The Fortuna Forest Reserve used to be a paradise for amphibians, but the dreaded Chytrid fungus has killed many of them off. This makes sightings like this one all the more striking.
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Tree frog
The Fortuna Forest Reserve used to be a paradise for amphibians, but the dreaded Chytrid fungus has killed many of them off. This makes sightings like this one all the more striking.
Sunday, July 18, 2010
To thy own role...
I am the resident movie-critic at the Fortuna Forest Reserve. That’s one of my roles here. My other role is possessor of the largest English lexicon. I am also the best roaster of chicken, the deftest applier of Indian spices onto potatoes, and connoisseur of non-Panamanian beers. I am a cultural historian of the United States, a subject with which I speak with absolute authority if occasional embellishment. I am an expert of American football, sole-bearer of knowledge of frigid winters, the knower of which aged celebrity is still alive. I have the best technique for shucking garlic. I am the tallest person and naturally the one who gets things off high shelves.
I am not really a movie-critic, per se. Sometimes people come up to me and ask “What is this movie about?” The Shining? It’s about a man who lives in a large hotel with his family over the winter and is crazy and tries to kill them all. “Oh.” It’s very good. Chinatown? It is about a man who is a private police and finds the conspiracy of an old man who had a child with his daughter and is taking all of the water of Los Angeles for himself. “Oh.” You like Jack Nicolson then? She thought so anyways. Finding Nemo? It is the tale of a clown fish who…
When Arturo saw Pulp Fiction, which he loved, he made liberal use of the N-word. I had to put a stop to that. “Brian, my n----r!” Arturo, please. The girls Carmen and Delvis seem to love Gone with the Wind, and so maybe Clark Gable will live forever (I have that terrible power here). You might think it strange to watch a 3+ hour harlequin American civil-war epic more than three times in a month, and all that in the jungles of Panama, but everyone just kind of shuts up when it’s on. Which is a nice change of pace.
My chicken and potatoes are very popular, I think, because they are made the same way everywhere else in Panama. When I make too much and ask if anyone wants leftovers, I notice they dig in even if they just ate. Even with the profuse amount of garlic I add, which I shuck with lightening speed, to the admiration of all within sight. I can reduce a whole bulb of garlic to its constituent cloves within one minute, a skill of perhaps dubious value even in a 16th century Romanian castle. I use my bare hands. Its just virtuosity. No, you cannot learn to do it.
There is an easy way to break the tension with speakers of another language, and that is to trade curses and otherwise naughty-words. It is a mutual exchange, and now I am as capable of Spanish potty mouth as Arturo is of uttering full grammatical English sentences that ought to register as one foul beep. It is also enjoyable to correct someone’s expletive. Use the S-word when you drop something, Arturo. Not the C-one.
It is important to have roles. At Fortuna everyone is driven by their work and what needs to get done. The only skills that are naturally valued are technical skills applied to urgent technical problems. It can be an exhausting exercise in being a complete tool. Take away diversions and extraneous skills and talents and roles and this place becomes a dudgeon, with trucks driving through and long rainy days and atrophied neural pleasure-centers and mouths drawn like thin straight lines in pencil. Sometimes it gets that way anyways. But carving out something to be when you aren’t your project is not just a luxury. It is a necessary escape.
It is like that movie The Great Escape. About the men of the World War two who try to escape from the Nazis and each has a different job and they tunnel under the fence and run away…and are killed mostly. That will be a good movie for tonight.
I am not really a movie-critic, per se. Sometimes people come up to me and ask “What is this movie about?” The Shining? It’s about a man who lives in a large hotel with his family over the winter and is crazy and tries to kill them all. “Oh.” It’s very good. Chinatown? It is about a man who is a private police and finds the conspiracy of an old man who had a child with his daughter and is taking all of the water of Los Angeles for himself. “Oh.” You like Jack Nicolson then? She thought so anyways. Finding Nemo? It is the tale of a clown fish who…
When Arturo saw Pulp Fiction, which he loved, he made liberal use of the N-word. I had to put a stop to that. “Brian, my n----r!” Arturo, please. The girls Carmen and Delvis seem to love Gone with the Wind, and so maybe Clark Gable will live forever (I have that terrible power here). You might think it strange to watch a 3+ hour harlequin American civil-war epic more than three times in a month, and all that in the jungles of Panama, but everyone just kind of shuts up when it’s on. Which is a nice change of pace.
My chicken and potatoes are very popular, I think, because they are made the same way everywhere else in Panama. When I make too much and ask if anyone wants leftovers, I notice they dig in even if they just ate. Even with the profuse amount of garlic I add, which I shuck with lightening speed, to the admiration of all within sight. I can reduce a whole bulb of garlic to its constituent cloves within one minute, a skill of perhaps dubious value even in a 16th century Romanian castle. I use my bare hands. Its just virtuosity. No, you cannot learn to do it.
There is an easy way to break the tension with speakers of another language, and that is to trade curses and otherwise naughty-words. It is a mutual exchange, and now I am as capable of Spanish potty mouth as Arturo is of uttering full grammatical English sentences that ought to register as one foul beep. It is also enjoyable to correct someone’s expletive. Use the S-word when you drop something, Arturo. Not the C-one.
It is important to have roles. At Fortuna everyone is driven by their work and what needs to get done. The only skills that are naturally valued are technical skills applied to urgent technical problems. It can be an exhausting exercise in being a complete tool. Take away diversions and extraneous skills and talents and roles and this place becomes a dudgeon, with trucks driving through and long rainy days and atrophied neural pleasure-centers and mouths drawn like thin straight lines in pencil. Sometimes it gets that way anyways. But carving out something to be when you aren’t your project is not just a luxury. It is a necessary escape.
It is like that movie The Great Escape. About the men of the World War two who try to escape from the Nazis and each has a different job and they tunnel under the fence and run away…and are killed mostly. That will be a good movie for tonight.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Saturday, July 3, 2010
A...flower.
When you wear shirts this color, humming birds fly directly towards you and hover in front of you for a minute, sizing you up for a flower. It's always strange to see them checking out a red gas can.
Red without autumn
The new leaves of Oreomunnia mexicana have delayed greening. They come out yellow and curled and then turn a fantastic red.
Memories
This is the river that McKenna and I followed to the road to get out of the forest during her visit.
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