2007-09-07 Leaving Andarivel
9/7/2007, Arboleda Andarivel, San Gerardo de Rivas, Perez Zeledon, San Jose Province, Costa Rica, Central America I did not expect to leave Andarivel so soon, before finishing the east river flood dike and before laying out the promedio fence line to divide the public river area from the private upper area.  Or before constructing a gravity fed potable water distribution system with an interesting maze of pipes and a tarp rain collection system, although the tank platform up under the avocado tree has been excavated, levering huge boulders with a six foot iron bar, and a 450 liter black Aguaplas water tank has been set there empty as a hollow drum.  Then there are the final terraces on the sala slope I will not finish excavating: a taut yellow cord between two stakes marks the next level: seven of nine planned in total.  And then next year after the rains resume in April I will not get to plant a loquat orchard on them.  The several loquat cherries already planted at Andarivel have done very well; they are perky little trees with tasty yellow fruit, easy to harvest, as good as the apple trees I  first wanted but learned will not fruit in warm climates.  And then I will not get to plant cottonwood trees by the river or more tall amarillon, guayacan or eucalyptus timber trees below the cliff slopes.  In spite of three full years developing Andarivel, not counting one year away in Asia and North Arizona, I could easily fill another handful of years with more projects, except that plans have changed. Andarivel has been a happy project of seven years for me, but I would not say a paradise because of a dark side which is the background poverty of my godsons and their families.  Especially troublesome has been the mentally disturbed and unhappy former owner Franco Brenes lurking in the background, all of his money from the sale of Andarivel wasted on criminal legal fees or frivolous entertainment, running up heavy debts.  I conditioned my second purchase of the remainder of his property in 2004 on his wife Carmen's receiving 50% to protect the children's inheritance, after seeing how Franco had squandered the proceeds from the first sale in 2003 on a junk car.  As a condition of sale, the family had to vacate the property. Franco was still in prison for a family crime of passion, and with her share Carmen bought a small, a very small, house in San Isidro. When Franco was released from prison after less than a year, thanks to his expensive lawyer, he chose to stay with one of his brothers not far from Carmen's house.  The court placed a restrained order on Franco prohibiting him from approaching Carmen's house for about two more years, giving us all some breathing space, but finally the order was lifted and since then he keeps showing up at Carmen's house. Carmen does not want him there but without an education or skillful employment in a macho Latin American culture, doesn't know how to keep him away and doesn't have the nerve to sue for divorce [ed note: a divorce was finally obtained later]. She doesn't even have locks installed on the doors. Recently one night when I went over to deliver Carmen a copy of a bank beneficiary form, Franco was sitting in the sala looking haggard, hard faced and unshaven. He left quickly saying he was returning to his quarters. When I left later after conversing a bit with Carmen in the naked light of a broken lamp, and after Jesus showed me Encarta on his new computer, first looking for a chair and then fumbling with the controls which suggested that he was not using the computer much, Juan helped me to cross the dark footbridge by the peephole light of Carmen's cellular telephone, and then Juan pleaded for $10 to mend his school uniform. There is so much squalor and dysfunction at that house I feel dismay and disgust whenever I go there, which is not often. Down the street Franco was waiting for me. He said he wanted to talk to me about Carmen and him. I tensed, anticipating what he was going to say, but unable to move away. The taxi service would not answer my calls. As we walked together down the dark street he complained about my helping Carmen with the telephone bill and supporting her studying school books. He said if it were not for my "little help" Carmen would not feel independent enough to reject him, and if she did get an education she would not accept him.  Then he threatened to kill her and himself and all the children if she would not take him back by December. I did not think it was a good idea to argue with him on a dark and dangerous ghetto street so I kept moving on until we finally arrived at the illuminated town plaza. I have had experience with him before when he starts ranting. I knew it was a waste of time to talk. However I did manage to get in a couple of words. I told him that the cause of his suffering was desire, his desire to return to Carmen. However, other people cannot be dominated as he would have it. He could end his misery by changing his macho attitude and accepting Carmen's decision. He should consider the sufferings of others instead of his own. I asked him why he didn't bring Carmen more money, if he believed money impressed her, and would he pay for the phone if my support stopped? He said interest payments on his debts of $6,000 prevented further support, and anyway, she talked too much on the phone.  I asked him why he never took up my long-standing offer of a full scholarship for his education including food and lodging, even debt service, to learn a trade in two years to be able to earn more money and thus provide for his family.  "--Because, (while in a training course) I could not be with her". Making a short-term sacrifice for a long-term gain is beyond his horizon. Later from my hotel room I advised Carmen by cell phone to put locks put on the doors because threats of violence should be taken seriously. Now I would like to put Franco back in the background and talk about what Andarivel has meant to me. My life has been characterized by "projects" or "periods" in which my unwavering attention has been applied to mainly one object for months or years. In high school I played the violin, but that was only one of several interests.  I would say my first full time project was trying to understand my place in the world, such as "why should I work?" instead of "what shall I do?". This quest for self-identity sharpened after high school, themed my first exposure to Carleton College (philosophy major) and second-semester dropout, and threaded my first vagabonding travels around the world. Then came meeting Swami Satchidananda in New York and studying yoga with him for more than two years. Then going back to school, getting an electrical engineering degree and first jobs, not very satisfactory. More engineering at Tecnetics in Boulder for one year, then 7.5 years at Hughes Missile Systems in Tucson as a programmer in hybrid circuit layout design. One year programming in Salt Lake City on a genetics project, then 1.5 years programming image analysis solutions for the human genome project at Argonne National Lab outside Chicago.  My DOTS program was my most satisfying engineering project. It was interleaved with my exploration of heuristic methods  for minimizing path distance in the famous Traveling Salesman Problem (TOUR). No copies of DOTS or TOUR remain in my files. They are all lost in time but I spent many days and nights on them. After Argonnne and my retirement from programming in 1993 at age 50, I spent nine winters in the Sonoran Desert as a homeless man living under tarps, and seven summers in forests hiking long distances, twice from Mexico to Canada. In 2000 I came down to Costa Rica because of a knee cyst which stopped the hiking. Now Andarivel has been a seven year project although I did not buy any property until 2003. In 2004-2005 I took a year off to travel in Thailand, India and North Arizona. On arriving in Costa Rica, I never imagined that Andarivel would expand into an all consuming project. I bought it for a spiritual retreat, not for a hobby, but gradually I began to develop it. It was a joy to exercise my healthy body in the sunny mornings. As it turned out, the knee cyst did not really prevent working on the land, only hiking very long distances. Every morning I would eagerly get up from my camping platform under the trees to uproot more coffee trunks to transform a rocky, gnarly coffee finca into a spacious arboleda, a grove of trees, an arboretum, as beautiful and worthy of visiting as the Wilson Botanical Garden near the Panama border. Although I knew that Buddhist monks were prohibited from owning land and from digging in it, presumably to avoid distracting their meditation practice and taking life or to avoid developing attachment to property, I hoped I could somehow mix meditation practice with interesting, creative, hard work. It did not work out that way because my drive for work pushed my body to exhaustion and every night I would just fall asleep. When as a boy I read the story of Robinson Crusoe cast away on a tropical island, forced to make himself at home there, his self-reliance and positive attitude impressed me. He did not sit around and bemoan his woeful state. He adapted to his forced solitude. Although he was not entirely happy because of his terror of cannibals, he had the physical and mental resources to cope with them. He was not particularly lonely because he kept himself occupied with constructing his fort and other projects, also he had a pet parrot for company. His daily routine was entirely under his control. Then after he rescued Friday from the cannibal feast, he acquired an obedient servant. At the conclusion of the book, when at last he returned to Europe, he inherited a fortune from his forgotten Brazilian plantations. Then he traveled in Spain with his devoted servant and beat off an attack of wolves in a snowstorm. Then I think he was planning more projects at the end of the book. Well, I have been just as content at Andarivel as Robinson Crusoe, but every paradise must end, and even attachment to paradise fades in time. Every paradise must end. It is believed by Buddhists that even the gods in the heavenly realms of this universe must take another birth in a lower realm when their accumulated merit has been exhausted after thousands of years. Their divine bodies begin to smell and dust accumulates on their perfect skin. Actually, this seems eminently fair to my point of view. How can an eternity of heaven or hell be earned or lost in a handful of earth days? Human birth is said to be the best of the thirty-one planes of existence, ranging from hell, animals, hungry ghosts, demons, human beings (we are here), six levels of sensual bliss, sixteen levels of non-sensual bliss beyond them, and four levels of immaterial existence beyond them. None of them last forever. Not even our physical universe will endure according to modern science. It had a beginning and will expand to nothing. The final state will be infinite space, a state of total dispersion and conversion of mass to energy, when even the protons of long extinguished stars will evaporate into quarks as space expands within them accelerated by dark energy. To assert that such a final state is eternal is about as meaningful as the sound of one hand clapping, because without a clock time has no meaning. Human birth is said to be best in this revolving cycle of births and deaths because only the uniquely human mixture of pleasure and pain motivates seeking a permanent end with no return, an exit to unconditioned nirvana, the renunciation of desire for all thirty-one planes including the heavens of pleasure. After all the Robinson Crusoe novel is only a work of fiction. Life is not really as satisfactory as the happy ending for Robinson or Horatio Alger or other heroes of romantic fiction. In reality, all human lives are subject to all kinds of suffering such as separation from loved ones, association with unloved ones, broken bones, illness, old age and death. Most of the time we turn away from unpleasantness by plunging into physical and mental activities such as my development of Andarivel, although a lingering dissatisfaction may smolder in the background. Sometimes moments of acute pain flare up which cannot be ignored or forgotten after a bad night. Sometimes the onset of pain is gradual and may linger for years without recognition. In my case, to get down to the level of physical pain, a certain stiffness in my hands began to manifest a few years ago. I called it the "wooden finger syndrome" for lack of any medical diagnosis. Of course there were already several other nuisance problems such as osteoarthritis in the left hip confirmed by xrays, bunions growing on the big toes, a cyst behind the right knee, varicose veins, prostatic enlargement, a persistent ear itch, residual aches in deep scars, worsening vision, broken fingernails, episodes of phlebitis and pleurisy and dry cough and the like. Fortunately my lifestyle of vigorous daily exercise, moderate, mostly vegetarian diet, abstinence from drugs, liquor and tobacco, fresh air, pure water, uncontaminated rural environment and a stress-free regular daily routine cured the ulcers and overweight problems which prompted my retirement at age fifty. A recent series of blood tests taken last month at a San Jose laboratory also revealed nothing out of range. Nevertheless I suspect there may be something internal as yet undiagnosed which is causing present symptoms of excessive fatigue, aching muscle pain in both shoulders, and now lately dizziness. I suspect metabolism and the elimination of toxins, maybe liver, maybe kidney. Last month a gerontologist at the Clinica Biblica in San Jose looked at xrays of my shoulders and neck and declared the pain in my neck was due to cartilage depletion from osteoarthritis, and the pain in my shoulders which looked fine in the shoulder xrays was caused by pinched nerves in the neck. A plausible diagnosis, but the course of arthritis medicine he prescribed (arcoxia and neurontin) did not completely suppress all of the pain, although it did help a little. Now several days of recent dizziness and one sleepless night of intense shoulder pain following some hours of hauling buckets of sand has prompted me to make a followup appointment for next Wednesday, Sept 12. At this present moment I don't feel too bad and my stiff fingers still hit most of the right keys. Actually I don't feel too bad because I have stopped doing heavy work. My last work day started with straightening a young fifteen foot alder tree bent by the overhanging branches of a neighboring fence tree, pruning branches to allow both of them growing space, then hauling some more buckets of sand and gravel and cement down to the river to finish the first level of the flood dike. The rainfall has been below normal this year, therefore I think the dike is high enough for this year. At least I hope so. I can't do any more. Jesus knows how to mix cement if he wants to take his turn. [ed note: a few months later a record flood bridged the dike and stripped a lot of soil from the bottom land along the river. The cause of the chronic physical fatigue was eventually traced to testosterone deficiency.] Depending on what turns up at Clinica Biblica next week, I am considering changing my residence to some retirement community in the nearest modern city, Panama City, or seeking further diagnosis and treatment at Bumrungrad Bangkok International Hospital, 6,000 foreign patients daily, even possibly living as an expat over there. Some kind of retirement community with others of my own generation and medical care when needed. I cannot return to live here, even in restored health, because, Number 1: this remote, rural location is hazardous to solitary old age. The steep slopes and cliff overhangs are dangerous. There is no cell telephone coverage in case of emergency. There is no one to help me if I fall down. Number two: Franco still lurks in the background. His misery and my attachment to my godsons will cause distress if I lose them or see them abused. Furthermore my constant concern about them is a source of mental anguish. My meditation practice needs a buffer from these thoughts. The Bible relates that even Jesus of Nazareth would leave his disciples and go off into the desert for periods of solitary prayer. Therefore I have begun making arrangements to leave. There is a neighbor friend named Ana Chavez who impresses me for her support for the education of her three young sons and her responsible, employed husband Jose Gonzalez. She has agreed to look after Andarivel in my absence. Her main duty will be to keep poachers out, feed Suchi daily and pay Jesus and Juan when they come up to work on Sundays. Suchi will continue to stay here unchained, I expect, until boredom leads him away. He defends the place by barking at strangers and dashing after motorcycles. Jesus and Juan are the future owners per the irrevocable deed. They might even take more interest if I am not here. I have decided to lock up the Sony PlayStation2 console, the DVD movie player and my Boerne Wal-Mart flat-panel TV monitor, as well as the HP Pavilion laptop, because these entertainments distract them from working on their future inheritance. Their recent visits on Sundays have been marked by a maximum of two hours of work, not even real hard work, followed by non-stop games and snacks. They don't do walks or other projects or go out for ice cream at the town grocery or converse with me or play with Suchi or read books or practice touch typing or English. They just sit playing games. Their cousin Daniel is much the same. Here is something I have noticed through long experience: people are products of their environment and the influence of an outsider like me is minimal. There was a play by Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion, on the theme of transforming a lower class person into an upper class person. Professor Higgins actually succeeded in the play, even though Eliza dashed his amorous hopes (in the book, anyway, not the sweetened screen version), but the play is fiction like Robinson Crusoe is fiction. In reality, changing a set of class values is extremely difficult. It requires at the very minimum a change in environment, such as for example, if Jesus were to come live with me or get out of his house and live in the nearby apartment rented for his use, but he would not budge. Another example: I was not able to control my ulcers and eating too much until I quit my programming work environment and changed to a healthier, hiking environment with backpack, "afoot and light hearted, healthy, free, the world before me, the long brown path before me leading wherever I choose." And so the path took me to Andarivel, a destination better than I could have dreamed. And now, where next? Update 4-1/2 years later, 3/28/2012, Waianae, Oahu The fatigue at Andarivel was eventually determined to be androgen deficiency. The "wooden finger syndrome" was and still is peripheral neuropathy (tingling or mild burning sensation in hand and feet).  The dike was not built any higher by Jesus. A major flood in 2008 swept it away along with all of the bridges downstream to the coast and much of the Andarivel fertile soil along the river was also stripped away. The property is still deeded to the two brothers Jesus and Juan while I still retain usufruct rights for life, preventing any liens or mortgages or sales. Juan will not reach age eighteen until 11/22/2014 but even then I may not necessarily renounce my interest if they do not seem ready to handle the property, such as by having completed their education, which is not going well. If my physical presence in Costa Rica is required to comply with legal protocol there, this might also hold up a complete and final transfer. My decision to abandon Andarivel and Costa Rica was correct; it would be precarious for me as a single man and a foreigner to spend my remaining years there. Even my current six month stay on Oahu has discouraged me from wanting to live here in a "foreign" culture (Hawaiian attitudes about mainlanders are not entirely friendly. Old people live as isolated here as anywhere; the reputed reverence for old age is a myth; in reality this is still a tribal culture). So my next destination as of May 1, 2012, will be a return to the mainland to the pine forests of northern Arizona at Flagstaff. I enjoyed my eighteen months in Alpine, Texas but the town was too small without hospital service and limited in physical activity to climbing one hill. My nine months in Pullman, Washington, were dampened by gray skies and bitter cold weather and, again, no forest to explore; the university town is surrounded by miles of treeless wheat fields. I did enjoy more social contact there, though still not a lot. I had a name tag at the Senior Center although I did not eat there. Home Page (jwleaf.org)