A bit of public venting

I realize the world at large is eager for some goodies from Fortuna. But you will have to endure this post before the more exotic stuff. It is my public venting.

Raulph and Erick. They do research for the Nitroff group, which involves fertilizing small plots with nitrogen around the Fortuna reserve. This experiment is being run by a primary investigator somewhere in Germany.

Raulph and Erik snore. Loudly. I share my room with the both of them when they visit Fortuna, and I admit to having a low tolerance for such an intrusion. Raulph’s whole body goes into contortions as he snores at night, until he finally subsides into a steady wheezing punctuated only by explosive snorts. His eyes dart back and forth beneath their lids in the reverie of REM sleep, and every morning he awakes to eagerly relate the details of his latest vivid dream.

“I think it means you should sleep outside,” I say, by way of interpretation.

Things between Raulph and I have been tense ever since he found me hovering over him, having ascended through the domes of ice of his sleepy Xanadu back into the disassembled bunk of his bed. And there I was, fluffing an extra pillow for him, my eyes two bloodshot orbs fluorescing a hellish neon red.

My proffered pillow was respectfully declined.

Fortuna can be difficult like this. For instance, I find myself having to pencil in time with pieces I’d scarcely learned to consider lab equipment back home. For instance, the table.

As absurd as it sounds to the civilized world, at Fortuna we have “the” table—the one and only table. If you want to use it, you’d better make a reservation. And what’s the alternative—the gritty, spider-carcass riddled floor? Your lap? When it comes to a raised and fairly level surface, there’s just no beating the table.

When it rains at Fortuna, the water from the tap becomes an opaque brown solution that resembles—inasmuch as it is—mud. And there’s nothing quite like pouring your water through a coffee filter and then discarding the waded mass of brown pulp.

Like sloths, the people of Fortuna host a permanent colony of fungus growing from their clothing, which, fused with the aroma of laundry detergent, becomes a noxious gas that smells exactly as it tastes. The detergent mitigates the smell of the mold about as well as a tic tac might take the edge off a steaming pile of poop.

In Central America, they love to eat rice. If you indicate you would like just a “little rice,” this is interpreted as a mistranslation, and your plate is molded over into a convex dish—one hulking mass of rice, with the rest of your food for garnishing. If you suggest you’d like no rice at all, you are told to go straight to hell.

As I am learning a new language—Spanish—I come to appreciate the frequency with which questions are answered with other questions. It is a sad realization. For as soon as my careful considered question—can I use the table, will you eat some of my rice, is Raulph allergic to peanuts—is articulated, it is returned in an impenetrable wall of unknown words, finished with the rising inflexion of a counter-question.

I wake up each morning and have a wonderful cup of coffee—or sometimes tepid water that has yet to be de-mudded, but I’m getting better at that. I feel powerful and intellectually alert and on top of the world. And if, after a hard day, that high has burnt out, or the day has failed to return its promise, I know that there will always be more coffee tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day. And so on…