Tocan Ustedes Cafe?

Last night, in the distance, over the rainforest sounds, the inevitable two-note chord progression of acoustic bass guitar. Simple, sad, melodic, and somehow, distinctly Central American. There was singing, amazingly proficient for borrachos. Closer to home and I hear laughter, guitar, and stories in Spanish....everything else was velvety dark. It was like Borjes wrote that scene in my life.

Olvidar-to forget.

I stopped to check the lights for insects, and I saw a very large Central American smooth gecko, a little beetle with huge antennae, probably a lonely male looking for mates. It had a black, shiny carapace. I have no idea what it was.

This morning, between waking to rain and misty bird calls, and actually waking up, I dreamed.

A half a dozen Tico boys had broken into my apartment, for the purpose of various types of mischeif. It was my apartment, and yet, it was where this room is. Funny, the topography outside had adjusted itself slightly-the building now sat sensibly on the ground rather than on stilts. The exterior had morphed slightly to become more rustic. My Costa Rican apartment had a pleasantly cluttered kitchen. The miscreants had gone through my things. I had somehow coralled them into my kithen and explained that they could borrow all the books they wanted.....I had plenty downstairs. My mother in law was somehow visiting here, not in far away Chicago...and this was an additional complication. The boys smiled impishly, but warmly, messing with the light fixtures, but genuinely interested as I offered "I need coffee. Do you guys drink coffee? Toca ustedes cafe?" I woke. I am here, in dreams. The 72 hour threshold has passed.

This morning, over coffee, hawkmoths, orange and black tufted in the abdomen, visited the flowers near the cafeteria. A white-collared swallow swooped over me to devour some of the bees I was watching. Later, a walk through never-logged, undisturbed rainforest. Clearwing butterflies, a huge spider devouring a braconid leftover from the night before (it was a great morning for spider watching. On the bridge over the river, I watched an orb weaver build its web), noisy aracaris, chestnut-headed orupendulas, parrots, a swallowtail, spider monkeys in the distance, a catkin covered with Trigona bees. I keep trying not to forget it all, each image, but it flows like maple syrup over pancakes.

The arthropods are so much harder to identify than the bees. I am lucky to get them to family. Nymphalidae, Lycaenidae, evanoidea, meloponini.

Like my hero, Alfred Russell Wallace, I have come to a place like this and am hatching strange ideas. I am starting to wonder how much of this -habitat structure breeds diversity in a high productivity setting-is really just evolutionary history. So many things here have long fossil records. Tropical environments have existed for millions of years before the seasonal, temperate, environments of North America. These neotropical forests are far older than the land on which they sit. This is the discredited view of things.

Strange Isthmus.