HOOKED ON COCALAND

st. mj's guide to paradise for lost gringos

book five:

Gringoland:

washing paradise out

of every last cell and synapse

(concl.)

...the sum of all creation is better than the higher things alone.
Augustine, Confessions VII, xiii, 19[3]

southeast Denver.

120.  LET NOT YOUR HEART BE DRIED OUT, LIKE A CHICKEN HEART LEFT ON THE KITCHEN SINK.

monday night, 10/17/94.  at home, finally, in my living room. privacy and a whole couch to sit on by myself.

San Juan was silent and dead as usual, a lonely, dusty, washed out village, sammy.

you were supposed to complain about my moving out, and be as interested in me as in my diary.

what was so funny about it anyway?

you should have talked to me, like a polite host. instead you stood there for an hour in the middle of your low-beamed, break-your-neck living room, devouring the boring confessions of st. mj., laughing, not even sitting down, shoulders stooped, head bent, too tall for your own pint-sized adobe wickiup. you were so stooped your magpie feather hung from ear to nose, unflatteringly, not dignified and straight to shoulder as it should.

you weren't supposed to be oversolicitous of my material, staying up all night long, for Pete’s sake, heading out to copy it in the middle of the night, as you confessed this morning.

and the chapter titles you invented are bananas. half of them i can't relate to.

why bother? we'll blow ourselves up any day.

you were supposed to talk to me this morning, not read the whole crazy thing again, sitting down this time. you put me to sleep.

you were more interested in the diary than in me, sammy. without me you wouldn’t have a diary to ponder – or publish. remember that. don’t forget me. i can see you’re thinking of publishing another crazy mj lorenzo production. you want people to know you got me better despite my amazing resistance, right? so they’ll come for your help and buy your publications? but if you ignore me while you’re doing it, sammy, i’ll regret the day i gave you rights to everything i wrote. worse yet, i might not get better. then you’d have to retract your claim that you helped me. 

"You found your heart!" you woke me up. "You found your lost heart!" this time in the ‘es oké’[4] healing tone of: ‘It’s okay!…’

"Has that helped?" you said healingly. solicitously.

is rain wet?

"can't you tell?" i said.

and racer, your other protégé and patient, had grown up finally. "You never cried here in San Juan," he complained. "Why there?"

he used to talk about the constant excitement between his legs. now it’s people’s feelings. you’ve helped him too, it looks like.

i told him i had no feelings when i lived in San Juan, "except,” i said, “the day we painted you, in the only dress suit you ever deserved, that of a kosa clown, head to foot, and i didn't like the feelings your clowning gave me that day." that’s what i told him, sammy.

that was the day i decided it was 'Cocaland, here i come, ready or not.'

you thought "something" had driven me out, you said this morning, with innuendo. again you were in peak shape. your feather spun as you gave me that look, like you knew something about me i had missed. "I thought something else did it, not Racer," you said. "I thought you'd lost your heart and wanted to find it. Tell me, mj," you caressed your feather to help you think, "if you can find your heart when you leave the U.S., why can't you find it by staying?"

i had no answer.

i hope my silence didn't upset you.

how should i know? i can't analyze myself. that's your job. i'm no Augustine. or Carl Jung!

that was the only answer i could give.

and you had to say, "If anyone should know, you should. It's your heart."

brilliant. peak condition.

i suggested we talk later. we had to get to the airport. we couldn't get there standing bent over in an adobe wickiup, analyzing st. mj.

but you wouldn't drop it. you said, so cleverly, so blithely, "Maybe you’ll figure it out on the plane and call me from Denver."

it's patronizing, sammy, to talk to a patient, anyone, like that. you ought to be ashamed, talking to a friend in that tone. it’s one of the reasons i moved out. it’s presumptuous planting suggestions.

of course you had to send me off with an assignment. when i went to Cocaland it was ‘Keep a journal of your feelings, mj, everything’, and the other winner: ‘Find a reason to live, mj, you need a reason to live’. sammy, i moved out to get away from things that make me feel therapized and inferior, like a dumb child, don’t you get it? i’m a respected psychiatrist in a neighboring state, and you send me off, as i’m moving out, with one last childish assignment.

i'm not writing you this for some weird reason such as having ‘figured it out’.

it’s just that i did think about it on the plane to Denver.

and here’s the result: if i knew how Santisima Cruz fixed me, while Gringoland did me in, i could save the world.

“if i knew how Santisima Cruz fixed me, while Gringoland did me in

i could save the world”

somebody else will have to save the world this time, somebody with enough distance to see it clearly, someone with smarts, and heart, like you.

maybe you can save the world, sammy!

that's another reason i'm writing, to tell you i don't meet the criteria any more, for saving the world by being your darn: dr. writer extraordinaire.

for a day or two after leaving Santisima Cruz, i thought i might figure it out. i paid more attention to my heart, and came to the conclusion that if i could go back again to the place where i found it, i could figure out how it happened.

but going back became inadvisable.

so now i’m stuck in a situation where it’s impossible to figure out.

all i know, sammy, is that when i'm in Gringoland, my heart shrivels up. on the plane from New York, it started drying as we crossed the Mississippi River. in this country it dries and dries until it shrinks and cracks, like a chicken heart left and forgotten on the sink. it's happened before and will again, if i stay here.

and you have to know ‘why’!

as we crossed the Great Plains toward San Juan Sunday, i looked at the little blotches of light sliding beneath the plane, each surrounded by black night, and death crept up my back. death was looking for my heart, but we landed and you and racer helped me feel a little better.

until you started reading – and ignored me, that is.

“death was looking for my heart, but... you and Racer helped me feel a little better”

(dried roses in Dr. Lorenzo’s back patio garden, Denver, Colorado, USA, late October 1994)

121.  IF YOUR HEART DOES DRY OUT, KNOW WHAT CAN GIVE IT LIFE AGAIN.

tuesday, 10/18

i’m feeling a little better about myself – and you, sammy, since i got that off my chest yesterday. i’m sorry. you were reading, of course, because you were interested in me. i’m a pain in the butt. i’m too sensitive sometimes.

i don’t know why i was in such a terrible mood.

maybe i’ll figure it out, so we can know what we’re dealing with.

i found out there’s no problem with Master Card. Chalo’s not a thief and con, hopefully.

giving your question another shot: why my heart comes to life more readily in Cocaland than here.

when i sat on Yazmín's porch with the whole town of Santisima Cruz watching, my cranky head in a yellow pad, they weren't sure if i had a heart. they looked at me, expecting it to show any second, like it would have in any normal countryman of theirs, coming new into their little town, sitting on somebody's porch in their neighborhood. they grasped my problem at some level, i think, bit by bit, and lured me out from behind my wall. once out, unprotected, i survived. they didn't destroy me, but took care of me. after that i needed no wall to get along, just me and my fragile little heart, getting to know them and their healthy big strong full hearts.

that's as well as i can explain what happened to me in Cocaland, sammy.

they never planned such an attack, of course. they didn't put their heads together and conspire. it came naturally, to treat me like that, and it worked to make me human again. in twenty-four hours my heart was in working order again, sammy, about as good as it gets in a Gringo like me.

why it hasn’t happened in this country recently, especially right here in Denver, is a huge, very important question i doubt i can answer.

you and racer did your little bit, though, and that was in this country. the things you did must have prepared me. all those strange things you did, i mean.

my first year with you i don't remember. when your heart is dead, you can't remember. that’s why Jaime moved out of this house. he wasn't a quack quack shaman. he didn't have the strength and knowledge you do to deal with craziness. and he was no Ibrahim. he didn't have a whole town backing him up. he was alone with me in this big three-story house, and didn't know how to deal with a friend whose heart was just about dead. he kept trying to find a little heart in me somewhere, and mine seemed dead. so he moved out.

he tossed out my heart with the garbage.

if you left a chicken heart on the sink and forgot it, racer would toss it out with the garbage, right?

a man with no heart, sammy, is not worth remembering. there’s nothing to remember. without heart, you might as well kick the bucket, and save the world the cost of feeding you.

Freddie's reaction to the death of his father's heart was the same as Jaime’s, except that he gave up on himself, not just me. that’s the risk of feeding your children your beliefs. i believed the world was ending. that’s an infection, sammy. infections spread, especially to vulnerable youth. i thought we were all finished. i was his father and role model. i infected him with that poison, and shouldn't have.

it's been sad watching the results.

i hate thinking about it.

the second year in San Juan i remember better. if you and racer had left me like Jaime and Freddie did, i'd have kicked the bucket. the world would have been a better place. but no. you had to sing to my belly with stones in your mouth. you sang to my dried out chicken heart, i should say, shaking leafy branches over it. you clowned around, one of you, with your painted black and white stripes and erection. and you, sammy, were always so serious. you were looking for signs of heart, using your methods and rules. they weren't the kind i grew up with. maybe that's why they worked. you did your trance thing and wandered time and space looking for my lost heart. and you nurtured what little you found. it took strenuous effort, mental and physical. you put yourselves out, both of you. it didn't get me very far, for some reason; but it was far enough i could take off on a trip.

then it was Robbie and his family, and the pace of heart repair picked up. and Chalo, and the pace quickened further. then the boys of Santisima Cruz; and Chalo again; and by this point i was almost healed and cured, a whole person, ready to save the world again.

my heart seemed to heal faster in Cocaland than in the states. i’m not sure why.

maybe there's more heart there than here.

the right kind of heart, maybe.

for me.

and you know, sammy, i think you had more to do with Cocaland than you’ve said. i think you put Robbie up to inviting me. his family seemed for all the world to look at me as a therapy project. they roped me in, kept me grounded, kept me by their side, tried to anyway. i couldn’t stand it and ran off partying with Chalo, and when they saw i was paintin’ the town red, suddenly they decided it would be nice if Robbie and i could see the little rural hometown he was homesick for. then when i wanted to stay in Santisima Cruz forever, suddenly they had an appointment in Cartagena. do you really think i can’t see this pattern? every time i wanted to go off the deep end, they reined me in. they tried to hook me up with Adriana. they wanted me to adopt their boys and godfather their girls. they would have kept me permanently, if i’d let them. they tried to make me miss the plane, sticking a chicken in the pot a few minutes before it was time to leave for the airport, hoping i’d stay. and sammy, you don’t think i believe it was just them, do you? do you think i’m not clever enough to see that Robbie must have been consulting you this whole time secretly?

someone was steering this trip, sammy. you’re a prime suspect.

but i’m a huge project. nobody is big enough to take me on. i’m incurable. so don’t feel bad.

i know you’d like me to go back to Colombia, but the country is more than i can handle, sammy. i've been getting grouchier by the day, recognizing i can’t handle it.

bingo. we figured out my lousy mood yesterday. i’m sorry i was rude.

if i can't get interested in something, Cocaland or whatever, i'll kick the bucket before you know it, and you’ll be rid of me and my rudeness.

122.  KNOW YOUR HEALING THIRD WORLD COUNTRY AND ITS POLITICS.  WELL.  OR ELSE.

sunday, 10/23/94.

reading about enchanting, godforsaken Cocaland, for five days straight, has given me a stiff neck and headache.

i've read a few books now, sammy.

i want you to know i’ve been trying to stay calm gathering data about danger, since you want me to give my heart every chance to go back to Colombia and i do too. that’s why i went to books. i wanted objective, unemotional, unbiased data, to help me make a decision that would be sensible.

first i read Chronicle of a Death Foretold,[5] about none other than the boys of Santisima Cruz – boys like them, that is, fifty years back. García Márquez. the novella they told me about, by him, that immortalized little Eden as it was back then.

the murder was so gruesome it seemed from a bygone era, hardly likely to occur in the Santisima Cruz of today, i should hope.

then i read Camilo Torres: A Biography of the Priest-Guerrillero.[6]  there was armed revolutionary class struggle in '69 when the guerrilla priest Camilo Torres was killed in action, but i was hoping things had calmed down since 1969. by the time i’d finished reading the life of Torres, i wanted to go back to Santisima Cruz.

everywhere else in the world, the ‘Cold War’ between the Western democracies and the Communist world seems to be over. Marxism is passé just about everywhere. there's been a worldwide backlash against military governments even. why should Santisima Cruz be different? it has to be safe by now, was my thought.

but then i found a different book, which said that 'death foretold' had become 'a Colombian byword': The Palace of Justice,[7] with a black and white photo on its paper cover, of the Cocaland supreme court building going up in painted crimson red (because bloody) flames. it’s the most recently published book on Colombia in the Denver Public Library, one of the better civic libraries in the country. if i could let this book affect me as it should – i mean, if i had any sense, sammy – i would never go back to Santisima Cruz, no matter how much i loved and missed it. my so-called paranoid thinking has not been paranoid. in guerrilla areas kidnappings are routine, says the book. campesinos (peasants; rural people) get caught between guerrillas and government soldiers and killed. some guerrilla groups are unpredictably violent, just as in Robbie’s story of the two young cattle rustlers killed by their own guerrilla protectors; and the armed forces sent against guerrillas are as bad or worse.

Colombian military guarding Santisima Cruz’ main-plaza dock from guerrillas in 1994

“some guerrilla groups are unpredictably violent

just as in Robbie’s story of the two young cattle rustlers killed by their own guerrilla protectors

–

and the armed forces sent against guerrillas are as bad or worse”

on top of all this, Colombia’s armed forces interfere in its government to such a degree that in 1985, just nine years ago, Colombian president and congress sat by not knowing how to stop it when the Colombian army wiped out nearly an entire bench of supreme court justices! this was the central story of the book. it’s the same incident i wrote about in my diary my first day writing in Cocaland, the hairy incident i remembered hearing about in our U.S. news reports years back, when it happened, that shocked us so in the USA, day after day after day in 1985.

Sammy, it’s like – if the violent 60s-leftist ‘Weathermen’ or ‘Black Panthers’ in ‘69 had taken our Supreme Court building with rifles somehow, and held our nine supreme court justices hostage: would our U.S. military chiefs have ordered our U.S. tanks to barrel in through the doors of the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C., and to crash those tanks down the halls firing heavy cannons at usurpers, blowing the place up, all nine Supreme Court justices and everything else? they would have tried something, naturally, but nothing so damaging to sacred civilized democracy itself!

in some parts of Colombia a state of class war is so intense right now, sammy, right this minute, that people in the neighborhood who get entangled, caught in the crossfire, go up in flames too, says the book. just like the supreme court justices.

no matter how important they think they are.

so of course: if Cocalanders in highest government positions blow up their own highest ranking judges, not even consulting with president and congress, setting an example of anarchy for the rest of the country: then, who in Cocaland, be it soldier, guerrilla or simple citizen, will hesitate to knock off the Ibrahims and Pedros and mj lorenzos of Santisima Cruz whenever they feel like it?

the fact that Marxism is passé everywhere else in the world has not informed local politics at all, down in the dark bowels of Colombian river country and a few other remote Cocaland outposts, says this book, The Palace of Justice. in some parts of the world they don't mind being out of date, apparently. in Colombia they keep on fighting a Marxist war of class struggle, a type of war that has gone out of date; and there's no resolution in sight.

this is accurate, up-to-the-minute English language reporting, sammy, published LAST YEAR!  and it's got me upset.

i’ve been trying to get past the problem of guerrillas ever since i met Ibrahim and Gustavo two weeks ago and it HAS NOT WORKED! every time i look at it sensibly, i see i can not return to that little paradise of theirs.

nothing is said in the book about kidnapping gringos, but if i were a guerrilla and knew enough about mj lorenzo, i would kidnap him. “He is an imperialist Yanqui of an especially undesirable type,” they’d say to each other. “He has looked at a backward South American river town and its simple-hearted folk in one light only, and from that picture, tried to weave a romantic myth. He has invented a bourgeois pastoral romance of ancient barnyard village life, and refused to see the whole grim economic picture. He has luxuriated in the first-world privilege of writing about Cocaland from a safe and uncommitted distance, using river country as his entertaining subject. His picture might delight him and a few world-weary Yankees like him, but it is a half-truth. Townsmen and campesinos of this little ‘paradise’, many of whom he knows, fight on mutely for equal access to Colombia’s – their own country’s – great wealth and opportunity.”

now Sammy, you have to agree i’ve tried very hard to see my way past this danger. but to their way of thinking, if i'm not part of the solution, i’m part of the problem. in Marxist thinking, as i understand it, you're one or the other. which means, from their point of view, i'm better off dead. or kidnapped and held for ransom, for that would put mj lorenzo to good revolutionary use. in river country where soil is rich, they don’t need my gringo bones for fertilizer. they need my gringo bank account, puny as it is, to help the living.

yet those nice people invite me back, Sammy. warmly. and with heart. nothing said of how valuable i might be to a guerrilla cash reserve, once kidnapped for ransom; or how worrisome i might be to the paramilitary, because of my friendship with guerrilla sympathizers. who are they kidding? do my new friends there think that i can fly down specifically for the wedding of a guerrilla sympathizer i know personally, and hang out with a family of guerrilla sympathizers whom i know personally, and walk away intact? when my apolitical, anti-political view is 'part of the problem'?

who was i kidding when i thought i could retire in such a place, unless by 'retire' i meant to retire from physical existence?

i’m being fair, don’t you think? i’m not looking for a way out. actually i’m hoping to find a way to convince myself it’s safe. that’s why i went to objective sources, library books.

yet you’ve been wanting me to go back. you didn’t even know about these dangers.

i’m tired of arguing with you, Sammy, feeling i have to defend myself constantly for not jumping on the next plane back. it’s making me cranky, and i’m sick of listening to my own cranky mind.

123.  WEIGH THE RISKS OF RETURNING TO SUCH A COUNTRY.  CHECK INSIDE SOURCES.  GET RIGHTEOUSLY ANGRY IF YOU HAVE TO, TO SORT IT OUT.

monday, 10/24/94.

4 am. dazed. tired.

i spent all day drenched in blood from The Palace of Justice. i slept for three hours and some dream i can't remember startled me awake.

before i reached the book’s ending, i was looking at piles of photos back from the developer, with Pedro's eyes bright and dreamy, full of light, and Ibrahim's, shiftier than i'd remembered. i still wanted to go. i knew it would do me good, Sammy, if i could just get past the fear.

“I knew it would do me good if I could just get past the fear....

the world of the boys simply could not be the awful world the books described”

dugout canoe, tree, work bench, and foraging chicken all share the same tiny canal-side space

in rustic Santisima Cruz

i was holding out, in spite of what i wrote you yesterday. the world of the boys simply could not be the awful world the books described.

yet, it is.

i'm devastated, Sammy. i’ve given up Cocaland forever. i don't crave Santisima Cruz, i hate it. not the upset i felt when i was there and only beginning to see the truth. a different truth has done its damage, the printed page.

i have a mighty respect for books. i’ve lived all my life with them, intimately, almost as if they were best friends. i think i’m a pretty good judge of whether a book should be taken seriously.

until i read this book, Sammy, i was just guessing. estimating the danger. now i KNOW. that’s the problem. that’s the new twist on things.

there’s documented evidence Santisima Cruz could be quite dangerous for me.

If i were ever to consider returning to Santisima Cruz, i would have several serious questions for Robbie. i’m not sure he would deal with them, and that would settle the question right there:

1. To what leftist group do the guerrillas of Santisima Cruz belong?  ELN?  FARC?[8]

2. If I returned, what would be the danger exactly?

a thoroughgoing answer. he’d owe it to me. i’d pay for phone calls he had to make. he’d have no right to invite me into a possible death or kidnapping trap, and not study it with me first. any time, for example, i’ve done a big complicated Colorado Rockies hike or climb with a friend, we’ve always studied books, maps and weather, preparing for possible danger. why should a trip to war-torn Colombia be any different?

3. Could Victoria guarantee safety?

in all seriousness? Robbie would have to know i was serious. he would have to be equally serious. he would have no right to throw my life away, not studying the problem seriously. he couldn’t make a joke out of it like he does everything else. he would have to learn politics, like it or not.

4. Could government soldiers with automatic rifles be counted on to keep me safe, as he always implies, or wouldn't they also be a danger?

Robbie would have to answer this seriously too.

why do i never make sense, Sammy? i'm concerned about preserving my life, yet supposedly, nothing matters if i have to give up Cocaland. and didn’t i just say i’d given up Cocaland forever already?

and another thing that makes no sense: all day i've been so preoccupied, so picturing myself kidnapped, or shot to death by automatic rifles, that i've forgotten my HIV status. now tell me, Sammy, if i really had a killer virus, would i forget it so often? could this possibly be a clue that some part of me believes, or knows, that i'm maybe not infected at all? you might like that thought, but it makes no sense to me.

i’ve actually had thoughts of getting tested, to see if my HIV is a delusion, as you claim.

i've even forgotten to feel bad about Freddie. could coca have spoiled Freddie's life forever? or hasn't it damaged him only temporarily, like it did me, three years back.

i’ve had it with fantasies, delusions, half-truths, and sweeping things under rugs, Sammy.

i'm on an emotional roller coaster again.

Cocaland is working on me, even after i rejected it.

it had better do something quick. i’m going downhill, and history shows i can go down fast.

124.  WEIGH THE WORST DANGERS FOR AT LEAST A WEEK, AGAINST POTENTIAL BENEFITS.  THEN MAKE THE ONLY SENSIBLE DECISION, FOR SOMEONE HOOKED ON COCALAND.

saturday, 10/29/94.

i can’t stand my crankiness, Sammy. it’s a bad sign. when i get tired of my crankiness, that’s when i clam up, so i don’t have to hear my cranky voice any more. things go downhill from there, into depression like we just got me out of – almost.

today’s news has been depressing me all morning. as i told you on the phone, the very thing i feared might happen to me, if i returned to Santisima Cruz, has happened to some other poor dumb gringo. i’m going over it again here, so you’ll have it in writing and might remember it better, and might – maybe – even take it a little more seriously than you did on the phone.

today's Rocky Mountain News, page 49A.

note the telling words, 'journalist', and, 'helps poor Third World farmers':

COLOMBIA

Huge ransom demanded.

Kidnappers have demanded a huge sum for the release of U.S. scientific journalist Thomas Hargrove, of Rotan, Texas, abducted two months ago by a group of armed men, Hargrove's employers said Friday. The International Center for Tropical Agriculture in the southwestern city of Cali said it is "amazed" by the ransom demand, which it said arrived along with proof that Hargrove, 50, is still alive. Center assistant director Fritz Kramer said the organization, which helps poor Third World farmers improve agricultural methods, won't be able to pay the sum because it is funded exclusively by government donations.[9]

for a week, Sammy, i've felt ten times more paranoid and useless than before my trip. back then i worried about sleeping on the floor with tarantulas, or hanging in a hammock with a stiff neck. yet you said, "Go, go! It'll help your recovery." now i’m aware of much more threatening risks than tarantulas, and yet i've tried to stay open, to see if there wasn't some way to justify a return. but you aren’t even cautious. you still say, "Go, go! You need it," even after all these books and articles i’ve told you about, which elaborate dangers in clear and convincing ways.

i’m writing this just five minutes after calling you today about this article, which was the last straw when i saw it. it’s the straw that should have broken the camel's back, Sammy. with this we should give it up. i've given up finding a way to convince myself it’s safe to go back. yet you still want me to go. you don't care if i live or die, apparently.

"Your recovery isn't complete," you say.

with all my improvement, according to your brilliant thinking, i'm in such bad shape, still, that the only operation worth considering is a life-threatening one. i'm so lost, so far from 'being a saint', as you put it, almost sarcastically, that the only cure for the spirit, is one that threatens the body.

you don't quack quack pussyfoot around.

i protested and you said, gently, cleverly, in that soft voice, "Isn't your life threatened already? Aren't your days numbered anyway?"

well, i guess. i haven’t gotten tested yet, so we’re still operating under the delusion that i’m infected.

maybe you have a point. if my life is already threatened by serious illness that they still haven’t found a treatment for, then what's to lose?

a quiet and meaningless death in my bed in Denver, that's what.

“So then why not threaten it more,” says the bone doctor, “and do something for your heart, finally, something worthy of yourself and your friends and the whole world? All the future generations that will read you,” you say.

now you’re trying to hook my ego. that’s base.

“Because,” you say, “if you stay here, your heart will dry up and desiccate again. And who would want to live in a human body, with a dried up, desiccated heart?”

see what you do? you steal my language and imagery, and use them against me.

then you anticipate my next move and get there before me. you say, “If you’re not infected, as you suspect at times, then all the better. You can go to Santisima Cruz and study the town, compare it with what you know of the states, figure out what's wrong with Gringoland and the rest of the world, and save it from self-destruction by writing about it.”

and if i’m not infected, you add, or even if i am, i can look up Chalo and help him survive, and write about that. by helping him live, i'll be helping myself. and writing about it will help the rest of the world, you say.

and you know, i suppose you’re right, sammy. i'm sick of worrying about guerrilla threats. i really shouldn't let gun-toting fanatical idealist revolutionaries get in my way, or government soldiers. or a single strange, one-time event with Chalo. i really shouldn’t let anything like a volcano in a taxi cab prevent me from seeing Cocaland friends. they mean too much to me.

and i should get tested to see if this infection is a delusion, and quit pussyfooting with reality.

yet i can't move. i'm too stuck to unstick myself. and your fancy arguments aren't helping.

sorry.

somebody will have to drag me to Cocaland, to get me there.

the trip is two months away. Robbie's going. he's keeping my reservation ‘open’.

i'm more tired and cranky than ever, and i can’t stand myself.

125.  WEIGH IT AGAIN, GIVEN TODAY'S NEWS.

sunday, 10/30/94.

Chalo called collect yesterday, right after i wrote you in this trip journal, Sammy. i accepted the call without thinking.

after the hotel room, i’d wished at times i hadn’t given him my number. sometimes i even hoped he'd have the sense not to call.

other times i missed him. at dinner the last night in Cocaland i already missed him. he'd made my trip a sensation, and i had told him so as we were saying goodbye. he'd saved my life, in fact. i hadn't told him that.

unfortunately i’d ruined what could have been a nice friendship.

i forgot, Sammy. i never had a chance to explain to him how badly i felt about the bump in my pants. the area of my brain associated with Chalo crashed, like a bum computer. how could he have known i'd meant to erase him from my life? i’d hidden ALL my feelings from him.

so he called, not knowing any of these reservations of mine.

he called as i’d told him to, just as he’d promised he would.

i asked how he was.

"Mal," he said.

"Bad?" i said. "Why?"

"Enfermo," he said.

"Sick!? How?"

"I can't work," he said. "It hurts."

i couldn't get what hurt, Sammy. the connection was bad. for one thing, the line carried sound in only one direction at a time. if both spoke at once, only one voice would be transmitted. it took some time to figure this out, because of a delay in transmission. that was the second problem. i would ask him a question, then stop to listen, only to find out he’d never stopped talking in the first place, so had never heard my question. for several minutes of excitement, we talked on top of each other. finally we realized. it took practice to learn to allow for the delayed, one-way-only, transmission. he seemed unfamiliar with the problem too, as if he'd never called Gringoland before. finally we got it down, and started to communicate.

then we got excited again and forgot to wait for the delay and take turns. i thought i'd never get to talk to him.

something was wrong with his leg. he gave several wordy explanations, that i couldn't understand because of the costeño accent. finally i put a stop to it and launched a structured quiz.

"I didn't understand you," i said firmly, almost angrily. "I'm sorry. Is it broken? Answer with three words. If i don't understand, I'll ask you more."

"No, it's inflamed," he said.

"What's inflamed? The skin?"

"No. The bone," he said.

that could be really bad. i was a psychotic head shrink, but i knew a little bit of modern Medicine. i didn’t tell him.

"Are you sure? Inflamed? The bone?"

i missed his answer in the excitement. we were talking on top of each other again, and as usual, whenever i did catch a bit of his costeño street talk, i couldn't get every word. it was street Spanish, literally. he was calling from the street, a pay phone, with downtown Cartagena roaring down on him. i had to yell so he'd hear me, and i hate yelling in Spanish, sammy. it’s harder than speaking it. i was frustrated and short-tempered. i was afraid he'd hang up.

"Have you seen a doctor?" i yelled, and he heard me. but some man wanted the public phone. he shouted at Chalo to quit being long-winded and get off. the poor kid stopped a whole minute to deal with him.

finally he answered. "The doctor wants me to go in the hospital. But I can't...," a very loud truck went by.

"You can't what?" i yelled three times, hoping he'd hear one of the three. i was afraid i knew the answer.

"I can't pay for it."

"What are you going to do?" i asked stupidly, dodging the hint for money i’d been anticipating.

"I don't know," he said helplessly.

we paused while traffic roared.

was he truly ill, or was this a ruse to get money? he wouldn't know that much about a rare serious illness called inflammation of the bone, unless he had it. would he?

"Doesn't your government help people with no money?" i asked, feeling helpless too.

"No," he said simply, indifferently, without drama. he wasn’t pressuring overtly. the tone was helpless. dejected.

"What about the church?" i said. he was treating me respectfully, with humility. the least i could do was help him think it through. "Don't they help poor young people like you, who have nothing? Would they just let you die of a leg infection?"

That was stupid. Unforgivable.

he didn't take it that way. "No," he said again. "The social worker at the hospital says no one will help. I have to find the money."

"How much is it?" i asked.

"Two hundred dollars."

"Two hundred dollars!" i screamed, as if a stay in the hospital should be ten bucks. "What about your aunt and uncle in Barranquilla?"  i was shocked. i was hoping he was wanting a little money, at worst, using a deceptive ploy i could forgive, and would ask for twenty dollars, or fifty. if this was real, we were in trouble. it was too much to ask of a friend, especially a new one.

"They don't have money," he said.

"What about their mafia connections?" i said nastily. he might have made that story up too.

there was an ear-shattering roar of bus, like the phone booth was in the middle of the street, or traffic was on the sidewalk, neither of which in Cartagena was improbable. i'd heard no intelligible response. i didn't even try with that one again.

“there was an ear-shattering roar of bus

like the phone booth was in the middle of the street

or traffic was on the sidewalk

neither of which in Cartagena was improbable"

parts of downtown and Old Town Cartagena from the San Felipe fort

when the traffic died down, i bit the bullet. i said, "I can't help you, Chalo. It's just too much for me."

i lied. it was only too much in the sense that i couldn’t stomach being taken for that much, if he was deceiving me. fifty dollars i could let slip away through manipulation, and not end up feeling like a fool one day, if i learned it was a con. but two hundred? it was more than fair play allowed, deceiving a friend.

"What does the doctor want you to do?" i asked, desperate for time to find the right maneuver. if he was deceiving me, i had to catch him before i got so entangled that the damage was already done.

"He wants me to find the money and go in the hospital now," he said.

i knew that already.

he would need antibiotics immediately, if my memory of osteomyelitis served, money for iv antibiotics around the clock for a week. and sometimes it didn't work. people ended up in the hospital for months, expensive antibiotic iv's running constantly, while doctors experimented with different expensive combinations of rare antibiotics. bones weren't perfused well by the circulatory system. sometimes insufficient antibiotic reached the inflamed bone, and people lost the body part in question by surgical amputation

another defect in God-cursed creation.

"Can't you pay for it little by little, after you leave the hospital and can work again?" i asked. Cocaland should be like the states. then i wouldn't have to deal with it.

our 1994 U.S. hospitals don't turn away indigent patients. it's unethical, even illegal, to turn anyone away. they treat, send out a bill, and sometimes get paid, sometimes not. every hospital in the U.S. eats losses like Chalo's every day. they make up for the losses by charging everyone extra, charging huge amounts to break even.

once in a while they do something halfway right, apparently, the Gringo capitalist empire builders. if Chalo were here, he’d have a better chance of keeping his leg.

Cocaland offered no such luxury as my country did. Cocaland made you taste grit. you had to eat crow to keep a sick loved one alive.

"No," he said, his voice breaking. "The social worker says I have to pay a hundred sixty thousand pesos, before the operation."

"Two hundred dollars. I can't help that much, Chalo. It's just... too much. I wouldn't even know how to get it to you," i said stupidly, sending him off in the wrong direction.

"Giro," he said. "Moneygram." he said the technical brand name in English with a Spanish accent. "Moh-nee-grahm."

"Do you know how to do it?" i asked, caught in my own trap. i had to look curious, now that i’d brought it up. "What bank?" i asked. maybe that would stump him, and the discussion would grind to a halt.

"I don't know," he said, and i was relieved there was an out; but ashamed.

"Will you be okay until tomorrow?" i asked. "Where are you?"

"El Centro," he said, a general answer meaning downtown, as i'd already known. what difference did it make? it was a stupid delaying maneuver.

"Will you be okay for a day?" i asked again. "I have to investigate to see if it's possible," i said. "Call me at this time tomorrow. Okay?"

"Sí."

that would give me a day to think of a way around it. "Do you have money to eat?"

"No. I can't work," he said. "It hurts me too much to walk."

"Do you still have your room?"

"Yes."

"Then go to your bed and stay there," i said, "until you call me at this time tomorrow. Okay?"

“Okay.” He didn’t hang up.

it might be a true emergency. there was a shocking internal consistency to his story. he had his medical facts in line. worse yet, if he didn't eat, he'd get weaker – and sicker. something had to be done immediately. either that, or the runt was not just an ordinary con, but a brilliant one! which was it? he was a smart kid, with native I.Q. and street intelligence, both. he even knew a little English

he had the typical likeability of a sociopath, worst of all.

"If you go in the hospital," i asked, "will they feed you?"

if i had to send that much money, i wanted somebody else to take a hit too.

"Si," he said. "Todo es incluso."

everything included. what a deal. the hospital was helping. two hundred dollars wasn't a lot. in the states they'd have charged tens of thousands. assuming, that is, that he had an infection. the financial arrangement was believable too, Sammy, because in Cocaland, if things are done at all, they're done backwards, as we would look at it. it's amazing what gets accomplished in so-called backward countries, when you consider that fact. leave it to a third world country to charge a flat rate up front for a procedure of unknown duration and expense, like inpatient emergency treatment of acute osteomyelitis. knowing what i did about Cocaland, and Mexico from Jaime, Chalo's description of the pay scheme seemed believable.

how could he have gotten such an illness, Sammy? maybe he truly had been hit in the leg months ago, by a rich Cartagena man driving a car, as he'd claimed when we'd first met. i'd thought it was unlikely fiction at the time. maybe the leg never quite healed. osteomyelitis always starts that way.

"Call me tomorrow at nine your time,” i repeated one last time.

"Okey, mj. Gracias."

he knew i was going to help him, the little rascal.

and that was the end of that conversation, Sammy.

until he called this morning.

just a bit ago.

meanwhile, yesterday i learned how to send money. and i found two hundred dollars in my bank account and withdrew it, and more, thinking he'd need pocket money for emergencies. he couldn't give up his room or sell his inventory of cigarettes, or he'd have less chance of surviving, once he recovered.

if he recovered.

this thought hit me as we talked this morning. i told him he absolutely had to get better fast.

"Because I'm coming to see you right after Christmas," i said, “and you have to be well so we can party.”

it leapt out of my mouth, Sammy.

i was convinced he was in a bad way, not putting me on, and i felt terrible. young and helpless and full of spunk, sick enough to end up crippled forever. i couldn't stand the thought of his not getting better. no one could feel that way about him but me. there was no one else who cared about him. he deserved to have someone to get better for. he was a good enough kid to deserve that. his 'aunt' and 'uncle' didn't care. if they did, they couldn't afford to help. he might be stuck in the hospital all the way through Christmas, with nothing to look forward to but my coming on the twenty eighth, but at least he’d have that. it would help him fight the osteomyelitis, which is very hard to fight at times.

besides, if i had to send that much cash, if i was going there risking everything, then i wanted something back, an instant cure, and his company.

“Call me from the hospital collect,” i said. “Every few days.” he'd heal faster that way. the bones would perfuse better, with someone pulling for him that he could talk to frequently. “You can be my tour guide again,” i said, “when I get there December twenty-eighth.” i wanted something back from the little squirt, for my investment. he owed it to me now. "Call me every day if you want," i said.

he said he would, if they let him out of bed and found him a phone.

and that's my story.

i'll be going to Santisima Cruz too, of course. i can't get out of it.

i called robbie and he addressed all my safety issues seriously. we made a three-way ‘conference call’ to Victoria, and she 'guaranteed' to keep me safe, though i’m not convinced. but convinced or not, says Robbie, i have to go because they'd never forgive me in Santisima Cruz, if they knew i was in Cartagena and didn't go see them. and i can't visit Cartagena without their finding out, he says. there's no way to keep his whole big family quiet.

i can’t back out. Chalo might not make it if I did. i feel happy and reckless. i’m tired of writing on a yellow tablet, Sammy, constantly writing about me me me. BUT THAT WAS WHAT YOU WANTED!!! i hope you’re happy with it, because this is it for this crazy diary.

you have helped, though we’re both incurable psychos. i am anyway. please forgive my getting nasty with you at times; but you wanted an honest diary.

i care about you and appreciate you – as much as one man can feel that for another.

i was going to say i love you.

as a good friend. don’t get any ideas.

call me when you get this in the mail.

Publisher's note:  ‘a look at’ Dr. Lorenzo’s diary from his second trip to Colombia (late Dec. 94 to Jan. 95), entitled ‘Guerrilla Country’, will be published at the present website eventually, if all goes well.

 I no longer desired a better world,

because I was thinking of creation as a whole:

and in the light of this more balanced discernment,

I had come to see that higher things are better than the lower, but that

THE SUM OF ALL CREATION IS BETTER THAN THE HIGHER THINGS ALONE.

Augustine,

Confessions VII,  xiii, 19

“A Colombian policeman, left, chatted with a member of the

Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [FARC] Thursday, moments before the inauguration

of the first round of peace talks between the government and the FARC leadership,”

explained the New York Times of this photo, Friday 1/8/99.[10]