In the Jungle Now

It´s the Sunday second weekend in Leticia and it has been a weekend of incredible edibles. On Friday night the full-time English instructor, Lililana, invited some of us over for a dinner of roast Boruga (a large forest rodent) that I think might be an aguti. As no one else seemed to keen on carving it, I did the honors. After dinner we drank some vodka and partook of some mambe (http://www.cocaindigena.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=7&Itemid=9), a finely ground, green powder made from the coca leaf that one puts in the cheek pouch, kind of like tobacco but not nearly so gross.

After a jungle walk on Saturday with the resident biologist guide (Oscar) on the nature trail that runs through the back of the reserve, I ate a chicken sancocho made by Oscar´s wife Clara, a microbiologist who studies the rainforest soils. This morning I took the bus into town and found a little corner cafe that was serving caldo de costilla (beef rib broth with potato and cilantro), huevos pericos and cafe con leche. I´ll get some more pictures posted soon, either here or on facebook as I´ve finally found a internet cafe without an impractically slow connection.

Lobby Power

I haven't blogged since the election, since I've taken a graduate-level creative non-fiction writing class, read many books: Nocturno de Chile (Bolano), A Woman in Berlin (Anonymous), My Traitor's Heart (Rian Malan), Fun Home (Alison Bechdel), 2666 ((Bolano) again)), High Sorcery (Andre Norton), Lands of Memory (Felisberto), The Age of Reason ((Sartre) again), among other less memorable things - most of a Bukowski novel, a graphic novel about an alcoholic, lots of short stories and even some occasional poems - though I'm sure there's a lot I don't recall. I won't pretend I can comment on all those momentums in this post.

I did notice (looking back to my most recent post) that when I was last blogging I was fairly recently back from a trip with my father down to Colombia, and also that the moments immediately preceding this post have been taken up by my haphazard and heartfelt/rended preparations for another trip down to my father's home country - to a region where neither of us has been - this time, for the first time, on my own. I've accepted a trial post with a school called selvalegre (http://www.selvalegre.edu.co/eng/Index.html), in the Amazonas department, in the southern most tip of the country, on the border with Peru and Brazil. The school is part of a non-profit organization called Fundacion Entropika (http://www.entropika.org/index.html). I'm really exited about this opportunity!

I'm shopping for a quality bargain digital camera with which to document my move from the eco-hipster urban Portland to the rural ecosystem of the Amazon. Traveling always gets me moving in a writing kind of way, so I'm sure I'll have new posts soon, hopefully accompanied by new photos.

The latest little books

I finished off the Montesquieu {Persian Lettres}in Santa Marta, so I thought. The monarch in those times-as observed by the Turkish travellers and their inerlocutors-was quarelling with the lords and the hired foreign finance minister; and paper 'securities' turned merchants into beggers and vice versa. I would have forgotten the whole convoluted episode were it not for the collossal collapse of the NY financial securities industry. Suddenly, Montesquieu is proven again as among the keenest of societal observers.

I just finished an advance copy of a light piece on a madman who reads the OED straight through, as well. I think there's at least a part of a story incipient in the dissonance between the 'hip' colloquial possibilities provided by the gems and germs of vocabulary that he brings from the depths of the voluminous undertaking, and his own sometimes dreamy, unselfconscious interludes where he chronicles the minutae of a self-inflicted privledge. That I was delighted and fascinated by the book perhaps biases my critical eye, though not so much as to prevent me from categorizing Mr. Shea's work as an off-shoot of the current 'stunt-book' genre. That is not to belittle it, because I'm hoping it does stupendous sales and that I can rip off its most salient points.

The Sarah Palin Effect

NPR All Things Considered (9/2/08)

Former Senator Rick Santorum: ... she doesn't need to know that right now. She will learn and she will, she will learn at uh you know, with uh, with a, with a firehose attached to her mouth, I mean with she's uh, it's gonna be pretty tough

Robert Siegel: Force fed, you're saying

Santorum: Force Fed!

Rober Siegel: Pure enthsuiasm.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=94194824

McCain Caves to Anti-Semite Anti-Abortion Pressure

McCain Caves to Anti-Semite Anti-Abortion Pressure

Pa' Bailar Apretadito

I've not been back from Santa Marta 3 weeks so I'm still listening to Vallenato non-stop. El Original por Silvestre es mi inspiracion por ahora. I'm always behind the times (by unstated preference) so I'm still thrown for a loop when I plug myself into my nano and am insulated from my easy commute by the sounds of Barranquilla dramas structured to feature superb accordion solos. Aqui estoy yo pero no se puede pero me toca.

I talked to my brother today and by way of greeting said, What's up there, Scrooge McDuckin' my calls? He cracked up immeditately. He told me that he was with T.Y. and M and K C just after sunset on Pine Island. His otherwise somewhat dreamy description of the evening would likely have left me unfulfilled but for my own personal experience with such evenings just a year earlier. He was pretty entertained by the sight of the distinguished T y K partaking (politely) of the Coors Light and Pabst Blue Ribbon that was the only beverage on hand. He also recalled a story my father had related to him about our recent Santa Marta trip involving the expressions 'ka-boom', 'pretty sloshed' and 'Jesus...'. That story cracked my brother up even more. He ain't heard nothin' yet. He still hasn't heard the 'Holy Toledo' story nor the several others, structured to feature the rarified pronunciations of our father. That's all for unposted times though, and for now estamos bailando un poco demasiado apretadito.

Here, at last, are our Santa Marta pictures!

http://picasaweb.google.com/jacobfernandez22/SantaMarta2008

New Photos

I'm hoping that I'll be able to link to an album of photos from the trip Maya and I took to visit my friend Virginia and her husband up in Vancouver, B.C. at the beginning of last month over the 4th of July weekend.

http://picasaweb.google.com/jacobfernandez22/SeattleVancouver