30th december

I dreamt I had five cars!
The jeep turns up at about 4pm with 18 tins of beer and some ice. Dave Jr is the driver. He also rolls a couple of joints so we get drunk and stoned. Through his drug induced altered perception of reality, he decides cooking on a wood-burning stove is fun and wants to have a meal. I am starving and I welcome any pastime that is in any way, shape or form food-related. He wants chips so he pours all the available vegetable oil into the frying pan with the intention of deep-frying the chips in the frying pan. He puts noodles in a pot on the other hot plate but the fire is not going properly yet and is only burning on one plate so even I can see that the noodles are going to be a long time before they are ready. He eats half the chips before they are cooked. I eat the other half. They actually taste like what they are - hot potatoes covered in grease, but I'm starving so I don't care. Anyway, grease fills you up between meals without ruining your appetite!
He uses three packets of sauce on the noodles - I usually use half a packet! The fire is struggling so I get some twigs and some cardboard to give it a boost. He opens the stove at the front and blows through the grate. I open it from the side and blow from the side and we are alternating breaths - working well together here... until something goes wrong and I'm ready to blow just as he blows ash in my face. Then, I’m inhaling as he blows again unexpectedly quickly. I poke around a little bit with a screwdriver and the cardboard comes to life with a blaze. He blows again and singes the hairs on my hand. Bloody hell - evolution didn't take this long! I knew it was going wrong and had experience with the stove to do it properly, but it was funnier to participate than to manage.
On the veranda, he's talking crap.
“Hey Dave, can you see that tree?”
You would think that is a pretty stupid thing to say in rain forest! Or in the dark? Especially both! “I can’t see anything, it’s pretty dark.” Had the drugs given him night vision? “Which one?”
“The silhouette. I think it looks like Donkey Kong.” He is making shapes from the treetops’ silhouettes against the slightly lighter sky behind as dusk dies away. He finally manages to explain which tree it is.
I don’t see Donkey Kong anywhere.
“Can you see the owl eating the mouse with a ‘D’ for digital viewing?” he continues.
I can actually see that. “Yep, but I don’t see the ‘d’ for digital viewing.”
“Oh yeah, its there. Right there.” He points. Pointing in the dark at something two hundred metres away, in the general scheme of things, is not a great use of ones time. I can see the owl eating the mouse but I don’t see Donkey Kong eating Barbie. Anyone else noticed the food theme here? Something tells me he is still hungry.
There is a tree much closer to the balcony that has a slender trunk and only sparse branches, two of which seem to reach out to me. In the morning, the dew hangs off a pretty mean looking spiders web worked beneath the armpit of one of the main branches. To me it seems to have arms that are welcoming a congregation.
“Can you see my preacher,” I ask him.
“Where? Oh this one here? That’s a good call. No, wait. That’s not a preacher, that’s a ballerina.”
I look at my tree. A ballerina? Yep, yep, that’s a good one, Dave.
I might let him have that.

29th december

It is becoming difficult to keep track of the days. I don't even wear a watch because I don't need to. I get up with the sun, eat when I'm hungry, drink when I'm thirsty, write if I want to, go for a walk when I want, go into town if I need to, and go to bed when I'm tired which is usually two or three hours after sunset. I am reverting to hunter-gatherer mode. Maybe my socialising skills will fail me and I’ll forget how to communicate in anything other than a series of grunts. Maybe I’ll yet be that caveman I aspire to be…
I poured myself a mug full of orange cordial and went to sit on the balcony where I could wave at the world going by. I took a gulp and got my ‘hit’ at the back of the throat but then it occurred to me that although it is coloured orange, the orange cordial doesn’t taste on bit like orange. I wonder if that is a loophole. There might not be any orange fruit basis to the drink at all and on that basis they could sell other drinks such as ‘green’, ‘blue’ and ‘ultramarine’.
“Got any orange?”
“Sorry guv, right out! How about a nice refreshing glass of green? Fix ya right up, it will! Or I can do you a nice ‘mauve’ and ice, if you want.”
I feel like wearing some different clothes so I check through the wardrobe to see what I haven't worn yet. I am horrified to find that some of my better clothes that I haven’t yet worn and the necklaces are going mouldy! I wash everything immediately and hang them up, hoping that they have a chance to dry soon.
While checking for dryness, I extravagantly pull a drying shirt off the balcony rail and accidentally swipe a crusty nest that was clinging to the underside of one of the roof beams. Basically, I succeeded in ripping it apart and a swarm of buzzy things flew out in alarm. I backed off but they didn’t seem interested in me. Rather, they just buzzed around, wasp-like but smaller, and I was pretty sure without the sting. They seemed to just hang around aimlessly for a while and, to be honest, I got bored long before they did anything.
“Sorry guys,” I say to them as I disappear. “ Hope I haven’t given you too much work to do.”
When the stove is struggling to kick off as it is now, smoke is everywhere and I need to get a flow through the house to shift it, hence the open door. Having nipped outside to top up my lungs with oxygen, I can see that the smoke does not seem to be lighter than air – it is not going away, but rather it seems to sit on the ground or worse still, rolls down hill to rest on the water’s surface. There is next to no wind and won’t dissipate. When the wind does blow, the smoke is pushed and pulled back and forth because of the irregular currents and swirls in this bowl of low land and water bounded by trees. It tends to surround the point of origin in an ever-increasing radius, just getting thinner and thinner. It doesn’t chug away in a neat orderly queue into the sky like its suppose to.
From time to time, people walk past while this phenomena is continuing and they either slow down as their oxygen intake suffers or they speed up to avoid choking. When I see this happening, I hide to conceal my guilt and general European incompetence at being unable to light a fire. It is only when the wood really starts to burn that the flames kick in and smoke production ceases and this gives the vale a chance to clear.
I blame the wood. I haven’t had any dry wood left for a long time and so I’m reduced to trying to coax the wet stuff to burn. It ain’t easy.

28th december

More dreams - I was operating a woman around a racing circuit by remote control. She went from last to first on one corner.
What on earth does that say about me? Remote controlled woman – that’s just wishful thinking!
A guy comes down the road today and stands at the barbed wire fence shouting for Over. Over isn’t there – presumably in the plantation somewhere – so obviously can’t hear. This guy won’t give in so, blaspheming to myself, I approach him to help him. I mean, I’m so busy – I haven’t got time for this.
“Hola,” I volunteer.
“Hola,” he says, looking me up and down.
”¿Cómo esta?” I offer.
“¿Sí gracias, y tu?” He replies.
“Si, muy bien, gracias.” This is going well, I stupidly think to myself. I wait for him to speak.
“¿Vengo por blah de blah de blah de blah de Over?” he says innocently.
Ha! “¡No esta aquí!” He isn’t here. I know I got that one right even though I have no idea what he just said!
“¿En el campo?”
Ah, I think. In the field. “Sí, esta en el campo,” I echo. Hey, this guy probably assumes I’m a Spanish native.
“Ah,” he murmured thoughtfully. And then he went off. “Quisiera something something something something something something something.” He pauses for breath. “Something something something something something,” and then casts a meaningful glance down the lane, pointing. “Something, something, something, something, something,” and so on and so on. When he hasd finished his eloquent (and embarrassingly long) monologue, he looks at me expectantly.
“¿Como se llama?” I ask him. What is your name?
“Ralfa,” he replies. I am doing ok. The way I see it, two people can be perfectly happy with any conversation on a short-term basis as long as the one who knows what he is talking about doesn’t find out that the other doesn’t have a clue. Everyone will go away happy. I am on a roll and thought I’d take a chance.
“Bueno. Me diré que fue aquí.” I will tell myself that you were here.
Blown it! It hasn’t worked. He looks me up and down and a snigger struggles to remain suppressed. The sentence hadn’t felt quite right anyway - must brush upon my reflexives. We both laugh. We stand around and chat for about ten minutes and at some points I’m doing ok and a couple of times I just pleaded stupidity, just some dumb American (I think it’s what they want to hear - the English are pretty much an unknown quantity in Costa Rica.). It was a giggle and it has brightened up my day a little. Ironically, I forget to tell Over that Ralfa has been here.
I am still burning on the wood stove and cooking on it. (I’m not actually burning … the wood is). Everywhere and everything smells of smoke and there is a thicker-than-ever layer of ash everywhere throughout the house, especially the ground floor.

Oh poor Antony! The bees have appeared and want their hive back. Unfortunately, they deserted it without leaving any presence so according to jungle law; it is anyone’s to inherit. But then, they are much bigger than the ants and they start pushing their weight around. Will it be war?

27th december

Dawn arrived and perfunctorily donned its grey morning suit. It rained all day so I wrote all day. I am habitually hanging out the bed sheets to air because they are getting so damp but it is consistently raining so it doesn't seem to make any difference.
Antony ant is holding a council of war today… but I wrote something else. A short story called the second stage.

The second stage
The beautiful spring day radiated with summer’s imperfections as it finalised its plans to banish winter’s asperity. The sun shone keenly in the azure sky until interrupted once again by the nonchalant clouds, hurrying on their way to nowhere much. April’s children were kept reminded of the transitory nature of its warmth as patches of shade on the ground followed today’s mandatory route, slightly different tomorrow. This year’s lambs frolicked and gambolled in the meadow, excitable doves did their tumbling for the benefit of all onlookers, or nobody in particular, and early spring flowers, keen to blossom tanned themselves by gazing at the sun all day, even when it wasn’t there. The bees had woken up from their winter dreamtime. The world continued as it always had, and as it was supposed to. Shoppers shopped, drivers drove, and all the people who worked were working. Birds flew and chirruped, cows ate grass and the rivers flowed. Cars travelled around, factories chugged away and the wind blew.
The world was several thousand years old according to the religious clerics and everything created by God. According to the scientists, the world was 4.6 billion years old and evolved by chance and a set of vague rules. We wondered who was right. Fact versus faith? Sammy had often pondered how either could claim ultimate responsibility for all the astonishing things he had beheld in his short life.
But unbeknown to the religious community and to the scientific community, there was a third reality that was about to become evident to the people of the earth.
How did the race of giant Superbeings make themselves known to us? I’m not really sure – it seems they were there all along. They were clearly of a much higher intelligence than us. They knew more than we did and when they told us what to do and how to act, we felt obliged to listen.
Perhaps it was in the form of a subliminal message that they informed us that the existence we call civilisation was merely their creation – a videogame- and that humankind had progressed well enough to reach the end of stage one. And so it was that the calm realisation was inserted simultaneously into the minds of all the people of the world:

“You have reached the end of stage one and now it is time to move into the second stage. We have wonders for you in the new age. New technologies will make your life unimaginably easier. We have machines that will think for you. We have computers that will make your decisions for you and medicines that can ease your moods. Let us manage you. Come with us and see.”

And all the people of the world turned to each other in congratulation as though it was a pleasant surprise. “Wow”, the people said, “The world is just a video game. Who would have thought it? Let’s see what the second stage is like." And the people were happy because they felt that they had been successful. You must be successful to pass a stage, after all, and this the Superbeings had confirmed.
All at once, the scenery transformed and everything changed colour and took on a fluorescent appearance. The green fields turned yellow and the blue sky turned grey. The trees turned to metal, the animals to concrete and the sea turned black.
Only Sammy wasn’t convinced. How did they do that, he wondered. It wasn't that anybody had said anything, and it wasn't a giant message in the sky that had made people realise. Perhaps they used radio waves, he thought to himself. Heaven knows there are more than enough inescapable signals drenching the earth, what with mobile phones, radios and televisions, and the rest. In a few hundred years, will we find out that they damage us? Do they cloud our thinking? Perhaps some animals can hear them -who knows? Maybe we give whales headaches?
But Sammy was happy where he was. He had a good life and he was enjoying stage one. He liked the colours and sounds, smells and tastes of stage one and didn’t see that this second stage would be an improvement. There were problems, of course. Stage one wasn’t really finished anyway, was it? There were many things we hadn’t done very well and surely we hadn’t got as anywhere near as many points as we should have done in order to pass a stage. How could we progress until we had finished what we were here to do? How could we say we had been successful? Perhaps the standards of this game are quite low. Had we learnt enough of the rules to cope with the next stage?
Sammy, like everyone else, had been told he had to get ready to make the transition into the second stage. Unlike everyone else, however, this did not make him happy so he said, "I'm not going into the second stage because I like it here in stage one."
Everybody knew that all the people of the world needed to move into the second stage or otherwise they couldn't do it – dissenters are not allowed. They tried to persuade him that the second stage would be better but Sammy was not convinced. They spent hours trying to influence him but he was having none of it. He was enjoying life and he knew that you couldn’t have too much of a good thing. The people of the world began to get annoyed. They were ready to move into the second stage but they couldn't because of Sammy.
The people of his Street had a meeting and decided to find Sammy and deal with him, and tell him once and for all, what he had to do. But Sammy had anticipated this and had disappeared into another street. So, both the streets got together to look for Sammy only to find that he had gone to another town. Soon, entire towns got together to look for Sammy but he had gone to another country. Eventually, all the countries got together to look for Sammy but they couldn't find him anywhere.
With the world still in stage one, everyone was looking for Sammy. Their experts used their machines and equipment to find him. Sammy was seen horse riding in Spain. He was fond of riding and was enjoying the scenery of the mountains. The seemingly ageless splendour and the clear blue sky with the warm sun always gave him gave him a sense of inner peace and tranquillity. The people of the world got on their motorcycles, ruined the tranquillity, and chased him but he got away. Then somebody found him running with gazelles through Africa. He was always astonished by the sheer variety of wildlife of the Dark Continent and thought that they were probably the most majestic beings on God's earth. The people of the world got in jeeps, scattered all the animals, and went after him but he got away. One day, he was seen swimming with dolphins in the Great Barrier Reef in the Coral Sea. The colours and shapes of the Coral, and the extraordinary diversity of fish that he saw made him marvel at the imagination and ingenuity of evolution - it never ceased to amaze him. The people of the world got in their patrol boats, scared all the fish and chased him but he got away.
Eventually Sammy had nowhere to run to. He was in Patagonia, taking in the Savannah and the wonderful flat plains where the guanaco graze. The people of the world saw him, and chased after him yelling and shouting, and the animals ran away. The vista was completely flat - a field that stretched from horizon to horizon. Sammy was running across the field and all the people of the world were running after him. For years Sammy ran, and for years the people chased. Eventually Sammy saw a hedge on the horizon, and headed for it. The hedge ran from the left horizon to the right horizon, the entire width of the field and more besides. When Sammy reached the hedge he hid behind it, but it was clear that he had been spotted. Sammy picked up the hedge, which was as wide as the world, and threw it towards all the people of world. The hedge hit the people and knocked them all over. He ran away. Sammy did not run far because he came across a beautiful orchid and was compelled to stop and take in its unfathomable beauty and intoxicating scent.
The people of world came running over the horizon and they saw Sammy enchanted by the flower. They didn’t stop running until they reached Sammy and they surrounded him and beat him to death in their fury. The flower was trampled to the ground and crushed.
And so the world moved into the second stage and everyone knew they were being managed. The scenery changed colour permanently and the fluorescent appearance remained. The green fields were yellow; the blue sky was enduringly grey, the trees metal, the animals were concrete and the sea remained black and the people were content because there was so little for them to think about. Everything was much more straightforward and they didn’t have to work hard and had no difficult decisions to make.
But strange things started to happen at the point where Sammy died. No matter what the Superbeings did, they couldn’t stop an orchid from growing there. They covered it with concrete but it would eventually break through the concrete and emerge through the crack. They built great structures upon the spot where Sammy died but the orchid would find a way through. They poisoned the area to prevent anything from living there but the orchid still prevailed.
The video programme began to fail and the fluorescence began to flicker. The fields shimmered, the sky became full of holes, the metal trees became warped and twisted, the concrete animals crumbled and the sea began to smell. The people of the world became very unhappy with the Superbeings who had made them such promises and had now left them with this tainted existence. Slowly at first, and with an increasing rapidity, the world became a place of decay and suffering. The Superbeings began to argue amongst themselves and the people of the world lost patience. Inexorably, the fabric of the world was disintegrating and in the gaps left by the faulty programme, the orchid grew.
It grew in the fissures that were emerging in the concrete and in the fractures that appeared in the floor. Its seeds became scattered and the orchid sprouted on the top of buildings and in the poisoned fields. As the pace of the programme’s ruin increased, so did the rate of the flower’s emergence across the world. Soon the programme could no longer function and it crashed. The world spluttered unsteadily and the people of the world understood that they should take back their futures.
This sudden realisation hit the people of the world and they began to look around themselves with clear understanding. ‘Maybe the second stage wasn’t so great,’ they thought. ‘Why ever did we agree to trade the simple wonders we took for granted for the bleak and abstract future that the Superbeings offered us?’
It was clear that the Superbeings claims had been false all along, and that they were not of a higher intelligence than us. They bickered and spat amongst themselves and blamed each other, and begged for another chance but ultimately, they were dependent upon the will of the people. They were banished. All at once, the scenery transformed and everything changed colour and lost entirely its fluorescent appearance. The yellow fields turned back to green and the grey sky returned to blue. The trees changed back to wood and leaves, the animals were reanimated and the sea turned blue-green once again. The people were happy again now that their future was once more in their own hands.
In the spot where Sammy died, the orchid bloomed and flowered again.

26th december

A strange thing happened last night...
After midnight, I got up for a pee. As I came down the stairs into the kitchen, I saw three lights coming down the road. It cannot have been anything motorised because there was no sound. They cannot have been runners because the lights did not waver - they were constant. I can only think they were cyclists but they were going quite fast on a very bumpy road which would have been very, very difficult in the dark and there was still no sound which is very strange. It was surreal, slightly unnerving. They almost appeared to be floating down the road at quite a fast pace. Perhaps it was the Holy Trinity on their way somewhere.

World Service Sport on in the morning so I’m happy as a sand boy on the balcony. I am still in the habit of dismantling the table and taking it up and down the stairs to the balcony in the am and pm. I am becoming interested in identifying the birds and the trees out of these moth-eaten books that are lying around. Montezuma Oropendula, Lineated Woodpecker, Scarlet-Rumped Cacique, hummingbirds and etc - I have you all sussed!
While I am up there, I see my first snake. I happened to look over the side to below and there it was, and it looked mean. It was lying close to the gulley beneath the eaves, around six feet long, jet black all the way down with some yellow markings here and there. I could see Negra laying dozing only around twenty feet away. Her eyes are blinking lazily open and I’ would have expected her to have seen it get that close. Natives of the country are encouraged to kill poisonous snakes and my immediate reaction was to get the shotgun, so I did. I put the shotgun together quite quickly and the snake had hardly moved. I got a cartridge, loaded up and pointed at the snake.
“Where should I aim,” I wonder to myself. “The body? The head?” Dead easy.
It’s too easy. It doesn’t even know it’s being pointed at and I can’t pull the trigger. It might not even be poisonous. I stay well out of its way just in case and watch it as it eventually sidles away into the longer grass by the side of the swamp. Then I lose it. I describe it later to Over and he informs me that it isn't dangerous, which is a relief to me. Wouldn’t want it biting someone tomorrow… like me, for example.

25th december christmas day

Woke up and lay in bed for a while. It’s Christmas day. The air is chill-warm, that strange short-lived combination of cool dawn mingling with the promise of a warm morning. I contemplate the usual stuff – life, the universe, naval lint, what life would be like if insects were the same size as me, and then I rise, flinging on some boxers. I amble to the balcony first to do my weather check and find the carpet of frost has been swept up and bagged by the moon before he exited - stage left. The sky is an intoxicating blue and the sun still a diffused blaze of yellow behind the wall of forest.
I head downstairs to get a coffee and am abruptly reminded that I have no gas. I will ask Over when I see him if he has another connecter for ‘la bombona’ but in the meantime I have a beer for breakfast and light the stove. I get some kindling and realise the stove is still full of ash but I am not inclined to empty it out today.
Finishing my beer, I have a tired attack and have a real crisis. Do I go back to bed and sleep or do I make something of this glorious - not to mention holy - day. I need coffee to wake mew up so I grab the kettle to fill it and boil it on the stove. The water trickles out of the tap. I try to wash up and it peters out altogether - would you Adam and Eve it! Not only has Santa not managed to get down the flue and not only has he not left me any presents, but he has taken back with him my gas and water, or at least blocked the supply while he was attempting to get down the flue. Blimey. It’s not as if I have much in the way of amenities in the first place.
No gas and no water, and the day had only just begun. I go over to find Over and knock on his white door a couple of times but he is not around (or he has decided that he's having a lay in and won't answer the door until he is ready). I dig out a couple of bottles of boiled water and have my coffee. The water comes back on in a dribble about one hour later so I fill up everything I can, slowly.
Well, what can you do? I chill out on the balcony in the full sun and watch the Christmas day routine. Just like any other day really. The bright sun is enveloping the forest with the warm caress of a billion years and the rainforest basks in it all, equipping the world with the oxygen to keep the billions of worker ants in the choking cities alive, whether they deserve it or not.
Eventually Over comes over and mentions the water - he's going up the mountain to the tank in the stream to check it out. I ask him if he has another connector for the gas cylinder but he says not. Looks like its wood-stove cooking for Christmas. Smoked this, flamed that, ash on toast ...
Late morning - the water seems to be flowing okay now. I wonder what he did. I suppose it was just a question of cleaning out the filters and checking the pipes or something. If it happens again I’ll take a torch and do it myself. I have a cold shower.

The Christmas Day a la Carte menu:

Breakfast

A beer
Tomato, onion and mayonnaise bun (x2)
Bag of raisins
Coconut juice (CRCCC)
Cup of tea

Lunch

Flame-grilled hamburger, with tomato, onion, and tomato, sauce in a bun
Beer with vanilla cookies
Tostadas with mayonnaise, tomato sauce and French
mustard dips
Another beer
Flame-grilled coffee

Dinner

Smoked omelette with tomato and onion
Pilchards
Orange cordial

Supper

joint (not the kind you eat!)
Beer

(Management extends apologies with the announcement that Ice cream is off the menu today)

24th december christmas eve

I am awoken by a rustle and dull thud as a coconut falling from a tree works its way through the branches of a tree and then hits the ground.
Had a couple of dreams last night...
1) I was studying but took the test early and only got twenty-three percent
2) I rang up Donna and asked her if I could go round for coffee. To my surprise, she said no. I was then in a park at a big table, studying in the sunshine when Donna turns up with several of her friends. They all sit down and we start talking. One of her friends is Caroline.
What’s it all about? But then, Donna has always been unattainable… and getting twenty three percent in a test? Nothing new there – I never cared for tests and would show my rebelliousness by deliberately flunking them.

It's a beautiful day today - sunny and warm with gentle breeze. The forest seems greener than usual and the sound of the trickling water is carrying further. All is well with the world. This is how Christmas Eve should be.
Seems I have palmito plants and coconuts mixed up. What I thought were palmito nuts are actually immature coconuts! They just look unlike coconuts the coconuts we see in the stores because they are not ripe and they haven’t been prepared for sale by being peeled. Explains why I could only see palmito nuts when I was looking for coconuts. I’m not even sure a palmito nut exists – I think it’s a plant that is used as a vegetable, also called Heart of Palm in this country.

I find some coconuts anyway. They are green at the moment because they are not ready. This was the large green thing that I chopped up to get at the juice inside the kernel. I get a machete and chop away the outside pulp to get to the big nut inside. Then, by puncturing a whole in the kernel, it is possible to drain away the juice that is inside. This is the fluid that eventually turns into coconut milk but at this point, it is an almost clear, slightly cloudy fluid that tastes quite nice. With a little sweetener, you might compare it to sprite or something. I get some kernels ready for tomorrow so that I can create my own Christmas beverage. I’ll call it my ‘Costa Rican Christmas coconut cocktail.’ (CRCCC).

It’s difficult today though, especially in the evening. At 6pm here, it is midnight in the UK and I have to say, I feel pretty lonely, thinking about the Midnight Mass, the cheering in the pubs, friends and family etc. I confess I can’t sit still nor get any comfort anywhere. I didn’t think it would bother me but it does. I’m restive and increasingly out of sorts as the day goes on.
I sit on the balcony at dusk as usual watching twilight do its thing and listening to the dusk chorus. They don’t know there’s anything special today so why should it make any difference to me? But it does. Sitting there, the full Moon begins it arc across the sky, ironically from somewhere behind the hickory tree, and soon enough it is casting a whitish topping over the whole kit and caboodle.
‘Well, would you Adam-and-Eve it?’ I declare, once again to no one but myself. ‘ Would you credit it? Frost!’ The full moon has deposited what looks amazingly like a layer of rime over everything I can see. ‘Thank you, God.’
Eventually I try to go to bed. I don’t even get close to going to sleep so I soon give up, get up again and go for a walk on the bridge. I click on the radio for a while and try to make coffee but there is no gas coming out now. It looks like the connector has finally broken. I can’t be bothered to think about that now – I’ll deal with it tomorrow.
I wonder again what I am doing here. Am I wasting my life or am I doing something that few people get the chance to do. Am I finding anything out about myself? And if I am, are they good things or bad things? What happened to my wildlife sanctuary, my jeep from Alabama and my motorcycle? I thought about what Jim had said about other people coming across in the New Year. Is that happening? Will other people be stranded here as I am?
I can’t figure Jim out. Is he a con man? I would say it’s a pretty stupid business to be in if he is – there’s no money in it. Why on earth did he have me fly half way around the world? What does he get out of it? What does Sinai wildlife projects get out of it? I just don’t get it.

Antony has just had a nasty encounter with some anteaters…
Wondering if I’m living thru Antony. I’m sure as hell not living anywhere else. I am surprised I am this motivated to write the novel as I’ve never really aimed to do one before. It’s a revelation to me. I am revelated.

Revelate /rėvvзlayt/ v.tr 1 to have something shown or displayed to oneself; to allow to appear 2. to have something disclosed unto oneself