Some of the more drab butteflies of this country. I do my best, you know.

We processed soil samples today. We spent all day in the lab, but our data are coagulating into something greater than the sum of their parts. Synergy, I believe it is called. We are constructing a synergy of data, rendering meaning and significance from mere numbers.

I feel much better. Working with Cat is going smoothly again, and we're so close to the end of this thing its hard to feel anything but relief. Processes are winding down and gearing up at the same time. Jack arrives tomorrow night, and the consultation appointments start on Monday morning. Presentations will happen on Friday, and then... The beach!!! Oh, we are all frothing at the mouth in anticipation of the beach. Wave 'Adios!' to moldy La Selva, Evergreeners! We'll be on the next bus to the Pacific ocean!

Still haven't had much time to sort through photos. Just like everyone else in this class, when I'm not sleeping or eating, I'm crunching numbers. Charissa and Michael are still collecting field data, but only for a few hours a day. Mostly, we sit in front of our glowing windows into the Otherland, that datascape where our destinies swirl in a virtual cauldron of ones and zeroes, and we wield our techno-magic: a click of the mouse here, type a paragraph there, hmmm... maybe some data analysis here, what's next?

We are producing knowledge. We are tiny little spiders spinning the periphery of a web of information as deep as the ocean and much, much, wider. We are students. We are learning more than the we'd expected.

For the past three days, the forest has been glowing in the rays of everybody's favorite star. Today the sun bathed us all day in photon love, and a mild breeze ruffled the canopy. The forest is still, and very quiet, but the air positively sizzles with anticipation of the next rain. The plants are busy photosynthesizing, but few mobile creatures here can handle three days with so little moisture, and so they hide in dark, moist places, waiting for the water to return and make the world habitable again. For the forest wildlife, this is the calm between the storms.

Genevieve came bearing gifts from the city: real, fresh-ground peanut butter, and bread with more grain than preservatives! Oh, the ecstasy. Can you hear the choirs of heavenly Seraphim, singing her praises on high? A little background info: the local staple for uninventive gringos is called "Breddy" or "Bimbo", and on the matter of nutritional deprivation, it leaves Wonder Bread, that white trash icon of the United States, idling its engines in the trailer park dust. Breddy/Bimbo is so vapid, so devoid of anything mildy digestible, that I finally understand why everyone here eats rice and beans for every meal. Compared to Bimbo/Breddy, rice and beans seems like nectar and ambrosia.

Data is calling. I must answer its summons...

Oh, this state of mind is a little bit disturbing. I really need to get out of this station. Thankfully, the quarter is almost over. I am losing it. Maybe I spend too much time on my computer, but I don't feel like the lab is much better for my sanity. I think I am beginning to understand why people here become a little unstable after a while.

Jack arrives in five days. Then the real end begins. With Cat's help, Rebecca resurrected our project. Data are flowing. Things are going well.

Adam was bitten by a sand fly. No big deal, except this particular sand fly was carrying a flesh eating parasitic protozoan that causes the necrotic disease known as Leshmaniasis. Infection involves the interminable expansion of an otherwise normal-looking sore, somewhere on the body. Scabs form but don't heal, finally erupting as the disease spreads out from the edges of the sore. This happens over and over again. Without treatment, it is an absolute nightmare. "The Lesh" can cause magnificently disfiguring scarring and considerable pain. The highly effective treatment available in Costa Rica involves sixty, count'em sixty shots of antimony (a toxic heavy metal) into the wound over a period of fifteen days. Works every time, the only side effects being similar to those of chemotherapy. Nausea. Fatigue. Incoherence. Confusion. Oh, I am not jealous of this one.

Jack was visibly shaken on the videoconference earlier today, when he informed us of this unpleasant development in plot of our intercontinental soap opera class. Adam is homeward bound, headed back to Missouri to seek attention from top of the line docs. Even the Centers for Disease Control have taken an interest in him. It is a shame we won't be able to see him again before the end of the quarter, but at least he will be safe. From what I understand, the treatment in the USA is less invansive and has lighter side effects than antimony shots.

Still working on whittling down those beach photos into something presentable. Stay tuned also for an inside peek at the Ministry of Culture building in San Jose. It used to be a prison citadel. Now, after a massive renovation, a bunch of museums live there instead. The children's museum was celebrating its Nth anniversary when I visited. Prison to museum is a popular conversion tactic here. I love this country. ¡Pura vida!

First:

Salman Rushdie, I love you. I have not enjoyed such an incalculably profound book as 'Fury' in a very long time. I promise, now, to read all your other books as soon as I possibly can. Please keep writing them.

Second:

So.... I just re-read that last journal entry and saw some paranoia breaking through between the lines.

Yikes.

But, these things happen, you know? What can you do? Life in the rainforest is pretty intense, and some lessons come hard. No matter. Someday soon I will no longer suffer the humiliations of this station. No, I will be long gone, like Speedy Gonzalez on amphetamines. The moment this class ends, a little cartoon puffcloud of dust is going to be all that's left of this skinny photographer. I'm countin' the days.

Anyway, I'm feeling a little more relaxed. Amazing what the beach can do for a person, really. Yes, now everything is fine. I can breathe again. And at La Selva Biological Station the clouds have parted and the stars are shining tonight like they haven't shone in a long time, reminding me once again of the raw, distracting power of a light in the darkness.

From stellar bodies swimming through the black velvet nothing of space to bioluminescent plankton bobbing in the tropical oceans, life is shining tonight. Glowing fungus on the rainforest floor buzz quietly, spreading a fluorescent-green photon carpet between the sticks and the dripping darkness. Beetles wander aimlessly, with perma-glow alien eyes, radiating light from their carapaces like remote-controlled LED flashlights on robot legs. The wild nightlife hums and quivers and flutters and glows.

I will watch it happen as I walk home in a couple of minutes. This day's long traveling has worn me out, and now it is time for bed.

Soon, photos and a couple of somewhat incriminating stories from Manuel Antonio, one of the most picturesque beach fronts I have visited in recent memory, and also one of the most corrupt.

La Selva wildlife.

I am tired of struggling.

This biomass assessment project is a nightmare for me. My research partner barely managed to hold herself together for weeks at the beginning of the quarter when I thought everything was fine. Now I am barely managing to hold myself together, and everything is not fine. Two weeks until the end of the quarter and I am losing my mind trying to communicate with my mentor... And my partner... And myself.

I just want this thing to be over. Cat and I seem to be absolutely incompatible. I have never met anyone quite so overwhelmingly hostile in my life. To break it down relatively simply, the quarter has gone something like this:

Cat overwhelms us early on, absolutely smothering us with advice and commands. Rebecca and I both are seriously turned off. She cuts us down at breakfast, bringing Rebecca to tears because we missed an appointment we didn't even know about. I make every attempt to do things without Cat, asking for her help only when we need it. We climb with Cat. It's good. We climb alone. It's really frightening. We get better at climbing, but the stress is getting to Rebecca. We climb. We do labwork. Cat bites our heads off in the lab because we're not climbing enough. We talk with her. Things seem better. We climb more. Genevieve arrives to help climb and get help creating a book on beach seeds. Things seem to be going well for everyone, but there is tension in the air. Rebecca finally loses it, and goes on vacation. The floods arrive and freak everybody out, including me. I miss a few days of field work. A tree falls in the lab clearing and Cat spends days dismantling it piece by piece. I remove some samples from it. Rebecca comes back from the beach, a new woman. Meanwhile, I have been doing everything in my power to avoid interacting with Cat, who has been giving us plenty of space since the last blowout.

Genevieve and I get really into this book project, and I start to neglect lab work. Rebecca and I scale back our project again and again until it seems like a complete waste of the entire quarter, but at least the stress level is lower. I become totally swamped with the book project, and labwork goes out the window. I injure my shoulder. No more climbing for me. Rebecca has run out of labwork to keep her busy and is chomping at the bit for something to do. We head out and finish our fourth tree, and return to the lab with some samples. I feel super guilty for basically dropping the ball with the biomass project but I can't leave Genevieve hanging with the book unfinished. We push on. By this point, I am losing my sanity from all the self-imposed stress and pressure to get this book thing off my plate. Rebecca is doing things for our project but I am no longer paying attention.

Yesterday, Rebecca spoke with Cat. She decided to jumpstart our lurching project and Cat has now officially taken the reins, which is good for the project. However, it is not so good for me, because I can no longer avoid her.

Today, I learned from Genevieve that Cat has been holding a grudge against me for weeks since the flood, when that tree fell over in the lab clearing. She wanted me to help dismantle it and I told her I had a lot of other things to do. That obviously was not the right answer. At the time it seemed like no big deal but now it has exploded all over the place.

I spoke with Cat today. I told her I was tired of struggling to communicate, and that I just wanted things to go more easily. Her immediate response was (and I quote), "Well, just let me tell you, the problem is all you." She repeated that phrase twice more before phasing into a twenty minute rant. It was good for her. She needed to do her best to make me feel as puny and insignificant as possible. I don't really know why. She seems to find it much easier to belittle someone than to attempt some sort of civil, productive communication.

Ah. Life is tough. This is the toughest it has been in a long time. I can't remember the last time I felt so frustrated by my inability to breach this sort of communication gap. And it's clear that I am going to have to make all the effort in this situation. Cat will certainly not exert herself for my sake. I am just tired of this. I am tired of fighting with Cat. I am tired of shipwrecking Rebecca on these little islands of despair and wasted time and frustration with me. I am tired of burning my bridges with matches I didn't know I'd ever lit in the first place. I am tired of biomass sampling. I am tired of La Selva. I need a vacation. I am going to the beach for a few days. I need it.

In other news, the beach seed book I've been working on with Genevieve has reached completion, for now. She's folding the pages as I type this. Later we will incorporate photos and publish it on the web.

I’m thinking about all those times
I did something maybe I shouldn’t have
But didn’t realize it until later

I’m wondering what it means to run through life with these
Blinders
Goals are sliding further and further away like avalanches
And I’m sitting here on top of my mountain
Freezing

I just can’t figure out
How to take these damn things off
They’re like an infinite
Onion
With me in the middle
I peel away a layer, and then,

(Just when I think my sight is clear)

Kapow! Some new bombshell explodes in my face
And someone asks quite reasonably:

“Are you joking? You mean you didn’t you see that thing coming?”

I can’t fathom a life
Not obsessed by
Progress?

My best moments are the ones when I have out-competed
Everyone I can
They are usually followed by loneliness

I can’t collar
My inner hamster
Running me round this wheel
For no
Apparent
Reason

But I am neither a volcano nor a wilting herb
There is no anger welling up inside, and
I am not going to lie down and die
(Yet)

I just don’t know the answers
I don’t understand
I don’t even know the questions
I never will, I suppose
I want to scream but that won't
Help?

“Maybe you should stop thinking about this.”
My blinders whisper seductively
Another layer slides up the onion and snaps into position, and
My ego lock clicks, sealing it

My curse
Is to fathom just enough
To see the blurry outline of my self-awareness

Like a broken bit of seashell
On a vast beach at dusk
That elusive shadowy gray speck
Me
Shivering somewhere

An infinite horizon of black sand
Stretches away forever like a starless universe

And the waves crash
Endlessly

Good photos. Hope you like 'em.

We're listening to Duke Ellington singing "In My Solitude" in that trademark raspy voice, emanating from the small bubbly Apple speakers like a deep air quake. A vibrant blue bird stares at me with one red eye from his perch on a bunch of orange berries on my computer desktop. I took that photo a couple of days ago when the floods drove the forest creatures into the lab clearing.

The night is dark and heavy outside. Tropical moisture condenses on blades of grass, illuminated by the rectangles of yellow light cast from the windows of this building. Gravity-defying geckos scurry like elusive dreams, playing with the edges of the shadows under the eaves, stalking the hapless insects intoxicated by the bright fluorescent lights.

We float through the darkness like lost spirits, casting our flashlight beams longingly at the world around us, parched for a good view of even a tiny piece of the expansive night world spreading away from our feet in a jagged cape of black velvet. The sounds of the jungle surround us, lapping at our ears like the waves of an ocean, rhythmic and soothing. The chirps of treefrogs ricochet in our eardrums. Electrical hums from crickets sizzle on our neurons. The cacophany merges into a single humming wave, shimmering through our consciousness, laying the foundation for our perception of this mystery dreamworld.

Somewhere, the great potoo squawks like a creaking door opening backwards. Her enormous carnival doll-sized yellow eyes draw in enough faint moonlight that she sees everything around her. Spiders tap-dance among the leaves and twigs, monitoring for prey like military guard robots set to kill. We move slowly on the trail, scanning for serpents. The potoo lands on a branch and preens, then wings to the lab clearing for better hunting.

My mind wanders among the silky dark forms above me. Trees reach starward, darkening the indigo silver night cloudscape with black craggy spires. I wonder what the view looks like from up there. Maybe I should ask the potoo.

This world thrives. Every minute four and one half pounds of sunlight rocket into our atmosphere and collide with the earth, clouds of photons fizzling into our planet's crust like mist from a three hundred and sixty degree golden waterfall. Plants reach out with green bodies, stretching, crawling, digging, pulling, hanging, and flying, desperately clamoring for every precious bead of sunlight. By night they rest and rebuild themselves, preparing for the next day's upward race. Night creatures with surprised, unbelieving expressions wander through the canopy. Snakes prowl the muddy hillocks, winnowing their way through the tropical leaf litter.

We speak for a while, stare for a while, and then return to the lab, where we plug back into the datastream and activate our control panels. I employ my arcane skills as a computer user and delicately flurry around the keyboard and mouse of this folding plastic box. I check my email. I think about the cloak of blackness, and this little pocket of light harvested from the sun by way of the trees and the rivers and the winds.

How many pounds of sunglight am I made of? How many pounds of sunlight are you looking at right now? How many pounds of sunglight does it take to open my blog and start typing?

The great potoo cruises across the river, makes a sound like a Bruce Lee movie, and wafts away into the folds of the cape. I will follow her to sleep.

I have been inside all day, in front of this computer, typing. My shoulder still hurts from a slight climbing injury the other day, but the pain lessens daily. I took some Excedrin a few hours ago to try and relieve the swelling, but the caffeine tensed me up and made it worse instead. I think sleep is possibly the best option. Unfortunately, it is also the most time consuming. Time is not something of which I have a lot to spare these days. Too bad I can't trade moldy clothes for more time!

The tropical sun shone this morning, cooking Rebecca and I out of our tin-roofed shack around nine in the morning. We slid away from the ant-infested, oversized oven we call home and headed here to the lab for a day of intense work and air-conditioning. I have been helping Genevieve design a book on beach seeds and the hours just flow by, one after another. We make progress but the end is still a long way away. Today she was going to try and return home to Hacienda Barú, her home on the Pacific coast. Now it looks more like Monday will be the soonest she can leave.

Rebecca and I have scaled back our project again. Climbing trees is a lot like learning to speak a foreign language. It seems so attainable and straightforward, and then reality rears its grinning, toothy head, waggles its toungue sarcastically, and I am forced to recognize that the learning process really takes a lot more time than I would like. We have only climbed four of our originally-planned nine trees, and there can be no more. Additionally, I have been focusing on this book with Genevieve a great deal as well, to the exclusion of labwork for my epiphyte project. However, my absence from the lab is not the most pressing problem. It is beginning to appear that we are not going to have the sorts of data we need to do the sorts of statistics Jack desires. We have been working very hard to accomplish something good with this project, and we feel satisfied with our effort, but our results are not exactly turning out to be what we had in mind. I have mentioned this all to Jack. We shall see what he says.

The forest hums and buzzes with the sounds of insects and frogs, as always. The flood waters receded and natural rhythms are running at a relatively normal level again. We have had sunny mornings for several days now, which means heavy rains are sure to arrive soon. Yesterday Fitch and Hillary, my housemates along with Rebecca, hosted the first party of the quarter. The a la mode bash was served complete with an almost bottomless bowl of excellent guacamole and a homemade game of pin the scent gland on the peccary. I pinned my scent gland on the wall of the house about two feet from the peccary, thus achieving the title of farthest off the mark, but sadly, no prize. The winners each received a special Space Star action figure. Some ingenious Tico decided to rip off the Star Wars franchise by selling Luke Skywalker, Princess Lea, Chewbacca, etc. under the name "Space Star" instead. The figures were a huge hit at the party, where excessive laughter occured over Princess Lea's wall-eyed stare and convincingly masculine physique. Price Lea would be a more suitable title for this interstellar heroine. Luke looked more like a Mayan warrior in Jedi clothing than a young anglo from space, but I'm sure the targeted audience appreciates the similarity.

The pressure is on here. The end of the quarter is a scant three weeks away. Jack arrives in about fifteen days. We are all in crunch mode, and most of us feel a little ill-prepared for the gauntlet run to come. Rebecca and I are better off than many, but certainly not in an ideal situation. This wet, dripping jungle makes me dark and moody, and I really want to get out of this place for a couple of days. Maybe soon I will. In the meantime, the seed book's gravity draws me in like a black hole. Back to editing...

I think the river is finished rising. I certainly hope it is. Right now I have to wade through neck-deep water just to get to the other side, and if it rises much more than a meter more, this lab is going to flood.

Last night the rains fell hard and steady. Rumbling, rolling like too many lemmings on a see-saw, drops of water cascaded down from the sky. They poured like atmospheric maple syrup, thick and heavy, coating everything in sticky, slippery wet. They fell until the swamps overflowed and the trails flooded. They fell until masses of epiphytes, heavy with moisture, careened down out of the canopy, smacking into the ground with noises like a tomatoes hitting a concrete wall. Wrecks of bromeliads and orchids litter the ground now, at least in places where they have not already been washed away. The rains fell, and they fell, and they fell, and all the while the river kept rising. When I went to bed at eleven the drops pitter-pattered like pussy willows falling on sand. At midnight I woke up to the tremendous, violent roar of a tropical rainstorm. By one in the morning the downpour had only increased its ferocity. That was when the creeks must have started to back up.

All through the night, big things were happening. When the river hit twenty feet above normal, trees on the banks started giving up their branches to the current. Creaks and snaps could be heard from inside my room in the river station. The massive mudflow outside slid smoothly by, hiding below its opaque brown surface a turbulent whirlpool maze of currents and eddies, uprooted trees and rolling boulders, only barely visible as oddly-shaped ripples on the deceptively flat surface.

When the water rose to thirty feet above normal, the creeks started flowing backwards. Water from the mountains flowed up into our lowland watershed. The walkway in the swamp hid under a full meter of murk. Animals headed for high ground, concentrating on relatively dry land that would otherwise have to be considered totally saturated. At eight in the morning the roar had not abated. When the river hit forty feet above normal, the human evacuations began. I awoke to the sound of urgent knocking. My host, Wayne, answered the door and found a La Selva employee who stated that he had to pack and get out. The river was threatening to flood the river station. Water was already overflowing the trail when I left. My socks got soaked when I sloshed through two feet of river flowing up from a ravine.

I have been trapped in the lab clearing all day. I have not braved the neck-deep water trap on the other side of the bridge. I haven’t ventured out much at all except to take some photos. Here’s a pan shot from the bridge around noon. For reference, I’ve put up a different shot of the same river at normal flow.

Tomorrow the river will probably be lower. Perhaps we will climb a tree. Right now I am tired and am going to bed. Happy mother’s day!