Overhead, dragonflies like bats before a cave. City dragonflies, they feed and mate in the humidity. Their eggs float on hyper-heated H20 above my head... little eggy swirls. The fust holds.

Last night I got the news that Little Tom, the friend I went to school with up in WA, who has helped me engineer some of the logistics of my journey south, was robbed of everything of monetary value in his new living space. Gone is his computer, Ipod, and money. I thought, holy shit. Holy Shit. Apparently, his house had been cased... his roommate lost two computers, plus. One of them was at a resturant and the other at the corner store. I can´t imagine.

But, I just got the message that he has resigned (Monday is the start of classes), and I can´t help feeling both a little deserted, and a little startled... who is going to take his classes? Why does robbery equal leaving a job? How do last straws get formed? When he walks on the plane, will he have a clear idea why?

Will I be broken too? We were just down in the Montanita waves together, drinking rum and thinking... I could sense my thoughts were different, but will I be stripped too? Will this country case me?

SSS wrote to tell me that Dengue is mosquito-borne. Whereas malaria travels in night-dwelling mosquitos, dengue travels in daytime mosquitos. The solution: pollute your skin with DDT at all hours. No thanks. As long as my back gets better, I can deal with sick. So far, the mosquitos haven´t been too bad and we´ve been running fast from the rainy humid season.

Still hot and fusty, I slept my first night all the way through last night. I remember enjoying my dream. I believe it was a law dream, and somehow I had an alibi, or at least sufficient evidence. The night before, I dreamt I was in a huge palm-covered shack with family, NAM and others, and the wind blew and blew and blew. Little seapods fell down from the palmleaves and dusted the interior. Just a windstorm... I woke three times with the thought, ¨I´ll be damned, it´s just my fan.¨ Fust or fan, anyone?

My burn seems to be leaving... little skins are peeling?

A note to those interested in Ecuadorian politics. Approximately one day before I came, there was a coup and the E President was rousted by an angry mob that was marching on Quito, the capital. The airports were completely shut down one day before I came, and I so I just made a near-post-coup miss. I am told that the angry mob is now in charge, and a man of their selection is the President. I have read that this occurs frequently. Very frequently. But there are apparently still some pissed off dudes from the area of the rousted President, who are staging what I´m told are like ¨mini-wars¨ (gorilla warfare?), but this is in the Northeast of Ecuador, and I´m in the Southwest, and I am told it is nothing to worry about here. I can sense some of the cynicism in their voices when they say, ¨Absolutely nothing will change.¨ One of the jokes I´ve heard: ¨With the former president, we were standing on the edge of an abyss. With our new president, we have taken one large step forward.¨ Sound familiar?

I am starting to feel comfortable in Spanish again... it´s like I can feel it brushing over my skin...odd somehow. I don´t understand everything, but that´s okay. Every American I´ve met down here can´t speak Spanish worth a shit. I´ve been here a week today, and I´ve been the translater for two people who have been here near a year. To tell you the truth, it´s almost like a point of pride with them. There are jokes, obviously joking, hahahaha, about why Ecuadorians don´t just give up their language? ¨They don´t speak English to me, so why should I speak Spanish to them?¨ (that´s Big Tom). Hahaha, my sides ache, what mirth. I feel an unspeakable despair and hatred that more people don´t learn to give up something in exchange for the priviledges. Oh, it´s oh so hard to give up the comfort of appearing smart and astute because you are speaking your native language. So hard. Why don´t more people love learning new languages? It seems to make sense to me... you come to the country, you get paid shitloads by E standards, you learn the language to the best of your ability. You meet people other than Americans. You listen. End rant. I try to be patient and hold my tongue on this matter, because I´m in a minority, but I feel frustrated. I need to meet folks.

The dragonflies fly. People build cities in the crops in their necks, and their throats grow goiter with the fantasies they´ve eaten to later regurgitate and masticate at leisure. There are no lakes in this city, only roads, and the best way to cross the street is to find an old woman and follow her across. If she knows she can make it, you know you can make it too.