Esther's Reflexology Garage

Starting next Thursday, Reflexology therapy is now available at Esther's Beauty Garage. Or will be next Thursday. At Esther's Beauty Garage. Next Thursday. Got it? At Esther's.

Esther is big on Reflexology. It's a thing. Reflexology resembles Plumbing Therapy®, in which a sensitive pudgy guy with a prominent butt crack thoughtfully massages your home's pipes to relieve leaks, squeaks, squawks, and creaks, without the inconvenience and associated high costs of having a plumbing license, business license, or anything other than a butch butt crack. Like Esther. She's butch too, Esther is, and she can reflex like crazy.

What is Reflexology anyway? It's a thing. That's about all anyone knows, so let's ask WonkyPedia. The WP knows all, eh?

• Reflexology is one of the most used alternative therapies in Denmark. (Wherever Denmark is, and does it actually count?)
• There is no consensus among reflexologists on how reflexology is supposed to work. ('K...Check.)
• Reflexologists posit that the blockage of an energy field, invisible life force, or Qi, can prevent healing. (Invisible! Qi? Quiche? Cheese? What?)
• ...no evidence found to support the use of reflexology for any medical condition. (Jeez — not again. Not this too...)

But a couple years back the Australian Government Department of Health & Stuff reviewed 17 alternative therapies to determine if any were worth paying for. Reflexology was in there but no one could figure out what it was, so at that point they all went out for cookies and beer.

All fine by us. If the cat lady down the block thinks it's a good deal, WTF then, I'm easy.

Come live the ultimate body care experience with Esther. Her reflexology massages will make you feel beautiful and healthy from the inside out. Different massages will make certain parts of your body feel a lot better.

Probably, especially if you catch Esther within a day or so after her monthly bath, and ask her for "The Special".

Do you want to try it? Just call Esther, she lived many years in the US and speaks English, so she'll be able to understand your needs.

Woof!

Bajada del Padrón 4-07 and Calle Larga, in front of Hostal Casa del Río. Monday to Saturday, 9 AM to 6 PM. Look for something resembling a garage. That will be Esther. Come prepared for a little friendly arm wrestling.

P.S.: How about a spring tuneup?

• Have your muffler probed for pests.
• Tinkle therapy by request.

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Comments? Send email to hoofist@nullabigmail.com

It may or may not help.

So, Monday

Category: Things my sister has apparently read all the way through.

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Yeah, so I got up Monday and had a reminder to myself by email notifying me that Tuesday was a national holiday.

Oct 9 Tuesday  Independence of Guayaquil   National holiday  <- See?

So I had lead time to buy some food, since you never know what's going to be closed. Mostly everything. But hey — I had a day to get it sorted out, so no probs.

I followed my usual lazy schedule, and after a late-morning shower I got dressed and went to lunch. All OK.

But then I noticed that things were really quiet. Not much traffic on the streets, not that many people. Some shops open, some closed. Eh?

Then I turned the last corner, the one only a few feet from el Túnel, and the menu boards weren't up yet. Well, it was a little early, so... But then I saw that the doors were closed up tight. Another oops moment. So I went back to my apartment, ate, and headed out for Supermaxi, hoping that they were open.

Luckily, yes. Coral was open last Xmas day even, but you never, never know, and Supermaxi is a different business, so I always feel lucky when something works. If one or the other is open, you can get pretty much all you need, though Supermaxi has a better selection of food, and at Coral you can buy tools, clothes, or a kitchen range if you suddenly feel a need for one.

So I loaded up on the basics and braced myself for Tuesday.

As it happened, I didn't bother going out Tuesday. Had plenty to do, and food, and the water didn't go out, or electricity, or the internet, which is excellent here after Henry worked things out while I was gone last summer. I don't know what he did though he said it was hard, but at least the wifi here has been stable, and that's a big deal. Like everything else, around here you just don't know what's going to happen next.

So the maid was still here, and I had to go hide while my apartment got cleaned on Monday, but I skipped hauling my pack full of dirty clothes to the laundry — wasn't worth the exertion. Lots of places take an extra day off when a holiday comes, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday being a nicer break than just Tuesday. I figured that I'd try for laundry on Wednesday, which worked out, and I had two days off as well, though I don't have anything to do anyway.

So, aside from minor panics like not knowing where I'll find my next meal, things are generally quiet here. The weather suddenly warmed a lot after the end of August, and the sun is back, though a lot of the days are still cloudy. We're definitely headed for summer. Too bad I'm getting bored again.

I did take a one-month Spanish refresher, taught by an ex-teacher from the U.S. who's been here for seven years or so.

You can tell she was a teacher because she can go a full two hours without either closing her mouth or taking a breath, even once.

Edgewise was a way you could not even get a word in. I know, I tried. She'd stop and look dazed. But.

There were two others in the class, both new here. Holly, who I don't know much about, a pleasant woman who apparently is about 63, and trying to get residency mumbo-jumbo sorted out and get her cats here, which is easy but complicated, and Bones, a former 39-year Harley-Davidson dealership owner who spends a lot of time rumbling around the countryside on his locally-bought on/off road motorcycle.

Ultimately the class didn't amount to a whole lot, but I was able to get out a bit and talk to at least a few people for a few hours a week.

But bored, me.

I've been wondering if there's another place to go.

It still seems like Portugal might be one of the best places to relocate to. Close to the rest of Europe, good infrastructure, good climate, not too expensive. Then Hacker News had a piece on it. Still a possibility.

I've also looked at Santa Fe, NM, but then wondered about Flagstaff, AZ. It looks like the general climate in Flagstaff is milder, more agreeable, and it's closer to the backcountry in California, Nevada, Utah than Santa Fe is, and looks like it might have a more reliable water supply, which is going to be more and more important as the years go by.

You can tell that i'm thinking of making the same mistake i've made several times already — moving back to the U.S. and trying to be 30 years old again. Maybe, maybe not, but this time I'd buy a van and live in that. Last season living in my little Nissan wasn't that bad, but nowhere near adequate since I had to keep most of my my things in storage, and was tied down by that. And if I got a van, it would almost have to be a new one for mucho bucks, so there's that.

Might be better to take a "vacation" starting and ending in Cuenca, like touring Britain, or Iceland. But then Cuenca is a godawful long way from anywhere else, and expensive to commute from. Don't know. Will have to dither some more.

One thing that mostly worked was that I managed to dole out gifts pretty well. I had 18 bottles of Dr Bronner's soap for the nine girls, and 10 little LED flashlights for the boys, plus a few things for a couple people's kids. Unfortunately, there were two new women working at el Túnel, and one bottle of soap leaked on the way here. Then Paólo quit working at my hotel, and MaríaJosé and Oskar no longer work at el Túnel (they're both university students now) but I had things for them, and for MaríaJosé's daughter, but luckily I found out from Xavier that MaríaJosé is his wife now, and Oskar is her brother, and Xavier sees him almost every day, but with the two new women working there, I didn't have enough bottles of soap to go around (not to mention the empty bottle that leaked).

And when I talked to Henry about the children's books I brought (Sandra Boynton, translated into Spanish), they seemed too simple for Sonia's girls (8 and 10), but Santiago has a daughter who is about 4, so maybe, I thought, that would work. Santiago was covered (LED light) and I found out that he's married to Joanna, the other maid at the hotel, and I had her covered with soaps (one lavender and one rose for each, except for Eva, Anita, and MaríaJosé because I just didn't have enough to go around so I bought some semi-high-end chocolates to cover for that, and though both Eva Anita work at the hotel, they're part-timers, so maybe...).

So that left four frog lights for Sonia's girls (plus a sheet of Hello Kitty stickers), and I gave one to Santiago's daughter, and one for MaríaJosé's daughter, but I had enough LED rechargeable tube lights so I could give one of those to Xavier's son, who was hanging around at el Túnel while school was out. And since Paólo was gone, I had an extra, until I came back from lunch one day and saw Paólo at the hotel. He was picking up his last paycheck or something, and I felt a little bad that I no longer had anything to give him, but I got a hug anyway.

As far as I know, that about covers the story of the gifts, except for Janet and Luís, the owners, who were on vacation, but I kept their things in my closet until they turned up, so they got their treats too (LED light and soap). Arrr.

And then yesterday I was coming back from lunch and heard "DaBEED! Buenas tardes!" as I came around the corner. It was Sonia (Sonia from the hotel, not Sonia from el Túnel) and her two girls heading into the hotel, and that's how my name is pronounced around here. School goes in two shifts, morning and afternoon. She had her girls with her (Pamela and Carolina, in their spotless little school uniforms). I looked up, caught off guard, but mumbled something and waved just in time to trip over a nubbin sticking up from the sidewalk and almost fell, but mostly just bounced a couple of times on one foot until I recovered.

Sonia had gone into the hotel entrance by then, but her two girls were trailing, and one grabbed me around the hips and gave me a hug and also said "DaBEED!", and then the other girl gave me a second hip hug (they're really short, about the height you'd expect to see on five-year-olds except they're eight and ten). So anyway, I guess they got their flashlights and kitty stickers and I forgot what I was saying, but it sort of looks like things worked out so far.

Now I'm watching for those little six-piece boxes of Guylian chocolates so I can start hoarding them for Xmas presents. My bread store (Rey Pan) is gone but the laundry is still there (Kleenex Lavandería), and two of the three dwarves (haven't seen the woman, just the two guys), and the legless guy who sits begging on a skateboard all day on one of the streets near here. The dwarf guys really appreciate seeing me because I give them each a dollar coin every time I come by, and leave them their popcorn balls to sell to someone else (it's how they make their living and it must be a pittance). And the older wheelchair guy who tries to sell candy bars by the ATM — I give him a dollar too and just say thanks when he holds up a candy bar — he can keep that for someone else.

And then there's all the dog shit on the streets, but I at least know two friendly cats, when they're out, but other than that I'm sort of bored, so we'll see how this shakes out. At least there is always something going on around here.

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Comments? Send email to hoofist@nullabigmail.com It may or may not help.

Me Sharpen Me Tool

I recently realized something. That's good.

What I realized wasn't that important in itself, but the process is. It's my new modus operandi. Hacks.

Lately I've been regretting things. A lot of things, some of them from way back in the past, like even before I went to kindergarten. Go figure.

Now, what should I do about those? What can I do? How do I change something I did 60 years ago, or more? This is not easy to figure out, but I'm not giving up. I want to improve, but I can't sneak back there and do anything differently.

However, I can do things differently now. Now is where I actually live, and I can do things where I am, or not do things: do intelligent and good things and not do stupid and bad things. So I want to try that.

I've been treating life in my apartment that way, which is what inspired me to try extending it to my whole life.

I've figured out how to fix the windows to stay open only as far as I need them to, but not too far, even accounting for the fact that one of them has a broken latch.

I've figured out how to exercise in my apartment.

I've figured out where to put my shoes to keep them away from the silverfish.

I've figured out how to keep the refrigerator from running all day because it's empty of everything besides air and a pitiful few footstuffs.

I've figured out how to get a substance to clean my laundry with, if not using what's available here, which all stinks (of industrial-strength perfume).

And many other things.

Case in point, Proper Hiking Technique:

1. Go fast enough to keep up with myself.
2. But slow enough not to leave my soul behind.

In these days of competitive hiking and/or proving to myself that I still got it and can go fast if I'm light enough. Should work.

Tricks. I'm looking for tricks, ways to make things work out.

Still don't get my point? Then try this.

When preparing to wash dishes, my mother routinely filled one side of the kitchen sink with hot water — about two gallons. Then she squirted in about an ounce of dishwashing detergent. That worked, but used lots of water and detergent, especially for only a few dishes, and sometimes didn't work that well, since the detergent was dilute.

What I learned from a friend: Wet the dishes in the sink. Squirt a small amount of detergent onto a sponge. Rub sponge over dishes. Rinse dishes. Done.

This uses almost no detergent, very little water, and works better than my mother's method. The detergent is highly concentrated this way, and cleans better. And you can use hand soap as well, to make it even simpler. Large quantities of dishes and things like pots with baked-on food need a modified technique, but that's also a different case.

Hacking be very cool, as far as I'm concerned, and my life improves almost every day. Now I feel a little less guilty about past things, but I still won't tell you what those are, so forget it.

I will say that I've also decided to live as though everything I do will be made public, because it usually is anyway, so I get to act more responsibly up front and then just forget about it, because at the end I have absolutely no actions to keep private.

Kindly Walking In Cuenca

One of the things I vividly remember after spending my first six months in Ecuador and returning to the United States was a brief episode in a Safeway parking lot.

I was coming out of the store and heard angry male voices. I turned my head. I looked. To my left were two men, deadlocked.

One was in a monster truck, one of those jacked-up pickups with the huge tires, so high off the ground that you need a stepladder to get into it.

The other was in a wheelchair. He was trying to cross what they call the "fire lane" from the parking lot proper to the store. Apparently, this disabled guy in his tiny, hand-powered sit-up bed was an offensive inconvenience to the other guy in his thousand-horsepower muscle truck, and they were having it out.

I felt threatened. I cringed. My soul hurt. I left.

A few days before, a man angry about the placement of a fence fired up a bulldozer and began ramming into things. Depending on which account you read, he destroyed two, three, or four houses plus a truck and a boat. He did "knock down a utility pole, cutting power to thousands". I know this last part to be true. I experienced it.

The cause? "A long-standing property line dispute between two neighbors." Resulting in violence.

Life as we know it. Life as I used to know it.

Things seem to be different in Ecuador.

Last week, for example, I was waiting to cross a busy street. On the other side were two men. One was on foot, the other on a bicycle. They were both going the same direction and came to their own private, two-person bottleneck. One had to yield.

They stopped. The man on the bicycle stretched out his arm, holding his hand palm-up, signaling that the other man should go ahead. He did, and the bicyclist followed. Problem solved.

No fights broke out. There were no threats. End of story.

Last year I came out of Good Affinity, a Taiwanese/Ecuadorian restaurant where I frequently have lunch. There was construction in the area. The city is building a light-rail system and many streets have been torn up for over a year. Wires were hanging loose from the surrounding utility poles. That happens here. Things are different. You have to deal with it.

Back to the story.

I saw several people in a car. They were trying to get past the hanging wires. A man was in the street. He held some of the wires, lifting them up high enough so that car could inch forward and get past them. Done. Problem solved. But.

Now the man who held up the wires had to get his own car past the wires. He got into his car and began to inch it along. Hmmm.

I'm not quick on my feet as they say. I'm better at analyzing things after they happen than while they're happening, but I got it right this time. I walked over to the car, bent down, and picked up the wires. I raised them above the roof of the car so the driver could get past them without getting any part of his car tangled in the wires. He crept forward until he was clear, and then I dropped the wires and went on my way. Done. The end.

Things are like that here. No one stood in the street swearing or throwing things or making threats to the sky. We just got past it.

Another story from this week and then I'll get to the point.

I was taking a late-afternoon walk. If I don't schedule some exercise, it's easy not to get much. I walk to lunch, and, well, I walk everywhere, but I usually don't get out before noon, and I don't go out after dark, ever, so late afternoon is my last chance to do some moving around.

Anyway, I was walking near the Tomebamba River, a small stream flowing through town, and came to a place where some construction work was going on. The construction was separated from the sidewalk by corrugated metal. There was a gate, a doorway, of painted plywood. The gate was open. A man was backing his pickup truck out, across the sidewalk, and into the street. I stopped, waited.

Then I noticed that the right side of the truck was barely clearing the door on my side. Then I realized that the truck's right-side mirror might be close to hanging up on the plywood door. Yep. I reached out and pulled the door toward me — away from the truck — as far as I could. This helped.

The truck cleared the door and then the sidewalk and I was able to resume my walk. Another problem solved through cooperation.

The man had to get his truck into the street, and I had to get the truck out of my way. We worked together. Then it was all over. I don't know who he was and never will. Ditto for him. We just worked together to get past it. That's how it is here.

Now, last summer I saw something else.

Again, this was related to the endless light-rail construction, which should have finished last June, but shows no signs yet of coming to a conclusion. So anyway.

The street was torn up. You could walk on the right side or the left side, but down the middle was a muddy trench. This was fenced off to keep people out of it. At one or two spots down each block there was an opening in the two fences, and a plank-and-plywood "bridge" spanning the trench. That's how you got across the street.

These cobbled-up "bridges" were points of pedestrian congestion. You can imagine.

Right then, when I wanted to cross, it was busy. I held back a bit, unlike everyone else. People here don't stop and wait. They push ahead, rub elbows, bump into one another, jostle, work their way through somehow. I'll do some of that if I have to, but mostly I stop and wait. That works too, and I'm not so good at politely shoving others aside. I have yet to learn that art.

Right then, when I wanted to cross, things were busy. Especially so since an elderly woman was working her way up to the "bridge", supported by a walker. You've seen them. She and her walker took up two-thirds of the bridge's width. It was slow going too. One slight mis-step and she'd have been down, walker or no walker. But she had help.

Behind her and a bit to her left was a woman, guiding her along, steadying her, holding one hand against the small of the old woman's back. In front was a man, also guiding her and lifting the front of her walker over rough spots in the jury-rigged bridgeway. Eventually the woman was across. "Nice," I thought. "It's nice to see how people here care for their elderly relatives." You see a lot of that here. And a lot of extremely small children out walking with their parents too, all holding hands as they walk the streets.

So the way was clear and I began crossing the street too. And then I nearly lost it.

Once the old woman was safely across the street the man turned and walked away. So did the younger woman, in the opposite direction. They were not a family. They did not even know each other. They were three strangers. Two who were young and healthy, and one who was not, but who needed just a touch of help. So they helped, and that was it.

I had trouble crossing the street. You have to watch where your feet go but I couldn't. Because my eyes were full of tears. Just as they are now, yet again, remembering.

Things are like that here.

Roof Cats

Find the cat, eh?

Cats are where you find them. Always. This is what I found here:

• Place: el Hogar Cuencano, "back yard".
• Time: Morning, noon, and night.
• What: The neighbor's cat.
• Justification: Because.
• Result: Frustrated delight.

I like cats. Don't ask me why. Or ask, but don't expect an answer. I've given up on that sort of thing. Answers are not definitive, only descriptive.

I had a friend — knew him since second grade, had several consumer-grade falling outs with him around the age of 30, following his wife running off with someone else, lost contact, but.

But he was a strong believer in rationality. He liked reasons. Reasons as proof and verification of reality. I go the opposite way. Reasons are not definitive, only descriptive. As a Zen master said (bear with me) Life does not come from ideas. Ideas come from life.

Seems self-evident to me, but as it happens, my friend's brother argued this. First the universal sound, The Word, the fundamental vibration, the ur-idea, and then everything else, then the Golden Age of humanity, then corruption and evil, and now we have to struggle to get back there. Pretty standard drivel, but this was not from the usual Xtian theology but from Sant Mat. OK fine. Same bureaucratic crap.

Just another pseudo-rationalist reaction to life. When you are little, the world is great, expansive, good, and golden. When you grow up, not. Therefore, the human tendency is to extend this to cosmic proportions, and declare that in them olden days we lived in and under (and through, of course), the grace of god (or God, or GOD, etc.). And now we don't.

Because evil. Because hard. Because confusing. Because whatever. So, pseudo-rationalism, the twin assertions that "It just makes sense", and "It doesn't make sense". So "it" either has to be, or it can't be. Whether it is or not. Because arguments define reality.

My friend from second grade once argued that realistic paintings such as Rembrandt's were more accomplished because they were more realistic than anything Mondrian or Picasso had done. Because non-realistic art was not precise, or realistic. Right. He was like that. Probably still is.

Lay your face in a Xerox machine and what you get is better than any Rothko. Sure.

He (and his brother too — I wonder how this can run in families) also said things leading to assertions that all of life was rational, or should be. Like walking or digesting food, or having feelings. This is the sort of argument you hear when someone asserts that people choose to be homosexual or transgendered (or Norwegian, I guess, or white, brown, black, or green). Try digesting something in 10 different ways. Try shitting gold bars. Via consciously-controlled processes.

Rationality? No. Most of everything that happens in life may be understandable but is not conscious, and therefore cannot be rational or under deliberate control.

Like cats. I like cats. Don't ask me why. Or expect an answer. The only answer is that I like cats.

In North America houses have big open yards. Front yards. Back yards. Side yards. Go for a walk, especially early in the morning, and you'll eventually see a cat or two. If you're a decent person and learn how to do it, you can pick up a bunch of friends this way. If you like cats, and if you think that a cat can be a friend of yours. I do. Don't ask me why.

In South America, at least here in Cuenca, Ecuador, things are different. From what I've read and hear, I'd say that things are different in this way throughout Latin America, but I haven't seen Latin America, only this once city. But I think that things are pretty much the same: you don't see cats running up and down streets and climbing fences from one yard to another. Because that world does not exist here.

Houses here are slammed up hard against one another. There are no front yards or side yards. No back yards either, really. Places inside the embrace of their respective architectures, like the old Roman style of house, a courtyard-hugging quadrangle, have secret spaces inside them. And roofs. There are roofs. Roofs attract cats.

Roofs are safe, and cats like the high ground, away from dogs, bugs, and random annoyances. The high ground is clean, open, and mostly bug-free. "Bug me not", thinks the cat. So they climb.

Cats can do that. Dogs can't. People can't, hardly. Bugs stay low. Birds can't climb but they can land on roofs, which is a plus for cats. Cats like birds, in several ways, including as entertainment. Roofs provide that.

So what's the point here?

I like cats. That's it. And I had the chance to pssst! at a nice cat on the neighbor's roof and talk to it and photograph it. And that's how I entertain myself. When I find a cat and can't get close and patiently befriend it.

So there, then.

I Really Didn't Expect This

I had to leave my apartment today. I have to leave my apartment every Monday, but the time varies. The maid comes to clean.

The maid comes to clean when she comes. The schedule says "2 p.m.". The schedule is not authoritative. The maid is, because when she isn't here, she isn't here, and when she is here, I have to leave, no matter what the clock or the schedule say. I hate maids.

This maid is OK. I don't hate her. I don't hate maids — it's maids I hate. I'd rather do it myself. I can. I know how. I'm good at cleaning. I don't mind. I prefer it.

But here they have maid service and I have to comply. That's one reason I hate maids. I don't hate maids. I hate having to work around a maid, no matter who it is. I always clean better than a maid because I know what needs the most cleaning and I know what my standards are. No maid knows either of those as well as I do. But I'm stuck.

I need to put all my things away before the maid comes. I need to put everything back where she expects it to be before she comes. I also clean up things like wild dust bunnies, spots on the floor where water splashed and looks like a stain, random bits of trash. And things like that. It takes time.

I hate that part. I'd rather do all of it myself but I can't. So I leave, and guess when the maid will be coming this week, and when she will be done. It's a crap shoot. Today I walked around.

On the way back I saw a blonde schoolgirl. This shocked me. Blonde nine-year-old. In a school uniform. They wear uniforms here, but all other schoolgirls here have black hair. My second blonde so far. The other one was waiting for the bus around 5 p.m. a few weeks back, wearing sunglasses, heels, and a fur coat. This was possibly stranger, but she also was not nine years old, so I had some other thoughts too. She looked good.

Totally out of place in a sort of Twilight Zone way, but good.

Anyway.

Closer to my apartment I had to cross the street. Check. But it's harder now, in places, because some streets are chewed up by construction, and the only way to cross is to turn right or left and walk to a sort of temporary footbridge laid across the construction trench. Today my side was full of a woman creeping along using a walker.

So I got there, and stood to one side behind her, behind the corner of the fence, intending to wait well out of the way until she was across. A younger woman trailed behind her, keeping watch, offering encouragement. Then I noticed a middle-aged man on the far end, holding out his arms, ready to grab her walker or her herself, and prevent any falls. Then, eventually, she was across, and I advanced.

When I myself got across I noticed that the old woman with the walker was alone. No young woman, no middle-aged man. The woman and the man had gone their separate ways. They were not her relatives or friends. They were just there, and offered their protection to the old woman while she might have needed it. My eyes filled with tears.

Yet closer to my apartment I passed a small tienda. I'm not quite sure what all they sell there, but some of it is dry pet food. My friend was there today. My friend is a cat.

I don't see the cat often. If I pass the tienda 10 times in a week, I might see the cat once or twice, but we have a relationship. I cultivate cat relationships because I like cats and I guess partly because it is a challenge. Cats are cautious, some more than others. The first time ever I saw this cat I kneeled, called to it, and it came over and climbed up my front side and gave me a hug. Then I didn't see it for roughly a month, but it knows me now.

It was a treat to see it today. I always look but usually it is attending to other business, and elsewhere. Sometimes I see it but it is sleeping on a plastic barrel just inside the door. Sometimes, and all too rarely for me, it is visible, awake, and out front. Like today. I stopped.

The cat climbed on me and squeaked is rusty-hinge voice every now and then while I rubbed its ears and cheeks and neck and head, and we had a great time. The cat lost some shed fur and I gained it. The cat is my friend. My friend is a cat. I like that. I don't like carrying cat fur home on my shirt but I like spending time with my friends, especially the cautious, choosy ones. I have no problems saying that one of my friends is a cat. In fact, I know some others around here. I like that too.

And today (even better) the cat decided when it had had enough, so the cat was the one to disengage, which is always easier, and then it turned away from me, stepped a few inches into the tienda, half-turned back toward the street side to gain the right angle, and stuck its head directly into a 25-kilo bag of dry dog food. It became a cat without a head, since its head was fully inside the bag.

I may try that some day. It would be easier. Probably not at that tienda though.

And also, something else, equally unusual, and strange too.

As I was coming around the stadium I had to cross another street where there is a roundabout. I stopped at the curb, letting my toes hang over, and looked left. One truck was coming. Clear after that. I stood, my head turned fully left, watching for whatever might be coming behind that pickup truck. Clear...clear...clear. And then the truck slowed. Then it stopped. Just short of the crosswalk. Surprised? Me?

Traffic here does not stop for pedestrians. Unless they are already directly in front of the vehicle. Sometimes not then either. Almost never is there a "courtesy stop", or even a slowdown. Mostly you stay put well back from the street where you are mostly safe, or you run like crazy. Like crazy and then some. I've seen too many people here missing one or more legs. I run then. I don't want to be like them. Except today.

Go figure — a pickup truck stopping to let me cross an otherwise empty section of street — still a shock. You never know what's going to happen around here. Maybe it's a stain on a sheet of plywood. Maybe it's a stain on a sheet of plywood, and it happens to seem like it has a certain meaning, whatever that might be. You really never know.

But things do happen. They do.

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?

Doorways

I'm in them, through them, under them all day, approaching and leaving. This is a city of doors and of doorways.

This is a city of handles and grasps, of latches and locks and keys, of knobs and knockers and bangers and hasps. It is a city of permissions.

You are either allowed or you are not. If you are known, you enter. If you are not known, you are left to yourself, out there, outside, on the street, where the world is public, and where you are but another passerby.

If you are known, and are welcome today, you may enter and find another world. You see the walls as the owners do. You find coolness on a hot day, or warmth after an outside chill. You are admitted to silence. The traffic, the dogs, the screeches and moans and shouts and hoots of life in the street remain in the street when you enter through a doorway. You shuck it, let it slide, let it fall behind you, allow it all to stay where it must stay, out there, when you move from one world to another. From public to private. Through a doorway.

It is mystery you never even speculate on, when you arrive in this city. There is no reason to wonder, because you have no crack or crevice or walkway or tunnel or view to entice you. There is no visibility. You see the pavements of the street, you see a slit of sky, you see walls. Walls exterior and smooth, with closed doors. Locked doors. You see nothing else. There is nothing to speculate about.

Then, if you watch, if you look, if you remain alert, you catch a glimpse. Of businesses set back, inside buildings, of bits of the normally external world wrapped inside architectures, used to house vehicles, temporarily. Now and again you do see a dark inside stairway through a door left open for a moment. You do see one or two coming or going, but usually you do not look, deliberately, for that would be a curiosity too forceful, too intrusive, rude. You do not try to intrude or to be rude. This is a city of privacies after all. You respect that. But you do, without intent, now and then, see a slice of one, of those other worlds, in there. Behind the doors.

From above it all seems different. It is different. That is where you realize the successive shells of multiple worlds, when you see them. Below, laid out before you like mazes, but that perspective is hard to achieve. The high places are also private, unless you are invited in, but if you should find yourself up high, and can look down, then you see. The walls within walls, the courtyards behind and within and side-to-side with the other courtyards, the gardens wrapped in gardens, the hanging laundry, broken windows, blind balconies unseen from the level of the streets, from outside.

All, all this is mediated by doorways, which are everywhere, of all colors and sizes and shapes and locations — opening onto the steepest of stairways, fronting onto walls, behind walls, leading to empty tiled spaces, choked with vendor's wares, full of purses or shoes or flowers — it's all there, but yet it isn't. Everything can fold up and close in a minute, a second, an instant.

Which you may see or not see. It depends. On when you are there, and if you are going to or going fro. Whether you are looking ahead, or around, or full of your own thoughts, or whether you are lolling your head free of thoughts, allowing your eyes to wander without intent. And then it is there, or not — it all depends. If you see it, something, whatever, it is because of the doorway and its door and the state of the doorway and the door and the time of day, day of the week, season of the year, and chance.

You never know.

But if you walk here and walk there, and watch, eventually you see this and that and the other — bits of evidence fluttering. Doorways opening onto — what? Something? Nothing? You never know. So you wait and watch. Slowly, you learn.

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.

Dog Shit On My Shoe

Not that it hasn't happened before.

Not that I'm keeping score. But I notice these things. Too late in this case, of course, because no one I know likes to get dog shit on their shoes, and no one I know feels neutral about it. Still.

There are worse things. Like that time.

Like that time I stepped behind a tree in a brushy area behind South Sound Mall in Lacey, WA and bled my lizard. And ended up stepping in a pile of soft stuff. Which had the distinctive odor. Of human. Excrement. Human excrement. Which has a smell. Which has a distinct smell. Which you know too well, same as me.

And wiping my foot on the grass, well. No. And washing the sole of my shoe, no either. Nor bleach, nor washing the sole again and bleaching again, no not nothing helped. So those shoes went out. Old anyway. Mostly worn out but they fit well but they had to go out so they did. Because of the smell, which dog shit has too, but one all its own.

And now it's on my shoe. Same foot too — the right.

Yeah, right. Right after my room was cleaned, which happens Saturdays. Right after. I came back and the maid had barely cleared the door, maybe by five minutes and then I walked in with dog shit on my shoe, and didn't notice it until the next morning when it was still soft and still strongly identified itself by smell. If you got close enough to the bottom of the shoe, which I did then, hunting for that thing that was off and it was my shoe which had a wad of dog shit under it, clay-like, hanging tight.

So by this morning it was dry and I held the shoe out the window and dug out the goo the poo with a bolt I found and then I didn't have dog shit on my shoe any more but dog shit residue crumbling off bits at a time across my white tile floor, the stairs, the hallways, and not enough out on the street or along the grass where I deliberately walked deliberately after stepping in what puddles remained of last night's rains.

Not enough because I can still see where the whole wad wedged in, where it clung on, where it hung, where it contaminated my shoe. The outline is still there. Nothing like walking on wet sand for a couple of miles to clean and reinvigorate the sole, and now when I really need it I have none, no sand, no miles of it, not wet either, at all. Just grassy strips here and there dotted with more dog shit and streetside side walks dropped on by dogs who couldn't make it to the grass by the river or who don't care to go there.

Dog shit. No longer the dog's, now mine. Wonderful.

And one day I stepped in some of my own, two days after I left it on the ground, and came back to the same campsite and decided to look for it so I wouldn't step in it and then stepped in it while looking for it. But that was different. No less dismaying, no. Not that. I wasn't really truly sure what that super-viscously dense goo was and checked my shoe by nose and still wasn't sure for a while, but what else could it be? That stuff.

That stuff that looked like shit and was about where I'd left it but smelled of salmon loaf gone very seriously delinquent. In case that's interesting at all, which it isn't, wasn't really because I still had shit on my shoe no matter what and identifying it as shit still meant that it was shit, and it was still on my shoe.

And now it's mine again, this shit that some dog left for me in paradise. And the best plan that I can come up with is the same as always: Do what you can. Only I don't know what that might be.

Maybe I'll just try waiting it out. The maid will be back in five more days. She might know what to do. If anyone.

I wonder how one asks about these things, if at all.

Pedestriating

It's different here. I think I can say that.

It's different here. In a lot of ways. Or maybe I'm a slow learner. Maybe I haven't been noticing.

Naw — it's different here. In the last six months I've seen more people without legs or with the wrong number of functioning legs than ever. There must be a story there. Lots of stories, most of which we, having heard them, I bet, would want to unhear, though you wonder.

Like the guy who drove past on a scooter with a pair of crutches in a holster, the kind of holster you see in movies about the Old West, where both the long-shooting good guys and the equally-talented and equipped bad guys carry a horse-top rifle. In one of those holsters attached to the saddle.

But he wasn't out on his way to a play-fight or a crutch race I'm guessing, this guy on the scooter, because he had only the one leg with him. I'm guessing though, about his intentions, but despite that he still had only one definite leg. Which means that the other one had gone its own way sometime in the past. Which is a thing I myself think about every now and then, because around here it's too easy to slide into a situation where you come out the other side with fewer legs than you started with.

Due to how things work, or maybe we must say not. Due to how things not work.

Crossing the street is a negotiation, but a different kind of negotiation than in the U.S. In the U.S., you come to a corner and want to cross, but if you stand too close to the street, one lane of traffic sometimes stops politely while traffic going the other direction in the other lane keeps moving, so what do you do? That's one thing,

And sometimes, you come to a corner and want to cross, and there is only one car coming forever, and it stops because you are obviously waiting, and you feel like a dick, like you have to cross right there and then even though you were hoping the car would keep going, so then you could cross with no vehicles in sight for miles and miles, and do it at your own easy pace, but you can't. Because this one driver, apparently, based on all the visible evidence, the last driver on earth, has stopped, so you have to run across the street in front of that person's car because it is stopped and the driver is waiting for you to do your business and cross the damn street and get the damn hell out of the way, and everyone else in the car is too. So you run.

Or everyone stops — everyone — all of them, all four lanes or six lanes of traffic, for some reason. Oh, right, the reason being to let you cross while a hundred or so people wait with their engines running, and then the rest is up to you. This is worse. Much worse. Now you really have to perform, and flawlessly. Or else. Or else you antagonize everyone. Which is about the time you wish you could do backflips and kick your legs way up and dance across the street in a clown suit while juggling guinea pigs, for the sake of all those tons of stationary vehicles, and their drivers, and the passengers of the drivers. All waiting for you. While you just walk in an ordinary and uninteresting way. Across the street.

But that's there and not here. Here it's different. I'm still not sure.

I'm sure that it's different here, but not so sure how it works yet, exactly, with infinite precision. This is only my third winter here. After all.

I'm thinking maybe it's like people are used to living in a small village among sheep or goats or chickens, and all those sheep or goats or chickens have jobs and families and obligations of their own, and are all out on the streets all day, going about their respective businesses. And when those people who are used to living in a small village and walking among busy sheep or goats or chickens come to the big city, they carry on.

And here, in the big city, the sheep and goats and chickens are taxis and buses and vans and they all have steel teeth to bite you with. To bite your legs with. Off. To bite them off.

But people don't know that, quite. The pedestrians. So they drift through moving traffic as wind through rushes, seemingly oblivious, and mostly it works. Whole families. Families. Crossing streets, often in the middle of blocks, completely carefree with not so much as a single simple glance toward dozens of vehicles and their hundreds of tons coming along. Coming along at them, the people, the families, mother, father, little tiny children, and a baby or two being carried, all drifting across the street like wisps of smoke and somehow, in my experience, which I am thankful for, making it safely. With all their legs.

And yesterday, to illustrate another point, two men. Toward evening, crossing Calle Mariscal Lamar, against the red light, were honked by a taxi. Honked upon. Honked at. And the first man continued, and mounted the far curb, safe. But the second man, the trailing one stopped. In the street. In front of the taxi, and looked at it as the taxi swerved around him, continuing without slowing, and remained standing, the man, after the taxi passed, and he, the man, then turned and watched the taxi recede, still standing in the street as the rest of the city's traffic advanced on him, until he was good and goddam well done looking, whereupon he resumed walking and then mounted the curb, rejoined his companion, and proceeded on his original course. All legs present and accounted for.

While I stood Mr. Careful Cautious atop said curb in relative safety and watched it all until the traffic light changed from red to green and then and only then decided to think about crossing the street. Which is one way you can tell the gringos from those who are likely to lose some of their legs sooner than the rest of us. Because traffic here does not yield or slow, and often seems to accelerate when feet hit the street. Gringo Feet. Mine anyway. Definitely mine.

And though I may yet join the leg-lacking through ineptness or misapprehension of one or more subtle cultural cues, it is somewhat comforting to know that the first rule of traffic here is that if you have legs, and are using them to get around with, then it's up to you, all up to you, yourself, alone, to look after them, and no one will stop or slow or yield at all, not a bit.

To everyone else you're no more precious or interesting than a bug splat. So look sharp there and step lively then. Or else, maybe.

Secret Cat Secrets

I read that they used to burn cats here, for fun, in the main public park.

Well, they used to do a lot of things in a lot of places, and not just with cats. Sometimes, in some place, they burned people, not so much for fun but to feel good about keeping things orderly by suppressing evil. People are like that, which is why I don't trust many of them, but I'd be more willing to trust someone who burned witches than someone who burned cats.

Or do I have that backward? I'm not sure any more, which is how it gets when you grow older.

Being young, when you're young, when everyone you know is young and anyone who matters is young, then things are much clearer. Things are obvious, and right is not wrong, and wrong is definitely wrong. And so, you might burn cats or your neighbors, and go home feeling happy about it, and only much later realize the regret, when it is decades past the point that you can reconsider.

Cats think for themselves and come home dragging their own opinions, which are often at odds with the opinions of those who want to dress them in cute outfits, let alone those with a fulsome supply of matches and not enough to do, because cats have to look out for themselves.

Cats are small mostly solitary animals. Housecats are. Bobcats and cougars are different — not sociable, not domesticable. Housecats are like your grumpy uncle Ed who huffs and snorts a lot and seems to disapprove of everything but always seems to come around needing a little company, and maybe he's the one who leaves you $600,000 and a note saying thanks for being there, and then you wonder if you really know what's going on.

Cats are small. They know it, and humans are gigantic in comparison. They know that too, and don't want to get stepped on, so they hang back until they feel sure that you're safe to be around. And they aren't pack animals, so if you want a relationship with a cat, it's a one-on-one deal. You are judged on your performance, not on your species. You have to do more than show up and throw an occasional stick across the lawn.

And another thing — a cat has to be socialized as a kitten, or else you'll never see it, let alone be become its buddy. If a kitten isn't handled daily during its first two months, then it will be wild forever, and nothing you or anyone else can do will make any difference at all. So cats are not dogs. They have to learn while young that humans are OK, and then they have to learn as adults that a particular human might be OK. It takes work. On your part.

Which has something do I guess with why I don't see many cats around here. They have places to hide, and they do.

There are no yards or fences here to sit in or on. No porches. There are no wild brushy spots between houses. There is nothing like a park here, as North Americans know parks. Here, this city (and judging from photos, most Latin American cities) are piles of stone and concrete and slabs of pavement all jumbled. These are not great areas for cats to lounge in, so they don't get out and lounge.

A cat here might have a secret hidey-hole in a wall that it can crawl into and peek through, or a chink elsewhere that serves as a spy-hole, or it might have a balcony to lounge on, above you, above traffic, above danger, but not much else.

The action here is inside. The action here is on the inside of city blocks and not the outside. Inside homes. City blocks here are hollow. Houses are facades with whole worlds behind them, hidden. Gardens are inside, as are the trees and shrubs and what safety there is.

That's where the cats stay, and where life happens, and why I don't get to see too many of my little buddies. Which leaves me a bit lonesome then. My loss.

Cracker Dance

Nibble your way to enlightenment while moving to the music.

We have them all here: whole wheat (trigo integral), barley (cebada), oats (aveena), quinoa (trendy bits). Take your pick. Nibble away. Become all you can be. Join the Enlightenment Force. Sing and dance your way to happiness while enjoying healthy snacks.

Your Heavenly Facilitator this week (fresh in from St Tropez) will be Carla Venn Diagram, famous graphic artist, stylist, fashion statement, and Spiritual Guru ™, still almost warm from the sunny shores of that fabled little French village that has so much to teach us, the place where Carla VD as she likes to be known recently participated in celebrating the life of the town's patron saint, Torpe de Pizza, well known to the history books for his mozzarella breath and propensity to harvest intense sunburns while sleeping off lunch during long afternoon naps on the beach.

Which you can also do in Cuenca, but not this weekend, because this weekend, (This one only!) we're welcoming Dr. Carla VD and her famous instructional hand puppets to show us the way to enlightenment without any B.S. or need to suspend any disbelief whatsoever.

Yes, folks, it's Carla Venn Diagram: MSW, MFA, Ph.D., Transpersonal, body-centered psycho-spiritual therapist, registered expressive arts therapist, visual artist, dance and improv performer, comedian, and certified Picnic Party Consultant. And she's here for us. Just us. And anyone who can spring for the low-low admission fee of just $99.99 for a twelve-step, twelve-minute, hands on all singing, all dancing instructional session that will change your life forever while it lasts don't be late.

Trained in Action Theatre, Authentic Movement, and Body-Centered Expressive Movement, Dr. Carla studied with shamans and van dwellers and was certified by and worked with Stanislav von Graf (Spee) and Jackson (Jackie the Peanut) Smallnuts in Holotropic Breathwork and plant therapy. (She herself has single-handedly and without regard for her personal feelings or safety and with no need to ever mention it or seek recognition solely and alone among all the peoples of the world who have ever lived saved many radishes, carrots, rutabagas, and several ailing pumpkins to boot from serious depression, evil spirits, and leaf rot, so think what she can do for you.)

This week only at the Four Centered Rivers Center for the Creative Centered Arts — come one, come all. Come early and often. Only $99.99 while the spiritual energy lasts.

Just look for the door around the back of the gray and orange building between Ed's Spanish Recycling and the Good Eats Cuenca Weenie Hole.

Bring a friend with money and get your very own free aura tuneup and miracle brow-wiping cloth and if you have recycling to drop off, well Ed will be glad to see you too. We start on time and don't take kindly to laggards since we have appointments in a bunch of other gringo burgs all up and down the Gullible Coast and then we have to hop over the border into Peru before dark. Just so you know.

Please send an email to let us know you are coming, and how much money you plan to be carrying, and if you are armed. Thank you very much. See you there if not somewhere else.

True!

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?

It Follows

It happened yesterday. Again.

I got an email from a car dealership in Durham, North Carolina. They want to help me by selling me a Cadillac.

Are Cadillacs still made? I don't know. I don't care.

Either way, I don't want any, and especially not from Brand X Auto-Kompanions & Boutique SpamHaus.

What? I should simply click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email? That thing down there? Way at the bottom? The thing that says "unsubscribe" but is only plain text?

Well, you gotta splain me how, that one. It might as well be mud smeared on a barn. It don't do nothin, mate.

Actually, I got a plan, a while back. Here's how it went.

I found out that Yahoo Mail has an option to block emails from specific senders, and when I started getting koochy-koo come-ons from this outfit I put their email address in there with the others.

Luckily, a year and a half back when I was looking around for a car, I did all of my searching and contacting via Yahoo, which is my throwaway email address, so now most spam comes in through Yahoo but the spammers don't know my real email address. Which is good.

But not good enough. I still get pissed. And especially this time, because somehow this last email came in right through the blocker and hit my inbox with a clunk.

Life.

There are moments when it sucks. All too many moments.

So I just wrote back saying "Go fuck yourself." And checked my list of blocked addresses.

Let's hope it works next time.

Meanwhile, there's another thing I've learned. No matter where you go, there are some things you can't get away from, not even by moving to another continent.

At Your Risk

Maybe it's just me.

I'm a dick, granted, from way back.

I'm awkward around people (live ones).

Dead ones, imaginary ones, distant ones — OK. I'm OK. I'm not so bad with them.

And cats.

But current ones? Live humans with pulses and up-to-date library cards, and capable of moving around and doing things, and expecting me to, no. I'm not good with them.

I'm not that quick on my feet. I interact poorly, if at all, then lie awake at night days, weeks, months, years, decades later, blushing in shame and confusion.

That's who I am.

But hey — don't walk in on me. Next time I'm gonna punch you, sucker.

Here are the rules you seem to live by, you people.

1. If a door is open even an inch, that means that you can push and enter.
2. There is no privacy let alone security, unless the door is both shut and locked.

Double-U Tee Eff, y'all! WTF!

Maybe it's how they do things here, maybe it's the times.

Maybe I really am a dick and don't know the basic rules. Well, I know I am a dick so that's not the issue, but still, expect a punch.

Don't expect an I'm sorry story. Expect a punch. Maybe two if I feel frisky.

You knock politely and wait, I'll come over. Politely. And see what's up.

Consider that I might be staying in a room with no other ventilation, and that maybe I have the door open an inch to let in a bit of air, OK? That's why when you push against it in an attempt to charge in, you get resistance, because my 40-pound duffel bag is sitting behind it.

When you can't easily swing the door open, that means STOP. It does not mean go get your biggest friend to come and help you push, seriously. Seriously.

And when you can easily swing the door open — don't anyway or I'll punch you twice anyway.

Don't with that stuff already — don't do it. I'm limbering up my good arm for when you come by again. I just want some air for crapsake.

Behave yourself. Back off once. That's all I got to say.

Especially if you are that guy over at Hogar Cuencano who stayed in that room next to mine, and went out on the little balcony and saw my door with the curtain hanging down inside and decided to walk in and there I was naked after my shower on the other side of the room and if I'd wanted to try keeping you out, all I could have done was run across the room wiggling my wobbler at you, right.

Pisser.

You do that again, I'm a whup ya. Whup ya straight up good and solid, Mister.

You have been warned.

Surprise Me

Bang.

Bang. Bang.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

This is life around midnight. It's Festival Time. That means fireworks.

Fireworks are things that explode.

Bang.

Bang. Bang.

Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Like that. Got it?

Want sleep, buy earplugs.

Can't find earplugs? Forgot to bring earplugs? Other stuff doesn't work? Like cotton wool, lint, cat fur, mozzarella, candle wax — well tough. Learn to sleep through it.

Or die trying.

Either method works.

And if you can't manage one of those, put on your party suit and get out there. They're expecting you.

Side Hazards Walk Hazards

Rest in peace.

Is not an option here.

And not just at night while the fireworks are going off for no rational reasons whatsoever.

It happens whenever and wherever you are. The not-resting thing. The no-peace-ness.

Because you can't relax, switch off your mind, and crooz.

Especially while walking. No croozing while walking here. Too dangerous. Too crazy. Plain nutso.

Because you'd quickly you'd die, you. Or worse, like get your butt mangled. Or your neck wrapped around a madly spinning axle.

Me? Me no want. Me want safe to be.

So I stay alert, watchful for the lumpy, grumpy, angry, and dumpy things around here. And there are many, the five just mentioned all being found among sidewalk features. (I'm not going into detailed mentions of dog poo this time around — that's covered in every other post I've done and will do, but not this one right here.)

But just for instance, should you want a concrete so-to-speak example in another sense of that metaphor, there is this: the open drainage trench off the south end of Calle Padre Agquirre.

It's still there. After three years.

And it should be there, because it was cast into the walkway. Anywhere else, most other places, it would still have its metal grating in place. Y'know — the metal grating part we're supposed to walk on so's we don't drop one leg or t'other into the drainage trench cutting across the whole width of the walkway and snap it off. (The leg.)

But there is no metal grating there. Without it, water still flows into the trench (which is about eight inches across and eight inches deep), but so can one of your feet.

Somehow, the site is not littered with the dead and dying, and not me either, even though I was not brought up here and should know better than to look where I'm going 24-seven (that's 24 times a second or seven inches of travel, whichever seems more reasonable).

But if you do see me there, lying on the ground, writhing, with the lower part of one leg chewed away by the infrastructure, it's OK if you step over me and keep going. That's what you're supposed to be doing. But if it isn't' too much trouble, send flowers, 'K? At least a few.

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.