On a Lighter Note

I decided to sleep on the couch last night. It's hard to get privacy living in this tiny apartment, which is a fun blessing, and heart ache for someone as private as i am. I feel I've been on fast-forward and I feel i haven't had time to reflect on the last month or the entire summer for that matter. Maybe that's why I am excited for school to start, so i can slow down and have some alone time and get back to a rhythm. I want control back in my life! lol

Today is sunnier and the sky is blue blue blue. And the huge puffy clouds suggest that the Panama sun and humidity are intense today. Our plan for today is to go to Old Panama. They are ruins from the pirate days with captain Henry Morgan the Welch terror of the Caribbean seas. Old forts and castles like big rubbles of stones and enigmatic silhouettes of grandeur and chaos. It makes me imagine Panama in the 1500s; thick emerald jungles and a space cleared for a little group of stones to protect the coast. Compared to Panama now it seems it would have been a peaceful and quiet fort until the pirates came and burnt it to the ground. Now the air is thick with the dizzying fumes from diesel, stick shift cars and I am occasionally afraid for my life to inhale the black plumes. 

But every so often when we drive in the interior or late at night through the urban streets, I catch the sweet smell of the jungle. It's intoxicating and it always only lasts for a split second. I wish i could bottle it and bring it home with me and say "Here California! This is the way clean air smells!" But you can't bottle the ghost of the jungle, the ghost of our time. 

And as i wrote this excerpt it just began to pour cats a dogs and the sky is extremely dark. More rain in 10 minutes than California gets in a year. But i love it