As An Amazonian

So you want to know about the Amazon? Well my experiences are different since I work here, but when I’m not working, I love being here. The working here is the hard part. People expect you to work miracles where there is hardly even god. But that is not the part worth telling.
If you can imagine a slow pace of life, think of that caught by a slow motion camera. You don’t wear a watch or worry about the time. You know there is light enough in the day and you know when it is night. What other great distinctions in the day are there?
Everywhere there is green with a little color here and there, but not like people expect. People expect there to be flowers everywhere, but the flowers are hidden. You have to find them. The animals are elusive too many only coming out at night. Only the monkeys break this pattern. You will hear a troop noisily passing by, and when you look up at them, several are also looking down at you as curious about you as you are about them.
In the middle of it all is the river, but not as most people think of a river. This river looks to many more like a lake than a river, but that is its size(and I am only speaking of the Rio Negro the largest tributary of the Amazon not the Amazon itself), and true to its size its impact on the region is great. When the river floods during the rainy season, the way of life changes. Fishermen become hunters, trees spend 4months underwater, and everything swims because there is no way around it. When the waters recede the men fish again and the animals have a wider territory to roam. The Portuguese underestimated the river and suffered when they made their capital so far up the river during the years of the rubber trade. 6 months out of the year they could get their ships up it, but when the river dropped, they were stranded. Life here is centered around the river and knowing it. Even travel is dependent on the river, unless you can afford travel by plane, which few here can. True to the pace of life is travel by river. A trip that takes 1 hour flying takes 36 hours by river, but I can think of no better way of seeing the river than by 36 hours on the top deck of a river boat with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other just watching the trees go by, to see the differences and pass among the islands of the floating grasses. Stress doesn’t exist because there is nothing to cause it. There is enough food for the day and nowhere to be at any particular time. Only if you try and bring work here does stress exist trying to plan things out and be on time. If you try and schedule things, they will most likely be late because being late isn’t even a consideration. Simplicity is the best description of life here, until you get to the city that is.

Don't Fall Down

There is no loneliness like working in the middle of the Amazon, a loneliness that kills solitude. Your head tells you what you already feel and keeps telling you until you’re too sick to stand it, but there is no escaping, no leaving. Work is all you know, and sleep is a bad memory taunting you with what you can’t have like the women that used to occupy that empty space beside you. The people that surround you want something from you, and to that end they pretend to like you, but you know. You see it in the change when you can’t give them what they want, even though your waking hours are spent in getting them what they want, though you can’t get it all, and they despise you for it.
You are surrounded by beauty, but you only see it in the periphery in passing. Nothing is more painful than such beauty without a moment to savor the sight, and you lie down for a few scant hours unable to sleep finally passing out of this realm with the hope that tomorrow won’t come, but it’s already here, another day where you don’t find the strength, you just keep moving so you don’t fall down. One day at a time is too much.

an old story

What is it about a woman’s back that is so sensual? The hair falling over the shoulders, the curve of the white shoulder blades, the knots of the spine leaving a disappearing trail. It was only a painting, no one I knew, but it was also all the women I’d known, the ambiguity of those shoulders, the dimples just above the jeans. And here I sat alone at a bar in daylight thinking about a painting that reminded me about all the girls but none in particular.

But she had invited me to a party she knew I couldn’t attend. But why invite me? Was it to remind me she was there in that far off city, and I was here… alone?
Suddenly I felt old. 28 is only a number, but years can be weights attached to memories, and when that’s all you have, you wonder, was it worth it? Doesn’t matter now. You can’t take it back redo what has been done. I never loved any of them, and they never loved me. They were company, and I was an escape, though I’m sitting here now alone not going anywhere especially not there not again. The last time was enough, and I’d not return until she is gone.

Storms in Chicago meant delays all day and my ride had gone leaving me at the airport trying to get on a plane, any plane, instead of waiting on my own. I ended up sitting at a wine bar not talking to the people next to me occasionally checking to see that my flight wasn’t going anywhere. Tempranillo was what I had too much of and I bought another bottle to take to her. A couple more glasses of something red on the plane, and I was drunk on the brown line trying to figure out where to go.
Finally she answered her phone, told me where to get off, and I rolled my suitcase to a stool where the ride and the wait were sobering me up, but I ordered a whiskey to fix that.
Hair stuck to her face because of the rain and she came up behind me thinking I hadn’t seen her tussling my hair saying how long it was before she sat next to me. Looking at my glass she began to ask me what I was drinking but stopped herself knowing it’d always be the same.
She ordered a cosmopolitan and leaned in close to me. But what was this? I didn’t know, so I leaned back in my chair away from her.

When do you get to that point?

Where returning is just not an option any more. I’ve been close before, but never this close. 4 years ago I hit a breaking point that sent me to the hospital, but I’m past that point now. I’ve learned how to deal with the stress, but you can only deflect it for so long, and I’m there, but there is further that I need to go. Emotionally I am very fragile, but my will is very strong, it keeps me together, it lets me do things normally I wouldn’t be able to do. That’s the problem. I can push myself too far like the swimmer who has swam out farther than anyone thought he could, but with not enough strength to swim back, and I don’t know if I’m there yet. I almost think it’s similar to combat fatigue when you shut off all the internal warning signs and you rush out in front of the enemy unafraid, and that’s the problem. You need that fear to tell you when you’ve gone too far. I don’t feel that anymore, just a dull ache. The build-up of stress and lack of outlet for my creative energy should have put me in the hospital again, but it hasn’t. I’ve gone longer than I ever have before without a break, a time to recharge, and I can feel it in the back of my mind where I keep pushing it because I need to keep going. But can you be the last person to jump ship with the captain standing there knowing there is still a chance of saving the ship but the hands that could have helped went away to save their own lives. When the captain is your own father, and you are the only one with the courage to stand beside him knowing if you gave up he would give up but not abandon ship. Could you live with yourself knowing you could have stood beside him and saved the ship, but you didn’t, you ran away. These are the questions I ask myself, and I know the answer. I can’t not stand beside him in these times, even though, I know the cost. I have never been so tired or burnt out before. I no longer have a breaking point, and don’t worry about the cost, just the end result. If I can make it and help him, then I can return to the life that sustains me, but only then. Wish me luck, I’ll need it, and I haven’t had any in a long while.

Only a Dog?

My only hope for humanity
Lies in a dog

Looking in the mirror
I realized
I lost my self
But I can’t remember when
Or where

She puts her head in my lap
And I can feel a love
I didn’t know
Or deserve
Everything else has
Fallen away
But this one thing
This
Keeps me holding on
For another day

In The Night

Love is a dream
And I am awake
In the night

Cigarette
After cigarette
And empty pages
With lines
That go
Nowhere

Lost again
And again
But is finding
Worth it?
Are you?
Lying there
Asleep

Questions
And answers
Amount
To about
The same
Nothing
When you’re alone
In the night

Losing Is The End Game

Fighting the good fight
Is still fighting
And fighters eventually lose
Though you don’t always know
When to quit