Costa Rica Retroactive Diary Day 2 “True Grit”

28 Jan

Went horseback riding for the first time. The feeling of power was incredible. Felt like my penis grew another 4 inches. Invoked feelings of being on the wild west like Eastwood and Jeff Bridges (Saw True Grit twice the week it came out). My masculinity was off the charts.

The funny thing about this town is that you’ll see just as many people riding horses for transportation as you’ll see cars. Actually better to ride a horse as the Costa Rican roads are beyond any horror you’d see in tax paying Oklahoma. If you don’t own a 4X4 vehicle in this country you’re screwed.  I also saw how a woman can really enjoy horse back riding. Seems like it could be really stimulating hee hee.

Spent most of the morning feeding (and milking) the cattle and horses and goats. Learned how to wash,groom and saddle the horses without getting kicked in the head.

Also went and netted some Tilapia from the pond and Paul’s chef Vivian cooked us all grilled Tilapia using only salt, lime juice and olive oil as seasoning. I was the bomb. For dessert, homemade ice cream. Something I hadn’t had since I was a young boy staying at my Granny’s for the summer. I almost cried after the first spoonful (weighs a ton).

Spent the even listening to the owner of the farm, Paul, talk about his sexual exploits in Africa–while on business there with the World Bank. Strange dude. Could not understand why he was telling me how he smuggled ganja into the states nor his fetish for 20 year old African women (the darker the better he says).

After two hours of this and seeing the biggest cockroach I’ve ever seen in my life (it flew onto the porch fluttered its papery wings and then flew away), I decided to try and sleep a little. But not before bathing myself in Deep Woods Off . Still it didn’t help much and I got eaten alive anyway.

This Canadian couple that were staying at the farm on a bed and breakfast deal decided they couldn’t sleep there one more night because the insects were so bad.

The husband and I went for beer and cigarettes and found a place with cabinas only 6km from the farm. With the bad roads (they were not driving a 4×4 vehicle) and the insects, old Andy decided he was gonna stay put. I put my Spanish to use and  brokered him a deal on the cabinas alongside a taxi to pick up his wife (and a ride home for me).

Paul wasn’t happy bout this and in between bragging about his sexual conquests in Africa he explained to me why the couple’s abrupt departure left him feeling sore.

Everyone was out to get poor Paul. His farm staff wasn’t worth a damn. The townspeople were against him. His ex-wives and girlfriends had him figured wrong. No one understood him. At least that was the way he’d tell it.

With just the two of us alone on the property, being on the farm took on a weird vibe, one similar to “The Shining”. Old Paul was exhibiting some paranoid behavior. And the weirdness was only just beginning.

I thought about rubbing one out before I went to sleep. But Paul’s room was right next to mine. He’d surely hear the mattress squeaking from behind the thin walls.

So I decided just to close my eyes and breathe deeply and ignore the hissing of mosquito wings in my ears.

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Costa Rica Retroactive Diary: Day One

27 Jan

My rooming quarters on the Finca Rio Perla.

Made it into the country without losing my hide. I could stay here at the farm the whole time. It’d be the safe bet. The cheapest bet but I don’t know if it’d be the best bet. Really good hospitality here in Siquirres. People seem nice.

Much nicer than San Jose with its hustle and bustle  and petty thieves (cab drivers included).  Everyone is trying to scam you the minute you get off the plane. Guys who say they are cabbies driving minivans and red cars without meters.

Even using a phone is stressful. Took me fifteen minutes to figure out that payphones don’t work you gotta use a calling card. I finally got on my bus and not a moment too soon. San Jose (C.R.), Houston, and Los Angeles are offically my 3 least favorite cities to be trapped in.

I split a cab to San Jose, got a bus there at the Coca Cola terminal and then took a bus to Siquirres. A small community 2 hours east of San Jose. Its just like you’d imagine it. Colorful, old buildings and houses, a soccer field in the middle of town. People riding motorcycles, dirt bikes and bicycles. This guy Dennis (the farm owner’s courier) picked me up and took me to get a goat from this guy Coco, who also has a fried chicken joint with his wife and kids.

Dennis treated me to some chicken and coca cola and immediately I was thrust into their culture with my weak Spanish. My knowledge of their language may have been good enough to pass high school and university–but  it was not good enough to have a deep conversation. I wasn’t going to be able to talk about Heidegger or Spinoza with some university chicks.

I’d be lucky if I’d be able to follow directions from native speakers and pick up some farming lessons (later I’d find the ranch hands spoke no English at all–the driver Dennis spoke very little).

A really nice compound here. From the sounds of things this guy is on the verge of starting a compound. Innaresting fella for sure. University of Maryland grad. Very much into himself or the myth of himself.

Beautiful country. Especially the area I’m in. Rain Forest. beautiful Farm, over 200 acres of land. Even owns the waterfalls on this property. How absurd is that? He has a beautiful cook with lively eyes named Vivian and he himself looks kinda like former MLB pitcher John Smoltz.

There is a guy here from North Carolina who went to school with Rasheed Wallace and Jerry Stackhouse. Damn I’m getting old. I was in high school when those guys played there.

From everything I’m hearing Patagonia is pretty nice country. Will definitely have to get down there some time in the future.  A hummingbird

just flew into my cabina as I wrote the last line.

I think I’ll only stay a week and then see more of Costa Rica. Perhaps another town like Siquirres. Beautiful. Simple. Beautiful people, living simply, friendly, This is the perfect introduction here. Not too overwhelming. The skeeters are as bad as they say though (possibly worse).

After just one day here, feel a bit closer to my friends who grew up on farms or went and worked on them. Its a really sweet experience to have.

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Eve of Departure

23 Jan

I came down here thinking that this would be the trip that would quench my thirst for traveling.

2 weeks on the road is usually my magic number. I was pretty much exhausted after my birthday and was just holding on til the end of the week. Excited about my return home to sleep in my own sleeping bag.

I was not expecting to have as much fun as I did in the little beach town of Montezuma. Yet it was beautiful and the ocean was incredible and I got to party like I was back in undergrad. As with any trip I´m on, sometimes it takes more than sheer craftiness to get by. This usually involves meeting the right people along the way and I most certainly did. The luck factor reared its pretty little head at always the right times.

The night before leaving Montezuma to go catch a bus to San Jose and a cab to Alajuela, I went for drinks with a derelict from Minnesota and these 3 Finnish gals. I had just ordered a happy hour sex on the beach when I ran into this table full of girls I had met the day before at Santa Teresa beach.

¨Texas!!!!¨ one of them cried out.

¨Team Portland. what are you doing here?¨

Long story short they had some luggage stolen and thought it may be nice to have a little muscle (and Spanish expertise) along for their ride back to San Jose.

So I only had to pay for the ferry, and the young ladies got me to my hostel in Alajuela with little incident and lots of laughs.  I´d gotten so carried away with my adventures that I forgot to put away money for the exit visa and one of the lovely young Portlanders lent me the money to get out of the country. Que Linda eh?

So now I am at this swanky 15 dollar hostel with great mattresses and great view of downtown (my the city lights up at night). Five minutes away from the airport with a free shuttle. My degenerate alkie buddy from Minnesota has the same Frontier flight to Denver and will meet me here in Alajeula today. Until his arrival and subsequent desent into debauchery, I will be watching the NFL Championship games today in the beanbag and tv lounge.

Sometime soon I´m gonna have to look into Panama. That may be my next visit down here in Latin America. 4 times cheaper than Costa Rica…..buy me a cheap bottle of  Nicaraugan RUm and party it up Van Halen style.

Ciao.

Mick

Root Root Root for the Home team

4 Nov

Let me start off by saying I’m very proud of the Texas Rangers. I grew up a Cowboys fan and was 14 the first time we won a Super Bowl. It was a big deal. I lived in Dallas for three Super Bowl wins.

It was cool, but after the first one, everyone always expected the Boys to win. We were used to it. Texas is a football state. And Dallas was a Dynasty even before I was born. My dad and my uncles were alive when they won titles in the 70’s.

They always told me stories of when they were great. Legends of Tony Dorsett, Randy White, Ed “Too Tall” Jones, Roger Staubach, Cliff Harris, Mel Renfro.

And because of that I was just waiting my turn for my own moments to witness “Super Bowl Greatness” and in 1992 it came.

But I never in my life imagined or dreamed that there was a chance the Rangers would ever make it to the World Series in my lifetime.

Well I realized a couple of weeks ago, that truly anything is possible.

I was rooting for the Mavs in ’06 and I ‘d have been happy if they’d have won. But I’ve never really been a Mavs fan like I was Rangers and Boys, they just sucked too much during my formative sports years. They were atrocious. The joke around Dallas was that they’d win less games than the Dallas Cowboys. In fact I think they won one more game I think in 1993. They were terrible.

So when I started watching basketball my favorite player was Philly’s Charles Barkley and when he got traded to the Suns I rooted for them and the New York Knicks (for whatever reason I really liked Xavier McDaniel who played for them then–plus I hated Jordan)

But before the Cowboys became relevant again, I was in love with the loveable losers, the Texas Rangers. They were always a pitcher or two from making some noise in the AL West (this was back when the A’s won the division every year for like six straight years)

They always had the bats but never enough pitching and always lacked the fielders. But they were charming. I used to go to old Arlington Stadium. My first game there was a double header experience with Nolan Ryan pitching the nightcap after Charlie Hough pitched during the day game. We brought food and drinks into the bleachers and it was a big party. Wally Joyner and Dave Winfield played for the Angels back then–as did Luis Polonia.

This was 1989. I spent the next 6 summers in agaony watching those guys lose. But they had personalities and good players and would score 8 runs but give up 11.

But Nolan then was the big draw. Everything he did was legendary. No hitters, big curveballs for strikeouts and high heat. I remember him striking out Wade Boggs four times in a game once. It was incredible.

A true Texas Legend

Every fifth day was pure excitement. What was going to happen? What milestone were we going to see? Who could he strike out next? Alomar? Bo? Rickey? If I didn’t watch many games, I always made sure to tune in when Nolan pitched. The Rangers (and baseball) were a bigger part of my teenage years than anything else.

I even had my senior prom at The Ballpark in Arlington. Where I spent half of it looking out at the field in awe instead of dancing.

They finally made the playoffs in 96 and I was on board but the Yankees then stood in our way and the extra round of playoffs seemed to cheapen the whole affair for me. So it didn’t hurt at all during those years. I was heavy into my own life and there was the strike of ’94 and I had bigger fish to fry at that point. College was looming and as well as the necessity of getting out of my Dad’s house.

So I kept up with them but always at a distance and I didn’t even watch baseball for at least a couple of years. I knew they were good this year but in the back of my mind was a wait and see approach. They had to get through the summer first, then past the first round to peak my interest.

And sure enough they did. And sure enough they did again. And sure enough they did again.

I watched World Series and rooted for other teams and it was always great when someone beat the Yankees but it wasn’t until last month when I really understood what its like to see your hometown actually get “in.”

I almost cried after the last Yankee out. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
And it’s only now that I really understand. And its really changed my perspective on what it means to be a sports fan. I can root against the Lakers and root for the Celtics because they have a lot fo my favorite players. I was extremely happy when the Celts won the title in ’08. Because it was against the Lakers and because I liked the Celtics team.

But it wasn’t nearly the sense of satisfaction of seeing my hometown Rangers win against the dreaded Yankees (the team that always drubbed us in the mid ’90s). I felt like I had a stake in the team’s destiny. I felt like they’d won it for my grandmother who didn’t quite make it to see our favorite team make the World Series.

This girl at my job is a Yankees fan and and she’s not from New York. She’s from Tulsa. If they ‘d have won, she’d have been happy but how happy could she have been in comparison to sombeone who’s hometown wins? She’s never even been to New York. She has no real stake in it other than hating Texas (and why would anyone hate Texas? It’s the greatest country in the world)

It aint the same man. Not even close.

Now I know what it feels like to root for my home team in the World Series and now I know how it feels to be dealt a crushing blow when that World Series opponent hits a game winning home run. It hurts. And I felt it immediately, but also I felt grateful just to be in the position to feel that pain–kinda like yer first true love and consequent heartbreak.

And it hurt to see the Giants celebrate the title. It hurt almost as badly as when the Niners took the title away from the Cowboys in 1994.
(And now I have even more reasons to hate the city of San Francisco. And I thought it was because they’re stuck up and pretentious– but it runs deeper than that doesn’t it?)

Watching those teams celebrate was like watching my worst enemy get married to my one true love, and having to watch helplessly from the pews.

All you kept hearing was how SF was a baseball town and how there was gonna be a huge party when they won. I’m sorry. I’m calling bullshit. I’ve spent lots of time in San Francisco and I know their definition of a party.

It involves a lot of wine and a little bit of dope and everyone leaves around 11pm , and the party dies down around 1:15 and then people go to sleep. Fuck that. THey don’t know what partying is. I’m from Texas and I went to college in Denton and in Austin. I know a good party when I attend one and I can honeslty say that they do not know how to party in San Fran. (L.A. maybe but that usually involves cocaine–and that to me is cheating)

I’m proud of my boys though. I just wanted them to beat the Yankees and everything else was a bonus. I can’t say they’ll be back because you never know. But I thoroughly enjoyed this playoff run and I’m grateful that the Rangers gave me a reason to tune into baseball again. Congratulations on a great season fellas.

Our first true ace since the legendary Nolan Ryan

Mick

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Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish

4 Nov

I put an end finally to my facebook account. I feel free.
There reasons I had started my account were no longer applicable.
I’ve got nothing to hock on the internet and frankly it wasn’t helping me at all. So long to social networks. I wanna minimize my internet interactions to emails.

I’ll miss the pictures of everyone I can’t possibly keep up with day to day. I’ll miss the updates about so and so getting engaged. But I won’t miss the dumb posts that half of my friends put on their walls. I won’t miss the dumb posts that I caught myself leaving either.

I’m sure I can find better things to do with my time, like practicing Spanish, planning my next trip and studying for my upcoming certification tests. No room for superficial relationships right now. I need to be more present. Lock it down. Tighten up.

Mick

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Settling Down and Settling UP

13 Oct

Back in good ole’ T-town again.

After Leaving New York I foound myself in western Massachusetts.
Near Great Barrington and Monterey. The home state of the Sports Guy Bill Simmons, W.E.B. Dubois, and Jack Keroauc.

I got a chance to stay on a 200 acre farm and cool out after being in the big city (8 million people in one tiny ass island?).

It was great. Composting, feeding chickens, weeding. Cooking, Cleaning. New England itself is awesome. Lots of old school culture and history. New Englanders have a deep sense of family and history and tradition. I felt like I was in a Robert Frost poem, walking around that farm at night, eating pancakes and venison chili. It was awesome.

We ended the week by going backpacking through part of the Appalachian Trail. My friend Jer, had actually hiked the whole thing at the beginning of last decade. Turns out he has a big patch of it right in his hometown.

We started on the Connecticut side and finished up in Massachusetts. He asked if 14 miles was going to be too much and I of course was thinking 14 miles on street level. I didn’t take into account that we’d be hiking some serious mountains.

We spent the night on Mt. Racer, and this was my first overnight campout since Boy Scouts and it kinda made me wish i’d have stayed in the organization a lot longer than Webelos.

If the apocalypse ever comes I want to be with my buddy Jer, he definitely has the know how to live among the wild life. What a guy.
So after waking up on the mountain and deciding that we must descend into civilization, we hiked another 7 miles to get to his truck.

By the time it was over, my thighs were screaming at me and my feet were howling. But I’d done it. And I felt surprisingly good. Jer looked like he felt like a million bucks. The guy is priceless. Solid dude and one of my many heroes. We got back into town and he dropped me at the bus station so I could catch a ride to Toronto to catch my train.

Spent a good week in Canada on a train, drinking Jameson and having stimulating conversations. I met a lotta innaresting folks. Had some quality meals that you won’t get on AMtrak.

I took the Viarail across from Toronto to Vancouver. The staff on the train was a lively group of people, flipping in and out of French and English. I was so impressed with their fluency. Made me realize how much I want to learn French.

It was astoundingly pretty for the first day, quiet and flat the second day, and the third day was epic.

As we came into the Rockies, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I’d been wanting to see this since I’d first came into Canada and saw a postcard booklet with pictures of Canada’s version of the Rockies.

I cried for like 20 minutes, for finally accomplishing a long held goal, for feeling so small in the midst of all this beauty, crying at how ugly I’d behaved in the past couple of months. It was a religious moment. and seemed fitting to have one of those right before I crossed the border into Washington and Oregon.

[Quick side note, Winnipeg struck me as a sister city to Wichita, Kansas, while Edmonton was just like DFW. Mirror cities man it was surreal. I guess Alberta is the Texas of Canada.]

The beginning of the end of my journey

Portland was good. I’d blown all my money in New York so with the help of my Portland People, I was able to skate by with less then ten dollars to last me a week (I was lucky enough to sell some poetry books in order to afford a ticket across the border).

The wedding went well. I made some memorable goofs from a mixture of anxiety, lack of sleep and preparation, and too much booze.

For the last few months I’d been thinking that an ordained license would be just a way to ensure that my travel expenses to friend’s weddings would get paid, however the minute the procession started I knew that it was much bigger than that.

I’d basically had a spiritual menage a trois in front of all these people.
it was powerful. I’ll never look at life the same way again.

Looking out at the throng of people there to see a hitching, it threw me off a bit. They were not there to see me do stand up, or read tawdry poetry, but to see me usher two people into a journey into matrimony. It was the most nervous I’d ever been before a gig. I nearly broke when the groom looked at me with tears in his eyes during the opening of the ceremony. It went off fairly well (even when I called the bride the wrong name during the toast THRICE!!!!).

So now I’m back home. And I’m happy to be here. It was good to know I made the right decision in moving back to Tulsa. I won’t be going back to Canada anytime soon. No need to. ANd Portland is still my favorite city to visit. I plan in going back in February to see Godspeed You Black Emperor.

And it looks like I’ll be here for the next five years. In November I will take my certification test and get licensed to teach and me and Kevin Durant will make the best of our new home here in Oklahoma.

I think a good compromise will be to teach and spend my summers working on various farms across the world. Farming is in my DNA. I could feel my grandmother smiling upon my shoulders when I was taking down my laundry from the clotheslines.

I suppose the theme of this trip was growth.

Growing crops, personal growth and development, urban sprawl…..
grow or die right? Lots of changes in the works.
To be continued.
I want to become a better person.

Waking up on a mountain to see this

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NYC

20 Sep

Pretty exhausted. Leaving for the sticks tomorrow. Will be on 200 acres of farmland for the week.
NYC was done big. Spent way more money than I feel okay about admitting. Saw some old college friends. Kicked it with some old school Texas pals, making raunchy jokes and laughing too loudly at a bar. Had a lotta stimulating conversations. New Yorkers are generally pretty friendly.

New York itself is a pretty awesome place. A place I’d move to in a heartbeat if I were in my mid-20’s.
Ween was fantastic and even ran into the guy who says “I keeps it real.” on Chappelle’s “When keeping it Real goes wrong sketch.”

I’ve drank a lot, eaten a lot of late night meals and now its time to retire. Train to catch in the morning.
Fantasy team to gut. I’m gonna be getting my Thoreau on. Yea EEEee YEAHHH!!

Mick

I have friends who live in the Big Apple so I don't have to.

Quote of the week:
“If I’m going to be putting my mouth on something that wet and slimy, then I want it to sit up afterwards and say “I love you.”

Eve of Departure Part DueX

16 Sep

Bags packed (check)
Passport (check)
Tolietries (check)
Books of poetry (check)
Olympus digital camera (check)
Ordained license (check)
Suit for Wedding (check)

I guess I’m ready then. New York City here I come, and other places.

Each phase a different trip. City then country, then mountains then the West Coast again.

I had my last therapy session for a while I think. I had some fundamental issues that needed to be addressed. Basically I’d been sabotaging my happiness with unrealistic expectations, then falling into a neurotic funk if I failed to meet them.

Even when I succeeded it was on to the next project, the next city, the next woman. It really stifled me from being in the present moment. Goals are great to have but you gotta enjoy the journey. Gotta be able to enjoy where you are at the moment or at least embrace it, even when it isn’t pleasant.

That was probably my biggest lesson. That and to quit letting my little head make decisions for me (A lesson I keep relearning year in and year out).

My dick has lost all of its voting privileges when it comes to my life. It no longer has veto power. It has officially been disenfranchised worse than
Negroes in the Jim Crow South.

Any kind of back talk and it can expect a severe beating, possibly two. No more kissing and telling, no more going after emotionally unavailable women, no more complicated love stories with messy endings. I’m done with that script. Doesn’t interest me any longer.

This will be a pretty bad ass trip. Seeing old friends in New York City, getting to see Ween again on Friday. Trekking through Canada on train,
then into Portland for a wedding and good hang in the Northwest before coming back home. Yes, home. As in Tulsa.

“All we have is now. All we’ll ever have is now.” ~Flaming Lips~

"FIrst of all, I'd like to thank my Psychiatrist."

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Settlement

16 Sep

"I think Sophie may be the one Jez. I can't lose her."

We were closer to being Dwight and Angela than
Pam and Jim from “The Office.”
Or Mark and Sophie from “The Peep Show.”
I kept the blender and the kids

she kept our friends

got her own office
and visitation rights.
In the end I guess we both won.

~Edward Austin Robertson

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Five Years

30 Aug

This has been a funny five year stretch. Started off in 2006 driving away from Denton, Texas with no idea of where I was going, or if I’d be back.
I just needed the time and space to ponder my life.

Through that time there have been many affairs, romances, flings, trists.
But also lots of ups and downs. Met many new faces, and seen some older but still friendly ones quite recently. Had you told me then I’d end up in Oklahoma I’d have laughed. Oklahoma, more like Oklahomo (genous)

But its been good to me. I’ve actually thrived here in the red dirt region.

But those five years have been pretty educcational. All that traveling has been fruitful. All those experiences have paid off. And so I gathered material for my literary projects, and that’s been my main focus for the last few years.

But I’m seeing something different in my future. A life of scholarly academia. A life of teaching..corrupting young minds.

I have two more books of poetry (and possibly a best of collection) a few short stories, and a couple other projects that will be completed by next year.

Then I will dive into a full fledged career as either educator or public servant. I will spend my new found free time learning how to paint and play music. I’ll take Tai Chi classes and boxing lessons. Learn to dance the Merengue, Tango and Salsa.

I will save up money to travel during the summers, and slowly paying off that debt accumulated in the past decade.

This fall I’ll be leaving for the east coast. I will be in upstate New York. I will be in Massachusetts, I will be on a train going through the Canadian Rockies. Hopefully the Borealis will meet me there, to finish a conversation we started back in Fairbanks, Alaska–circa ’08.

The end of this era of Bobb is slowly approaching. The next few months are going to be a lot of fun.

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