Gringo Poem

Sandwiches to distribute to street people in need. Quito Second-hand offers excellent condition items.

Laptops, Canadian money and withdrawals, treadmill. Large dog, found near Feria Libre.

I'm looking for turmeric as a supplement or pill.

Danny's Computer Service. Is an End of Life document necessary?

Need your knives and scissors sharpened? The best New York cheesecake in Cuenca.

For sale, small couch, Peach-Skin Midnight Fantasy Comforter, Duglis.*

Brand-new disinfection trays for home or businesses. Stay safe and clean. Warmth and comfort. Desinfection alcohol and antibacterial gel. KN95 masks.

Recommendation for Diana Vera, facilitator. Are you in for a treat?

Craft beer: growlers and four packs.

Mexican food: tacos al pastor, gringas and more delicious options. Have you tried our bagels yet?

El Rey del Burrito, the best Mexican food. Nuts for delivery.

Cuchi Suco BBQ pit is back.

Cozy, fully furnished one-bedroom apartment with balcony. Sourdough bread.

 

* Footnotes. (This will be on the test.)

Question: I want to light my 4×2×2 with T5 and LED, and to mitigate cost I want to do a little DIY. I have three ideas and am looking for advice or reviews. — Duglis

 

Possible answers:

(1)  Are you Duglis the Immortal?

(2)  What type of name is Duglis?

• I'm not sure
• Boy's name
• Girl's name
• Boy's or girl's name
• Last name or family name
• Pet
• Food
• Pet food
• Fet pood
• Poopoo
• You-know-who
• Other (Example: How difficult is it to pronounce Duglis? Another example: Do you ever have pains in all the diodes down your left side?)

(3)  How unique is the name Duglis? Out of 6,028,151 records in the U.S. Social Security Administration public data, the first name Duglis was not present. It is possible the name you are searching has less than five occurrences per year.

(4)  Weird things about the name Duglis: Your name in reverse order is Silgud. A random rearrangement of the letters in your name (anagram) will give Isuldg. How do you pronounce that? Go ahead. Just try.

(5)  But again, I do not know how you feel about it, but you were a female in your last earthly incarnation. You were born somewhere around the territory of USA South-Central approximately on 750. Your profession was entertainer, musician, poet, and temple-dancer. You always liked to travel, to investigate, could have been detective or spy. You should develop self-love and ability to implant hope into hearts of people. Ambition is not everything. True wealth is buried in your soul. Dig for it, Babe. (Click to save the high quality version of yourself.)

 

Yes — "Desinfection." I don't know either.

 

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Recently found lint on the ceiling. Didn't realize I was looking at the floor. All OK now.
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You Can Trust The Cold

I'm not freezing any more, and I hate it.

I got back to Washington State on October 4, bought a car, and began living in it. According to plan.

According to hope, but not hopefully, I caught a spell of fair weather, which is like free bags of gold dust handed out on street corners in western Washington in November. Rare. Unheard of.

Usually the rain doesn't start until the third week of October, sometimes earlier. But November is dead set on rain. It's always there, no avoiding it.

Except for 2002, when blue skies, sun, and calm air prevailed pretty much through the whole month of November, when I made one of the greatest day hikes of my life up the west slope of Mt St Helens. And except for 2019, which is now.

First, I got back here. Then I got the car. Then the rains began and I went nuts.

The bad part of buying a car is that you have to wait for the registration and the title and the plates, which takes about six weeks. You can't avoid that.

So there I was, here I was, in the rain, and looking at another five-and-a-half-weeks-of-it, so I bugged out for eastern Washington and got away from it for four or five days. And by then?

Well, by then a high pressure zone floated in and western Washington also got clear and sunny. And cold. Very cold some nights. Hard cold. Hand-freezing cold.

I managed.

It hurt, but it was only pain. Pain isn't always bad, because this was clean weather. Dry weather. Cold weather. Almost a month of it in total, combining eastern and western Washington locations.

If you're cold, you warm up, by going inside somewhere, by putting on more insulation, or by exercising. That's it. Wet does not work that way.

Get wet, and you stay wet, sometimes for days, even indoors. It used to take two full days for my bicycling clothing to dry after I washed it in winter, in the cool air and the humid air inside my apartment.

Cold isn't like that.

If you're cold and you do something about it, you get instant results. Period.

Cold is predictable. It cooperates. Fight it and it yields, not lingering forever, not hanging around inside your shoes, making your skin feel slimy. Cold really is clean. I like it, a lot better than wet, but now things are wet again, and I've been having troubles with the dealer where I bought my car. Things are slow. Dragging on and on.

Maybe today, maybe tomorrow. I should finally have my plates, and then I can leave, can take back control of my life and tour. I want to head south to see the deserts and the desert winter sunshine. I can hardly wait.

Maybe in a day or two. Maybe I'll be free by then.

Meanwhile, I'm wet. I hate being wet. Time for sun.

 

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Ruffle my fur, see what happens. I dare you.
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Forks: Let Us Praise Metal

I did. I bought a fork. It's a good one and it's mine now.

First it was a knife. Knives are essential. How else would you stir your peanut butter? See?

You need a knife, and it has to be strong, so that's steel. You need a steel knife. That's what Wally Mart is good for. They have table knives, of which one can buy one, individually. For us singletons. So I bought one.

The peanut butter is yet to come, but I can feel it in my future. I never get far without reverting to peanut butter, and it is sure to arrive on-scene soon, expecting my knife to stir it. I am so ready, now, but having only a knife left me feeling incomplete, so I went back to the World of Wally.

And there I found Spoon. Spoon-ness. Became spoonified, with two. Had to get a package deal, but I'm set in case I bite the head off the first spoon, because I have two. Or I can commence lunch armed with one spoon in each hand, which works at times, and is mandatory at others.

So, the score: One knife, two spoons, and a box of plastic ones, plus plastic forks.

Plastic forks are amazing, but not for eating with. Likewise the knives, spoons, and so on. Amazing. But try to eat a can of cold Spam with a plastic fork. Iffy: bend, break or catapult are all conceivable outcomes.

The bendy part should be obvious, because plastic. Get over-bendy and you have breakage, which is disappointing at best, and breakage is always better than a bit of slippage resulting in catapulting food in every direction, to stick all over the inside of the car. And the cold Spam?

You were probably wondering. I understand.

Spam. It's food, even if you don't think so, but it is. Meat, and other things, packaged nicely. Keeps forever in its can until desperately needed.

A life saver if you haven't eaten in 36 or more hours and need fat, and can buy the "lite" sodium version which still has more than enough salt in it if you eat the whole can at one go, but lacking refrigeration and being hungry, you do. Do buy. Do savagely eat.

So I've eaten three cans of Spam as the major part of a meal in the last week-and-a-half, and damn-well worth it. Lifesaver. Did I say that yet? Miracle food. Better sauteed but hey. If you gots it, then eat it and be full. And you will be.

Fat. It has fat and once it's on your inside you're set.

But you need a decent fork for it. Plastic is entirely iffy. Entirely so. Therefore I bought a steel fork. $1.78 and worth it. It's amazing how sturdy a steel for is, which I realized when I used in on dill pickle spears. Wham. Jam it. Just jam it in, no worrying about bending or breaking or anything. You see a pickle you want, stab it and then bite. That's it. No more, no less. I love it.

So now I have flatware good enough to survive World War 3, and am content on that front. Envy me, for I am satisfied.

 

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Currently wondering where to sleep tomorrow.

Los Balcones, My Home, eh?

Hang time, 3^rd floor.

So I'm back here. Cuenca, Ecuador, late winter (September 1^st). Loving it.

Temporary room.

My apartment wasn't ready so I was stuffed into one of the regular hotel rooms. Anything but regular, but that's why I like this place. One of the reasons. The people here, the staff, are Reason One, and the businesslike nature (i.e., honesty, fairness, predictability) of the whole enterprise is Reason Two. Or maybe it's the other way around. Anyway, it's good. Good here, and good to be back.

From another angle.

I spent my first 26 days in country at another place, Hogar Cuencano. It's OK, but I like it a bit less every time I stay there. I am certainly glad to give up the lukewarm shower and the dirty AC current, which scared the snot out of me (I thought my laptop had gone on the fritz but it was definitely the current — both the laptop and the electricity are OK-fine-and-dandy in my apartment).

View three.

The day I left Hogar Cuencano I gave the owner, Maggie, a treat of assorted chocolates. They have lots of gift bags here in various sizes. If you buy those you don't have to wrap anything — just find a bag big enough with an agreeable design on its outside, and plunk your thingy in that. Whenever anyone sees you pull out a gift bag they immediately know what's up. And then they can re-use the bag when giving their own gifts.

Obligatory bathroom shot (everybody around here photographs the bathroom).

So when Maggie saw me pull out a gift bag she grabbed it, held it tight, and scurried around to her bedroom, went inside and locked it up. This was in front of her employee, the person who does most of the heavy lifting of floor mopping, stair sweeping, toilet cleaning, and bed re-sheeting. "Yep." That's what I thought: "yep". Worst fears confirmed. Maggie is a real tight-ass. I don't think I'll go back there.

View through the doors from the balcony, on the building's corner.

It was good that I was conservative. I had brought two bags of assorted chocolates, one for Maggie and one for the young woman who works for her, but I only gave Maggie her gift and kept the other hidden. Good thing that I did. Maggie might have bullied her and confiscated the second give as soon as I got out of sight. (It's a thing here.) But it turned out fine in the end, better than I could have expected, and the maid got a treat too. (Keep reading.)

Looking west, up Gaspar Sangurima.

It was later that day that something magic happened. First, I hoofed it over to Hotel los Balcones and left my valuables. My apartment would be ready "later" they said, after 2:30, so I went to lunch.

Looking south, along Presidente Borrero.

After lunch and some messing around I was ready to haul over the rest of my things. I returned to Hogar Cuencano, where they were stashed in a closet under the stairs. I looked around. All quiet. Dang. Now what? Eventually I heard some tapping upstairs. Someone sweeping the steps. Eventually the maid came down. After waiting politely for her to finish I asked if Maggie was around. No.

Hmmm. I don't speak Spanish well, and she didn't speak English, which Maggie does. I needed a taxi. Now what? Again.

Looking east, also along Gaspar Sangurima.

So I tried my best. Something like "Necessito un taxi", with a few por favors thrown in. It worked. She understood, and was more than happy to help. But she couldn't manage to locate a taxi company by phone. She tried two phones, at least. Maybe three. No luck.

So she had to run outside, and down to the corner, and stand on the street to try flagging a taxi by waving her arms, which is the usual method around here. I waited.

A look north along Borrero.

It worked, but while I was waiting, standing over my three duffel bags in the hostal's entryway, I pulled out that second gift bag. It's good that I'm not always slow in the head. I'd given up on getting a thank-you gift to the young woman but this was my chance. Our chance.

I had it ready when she located a taxi. I was outside by then, and waved at the taxi and pointed at the street, indicating where to stop. Then I went inside to get my first bag, but the woman was there ahead of me, hauling it out for me.

I said something inadequate, on the order of "No, no — please.", and grabbed it. Then I set it down and reached for the gift bag. "Para usted", I said, "For you." "Gracias por su ayuda" — "Thank you for hour help." Then I grabbed that first bag and hauled it out to the taxi.

Across the street, kitty-corner.

By the time I got that to the taxi and headed back for the second bag, she'd already gotten it halfway into the street. I felt bad again, but could only mumble something like "No, no", pleading.

When I took it from her, she clasped her hands together and said something. It was almost like I'd saved her baby from a tiger. She was trying to thank me for being respectful, for paying a little attention, for appreciating her worth, for thanking her, for the little tiny gift I gave her.

Then the third bag got stashed inside the taxi and I was off. I waved goodbye. I only wish I could have done more.

But up on the roof, around back, it was laundry day.

So then I found out that my apartment wouldn't be ready until manaña, about 4 p.m. Arrr. But I got to see what one of the fancy rooms was like, which is where the photos came from.

Street style.

So that got worked out, and now I'm in an apartment. Not the one I wanted, but it works. I'm home. I have privacy, and room to wander around within my own walls, and hot water. The electricity is clean and it's always on. The internet works. One of my kitty-cat friends lives around the corner, and when I feel like I need being bitten, I drift by there and see if he's home. I rub some of his fuzzy parts and he gets happy and then he bites me. It's a relationship — you know how they work.

Across Borrero on the corner, from my balcony. A typical roof. A shop downstairs and WWII upstairs.

Now I'm getting settled in. Today is September 18 and I've been here since September 1. It seems like about six hours. It has been pleasant. Even though this is the "wrong" apartment (I'm in #3 and want to get back into #4, if possible), I'm OK. I'm fine. I'm content. I like it here.

West, a higher view, looking across the third or fourth floors at the mountains just outside the city.

But wait — there's more...

One of the smart things I did, if I'm allowed to judge myself, is that I brought back gifts. Two 2-ounce bottles of Dr Bronner's liquid soap for the ladies: Sonia, Jenny, Maríajosé at el Túnel, and Sonia, Janet, Joanna, and Anita at Hotel los Balcones. (One bottle of Rose and one of Lavender.) For the guys, one "Nitecore Tube Tiny Keychain USB Rechargeable 45 LED Flashlight" each. The flashlights cost more, but the cost for the ladies vs the boys is kinda-sorta equal.

The guys got toys and the girls got an experience. I tried to be as fair as possible and mostly, I think, I got it right, except that at el Túnel, Maríajosé and Oscar were no longer there, and they'd added two female kitchen helpers, and at los Balcones, there was an extra female staffer. And the children's gifts I had gotten didn't quite shake out.

So I fudged.

The top side of the "New Cathedral", with another church in the background.

Sometimes you have to fudge.

The children's books didn't go to Sonia's girls, but they got flashlights that looked like frogs and a bunch of "Hello Kitty" stickers.

The children's books went to Santiago's daughter, along with a frog flashlight. And I found out that Santiago is married to Joanna, who also works at los Balcones, which I had no clue about. Now I know that.

Maríajosé was gone, but she's Xavier's wife, and has a daughter, and I had planned for them, so she got one bottle of soap and some chocolates and her daughter got a frog flashlight.

Xavier's son got a rechargeable LED flashlight, just like all the grownup guys, and I had one for Oscar too, even though he no longer works for el Túnel, because he is Maríajosé's brother and Xavier's brother-in-law.

Paólo is no longer at los Balcones, so that freed up one LED light (Whew!)

Anita and los Balcones' new employee, Eva, each got one soap and some assorted chocolates instead of two soaps, so even though I didn't have enough soap to go around and one bottle leaked itself empty en route, that sort of worked out. Not all the ladies got two bottles of soap, but they all got something more-or-less adequate. I don't think that anyone felt left out.

And...I think I'm done.

The three blue domes — Cuenca's icons.

So now I can kick back a bit, and am mostly happy. I get up, read the news, go to lunch and try to end up having walked around five miles a day, and then I go back to bed. Pretty good so far.

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Still Stranger In Motion

Here I go again.

This time though, my absence is planned to be temporary. Previously, my temporary absences were intended to be permanent. So hey then. I'll have to wait and see how this turns out.

I can't stand sitting in one place too long, and I hate traveling. Noodling along by car is OK, as is backpacking, my preferred vehicle of locomotion. And by "backpacking", I mean backpacking, staying outside and sleeping in the dirt. I don't mean attending drunken teenage parties in various countries recognizable only by their entries in a rumpled copy of some Lonely Planet publication.

Anyhow, by the time I leave I'll have spent 11½ months in Cuenca, continuously. My previous limit was six months, give or take a day. Besides being a record, this stay signifies a couple of other things. One being the fact that I'm older, and Cuenca ain't bad for geezers.

I have to watch what happens these days. Every few months, it seems, some other part of me goes off the rails, and I can't afford to be sick in the United States.

I can here, even without insurance, which is another whole separate topic. You know the phrase "get what you pay for". Here, referring to insurance, that has to be mended to "don't get what you pay for". Although the IESS (Instituto Ecuatoriano de Seguridad Social) seems well liked. By those anti-socialist ranters as well as by actual humans. The private insurers, no.

So if I actually have a problem with Age-Related Macular Degeneration rather than another scare as I did about two years back, then I can both get it treated here, and afford to get it treated, here. Unlike the Great and Grand Exceptional United of States in the America. Where I can't even get an appointment with a doctor. That's one thing. Gettin' older, gettin' more cautious, justifiably so.

Another reason is that it's just cheaper here. I'm finally getting used to that. This time around I have two income streams instead of one, and the difference between living here and living up north is substantial. I can't spend enough money here to make a significant dent in my income. Lunch is either $2.50 or $3.00 at the two places I eat. Either way, it's cheap. Rent is $450, which is around the middle, or slightly on the high end, but I've got what I like and $450 it is. I don't care. Utilities included. Maid service included. DirecTV included. Wireless internet included. No probs.

And though I'm close enough to being deaf that I basically can't communicate with anyone who speaks Spanish, life isn't that different from being in an English-speaking country where I still don't have much of anything in common with anyone anyway. My companionship comes from what I read and write whether I'm in Ecuador or any other country. I don't do smalltak anywhere. So that's all a wash.

So I'm still an outsider, a stranger, a philosophical wanderer no matter what. I don't fit. No matter which round spot I try to dip my squareness into. It never works. I mind my own business and keep out of trouble, and stay on the lookout for interesting things, but life gets slow sometimes. And as for where I fit in — I'm still waiting to find out. If nothing else, a change of scenery refreshes my attitude from time to time, and if, as now, I'm headed for several weeks of backpacking, well that's good.

Outdoors, off and away somewhere, is about the only place I don't feel like a stranger. And I'm going there.

Bye soon. For a while.

It's Just Like Backpacking

Living in Cuenca is a lot like doing a long backpacking trip. Maybe my longest one yet. I'm not sure.

One thing I have to do is improvise. You do that a lot on a backpacking trip. Need to do something? Try hitting it with a rock, poking it with a stick, avoiding it, going around, over, under, or running away. See if that works.

If not, then maybe that's it. Maybe you can't do anything about it. Just live with it. Stay as close to what's pretty much OK as you can, and stay as far off as you can from the parts that don't agree with you. Whatever works, mostly.

Mostly is the key. Nothing is ever perfect, or if you want to be honest about it, no one knows the perfect, but a lot of life is learning what is pretty much OK, and then doing that. Same as life here. I think I'm getting by.

Life here isn't always pleasant, but it is most always interesting. Often in the same way as discovering that you are bleeding from your arm is interesting, especially if you didn't know that you were wounded. Life here is confusing to navigate. I never know what's going to happen next.

Mostly, nothing. Nothing interesting or notable anyway. Something always happens, but a big part of life is learning what to ignore, or more catastrophically sometimes, ignoring everything and learning by painful results what not to ignore. But either way I never know what's going to happen next. More so here than in the U.S.

After all, I grew up there and not here. I guess part of the deal here is being clueless and still getting by, which is, again, much like living on the trail. We are clueless animals, by and large, insulated from many of the realities and harshnesses of life by our social infrastructure. That would be agriculture, industry, education, medicine, packaged food, clothing, and all those other necessary and universal attributes of human society. We don't need to live by our wits or our instincts, fighting for the next meal. We can cruise along almost cluelessly, but being in a different culture highlights a lot of things.

Things are not always pleasant here. Navigation is confusing. I never know, really, what is going to happen next, and sometimes what does happen is dangerous, requiring adaptability. And there is shit on the trail at times. Shit is everywhere here, always.

The correct response, though, is the same — walk around it. I know how to do that, so I'm OK with that, mostly. Mostly is mostly working out. I've had to clean shit off my shoe only once in eight months. That isn't bad.

Little things. (That was one of them.) Little things are happening all the time. A person has to roll with them, just like while backpacking. Not everything is bad, either. Not everything needs a response. Most of it, not. Mostly, it's interesting. I notice something and either think about it or I don't, and keep walking either way. The things I think about are kind of interesting, to me. Or odd.

A few days back I saw a motor scooter go past. Then I saw a helmet rolling down the street, going like crazy. Then a motorcycle rider came along and hit it. Then the helmet kept rolling until it went up onto a grassy median strip, slowed, and fell over. Then I saw a man come trotting back toward me along the median. He went to the helmet, picked it up, and returned to the motor scooter. OK fine. Just another thing.

And another thing I never saw much of in the U.S., a whole family on a motorcycle. Dad was driving. Mom sat in back. Junior was in front of Dad, between his arms and sitting on the gas tank. I assume that it was Mom, Dad, and Junior (or Missy). Horrifically dangerous for the little one regardless of gender but you see some of that here. Another passing event like a cloud in the sky or the bark of an elk in the woods. Either way, I'll never know more of the story than what I saw, just as it happens while I'm backpacking.

See this, see that, see whatever, and keep walking. It's not my game. I'm not a participant. I'm just here, as much by accident as anything else, and it's only scenery for me. A luxury, I guess. Again, just like backpacking, which is one of the finest luxuries. You just walk, stop to eat, look at this and at that, make a quiet little camp and sleep, and then walk some more. No need to try understanding anything, although that is a fun game in itself — there's really only the detached walking and gawking. Just like living here, in this foreign place.

Which is foreign and still not too foreign. So it's entertaining. Mostly. Again, mostly.

A couple of weeks back, while returning from an early-evening walk, I got water dumped on me from over the wall of a raised playground. Water-dumping and squirtgun spraying go with carnaval, which was long past, but people are inventive. Someone had not got enough, and I guess I should have taken the wet spots on the concrete as a clue, and I did, actually, but disregarded them, and then I got dumped on. Eh.

I didn't even bother to look up. Didn't stop and look around in puzzled incomprehension. Didn't pause, or swear, or anything. I knew. I wasn't ready for it but I knew. It was obvious the instant it happened — someone had dumped water on me from above.

'K, so now what?

What else? Keep walking.

Again, that's just like another backpacking experience, because out in the woods, you never know. Something always happens before you expect it to. Or it doesn't, and something else happens. Or that doesn't either. You never know.

And right after I got dumped on, maybe three minutes later, I had to cross a street. It was at a "real" intersection, meaning that there were traffic signals there, which people obey here, for some unknown reason, because they don't obey any other traffic regulations, but I had the green and could legally and (kind-of safely) cross, except.

That someone coming along made a right turn as I was almost fully across the street (on the green light), and didn't slow down. At all. And almost brushed the front of my pants with his left-side door. Which isn't that unusual either. I once had the toe of my left shoe run over by a car's right rear wheel, which is a close call but also not too unusual. Which is what then?

Which is about average for here, which is a lot like backpacking, when I (you, we) have to deal with ordinary recurring hazards, like getting from one side of a stream to the other. No matter how ordinary and simple and usual it seems, there is always a surprise hidden somewhere in there. Somewhere.

Maybe it doesn't bite you this time. Maybe it's napping, or looking the other way, but it's in there, and suddenly you can find yourself facing a real problem, and mostly you bend a little or do a side-step, or stop and think and then try a short detour, and then it's on to the next thing. Or else you get killed. But you never know.

It's like living here, I think. Living in Cuenca is a lot like doing a long backpacking trip.

Cuenca Is

Cuenca is like a long exploration of Grandma's enormous old attic. To me. But what do I know?

Not that much, as world travelers go.

I've been to Canada a couple of times, along the southern border (or along the U.S.'s northern border, if you will). I've been to Bismarck, North Dakota, to Minneapolis, to Denver, and Sante Fe and Tucson, and I lived in Seattle for a while. Almost two years. Just two blocks north of Seattle's city limits. That qualifies. And Bellingham, Port Angeles, and Olympia.

So I don't get around. Not that much, but I've seen a bit. I've seen more, I think, than my former friends and acquaintances who never left Bismarck, who never left permanently anyway, or who left but didn't make it outside of North Dakota. For long.

It's odd what a backwater will do for you. A backwater place, a quiet corner of the world, like Bismarck, like North Dakota. In a way — odd to me. I had friends there who moved in from Chicago, for work, and became permanently affixed. They went native.

Maybe it was already in them, or maybe the place changed them. I don't know now and I never will. I've lost them. We have no more contact, not for 11 years, since they decided they no longer wanted to have anything to do with me.

In a sense that's good, though I'm still a dick. I'm not easy around people, even people I've had long-standing relationships with. Friendships, working relationships, relationships with relatives — all the usual. I'm still awkward, and sometimes I don't meet expectations, or I say the wrong things, or miss the cues, and come off as a dick. So I'm a dick. That's who I am. Stand back then.

But for a while, while I still had friends, I noticed something, especially with Nick and Patricia, my friends from Chicago. Though I never could stand Patricia. She came with Nick. Part of the deal, so you had to put up with her. But back to our story.

I returned to Bismarck after being away six years, and went to visit Nick. At that time I was still welcome in his home. I went there, was welcomed in, and sat down. Nick and I began talking. We picked up our conversation from six years earlier, as though we'd last seen each other just a week before, instead. The place is like that. Friendships last forever. People don't change much. They don't grow either.

That's one thing I noticed while visiting Nick and Patricia, and Norman, my former boss and co-worker, and John, former friend and former co-worker. And my parents. And others. I had changed and they hadn't. I had changed a lot and they had only gotten older, and were still talking and complaining about the same things as always. In 1993, Norman and John were still complaining about the same problems at work as when I'd left that job in 1975, and John had not worked there since 1974.

Cuenca is like that too.

I can feel it. I am not an expert, and nearly deaf, so I can't converse to any extent. But I've seen some evidence.

Two years ago my Spanish teacher chided me when I related a story of trying to enter a department store by walking in through the checkout aisle (you know — the passage between two cashiers — in the U.S. you go through backward when it's handy). "What if everyone did that?" she said, annoyed at my gringo ways.

I had been stopped halfway through by the cashier and made to go back "out" where I had to loop way around and enter the store's inner sanctum via the official entrada. Even though nothing was going on — it was slow that day. There were no customers trying to pay for things. The coast was clear. Which is why I decided to do it. But I had to go back and enter the right way. Because.

The whole city is like that. It is full of old buildings and old ways. The old is piled on top of the old, with some new sprinkled here and there. Both customs and things. Sprinkled. It is charming in a maddening way. I notice things nearly every day.

At one place I eat, when locals enter, they leave the door open. A staff member has to go over and close the door. I eat there three times a week. This happens four or six or eight times during each half-hour period I'm there eating. Every single day.

It's how things are done. They just go over and manually close the door again and again. They've always done it that way. It doesn't look like they'll change. Even with my help.

I tried.

I bought a pair of cheap door closers. Really cheap. Five bucks each. Simple springs that you can affix to a door at a hinge. I brought these along and when I had a chance to bring up the idea, I gave them to the restaurant's owner. He was happy to get them. This was eight months ago. He still hasn't used them. He and his staff prefer to stop what they're doing, walk over to the door, grab it, and close it. And to repeat this all afternoon, six days a week. Rather than to use what I donated, or find something similar.

I knew a cat once too, in Bellingham. It was the neighbor's cat but we were buddies, and the cat came to visit me every morning, climbing up the half-ladder, half-stairway fire escape below the back window. It had learned to do this on its own to get to the roof of a shed where it would nap. It continued this way to visit me, first climbing up as high as the roof of the shed, hopping off the step to the shed's roof, then immediately hopping from the shed roof back onto the stair it had just left, and then climbing up the rest of the way to my window. It worked.

But there was no reason the cat could not have climbed up the whole distance to my window without making a stop on the shed roof. Except that the first time the cat had gone up the ladder it went to the shed roof, so that was how it was done. The trip to my window got added later, and the roof detour remained a part of the routine, even though there was no point in it.

Got it?

Living here is like that.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is probably the maxim I hate the most. Or it's at least close. "We've always done it that way" is another great one, and is interchangeable. I think I hate that version even more. It's rolling stupidity. My home town is full of it. My relatives were full of it. Everyone is full of it. People do what they've always done, because. Just because, you know?

Don't question. Don't cause trouble. Don't make us think. Why do you always have to make trouble?

Because I'm a dick. It's what I do. Though I'm not complaining about Cuenca. I like it here.

Because I don't have to be a part of it. I'm a perpetual passer-by. Because I can be. Because I'm rich.

I'm philosophically opposed to being rich, but I am, here. My income, relatively small by U.S. standards, puts me roughly in the top 10% in Ecuador, though there are many locals who have far more income than I do, but still I'm hanging with them, statistically speaking.

And since I'm rich, because I'm rich, I don't have to belong, so I don't have to play by the accepted rules, so I can be an outsider as long as I want, though I think I can understand some of how this all works. It works because people don't want to lose what they have. They're poor and isolated. The poor and the isolated are conservative and seldom think new thoughts.

I learned this from North Dakota.

Taking a chance is taking a chance. Taking a chance is dangerous. You don't want to do that. There is no reason to do that, if what you have gets you by. If what you have gets you by, then fine. You do that. But you don't get creative and risk it. You don't dare. You stay the course, conform, fit in, do it the way it's always been done, and then your children take over, and then your grandchildren, and on and on.

And Ecuador is not North Dakota. Which is why I'm here. Ecuador is much more of what I liked best and liked least about North Dakota. My friend John used to say (when he was still my friend and when we talked) that North Dakota was 20 years behind the times, and that was what he liked best about it. Ecuador, until the last half-century or so, was several hundred years behind the times, and I'm right in the middle of the slow region. Inland, in the mountains.

Along the coast things were never so slow, never so isolated. There was contact with the outer world. Ideas flowed. Cultures mixed. Change was a constant. Inland, no. Things stayed the same for half a millennium. Then they changed. But slowly.

OK by me. I like the climate. I wander around in the balmy bug-free weather at 8000 feet enjoying the sights. I like the peeled paint and cracked adobe walls, the broken pavement, the sounds. It's fine. Even the dust and the dogs. It's interesting, especially so since I don't have to be part of it. There is always something going on up and down the pedestrian-choked streets. I can use my imagination, just like I did exploring my grandmother's basement and my grandfather's garage. Looking at all the odd stuff and trying to imagine how people could live that way.

Which is what I'm doing here, in between trips out to lunch, or naps. So who am I to complain?

Guardians Of Darkness

The guys hanging out inside the planetarium. Them. They're guards.

I haven't been to the planetarium in Cuenca, but I'm familiar with the idea. Planetariums are dark inside. That's the point, confirmed by my one sighting, in Moorhead, Minnesota around 1971, when I took a sort of astronomy for noodle-heads class.

Planetariums are dark so you can see better. Which I don't have to explain because even if you think about it and come to the rational, reasonable, sensible conclusion, you know better. You know that inside a planetarium you don't want to see everything. In fact, you don't want to see much — just a few tiny points of light.

Which means that the darkness helps you to see better.

Another characteristic of planetariums is that they're empty. They have seats below and a dome above. And air. Most of the place is air. That's about it — like a movie theater. The place is about ideas and not things, and is full of dark air.

So it's funny (to me, still) to walk past the Cuenca planetarium and see one or two or three guards just outside it, or just inside it — What?. I should know by now. Guards. They're everywhere.

I did, during a previous incarnation here (at least a couple of years ago now), finally realize that guards, even armed guards, who are everywhere here, aren't so much armed guards. They are receptionists. And as with receptionists everywhere, their primary role is to maintain order. Their secondary role is to provide information. Their tertiary role is to control access to whatever inner sanctum that particular place has. And in Cuenca, a receptionist's ultimate role, the one of last resort, is to shoot you if you misbehave.

But only if you're exceptionally naughty, you see. Not usually.

Usually you see guards standing around hour after hour, five or six days a week depending on the hours of the business, or seven days a week even if the place is closed but important, like Banco del Ecuador down the street. You don't want anyone kicking their way inside that place and making a mess, so you leave at least one guard in place after the lights go off and the doors go into lockdown.

Which still, despite my getting used to a lot of things, or at least at least my witnessing of a lot of things, many of which I remain completely and eternally clueless about, leaves some room for wonder about the guards at the planetarium, because For why?.

I don't know why.

If I wasn't functionally deaf (meaning that I can hear but not too good no more) and thereby incapable of becoming functional in Spanish, I could ask. Most receptionist/guards seem happy to talk and why wouldn't they? They got nothing else to do all day, but I can't ask, you see, so I'm going to guess.

My guess is that to get into the planetarium (legally) one has to buy a ticket, pay a fee, pony up some coin, so. So this means that somewhere in there they have a box full of money. A box with a bunch of money in it. Some cash. At least a little. Possibly. Though who can say for sure? It's a guess.

Therefore the guards. In case someone might think that there is enough money in there to make robbery seem like a reasonable thing, even if there might be only $25 in quarters and dimes in there. This isn't a rich place, and people don't walk around throwing $50 bills in every possible direction — it's more like a dollar coin, a quarter or two, and a handful of pennies. If you can find pennies, but then again, if you do manage to find pennies you get really cautious about spending them, so maybe not. But maybe.

Again, I'm guessing. It's called for in this situation, so let's keep running with it and see what happens next.

So in essence, the guards at the planetarium are there protecting an idea. A potential. Putting up a barrier for anyone who gets his own and opposing idea. It's an intellectual standoff, a practical application of performance art: We are here with guns and clubs and uniforms and a big room full of darkness and you are out there, misguided, misinformed, with no income but not lacking in ambition and an urge to try something desperate on spec. And we say No — probably not a good idea there — don't try that, OK? Please? Just keep moving, go somewhere else if you would.

Maybe that's it. My best guess for now. Go figure.

US Ambassador Locates Ecuador

For U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador Watt C. Muffly, it's all about relationships and opportunity.

Apparently. That's what he says.

The new U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador speaks softly and has an easy smile that generally makes him immediately approachable, but today it's somewhat different. He's still speaking softly but (for a while) his tone was uncertain, evidencing perhaps a slight amount of trepidation. Perhaps confusion. Disorientation. He was not exactly sure where he was, exactly. For a while.

True, the Ambassador has heard of Ecuador, a smallish country sitting on the left shoulder of South America, and did know that he had been posted there, and was sure that his plane had been pointed in that direction. But he wasn't sure that he had actually arrived.

The map, his map, didn't seem to match up with anything he saw, which was initially somewhat confusing.

But this was all straightened out when he turned the map over, and then things got even better when he put north back where it belonged — on top. Everyone sighed. Some with relief.

According to those who know him, the Ambassador is is the kind of man you would invite to dinner at your house, just because you know he would be a good addition to any mix of company. Which may be why he got the job. Or maybe his map-reading skills indicated that a posting to France could be problematic for various reasons.

Anyway, he's here (or there, depending on where you're standing at the moment), and things are looking better now.

Last week the Ambassador was in Cuenca, a city known as a U.N. World Heritage site, due to its funky old buildings, and also known as possibly the cleanest city in all of Latin America, and the one with the best drinking water. All good things.

Once in Cuenca, the Ambassador introduced himself to local authorities, expats, and members of the news media while becoming more familiar with the city. By stepping in a pile of dog excrement. Which happens, even in Cuenca, because clean is a relative ranking, compared to other places, which can be much worse.

But it happens. You have to get past it. Which he seemed to do by way of a short hop following a brief utterance. Before wiping his shoes on the mayor's lawn.

Coincidentally, and possibly felicitously, Cuenca Mayor Marcelo Cabrera was traveling, out of town at the time, so no one other than second-rank flunkies saw any of this, and an introduction to the mayor will have to wait for another time.

This is also good, most likely.

Other than that event, as noted, the Ambassador said that he has had a smooth start in building those relationships that he views as critical to his work. The prefect and the governor presented me with no complaints, he said, smiling with a satisfaction that presumably represents his government's views about right and wrong.

I really tried to get them to tell me if anything was not going well, and they said 'no, the American expats who have settled here are all great — they seem to do nothing but eat, and deposit gobs of money from their retirement checks, right here in and around our city streets, and since they had to leave their guns at home, we mostly don't fear them so much any more'. And that's wonderful to hear — just the way we like it, the Ambassador concluded, pretty much amicably.

In an expat media interview Saturday morning, Ambassador Muffly continued to express his approval, suggesting only that U.S. citizens could advance the work of the U.S. State Department a bit by integrating themselves even more into the city and its efforts at improving education, health, the stray dog situation, whatever, like helping to fix up some of these old buildings, maybe getting a Walmart or two out there — that sort of thing. Couldn't hurt, as long as we bring here only the best that American culture has to offer.

Also, of course, whenever anyone coming to a new country experiences things that are a bit different or that we don't like, the Ambassador said, continuing to wipe his shoe after moving to a fresh patch of lawn.

I would hope that expat media would not use its platform for complaining about Ecuador. Saying 'why don't they have this here' or 'why don't they do that' makes our job as relationship builders more difficult, he said, seeming to be only slightly distracted by this time.

And now, a full two weeks after arriving, how does Muffly feel about his new posting to Ecuador?

I'm excited. Terrifically excited. Really. I am. Just going on a brief walk around Quito (where the Ambassador resides) I found two shoe shops that carry footwear in my size. I can't wait to get back there and do some serious buying, he said, shaking his left foot as he spoke, perhaps unconsciously. I'm definitely not looking backward, or downward, only forward toward a successful resolution of all issues, he said, continuing to smile weakly, though diplomatically.

Which might be why he got the job.

Dip-Shitz

Life isn't perfect.

Did you know that? Did you ever expect to hear that? Is it news to you?

I'm a dick, and so are you.

I try not to be. A dick. When I remember. But mostly. I'm thinking about other things.

Like lunch.

Or those flies. Always the flies. Why do they hang around me?

Flies, I can do without.

So what were we talking about? You, I guess. Why are you such a dick?

Can't you try harder, keep in touch with my feelings, stand up straight and act more like a responsible person? It would help.

It would help me. I have enough problems without bringing you and all your baggage into the equation. And it isn't really an equation either.

Which maybe is why some of this doesn't pencil out, trying to fit everything that happens into a formula like stuffing trash into a bag but with all the odd ends and points and dribbling it doesn't turn out so neat. So neatly.

Precision instruments do not function optimally in this world we have wandered into. I wish. But no.

But I think the problem is mostly you. Without dealing with you and your friends and relatives and most of the other people around here I could do OK, do better at least. If you weren't such a dick, at least that's what I think.

Am I wrong to think this?

Don't bother answering I don't care what you think since I'm always right. So think it over and agree with me.

But you don't need to bother telling me about it. I don't want to hear from you any more.

What more can I say?

Change Me Change

How do you look?

I know I'm getting old. It happens.

But I still have hair. And it's still the right color.

Got a bit of gray in my beard but I can grow one. A beard. Which is nice. Hides my face.

I waited all my life to grow a beard, waited all my life until I could, and I'd hate to go chin-bald right when I got enough fuzz to make it happen.

But I'm OK there. Things are decent on my underside. And like I said, I still got hair on the other end of my head too.

And I don't have to work any more, but I'm still interested in lots of things and there are many things I want to do, and quite a few of them are new. I hear that there is an endless supply of things to learn and do, so I don't feel rushed. They can come along as they will and I'll pick and choose. Grow into this or explore that or become the other thing.

As I see fit.

As I change. Morph. Grow. And age some more.

Though it isn't just me. I know people. Have known people. Have picked up friendships along the way, starting wayback, somewise back to second grade. That's about since age six in human years. At least that far back. And funny thing.

A lot of those people haven't changed hardly.

They got older and bigger and eventually got jobs and marriages and houses and wrinkles and stinky feet and drinking habits but mostly they became simply different versions of what they'd been as small children.

Even the people who moved to my home town as adults from outside somewhere. I had some friends like that too.

Ted Q and Steve S go way back, to the beginning of my gradeschool days. Ted: loud, boastful, obnoxious. Steve: funny, gregarious, needy of attention. Still the same. Even now. Steve has to be the center, Ted must have the best lie to tell. They both stayed. They became adults and assumed responsible positions and haven't grown much at all.

I just looked up John B. I first worked with him back in 1970. Dang. He's still painting the same paintings he was painting then, and the same ones he has been painting since. Still insists that he's "out of the loop". Still plays at being a farmer and a rugged individualist and a home mechanic and knows the correct answer to every question. Still wears the same clothes and has exactly the same ideas as he did then. Has been going to the same events with the same people for decades.

Similarly to Norman P, who used to be my boss, and John's boss at the time.

Twenty-five years after, I visited Norman and he was still at the same job, still complaining about the same things, and though John wasn't working there any more, he was complaining right along, and so was Nick F.

Nick came in from the outside. Raised in Gary, Indiana, settled in Bismarck, North Dakota as a mid-aged adult, and stopped growing right about then. The same twenty-five years after I was no longer working with Norman and John and Nick, Nick and John and Norman were still doing the same things, spending their days the same way, complaining about the same damn things.

But I wasn't.

I wasn't in that scene any more. No longer a figure in that diorama. No longer subject to the rules of that universe.

I had moved away. I had been other places and seen other things and met other people and faced different challenges and kept moving in that direction.

Instead of living in one smallish city in the middle of an anonymous state separated from the rest of the world by long reaches of flat grassland, I had lived in a large city and then a smallish one and then another smallish one and had, having finally finished one college degree, turned away from it and had pursued another in a totally different field. I had left fishing and photography and had picked up backpacking, and then bicycling, big time. Both big time.

And then I moved on from there too.

I had gone from being an unemployed English major who delivered lumber and worked as a clerk-typist to being a mainframe computer programmer who then transitioned to client-server development and then into web development. I got a physics degree. A hybrid physics/computer science degree with minors in chemistry and math. Plus one quarter-hour in volleyball.

I changed.

Now I've changed some more. I'm here.

I'm on a whole nother continent, south of the equator, in a place where I don't speak the language and don't know hardly anybody and am not sure at all of the rules. It's different.

So am I.

Unlike all the people I used to know. Who haven't changed. Much. During the last half century.

Which is something to think about.

Being an expat. I think it changes you.

Or is it that if you can change and grow, then becoming an expat is a thing you can do.

Either way.

Either way you change and grow because of it.

I couldn't go back to that small stuffy life.

Detergent Stinks

Let us now wilt perceptibly.

I needed to do some laundry.

Fine. OK so far.

I found a self-service laundry. These are rare to non-existent here. Here, labor is cheap and machines are expensive.

Also, here, few people know how to operate these expensive and delicate machines. Which is why ordinary humans are not allowed to go into a shop or library and run off a few photocopies. Someone has to do it for you.

Someone who knows how, who has been trained, who will not hurt the machine.

It's the same with almost everything else: Don't touch, please. It may break from you. We do this for you, included in price.

But I found a self-service laundry (lavanderia autoservicio).

It may be the only one here, but OK. Fine so far. Just one more thing.

Detergent.

I needed some.

Luckily for me, Coral has a good supply. Lots and lotsa detergent. Comes in every color and all amounts. All are brands I've never heard of.

It all stinks.

It really stinks — all of it. I mean, really. Ninety-eight percent industrial nose-killer, two percent detergent.

Today, about two weeks after having bought some, and thinking back on it, my nose hairs quiver. They shrink and shiver, wilting even now, attempting to run and hide. Right outta my nose to somewhere sheltered and safe.

Well, the buying part is over. I bought some, and left. Got out of that store's aisle with my tiny, 61-cent bag of something-or-other, back into the reassuring relative freshness of diesel exhaust and dust on the street.

With my tiny bag.

With what I thought was maybe, possibly, the least stinky detergent available there, that day.

But who can say?

Who can say? Really?

At least the bag is small, and I try not to use much, and add in an extra rinse cycle, and hope that the dryer will burn off most of the residual stink, and convince myself that the atmosphere will deal with most of the rest, and believe, sincerely and ardently, that I can deal with what smell is left after that.

Without absolutely keeling over and croaking my last feeble croak.

I can hope, can't I? Can't I?

Got Nostrils? Too Bad.

No Scents, the sign said.

It was on the office door of a math professor I once took a class from.

Woman. Put herself through college all the way to a Ph.D. as a single mother. She smoked.

Couldn't stand perfume though, or cologne, nor any kind of poofery or puffery or fluffery that came in a bottle or as freight in a bar of bubble soap.

I myself at times have gagged mightily when confined narrowly, near one recently exited from drenching of ten-cent-a-gallon stink juice.

The anti-aroma brigade gains more members daily, way up north where I used to live. I can understand them. I can understand that.

Here, no — don't think so. Not in Ecuador. Maybe not in any of what we-all call Latin America.

Here, if you're alive, you need to smell good.

To smell good you need to smell like you popped out of a flower-adorned bottle.

You get that way by

• bathing with bar soap
• applying hand lotion
• shampooing
• greasing up with sunscreen
• doing laundry, and wearing the results
• doing anything else

You can't help it. Everything stinks, everywhere, all the time.

Products aren't allowed on the market unless they can be used as chemical scent weapons, capable of emitting shock waves of sweet reeks to flatten small buildings and overturn rolling traffic.

The Bad News: The smells that linger for a week. No matter how often you wash.

The Good News: I'm waiting. Make it happen. Please.

But it's all relative then, innit? As in how close to borderline nausea you begin that day, just being alive. And how fast you can reasonably run, discreetly.

But they're always there, the floral stinks. Always.

Always seeking, ready to infiltrate your head, and to destroy your sanity. Mine, anyway.

Maybe it's my nostrils.

I See You?

You walk around.

If you want to see anything, you do. Walking is the best way to see things. And here is no exception, seeing things here.

To walk, you need open spaces. Open spaces to walk in, walk through, experience, explore.

But you don't get much here.

It's different here. This is a private society.

Streets are necessary. Streets are mandatory. Otherwise we'd all need to be birds. That won't work for me. I've tried. When I was young. With the arm flapping. Every kid tries it. It doesn't work.

So flight is out.

Moving around on the ground, the obvious place to start is with your feet. You move them. And then you move.

And to move you need streets. Because moving feet can do only so much.

Moving feet move bodies, and bodies can carry some of this and that, but not much else. So that's were wagons and carts and donkeys and then cars and trucks and buses come in. All require streets.

So we have streets here. They are essential. But this is a private society.

Which means.

That things are different here.

Open spaces are rare, aside from streets, occurring randomly and relatively unpleasantly, as parks. They aren't. Not as we know parks. We foreigners.

The parks here are flat squares of pavement, with a few shrubs, and a scattering of fenced-off trees.

Not what we think of. No. Not what I think of.

The open spaces here are inside houses. Or other buildings.

Schools have them. You can see. Every now and then you can see. Them. Inside. Inside the walls inside the buildings.

Safe areas. Protected areas. Private areas. Roman villa style, rooms around the periphery, space in the middle. Sealed off from the rest of the world.

The parks. What they call parks. Are incidental. Really.

Token gestures.

When you go to a park, you're going to a place you go to be public.

And that's different from.

From what?

I don't know — different from what I used to know. Just different. More public in a way.

Deliberate.

Like making a political statement, or formally proclaiming a religious view. I am here, now, today, in this place, and am visible. So there. Done.

And then you go home and get all private again and no one knows where you really are or what you are up to and no one cares.

You behind your walls.

JBoob With Chicken

Hey. Don't blame me. I just pressed the button up toppa the camera.

J was already there, boobing around with a chicken on his shoulder. It was like that when I got there. It was like that.

I dint have nothin to do with the chicken neither. Is that a chicken? Who knows? It's something up there beaking into the sky. Might as well call it a chicken. Looks happy. Can't beat happy.

J don't look so much happy, but that's kind of the story. Sad to be here, sad about what seems to be happening, sad about what comes next. Even for the guy in charge it's not a happy story so I'll go with the chicken. Or the boob.

No.

No matter what it's a creepy boob. I don't know. What's the real story here?

Too late to ask, I just pushed the button. So away we go then, and something different next time.

Water World

The leaking wall.

Why does la Asociación de Hoteleros del Azuay stink of urine?

That is the question, one I had often wondered about, especially when passing on the south side of the building.

What was it about the Hotelier's Association of Azuay Province, specifically, that made it reek? Could it be their bylaws? The shape of the building? The color of the paint? The plaster used in its construction? The building's specific spatial orientation? Its fung? Its shway?

Evil spirits?

Maybe. Anything is possible, and not just here, but everywhere. Anything at all.

True. And that is what makes life special.

Life is special because it is composed of living beings, each and every one of which, in its own way, is capable of noticing odd situations and strange events, and then (again, each in its own way) of understanding the weird, and reacting. Even plants.

Plants can tell that the sun moves across the sky. This is basic understanding. We, of course, know that the sun does not move across the sky because we are brighter than plants, and confine ourselves to speaking about the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, but not about it traveling across the intervening distance. In other words, we are more perceptive, and are wrong in a more subtle way.

But the real point here is that plants (even plants) are sensitive and smart enough to know when something is going sideways, and are capable of dealing with it. By bending their stalks to compensate, in this case. Rocks can't do that.

Now, with regard to la Asociación de Hoteleros del Azuay, I noticed. I noticed the funk. You can't avoid it, sometimes even from across the street, but I didn't catch on.

Some clues follow.

1. Every now and then I see cab drivers standing side by side, facing the river, with their backs to the street and their hands down in front of their crotches. I know what that means.
2. Occasionally I'll notice a pedestrian or bicyclist, facing the river, and so on. I.e., ditto.
3. It's common to see a vehicle stopped along the highway with the driver and passengers standing, hands down in front of their pants, facing away from the road. Check.
4. Downtown, guys facing a building, wetting it, in plain view of everyone else. OK, right, got it.
5. A mother at a bus stop, coaching her five-year-old son on how to do it right. He is standing next to her, facing a wall, letting fly. She is there for him.

Hmmm. But what do those so-called clues have to do with la Asociación de Hoteleros del Azuay and why it stinks of urine?

Boy, that's a real pisser of a question — I had no idea. Really I didn't. Could there be any explanation, I thought?

Well, maybe. Maybe not, but maybe.

La Asociación de Hoteleros del Azuay stands at the corner of Presidente Córdova and Padre Aguirre, two thunderingly congested streets in the very center of Cuenca. Padre Aguirre is a major bus route. I finally caught on to that, and now walk one block north, on Mariscal Sucre because of the diesel smoke. Because there isn't any on Mariscal Sucre. Seriously. I do this now. You don't know diesel smoke until you try walking along Padre Aguirre. You can't.

You have to swim. While holding your breath, with your eyes closed. At the right time (about every 10 minutes, all day) you can see it. You can't avoid seeing it. Two or three buses heave themselves up onto their feet, tumble forward, roar, and spew gigantic black clouds out of their rear orifices. Eventually these clouds thin to the point that light again reaches the street, but leave the entire street blue and hazy for blocks. North American buses don't act this way. Not at all.

And on the northwest corner of Padre Aguirre's intersection with Presidente Cordoba is a large public market, taking up a full city block, so it's really busy there. People. Cars. Trucks. Buses. More people.

Guys stand on that corner, behind la Asociación de Hoteleros del Azuay and bleed their lizards.

That's it.

Guys standing approximately 10 paces from one of the busiest intersections in the city, whizzing away at the back wall of the building. But it's OK, because their backs are to the world at large. Only their backs are visible, and their other parts are not, since they face the wall, and around here, it's proper etiquette.

A stream flows under their feet, diagonally toward the street, trickles over the curb, and puddles.

And really stinks.

That's it. I finally caught on, though I had to see a guy out there going at it before I realized what the cause was. Of the pungency.

Duh.

Dim Bulbs

Twenty watt thinking.

Funny thing.

The guy with the nice-looking apartment was remodeling, and then there was this carnival holiday thingy, and he said he'd probably get back to me by Wednesday of last week when he had it all pulled together.

And he didn't, so I wrote off one more place.

And then Monday, after I had to clear out of my room and go do something while they cleaned it, and then had lunch and goofed off, I found out that this same guy had sent me an email saying I could come over and see the place. And by then, when I saw the email, it was hours and hours later.

Sure, of course.

So I emailed him, asking for the address, and said I'd call Tuesday. Assuming I could figure out how to use the phone I had bought.

There was no return email from him, and when I called Tuesday he said that the apartment was "not available". I.e., he'd rented it. Probably to the first person who came by and said "Me want."

More batsnit craziness. I hope it isn't contagious.

I have an appointment for Friday, through a realtor, for a $250 apartment, which is located somewhere. Out there. Nobody wants to say anything around here, even if the question is only which part of town we're talking about.

No. Highly secret. Can't say. Wait until you see it. Is great, this place. Just wait.

I tried to get in earlier than Friday, given my experiences with people and their rentals appearing and then suddenly vanishing, leaving no trace, only a faint sour taste in the soul, but he said Friday was the day, and I would be the only prospective tenant there, and could take as much time as I needed with the owner, etc., and so on.

So. Whatever.

On the other hand, Peter, the 22-year-old with a three-bedroom, three-bathroom place, just emailed me and said I can move in there on March 4th, or not, depending on when the others leave. This is the three-bedroom, three-bathroom place with one bathroom in the living room, and the third bedroom inside the second one.

I'll have to draw a picture sometime.

As soon as I get new crayons.

So anyhow, I bought drugs today.

Getting extremely low on the prescription medication that I brought with me, I finally gimped it over to one of the larger pharmacies, hoping they'd have most everything.

Kinda.

Two clerks eyeballed the data sheet I gave them. One clerk poked at the computer and finally said "Nope. No such thing here." (It's more exciting in Spanish.)

And at that moment the other clerk emerged from the shelves with a bottle of 100 tablets of the right stuff, all sealed and tidy and clean and safely on the correct side of expiration date.

I had my passport, and could have supplied a copy of the prescription, but they just wanted money. Not even a note from my mother. The total was $17.20, and then I was out of there, slick as snot on a doorknob.

No need to hunt for a doctor who isn't retired and is still taking new patients, explain why I don't have insurance, offer to pay cash, stand there looking at confused faces, wait for an appointment, explain that I've got a really mild case of you-know-what, and have been taking the absolute minimum of this medication since 1975, have never had any side effects, hoping to get by without a bunch of tests involving needles and, in far corners of the country, laboratories I've never heard of which will send me oddball bills for months on end.

No, not like that. Here you tell them what you want, they set it out, you pay, and if you die alone on the floor at home because of what you just bought, that's your own fault.

I was at this same pharmacy a few weeks ago, unsuccessfully trying one weekend to score some baking soda, which is a controlled substance here, but it wasn't until today that I noticed the security guard. Maybe he's off on Saturdays. But he was there today. He wasn't carrying a shotgun though, so he can't be very good.

Every time I walk out the entrance of my hostal I pass a security guard at the bank next door. He stands there all day, holding a 12-gauge, pistol-grip shotgun. There are lots of these guys around. All over. Standing all day, watching, shifting their guns from hand to hand, wearing navy blue armor, navy blue baseball caps, navy blue pants - the whole blue thing.

The bank where I get cash has at least three on duty all day. Maybe four. I think it's four. But that's a sort of drive-in bank with its own parking lot, so I guess they would need more firepower to cover the acreage.

I bought a light bulb today too. (There is actually a story here, but I'll skip that part for now. You know, suspense and all - wait for it, 'K?) I bought the bulb at a sort of all-in-one, jumbled-up grocery and department store. It's kind of a fun place with a little of everything piled every whichway, but even they also have at least two armed guards out front all the time. Yes, with shotguns.

Well, one has a shotgun. For sure.

If this was a typical Target store, and Target stores really liked the idea of armed guards, there would be half a dozen out front, and at least as many inside. Just so you get the idea.

Firepower.

Inside this store, staff not driving cash registers walk around and look at people. No one has ever asked if they could help me with anything (which is OK for me, for now, since I'm essentially a mobile idiot). They only walk around and watch what's going on.

Which is nothing.

And I don't ever want to be there when anything is going on.

So, right now.

I have to study Spanish so Señora T. won't be upset. She's my Spanish teacher. I'm not sure if she cares whether I study or not, but if I don't she'll have nothing to do but to sit there and stare at me, which could trigger an emergency call to the security guards, and we don't want that.

Things could be worse but I don't want to know how.

Duh

Some things, they puzzle.

I can tell you one thing.

And that is.

There's a lot I don't understand.

Take the immigration office here. It's busy. Really busy.

Because why? Because people have questions.

I understand that part.

And where do you go with your questions? To the experts.

I understand that part too.

Definition: Expert - Someone who can have your butt thrown out of the country if you don't play by their rules.

So here's the deal then.

The immigration office is busy because people want to retire here, and they have questions, and being reasonably smart, they read up and talk to people, and then they go to the experts for the final cut.

And the experts subsequently become busy.

The solution to which is to reduce their hours by half.

And to put up a sign notifying everyone: "The immigration office communicates that the attention to the public will be from 08H30 to 12H30."

Which has the effect of what, for example?

Of making people cranky, and ornery, and irritable, and of making some go away.

Where they go is no one's concern. If they go somewhere.

Else.

Dontcha see.

Which reduces the pressure on the immigration office.

So that part I understand.

It's the rest I don't get.

Bleeding Lizards

You see it everywhere.

And I mean everywhere. If you look.

It's a man's world here, a virtual whiz capital.

Gotta drain the plumbing? Do it. Nuff said.

The only requirement is to face away from traffic. Face a wall. Face the river. Stand behind your car, whatever. Just don't show your pee-pee.

Too much.

And if rules are made to be broken, they get broken.

Like two days when ago I was returning to my hotel about 1:30 p.m., when I rounded the corner, and in front of me, across from the blue-domed cathedral, in a major tourist area, half a block from the flower market, I saw a man rising from a squat and pulling up his pants.

Yeah, I saw way more than I needed to.

Being a guy, I know what's down there. Well, I know what I got, and don't want to know about yours.

I think he laid one on the pavement.

He must have been in the advanced class. Maybe it was his final exam. Way beyond watering the curb.

Cab drivers tend to congregate in off hours. They park four or five or six in a line along the river. They stand and talk. Shoot the breeze. Hang out.

Whoops. I'm giving away the plot.

What plot? You know where this is going.

So when the time comes, they stand shoulder to shoulder, their backs to traffic, and nail the lawn.

You can identify that stance from two blocks away. Legs spread for stability, both hands down at the crotch. No walking around. Looking straight ahead. Give it a couple of shakes when you're done and zip up.

All over.

Just delivered a fare? With your cab parked in the street, walk behind it and do what you have to, facing the trunk, then get back to work.

Hanging out with the rest of your fifteen-year-old friends in front of someone's house? Stick your business end inside the doorway of their outer wall and leave some moisturizer.

It happens.

All over here.

And you know what?

I wish I could do it.

Things would be so much simpler.

If.

Eat Week Two

The day of eternal chewing.

The other place I went during Eat Week is called "El Nuevo Paraiso".

I have a review from a couple years ago, one that was published on a now-defunct web site, or I'd link to it. Anyway, it clued me a bit to the location, style, and conventions of the place.

Sort of.

It is another vegetarian joint.

I went there twice during Eat Week (Tuesday and Thursday).

El Nuevo Paraiso is all Ecuadorian. The TV is on, always turned up to 13, and me with the one ear and all, it's kind of a soundscape adventure.

Tuesday, on my first visit, I went in and stood staring like an idiot (something I'm actually good at) toward the menu, again a menu on a wall, with pictures.

From the pictures you can't tell anything, really. I can't. So, on to step two.

The woman at the "caja" ("box", or "cash register") came out of her cage right smartly when she realized I needed professional help.

She headed for me with a ruler in her hand, but she didn't whup me. Instead she started slapping the ruler at the various pictures, jabbering at me in Spanish. I think it was Spanish because that's what they talk around here when their mouths are open. It's like a tradition.

But with only the one partly-good ear and all, and the TV glowing red from the mass quantities of electrons flowing through the speaker, and the traffic noises, I couldn't really tell.

It could have been Tagalog. But probably not, you know. Probably Spanish, which I am not any good at yet. Which is why I said "jabbering". These days even English, which I've been immersed in for decades, is also jabbering. I'm losing it, ear-wise.

So to get her to stop slapping the pictures I finally said "Sí" at the last one she hit. Like I had caught on when she walloped the picture of my dreams.

She seemed relieved at that point. Relieved that she could stop slapping the wall and put her arm down and get on with things.

So that was phase one. Phase two involved ceviche.

I'd heard about their ceviche from the review I mentioned. I wanted to try that, being a ceviche virgin and all, so I asked for that too.

Result: more jabbering. Aimed in my general direction. I'd confused her.

This little old stupid gringo guy comes in and at first seems convinced to buy the stuff she's been slapping with her ruler, and then he orders ceviche instead.

No. Tambien. He wants both? Sí, he wants both.

Ah, even more crazy, this guy.

Since I was able to put $4.00 of actual money into her hand she decided that the deal had finally escalated into her pay grade, which is to take orders and get money, not to educate fools, so she calmed down about then. Somewhat.

And since I also mumbled "tengo hambre" (literally "I have hunger", or, more naturally, "I'm hungry"), she decided that I was not only crazy but probably creepy enough not to mess with any more, so after tucking the money away safely she wrote my order for two lunches on a piece of paper the size of a bubble gum wrapper and handed it to me.

Almost immediately, before I could figure out what to do next, someone else came along and took the scrap of paper, and then disappeared into the back.

OK, then.

About two minutes passed and then something happened.

The thing that happened is that a basket arrived, containing a knife, a fork, a spoon, and a napkin. And a bowl of cold soup, about six ounces worth (but separate, not in the basket). I decide to wait and see.

What I saw was nothing. For a few minutes. Then something else happened.

Which was that a plate of stuff arrived, just like the one the woman had been slapping with her ruler. It had rice, a slab of breaded and fried fake mystery meat, a bunch of vegetables, some more vegetables, and yet more other vegetable-like things.

So I began poking. Hmmm.

Then a big bowl of ceviche arrived, with another plate of rice.

I decided to start with the first bowl of soup, since it got to me first, and looked good.

Kind of pink, I think.

Damn.

Just about the best thing I've had in Ecuador.

Room temperature, creamy-white-pinkish, with bits of floating herbs, and with thin onion strips too.

Spicy. Very spicy. I could have eaten about half a gallon, but stopped after consuming half the bowl, and shifted my attention to the plate.

Roughly at about this time I noticed that the guy at the next table seemed to be keeping an eye on me, so I began to wonder.

But usually it's best to act like you know what you're doing, so I tried that and went at the plate full of vegetables and artificial mystery meat.

Which was good.

All of it was good, but mostly pretty bland.

The vegetables seemed like steamed vegetables. Cooked, warm, wet, and crunchy. Not much more.

There was a lot of what looked like vegetable pearls in there, pale, smooth, wet, crunchy. In a steamed-vegetable way.

This must have been more mote, the corn kernels they eat here. Roughly pea-sized but not pea-like otherwise, and not corn-like. Mote-like, I guess. New to me.

After a while I tried the ceviche, which was rich and full of mushrooms and things, and mostly (to me) not so flavorful. But maybe it's just me.

So after several hours of chewing I was around a quarter the way through my food. Even the ceviche had to be chewed.

Lots of chewing.

Lots and lots of chewing, of things that had little flavor (to me). Except that soup. The first bowl of soup.

Dawn began to break.

I began to wonder if that first bowl of exquisite soup might have in fact been a bowl of sauce.

The guy at the next table was still discreetly watching me. I thought. Perhaps hoping to discover the secret of craziness among gringos.

Meanwhile, I continued to eat. Like I've eaten all of this before and am willing to teach the world the right way, with crazy veteran confidence.

One part of my act was to take my small bowl of cold spicy soup and ladle it onto the tasteless vegetables. Lots of it. Which helped.

But then, driven by food lust, I made the mistake of eating the rest of said spicy soup with a spoon, leaving at least two thirds of my vegetables in their original, wet, taste-free state.

Too bad.

On the other hand, I do know how to pack it away, after countless years of gut stuffing. So I did that, but got really tired of chewing.

Unfortunately, the only way out of the place was through chewing.

So I did more of that.

Eventually it was all over except for licking my plate and the two bowls. I passed on that. For some reason.

Maybe I'll do it next time.

But well before I finished, one of the staff stopped by the table of Mr Other Guy for some reason. And when she left him she put his bowl of soup on my table.

The small bowl, of pinkish, cold soup, from his table.

I guessed this was either a taunt or a jest.

Maybe a salute.

Who can say?

Anyway, I was not about to finish his meal for him, so after a minute of continued chewing I gently pushed his bowl away from my plate and ignored it. I had serious chewing of my own to finish.

I guess the good news is that no one came after me with a stick. Or a ruler. Or a bowl of sauce. (Except as already related, above.) And Mr Other Guy left before I did, probably so he could go tell everyone his new stupid-crazy gringo story.

Four bucks worth of eats is a lot around here, if you go where Joe Ecuadorian goes.

Consequently I waddled the half mile back to my place, but not without one more encounter.

This one I regret. Oh, my, do I.

A lovely young woman (Maybe a third of my age, OK?), stopped me and seemed to ask for directions, in Spanish, that being what they do here, as I've already stated.

All I could do was apologize and say that I speak very little Spanish and then turn and wobble down the street, bumping into signposts and whatnot, due to a severe ballast imbalance achieved during lunch, while chewing.

Back at my room I dug out a map and figured out that the part I understood ("Simón Bolívar"), was a street in the direction opposite to the one the woman had been going.

If only I'd had my map.

I mean, just to be helpful.

I could have stumbled along in Spanish well enough to have figured out what she wanted, pointed to where we were, and to where she needed to go, and then I could have given her the map. And been a nice guy.

Crazy. Ugly. Stupid and all, but kind of nice in my own road-accident sort of way.

But no.

That didn't happen either.

So.

Two days later I went back to "El Nuevo Paraiso", expecting perhaps an armed mob. Nope.

No flamethrowers. No one throwing rocks. No nothing, much.

It did require three people to take my order though.

Even though I chose the "Menú de Hoy" ("Daily Special", usually written as "Menú del Día") from the whiteboard out front.

With one ear, no Spanish, and the TV up around 13.5 (maybe 14), things get dicey, quick.

I had my $2.00 out (in dollar coins, which they like here), and was ready to pay and all, but hadn't heard anyone say anything that I could recognize.

One of the women was talking at me, and so was another one, and the third, she was talking and writing out "$1.80" on a scrap of paper. For my edification. Since even if I was so stupid as to not speak or even comprehend any known language, then surely I could still respond to "$1.80" if written out. Which here translates to "$1,80", but even I am bright enough to follow that.

No. My problem was not-paying-attention, plus hearing three people and a TV all talking at once. Into my one ear.

But.

I finally caught on.

I handed over my money and things calmed down. No more ruler-slapping, at least that day.

What I had ordered was:

• Entrada: Col morada con de mayonesa (Cabbage with mayonnaise)
• Sopa: Mote con frejol (Mote with beans)
• Segundo: Tallarin chino con llapingacho (Chinese macaroni with llapingacho)
• Juego: Colada (Literally, "wash", but essentially the "colada" in "piña colada", I think)
• And a bowl of sauce came with it (Joy!)

About col morada con de mayonesa: I've never had cabbage like this before. Amazing. I don't know if the mayonesa was mayonnaise or twice-refined axle grease, but I want more. Sort of almost warm, not room temperature, which slight warmth made it so friendly.

The soup (Mote con frejol) was fine and smooth. Like bean soup containing imaginary corn. Imaginary mote corn. Not corny or crunchy or lumpy or anything bad. Fine and smooth.

The "Chinese macaroni" looked like spaghetti to me. Long and noodly. Noodly. I liked that.

The llapingacho was a potatoey and yammy something. Yellowish inside, with a nice crust around the outside. There were rice and vegetables too.

The juice looked synthetic. Not sure about it.

Something like lemonade mix with artificial cinnamon in it. Something like what you'd get if you ground Dentyne gum into a powder and mixed a lot of it into cloudy pink sugary water.

Then again it may have been dilute fruit juice. It had some kind of pulp at the bottom, and was not chilled. I didn't want it but thought it would be disrespectful to leave it either untouched or half-drunk so I drank it all.

No unexpected side effects to report.

Bowl of sauce.

Ah.

This time, instead of asking for a straw, or drinking it straight from the bowl, I dished out the whole of it onto the rice and vegetables.

Smart move.

It perked up everything.

Made the whole meal amazing (except for the juice problem, of course).

Tangy. Spicy. Almost peppery. I still want a half gallon of that sauce straight some day. All to myself. Even if it kills me.

There are worse ways to go (all the other ways).

So, a really fine, filling meal for $1.80.

I'll be going back every now and then as long as they keep serving sauce and don't come at me with sticks and knives.

Or maybe even if they do. Hey.

Week one...