Morning Peanut

The morning janitor has come sweeping through the theatre of my mind and requested that I move along so here's a new top post just to honor the passing of time and our incessant need for something new.

Frida Kahlo enjoying a morning peanut.

Rainy rain

Florida, and after some delay, it seems that the rains have finally begun.

Invest 96

Invest 96 is currently moving through the Gulf. According to  Weather Underground it has the potential for "tropical development". Here that meant all night rain and, before dawn, frogs, cicada and numerous other wonderfully bizarre sounding creatures singing their little hearts out. This morning the front of our swamp house on stilts is toe deep in water. Florida is in the sub-tropics but today is humid enough, misty steamy and gray enough that, combined with the magic of euphoric recall, it feels like one of my favorite rainy season days in Costa Rica.

It began clear and sunny, a great day for a hike, so we decided to go to the Gandoca-Manzanillo National Wildlife Refuge on the Caribbean, our goal being a certain secluded beach at the south end of the reserve. We biked to the trail head and launched on what turned out to be a grueling trek on coastal jungle paths. We had to backtrack a couple of times when trails died in impassable ravines and, once out of that fray, we slogged for miles up and down a gutted logging road that rain had reduced to bogs of mud and impossible slicks of red clay. Very slow going. Finally, after a testy little discussion on the merits of reaching the beach, we took a break on a pile of hand-milled teak slabs protruding from the vegetation. It seemed to be the site of an old manual sawmill. After lunching on mosquito, peanut butter and banana sandwiches in the gray afternoon light we, at least partially, returned to our senses and agreed that time had run out. Just after we started back it began to drizzle.

Cicada preparing to sing

By the time we got to our crappy rental bikes it was nearly twilight. Halfway back to Puerto Viejo it began raining.Then it got dark. Then the rain turned into a first class tropical downpour. The closer we got to town the harder it fell and the more crowded the road became. A few miles out, it was a circus of slow moving trucks and fast moving cars weaving through bicycles and buzzing mopeds carrying two, sometimes three people. Like us, they were dodging the trucks and cars while also weaving around hand carts and pedestrians hurrying through the rain. Everything and everyone was soaked and steamy. Luckily, headlights from passing vehicles illuminated the potholes and pools of water as well as those of us on foot and bicycle. It was so overwhelming that finally there was nothing to do but surrender to the exotic, insular, dangerous beauty of the storm. Then it was actually fun being a part of it. Of course, it helped that we made it back to the hostel alive.

As for Florida, I think we are finally acclimated. The temperature is in the 80s and it feels a bit cool. Barky isn't too happy today. It's the damn fireworks. People are still setting them off. Poor guy. He's a wreck.

Feliz Cumpleaños Frida Kahlo,104

In honor of the 104th anniversary of the birth of the very excellent surrealist painter Frida Kahlo, I hope you will enjoy this video montage of her work.

Frida Kahlo, July 6, 1907 – July 13, 1954

Gracias siempre, mi amiga.

Battle Royale

Frida Kahlo savoring a peanut in her favorite palm tree.

The Great Peanut War of 2011 is currently raging here in our tiny dead end hamlet along Alligator Creek. I suppose it's my fault. After we settled in I started sprinkling peanuts around the base of the pineapple palm for Frida Kahlo and, at first, all was good. She came, ate a few and tucked the rest around the yard for later. Diego Rivera showed up shortly after I started putting out a seed mix designed to attract red-headed birds. No surprise. Squirrels love sunflower seeds. Then, of course, the very passionate Leon Trotsky made his appearance. A couple of days later we worried that he had died in a fall from the porch after a failed assault on a bag of peanuts. I'd foolishly left them by an open (screened) window. Since then we've watch him fall several times more, once after attempting to hurl himself through a screenless (closed) window. Perhaps another assault on my peanut stash, now in the laundry room, but who can know the mind of a squirrel? That time we heard his little claws scratching the glass as he slid down and into the bushes. Another time he miscalculated a leap after a rival and again launched himself into the bushes. He is a tough little dude.

Most recently the notorious clowns Larry, Moe and Curly joined the show. Now all five chase each other up and down the porch screens, drain pipes, over the roof, along electric wires, through the trees and around the yard but Frida Kahlo pays no mind. She comes when there are new peanuts under the pineapple palm, chooses one, licks it all over then scampers off to stash it in its own, unique secret hiding place. I don't know if she remembers where she puts everything but she repeats the ritual until all the peanuts are tucked safely away. As for the jokers? They are too busy fighting to notice.


Diego Rivera, Leon Trotsky, Larry, Moe and Curly at it again.

Lemon Bay outtakes

I have a thing for

mirrors on the ground

Yes,

that is where I found it.

You expect me to believe that?

And that is were I left it. Anyway...

I also have a thing for the letter H, aka h,

legacy of an acid trip in my 20s.

so I thought the Lemon Bay Cemetery

was pretty cool. It even provides moorage

for the H. H. Bill Anger.

Cranky cockroach