You ll probably see no new posts until March 22 – unless I m so inspired to write the I cannot wait to post – which is possible. At any rate, this will give all of you time to catch up on posts. Interesting stuff is coming!!

Todays “event of the day” happened late in the evening. I had gone into town for dinner, and possible dancing. After dinner I decided I was just too tired to go dancing and then walk back home, so I left just as things were kicking off about 10:30 pm.

Once home I unpacked the supplies I had purchased, and reclined in the hammock. I lay in the hammock, swaying in the night breeze, listening to the cicadas and the occasional sound of music from Chicos, wafting up from Montezuma below me. I was thoroughly enjoying the music of the street party I had left 45 minutes before. Suddenly I heard a heavy sounding “THUD” in the house. It was an odd sound – it sounded like something heavy AND soft. I looked to my left and saw a dark shape, about 4″ long inside the house. As I watched, it disappeared – and there was another THUD. I went inside to investigate, and could see that it was a frog. Of course, it went into hiding, and I could not locate it.

My Evening Visitor

An hour later, as I was preparing for bed I searched for it again. No luck – it was well hidden. “OK” I thought, I guess I’ll be sleeping with a frog in the house tonight – perhaps I’ll close the bedroom door.

I went into the bedroom – and heard a THUD in the bedroom. It sounded like it was coming from above the built in shelves that hold my clothing, so I stood on the bed to look on top. Sure enough, it was the frog. Somehow he had gotten to the top of the shelves – 7 feet off the ground!! How?

Mindful of the fact that some frogs here can be poisonous, I fetched a broom intending to encourage it to the floor, and then out of the house. As I brought the broom near it, it jumped again – and I instantly understood how it had gotten to the top of the shelves. It jumped from the top shelf to the ceiling, and stayed there!!!! This was not like any frog I had ever seen – that’s for sure. I could see that it had little circular pads on each “finger/toe” – and they functioned like suction cups. So I chased it around the room for quite a while. I’m sure that anyone watching would have found the scene hysterical! This little guy could jump 3-4 feet at a time, and could attach to ANY surface – vertical, horizontal, whatever. It was a tree frog, and that’s how they get around the jungle.

Eventually I got it out of the house. I took some photos early on in the comedy, but missed some great shots while I was encouraging it to leave. This amazing creature could be about 6-7″ long when it stretched it’s limbs – or it could fold everything together and become a soft, 2″ lump- no longer distinguishable as a frog.

I enjoyed the encounter, and (the next day) I showed the photo to Alex, who has lived here his whole life. “What kind of frog is this” I asked. His reply – “I have no idea, I’ve never seen one like that before”.  Amazing. A life long resident of this locale, as surprised and dumbfounded as I. Now THAT is the nitty gritty of biodiversity. Three months into my journey, this place still amazes me. I have a feeling that it never ends!

I was walking to town in the late afternoon, still on the long driveway, when I heard a voice up ahead. As I rounded one of the bends in the driveway, I saw Rosa, the housekeeper. She had stopped on the driveway, and was speaking to someone on her cellphone. She gestured for me to stop, pointing into the jungle. I thought she was showing me some bird or animal – but it turned out that she wanted some help knocking some mangos off a tree. She had located a 20′ piece of bamboo, and she wanted me to help her retrieve the mangos. After a few amusing attempts we succeeded. I did not notice that one end of the bamboo was more slender than the others – Rosa laughed, saying “David, La Punta”. The bamboo was indeed easier to manage with the point up! Duh!!

So we retrieved a half dozen mangos, and walked toward the main road. A short time later, she stopped and pointed into the jungle to my left. After a few seconds, I was able to see what she was indicating – it was a Mot Mot, beautiful! I asked her what it was called in Spanish – she had no idea. I told her that it was called a Mot Mot in English. She repeated it once or twice and that was it.

I have wanted to write about Rosa and her relationship to the natural world for weeks now. She, and the other locals here, have been great teachers to me. They are truly PART of the natural world in a way that we in the developed world have forgotten. They do not even realize how remarkable and different they are – to them it is normal.

I first noticed this almost 2 months ago. One morning I saw a coyote on my dawn walk. More accurately, an agitated monkey pointed it out to me. I wrote about it in the blog. Later that day, I saw Rosa and she told me she had seen a coyote as she was walking in to work. Understand that Rosa, unlike me, does not have time in her day to sit in the jungle and wait. I suspect she did this training much earlier in life, in her childhood. So she notices everything in the jungle as she is walking. I have watched her. She does not look for things. She is attentive and her attention is drawn by movement or changes. On that day, the presence of the coyote drew her attention. She is not focused on looking – rather her attention is drawn to activity. My sense is that she is part of the jungle, her field of awareness is very large and includes the natural world. I have noticed this with all the other locals – they are really part of the landscape, and it is part of them. they notice changes in the natural world, the way I might notice an insect walking on my skin. It’s almost as though the boundary that separates them from the natural world does not exist – or at least it is very porous.

This learning has begun to figure large in my book. The barriers of separation between the locals and the natural world are weak to non-existent. I believe this is something we need to recover. To survive and correct our relationship to the biosphere, we must recover our sense of unity, of inclusion in the natural world. To me, this seems like the proper relationship of (hu)man to the garden of eden. It is what we lost when we shifted our attention totally to our minds, ignoring our connection to all that is.

One other aspect of this is the joy. In my view, Joy is a characteristic of being present. If we are present, aware, connected we exist in a state of Being – and one of the attributes of this state is Joy.

One day last week, Rosa noticed that I was not my happy self. She asked me (in Spanish, she speaks not a word of English) if I was happy. “No” I admitted. I asked her if she was happy, and her response was unforgettable – “Todo de dias” – I am happy everyday!!! What an amazing statement. I, child of the developed world, with all the comforts, money and luxury that accompanies my privileged existence cannot say that. But she can. She is alive, connected always to the larger world. As I said, Rosa has been a powerful teacher for me. I understand the teachings hidden in her smiles and her laughter – she often laughs at me – we children of the developed world are a bit odd, and quite amusing apparently. I am grateful for her presence here.

For the first time in over a decade I woke up with a mild hangover. Not surprising, considering I had less 4 hours of sleep when the rising sun blazed through the wall of glass that forms the east facing wall of my new home. And not a bad hangover- just a bit of a headache and a general lassitude as I went through my morning routine. But enough of a hangover to shape my day. (and no, I do not regret a thing about last night!) Today would be a day of research and contemplation. I dove (slowly, gently … eased would probably be a better word) into research into Biomimicry.

Biomimicry is a new science that studies natures design models. Its’ fundamental focus is radically different from the prevalent worldview that looks at nature as a collection of free resources, from which we extract value. Instead the focus is on systems, and on what we can learn from nature and natural systems. A key premise is that natural systems have evolved over billions of years, so the designs have been tested, each designs’ quality evaluated and refined over millions of cycles. The testing done over the life of the universe, the discarding of ineffective designs, the promotion of effective ones has been done for us – if only we are humble enough to observe and learn. It is this shift, from that of the arrogant user of nature, to the awestruck student that makes all the difference. It is also not new – “primitive” peoples, cultures and shaman have understood this long before we conquered and replaced them.

I have mentioned Permaculture before in my posts. Permaculture falls into the category of Biomimicry, and there are many others as well. And Permaculture is one of the organizational principles of the Transition Movement. Like all true paradigm shifts, Biomimicry exposes unstated assumptions that limit our perspective, and our options.

For example, consider one of our “great” achievements – modern agriculture. We crow about the advances in productivity as we’ve developed synthetic fertilizers (fossil fuel based), herbicides (same), pesticides (same), mechanization (same) and increased groundwater usage (same). We assume that we understand the components, as we have dissected them, and that we can selectively enhance some of them without impacting the whole. For the past decades we have ignored the unintended consequences of a fundamental flaw in our approach. The flaw is our view of the natural world simply as a collection of resources to be used and manipulated. We have not understood, systems and synergy. The consequences will be the downfall of modern industrial agriculture.

Our fundamental design is monoculture on increasingly massive scales. Monoculture depletes the nutrients in the soil, indeed it results in massive losses of topsoil each year. It strips the soil of it’s ability to retain water – thus requiring the use of and ever increasing depletion of groundwater, pumped from deep in the earth with the aid of fossil fuels. Our modern approach (agriculture as business) is limited by our view of the natural world simply as a collection of resources to be used as we wish. We do not respect or appreciate the integrated nature of the natural systems. Instead, we dissect and utilize the parts that seem useful to us, while discarding the wholeness of the integrated system. And that has begun to generate the inevitable unintended consequences.

Modern industrial scale agribusiness is having problems. Costs are increasing. Yields are falling from their peak. Natural resources (like the nutrient rich topsoil that we started with 100 years ago) are disappearing. For example millions of tons of un-anchored topsoil are blowing or washing away each year, requiring ever increasing application of synthetic (fossil fuel based) fertilizers. Of course, the ever increasing need for man made fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, large fossil fuel based farm equipment, engineered seeds (annuals not perennials) is good for business – for agribusiness and its’ petrochemical owners. Not so good for the family farm. And an unfolding disaster for the rich natural resources we inherited just a handful of generations ago.

Thankfully, a small (and rapidly growing) segment of scientists, researchers and farmers are beginning to adopt a new approach to solving the issues created by agribusiness and monoculture farming. These are the people who understand synergy. They understand that the natural world is an expression of unity, that it is a completely integrated system. They appreciate the multi billion dollar testing effort that these systems represent, and they humble themselves in awe of the resulting designs. The result of these systems is far, far greater than the sum of the components – and the replenish themselves. They do not require the constant addition of nutrients. They are naturally resilient and resistant to drought, insects, and disease. And we have nearly destroyed them.

Of course, Biomimicry extends to other areas in addition to Permaculture, but the above is a good representative summary of the growing issues and the wonders that are possible if we make this fundamental paradigm shift – from users to students, from arrogance to humility.

Today, as I recover from the excesses of last night, I celebrate the work of this new wave of scientists, researchers and farmers who are courageous enough to recognize that we, with our 10,000 year history and limited understanding, cannot compete with results of the 4,000,000,000 year research, design and testing effort of Gaia. It is high time we recognized ourselves and our limits. We are newcomers, childish in our understanding and hampered by our arrogance. It is time to humble ourselves in awe before the natural designs with which we have been gifted, and to accept a new role as simply ignorant students at the feet of a real master – Gaia.

After good day of writing, and several days of isolation I was ready for some fun and interaction so I wandered down the hill into Montezuma for drinks and dinner. I intended to do a little shopping after dinner and return by 9pm or so. As things turned out, much more was in store.

The walk into town was pleasant. As we approach the equinox, the sunset is later each day, even this close to the equator, so I was able to take my time, enjoying the walk and arrived well before darkness fell. I spent a little time at Chicos, sipping a beer and watching the interactions as darkness fell. Enrique wandered in with his cooler of fresh made ceviche and a couple of new American tourists in tow, announcing himself with his characteristic shouting voice. I watched another Tico, one who spoke some English, move in (Enrique speaks no English at all), establishing rapport with the tourists and presenting his pitch as a potential driver for their return to San Jose (I make you special deal – only $150 US !). It was all very normal, comforting in a way, watching the people of this place do their relaxed hustle. For whatever reason, I was so struck by my feelings for this town. I really love this dusty, primitive, marginally functional place SO much!

My plan was to eat at Cocolores, so I moved on and grabbed a seat at a kind of bar/counter that faces the sea. I have found that, since I often eat alone, counters are better seating arrangements because they open up the possibility of meeting new folks, and that was really true on this evening!

First I met Rob, who has not worked since 2001. Prior to that he was a consultant for Anderson (now Accenture) and had traveled widely in that role, mostly in SE Asia. He was fascinating – very bright and personable. A mountain climber, he has climbed Mt. Everest (turned back 400 meters from the summit) and has actually summit a number of other major peaks around the world. I really enjoyed our conversation. The world became very small when I discovered that he knows Castle Rock, and travels there roughly 4 times each year since he has family there. It was quite a connection and I look forward to getting together with him in Castle Rock later this year.

At some point in our conversation, two Canadians from Vancouver, young women sitting to my right, joined in the conversation. Things proceeded as they do here, and the three of us ended up going to their place for drinks, and then Candace and I went to Chicos to enjoy the music and dancing. It was a really nice evening of sharing – history, travels, dreams and aspirations punctuated with dancing (GREAT music) and an occasional interruption by a handsome young Tico who periodically came by to hit on Candace. I was amused – I had seen him around, on the beach with his young friends, and it was fascinating to watch him make his moves. We ended up closing up Chicos and talking a bit more afterwards. We had a lovely connection – I am sorry she is leaving in just another day. It would be nice to get together again – but that is the story of Montezuma. People, their stories and beauty arrive, share and depart. It is a place that reminds one constantly of the transience, impermanence and beauty of life.

When I departed, the streets of Montezuma were completely empty (never seen that before!). I wandered back up the hill at 3am and did not see a soul. The grand finale was an amazing walk through a jungle that seemed strange and new – filled with the strange cries and sounds from the throats and bodies of those creatures who claim it after midnight. I was home.

I’ve been contemplating greed for the past few days. So greed is the subject of this post – but you’ll notice an undercurrent of something else … anger. I am tired of apologists, of the endless stream of justifications that are put forward in defense of greed. I probably spent a bit too much time last week reading comments posted by readers on mainstream media sites in response to stories, and this fed my anger. I do realize that reading comments on a news website does not present an accurate picture of the real capabilities of “average” people (whatever that means), but the picture – of an obstinate refusal to recognize the sources of an issue, to integrate multiple sources of information and to think critically- is distressing. I read comments blaming the new US president for the deficits and economic meltdown and wonder what planet they have been on for the past decade. But more than that, I am angry because these people must be accepted and treated equally, even as they obstruct the path to any possible solution with their blame games. It does make me angry, and I apologize if this colors this post – but so be it. End of rant

Greed is, of course, very much in the news. We are all very upset that GDP growth is declining and going negative, profits are down, businesses are closing, jobs are disappearing. And underlying the whole drama is greed. Greed created this immediate situation in the first place. Short term returns for speculators, real estate agents, banks and investment houses overcame any sense of morality or common sense. And greed is the source of much pain and panic now, as we, all of us, come to terms with a world of increased uncertainty and greatly diminished expectations. I wonder when a wave of rage will arise – demanding that those few who received the ill gotten (and obscenely large) gains return them and pay some consequence, any consequence, for their greed. If and when it happens, it will surely be ugly. But that is not really the topic of this post either.

In the natural world I do not see much sign of greed – none as a matter of fact. Yesterday a troop of cappuchin monkeys passed by my house, foraging for food. They took only what they needed – leaving plenty of ripe fruit for the next monkeys (or humans) who came by. Only in the human world does this passion rear its’ ugly face. Only humans desire, and “need” to acquire more and more – money, possessions, power. Our greed is driven from a fundamental sense of insufficiency, the root of so many of our problems.

I’ve been considering greed because the results of greed are rocking the entire global economic system at this time. Security and perpetual growth are being exposed for what they are – illusions.

Greed is what ultimately created the housing bubble. Of course it has done much, much more harm, and has been doing so for decades. It is greed that has driven jobs offshore, from one 3^rd world country to another to another, always seeking the lowest labor cost for the benefit of upper management and shareholders. It is greed that allows us to accept, to justify, social inequities. It is greed that drives us to clear cut forests without regard for the value of the free services that the forest provides. It is greed that has driven our consumption obsessed culture – we can never have enough. The ache within us is bottomless. And the damage that is done in the name GDP growth and profits is horrific.

However we are part of the natural world, a world that has no use for profits, fancy derivatives, earning reports or other modern human constructs. The natural world knows only balance – it always seeks balance. And what we are now witnessing are the initial stages of balance being restored. And balance will be restored – with as little respect for our desires as we have shown respect for the natural world.

In our greedy pursuit of profits and comforts, we have devastated our planet. In order to fuel our growth, we have depleted fossil fuel reserves patiently accumulated over hundreds of millions of years by natural processes. After our profit making we leave behind earth that is scorched and barren (have you ever seen a oil field when an oil company has completed extracting all the oil it “owns”?). To allow the extraction of the minerals and any other resources we “need” in order to meet our growth targets, mountainsides have been ripped open, reducing the ability of the earth to moderate water flow. The endless stream of waste we produce is shoved out of sight by for profit companies – poisoning our water supplies, polluting the ocean. Vast areas of the ocean (hundreds of square miles) are now floating waste dumps. Our “for profit” industries take their profits and dump massive amounts of poisons into the water. and onto the land. Greed in the form of shareholder returns, provides an acceptable framework for them to act in this way. Eventually the companies go “bankrupt”, leaving behind a devastated landscape and toxic Superfund sites to be cleared at government expense – except that never seems to happen. The list of the injustices and horrors that have resulted from uncontrolled greed seems endless. But it will end, and balance will be restored.

How is balance restored? Climate change is a one example of the balancing process that has begun. As greenhouse gases accumulate at every increasing rates, the global homeostasis is disrupted. Since the earth is an enormous self regulating system, temperatures rise in some areas, fall in others- but the bottom line is that more energy (heat) is available to power the system. More energy means more storms, more powerful storms. And the disruptions to the previous balance (homeostasis) mean more wild fluctuations as the global system seeks to find a new equilibrium.

It’s nothing personal. The earth doesn’t know about or care about greed. It just operates according to natural laws, and those laws require that balance be restored – as it will be. In the process of re-balancing more and more businesses, regions and countries will be disrupted – until ultimately we are all forced to adjust. There is no place for greed in the natural world. Sooner or later (perhaps too late) we will learn that lesson.

Well I’m moved into my new digs… quite nice, and very different. My new space is very airy, bright, and does not have as much outside living space. It will be an adjustment, as I have become accustomed to being outdoors, in the elements all the time. However, the new space does have huge double doors which open fully, so it is not all that different. The living space is very beautiful – lots and lots of gorgeous wood everywhere, and a huge common space (probably 15′ x 30′). I also have a much stronger internet connection here- which will be a pleasure.

I thought I’d begin posting with something different this time. I was digging around on the Transition site last week and stumbled across this (below). I thought it was a wonderful contemplation on our connection to everything, and wanted to share it. Rather than post a link, I’ve excerpted it in full, with credit. Enjoy !!

“Connecting with Earth – the lyrical journey of the carbon atom“

- From the Transition Initiatives Primer
- Produced by the Transition Network

Carbon is the building block of life, and here is a phase in its never-ending journey, adapted from an essay by Primo Levi.

“If ever you thought you were unconnected to the planet, this essay should put you right, for you have around 700,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 carbon atoms in your body (representing 10% of your mass), each of which has already performed countless dances not unlike the one you’re about to read…”

“Our atom of carbon lies for hundreds of millions of years, bound to three atoms of oxygen and one of calcium, in the form of limestone not too far from the earth’s surface. At any moment a blow of a pick axe detaches it and sends it on its way to the lime kiln, plunging it into the world of things that change. It is roasted and, still clinging to its oxygen companions, is issued from the chimney and takes the path of the air. Its story, which once was immobile, has now turned tumultuous.

It was caught by the wind, flung down on the earth and lifted ten kilometres high. It was breathed in by a falcon, descended into its precipitous lungs, but did not penetrate its rich blood and was expelled.

It dissolved three times in the water of the sea, once in the water of a cascading torrent, and again was expelled. It travelled with the wind for eight years: now high, now low, on the sea and among the clouds, over forests, deserts, and limitless expanses of ice; then it stumbled into capture and the organic adventure.

The atom we are speaking of was borne by the wind along a row of vines. It had the good fortune to brush against a leaf, penetrate it, and be nailed there by a ray of the sun.

Now our atom has formed part of a molecule of glucose. It travels from the leaf to the trunk, and from here descends to the almost ripe bunch of grapes. What then follows is the province of the winemakers.

It is the destiny of wine to be drunk. Its drinker kept the molecule in his liver for more than a week, well curled up and tranquil, as reserve energy for a sudden effort; an effort that he was forced to make the following Sunday, pursuing a bolting horse…

The atom was dragged by the bloodstream all the way to a minute muscle fibre in the thigh… and later, as carbon dioxide, was breathed back into the air.

Once again the wind, which this time travels far, sails over the Apennines and the Adriatic, Greece, the Aegean, and Cyprus: we are over Lebanon. And the dance is repeated.

The atom now penetrates and is trapped by the venerable trunk of a cedar, one of the last. It could stay in the cedar for up to 500 years but let us say that after twenty years a wood worm has taken interest in it and swallowed it.

The woodworm then formed a pupa, and in the spring it came out in the shape of a moth which is now drying in the sun, confused and dazzled by the splendour of the day. Our atom is in one of the insect’s thousand eyes.

When the insect dies, it falls to the ground and is buried amongst the undergrowth of the woods. Here are at work the omnipresent, untiring and invisible micro organisms of the humus. The moth has slowly disintegrated and the atom has once again taken wing.

It takes to the air… and eventually comes to rest on the surface of the ocean, then sinks slowly. A passing coccolithophore appropriates the atom to build its impossibly delicate shell of calcium carbonate. Soon it too dies and glides to the bottom of the ocean, where it is compacted with its trillion companions and their own carbon atoms.

In geological time, tectonic plate movements bring this sediment, now as chalky cliffs, to the surface of the earth, exposing our atom once more to the possibility of flight in the complex dance of life.”

- end excerpt -

Our bodies, with which we are so identified, are composed of a “bazillion” atoms, each of which has done a dance like this for billions of years. We are truly linked to everything that was and will be.

Sorry to those of you who may have become attached to a daily doses of my adventures on this journey, but I need to take some time away from the blog. I should be back in a few days.
In the meantime, I’d suggest you subscribe to the blog (click the RSS link at the very bottom of the web pages). This will notify you when I have begun posting again. If you prefer not to do this, then just check back in a few days.

On March 1 I will be relocated to a new house on the same property, and should begin posting again.

Today’s blog is a small vignette about traveling to the Fiesta. My plan was to catch the last bus out of Montezuma to Cobano- shortly after sunset. As I was waiting for the bus, a young couple approached and asked whether the bus had passed. I responded, “no” and we waited together, in the falling light. A pickup truck had pulled up between us, and parked. When the driver emerged, he took several minutes to prepare, then began to drive off. At this moment, the young man of the couple shouted out something and went running after the truck. The truck stopped, he spoke with the driver and in a few seconds shouted back to us that we could get a ride to the Fiesta in the truck. As I approached the truck and prepared to get in the pickup bed, the young woman – nicely dressed in a slinky black dress, stopped me. She indicated that I should sit in the cab with the driver. I asked – “Why”. She made no reply, just a smile and a gesture indicating that she was fine. I was more than a little conflicted, but it soon became very clear that she and her friend were determined to ride in the back. So, she and her boyfriend climbed in the back of the truck, and I jumped in the cab, and off we drove.

As with so many vehicles here, the shock absorbers in this pickup were completely shot. Even in my seat each bump was bone shaking. I was concerned about her for the whole trip. From time to time I glanced back, to see if they were alright – if they were even still present. Each time I looked back, they were happily smiling and(somehow) conversing.

The road is rocky and unbelievably rough. Since we are in the middle of the dry season, huge clouds of dust were kicked up by us, and by passing vehicles. It was a real dust bath. To make things even more interesting, we took a shortcut, on a road I had traveled one other time with Carolina. This road was, if it is even possible, even rougher and dustier. It included interesting surprises like a pair of Ticos leading a group of horses away from the fiesta down the middle of the road, and the crossing of a (currently dry) creek bed.

We arrived safely, and the young woman got out of truck bed, dusted herself off and smiled. “Was everything ok?” I asked. “Yes”, they both assured me. The ride in the dusty hard truck bed was fine. We helped the elderly driver find a space to park his truck, and offered thanks. He wanted nothing in return.

We parted ways at that point – they were going to the bullring before dancing. I was going to eat. I never saw them again that night, but I thought about their generosity all evening. What an amazing place, where they would give a complete stranger a seat, in the ride that they arranged, and expect nothing in return but a smile.

This is a country where generosity of spirit comes easily. It is no wonder that I love this place and am so inspired by it.

I have been intensely focused on my book for the last couple of days, and have had no energy at all for writing the blog. And my personal process has been intense as well – both locally, and dealing with events on the home front, so apologies for the lack on new entries here. I have not forgotten the blog- I just took a break from it for a couple of days.

First, a little business. I have spoken in glowing terms about where I am living, and about the owners of this bit of paradise- Alex and Khalida – many times. Alex has contributed a great deal of local and historical information which I have conveyed in these posts. Thank you Alex!! I realize that I have neglected to put a link to their website anywhere in this blog, and I’d like to pass that on now. You can go to www.aguavistacr.com to learn more about this spectacular cluster of cabinas in paradise.

Tonight I went into Montezuma in the evening. I needed a break – from reading, writing, cooking – everything. After a little time in Chicos, attended to by my favorite bartender there (Tesla – it’s great fun to watch her interact with customers). I went to Cocolores. I had to wait for 30 minutes for a table there- not surprising, as it is one of the two best restaurants in Montezuma, and the candle lit wait was so very pleasant.

Cocolores has class. It is run by Italian ex-pats, the food is excellent and the ambiance superb. As with everything here, the dining area is open air. It is set off the main street, and one approaches on a path lit by candles surrounded by colored paper “shades”. The music is upscale, often jazz- and the atmosphere is always festive. The dining area is filled with the sounds of discussion, laughter – and on this evening, with young people feeling on top of the world in their lives. As is often the case, I am alone so I can observe, catching the conversations and watching the interactions.

Tonight the people are lovely – having fun, not a care in the world. One group in particular interests me. They are a mix of Americans and Canadians, in their late 20′s, and I enjoy watching them play at being “sophisticated” – for example, mocking the fact that the wine list contains only 2 items – a red and a white. And I watch the courtship games that are playing out, and the styles of each player. It is entertaining, and I linger past the end of my meal, fascinated.

But my fascination is mixed with sadness. Like so many of us visiting from the developed world, they are privileged. What is sad is that they are seemingly unaware of their privileged status and it’s transitory nature. They do not realize that it will be coming to an end. So, in the moment, they are having a riotously good time. I enjoy that moment vicariously. I celebrate it with them in smailes and laughter. But I wonder, how will they react when the party is over? I wonder that about all of us, myself included.