preamble: rituals of various sorts

In the interest of time, this prolegomena will be brief: i need to force some concentrated effort into article-writing. but there are many things to tell, and so i'll just outline them here and then perhaps do some rigatino later.

Yesterday was one of those long and busy, multifarious ones: in the morning, i met up with josé to attend a meeting of leaders planning Panamá's upcoming general strike at the headquarters of one of the major organizations in town the Asociación de Profesores de la República de Panamá. representatives from two other related organizations, FRENADESO and SUNTRACS, showed up, but the meeting was basically closed to the public and limited to the planners of the strike. José wants to set up a 'frente cultural' to educate and serve members of these groups and the people in neighborhoods to which the groups cater, and so he brought me to see what i thought. anyhow, it was interesting, and i got some contact info and was thinking about ways to form a committee that would incorporate theatre and performance into their demonstrations or even day-to-day affairs and outreach efforts.

after drinking a few 30-cent cups of coffee at an excellent and incredibly cheap greek diner in perejil, we went to the headquarters of the panamanian communist party to hang out and take some photos with a sort of amazing social realist tapestry featuring a dapper-looking lenin. more on that later, though the idea of lenin's face on a rug is weird to me, since people will implicitly be treading on his five o'clock shadow and jaunty fisherman's cap.

we also spent a couple hours talking about the future of marxism with an 80-year-old west indian panamanian man, luther thomas, who seemed to hold a high position in the communist party. he was impeccably knowledgeable about the history of panamanian-US race relations and also quite well read on international communist or progressive-leftist goings-on. he commented admiringly on berlin's gay mayor and the spirit of cooperatism that informed some european politics...anyhow, interesting guy. and i got some names of people from Colón, who offered to take me to a central organization there, la Iglesia San José (which must be Saint Joseph's Church of West Indian fame). So that was cool.

i hated to leave Luther and his grumbly and awe-inspiring oratory, but i had to get on to the next meeting, at SAMAAP headquarters. that was largely uneventful but good for the research. also, there's one spirited and combative woman who i actually ran into this morning at the 7:30 am West Indian service at la Iglesia Episcopal San Cristóbal, an event for which i was up at dawn. i'll say, a drum kit really improves a religious service. also, I enjoyed shaking hands with everyone, receiving communion, and singing, "For there is pow'r, there is pow'r, there is wonder-working pow'r/in the blood/of the Lamb!" This was the extreme of bells and smells, let me tell you: bread, wine, crosses hoisted high on pikes, golden sacramental chalices, a secret bible-chamber, and tons of incense of the 'frank' variety. also, there were some unbelievably cute kids at this service: a skinny, sniffling trio and then a fat baby with a burgeoning afro and a matching set of rhinestone-studded headband and shoes. i wanted to hug them most terribly. also, several older women pressed me to their vast bosoms after i was compelled to introduce myself to the congregation (as all visitors were). one of them said, "I MUST hug the visitors" while embracing me with bone-crushing force. goooood feelings abounded.

so that, in short, brings us to today and this article which must must must be written. ho, canada! let's get this thing underway.