Mud and Dogs

Mud and Dogs

Reyes is a beautiful city, surrounded by mud. During the rainy season, the unpaved road from Rurrenabaque to Reyes is, as our friend called it, mantequillado — like warm butter.

This is the only picture I have of a muddy road. Imagine this about 6 times wider with large trucks driving all day on it.

I watched the side of the road as we drove. It was just like the countryside anywhere: modest houses, cattle ranches, and clotheslines. And then my vision blurred, but it wasn’t a problem with my eyes. It took awhile to realize that the mud I had been staring at had become a thin body of water, the exact same color as the mud. Plants growing in the canal-shaped pond obscured the boundary between land and water. And the thing that made my mind go fuzzy and my eyes turn inside out was the reflection. I could not grasp that water the color of mud could reflect the plants and the sky. Yet it does.

This picture also doesn't match what I was writing about. You'll notice the light does indeed reflect off of it.)

Surprisingly, the streets of Reyes are clear of mud. They are paved, well-maintained, clean streets. The town square is manicured with flowering plants. The houses are in good repair. 

Reyes is so civilized, in fact, that dogs can sleep undisturbed in the middle of the street during rush hour. Not until the bumper of our pickup truck was literally on top of a dog did it acknowledge our presence and move out of the way.

You may be noticing a theme with the pictures by now. This dog is obviously not in the street. This is also not the city of Reyes. The dog, however, is lazy.

In contrast, people in the street are an entirely different matter. For example, signs that mark pedestrian crossings in the United States show a person walking, or two people standing by a crosswalk and waiting. In Bolivia the pedestrians on the signs appear to be running for their lives! Which is what actually happens when you try to cross the street.

One solution to the pedestrian “problem” is called teleférico. In La Paz, a series of tracks that resemble telephone lines are suspended above the city, carrying small “bubbles” filled with people. It might be a slower form of transportation, but no one has to run for their lives, and the dogs can sleep in peace.

Enlarge and zoom in on the trees in the center-ish of the shot. The bubble looking things are people transporters

Etymological Thought For the Day

We went to the countryside to look at some property for sale. It was in an area where the people are imbued with the idea of preserving their natural resources. In fact, the Madidi National Park sits literally steps away from the main road.

We walked through the crags and hills, avoiding the evidence of cows.  In Bolivia, cows are ganados. In proper Spanish the word for cow is vaca. “Ganar” means “to win” or “to obtain.” I'm not an expert on etymology, but it seems to me that perhaps the Bolivians believe that owning cattle is equivalent to winning the game of life. 

Zoom in on their faces. They definitely have an opinion about us being on their farm.

We approached the forest. In a quiet moment when the others had left me by myself for a moment, a word crossed my mind: “semejante”. And immediately another word came to me: “semilla”. 

“Semilla” means seed, and “semejante” means similar. In my mind, I connected the words thus: two things that come from the same type of seed are similar. Entonces, “semejante” significa “del mismo tipo de semilla.”

On Fish and Drug Lords

20 March 2018 Panama: the Link Between the Americas!

After 4 airports in 24 hours, and with no more free WiFi, creativity kicks in. Thankfully, the Panamanian airport billboard committee gave me some help. 

After passing the standard ads for cell phones, video games, and shirtless men/cologne, I came upon this gem:

The basic translation is: “Illegal fishing encourages pirating, it can be tied to drug trafficking, and to the slave trade.”

They might as well say, “If you fish illegally, one day you’ll be working for slavers and drug lords.”

It sounds like a slippery slope, and logically speaking, it is. But just because it’s a logical fallacy doesn’t mean it is always false.

Take Barry Seal, for example. As a pilot for TWA, he started casually “forgetting about” the Cuban cigars in his briefcase, and he ended up working for (and dying at the hands of) Pablo Escobar and the Nicaraguan drug cartel. (The video below was taken as we flew over La Paz. I thought it might be similar to what Barry Seal experienced.)

So, if you don’t want to end up like Barry Seal, always get a license before you fish.

The Woods Are Just Trees

19 March 2018

Charlotte Douglas International Airport

(Please forgive any errors. I have slept very little and am typing this post out on a smartphone.)

I didn’t expect to have a story to tell already. Our flight was a red-eye. I would have settled right in to sleep, but I was nursing a blood clot on my leg and wanted to ask my neighbor to switch seats with me, because it’d be easier. 

Don’t worry about it, my seat neighbor said. Anytime you ask me to move it’ll be no problem. If I fall asleep, just slap me in the face. My friend here does it all the time.

An hour later, the conversation was still going. Seth is a Jewish college kid from Alpharetta, Georgia. Of course Jon and I had lived there. We talked about Lake Linnear, then on to other travels. 

I say “we”, but Jon and Seth moved from one story to the next so quickly all I could do was venture a fast question as one of them was taking a breath. 

What is FSU? Florida State University, in Tallahassee. What are the kids like there? asked Jon. There’s a whole range, depending on where they’re from. Rich corporate kids, weird kids, cool douche-y kids.

I gotta ask you, Jon said. Is there a safe space on the campus? 

Seth didn’t really know how to answer. He said if he doesn’t agree with what someone says, he just walks away from the conversation.

All the guys at FSU are on steroids, he said. They don’t think about 5, 10, 20 years from now. I’m not big, but I hold my own. I’m trained in Krav Maga.

Is that Israeli martial arts? I ask.

Yes, it’s pretty ruthless. The hardest thing I’ve ever done is get to level 3. And he told a story about Cozumel and going outside the “tourist fence.” The thugs didn’t believe he would be a match for them. Yet here he was, whole and in good health, telling me the story.

I take everything at face value. What reason do I have to doubt? I default to trust. Besides, Seth followed his story just a few minutes later with a description of a somewhat humiliating experience with snorkeling.

After awhile, Seth brought out a small object and asked if we would mind. “We all have our vices,” he said.

Is it an e-cig, I asked. Yes. Jon wanted to know if it gave off vapors. 

“Yes. Technically it’s a felony to use one in an airplane.” Maybe the question of vapors made Seth think twice. Or maybe he’d just had enough. He put it away and started looking for the flight attendant so he could buy a drink. 

A few hours later I opened my eyes and looked around. Seth was sleeping with his mouth open, baseball cap pulled sideways over his eyes. The flight attendant reminded me to put my seat up because we were about to land. I noticed Seth’s seat was also reclined. I pushed him gently, then progressively harder with no result. I was contemplating the possibility of slapping him in the face, but the flight attendant came in time and took care of it. He jerked awake, and in short order began to complain about a pain in his ears. 

How many drinks did he have, I asked Jon. One or two? 

More like eight, Jon said. He was hanging out with the flight attendants for a couple of hours.

I felt like I was already in the jungle. The woods? Those are just trees. It’s how we behave that lets us know whether we live in the jungle or in civilization.

JJ on Death

Juliette asked me tonight, "Will you be sad when I die?" I answered I would be very sad, and she said, "I'm going to die. But not my brain. Just my body. My teacher's uncle died. The teacher with orange hair. Not Sister Goff. Oh, Sister Trotter. It was her brother. And it was my uncle. I don't remember his name." For the record, we are not related to Sister Trotter, as far as I know. I'll have to have a conversation with her, though, to verify the facts.

Ho'oponopono

ZERO LIMITS, The Secret Hawaiian System for Wealth, Health, Peace, and More

“It’s about a doctor who emptied a ward for mentally insane criminals in a couple of years, just saying a few words to himself.”

What did Dr. Hew Len do to the patients, how did he treat them that the results were so spectacular? He didn’t do anything. Not a thing to them nor with them, except looking at their files. He only tried to heal himself, applying an old, traditional community problem-solving system from Hawaii, called Ho’oponopono, adapted to individuals by his Teacher, the late Hawaiian sage Morrnah Nalamaku Simeona. And what was he doing to himself? In his own words: “I was simply healing the part of me that created them”.

Actually, he used to sit in his office and look at the patients' files. While perusing them, he would feel something, a pain, an empathy. Then he started the healing on himself, taking full responsibility for what was going on with a given patient. That's how those people got better, because their doctor had the strange view that it was himself who needed the healing, not them.

t’s your responsibility doesn’t mean it’s your fault, it means that you are responsible for healing yourself in order to heal whatever or whoever it is that appears to you as a problem.

Dr. Hew Len himself uses the simplest of the formulas from Ho’oponopono. Whenever a matter arises –and they arise incessantly– adressing the Divine within you, you only have to say: I love You, I’m sorry, Please forgive me, Thank You.  .... The cleaning of memories requires a lot of concentration and persistence and is an unending job. But the result is what he calls Zero Limits, a state where one is free from the past, and suffused with Divine Intelligence and love.


All of the above is quoted from this article: https://hubpages.com/religion-philosophy/How-Dr-Hew-Len-healed-a-ward-of-mentally-ill-criminals-with-Hooponopono

Anniversary-Fred Suicide

The biggest impact of losing my brother has been the pain it has caused my family. Being 8 years older than he was, I didn't have very many naturally occurring interactions with him. Not that the number of interactions has much effect on the importance of them. But it does increase the potential.

This is true for some of my sisters as well, yet his death had a much bigger impact on them. Why is that?

I am trying to imagine how I would feel if someone else in my life were to die. I live so much of my life alone in my thoughts and in my feelings. What would it feel like to have someone in my life who was so involved in my inner life that their absence left an actual sense of loss?

I have become so accustomed to loss, as each time my family moves to a new home I leave behind those I have learned to love in such a short time. Perhaps that love is not as meaningful as the love my sisters have for their lost brother. I rarely feel a deep pain at leaving someone behind. I do feel a deep pain at leaving everyone behind -- but it is not one specific person.

I can imagine the loss of a child or husband. When the kids are at school, or my husband is at work, my behavior is different than when they are around. I cook for them, do laundry for them. The pain of losing someone when they are young involves the question of why they died at that stage of their lives. With elderly people this aspect of their dying is less troublesome, but of course children and friends and grandchildren still feel pain at their loss.

What is the source of this pain? Is it because the pattern of behavior is altered? Or because the object of your love is absent? My inclination is that it is because the pattern of behavior is altered. I rejected the other (love is absent) because, for example, when I do not have communication with my loved ones, I still love them. They are absent, I still love, and there is discomfort that I cannot speak with them. But the discomfort is only because I am used to a certain pattern of behavior and that behavior has become disrupted.