I’ve always loved the movie "Joe Vs. The Volcano." It’s always
touched me in ways that only a handful of other stories or pieces of
art do. I always thought I was the only one. Then I found out through
an idle web search that there are a lot of people out there who have
dedicated a lot of time and thought into enjoying and studying this
movie. Imagine my surprise and delight. Some great stuff.

A great essay

This guy sums up just how I feel about the movie and indeed it’s a
pretty good life philosophy for me. Then I read this other one that
started me off on my own little wandering path of thought.

Another great essay

As our business has gotten funded and we are moving out our fog of
discontent, things are starting to make sense again. Once again, I’ve
learned some valuable lessons from Puerto Rican culture. I’ve been
noticing that people generally put up with a lot from one another and
are slow to break ties over disputes, ill words or broken promises.
Perhaps it’s the island culture that no one is very far from one
another and getting along is sort of a survival instinct.

Part of the reason most people behave better with strangers than
loved ones, is that strangers, others, co-workers, and friends are
quicker to throw you away if you screw up. You put yourself on your
best behavior directly proportionately to your imperiled value to the
other person. In Puerto Rico, office cultures are sometimes what we
Americans would call unprofessional… lots of noise, people maybe
talking loud. People are quicker to bring their home problems to the
office, bring their kids, bring their personal lives into the forefront
of their professional lives. I suspect that since Puerto Ricans are
slower to throw each other way, in a way it’s like family. You deal
with it and try to make it better instead of cutting the guy a pink
slip, check and sending him on packing on his merry way.

Viserally, Puerto Ricans are connected to life in a far deeper way
than most Americans… work, life… these two aren’t seperate.

Increasingly I’ve seen technology make culture take on a more
drastic meaningless existence. Movies are all show and no imagination.
Two hours is a very short story if it’s all visual. And breathless
wanting kisses of the forties have been replaced by a carefully crafted
sculpted silicon breast shot. Shakespeare in Love? Shouldn’t it have
been Shakespeare in lust?

The fast pace of the Internet makes ALL the rules able to be
rewritten in a matter of months. The WAY of doing things seems to go
extinct overnight, with the next new thing growing ever closer and
closer. To what are we beholden? Increasingly we grow dissatisfied with
religion. We shift from thing to thing looking for some sort of self
satisfaction, peace, or wellness. We flit and click and jump from one
thing to next hoping that it will fill us. We don’t want to hold too
tightly to any one thing for fear it will evaporate in a heartbeat. So
we tie down emotionally and fill our lives with eye candy… the
illusion of life.

At work we can be replaced without a second thought. Shareholders
you know… Downsizing, cutting middle management, move to new
facilities, restructuring, not making the cut are all reasons people
are tossed aside.

Quoting Joe in the movie Joe vs. the Volcano, "Zombi lights… sucking the juice out of my eyeballs."

It’s difficult now, with all external indications that the US is
doing very well. We have lots of jobs, money, and we are busy busy
busy. Gotta move, gotta do, gotta be.

I sometimes criticize Puerto Ricans for not caring about doing a
good job, being lazy or not being efficient. But Laura shamed me the
other day as I was bitching about something she broke or damaged,
saying to her, "At least I care about how I treat things."

"Too bad you don’t feel the same way about people," she shot back.

And damn it if she wasn’t right. We Americans are so pointy clicky,
efficient, and bottom line oriented that we seem to forget that people
are more important than things. It’s easy to answer correctly on a
test, but hard in practice. That’s one thing at which Puerto Ricans
excel. Things are inconsequential. Sure they love gadgets, cars, and
all manner of cool toys, but 99% of them are damaged in some way…
including all these new Jaguar’s I’m seeing recently. You work it out,
it’ll work out. Está bien… tranquilo.

And so there I will leave this for now. I’m still learning, still
growing, still failing, but every once in a while these things just
come out of the blue and hit you over the head plain as day. I hope the
Latin influences of family, culture, fun, and society can have some
great positive influences on the American way of life.

The Day of the flat tire. I don’t know how many of you have had flat
tires, but today I have been initiated. This is no small thing. I am
sure that aside from excuses for arriving at meetings-work-dentists
appointments late it is a rare occurrence. Let me tell you about how it
works down here. Half the cars drive around with those ridiculous
little donut wheels (small spare tire). It’s almost an epidemic. The
other day I say a BMW (a nice one too) driving around with that silly
little wheel. If he had been in a car locker room the towel whipping
would have been fierce.

It’s all fun and games, however, until it happens to you which if
you live in Puerto Rico, it will. Maybe it has something to do with the
heat (perhaps the rubber is half melted anyway allowing anything from a
toothpick to a hard jolly rancher to penetrate your side wall), or the
fact that the streets seem to have an extraordinary quantity of pot
holes and debris. I don’t know. But today I came out to the parking lot
to find out that I had a flat. Aw man. I breathed a sigh of relief,
however, because thank God that it didn’t happen in rush hour traffic.

I whipped out the tiny silly diminutive God-awfully goofy little
spare tire and cranked up those silly little toy jacks that take a
million turns to go up half an inch, put the silly spare on and drove
gingerly (avoiding pot holes and debris) to Santurce, a working class
neighborhood (some would call it a tough neighborhood) and found a guy
who repaired tires… for, get this… $5. Yes, you heard right. $5.
Tire repair around here is such a booming business that they charge $5
a tire and work around the clock. Hell, maybe I should get out of the
computer racket and cash in on the booming flat business. So the guys
found the hole repaired the tire and slapped it back on in about 5
minutes..

…which is good, great wonderful, brilliant, but remember that $5 I
was talking about? I didn’t have it. I had $4.50. Now I couldn’t
exactly try to scam this guy out of fifty cents on an already
impossibly low fee. Wouldn’t you know it, they didn’t accept credit or
ATM. To further compound matters, I was in an area where there were no
ATMs. Oh, did I mention it was now 5 o’clock. Aw geez, now I have to
navigate down streets that when they were designed were intended to be
two way streets. Today, however, Puerto Rican’s have taken parking to
new levels as cars are stacked on either side in impossible
configurations making this already small two way street an even smaller
two way street. So it became the Samurai on the bridge all over again.
You gonna back up to the nearest cross street or am I? I think not
knave. I have to find an ATM. You will suffer should you wish to
challenge me. It worked, he backed off and up he went to the nearest
cross street. I gave a little wave of thanks and made my way into the
heart of a six pack a day smoker, potato chip snarffing, egg guzzling,
red meat devouring, whole milk drinking, 500 hundred pound overweight
50 year old. CLOGGED is the word that kept rearing it’s ugly head as I
banged on my steering wheel and cursed the accursed traffic and the pot
hole ridden tiny streets. After about an hour, I spied it, an oasis of
money. A-ha, doh!, I’m on the wrong side of the street. Quick stop in a
gas station-run across the street on a pedestrian cross walk that only
half remained-narrowly missed by cars honking at this brazen fool who
stepped out of his car for even a millisecond-lunging for the security
of electronic cash, information age technology that would save my ass,
give me my cash and allow me to get on with my life.

So the deed it done, now I have to get back to the tire shop. To
relive the feeling, reread the above paragraph. Now I arrive back to
the shop and it’s closed. Ah, there he is. I breathe a sigh of relief,
and notice the humble tire change guy hanging out at the bar next door.
Here’s your money, I say, and thanks for your patience. Whew. The day
is done, the tire is repaired, I can go home complete, satisfied, whole
again.

I’ll worry about putting that jigsaw puzzle called the jack, lug
wrench, wing nut, spare tire assembly sometime next month. For now
it’ll just kick around in the trunk. Hey, maybe I’ll need it again
really soon.

Hurricane news: We’re fine… well if you count being without
electricity and water for a week. It was just like camping. NOT!!
Civilization doesn’t lend itself to camping very easily. What I
wouldn’t have given for a tent, a campfire, and a hole in the ground
(for you know what). Cities just weren’t made to be without water and
electricity.

What can I say. It was very impressive. I’ve not seen anything like
it in my life. Right now it looks like winter has struck this Caribbean
paradise. What trees ARE left don’t have any leaves. Normally urban
sprawl is just barely kept in check by the jungle seeking to reclaim
the constructs of man. Now, I look out and it seems that humankind has
won, our defenses have certainly proved themselves over natural
selection.

It’s really sad, but all you see is concrete. "My God, is there
really this much city?" Condado window has 43 cargo containers worth of
glass on it’s way from New Jersey ready to install this coming week.
Soon the skyscrapers will have their quick repairs, electricity will
come back, and we will be on our feet completely by the end of the
year, while the jungle will limp slowly back within years. That is if
we don’t find something to do with the bare spots in the meantime. "Hey
I never noticed that nice spot over there. Won’t that make a nice
McDonalds."

In reality the humans here have lost very little. Perhaps we have
had a bit of inconvenience. And maybe we will finally learn to put the
electrical system underground, as the power poles took heavy a heavy
toll. Then the next hurricane might just pass us by, and we won’t even
notice it was here.

In truth, it threw everything it had at us, and we’re still here. I
think there were only a couple of deaths (heart attacks I think). The
important lesson here is that this horrendous force of nature was
thrown at us almost as if to say, "Hey you!! Pay attention, I can still
kick your ass, " and it almost got overlooked. What people really
worried about was the rotting food in the fridge, the unflushed
toilets, the unshowered bodies, and long lines at McDonalds (they had
power generators).

While I’m glad we live in the twentieth century and the loss of life
wasn’t worse, and most people can weather an event like this pretty
well, I just wonder if we’re missing something. Is the abstraction
almost complete now. Will the bubble of urban life sustain us so
completely and exclusively that we’ll lose all connection… and just
float away.

I know this is a weird way to portray a hurricane, but I can’t help
but feel like it’s all in slow motion, no big deal, just going on
outside the bubble. It’s all so surreal.

But not to worry, today the electricity and water came back on. Looks like we’ll have air conditioning tonight.

I’m talking to myself more and more these days. I have this Puerto
Rican friend that keeps me company. He’s in there with all my other
voices. There are these personalities that I have inside of me,
different voices that rise to meet different situations. There’s
African-American Jim, the one that feels comfortable in
African-American culture using the vocal cant the hand mannerisms and
the manner of so many of the people I’ve grown up with. There’s blue
collar Jim, the one that can listen and understand why management (or
officers in the military) are such know-nothings/know-everythings that
do little but live in air conditioned offices and fuck with the guys
who do the real work. I can understand why people buy lottery tickets,
complain about their jobs, scrape by, harbor the thought in the back of
their minds that they don’t measure up, that someone else has the
power. I listen to their conspiracy theories and after putting Skeptic
Jim away, I actually learn quite a bit. I walk away with new respect,
new understanding, and a greater appreciation for Blue Collar Jim and
all the things he helps me with. I’ve come to realize the past few days
that I’ve got the heart of a blue collar guy and the mind of an
intellectual. I love good wine, fine music, art, and philosophy, but I
really love it all. I don’t use them as talismans to protect myself
from the rest of society, the part that actually makes it move.

So there’s Puerto Rican Jim, the one that calmly soothes me in the
mist of small minded Puerto Rican drivers, or store clerks, or while
people are shoving past you in line. I let forth a silent scream, the
internal battle clearly visible on my face, "They are so small minded.
You’ve got to have order, forethought, planning, organization. Rules
are made to be followed, not bent into invisibility. Why even have them
then? Arrghghghhh!!!!" my brain screams at me flooding the reasoning
processes.

"Listen, Jim, my Puerto Rican voice says, in a somewhat irritated
voice, "What is it that you have in your world? Do you have order,
productivity, and prosperity? But how often do you socialize with
people. How often do you show compassion for those around you. You see
someone on the side of the street with car trouble. Do you help or do
you think that AAA will take care of it? You think of consequences. Who
is this person? Do I know them? What if they rob me? You plan your
savings, squirrel it away for a rainy day that never comes. You hold
yourself inside guarding it from the outside, saving it for some
eventuality. Your feet are slower to dance, your voice reluctant to
sing, your arms heavy to show affection, and your heart is hard and
skeptical. Such is the nature of your Protestant country. It’s your
work ethic.

We, however, live life with immediacy. We don’t save money. We spent
it. We dance, we sing, we say "buen provecho" (bon appetit) to complete
strangers. We stop to help, we listen to the problems of a hurrying
father and respond with our hearts rather than with our heads. Yes, we
get burned, and people scam us. They lie to get ahead, take advantage
of our good nature, but it’s who we are and we are willing to pay the
price. It’s just a different way of thinking, Jim. Live now or live
later. It’s all about what you chose. Sure we drive like crazies, and
we’d cut off our own mother to get ahead a couple of seconds, but
that’s just our passion talking. Sure there are things to work on, but
in general you’ve got to look at it with an open heart and mind. It
can’t just be in your American context. You’ve got to see our context
and realize the good things that come from our manner our culture and
our Puerto Rican soul.

I must admit the first time he startled me with that in the car, I
felt really bad about all the curses I was mentally issuing to my
fellow drivers. He shamed me, and I hope he keeps my blood pressure
down.

It was really in that moment that I began to feel what I had already
thought. Total chaos is never productive, but neither is total order.
Americans err on the side of order sanitizing life to a point that it’s
as tasteless as a Denny’s Grand Slam Breakfast. Puerto Ricans run the
dangerous gauntlet of disorder to the point of overwhelming positive
productivity. However, with the right mix, chaos brings unexpected
delights, serendipitous relationships that you might not have chosen
consciously, parts of yourself that you might not have known. I might
never have met Puerto Rican Jim, even though he lived inside me from
birth. With order as well comes an ability to deal with those pieces,
make sense of them, put them in their context and not be swept away by
them.

I guess, it was a bit rocky there for a bit, but I am continually
reminded of how beautiful lack of control actually is. It’s shaping me
in ways I would never have suspected. It’s hard, but believe me, vale
la pena (it is worth the effort).

Let the games begin. The season of the sagardotegi (sah-gar-doe-TEG-ee) has begun and this year we had the pleasure of making our first trip to the sagardotegi (cider house in Basque) with some of my friends from Ibermatica. It is really sweet that they still remember me and invite me out with them. The excuse to celebrate was the new job of Antxon (AHN choan) Alonso Lopez a programmer and abused grunt at Ibermatica. He’s free now and seems to be having a ball. He’s finally thrown off the yoke of the Ibermatica feudal system and struck out on his own. It’s a small Internet service provider start up and with Antxon on the job things are off on the right foot.

It’s funny but it feels kinda like I haven’t left the Bay Area (of San Francisco). Here I am 9000 miles from Multimedia Gulch and I’m talking about Internet startups… The Internet is everywhere folks.

Antxon: Perl programmer turned crazy cider drinking fiend.

So the sagardotegi is a wonderful time. In the sagardotegi is where grown drunk men will grab the back of your neck (affectionately) and sing to you. Hehe, it happened to me. I could only stand there thinking, “I’ve got to put this on the web page. The sagardotegi, a place where strange drunk men will grab your neck and sing to you.” Incidently they like to grab your ears too. There’s something about ears here. I haven’t quite figured it out yet

A cider house is pretty much just that, some guy’s apple farm, a house. They grow the apples, press them in this huge basement, and then invite people in as if it was a restaurant, except with 10 huge 5000 gallon barrels of great fermented cider. The funny part is that they almost literally throw food at you. You pay $25, for all you can eat, all you can drink, all the mess you can make… akin to some barbaric middle ages movie where there’s a roasted pig, mountains of food, and drink. Hombre, what a time.

The Cider, crowding for a bit of that sweet nectar.

The cider runs from taps in the kegs, shooting out from about eye level. The custom is to put your glass as close to the floor as possible, one: to let the cider breath, and two: to show how studly and awesome you are. I tried both, and I don’t notice a difference, so it’s probably just to show how cool you are. The floors are covered with cider as of course it spills, and the people are covered with it because, some of them are not as dexterous as others, and of course you can’t tell who is who, because “are you a mess because you’re a dork, or are you a mess because your buddy is a dork?” Ah, but those are questions better left to the philosophers.

Que mas?

So we ate some succulent barbecued veal (funny thing about veal, here veal is a pampered cow, fed the best stuff, babied like a pet, rather than tied up the way it is portrayed in the US. Also, a veal cow is a mature cow, a couch potato (patata here) cow, kinda like it ate nothing but Cheetos and drank beer it’s whole life (watch out UG they’re coming for you)). So, we had some of that and some bacalao in green sauce, as we stuffed out faces with this awesome french bread (actually it’s Spanish, but it’s just water yeast, and salt so it’s what we would call french bread).

We are looking to go a few more times this year.