resplendence is defined by the ethicality of going back to sleep, even if it is for another hour and a half at most.  The subterranean firing of synapses is a Pavlovian reaction to the luminosity of the curtains.  As the morning hardens into the naked stare of the workaday sun, pleasure segues from exaltation to uncertainty and then guilt.  I had a down and dirty deadline of the first scrape of tables across downstairs concrete floor, a 7:30 wakeup call but pulled myself from the electromagnetic fold of my blanket with fifteen minutes to spare, made coffee, and assumed the position here in the captain's seat in front of my odd eye upon the universe . . .

I put together the PL solar order, spoke with ICE Domical engineers, and got myself ready for today's showing, pulling the planos together.  And the showings went really well.  My Swiss clients were very polite and receptive, and there were no surprises for any of us, and it was good.  Back at the Crow's Nest, the Snow Hare and Vic arrived for lunch and I spoke with him.  He appears to think that I have sabotaged him with his landlady.  He is suspicious of me because people talk with me and I with them.  He appears to suggest that others would not think that he was involved with drugs if somebody (read:  Pablo) weren't ratting him out.  Dan acts like he has no history with a mirror or that people around here have never seen dissipation or drugs before and don't know what it looks like when they see it.   At a level inside his brain that is rotten from the repeated willing misfiring of synapses, he seemed to imply that I might be part of his problem.

I got the equipment paid for by PayPal, and the overnight check reached its destination, and batteries were delivered, and the panels are due for delivery tomorrow.  I bought a solar refrigerator ($1150) to go with the inverter I bought for downstairs, so I am converting some of the fluid stuff to hardware.  I bought an extra filtration system last week beyond the two that have been ordered and are due for installations in coming days. 

I am saturated with the negative energy of the Snow Hare's situation and can't imagine how he has let it come to this and how I came to become an enabler to a dark purpose.

April 5 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

Will trade places with guitar	Starting young	Carrying water in China

Manic Monday erupted like a long-winded denouement but built in tension and excitement throughout the day and now spume from its crisis is settling across the town.  The Snow Hair and his latest sidekick, Victor, rolled into town about eleven thirty.  At death's door in appearance, the Snowy One was barely able to hobble around on crutches, his legs masses of scabs, both knees and both ankles grossly swollen, his head dinged and pitted with scabs and cuts and scrapes all over.  He complained of broken ribs and in shifting his weight at one point gasped in pain, apparently from a broken toe.  He was not notably under the influence but wild-eyed and in a different mental place, like manic perhaps, sort of.  Within moments of arriving he made a point of switching to Spanish to state that Victor wanted to watch television and if it would be okay would be coming over to hang out with me tonight and watch television.  I stared at him dumbfounded for a bit, unbelieving, and a think came into his eyes, like the least I could do for this friend of his and for him was to let Victor watch television.  But I didn't anticipate wanting to watch television with him and Victor, assuming that's what he meant, and I balked and finally managed to get out that that did not sound like something I wanted to be a part of.  He reminded me that he does not have a television set, and not five minutes after hobbling upstairs on his crutches and settling down on the couch, he told Victor to not plug in his cell phone that they had to go and get over to his place.   I engaged Dan with a few observational questions and points, notably that his infections if they were staph could prove life threatening and that he had to get to the clinic and get some systemic antibiotics.

Victor came back an hour or so later and gave me some backdrop.  While Victor may not be a cold-hearted street person out for his own ass, he is not exactly the reincarnation of Thomas Aquinas.  He owned up that he does coke, though only sniffs it, he pointed out, though on a daily basis.  Of course, what might I expect.  Who else would put up with Dan's shit unless there was a vested interest.  Anyway, he went downstairs and had some beers and went somewhere else to have some beers and went back to the apartment to sleep a bit and found Dan in his underwear sprawled on the landing with the keys locked in the apartment trying to break in with a board and came back here to get me so I could go and help.  He had managed somehow to get his hands on some coke and was wild and scary, and the next thing the landlady calls me that the neighbors are all terrified by Dan, crawling around bleeding, yelling, and banging on things.  I went over after awhile but everything was quiet from the outside so I kept walking.  Maybe she let him in and maybe he is in the jail.  His sidekick was afraid to go back around, afraid that he would be shaken down by the police for association--probably not an unreasonable concern--and when he saw me, he started walking with me like we are old friends and asking where I was going to be so he could come and hang out with me.  I declined.

In the meantime while all this was going on, the ex-boyfriend of my new bartender shows up at Juanita's and on my landing with his head bowed weepy and begging for forgiveness and wanting to abase himself before everybody for what he had done and to pay the bill he had walked out on.   I told him I accepted his apology but that he had to apologize to the staff.  They were the ones that had cleaned out the pile of excrement that he left as a calling card in the urinal in the men's room.  He brought this up and said that that was not him but that he had still misbehaved, and cried some more, and wanted to pay urgently and make it right, and I was moved but unable to see the angle of his approach until Aracelly came up to tell me that he was only interested in stalking Glenda, naturally, so I had to go down and reverse myself and tell him that it would not work, that I did not want his pay that I could not by the laws of the land tell him he could not be there but that he was not welcome and we could not serve him.  He kept coming back with his willingness to apologize, and I finally had to break it off and walk away, leaving him clutching bills that he wanted me to take.  Another trap.  I told him to keep his money that I did not want it and did not want his business.

His name is Roberto, and he worked as a field hand for Osa Water Works for a few months back in 2002.  Can't recall what happened, but I think it was just that he was a bit too ordinary with nothing redeeming or outstanding to keep him on, and I have seen him ever since and always smile and say hi.  By the time they got him to Golfito today he was dead.  The way the story went was that he called his girlfriend, and her lover answered the phone and that was all it took for him, and so he drank poison to solve the problem and unlike my day cook's sister when she drank muriatic acid three months ago, he did not survive his awful elixir.  I keep waiting for the punch line to be that he dialed the wrong number and killed himself in a vicious comedy of errors, but I am probably the only one pulling for this outcome and it probably reveals me to be a sick puppy.  Roberto was in his forties, not too much younger than me.  He was old enough to know better than to kill himself over a woman.  Especially a cheating woman!  Boy you have to really be a sad sack to do such a thing.  And I bet I can imagine him thinking as he was glug-glug-glugging it down, how sorry she was going to be, how bad she was going to feel . . . and I imagine her great relief at having him out of the way without having to go through the hassle of dumping him and having him cry and wail and stalk her and all the inconvenience of how to divide the mutual friends up and who gets the dog and what to do about the lot in Palo Seco where they were probably going to someday build their dream home.  Jilted lovers that kill themselves probably just wind up doing everybody a favor.

Well, the ikhanosphere is not so bleak and ugly and unredeeming a place as the preceding paragraphs might suggest.  My mechanic just delivered my truck to me with a new passenger's side door, and the color is the same as the old one so I don't have to paint it AND the window rolls down and up.  It cost me $164, parts and installation.  The asshole that is the father of the kid that hit me paid me $60, that was all they would pay, yelling at me all the while, scumbag bastard, so it wound up costing me $100 but for that I got an improvement over the old door, an improvement worth perhaps $30 or so, so I did not make out half bad.

And tomorrow I show properties and learn what the fallout will be for the Snow Hare.

April 4 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

14:00

Finally ventured off the reservation, buzzed my way out to make a round, push myself toward something on this standstill-dead Easter Sunday.  Rollo, the only client in Juanita's was my town cryer.  "[Redacted] killed himself," he lamented.  "This morning on his motorcycle in Rincon, he didn't make the curve, and . . . " hands tumbling around each other to indicate the crash.  "He was my friend," Rollo lamented, taking a pull from his beer.  "But these are the things of life."

A few years ago it was [redacted] that was hit on his bicycle by [redacted], who has been involved with his truck in three fatalities to date.  As the nominal head of a local underworld syndicate, he and Dad had shared time in prison.  His death left [redacted] nominally in charge of the local underworld empire.  The new boss was fast friends with today's decedent, who has been supplying the region with its psychoactive sidelines since I first moved here in 1994.  Coke mostly and then in the past year just pot.  A sort of gentleman pusher, always smiling, always professional, never under the influence himself, always respectful.  But he drove a motorcycle, and those things are, I guess, just dangerous.  Maybe his tire caught a rock.  Maybe he was enjoying the new tarmac and had the bike up five miles per hour over controllable speed.  Maybe he was driving along marveling at the mangroves or thinking about business.  And in the space of less than a minute he was in a heap, mortally injured, crumpled in the ditch, thinking surely, desperately, " . . . oh no, what have I done?"  I always liked him and am saddened at his passing.  His trade was admittedly an illegal one but neither immoral nor unethical, and he was a competent tradesman.  He is not as likely to be mourned aloud by the polite class of town, not perhaps in the same way as the others killed on the new highway so far in the past year.   Tonight when I pop a top I will lift a glass here in the solitude of the Crow's Nest in his memory.

The Snow Hare has called from the road outside of Cartago.  Victor has him in his car, headed south.  The San Jose police are surely ready to rest their knuckles, bound to pleased to be not be required to dispense the daily obligatory beatings that he has come to demand from them.  Of course, it must come as a passing blow to have the police department's human ATM remove himself from their easy reach.  It has to be nice to have a source of ready money always near and one hotel complaint away from the next cash withdrawal and brief workout. . .

09:30

On this Easter Sunday, the world has spiraled madly into control, its flailing arms coming together to fold themselves over a gentling chest, and the echoes of deep respiration can be discerned like the sound of the sea inside a seashell, the mantra of balance and continuity.   The Snow Hare was able yesterday to parlay the $100 I helped him to get from Western Union from his suspicious sister into $1500 that he was able through phone calls and emails to cajole from someone else.  The $100 was pocket money and bus fare to get him to Jimenez, but it would appear that it was a lie, that all he is after are more drugs.  His new protector, Victor, called this morning to report that he had dropped the wild one off at a hotel at his insistence, that he had called a blizzard up like room service, that sometime later he cause a scandal, and that the police were summoned to dispense his daily beating and take his money.  Dan is like an ATM to the San Jose metro police.  They dropped him off somewhere, and he called me (collect), asking me to call Victor and tell him were to go and get him.   The adventures of the Snow Hare are certainly not what makes the world seem properly aligned today and is documented as an obligatory footnote to the novel length saga of dissipation and decline that he is embarked upon. 

In the vein of twitter I have some one liners that for me encapsulate the favorable state of the universe, at least through the prism of my impressions and values.

• On the heels of his health care reform triumph, the American president has broken away from the pack and is now driving the national dialogue rather than being taken for a ride by it.

• The cowardice of the Pope and the shameless temerity of the Catholic Church has defrocked one of the world's major religions as a base and lay organization unable to recognize that the way out of the hole is to first stop digging.

• The Israeli-American dustup following Israel's provocative announcement of settlements during a visit by the American vice-president is the PERFECT opportunity to remind our middle east friends that the relationship is a two-way street and efforts to embarrass their most important patron are not going to automatically be tolerated as a birthright.

• Hamid Karzai, his chops bruised by a private dressing down by Obama has revealed himself to be a spoiled child subject to tantrums in between his trips to cookie jars and may very well provide an American exit strategy, lead that way in fact as an angry procession with his head ugly and sallow atop a pike.

• Iran's incorporation of sabotaged black market parts reveals that US intelligence agencies are in from the cold of their nukes-in-Iraq winter and back to the tricky business of getting America's back.

• Balances are appearing in the incomprehensible grey zone of global markets and economic forces.  All the talk of America in decline misses the greater silver lining in that America MUST decline relative to other world societies for a kind of stable balance to result.  Once the shipping of American jobs overseas was decried, but as overseas economies experience changes in their societies as a result of new wealth, wages rise, and the see-saw returns to favor the return of American manufacturing with profitability governed by market forces and not protective tariffs and artificial boundaries.

• With the green revolution ineradicably entrenched in developing societies, not only is at least the planet's health on the forefront of humanity's radar, but the technological and economic demands of improving our planetary stewardship imply an industrial base for vast economic expansion certain to disrespect international boundaries.

• And in the Crow's Nest, while I have not turned the corner to financial independence yet, the daily slog is not unpleasant and carries its modest but enabling paydays and keeps the ball always rolling, the gage of new opportunities ever in place to illuminate shifting avenues within the garden of forking paths. 

• I feel a happy divergence from the present course on my horizon and steaming ever nearer.

April 3 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

The gathering night gasps coyly, a blushing maiden with glistening thighs. 

. . .

Incandescent the light fantastic

iridescent the indigo glow

ribald and glib the pieces of plastic

truth senescent and covered with snow.

. . .

April 2 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

. . . Armadillos in Amarillo and ladybugs in Couer d'Alene.

Why they call it "Good" Friday is a mystery as deeply and moistly Christian as transubstantiation and pederasty is Catholic.  Today, finally legitimately Friday, is actually Sunday.  The holiday weekend of Thursday and Friday concludes tonight, and trembling alcoholics can re-emerge and shake off the DTs tomorrow with a nice stiff pint of guaro.  Tomorrow, Saturday, is a working day again, like Monday, only it is Saturday, which is why today's Friday is really Sunday.  Got that?  As if that were not enough the day after tomorrow, Sunday, is actually a Sunday both in fact and in metaphysically, arguably more Sunday than a normal Sunday because it is Easter Sunday and caps a week of festivity and dissipation to somberly mark a return to duty and work.

Me?  I'll be glad to get beyond Easter.  I have accomplished exactly 0% of the various tentative ambitions I had for this day.  Not quite fair. . . I had intended to feed myself well, to not run out of beer, and to enjoy my down days with militant determination.  And I have really enjoyed my isolation and wonderful contact with myself, and I have enough beer in the fridge to get me through this evening admirably, and I have fed myself bounteously.  As we speak I have a pizza in the oven and fresh iced tea in front of me.

Orpheus is in Budapest and Aladdin is in Baltimore.  Speaking with Aladdin, he ponied up to welcome my return to Purchase to collect him from his dorm again this year.  I had asked him in a couple emails without a reply and quit thinking about it.  But his bringing it up today as a favorable and desirable has propelled the original Atlantic Seaboard Homecoming May trip back on the platter.  I have already tentatively blocked out a month of my time, included a quick weeklong trip to Arkansas, and am running down the list of friends that I plan to stop in and impose upon.  I am beginning to feel giddy in advance of this sudden plan, which is only three weeks out on the horizon.

Oh yeah, and let's hear it for WORLD AUTISM AWARENESS DAY!  Yoo hoo!

April 1 2010:  Crow's Nest, Jamestown

Here on this Holy Thursday afternoon, the sky, grey all day long, has finally opened, releasing its pent up anger wetly upon a town just now beginning to swell with the throngs returning tired and tipsy from the beaches.  In the Crow's Nest, the day has been ticked off in online news and reflections, a bit of correspondence and dish washing.  The sense of a chapter in windup continues fully wound in my cerebral docket.  It's like my forehead at any moment might open with a little trap door and a wooden bird on a platform burst forth held tight only by a spring to face the world with wooden raucousness and go "cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo."