Another Day

I feel old, alone, a little melancholy, but alright. I’m so tired I can barely think. Simple tasks seem out of my reach if they involve thinking. I chose to workout instead of get enough sleep today as I have been doing many days, and I wouldn’t have lasted this long if I hadn’t made that choice. I’m stronger than I’ve been in two years, but physical strength is all I have to keep me going. I’ve been thinking about my next trip, though it’s months away. I mark off the days on the calendar, and I keep counting wrong, so they last longer. I’ve been thinking of studying Spanish, so I can disappear in Central or South America. I feel it will be the new Europe. I need to travel. I’ve found that I’m fine alone. I’ve spent so much time looking for someone, but we all know how that goes, it doesn’t work for me. I don’t think I could commit even if I found someone. Eh, it’s cheaper to travel alone. I need another Hemmingway book to read. I looked up all his works online, but I left my card in my room so I couldn’t order them. I wonder if that’s how he felt going through so many women. I don’t think he was a womanizer, just human. Some of us don’t have longevity in us, I think.

It was love.

I knew I loved her at first sight right when she got off the chartered plane. Even a cynic like me softened for a second, and I knew this would last. After 3 months of waiting, she was finally here, my Lady. Now she’s sleeping at my feet while Nicolau is sleeping in my lap. They just met this morning, and Nico is not quite sure what to think of her. She wants to play and he is like a cranky old man who doesn’t like kids.

Insomnia in the Amazon

To stop is to sleep. To sleep is to die.

Going on days without sleep my blood coffee content was up to 20%, and the cigarettes followed the cups.
Jet boat in the night with coffee and cigarettes on the bow staring at Orion on the 2 and ½ hour ride from town. 3rd week feels like the 1st or 10th, I can’t tell… even what day it is, though my watch says it’s Friday the 17th. 5 days to do drivers safety online before I have another warrant. Don’t need to be arrested again.
This no sleep thing is getting the hang of me, and it works or I work. 54 days left if my count is right, though Xs on the calendar don’t lie, they just come slowly.
Had a book, read a line, and stopped, it stopped… making sense. I put it back in my shirt with so many pockets opposite my cigarettes. Hour and 15 to go passing Peixeboi, the halfway mark. Even at night by spotlight I recognize that island that to tourists looks like every other one, but I spent half a day broken down there 2 years ago with a guide and supplies that spoiled in the sun.
One guide sitting by me goes back inside the cabin. It’s too cold but I feel right for once, and another sits by me asking me not to put him with a couple this week, though I know I already did. Sao Luis is 5 light bulbs in the black on the bank. 30 minutes to go. Cumaru passes with lit houses, and 20 minutes to go. Light at the point in the distance, first sight of the lodge still 15 minutes away. Radio chatter, and they know. Everyone is waiting on the dock and ready. The guests follow me up the steps into welcome drinks and cabin assignments. Still waiting for them to go to sleep so I can try.

The Wonderful Influence of Mankind

Monkey see monkey do, is pretty apt description of monkeys. My father’s first monkey on our original river boat learned quite a bit. He would watch the guests and when they left would pick up a still lit cigar and start puffing on it. He would also watch the guests drink beer, and kindly finish theirs for them when they stepped away. The only problem is that monkeys are terrible drunks. Chico was his name and he used to get drunk every night on the old boat, but being drunk he would lose his monkey stills to do such things as walk and climb. When climbing up the side of the boat from deck to deck, being drunk, he would then fall into the river giving you not only a drunken monkey but an unhappy one as well. The other thing he would do would be to slide across the deck propelled by one arm because he was too drunk to walk but not drunk enough to pass out. Other than the learned vices, he was always a good friend behaving himself for the most part during the day.
So yes, monkeys do watch humans and imitate them. Konge has been watching Gel my maintenance man I believe, which is the only way I can explain his hobo like characteristics. Gel has enough money, but he really doesn’t care, so when he goes into town instead of having a decent bag to put his stuff in, he uses a garbage bag quite resembling a hobo as he’s walking along the street having just gotten off the river boat. Another thing I tease him about is that after lunch he takes a nap on one of the benches in front of the employee mess just like some bum sleeping on a park bench at night. The first time I saw him doing this, I asked him, very sarcastically, if he didn’t have a bed, but it was too far away he said, which is why I suspect Konge of imitating him. I found Konge has a striking resemblance to a hobo as well. He sleeps on a bench in front to my apartment while the other monkeys are in the trees, and true to his hobo nature, he doesn’t forage for food, he sits begging outside the mess hall, or stealing when people are unaware of his presence. Another way monkeys have benefited from the influence of mankind.

Old Man with a Palm Branch

An old man came asking for work bent, worn out, and almost deaf, and I gave it to him clearing pathways with the group. Not expecting much, I stopped and watched him one day. With swift strokes up, down, and across his machete with a file taking certain care to the sharpness he didn’t pause long. Still I watched him. Getting up he moved with the rest, as fast as the rest though 20 years their senior, at least. I walked off to check on the cabins, too much work to get done before the season starts. I found they hadn’t made the tables like I asked, and wouldn’t get them in time. That’s the way it goes, they don’t tell you until you ask specifically hoping you will forget, and they won’t have to do it. Cursing I walked along the path, on my way to lunch, where I passed him still working away, and told him it was time to stop. I had to lean close and yell into his ear, but finally he understood. The others had gone and still he worked on. I think I’ll keep him on, I thought, and maybe get rid of one of those younger ones who can’t keep up with this old man.
Today, well into the first week, I saw him again as I was drinking my 3rd cup of coffee, the fishermen gone and waiting for the small generator to be turned on so I could get back to work. He was sweeping the pathway with a palm branch. We had a leaf blower, but the older ones stick with what they know, as long as it gets the job done, I thought, and chuckled at the different things we had tried to bring in without success. The lawn mower they liked, but the professional one they hated, it moved too fast they said. The younger ones like the leaf blower, but then one day you would see an old one slowly sweeping with a palm branch. It just blows them everywhere they would say. No wonder they looked at me with such curiosity when I rode by on my ecorider, and the kids usually running after me if they weren’t in school.

To End a Day

Smoking another cigarette
Seems like the only way
To end
The day
If I could

In a cycle
Dreams seem reality
And reality…

My eyes half-closed
I lie down
To dream of waking

Another day
I can’t tell
Just put my boots on
And walk
Into
The dark
Early morning
Or night
I can’t remember

She said she missed me
Who was she
Is it just my pillow again
Fallen on the floor
Too cold
Though my A/C
Isn’t working
And I can’t find
My boots
On my feet
Did I put them on
Dreaming
Or dream
I put them on
I can’t tell
But maybe
I should go
Outside

The Cowboys Don't Play in Brazil

In my bag I found a 2008 Cowboys football schedule. “How did it get there? I didn’t watch football, since the majority of the season took place when I was in Brazil.” Curious, I opened it to look at the games I wouldn’t see, and I saw an email address written inside, and I remembered the bar, the redheaded girl, and how I never did email her. Not that it mattered now, but it made me think about all the other girls; some lasting as long as it takes to mumble goodbye in the morning or the others whom I left or left me when I was leaving again. A long list it seems, and would keep getting longer because I wasn’t settling down, and they weren’t up for running away, so why make something more out of what is just another stop? That’s why I’m getting a dog. They travel well and will travel anytime, unlike cats, monkeys, or most women, even those crazy redheads that my friends all hated but were so much fun.

I felt old today talking to a friend from High School, one that I hadn’t seen in 10 years, and he was just as unsettled as me. I listened to some of Jim’s songs, smoked another cigarette, drank a beer, and went to bed.

A Brazilian Birthday Party

In Brazilian birthday parties no expense is spared. This is one of the few times a year they get to show off. Last night a little girl was turning one, and as is the custom, everyone was invited, not just the kids. The lady who is the cook for the employee mess, a great big lady, made sure she invited me personally because the more prestigious the guests, the better the party, and well I’m about as close as prestigious as you can get out in the middle of nowhere, not that I’m very close.
They had spent several hours after dinner cooking the snacks for the party, enough for about 40 people, and the cakes I’m sure they started 2 days before as there were 4 different cakes besides the birthday cake, and the decorations had been brought from Manaus at a cost I would never pay. There was enough soft drinks for at least a hundred people, only soft drinks since no employee is allowed to drink at the lodge but if we were in town there would have been plenty of beer, and people passed them timidly around afraid to take too much because those from the villages weren’t used to the showing off that goes on in the city.
So the desired effect was had, that some were impressed and even intimidated, and others got food they don’t normally get at the lodge. I even broke my not eating after 7 rule to get some food that wasn’t the black beans, rice, and fish or chicken I had been eating for the last 2 weeks, though I suffered for it later with a stomach ache when I did my workout.
It was all very serious taking pictures and such until another Brazilian tradition came out, and my head guide was making sure it was followed. You see, when it is your birthday, they crack an egg on your head, not a confetti filled egg, but a real egg, and since you can’t do that to a one-year-old, he decided that the father would do. As can be imagined, the formality dissipated when the egg was broken, and given the unorthodoxy to the situation, is wasn’t long until Ze’, my head guide, had an egg broken on his head as well, not to mention several other guides, and those unlucky enough to be standing too close to someone who had procured an egg, which may seem like an easy thing, but none of us had seen eggs for weeks only having crackers for breakfast, which I of course gave to the monkeys who didn’t seem to happy with the “treat” they were getting, though that was the only treat I really gave them, except for Nico. This only goes to show to what lengths people go to celebrating birthdays, and as is my custom, I avoid getting hit with eggs, so when there was a lull and the egg throwers had run off after each other in the darkness, I too walked off into the darkness, in the other direction.