brief observations

Hola all - not much time to linger here, but a couple things: so, recently I've started hanging out with the mother of my compañera de casa Salomé, whose name (creepily enough) is also Salomé, and she has brought me into her circle of rabid exercisers. she's this incredibly fit lady who can do headstands at any given moment and all sorts of other kundalini (?) moves. She told me about meditation, my chakras, etc. She also told me that if I do a series of five exercises 21 times each, I'll be young forever. So i wanted to learn this "ejercicio de juventud." we've started doing it in the morning, but the loophole is that the exercises are each incredibly difficult, so that at the end of each session i've almost vomited. YES. this is how hard they are. today, for example: a near-vomit after doing the juventud stuff. but she's totally fine and tells me that i'm in bad condition, and that's why i feel like hell after 20 minutes or so of the torture. she says that i need to keep doing them, so i think i will. here's to a solid 'trunk!'

also, the other day i went with a friend to visit the impoverished pianist and give her some stew and rice that i'd cooked. we sat and chatted, and she amazed me once again with her sprightliness and pride in the face of things. then we were walking in Rio Abajo, and this car pulled up to the bus stop for the diablos, and a man rapidly purchased this brown drink from another guy who was walking around selling it from a cooler. he leaned out of the car, took a quick swig, and then peeled off. the vendor, undeterred, poured the brown liquid into another container. it turned out to be a west indian aphrodisiac, 'sea moss and isinglass.' cool.

okay, that's all for now. oh, i also hung out with some reggae-roots people last night and saw my downstairs neighbors give a concert. their band is really, really great. how to work this into my fieldwork??? one of their songs, "la vida es caprichosa," was quite the rousing reggae-roots anthem to youth culture in panama. there was also a lot of kafu banton and other local reggae playing. very interesting, quite a scene.