Pete is playing guitar for jason and I. This morning I did paperwork for a few hours then went to the office to meet with Tony and do more paperwork. There seems to be no end to it and I'm still just managing bare maintainance. I still haven't managed to get the taxes paid for december, nor paid the back taxes or penalties that I've gotten notices for.

At 3 I waent over to Gar's house where we played his new board game Age of Mythology or something.

Then I came home to meet with Pete.

Yesterday I met Jason's sister and two of her friends,visiting from Vermont. I declined to go to New York with them and stayed home playing computer games all day. When they got back we payed a card game called phase 10 and I smoked with them. The weed was strong, if a little brutal with the dry mouth. I got so high it was all I could do to play the game and I felt disconnected from the conversation going on around me. These girls are hard partiers full of stories of drunken mayhem. The game involved a ridiculously complicated and unnecessary amount of score-keeping since the score only matters if there's a tie. I won the game mostly to get it over with. When they were gone I was still pleasantly buzzed and I danced alone in my room before bed.

This morning I awoke with a heart full of fear, because I never did the work I intended to do on friday, then throughout the weekend, and the computer and checkbooks which I'd promised to leave at the office for Tony are still untouched on my desk. Gar left me a message, he has the day off and wonders if I'd like to play Age of Mythology again. I would.

I'm so hungry for Keli. I miss her. I enjoy missing her. How long has it been since I've pined so? High school?

My attempts to throw away my pipe and quit smoking have resulted in numerous incidences of fishing that pipe out of the trash and filling it again. This morning I'm smoking the last of my tobacco, and I'm determined to buy no more.

What shall I do with this life? How better to live it? Is there more than distraction and momentary pleasure? If yes, why does it seem always to be a prospect for latter? What could I do right now? Is there no better, grander answer than my work? I go now to do the drudgery. Pay bills, face missed payments. Manage some semblance of management.

HAI Ball Angst

So, now I'm at the HAI Ball, and I'm discovering that its not the easy social night of relaxation that I was expecting. First I was attacked by social anxiety; every person I talked to seemed to become uncomfortable then excuse themselves. I wondered if I was being rebuked, if I just wanted more time for connection than was average in such situations, if I was projecting my own anxiety and it was making people want to leave. All this despite many obviously warm receptions, and numerous extravagant compliments.

The most extravagant of which is that Chris is here and has been telling me ...

...and there went her boyfriend since November walking by and asking what I'm doing out here. I just held up my phone as if that explained something. And it was good enough for him. If it hadn't been, what would I have said? Oh, I'm just feeling shitty because I have a crush on your girlfriend. And she's with you, and she lives in Boston, and I know there's no way to make it work even if she was available, but I can't seem to think of anything else right now.

Time Slips

I'm riding in the car with Beth, writing on my phone again. on my way to the HAI Ball. Time is slipping by and I can feel the clarity of my trip getting fuzzy. Worse, I can feel myself getting bored by my own stories, compressing them down into sentences to save brainspace; the weight of new events pressing in urgently, stealing vitality from what has gone before, however precious, however pleasant. So here's my last ditch effort to preserve what's left:

So, we went home with the drug dealer. This is not some ironic invocation of the stereotype, covering an aging hippie who likes to smoke weed. No, drug dealer barely begins to evoke the correct image of the physically threatening, emotionally fragile, inevitable train wreck of a man.

As soon as I walked in the door I was passed an empty sobe bottle with a hole drilled in the side. There was a joint sticking out of this hole. To my later regret, I took two big hits from this makeshift pipe. The weed was strong and it left me feeling paranoid and vulnerable in an unknown situation.

I was sitting on some steps next to Keli, trying to acclimate myself to the environment when the words being soken by our host started to filter through. He was talking about how the Jews controlled the media in the US, and how different the news was in countries that aren't controlled by Jews. I was too shocked to speak. This was my first time in the presence of a real live anti-semite. I think it was Aron who steered us out of the uncomfortable subject by agreeing that foreign news was really cool.

Next he started talking about the fags. How they were perverts who fucked babies. How he had joined the the white supremacists in jail just for safety. He striped off his shirt and showed off a huge swaztika tattoo that had been artfuly transmuted into the stem of a rose.

I'm loving the flexibility inherant in posting my journal entries from my phone. The instant feedback is nice too (thanks Brian!).

So, after spending two nights with our Myan host family in Guatamala (8 nights for everyone else) Cameron and Emily were ready to move on. They were planning to take a bus to Costa Rica the next day. I'd just arrived, but then, I'd also been to Guatemala before, and I really liked both Cameron and Emily right from the start, so I suggested that we just pack up and all drive to Costa Rica together. This idea was met by much approval from all. The only pre-requisite was that I get my return flight changed, which turned out to cost only 50 dollars.

There was another complication though. The group had picked up some fellow travelers along the way in the persons of Asher and Marisa, both of whom were really nice people making their way to a giant rainbow gathering in Brazil. The problem was that the consensus among Keli, Aron, Cameron, and Emily was that five people in the van was comfortable and seven was too much. No one wanted to say that they couldn't come, but no one wanted them to come either. It only made matters worse that our high-tail it to Costa Rica plan was perfect for them. I played my instigator role, insisting that there was nothing wrong with anyone's desires. I liked Asher and Marisa rignt from the start, but I didn't think it wise to act from obligation. In the end there were some minor emotional bruses, but we decided to part ways.
We didn't get very far, however. Our plan was to drive to Panahachel, drop off Asher and Marisa at a hotel (by this time they were both feeling pretty sick), and continue on to the beach to spend the night. Well, after an enourmous dinner of US style burgers, a few beers, and darkness coming on, we were no longer too keen to drive on to this unknown beach in the dark. Cameron ran across someone who offered a room for the night and some weed to share and we were all intrigued. What followed was the most uncomfortable night of my trip.

first entry

Okay, so after having a live journal account for over a year and never posting to it, I've decided to start. The impetus comes from having just had the paper journal that I've been keeping for the past five years stolen while traveling in Costa Rica (along with my backpack, wallet, clothes, all my credit cards, etc.). My hope is that this way I can never again loose all that effort.

The trip itself was quite an adventure right from the start. On the flight over I met a Guatemalan woman with whom I got to practice my Spanish and, to my amazement, my kissing. Marisella isn't the first married woman I've kissed, but she is the first without her husband's consent. We both knew this wasn't going anywhere after the flight, so I feel innocent enough about it, but what a welcome!

When we landed she was nervous about her husband seeing us together, so she waited on the plane until I'd left. I guess I'll never see her again. I feel some sadness that she'll have to hold the memory so privately; telling Keli all about it was the first thing I did when I got out of the airport.

It was so great to see Keli! She was easy to pick out of the crowd with her orange and blue hair, not to mention the relative lack of gringos. We sat outside for a couple hours talking and waiting to be picked up by the rest of the group.