HOOKED ON COCALAND

st. mj's guide to paradise for lost gringos

Santisima Cruz Divina:[1]

paradise found and lost

32.  YES.  GO AHEAD.  WHY NOT LET YOURSELF GO?  WHY NOT PAY A STREET URCHIN TO BE YOUR COCALAND TOUR GUIDE?

friday, 10/7/94.

mid-afternoon.

river town of Santisima Cruz.

watching.

not jumping in, not diving in over my head, sammy, just watching, that's all. taking it easy. trying to stay even-keeled so i don’t drown in the whirlpool.

some things can still get me to go overboard, even when nobody's pushing me, apparently. like a street urchin we met in Cartagena.

our second hot afternoon in wonderful hot Cocaland, Robbie and i headed for the famous tourist beach at Boca Grande, as promised, FINALLY. but we never made it to a leaning palm tree because first we stopped a block from the beach to have a cooling drink. it got dark early. we were still at the same outdoor patio-café, having a second cooling drink, then a third, soaking up the infamous high-energy Boca Grande evening party vibe, wondering where daylight had gone, eating steak and fries at a railing by the teeming sidewalk, and a cigarette boy came up and started talking over the railing to Robbie. i don’t know what happened, i didn’t understand their Spanish, but a few minutes later we were touring Old Town Cartagena in a horse and carriage by night, the three of us.

a colonial-era balcony in Cartagena’s Old Town

"I don't know what happened, I didn't understand their Spanish,
but a few minutes later we were touring Old Town Cartagena in a horse and carriage by night,
the three of us."

that wasn't the big mind-blower, though. Robbie and i might have toured Old Town anyway, the ancient Spanish port area that poor old Blas de Lezo saved from the English. but i’d seen ‘old towns’ all over Europe. it wasn't adding another person to the mix that did me in, either. third parties abounded since we arrived, and fourth parties, even fortieth parties. Colombia is full of extra parties, mostly children.

the real shocker, i think, was seeing the world through Chalo's eyes for a moment or two.

if ever there were a throwaway child, a spin-off of population boom, sammy, Chalo was it; if ever a picture of the world going to the dogs, of the social fabric of Western Civ failing to sustain a member, of too many children for too few parents, it was Chalo.

he didn't give a rat’s asshole. he was a partying fool.

he owned nothing but the ratty clothes on his back and one pack of Marlboros (which he sold on the street, one measly cig at a time), yet he never complained, the fool. he had never been spoiled like i was spoiled from the day i was born, so each day was an adventure in survival, the fool. and i became a fool WITH him, getting swept up in sharing his philosophy, hardly sleeping, hardly thinking about the consequences more than he. i didn't ask why i was alive. there wasn't time. i forgot we were doomed and not worth saving. i was too worried about Chalo's ripped jeans and holey sneakers, too preoccupied with making it back to the apartment in one piece sloshed, to wonder why we never got to the beach to read Augustine and calculate the exact date when the world was ending.

for three whole days and nights i forgot the saint, beaches and palm trees, sammy. i even forgot you and the journal you asked for.

you might suggest this to other gringos who join your group-healing vision quests in New Mexico and wander the outback with you, and fail to benefit, as i failed. tell the incurably world-weary ones like me: Okay. Here's plan B: fly to Cartagena, Colombia, on the Caribbean. Sit at a table inside the railing of the Café Pelican in Boca Grande (on Avenida San Martín). Talk to a short, golden rosy-brown, warm-eyed nineteen-year-old named Chalo, selling Marlboros by the single cigarette on the sidewalk. Offer him a few Cocaland pesos to show you Cartagena. Hang on to your wallet. Hang on for the ride.

just remember to tell those vision quest failures to do it in SMALLER DOSES than mj lorenzo. otherwise the treatment may be worse than the disease.

after seventy two hours of this, by last night i was wound up tight as a drum, ready to pop. the family looked worried. i've had a mean headache all day. too much Barranquilla Aguila beer. three hours of sleep, and the barrage of impressions all over again this morning. overwhelmed by the trip inland, i forgot Chalo till now, poor partying fool. forgot the whole racing world, sammy, when suddenly, a minute ago, i remembered EVERYTHING.

and panicked.

that's why i'm writing.

33.  NOW SLOW THINGS DOWN AGAIN.  TRY COCALAND BAYOU COUNTRY.

i know myself, sammy. i sense when i'm close to the edge. i have to slow down and see the world again as the soul-destroying place it is. Robbie knows me too. he saw i needed a break from partying. he talked with his family, i think, and that’s why we’re in Santisima Cruz.

i would have partied with Chalo till i croaked.

i'm watching. writing. not jumping in. not asking what anything means. refusing to think. just watching. and writing. waiting for the headache to leave me alone.

but i don't know if the people of Santisima Cruz will leave me alone.

that's the problem. i'd have gotten a room in Cartagena, but coudn't think fast enough, so i'm stuck with family and small-town neighbors. and small-town Colombians are gregarious people, sammy. plus i've been an exotic attraction since arriving a few hours ago. when i tried to write inside the house, the family wouldn't leave me alone. so i came out here on Yazmín's front porch to get away. now i'm worried the friendly neighbors won't leave me alone.

we'll see.

the three-ring circus i'm determined to watch undisturbed, is Santisima Cruz, a small town 200 kilometers south-southeast of Cartagena, in the neighboring departamento, or state, of Sucre. it’s an insignificant county seat and market town on a neglected branch of the Rio Magdalena, Colombia's major river. all the little floodplain branches around here are inundated nine months of the year, like now. it's as remote and backward as you can get, Western civilization five hundred years back. if you can't get away from doomed, late-stage Western civilization here, sammy, there's no hope for you.

"The river you see in front of you," or "the stream," the lake, the puddle or canal i see in front of me, said Robinson's brother Angel over and over on a sort of obligatory tour of the neighborhood, "is not here in summer, only winter."

he used the Spanish words verano and invierno and i failed to comprehend, since by my USA mental calendar it's October now, not summer or winter.[2]  coastal Cocaland doesn’t have four distinctly different seasons like more civilized places do, i know, just year-round torpor. but i didn't question his logic because Angel and i are getting to know each other. besides he's my host and i want to treat him well, sammy.

and he's mourning.

maybe that's why Angel acts so unlike everyone. he wears a dark woolen beret indoors and out in a very hot climate, walking in blazing sun, sweating around the temples. he probably wears it to bed, poor thing, but i'm trying not to judge. his son gave it to him before dying, maybe. there's some explanation, i’m sure. i haven't asked the poor guy why he wears it, or if he wears it to bed, because i don't want an international incident. besides i think i might be starting to care about him a little, sammy, believe it or not. if he can put up with a crank – as you call me – from a country as hard to love as the U.S., i should be able to put up with his little old hot wool beret. who's in distress here? who needs understanding? his son’s gone forever. mine’s alive. i'll be dead and out of pain soon. Angel will feel his loss for years.

since i sat down, no one has paid attention to me. writing on a big yellow tablet in the middle of everything serves to put these simple people off, sammy. i’ll bet they've never seen anything like it.

yet there's a white-haired old man ten yards away, back to canal, facing me and reading a book, of all things. i thought this was an unlettered backwater.

what is he reading? the Bible, it sounds like. but of course. it wouldn’t be a novel. it wouldn’t be a travel diary, in a mud-puddle town in river country, South America. in Santisima Cruz there aren't even cars. there aren't even streets, sammy. the only roads are muddy weed-clogged rivers and canals; the only vehicles are boats so beat up they sink if you blink, no doubt. before me at the moment, on the camino, the wide dirt walkway in front of the house, i’m being passed by – not a car, but – a chicken. now a dog. if i stay long, there’ll be pigs, big and little, maybe burros carrying boys or men. that’s how a major thoroughfare looks in Santisima Cruz. since i’ve sat down, people have gone by walking and riding bikes; and, beyond the little walkway, the packed-dirt highway they call the ‘camino’, there are boats just a few paces away, of course, humbly plying the caño, the neighborhood’s friendly little water highway.

Santisima Cruz:

the ‘camino’ (walkway, horse path, public area, kids' dirt playground, communal work space, pig promenade)
fills the distance between rowhouses (left)

and caño (canal – right, past trees and ladies sitting)

Robbie’s mother’s (Yazmín’s) rowhouse is marked by Omar’s horse tied in front

and sits about a five blocks’ gander from the main dock and plaza

"The three-ring circus i'm determined to watch undisturbed, is:
Santisima Cruz
a small town 200 kilometers south-southeast of Cartagena,
in the neighboring departamento, or state, of Sucre.
It’s an insignificant county seat and market town
on a neglected branch of the Rio Magdalena, Colombia's major river."

the ‘caño’, as they call it, meaning channel or canal, is really a long winding overflow channel, says Angel, that leaves the local river upstream somewhere above the town, and rejoins it down near the center of town, behaving just like the main river throughout the current ‘winter’ or rainy season, meaning, staying dangerously full.

everything is just as charming and remote from the centers of civilization as ever you could wish.

i know you, sammy. i’ve lived with you now, and know you better than ever. you’re saying to Racer right now that losing myself in a South American backwater could ‘complete my cure’. forget the therapy, sammy. the place is interesting, that’s all, in a gentler, more caring way than Cartagena, maybe. i don’t want a cure, least of all yours. i want to forget. and if a town like Santisima Cruz can help me forget, half as much as Chalo did, it’ll be worth the headache it gave me getting here.

the main thing is to ponder nothing heavily, just to write and write. occupy the crazy mind till i calm down from the street kid and the alcohol bingeing, until i feel centered again, walled off securely in my private world again. write write write, regardless of subject, until everything’s right again.

are they going to leave me alone here on the caño in Santisima Cruz, sammy, so i can write and cling to what little sanity a gringo has to start with?

so far, so good.

  "All day i've tried to wish the pain in the back of my head away.
I've told my mind and neck to stop tightening up, relax,
but then I froze and braced against cold mountain air when the bus careened across the cordillera,
up up up, curve after curve, down down down,
without a clutch strap to hang on to, in case we flew screaming off the cliff like Michael Douglas."

Colombia’s Caribbean coast from Cartagena to Montería

and as far inland as Valledupar and the neighboring country of Venezuela

with Dr. Lorenzo’s route of travel (by bus and chalupa)

from Cartagena to Santisima Cruz (via Magangué) marked in bright red[3]

34.  IT’S OK.  WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT THEIR DIVINE TOWN MAY WELL NOT BE HOW IT FEELS TO YOU.

today there's big news in river country. it rained a lot last night before we arrived early this morning, Angel said on our tour of the town. it explained one lady's woeful tone answering his question, 'how are you?'

la señora in her dirt yard kitchen
outside her palm-thatched stick-and-daub home
and none of it flooded, thankfully

"Look," she pointed, "we have to build all these rock and trash footbridges to get out of our yard. Señora across the way has no yard at all, only water."

“we have to build all these rock and trash footbridges to get out of our yard”

every year in rainy season it's the same exact thing, sammy. yet it's news. it's cause for angst in Colombian bayou country.

“Señora across the way has no yard at all, only water”

meanwhile down to the left, canned neighborhood vallenato rails from big speakers at a spot somewhere between the two bridges over the canal, the high stone one and the low bamboo footbridge at the Señora's.

everything i describe, you have to imagine with music in the background, romantic lovely beautiful vallenato playing constantly, night and day, over a big smooth sound system, with a mellow bouncing bass and a soft pleasant accordion treble.

it’s a scroll painting, if you want a picture, sammy. dig up a scroll painting from the Metropolitan Museum in New York. ancient China canal life with music, and without the funny Chinese hats.

AND(!): it's just like Robbie described his home town thirteen years ago, a few months after we first met. i only half believed him at the time. i figured his sloppy run-on costeño Spanish had led me astray. all these years i've pictured a tropical delta in South America, somewhere south of the Caribbean and west of Maracaibo, a flooded plain, a backwash cut off from the larger world, where a huge river i'd never heard of, called ‘Magdalena’, named for a prostitute saint, Mary Magdalene, flooded so much every year that people built their houses on high foundations. they lost their yards to water, visiting each other paddling boats yard to yard. that's what he'd said!! i was sure Robbie had said that to me one night in 1981!

“visiting each other paddling boats yard to yard”

poling a dugout canoe down the caño

yet they didn't move away from that crazy place!

that part i didn't get at all.

if Robbie's strange story was true, then why didn't they move away? it couldn't be true, or they would have left! or, was nearly year-round flooding the reason he'd left? was that why his mother went to Cartagena to visit her daughters? a constantly flooded town was the only picture i had of Robbie's home town, and it made no sense. after a while i dismissed it as a fantasy i'd cooked up one night in bed when young Robbie, in Denver, worlds from home, described in emotional tones his childhood.

maybe they stayed in river country for the free piped-in music that came floating through the almond trees all day and all night.

it wasn’t possible. he couldn’t have said, as it seemed, that ghosts visited the town, evil magical forces, and that people communicated with the dead. i saw dark swampy areas in the night and a frightened child named, oddly, ‘Robinson’. and what of the bizarre tales i thought i heard him tell me, of young men taking boys outside the village in groups to instruct them in the fucking of burros? that couldn't be true, either. one of us was making things up. a third-world kid with a weird name, stranded in the U.S., at the mercy of a gringo old enough to be his father, could be forgiven, maybe, if he made up weird stories about floods, magic, and sexual initiations among youths and boys. but i didn't want to think Robbie invented stories, so i wrote off my vision of Santisima Cruz as a projection invented by my suggestible mind. i had romanticized things falsely, as i all too often did.

but it's just like he got me somehow to see and feel it. how did he manage that? maybe it was the romance language that did it. it is a romantic place, dated and rustic, with palm thatch rooves and charming little plazas here and there, purple bougainvillea branching up tree trunks and walls. maybe not understanding his language helped more than it hurt my understanding. only so much can be said about a longed-for hometown in words, and somehow between what Robbie said and didn't say, he got me to insert the right unbelievably mystic, romantic, flowery, sexy picture.

“purple bougainvillea branching up tree trunks and walls”

a principal Santisima Cruz ‘street’ 'corner'
(with pig)

even what floats by hypnotizingly in the caño is otherworldly. at the moment the caño in front of the house, our little offshoot of the river, slowly and silently drags by a fantastic assortment, dozens of plastic bags bloated with air; whole hyacinth lily-pads in clumps sailing past like little boats tied together, masts beaten and broken; entire painted signs off buildings; miniature green tennis balls that turn out to be limes, or guavas.

all of it moving to lively Latin dance music called vallenato.

"It's not contaminated," says Robbie's fourth sister Rosana convincingly, when i ask about a man bathing out his front door in fast-flowing trash.

she lives in this place year-round with Omar and two kids and should know, says Robbie.

but i don't believe her.

now the church bell rings a few blocks away, adding its chime to the music already omnipresent.

"It's a very old church," Angel said as we pushed our luggage in a wooden wheelbarrow through the main plaza this morning, coming up from the dock after disembarking.

Santisima Cruz:  the only church in town, just as during Europe's Middle Ages
and, though finished mid-20th-century, absolutely fittingly un-modern:
romantic; nostalgic; hyper-medieval; and pre-car neo-Gothic

"Now the church bell rings a few blocks away, adding its chime to the music already omnipresent."

"How old is it?" i asked as we walked by it.

"Oh, when I was eight it looked just like it does now," he said.

like many Cocaland explanations, this explained nothing, sammy, so i dropped it.

“we pushed our luggage in a wooden wheelbarrow”

in front of the porch, traffic picks up.

"Qué te parece el pueblo?" asks the lady next door to the left, passing my way. what do you think of our little town? she's from the same house as the man swimming in the canal and the old man reading his Bible on the bench.

"Lovely," i answer, drumming my pen, hoping she'll go away. i have to write; or i'll kick the bucket right here in the middle of sixteenth century Cocaland – from nervous exhaustion, sammy, brought on by Chalo and drinking.

"I like your little town a lot," i say and look back at my tablet.

"I don't know why," she's heard to say as she turns to the old man on the bench.

i'll explain another day, when i feel better. her town is calmer than Cartagena, for one thing. there are no partying fools like Chalo. if there are any, they haven't found me yet. so i can write without interruption, rebuilding the inner wall i can't get along without. anything, anything suffices as subject matter. inner fortitude returns, slowly.

when i die, sammy, i don't want to die here, in Santisima Cruz, Colombia, flipped out because of too much manic partying with someone like Chalo. i don't want to be shot by an anonymous self-appointed river town posse, put out of crazy misery like a dog with distemper. i want to kick the bucket when and where i choose, a sane man lying calmly in bed in Denver, like Don Quixote, encircled by friends and family, lovingly, and admiringly.

across the caño behind a pole fence, out of view, it sounds like a kitten is being raped. strange things happen in paradise.

why should i believe anything anyone says? a leading Colombian paper says the country's rivers are contaminated "beyond belief or conscience." yet Rosana says this one's not. men and boys dive in and swallow, drink, and don't get sick, she says. that proves the waters are ‘pure’. i disagree but don't argue. maybe locals build up immunity in ways gringos can't. how could it not be contaminated? rivers all over the world are filthy. we're dying in our waste. everyone knows it. we just don't like to talk about it.

if we don't destroy civilization with waste, we'll do it in some other way, nuclear war maybe. chemical war. biological.

Efrén, who must know because he's stationed at the naval base in Boca Grande, says beaches there are contaminated with 'black water' from resort hotels. yet everyone in the family said the beach they got a taxi to drive us to one day in Boca Grande was ‘safe’ from infection. it ‘had to be’, they said. they proved it, like the men and boys of Santisima Cruz. they waded into the hot breaking waves of the Caribbean, dove in, swallowed the water, of course, by accident, and never got sick and died. i might not get sick and die either, if i jump in the caño. but i'm taking antibiotics to prevent infection, sammy. as soon as i get home and stop taking them, i'll froth at the mouth and keel over.

i'm expecting it. it's okay.

i'd just like to party with Chalo one more time before i go.

in the meantime i stave off mental catastrophe a little longer, pushing the town away so i can write.

to music.

vallenato.

35.  HOW TO TELL A LITTLE STREET URCHIN GUIDE YOU LIKE HIS EYES, WITHOUT GETTING YOURS BLACKENED.

as i said, our second evening in Cocaland we were at the Café Pelican, taking our time eating dinner and drinking margaritas. i was on my third big leisurely drink, still trying to wind down from the sensory overload of so much Cocaland family. we were getting a break from them and everything, i thought at first, but now i was plagued by vendors. since we'd sat down, behind the railing by the sidewalk, we'd been plagued by kid vendor after annoying skinny junior vendor coming up to the rail, trying to sell us every kind of trash and trinket. they talked to me whether i wanted to talk or not. after all, i WAS eating dinner! they talked to me if my mouth was full! they interrupted our conversation! Robbie, cut off from his homeland for 13 years, found the riff-raff interesting. i didn’t. i thought they were mostly scruffy, pushy, dwarfy and dirty underage social rejects who survived by living in the street around the clock, selling one or two Marlboros at a time. street urchins with makeshift jobs that no more than barely kept them alive.[4]

but then, suddenly Chalo came along. a short, muscle-y late teen, same color as Robbie, with a better haircut, smaller nose, and jeans ripped in the crotch. he came up to the rail with nothing but a single pack of Marlboros, and neither of us felt plagued. we liked him and he never left. he stood there and hung over the rail, and we chose to not chase him off. i don't know why. it wasn’t the cigarettes. we didn’t buy any until much later. it might have been the third margarita. or he may have been different from the others in some way. or the chaotic festive Latin street vibe which surrounded Cartagena’s main beach resort area, may have rubbed off on us finally. from the second we sat down, a barrage of strange, foreign, mind-blowing activity on the sidewalk and Avenue San Martín had assaulted our senses and values. an uptight gringo could groove with it best if high on pot, drunk, or hit with a hammer in the head, and we were approaching drunk. whatever the explanation, something had changed, because this time instead of chasing off the kid vendor, i told Robbie i was struck by his warm affectionate eyes, something you rarely saw in U.S. men, i said, particularly upon first meeting. Robbie, for some crazy mamagallo reason, translated this line for the kid without asking my permission – about warm eyes – while i acted like i didn’t get this part of the conversation. the kid smiled with poise, showing no discomfort with frank off-the-wall teasing from two slightly
drunk North Americans. right from the start, sammy, he showed a relaxed, matter-of-fact attitude toward things, and i liked it, despite my current Aunt Sally anti-things principles.

before Chalo had seen us, just as he'd arrived at the sidewalk outside the Café Pelican, a contestant from the Miss Colombia pageant had strutted by, dazzling everyone, and he'd grabbed his crotch then turned toward us. somehow his eyes had met Robbie's. Robbie had laughed, acknowledging this gesture. i'd seen all this and thought it meant the kid was hustling, looking for sex business. Robbie explained later that to Colombian men, all it meant was one man's acknowledging another's sexual attraction to a woman.

actually, THAT was the moment when we met, not the railing. THEN he came up to the railing.

in short, Chalo was unruffled by our slightly drunken friendliness, and the three of us proceeded to spend the larger part of three days together on devised adventures. i'm still absorbing the shock, sammy. the story deserves careful rendering. it requires a mood for telling. it’s coming back to me in measured pieces, so just keep your pants on and WAIT, sammy, don’t skip ahead, i’ll get to it as soon as i can.

36.  WHAT THE SMALL TOWN PAPER WOULD SAY ABOUT YOU, IF THERE WERE ONE.

across the canal more garbage flies over the poles into the canal. green garbage. lettuce maybe, which is rare here. more likely palm leaves, no longer wanted or needed for thatch. who knows what lethal chemistry may be on them? palm leaves are used for everything imaginable in poor tropical areas of the world, from roof thatch to toilet wipe.

people walk by the porch staring. i smile, drumming my pen. some smile back or speak briefly. most are reserved. i bury my nose in the yellow pad, worried i won't get away with it, sammy. but if they can just leave me alone a little longer so i can get my bearings, please, i may be able to talk again then.

canal-side porches, or stoops:  Robbie’s mother’s porch in Santisima Cruz is in immediate foreground,

where Dr. Lorenzo wrote this part of Hooked on Cocaland

(looking toward Victoria’s up-canal, past the gangplank for the legendarily hairy, railingless bamboo footbridge over canal)

(the caño or canal is beyond the trees and embankment)

(local men sit in straight-back chairs, which are usually leaned back, as here)

"I lock myself inside...  outside on the porch, deep inside my writing.
Buried in an eight and a half by eleven yellow notepad.

"The friendliness of a small Colombian town could prove too much for me, Sammy, today or any day.

"In the tropics people live in clusters, erecting thin aerated walls in the heat so air can move.
They rub elbows morn to night, supporting each other in every way like one big happy family.

"The texture of community life is enchanting; but enjoying it requires heavy, full-time training from birth.
I'm an outsider and they want to pull me in.
They want me to abandon my natural wall; but remaining an outsider is necessary.
It keeps me healthily safe. It preserves my sanity."

i'm an event of some importance here. that's the problem. they won't be able to ignore me long. i'm as pale-faced as they ever see in these parts. i'm not merely 'gringo', meaning from a first world country. i'm gringo from the most controversial and exciting of first-world countries, to them, the United States. and besides, to bring it home, i’m the much older friend of a kid the whole little town knows, a kid now grown and returned, who left due to some mysterious misunderstanding with his family. that part’s controversial and exciting too. if they had a local rag it would be a headline. ‘R. RIVERA RETURNS WITH U.S. DOCTOR FRIEND’.

“Señor Robinson Rivera Hurtaldo is back in town,” the article would begin in less sarcastic terms than i would use, “the same R. Rivera we all knew growing up, who at the age of fifteen left our beloved Santisima Cruz and for five years bounced around the big cities of Cartagena and Barranquilla, then disappeared, eventually writing home from the U.S., sending pictures every few weeks of his still growing body.”

“A few years ago, as you might recall,” it would say in some form, “he started sending not just pictures but dollars.”

Yazmín gets her house fixed up in Santisima Cruz, and rents another in Cartagena. a few hundred dollars goes a very long way in Colombia, sammy. one week’s salary in New York is more than anybody can earn legally in Santisima Cruz in six months.

certain details the article would side-step regarding Robbie’s money-wires. like the little black girl getting an umbilical hernia repair; or Robbie’s sister getting an abortion; Angel’s son getting a little medical help, but not enough, and dying; Angel getting cash to live on since he’s too sad to work; virtually everyone in the big extended family getting diagnostic workups, operations, medications, all on Robinson’s sixty bucks a day in undeclared tips from Gallagher’s Steakhouse on 52^nd.

“all on Robinson’s sixty bucks a day in undeclared tips from Gallagher’s Steakhouse on 52nd”

Gallagher’s in November 2015

the paper would avoid asking why R. Rivera ended up with a pal twenty years his senior. a gringo doctor, no less. what could the explanation be? possibly an uncomfortable subject, better left alone. or why the doctor thought himself to be HIV positive. who would investigate that, if they found it out? maybe he got it doing surgery on an infected patient, or drawing blood and sticking himself with a dirty needle. but do psychiatrists do surgery, or stick patients with needles? and why quit practicing psychiatry, if only infected, and not yet sick? why feel sorry for himself? why spoil paradise with his self-pitying malignant gringo mind space? all this would be unsavory in a local Latin American rag, sammy, and would be left unaddressed. Latin American towns should ask such questions, but most have no local newspaper. besides, people in such towns are friendly by nature, usually. newspaper editors in Denver might ask rude, unfriendly questions. but here, if there were a paper or a radio station, we would never know their nosey questions. they’d keep them politely to themselves.

in the meantime, whatever friendly questions these people might have, i’ve succeeded in putting off a little longer by writing intently.

two dirt bikes go by, driven by dark-skinned healthy boys in muscle shirts.

maybe what sounded like a screaming kitten was actually a complaining piglet. or singing. how about that? how would i know? i’ve never lived with pigs and piglets before. we’ve wound back the clock half a millennium here, sammy. i’m out of my element.

a normal Santisima Cruz street scene

at the big concrete footbridge up-canal in front of Victoria’s house:

boys in grade school uniform passing a pig party

37.  GRINGO STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL IN A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY:  REMEMBER, THERE’S ALWAYS PILLS.

people in Santisima Cruz are not as black, or as white either, as at the Caribbean. in Cartagena racial appearance ranges from light Caucasian white or suntanned brown to all-out Afro-black, but here upriver, inland a bit, almost all specimens are homegrown and the same deep golden rose-brown as Robbie and Yazmín, the same color as the Indian lady with black pigtails i saw out the bus window this morning, as we passed through the indigenous enclave of San Jacinto in the mountains.

i write and write, sammy, changing subject, nonstop, dumping whatever comes to mind. the object is not to construct a coherent or logical description of any one thing, but to get back protection, rebuild the inner fortress i worked on so hard in San Juan Pueblo, before Cartagena and Chalo knocked it down. i don't like losing control. i refuse to go bananas in Robbie's home town in river country, with curious strangers watching every crazy move, like some García Márquez story.

once my wall is back in place, sammy, invisibly and solidly, once the nervous exhaustion, hangover and headache are cured, i'll be back to my normal, well-defended, rude self.

these people take no pills, apparently. i'm now taking two Tylenol with the heavily sweetened demitasse of black Turkish coffee Angel just brought me here on the porch, called tinto, adding them to the two aspirin that failed to remove my headache on the boat a few hours ago.

"What are you taking those for?" Robinson asked after i climbed into the rocking chalupa-boat frantically, having just contended with fear of being robbed; and of falling into the river, since there was no proper dock to step off from; and of losing a male member of the family when Angel wasn’t there and the boat was leaving. Angel reappeared just as the boat pulled away, explaining he'd had to find a halfway respectable place to urinate in the street among the crowds at the Magangué docks. i sat down in the rocking chalupa, and sweaty confusion ensued immediately over whether to hold the shoulder bag in my lap, or turn it over to nondescript total strangers on the dock, who were offering to ‘help’ me, by tying it to the top of the motor launch. these were a few of the unnerving things that never would have happened if i'd stayed in the U.S. where i belonged, sammy. so why was i taking aspirin and Tylenol?

"Stress," i answered.

"It's all in your mind," said Robbie.

"I know," i said.

all day i've tried to wish the pain in the back of my head away. i've told my mind and neck to stop tightening up, relax, but then i froze and braced against cold mountain air when the bus careened across the cordillera, up up up, curve after curve, down down down, without a clutch strap to hang on to, in case we flew screaming off the cliff like Michael Douglas.[5] then came the nervous stretch at the docks in Magangué, where every soul looked a ragged thief and the two most defenseless members of the party, Yazmín and i, were illogically left to guard our many bags of food and clothing. then the motor launch flew up the river so fast, my life vest blew off. my neck tightened up again, to resist the cool dawn air. luckily i had a beach towel and wrapped up in it.

about an hour later, halfway upriver, as if to help me forget the small stuff, soldiers in green camouflage appeared on the riverbank with automatic rifles waist-high, ready to shoot one false step. the pilot felt it best to cruise over respectfully from mid-river to left bank. all male passengers, they decided, even U. S. American psychiatrists who were politically indifferent, had to leave valuable bags with women passengers, climb out on the steep bank and be frisked. finally i quit fighting it. the pain circled my head and sank in. i waited for the pills to catch up and they never did.

plus, after seventy two hours of touring Cartagena on foot, drinking, partying with Robbie and Chalo, barely sleeping, and ending up hung over, i've had to fight the urge to fall asleep; and fighting drowsiness always gives me a headache. last evening in Cartagena, for example, Robbie and i fooled around with Chalo, got home plastered at midnight, then had to get up at three AM, hung over, to catch a five AM bus with the family.

and the headache rolls on.

struggling for survival in a third-world country takes a mental toll on a gringo, sammy. i've been pampered for fifty years. i’m weak spiritually, barely practicing or believing in anything, least of all myself. i’m so physically pampered and spiritually weak, i can hardly figure out why i can’t deal with it.

and you think a society of millions of people like me will last? read Toynbee.[6] we’re doomed like Greece, Rome and every other highly developed and spoiled civilization in the history of the world. every element which led to Rome’s fall, is present in Western civilization right now. read Will Durant’s Caesar and Christ.[7]

38.  KEEPING A WHOLE TOWN AT BAY LONG ENOUGH TO REGAIN SANITY.

now the volume rises. late Friday afternoon in river country, Sucre state. TV comes on. little Omar and all the kids are called in from swimming in the canal or whatever they've been up to. a pink tone invades the atmosphere. three times the usual number of people pass. the heat drops from boil to simmer. half-cooked victims of today's sun appear alive and well after all. it's five thirty. even the slightest drop in temperature is a relief.

they talk louder. some yell. YazmÍn is in my ear talking to a lady who has stopped by the house like so many neighbor ladies have – or boys running errands for their mothers – to buy eggs or cheese from the household-business fridge that Robinson sent money for the family to buy.

the atmosphere thickens. kids leap and shout. long-lost friends yell hellos, or jump up on the porch to greet YazmÍn. she hasn't been home to Sucre state in several months. under pressure from Robinson she's left her favorite place on earth to live in Cartagena near medical help.

i'll have to talk with Robbie about this. he quoted her as saying, "I'd rather be fat and dead than have to stop eating food I love." i can relate to that idea. so what's wrong with the soup and rice they eat here three times a day, or real hand-made fresh juice of guayaba, pineapple, or whatever? what's wrong with living in your own beloved home town, if that's where you feel the happiest? she's been smiling all day since she got here today, while in Cartagena you couldn't get a smile out of her. hasn’t anyone noticed that besides me?

and i think i'm beginning to see why she smiles here and not there.

people, you see, sammy, good, decent intelligent people, even well-educated people can live quite happily on next to nothing, in boiling heat right next to the equator. you don’t have to live in the USA in order to ‘live well’.

if one family can afford a sound system and others cannot, they pipe the music to the whole neighborhood, night and day.

now i'm surrounded on the porch by six people, tiny to grand. "Angel, how's your family?" he too has come to life. he too lived in Santisima Cruz until recently.

"Is your water dirty?" YazmÍn asks in Spanish and takes my glass and throws the water onto the dirt camino, right where people stand or walk. she waits for an answer. i drum my pen and she turns away.

"He's gringo," explains somebody’s ten year old girl to a passerby. i drum and they move on.

they leave me alone as if they understand me, sammy. yet they've never known me.

how long can this standoffishness last?

the energy changes. something unusual is happening. yes. a strikingly attractive young woman climbs the steps onto the porch. somebody introduces us. i forget to drum my pen.

"Mucho gusto,[8] Sandi," i say, finally tapping the pen. she stands at the door and looks in, a special sight in profile. stacked and not the least bit shy about it. solid, top to bottom and front to back.

Sandi and her mother Victoria at the top of the town's main step-dock

with a busy market-day plaza behind them

"The energy changes. Something unusual is happening.
Yes. A strikingly attractive young woman climbs the steps onto the porch.
Somebody introduces us. I forget to drum my pen."

the first young woman of marriageable age they've let me see, sammy. they must lock them up in this town. keep them busy at home, as in Old World countries. medieval times. she calls in through the front door to Angel. in she goes, off the street, locked inside again.

i lock myself inside too. outside on the porch, deep inside my writing. buried in an eight and a half by eleven yellow notepad.

the friendliness of a small Colombian town could prove too much for me, sammy, today or any day.

in the tropics people live in clusters, erecting thin aerated walls in the heat so air can move. they rub elbows morn to night, supporting each other in every way like one big happy family.

the texture of community life is enchanting; but enjoying it requires heavy, full-time training from birth. i'm an outsider and they want to pull me in. they want me to abandon my natural wall; but remaining an outsider is necessary. it keeps me healthily safe. it preserves my sanity.

i tried to get away in Cartagena and it didn't work. i went to extremes. i blew it, so Robbie has brought me to this remote burg, sort of as punishment, as it were. here we are, starting over from scratch, given a second chance.

things are darker now. the people next door sit in front of their house watching, leaving me alone. they too seem to understand.

vallenato from huge invisible loud speakers rolls and bounces. the bass beat is gentle, liquid, friendly, the singing is plaintive, the accordion playful and decorative. plastic bottles float happily by in the dusk.

Robbie has gone somewhere on a walk, seeing old friends.

quiet returns. the pink is gone from the atmosphere. i focus harder to see. most life is inside now, preparing for dinner. i'm almost alone. frenetic Spanish rolls off the TV and spills out the front door. tin can brass. male voices, live and recorded. a hundred birds chirp. a dog complains. carefully, but very carefully, a man crosses the very narrow bamboo footbridge (without railing) over the canal. in front of the house to my right, two ladies sit and talk in the dusk drinking tinto, that strong Turkish coffee. a man enters our door saying, "Buenas."

"Hola amigo," comes Yazmín's voice from the back.

he enters without disturbing the strange front porch sculpture: Gringo on High-back Chair, Leaning Back on Two Legs, Writing.

the canal is a sick rippling green brown, with little white glassy spots of reflected still-light sky.

the tinto is to replenish the blood sugar between two o'clock lunch and eight o'clock dinner, they say. Robbie complains that Yazmín spends all day eating sugar. he berates her and his sisters for uneducated habits he sees through, after thirteen years in Denver, Mountain View and Jackson Heights. too much sugar, he scolds. little Jesús in Cartagena was so wound up on sugar he was hyperactive. he didn't even recognize his fruit juice when Robinson made them leave the sugar out.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Guayaba." guava.

Jesús didn't think so. but he drank it.

i forgot to tell you, sammy, that Jesús' mother is Robbie's youngest sister, Adriana, who cleaned up my pineapple juice from the floor. and Jesús of course has a real biological father who doesn't come around.

Robbie hinted i should pay her way to Denver to be my housekeeper. she could bring Jesús along. i'd have a son again, and could raise him the way i wanted. no joke. he said that. he’s serious. Robbie thinks my Augustinian views on sex are pure mondongo. i'll forget them as soon as i'm around the RIGHT person, says he.

what he doesn’t know is that the ‘right person’ struck the instant we climbed in a Cocaland cab. and it was his WHOLE BLINKING FAMILY!!!

i say no. having a female housekeeper is bound to cause a huge misunderstanding, one way or the other. i don't want a misunderstanding with a sister of his. and anyway, meeting Chalo has given me a different idea. if ever i wanted to take someone from here to the states, why not take just one lively young person who could function as both helper and replacement teenage son?

39.  HOW TO MAKE SENSE OF A STORY THAT DOESN'T.

as we toured the city of Cartagena these last three days, sammy, we uncovered a Chalo street-urchin story which, like so many other Colombian stories, made no sense.

Chalo's mother lived in Villavicencio, down on the llanos, the plains. his father lived way up in Bogotá, sixty five miles and a tremendous elevation and climate change away from Villavicencio, and never got home on weekends, Chalo claimed. maybe it was because of the high mountain ranges and wide and wild rivers between those cities, i thought, as between any two cities almost anywhere in Colombia. but if he'd been any kind of family man, he'd have gotten home some weekends, at least. it was only sixty-five miles. there were always cheap buses in Latin America. so naturally i asked if they had separated.

no.

were they divorced?

no.

they were neither separated nor divorced?

neither.

this was just one piece of the story i didn't get, sammy.

of course it never dawned on me to ask if they'd married. if they hadn't, that might explain his saying they were neither separated nor divorced. anyway, this was where the mafia came in.

for some reason at about age twelve Chalo went to live with an aunt in Barranquilla, he said, and became close friends with Cocaland marijuana mafia families. this was how his story went, anyway – as i understood it, remembering my Spanish is disabled like the rest of me, and Chalo’s Spanish was as messed up as anyone else's at the coast.

somehow over the years he’d managed to see all the major cities of Colombia: Cali, Medellín, Bogotá and more. and i didn't understand that either. he was now nineteen and penniless, yet lived on his own, with no help from anyone, and had toured the entire huge country somehow.

when you thought about it calmly afterward – like now, sammy – none of it made sense at all.

yet sometimes seeing things Chalo's way helped me forget i hated the world. why didn’t he ever complain? why didn’t the struggle to get along in the world upset him, like it did me? maybe because he changed his story to suit his fancy, and ended up living in an imaginary world that was more tolerable than the real one, while i tortured myself trying to face what i thought was the truth about this miserable world we all live in. would Chalo, for example, have tried to face the truth that the world as we knew it might end any day?

alone in bed each night, after a day of drinking and eating our way through Old Town, touring ancient Spanish churches and Spanish Inquisition chambers, i would remember the mj who complained about everything. i was supposed to be depressed and complaining, or dying with dignity, one or the other. i was forgetting my mission, the one that had made so much sense, i thought, of withdrawing bitterly from a doomed world then leaving it peacefully and quietly. the idea could wait a little. it was around the corner, waiting for me to reclaim it when i wanted, this mission to be rude to everybody until i kicked the bucket. Chalo had made me forget it briefly, that's all.

that's what i thought until a few minutes ago.

forgetting my mission has pushed me to the edge, sammy. i need a mission of rudeness and death, apparently, to slow me down and keep me sane. without it i get wild, drunken, and scattered to the point of dissolution.

i've neglected you, too. i haven't mailed you what i've written. and for a stupid reason: i can't decide if i'm writing to you or myself.

what can i say? i know it's stupid.

40.  MOSQUITOES AND SAINTS IN GLOWING WHITE.  TWILIGHT IN SANTISIMA CRUZ.

in the dark of nighttime now, ancient unpainted old-world boats go down the canal, silently moving to the right, eerily, full of silent people, like ancient Greek ferries crossing the river Styx. they float gracefully with the current, without a sound, paddled only briefly to steer. an unusually big one floats by on the strong current without making any sound, 25 or 30 people seated silently on its benches in the dark, many dressed in glowing white country-peasant muslin, head to foot, all of these phantasmagoric people so close to me i can practically touch them. one man is standing up in their midst, a kind of priest or leader in glowing white poncho or ruana. it's a church-full of people killed in a bus crash. would-be saints crossing to the afterlife.

Yazmín appears in the front door and i ask her if they're from the church. no, she says. the countryside. apparently the campesinos, or peasants, still wear pure old-fashioned white in the countryside. they’re headed for a soccer match, i finally understand, after much confusion.

Yazmín's costeño accent, like everyone else's, is impossible to cut through. Robinson, after thirteen years away, can't understand his own brother Angel.

at the house to the left a light comes on, casting yellow on me and my tablet. a little light to write by. dark featureless faces go by on the dirt path. Robinson isn't back.

with so little light available, my eyes almost fail. i may have to quit writing and stare into space instead, sammy. what if my wall isn't strong enough to quit writing? i could watch TV, but it's risky for the same reason. and besides, it's as useless as staring into space, i understand so little TV.

the canal is a greasy shimmering black-brown, with rippling spots of vague reflection. i can't make out the features of people walking by on the other side. a young woman goes by me singing. a boy comes to purchase four quantities of cheese. and a recorded male voice down the canal wails out vallenato over loud speakers.

the young man from next door appears in the semi-darkness with wet hair and bare chest, wringing out a white T-shirt. he sits on the other side of the camino, the path, back to canal, and looks calmly at his front door and me, alternately. he's shy like the rest of them. harmless. he puts on his white t-shirt and becomes… another saint in glowing white.

out that same door comes a man with a trash basket, all of which goes in the canal, too fast to see. it swishes like slush or plastic, maybe both.

pigs roam in open areas in front of houses across the dark canal.

where’s my wall, sammy? i need it before it gets darker. another night like the last four, so wound up i can barely sleep, could undo all the progress i’ve made today by leaving Cartagena and getting back to writing.

mosquitoes land all over. they attack my bifocals. i complain, utterly blinded, and Yazmín scolds me as she would a son, saying i should use my can of "Off." i go inside to find it and the house smells of shit. i'm afraid to ask why.

"Now arrived the mosquitoes," says Angel, returning from yet another walk.

"They’re biting," says one of the children.

i offer the family my canned repellant, gift of modern scientists in the U.S.A. 

they refuse politely. for millennia people of their blood on this wet spot of earth have swatted.

i return to my chair and protect myself by writing.

to music.

vallenato.

41.  ENJOYING QUIET MOMENTS FOR PAINFUL REFLECTION.

it's a three-ring circus, sammy. waking you up, or calming you down, whichever you want. both, maybe.

like St. John's day in San Juan, when you and i painted Racer in black and white stripes.

watching your houseboy was the only thing in San Juan that ever made me care about the world a few minutes, sammy. having southeast Denver's infamous Racer Pugh around was like having a pet monkey.

and on St. John's Day he turned into a holy pet monkey, thanks to those darn black and white stripes. it shorted my circuits, sammy. for a few hours i was just a little razzle-dazzled. watching a pet monkey turn into a divine clown[9] was powerful tribal medicine, sammy. you found the magic that day.

wow.

how.

Robbie Rivera, runner for 20 years

in the King Cole Bar and Restaurant

St. Regis Hotel in New York City, Christmas 2015

by the way, it still bothers me the way you said to me so many times, "While you're down there, find something to live for." i don't understand this obsession of yours. why bother, when i’m on my way out like everyone else, one way or the other? when the human race is drowning in its waste and friends are dying of plague. America’s youth are numbing themselves. what is there to live for when your son sits in jail plugged into earphones, blocking out life, year after year with rap music?

better to write and write on, laying it out for someone like you. apply your magical brain to it, sammy. maybe you can save this world. i sure can’t. maybe you'll see where i went wrong. the world awaits the results. and i too, staring into darkness in Colombian river country, forgetting failure as husband, father, psychiatrist, and lover. soon i'll go away not to return, and this too will end.

my trick seems to have worked, sammy. i'm alone despite hubbub. i am myself again, i think. intact. the withdrawn, world-hating crank known to everyone as mj lorenzo is himself again.

mj lorenzo.

saint of the religion of rudeness.

a religion devised by saint mj himself.

maybe they’ll name a river for me, thanking me for my Confessions (like they thanked St. Augustine for his).

the people next door have made a large patio out of their portion of the dirt sidewalk, the camino. the friendly lady who asked how i liked her pueblo sits on a stool facing the canal, back to me. beyond her, under a tree, but still on this side of the canal, four generations of males sit hip to hip, from male baby all the way to male Bible-reader great-granddaddy, lined up on a crude wooden bench, facing her and the canal-side townhouses and me. occasionally they look at me in a friendly or puzzled way.

and: all of this to slippery-slide-y music, piped-out canal-side vallenato.

i can't keep these nice people at bay forever, sammy.

i’ll have to let down my wall, but how?

am i ready?

i think so.

food's on, and here's Robinson.

the neighborhood men's bench, 'crude' and 'wooden'
in front of the house next door to Robbie's mother's (Yazmín's) in Santisima Cruz
and beyond the bench, the canal with an unpainted dugout canoe of hollowed-out tree trunk
(and beyond the canoe: the two gangplanks on either side of canal
which lead to the high 'hairy footbridge')

taken by the Dr. from Yazmín's porch
where he wrote so much of this diary