once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right...

so for those of you who don't remember or who never heard, i work for a local soil and fertilizer company, all natural and organic ingredients.  work, for the most part, is good.  i started working there almost a year ago as a common laborer, stacking bags of soil onto pallets.  after a couple months i was on the production line as one of the baggers (they put the dirt in the bags) and eventually one of the sealers (they seal the bags that are full of dirt before the "stackers" can stack them).  i applied for an opening as the assistant shipping/receiving manager and received the promotion after having been there only 3 months, partly due to my experience in shipping/receiving management.  to date, work is going well.  our business is booming.  and i mean booming!  we have just bought a new production facility, approx. 5 miles from our current location, simply because we have expanded at a rate of about %70 every year for the last 5 years and can no longer meet sales demands with the equipment and storage space we currently have.  the company has expanded from a staff of 12 to almost 48 and we are currently in the process of hiring %30 more staff and acquiring  %30 more production equipment to try to meet this years expected growth demands.  this last week i received a dollar an hour raise, with no request or even suggestion on my part, and was told by my immediate supervisor that i was doing a "kick-ass fucking job" and that he "really appreciates me even though he doesn't always think to say it out loud."  so basically work is good.  it's also ramping up for the spring grow season and i'm shipping truckloads of fertilizer and soil to all over California, Washington, Oregon, Hawaii, Florida, Tennessee, Illinois, Texas, and Colorado.

life at home is good as well.  as you all know tattooedjen and i are to be married this coming September 20th, which is also my 30th birthday.  this, of course makes me happy to no end as i have found a good woman, and wonderful friend and lover in this beautiful woman of mine.  today we have done absolutely nothing which delights me to no end.  we had plans to do laundry, which will probably be delayed until tomorrow if i know my chica, but we also had talked about going to breakfast, which we also did not.  good for the wallet and the diet, both.  instead i played my computer game after a lazy wake-up in bed, enjoyed some nice fresh ground Guatemalan coffee beans, and smoked a couple bowls of some Matamuskan Thunderfuck.  Jen laid about loving, and hating, the kitties and reading her book.  so far anyway.  all this could change in a moment or two.

anyway, that's brief update on my life.  there is, of course much more to relate but this is the first installment and there will surely be more to come in the near future. 

so after a long hiatus, i'm finally getting back into this blog thing.  the last entry to my page was sometime back in late september or early august of '07, if i remember correctly.  and there's no way i'm going to be able to fill in all the stuff that's happened since then so i'm not even going to try.  i'm sure most of any of you that used to read my emtries have long since stopped checking my page but in the next few days to come i shall begin my blogging anew and hope that some readers or old friends find there way back.  if not, i'll get by...i always do.

so Tattooedjen and i just finished making an awesome salad for our upcoming meeting with iliketiedye and her man, occurring on the morrow.  jen's relaxing in the living room and i'm feeling a desire to post a passage from my own personal bible, the illuminatus trilogy.  i've been thinking about tarot and some other similar spiritual (though not necessarily religious) belief structures and that always draws me back to this most odd novel.  the passage that follows is one that helps remind me that there are many ways of observing the world and that each is valid in it's own right but that it takes a wise man to understand and apply this practice in reality.

    "The chapter was brief; it was in "The Book of Republicans and Sinners," and said:

    5               Vau                 The Hierophant                                They Nailed Love
                    (nail)                                                                         to a Cross
                                                                                                    Symbolic of their
                                                                                                    Might
                                                                                                    But Love was
                                                                                                    undefeated
                                                                                                    It simply didn't
                                                                                                    fight.


       Five stoned men were in a courtyard when an elephant entered.
       The first man was stoned on sleep, and he saw not the elephant but dreamed instead of things unreal to         those awake. 
       The second man was stoned on nicotine, caffeine, DDT, carbohydrate excess, protein deficiency, and other chemicals in the diet which the Illuminati have enforced upon the half-awake to keep them from fully waking.  "Hey," he said, "there's a big, smelly beast in our courtyard."
       The third man was stoned on grass, and he said, "No dads, thats the Ghostly Old Party in it's true nature, the Dark Nix on the Soul," and he giggled in a silly way.
       The fourth stoned man was tripping on peyote and he said, "You see not the mystery, for the elephant is a poem written in tons instead of words," and his eyes danced.
       The fifth stoned man was on acid, and he said nothing, merely worshiping the elephant in silence as the Father of Buddha.
       And then the Hierophant entered and drove a nail of mystery into all their hearts, saying, "You are all elephants!"
       Nobody understood him.

The humidity hit me like a wet slap in the face as I stepped out of the gate and into the airport proper.  The cacophony was surprising to me, seeing as how it was 10:30 at night, and I did my best not to lose sight of Ishmael as he wove his way through the throng of small, dusky-skinned locals.  I tried to keep one eye on him and see everything else with the other and wasn’t doing very well at either one.  After passing through the security checkpoint, where the guards searched my bag for any weapons or contraband I might be trying to smuggle into the country, we made our way out front and waited for our contact to arrive with our transportation.

I thought back to how I had ended up at that exact moment in my life and it occurred to me that I must have made some pretty different kind of choices to have ended up in front of an airport in Panama City, Panama at 11pm on a warm September night.  Little did I know that things were about to become much, much weirder than I could ever have imagined.

Our contact arrived with our van and we made our way through town, towards the canal.  The city looked much like any other.  The bright lights and brick buildings could have been part of Anytown, USA, except for the jungle that pervaded even the downtown area in the form of huge trees that had enormous canopies.  Where a walnut or fir tree might be planted in St Paul, there was a mangrove, or some other suitably tropical tree, in Panama. 

We arrived at the base, Ft Clayton, and we shown through the front gate and given our rooms in the barracks.  The seven of us had the entire floor of the building to ourselves.  The bathroom was originally a men’s room since the barracks were originally men’s quarters when they were built, circa 1970’s.  We quickly adopted a schedule for shared usage, since our team included three females, and set about unpacking for the evening. 

After stowing our clothes and equipment, we decided that being midnight only meant we were a couple hours behind the party curve and Ishmael pulled out his dusty ol’ memory and navigated us around base to his once familiar hang out, the Officers Club.  This would set into motion a series of events that, while entertaining and worth telling, are not pertinent to the development of this story and in fact, deserve to be told as a story in their own right.  Ultimately, we ended up in bed for the night sometime around 4am with plans to take a drive at 6am to another old hang out of Ishmael’s, the Caribbean port city of Colón.

Ishmael had been stationed at Ft Clayton during the debacle that the Army likes to call Operation Just Cause, back in the 80’s.  He had been a young Puerto Rican private during those days and would continue to serve his country until I met him in 1997 and he was a Staff Sergeant and a former member of the All-Army Wrestling team.  He had spent a couple years in Panama and had left engaged to a young lady from Colón.  The purpose of this little drive was not only to see the sights and experience the culture a bit but he wanted to try to look up his old flame and what sort of cards life had dealt her in the time since their romance. 

We were up and on the way by 6:30 and had left post through the main gate, where our sticker in the window allowed us unrestricted access.  We played some cds in the Buick and kept the radio off, simply because we couldn’t pick up anything but local stations and didn’t feel like listening to any Spanish tunes.  The 2 hour drive was long and windy and we had to cross the canal several times.  Sometimes they were bridges over the awesome span of water but twice we actually had to drive through one of the drained locks.  It was humbling to look out the window and see the huge steel walls rising up out of sight and know that those walls were the only thing keeping thousands of tons of sea water from rushing down in and crushing the breath from your fragile little body.

As we left the jungle behind and approached the coast, civilization slowly began to appear.  At first it was little bus stops at the mouths of dirt roads that disappeared off into the trees.  Occasionally, there would be a small shack or trailer or something resembling a dwelling of some sort.  All of the structures had bright colors and lots of flyers and signs posted on them and we paid them little notice at first.  The whole city had been a hodgepodge of reds and yellows and greens so why should the rural areas be any different, right? 

We entered the city around 1pm and made our way to a gas station to refuel and get some information.  As CJ put some gas in the car, I was approached by a small boy who I assumed would ask me for some money.  Begging and pandering were common with tourists and gringos such as ourselves and though none of them ever approached Ishmael (because of his obvious Latin appearance) that didn’t exclude us from their requests or offerings. 

Instead, the boy said to me in Spanish, “Would you like to buy beer, Mister?  My brother has some for sale behind the station in the alley.  You can follow me if you like.” 

“No, thank you,” I replied and we went inside to discover that we could only buy the gas and nothing else in the store. 

I was about to be given my first lesson in Panamanian law.  What we learned from the clerk was that there was a vote taking place that day.  Apparently, the president of the country had served his two terms in office and, like our own president is required to do, he was to leave office.  However, the vote was for a proposed change to the constitution, presented to the public by the president, allowing a president to serve 3 terms if he is able to win a third election.  Everyone votes at polls in or around their communities and all businesses, except for things like public transportation, restaurants and gas stations, are to remain closed during the polling hours.  So from 6am to 6pm nothing is open and nobody works.  Your sole responsibility is to go and vote.  No alcohol is sold during those hours and everyone treats it kind of like a holiday. 

That’s what all the brightly colored flyers had been for, I reflected.  Upon close inspection after learning of this special occasion I could see that all the flyers either said “SÍ” or “No”.  Suddenly, the boy approaching me at the gas station made a bit more sense as well. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon in Colón and returned back to Panama City in the late evening.  Again the long windy road was virtually empty except for the occasional bus that was transporting the remote residents to and from the polls.  As we made our way back into the city we had turned on the radio to the Armed Forced Network and were shocked at what we heard.

“We repeat, no soldiers are to leave the base during the weekend as the riots and violence expected to erupt from the voting results will likely be targeted at any Americans caught out in public.   No one is to leave base for any reason.  The base will be off lock down and return to normal operational status Monday morning at 4am.  And now something a little newer on the play list, Mr. Kid Rock.”

Slowly, it began to dawn on us that maybe we were in a lot of trouble.  Ishmael and CJ, being the two senior NCO’s (or for you non-military types Non-Commissioned Officers…meaning sergeants) decided we should make our way back to post immediately and plead ignorance and lack of communication as our excuse for being off base.  After all, it was out first day in country and we did get in late the night before so we hadn’t exactly been briefed on anything by anyone.  Just picked up from the airport and issued rooms and told to report to work on Monday morning.

As we entered the city streets proper though we found that our plan might not be so easily executed.  We immediately ran into a mess of traffic as everything, business wise, had reopened and everyone had flooded the city streets in celebration or protest of the results.  The flyers were all over everything, covering entire buildings, cars, busses, benches, billboards, everything…literally, everything.  It looked like somebody had wallpapered the city with the things. 

The traffic barely moved as the street was packed with mobs of people and cars.  We inched along streets that had “Si” or “No” on everything in sight and it quickly became apparent that whole neighborhoods or groups where voting one way or another.  It also became quickly apparent that we were the focus of many stares and not all of them were friendly interest.  Ishmael could pass for Panamanian but none of the rest of us was anywhere close to Hispanic looking, even though I’m 25% Mexican.

Van Beck is straight German Catholic from Minnesota.  Beasy and Redd were both Irish and looking every bit the part.  CJ and Staggs were also fine specimens of Irish/German ancestry and my blue eyes and sharp features belie my German heritage as well.  We decided that we should do our best to sit low in the car and not look obviously white…however one accomplishes such a feat. 

CJ got the bright idea of ripping off some of the flyers that were everywhere and acting like the revelers and protesters we were trying not to draw the notice of.  What better way to blend in than through behavior imitation, right?  If it acts like a local, and smells like a local, and screams and cheers like a local, must be a local…even if they don’t exactly look local.  So Staggs and I grabbed off several signs of both varieties and stashed the non-appropriate one under the seats and used which ever seemed more predominant in the neighborhood.  We hung out the windows and waved signs and screamed and hollered and cheered like there was no tomorrow.  We waved fists and shouted obscenities and acted just like everyone else was and most stares and looks afterward were those of surprise and acceptance as opposed to those of cold distain.

CJ tried his best to weave through the crowd with the Buick, and anyone who has ever driven a Buick knows how hard it is to “weave” with one.  He laid on the horn as much in celebratory acting as he did as a driving tool.  The sound of car horns and the dull roar of the mob was all that could be heard in the distance and in the immediate vicinity it was whatever music was on the loudest stereo within ear shot mixed with the discernable shouts issued from individual throats.

As we worked our way ever closer to the base, down whichever streets looked the most navigable, we swapped signs saying “SÍ” for those saying “No” and hollered for the president’s head, just as loudly as we supported him the block before.  At one point, Van Beck and Redd were both sitting on the roof of the car through the sunroof, Staggs and Ishmael, were both half hanging out the back windows, and CJ slammed on the horn as I tried my best to navigate us by map through the maze of insanity. 

Suddenly, we weren’t moving any more.  We had hit a dead stand still and nothing on the street was moving except the people on foot.  The throng flowed around the cars with people drifting in and out of sight in a matter of a minute or so.  I imagine, from above, it must have looked like some sort of sea of ants swarming around the islands that were actually cars.  Out of nowhere it seemed, a huge armored van appeared.  I seemed to just materialize in front of us and I realized everyone was getting out of its path as best as they could in the press of people and vehicles. 

Two doors in the back opened up and out jumped uniformed men.  They looked like swat officers, or something similarly elite, to me.  They had all black on, the hard plastic riot shields, tear gas grenades at their belts, and I distinctly remember looking at their shotguns and thinking they looked like sawed-off, forced entry, weapons.  Immediately the people began to disperse and vehicles could suddenly move again.  CJ did his best to duck down and drive at the same time and we all pulled back into the car and closed all windows and locked all the doors.

CJ managed to get us down a side alley really quickly and with Ishmael’s limited knowledge of the city we were able to get pointed back in the right direction and head back towards the canal and what we now called home.  We pulled up to the guard post close to 11pm, six hours after we entered the city!  It had taken that long to make it 12 miles.  The guards pulled Ishmael aside, as he was the highest ranking individual there, and between whatever he told them and the status our sticker afforded us we were able to get back in sans an entry into their Report Log.

I have to say that it was refreshing to see such vibrant enthusiasm for participation in the democratic process.  A bit scary from the vantage we got to see it from, but refreshing none the less.  I think that “our civic duties” have a become a chore for most Americans and little if any attention is paid to politics and the governmental process because everyone feels like, “What difference will it make anyway?  My vote doesn’t even really count.”  This in a sense is true, as we are a republic, not a democracy, and we elect officials who then vote for us.  But everyone complains about our government and the decisions they make and I don’t think people also accept the responsibility for voting for those officials who go on to make a mockery of our country and what it’s supposed to stand for.  It was cool to see a truer form of democracy, a direct democracy of the people that is, up close and personal because it made me think that there was a time when our government did function on this kind of direct influence of the people.  It hasn’t for quite some time I would venture to say, probably not since the 1800’s anyway, but it was at that stage at some point in the not too distant past.  It makes me hope that one day we could return to that kind of direct influence from the public and experience that sort of interest and passion about “our civic responsibilities.