time and panama

I don’t know why I haven’t been writing. I keep giving myself excuses – reasons. Excuses. I can’t reach inside myself like I used to. Something is inhibiting me. I can’t be honest. But, maybe my writing has never been honest. Maybe it’s always just been performative. I’ve been thinking a lot lately. It turns out that many of my demons haven’t left me. They’ve just been lying dormant under the layers of ornate architecture placed in my life by societal expectation – ritual – regulation – anticipation. I never imagined myself as the variable in this vast experiment (existence?). As much as I’ve tried to alter the circumstances, my environment will always be the constant. I can only change myself, my outlook, my perspective. I’ve been thinking a lot about death lately. Time keeps passing more rapidly as I get older. The constant incremental notion of “day” becomes consistently shorter. This is because these 24 hour circular lapses – as they continue to occur – become increasingly smaller percentages of my entire existence.  To a newborn, one day is like an eternity of new abrasive sounds and smells and pain and immaculate feeling. To a centenarian invalid, another day is just a breath.  I’m not quite sure what this means. I feel guilty about wasting time. But how can one even define what is wasted, what is saved, what is valuable? Are any of my future seconds even salvageable? I think, however, that my anticipation of the future here is false.  The future doesn’t exist except as a taunting driving force of what could be, an invisible Big Other that governs my every decision. My fate seems too far away from me to be real. That instant when the future becomes manifest, it is already behind me and I am again left waiting for what comes next. The past is a re-imagining of hundreds of dead moments – irrevocable decisions – bitter sweet nostalgias – endless regrets. I suppose, then, only the present is real. That fraction of a moment that is too brief to hold, too fleeting to feel. Does this mean that humans can only live out their lives through ignoring the immediacy demanded by the present? I know what it means for me – my entire existence is mediated by my imagination. I have never truly experienced the present. I have come close – but I only realize this closeness in the re-examining of past events.

We went to Panama City last week. If Miami and Los Angeles had a love child and birthed it in Central America, this place would be it.  The city moved faster than anywhere I’ve been in awhile. The streets screamed with Diablos Rojos -- refurbished American school buses.  For only 25 cents, you could go anywhere on the spread-out urban grid.  These buses – they were marked up and painted with elaborate designs – a strange amalgam of catholic kitsch, modern pop culture, and Latin American street art. One of the buses was named “Yoda” and had several little green portraits sprayed on all sides (complete with catholic rosettes and floral motifs). Others had pictures of J-Lo, Jesus, Looney tunes characters, scenes from animated Disney films. Loud images tore past me as I sauntered destination-less on the side of the road. These were more than ornamentation – they were immortal portrayals of our modern last supper, the pious icons and pietas of the 21^st century. Imagined gods, created saints. I was captivated – forced into reverence – face to face with a culture I couldn’t understand.

The insides of the busses were as haughty and eccentric as the outsides. Brightly colored feather boas, playboy bunnies, holographic portraits of Mary or the sacred heart, extravagant beaded rosaries, bumping reggaeton and the traditional wailing pathos of corridos.

If I lived in Central America, I’d probably convert to Catholicism just simply for the fact that kitsch is not only endorsed, it is encouraged.