Taking Steps

What's a prisoner to do?

Pace.

Luckily, my cell is large. I can take big steps.

I have room to rattle around aimlessly between the walls. I can go out the door, hit the street, and as long as I don't get lost, I'm OK. But this isn't really hiking, let alone backpacking, which I miss.

I spent most of the summer back in the U.S., sort of randomly backpacking around Washington State, living in a car I bought in July and sold in September, parked in nooks I found in the woods or in state parks when not on the trail. It was good enough. My time was limited and I didn't have any real plans other than to be there and enjoy summer.

My time was limited because I'm in the middle of a sort of probationary period defined by the Ecuadorian government. I'm kind of a refugee, a refugee from winter, so I'm now an Ecuadorian resident. An official, legal, recognized Ecuadorian resident. For the third time. Yeah, right — did this before. Blew it up twice. On my third round now. They let you do that.

The deal is, if you meet the requirements, which in my case is being able to prove that I have a permanent lifetime income of at least $800 a month, and no criminal history and so on, then it's basically a matter of filling out the paperwork and waiting a couple of months, and then you're in. You can stay. Forever. You can even vote. Such a deal.

And the climate here is crazy good.

Typical temperatures:

• Overnight low: 50° F (10° C)
• Daytime high: 68° F (20° C)

Wind: not bad, usually light. Sunshine: YES! Rain: Now and then, around 35 inches per year, or 889 mm, but things usually dry up shortly after a brief shower.

I'm also a former burrowing mammal from North Dakota (Land of the Frozen Dead), who moved to western Washington in 1979 and was amazed that winter never came that year. Things got darker and cooler and wetter and then started getting brighter and warmer and dryer. Summer turned to fall, which turned to spring, and then summer again. Wow. No winter, even though I grew my usual fur in anticipation, out of lifelong habit.

It was like that for a long time. A real treat for someone who grew up where the weather could kill you dead any time of the year, but especially in winter. Winter is an OK season too, but not eight months of it. That's nuts.

Well, eight months of cold or at least cool weather. In North Dakota my favorite month was October, when everything got dry and crispy and clean — no bugs, no snakes, no poison ivy, no humidity, no heat, no storms. Just progressively colder, and mostly calm-ish. Cool trending toward frosty trending toward frozen.

After that was November, which was more of the same, but a little closer to the killing edge, and then December and the holiday stuff, and after that January. I'm not sure what January is good for, but it was right in there like clockwork.

And then after January things got cold. Seriously, truly, uncompromisingly.

February was usually the coldest month in North Dakota. Brighter but colder. It's a characteristic of continental climates. There's a lag. It's like the earth way out there doesn't quite know what's going on, a communications lag or something, so the earth is always a couple of months behind, and keeps getting colder even after the sun begins getting hotter again. It's a thing. You have to deal with it. Or you die.

The last winter I lived in North Dakota, I worked outside. Delivering lumber and other building supplies by truck, around town. Just local driving. I walked to work. The coldest day was in February. Minus 35° F in the morning, minus 7 for the day's high (-37° and -22° C, respectively). Chilly. Not windy though. When it's that cold, at least the wind gives up and stays home in bed, so overall, not so bad. But North Dakota winters go on for friggin ever. That's the deal. You get tired of it.

And then you get older and it's not fun any more. So I left.

And after a few decades in western Washington I got tired of the gray winter skies. True, you can get by wearing only a windbreaker for most of most every winter (and by carrying an umbrella), but you start to go crazy too. In western Washington, it's the same kind of deal as in North Dakota, but with gray skies and drizzle instead of world-killing cold, world-killing cold and wind.

In western Washington, endless humidity and drippy skies drive you nuts by around January 4th, but things don't clear up until mid-July. Yeah, right. July 12th or 13th. I forget which. One day or the other. Like someone flips a switch. After that it's summer. Summer, and it all seems worth it once again. Summer's a killer in western Washington. In a good way. Best summers ever, anywhere. Usually lasting until the third week of October. After that, you start to see some rain again. Then more rain. Then November. November is the stormiest month, especially around Thanksgiving, but it sort of feels cozy. You get to stay indoors and eat stuff and watch the world blow around outside and the ground is suddenly covered in colorful leaves.

Which begin rotting pretty quickly. So they liquefy and then there is more rain and every day is a gray day, and later on sometime there will be a nice sunny day and you feel good again and then it rains for another two weeks after that, and so on. Yeah, right.

I spent several years living in Bellingham. Since I was busy starting over, learning math and physics and such I didn't pay much attention to the weather until I read the newspaper headline one day: Sun Visible for First Time in 60 Days (paraphrasing here, but a true story — from about 1982). It was actually front-page news.

It does make you crazy after a while, so when I got old enough I figured Hey, enough already, and moved to Ecuador.

And then got bored, and moved back, and then got bored with that and moved back to Ecuador and got residency a second time. And then got bored, and moved back to the U.S. and got bored with sitting around all winter (but summer was nice), and got a severe case of the galloping dreads looking at my second winter back there, and moved back to Ecuador and got residency an effing third time, and now here I am again. (Slow learner, wot? Cost me a bunch too, but money's free these days — it just rolls into my bank account toward the end of every month, so it's only numbers. I don't really have enough to live in the U.S. any more, but here I'm actually rich-ish. Can't complain. I'm free to do stupid things now and don't have to get up and go to work and be around morons any more.)

Oh hang on — I can complain.

First, I'm a dick. But then, someone has to be, so deal with it. I don't care. (Yes I do, but I'm trying not to whine.)

Second, there's this problem with Ecuadorian law. See, if you get residency, you have this probationary sort of period that goes on for two years. For those first two years you can't be out of the country for more than 90 days each year, or you lose your residency, and I've done that already, so this time I'm biting the bullet and living with it.

I was gone what was it, around 82 days in 2016. My anniversary date was December 7, so I have another 251 days to go until I'm totally permanent. After that I can be out of the country for 18 months at a time. That would work. Meanwhile, I can be gone up to 90 days again between now and next December 7. Happy Pearl Harbor Day, me.

After I see another year go by I can spend eight or nine months backpacking while maybe living in a van, and three or four months here, enjoying not-winter. (By the way, the UV index for today is 10. That means if you spend more than 12 seconds out in the sun your skin starts smoking and bubbling. After a minute or so your skin is fully cooked and starts to slide off. Been there, done that too. A week or two back the UV index hit 13, which will take paint off a cattle truck. But them's the benefits of living at 8000 feet or 2438400 mm. And no bugs neither.) For the rest of this week, the UV index will be just extreme. I'll write you when it's over.

But hey I'm bored again, even with all this bubbling, smoking skin going on.

The big humpy part of my day, the pinnacle, the acme, peak, summit, crest, crown, tiptop, the height, the supreme pointy part, is lunch. I do lunch now. That's my day, most of it.

After lunch, it's downhill. Not a whole lot going on, unless I go for a walk. So I walk too.

But I'm in a city. This isn't like hiking, let alone backpacking.

There are places I don't want to go, and places I can't go, and other places I shouldn't go, and then there's night. Days are relatively short here, year-round, since we're 2.54 degrees south of the equator. Sunrise at 6 a.m., sunset at 6 p.m., and then it's dark, and anyone with any sense doesn't go walking around after dark, and if you do, you quickly find out why not, so it's lunch and daytime tramping for me. For now. Though I'm still bored. And haven't figured out where or when I'll spend my 90 days of freedom during the next 12 months.

So I'm back where I started: What's a prisoner to do? Pace. Luckily, my cell is big.

And it has high walls. Maybe I can't quite escape, but I can climb up the walls. That's what I do sometimes.

"Cuenca" means "basin". The city is in a football-shaped valley. Officially, it's "Santa Ana de los cuatro ríos de Cuenca", Saint Ann of the four rivers of the basin, whatever that's about. Basin, watershed, catchment area, socket, bowl, hollow — take your pick. Valley. The city is in the bottom of a bowl-shaped valley.

To the north, the nearer valley wall. It's a short steep walk up to an overlook. Then it's a short steep walk back down. A decent workout that takes around 45 minutes if a person meanders around somewhat. Not too bad, but not a hike. But there are stairs. I like the stairs.

You can walk along streets and sort of make it an up-the-ramp walk or go the other way and end the ascent with about a hundred feet of stone steps (30m). Well, maybe 70 feet, but it looks intimidating from the bottom. Maybe only 50 vertical feet. Who am I, some kind of damn expert or something? It's a workout. Which is what I need. I go up and then come back down, huffing and puffing and snorting and farting with the effort.

But that's the toy workout. Nearby, accessible, quick, easy. Something I do when it's late and I have to do something but can't do the real thing.

The other one is the real thing: The Turi Trudge. This one can kill you. I love it.

Instead of going north, go south. See, the deal is, there is another valley wall over there. Conveniently, valleys have two walls. This second one is farther off and it's higher, and has extra special benefits.

Benefit Number One is, you get to tromp across the full width of the city. (Well, I live kinda to the north a bit, on the edge of what they call the "Historic Center", or el centro, so my walk covers most of the city's width.)

Benefit Number Two is, you get to work on your traffic-dodging skills. Which you have to do any time you step out of your door, anyhow, but let's gloss over that, 'K? And pretend that this here mess-a-words is, like, you know, imposing and important stuff. And that this is extra-special traffic-dodging.

So it's about a two-mile walk to Turi from where I live, starting with the across-town part and vehicle-avoidance, which includes running for your life and swearing, and all kinds of other fun things. But then you get there, to the south side of the city. And then the fun starts, because things suddenly get vertical.

Benefit Number Three is, stairs. Lotsa stairs. Stairs going up. To Turi. Turi is a sort of little town on the edge of town, and there's a church up there. (There's a church everywhere here — can't swing a dead cat without hitting several of them, even with your eyes closed on a cloudy day.)

Turi must be 500 feet up from the last road crossing, let alone the main part of Cuenca. Even in metric that begins to sound a bit imposing: 150 meters or thereabouts (152, eh? In case you're literal).

Cuenca from Turi.

OK, so first you walk the full length of Avenida Solana across town, and if you've managed to dodge all the deathtrap intersections, you get past the last traffic circle and there you are at Bocatti Tres Puentes. ("Hacemos lo que mas te gusta". OK, whatever.) In case you're in a deli mood and want to stop there and buy raw meat and just go home again. Again, whatever, all right? Get over it.

Which you do (get over it) by veering left and crossing the street. If possible. Because traffic, etc.

And then you take a right down the next street, and you begin ascending just about there. No fooling. By now the time for fooling is over. It's about to get serious.

And if you didn't think I meant it about traffic, well a year ago a bus ran into my hotel. Crash. Just like that. Slammed right into the corner of the building, maybe because it thought the hotel was issuing a challenge by not running for its life, or simply out of cussedness. You never know around here. Bang. Lucky for me I'm in an apartment in a separate building out back, so the first I new about all this was when I went out to to go lunch. (See the importance of lunch now? It teaches you things, like WTF is going on out here? I head out for lunch on a normal, quiet Sunday and here's this damn bus crossways in the intersection with its teeth sunk into the hotel and police all over, and about a million people all standing around waiting to see what will happen next, and all kinds of whatnot and you never know.)

So if you live long enough to make it that far, you go about a block more and there's a street going off to the right but you make a tiny jog left and enter what looks like a private driveway but isn't, and after another block the street ends and the stairs begin, but these are just the pretend stairs. They're there to fool you. To bluff you into going the other way, which will take you to a dirt road leading around the shoulder of the mountain and into some sketchy semi-farmland territory where it would be all too likely to find yourself facing a pack of angry dogs who need some tooth exercise. So guess who went that way once and lived to tell about it? Luckily the dogs were on vacation or something that time, but I'm not pushing my luck by going that way again.

Anyhow, the stairs.

Much nicer.

Houses on either side, with their gates and walls topped by barbed wire, but you mind your own business and stick to the stairs and that's work enough. Don't mess with them people and their barb wire, prolly they won't mess with you.

Just start climbing. Stop to catch your breath, turn around, and there's the city behind you, getting lower as you get higher, but that's not why you're here, so you get back to the stairs and climb some more, and after you're about ready to die you keep climbing and then you're over the hump and descend to the autopisto.

And it is a pisser. Four lanes, divided, death trap. But that's part of the fun, innit? Vehicles coming at you faster than light, with evil glints in their bumpers. You cross if you can.

After that, it's another block or so, and then another, smaller road to cross. Also a death trap, but what isn't around here?

And then...

A crude view of the Turi climb. (Can't find nothin better.) About a million times tougher than it looks.

The Stairs. The Real Climb. Death On A Stick. Pant-O-Rama. The Ascent Of Endless Pain. Around 500 feet up and no one to get 'er did but you and you feets. You there, with the legs and the attitude: Take this, Smartass. Just try.

So you do.

And after you've been there a few times (up once, down once), you think about doing two laps. Up once, down once, up again, down again or die puking. And then, later, you wonder about doing three laps. Hey, since you're already there...

You know. Life — something you do to kill time while waiting to die. Relieves parts of the boredom and whatnot and it's exercise.

So if I can't get out and do real hikes, or go backpacking right now, at least I've got this.

OK, sure, I should have friends and do stuff but I'm a dick, remember? So I don't get out much. I'm awkward, like a turd at a pizza party. No good at hanging out with other people and enjoying life. Haven't found them other people that gotta be here somewheres that I can do stuff with. I do know a couple of cats around here, and they're nice, but they've been avoiding me lately too, and one bites, but without them I'd have no friends at all, so I just suck it up and carry bandages when I go a-visiting.

I'm mostly deaf too. Did I mention that? On top of the rest I'm mostly deaf now too.

Yeah, right. More fun stuff. Mister Dick-O-Rama.

Woke up May 15, 2012 and my left ear no longer worked. I happens. Leaving me with my right ear, which is only slightly more useful for hearing with than a rusty shoehorn. So I'll never be any good at Spanish, or even at learning Spanish, which makes me even more of a dick whenever anyone on the street stops me and asks for directions, or just the checker at Coral or SuperMaxi trying to be helpful, and saying something, or asking me something, and I'm standing there like an ugly (though tiny) moose, with my tongue hanging out, all puzzled-looking and dopey. (Tiny — at least I'm not ugly and huge. Then again, neither is a tapeworm and you know how much fun they are.) And with moose, you know, you never know, even with the small ones, so I scare people once they catch on that I'm not actually a reasonably predictable human thing. So life in paradise. Ain't all you'd expect sometimes. For me nor them.

Somebody's working on setting up a Hash House Harriers chapter here, and that might help. "Drinkers with a running problem," they call themselves. Active people. I can't run (back problems) but I can walk like crazy, so maybe I could fake it. We'll see. No matter how fast they try to run away, there I'll be, coming up the backstretch. There's always hope, even for me. Woot!

Does anybody say Woot! any more?

Maybe just me.

Later then, if you haven't had enough yet. Maybe see you on the steps.

(Anything here you don't understand besides me, it's on Wikipedia.)

P.S.: Hey! Wanna go hiking sometime? Just kidding. Ha! Bite me.

Bye.

Penmanship

Watching a big-league game way up close.

So after getting a reprieve from "Legal" at Immigration on the bundles of apostilled documents that were inadvertently invalidated during photocopying by the removal of one staple each, I had only two things left to do.

One was to finish my application letter in which I probably said all the right things. It's like a why-I-am-really-a-good-person-and-should-be-allowed-to-stay-here sort of thing. And ten to one no one ever reads these anyway.

The other task was to get color copies of two pages of my passport notarized.

Notarizing things is a big deal.

Here's a summary of what it means.

• someone with a rubber stamp looks at some never-seen-before documents
• that someone inks a rubber stamp and hammers the document with it
• that someone then signs on a line left by the rubber stamp
• this signifies that said someone believes the documents are genuine

A person I met recently tipped me off to a notary place close by, about a block from where I'm staying.

Since I'd finished early for the day at Immigration and was feeling pretty good about not being thrown into chains and stuffed into a crate to be dumped at sea for having my seals broken, I went over there.

The time was 11 a.m. The place was packed.

It is upstairs, behind an anonymous ground-floor door with a word painted on the building's wall above the doorway.

The word is "Notario". I figured it out on my own.

Upstairs it looks like a converted warehouse.

The wooden floor is rough and bare of paint or even stain. The place is inelegant, like its only improvement has been the addition of interior walls. Nothing else.

At one end, to the left, is an archive of old notarized documents (if I'm guessing right - it could as well be an archive of deceased and mummified notaries).

Along the main wall are two barred doors. Over to the right is "Copias", which is where I realized I saw the line that morning. But it was enough to scare me off at the time.

Another gringo came in as I was exiting, after having decided that it was hopeless.

He went in anyway. Later he said that he'd gotten his work done in 15 minutes. I'm glad he didn't listen to me. No one should ever listen to me. I always do things the hard way.

I decided to try after lunch, when there might be fewer people in line.

Around here "after lunch" has a meaning. The meaning is after 3 p.m., give or take half an hour. Lunch for a lot of people runs from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., and then you have to throw in tooth-picking, fingernail-polishing, idleness, and noodling time.

So I finished my own lunch and tidied up things in my room and by then it was 2:20 p.m.

At first I decided that it was too late in the day to bother.

Then I decided that I ought to go and see anyway. Maybe I'd get lucky. Or something.

Possibly something.

Luck. There were half a dozen people there this time.

Only half a dozen people.

So I decided that since I was there I had to give it a shot. By now the time was 2:30.

After 10 minutes or so the people ahead of me began to knot up around one of the barred doors. I joined them.

This door also had something about a notary written on top. I think. It seemed hopeful. Like a not-lost cause. Maybe.

Suddenly the inner door opened, the bars unlocked, and some of the people went in.

At almost the same time the door to its left opened and some of the people went in there.

I did too. Fewer people went in the second door, which gave me a better chance.

But a woman inside jabbered harshly and the guy ahead of me turned around, went out, and went in through the first door, with most of the others.

I did too. The woman looked mean. I didn't need mean. Not at this stage.

In the not-mean office we sat on chairs.

There was one woman in this office and four desks. Let's say that Betty was the woman's name.

In a chair in front of Betty's desk sat a large fat man. Every now and then she talked to him and he answered, but mostly she poked at a computer with some of her fingers.

After a lot of this poking and querying Betty got up and fed a single sheet of paper into a laser printer. Then she turned it over and did the same to the other side.

Then she returned to her desk and poked at the computer some more.

Eventually, after several decades of this, and many intrusions by many people who came right in and went up to Betty and began long conversations, she began pounding on documents with rubber stamps.

For someone not impressed by ceremonies, I have to say I was impressed by this one.

Betty has a helluva swing. Give her a bat and she'd beat every major-league batting record into sumbission.

Betty had at least four rubber stamps. She hit uncountable documents at least four times with each stamp. I think.

I wondered what happens when she runs her ink pads dry. I guessed that the office shuts down for a week or so until the ink-pad guy comes around with fresh barrel of stamp pad ink.

But maybe not. Given the lunch hours here it could take a month. Everyone could go on vacation to relieve the stress of long lunch hours and waiting in lines.

"Finally," I thought after the pounding of rubber stamps began to taper off, "she's wrapping it up. Now the rest of us can have a shot."

No. Not like that.

The fat guy got up and joined the rest of us, quietly sitting on his own visitor chair. Things got dim for a while. My mind went into the slowest slow motion possible. Let's say torpor. Torpor was about it. Think torpor.

Betty may have been on the phone for a while, but I'm not sure. It was a time warp. Mostly Betty poked at the computer.

She seemed to like that part. She was good at poking.

I remember not looking at my watch. I didn't want to.

My watch would only have told me that I was very likely to die on my chair, after which the mice would eat my remains and go poop them out on the street, whereupon I would be forgotten forever (even by the mice).

So then. More people came and went.

Mostly these people seemed to be after some kind of favor. Betty talked to each of them in turn and her answers always seemed to be essays ending in "no".

Betty never looked at the half-dozen of us who had been sitting there forever. We were only landscape. Wallpaper. Dead flies.

Suddenly (if I can say that after several eternities), an old man tore into the office.

He was mostly bald with a fringe of white hair on the sides, and wore a gray suit. Sort of a silvery-gray suit, which is slightly uncommon here. Most suits are darker. Some are brown. Lots are very dark gray, or black. Few are silver.

The man (let's call him Mr Notario) must have been in his 80s. He went to the big desk at the back of the office, behind Betty's bookshelves, and sat.

Suspense filled the parts of my mind which had not died.

The time was now 3:18 p.m., but it may have been 3:18 p.m. on a different day, in another year, in a separate reality. Or century.

I was hallucinating by then, so who can say?

With Mr Notario was a young man, bearded, with long unruly hair. I'd say he looked like Che Guevara without looking like Che Guevara. The beard and hair did. Let's call him Che anyway. Just for fun.

So now you have the images.

Then, things happened. All at once. All of us in the office were suddenly all being served. Communally.

I've never been juggled before, but being juggled would feel like that.

I had my two color pages rubber-banded and rolled up inside some waste paper for protection, and suddenly Betty, who had paid no attention to any of us, at all, was on top of me.

I fumbled with the rubber band and with my notebook, trying to look up the explanatory sentences I'd prepared, and while she did listen to me mumble and mangle the language she seemed to know why I was there and just kept saying "Su passaporte." ("Your passport.")

And of course I couldn't get it out of my pocket.

But she waited anyway.

Betty gave my passport and the copies to Che, whom I watched carefully. The passport was the one thing I couldn't afford to lose so I stood there while he eyeballed everything over and over.

Then he found the two extra sheets I was using to protect the actual color copies and he wanted to look at them too, even though by then I was tugging at them, trying to pull them out of his grip. He finally gave up and we were off.

He began hammering at the two actual color copies with his rubber stamp. I kept my eyes on the passport. It came through unharmed.

When I got my passport back (rumored street value: $2000 or about 4-months' income for the average person) I didn't care too much what happened next - the passport was safe. But something happened anyway.

Che went to his second desk in the back with the copies, and there he diddled with something, and then took the now-stamped copies over to Mr Notario sitting in his suit behind his half-acre desk.

Everyone else was behind me, swirling, jabbering. Like bumper car day at the amusement park.

Che motioned me over to Mr Notario's desk and I stood there not knowing what was happening, but Mr Notario motioned me to sit so I sat.

He didn't look at me or say anything.

He was scribbling.

What he was scribbling I didn't know, but he did it with all his might. His whole body went into scribbling.

I bet he could go a full 16 rounds against the world champ and come out fresh and smiling, is how strong and dedicated he looked with his scribbling, Mr Notario did. Age is no limit to a champeen scribbler.

Then the phone rang. Betty had transferred a call to Mr Notario.

She came to the back of the office and stood in a corner in the shadows and watched Mr Notario while he talked.

He wasn't just a scribbler. Mr Notario could really talk. Even I could tell.

I couldn't understand him but I can recognize a talker. He was a talker.

I looked at Betty in the shadows, wedged into a corner, but couldn't see her face. She didn't move. She only watched Mr Notario talk.

Something was going down. This conversation was not polite.

Toward the end of the call Mr Notario said two words which I can't recall, but whose meaning was clear. Maybe I remembered enough Latin to understand, but there was no doubt about the meaning.

What he was saying was "Shut up and listen to what I'm telling you." I got that. No doubt about it. He said it with his voice and with all of his lips, and with his full authority as a notario.

Eventually one or both parties got tired, the call ended, and Mr Notario got to my documents.

He scribbled.

He scribbled some more. And some more. And that was just the first document.

He started over on the second document.

Then at some point he was done.

He handed the documents back to me with an invoice attached by paper clip, and there was Che again.

Time to pay, and Che was my man.

Each notary fee was $1. For two documents that was $2, plus 24 cents tax. So $2.24 total. I gave Che $2.25 and he went to hunt for a penny. He found one and brought it to me. Good man, this Che.

Then I left. The circus was still running at full tilt inside the office. People were swirling, whizzing in every direction, jabbering, bouncing off the walls.

When Mr Notario handed me my papers I thanked him in Spanish. He gravely nodded his head once and then forgot I had ever existed.

He went back scribbling, with his head down, putting his shoulder into it.

Total elapsed time in the office: about an hour and 15 minutes.

When I got back to my room I looked at my two documents. There was nothing written on them except Mr Notario's signature, which took him a full 20 seconds to write out. He really put his soul into it though. When he signed something you could hear the pen scream from across the room.

But the documents were good. They were properly notarized.

Immigration accepted them, so I guess that part is over.

I probably left out some things, but you get the idea. It was a day.

My Avocado And Me

Don't talk to me about fruit salad. Just don't anymore.

I got frustrated trying to figure out the residency requirements for a small Latin American country, so I decided to hire an attorney.

Down there they call them "abogados". I eventually found out why. Because of the resemblance to fruits and vegetables.

Which is why, for me, the term is now "avocado".

I held off asking real, meaty questions until I hired him, to be fair.

His fee was US$800, with half up front, and half on completion. Everyone recommended him. Even that expert guy who runs the forum I've been a member of for almost four years. Even him, and he's been around. Said something like he'd trust this avocado with his life, if it came to that.

So I told him to let me know when he got the money I wired him, which he didn't. But one of his emails sort of indicated that we were actually now on business terms, so I got into the nuts and bolts.

See, there is a lot of weird stuff, and if I were coming into my country instead of trying to leave it, I'd see different weird stuff, but it would be weird. Like some I just heard today. Like you can't have been associated with the German NAZI party in the 1930s and 1940s. Like that.

If you were, then you can't become a U.S. citizen.

So, especially, there is a medical requirement for this other country. I read the law. Even with my primitive Spanish I could get through it. The law mentions a "medical certificate".

So I asked, what?

Is there one, or a form, and please send me a copy of it or them and of the administrative rule that spells out in detail what the deal is so I can understand what I actually have to do here, because the law obviously says nothing.

Because if I can find a physician who will even talk to me without the comfort of medical insurance, I can't say I need to be pronounced clean and fit. That would be like a big ear of corn walking into the pig sty and saying "Howdy, fellas! Let's be friends!" Dangerous. I could get run through every test and procedure there is, and be getting bills from unknown labs for decades.

Seven days go by. During which I receive lots of email silence.

On the eighth day I send another message repeating the above, and I get a response that says basically I have to be in good health and free of diseases. And I should follow the link he sent to see what worked for someone else.

Which told me as much as you get from what I've written so far. Zip-doodle. I should be in good health and free of diseases.

'K...

I knew about the thing that worked for someone else but so effing what?

I wanted real information from someone whose whole business is in immigration and residency. So I wrote again.

You know. Asking the usual. What does "being in good health" mean, EXACTLY, and WHICH diseases? Exactly.

And the response I got was kinda like silence. So much like silence that it was exactly the same.

You know, like he forgot how email works.

Maybe that happens to him.

Maybe it's all because he's an avocado and has only so much fruit-filled energy available.

So after another four or five days, guess what?

I tried again, apologizing for breaking in on what must be a hectic schedule and all, but saying that I really needed specifics, and this was the fourth time I'd asked and all, and I did need to get exact, precise answers, as I'd said before.

And he did reply this time, saying I needed to be in good health and free of contagious diseases.

You know, I checked. I went to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They must have some kind of list. Nope. No comprehensive list of contagious diseases.

I did find a long list somewhere, about 200 of them. Things like HIV, tuberculosis, and leprosy, to mention the three that stood out. Which are in no way contagious, and barely communicable. So crap.

Right, I told him he was absolutely useless. Which is true.

And he was fired, which was true. Still is.

And that I know more than he does. At least based on our communication, which is reasonable, because he supplied no information.

You know, really, saying "try getting a letter like this because it worked for that other guy" seems less than professional quality service.

Yeah, so I'm not going there. Not near him, not near that country.

You have to deal with the consulate closest to where you were born for your birth certificate, and at least one more consulate if you're not living where you were born.

And the consulates do not do email or answer the phone, and they possibly keep the doors locked. If they actually do have offices. No one seems to know.

And though there is another way, which involves going through the Washington, D.C. consulate, which requires that you first go through an office of the U.S. State Department, that recently changed so you have to do something else now on top of that to get your documents past, by, under, through, or around the State Department, and then they finally get to what seems the only consulate in the country that can actually do anything.

And then you sort of have to start over in-country, but need all this preliminary work following you like an angry storm of endless papers and pain.

So I'm going to do something else, and I hope that's where this blog can really start.

But it will be a few weeks yet.

Poop.

Stranger In A Strange Land

Home is where the spooky is.

I was askin Mike, hey Mike, where should I move to when I get out a the tunnels?

Mike used to be hooked on meth but he's OK now. He's a stand-up guy.

Life ain't what it used to be. Mike and me, we live under Las Vegas, in the tunnels. So I says to my buddy Mike, hey, where should I go when I move out?

A couple years back we had 12,000 people in the tunnels. That was before my time, truth be told, but now we're up to 14,000. Yeah, right. Fourteen friggin thousand mole people living in tunnels under Las Vegas, and I'm one a them now, but not for long.

Like there's this woman, Sali. Sali was a cashier in a hotel for 21 years. Then, bada-bing, it closes up, three years ago, like overnight. Talk to her now. What does she say? "I got lots of pain, you know? A lot of pain," says Sali.

Hey Sali, I feel your pain. I got pain too. We all got pain. Endless friggin pain down here in the tunnels.

But I want somethin better, you know what I mean? I had somethin better, back in the day, and now, hey. I want it back again.

I'm plannin on movin out, you know? That's where Mike comes in. Mike has been around. Mike's a good guy. Sure, he's had his troubles but he's clean now and he's a smart guy, so I ask Mike, hey Mike, where should I move to when I get out a the tunnels?

Well, it ain't so easy, this thing. You figure you throw a dart at a map and go there, but there's plenty a funny stuff out there. Foreign countries and all. Languages. What the fluff. So I figure I'll skip the foreign countries for now and look for a place in the good old U.S. of A.

So I ask Mike for a recommendation.

Like how about Alabama? I like the way that name sounds. It rolls around like a marble on a table top. Al Ah Bam Ah. And Mike says I gotta shave because my mustache looks fake. "It's against the law to have a fake mustache that makes people laugh in church," he says. Hey. I could end up in jail there?

No. Maybe not Alabama then.

So California. Oranges. I could go for that. But Mike says. Eating an orange in your bathtub is prohibited in California. Hey. One a my favorite things to do. Way to spoil things, California.

So now I'm totally lost.

In Delaware you can't get married on a dare. Like I want to, but all the same. Indiana says the value of pi is not 3.1415, it's 4. Hey I been to school. I know that one. I ain't stupid. Scratch Indiana then.

Minnesota won't let you paint sparrows and sell them as parakeets. New Jersey says men can't knit during fishing season. North Carolina. Hey. North Carolina, where it's illegal to sing off-key. Which leaves out guess-who?

Virginia. Tickling women is against the law. Another one a my very favorite things to do, and I find I could not do this thing there.

And a course my favorite of all, South Dakota. Where after your visit to Mount Rushmore and you are tired out and all it is against the law to fall asleep in a cheese factory.

So I guess that leaves me lookin elsewhere then. Maybe some a them foreign countries...you know...ain't so bad then.

Hey, maybe they talk funny and all. The language stuff, you know? But hey. Maybe I could handle that.

I'm a smart guy, I got enough socked away to move out a the tunnels now. Maybe I'll go someplace warm where a few bucks will buy me a bed and I can just take it easy and not worry so much about breakin the law and all.

I used to lay tiles. Maybe I could do that again. Lay tiles.

Maybe Mike will come along. He's OK. Been a great help to yours truly.

I should go ask him. That way we're both out a the tunnels. You know? Me and Mike. He's a stand-up guy.

More:

Homeless People Live in Tunnels Under Las Vegas

Like we didn't always suspect.

The Story Of Citizen-Applicant

A sort-of fractured all-too reality.

Citizen-Applicant had business with Government Bureau.

At Government Bureau's office, Citizen-Applicant met Certified-Bureau-Official.

Citizen-Applicant's question was simple. It was general.

Citizen-Applicant sat, then asked.

No.

Citizen-Applicant was instructed to fill out the form. First.

Form?

Name, address, age, date of birth, Government Bureau Identification Number (GBIN), street address, city, state, zip code. Mother's maiden name.

Said Certified-Bureau-Official.

Only a simple, general question applying to any Citizen-Applicant.

Not requiring any personal information.

So how about it?

What if I just ask?

Said Citizen-Applicant.

No. The form. Fill it, Certified-Bureau-Official said. The form must be filled. We have rules. Fill it. The Form. With a Capital. F.

Overruled by Certified-Bureau-Official again and again, Citizen-Applicant complied. Smeared marks onto a plastic card with a thick black marker.

Completion?

No.

Certified-Bureau-Official said Citizen-Applicant's mother was unknown and asked if Citizen-Applicant had been adopted.

No, not even once.

Certified-Bureau-Official was unhappy. Certified-Bureau-Official asked for an updated address.

Address hasn't changed. In 15 years. Said Citizen-Applicant. And not adopted.

Certified-Bureau-Official requested proof.

Citizen-Applicant, bold, asked the question. Anyway.

It was only a simple one. A simple question.

Proof? No proof, said Citizen-Applicant, and I only have a general question.

Ah, simple then, said Certified-Bureau-Official. Come back next month. Come back next month, and we'll give you Letter-A.

But I have Letter-A, said Citizen-Applicant, and I need Letter-B, can I get it now or do I need to wait until my eligibility is no longer a promise but a reality, a fact? What then?

Then?

Yes, said Certified-Bureau-Official. Starting next month, for no particular reason, come again, here, and you can receive Letter-A. If you ask.

I have Letter-A.

I need Letter-B.

Said Citizen-Applicant.

I do not understand said Certified-Bureau-Official. I cannot give you Letter-A until next month.

I have Letter-A.

I need Letter-B.

Said Citizen-Applicant.

Certified-Bureau-Official then assumed what appeared to be the martial-arts posture called Terrifying Sleeping Dragon. And ceased moving for a bit.

Citizen-Applicant, aware of nearby uniformed guard, did not try crawling.

Under the glass partition.

To strangle.

Certified-Bureau-Official.

For amusement.

Come along then, month after next, when your eligibility is no longer a promise but becomes a monthly fact.

Then we will give you Letter-B, said Senior-Certified-Bureau-Official strolling up to window.

Miraculously.

Letter-B? Said Citizen-Applicant.

You will give Letter-B? To me?

Yes, said Senior-Certified-Bureau-Official.

Letter-B. It will be so. Month after next.

No probs, said Senior-Certified-Bureau-Official, stroking its official necktie device.

That is what I believed all along, thought Citizen-Applicant, in his car, already blocks away.

It was only a simple question after all.

A Fortune Of Reversal

Eighteen years, for what?

For eighteen billion dollars.

"We can't let little countries screw around with big companies like this," is what a Chevron lobbyist told Newsweek in 2008.

This is the story of Chevron, the third-largest corporation in the United States, with annual revenue of around 200 billion dollars, versus Ecuador, whose entire economy is only about a quarter of that.

The issue is that Texaco, now owned by Chevron, began pumping oil from Ecuador's Amazon basin territory in 1967.

Fine so far.

That continued until 1992, when the company withdrew, allegedly leaving "hundreds of open pits full of malignant black sludge" and roughly eighteen billion gallons of toxic waste. The settlement thus amounts to a dollar a gallon.

The judgment came on February 14, 2011, at Lago Agrio in northeastern Ecuador, handed down by a local judge named Nicolás Zambrano. The ruling was the largest-ever in an environmental lawsuit.

Chevron has one last appeal, to the Ecuadorean Supreme Court, but to do that would have to first post a multi-billion dollar bond. And, since Chevron has no assets in Ecuador, you might think that the whole point is moot.

But the company does have huge assets elsewhere, all of which could be fair game for any cooperative government to seize and turn over to Ecuador.

Which makes the situation strange, especially considering that in 2001 Texaco could have settled the case for $140 million and walked away. This is about what Chevron is now paying every year in legal costs to fight the case.

At the New Yorker:

Reversal of Fortune A crusading lawyer helped Ecuadorans secure a huge environmental judgment against Chevron. But did he go too far? By Patrick Radden Keefe

Why Chevron Will Settle In Ecuador By Patrick Radden Keefe