May 31 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

May 30 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

May 29 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

May 28 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

May 27 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

May 26 2010:  Hotel Angelus, Pérez Zeledón, Costa Rica

May 25 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

Three days running the clouds have covered the sky all day long, intermittent rain throughout the day, never a single gleam of an errant beam of sunlight.  Not one.  It is a bit unusual, it feels.  The surf, I understand has been epic.  Colorado Chris today said the last month is the best he has personally ever seen and lived it.  The Snow Hare returned today as his human incarnation, healthy looking and sounding, level-eyed.  The town of Puerto Jimenez embraces more of its same qualities, and as with each return to a sense of disillusionment, this return has carried a steeper grade of disillusionment.  Perhaps that is not even the right word.  But disappointment would be too strong.  Tortuga Tim has been a great distraction from too much gravitas in the past few days.  The functions of office have been purely perfunctory.  Even the revision of the Chuba Cabra script.  Perfunctory.  Pedestrian efforts.  I occupy a jaded void of meaning, and that's enough to have to get out. 

But perhaps meaning is overrated if you can make it yourself.  Or put another way, if I can make it myself but am no longer able to here, then it circumnavigates back around the locution to the original point, that it is time to make a move.  It's time to go somewhere else.  Do other things.

Will I feel differently tomorrow? 

May 24 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

May 23 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

May 22 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

May 21 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

Ceviche	The Natalie Party Monkey	Shrimp scampi

May 20 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

May 19 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

May 18 2010:  Crow's Nest, James Town, Costa Rica

Cerro de la Muerte	Quetzal country	Bridge Maintenance	Costanera just north of Cortés

May 17 2010:  Dunn Inn, San Jose, Costa Rica

May 16 2010:  Ramada Inn, Baltimore, Maryland

2218 gymnastics	The kinetic couch, Sonya and Orpheus	Buddie	Dirty sexy money

New Jersey turnpike	All lanes lead to the Grey Metropolis	Aladdin reflects

Dino kicks back	Toby, one final down, four to go.	The Orph-meister	Home to roost

May 15 2010:  2218 Calvert Street, Baltimore, Maryland

Modern Man (and Pablo)	Aladdin eyes the cool police cart	Aladdin on the graduation lawn	The KM in his dorm room

May 14 2010:  Big Haus, Purchase, New York

May 13 2010:  Big Haus, Purchase, New York

Grilled seafood platter, Brisa Marina, Portchester	Octopus, shrimp, and lobster salad	Seafood fettuchini

Robbie and me	West End Avenue	Highway 9-A, Hudson Parkway, George Washington Bridge in background	Holly and Aladdin

Manhattan in the morning	ditto	Roberto and Gringa from their balcony	ditto

May 12 2010:  Robbie and Gringa's pad, Upper West End, Manhattan, New York

Midtown looking south	Broadway	Honk:  $350; leave doggie doo:  $500	Electric wheels, Manhattan

1507 Washington, Easton:  my old haunt	George Washington Bridge	Manhattan in the mists	Manhattan sculpture

May 11 2010:  Easton, Pennsylvania

Tuna tartare	Horace, lining out the evening's entertainment	After one sip	the martini maker

Listening to free Internet music on www.jango.com and grokking on the whole of my momentary existence.  Eighty miles from the capital of the planet and ten years from where I left gainful employment and this vibrant nation to strike out on my own in a tropical backwater that filled my imagination with a feverish impulse.  Here it is on the flip side of a life spent on the margins of expectations but in the passing lane of my own illusions.  Today I stroll back into the workplace I left a decade ago to cast my eyes around at the planned wreckage of the dismantling of the plant.  The Teamsters were probably the death knell of a surely longstanding slide in profitability. 

CES screenshot	ibid	Dismantling the plant	Resist Stripper(s)

Am reeling from the long path down memory lane and through the kaleidoscopic imaginarium of three decades processed through the prospective of Andrei.  It is stunning to imagine the paths taken, their consequences, and the roller-coaster of lives that can never be checked at the coat door.  Since arriving in the States, I have been reeling with an urge to comment on my latest take on the great American zeitgeist as taken in through the tint of my shades as I roll down the Great Divided Freeway and grok on the whole of it.  But my continual motion has not favored my freedom to do so.

Formerly Ashland warehouse	Plant tour	Horace Smith	Still in use a decade later:  CES

But in the meanwhile, my obligations in Costa Rica are being fulfilled, and I must take comfort in the reasonable orderliness of my systems there.  The sky has not fallen.  And nothing bad has happened.  And even some minor problems have arisen that Kati has managed adroitly. 

This leaves me wio05th the freedom to really survey my life and options and make new stands in bold places.  Theoretically, anyway.

May 10 2010:  Allentown, Pennsylvania

Susquehanna River	Andrei and Sandy Grecu	Susquehanna	Andrei and YHC

May 9 2010:  Andrei and Sandy's home, Leesport, Pennsylvania

May 8 2010:  Lisa and Jerry's house,  Moselem Springs, Pennsylvania

May 7 2010:  Yorktowne Hotel, York, Pennsylvania

Strange elegance in a rural brick city, namesake with a place in England that informs the wonder of my momentary domicile.

May 6 2010:  2218 Calvert, the Grey Metropolis

May 5 2010:  Wright, Arkansas, Dad's house

The restorative power of the heartland has left me filled with a contemplative vigor, and the armchair satisfaction that it imbues upon my world is a kind of palliative for all the existential angst that could possibly bubble to some unimaginable surface.  As the White Hare settles in torpid Jimmy into whatever he is doing and leaves the airwaves free for a day of any unwelcome emails and neediness, my time in Arkansas comes to a close and the East Coast opens its arms to embrace my tentative arrival tomorrow afternoon.  I have a rental car secured for my purposes and a list of visits to make and plenty upon which to reflect and marvel in my remaining stateside tour. 

Yesterday I completed billing on Playa Lapa, Nicuesa Lodge, Hotel Verdemar, and Cerro de las Ninfas.  Today I am muddling through graphic art for signs and business cards.  It's a warm Spring day, flies a buzzing, a gentle breeze rising in the day's lazy passage, ripples on the water.  An odd sense of accomplishment feels on the surface unwarranted but inside my personal generosity with myself wins out over any masochistic bent and I am left undaunted by any fears, the unknown as wholesome as the freshly harvested, the inevitable decay as friendly to me as the sap rising toward the smell of summer.  There was a quote by Emerson, something about the beauty of age turning inward.  And there is a certain smugness to my sense of satisfaction.

Or perhaps it is just the Dan-alleged bloated ego peaking out from around the woodshed, madly grinning.

May 4 2010:  Wright, Arkansas, Dad's house

May 3 2010:  Wright, Arkansas, Dad's house

May 2 2010:  Little Rock, Arkansas, Momma Lynn's house

May 1 2010:  Camden, Arkansas, Mom's house