Age of Ethics and Consciousness

After cousin Jeffrey left the bus station in David, just as I settled into my chair, the baggage man came into the bus carried by the river of other passengers entering. He showed me a baggage ticket and asked if I had the same number. I fished my three tickets out of my pocket and of course one of them matched. He motioned for me to follow him and out we went into the isle and paddled upstream against the current. On arrival at the belly of the bus, he pointed to one of my gray cases left lonely on the curb and asked if there was a bicycle inside. Perhaps he was referring to the words "Bicycle Tourist" that I unwittingly scribed on each case the day before, thinking somehow the act of demystifying the contents for airport security x-ray operators would be returned in with benevolence and smoother flow? (start laughing anytime.) Of course I said yes, that the case contained my bicycle and provisions, after which he asked for an additional six dollars. This held fair balance as it was less than the $10 bribe that we did not cough-up initially. Finally I had to shove the six dollars in front of his face to regain his attentions that had shifted away leaving me in some state of bizarre and prolonged invisibility. I returned to my chair. There was a teenager next to me with his death t-shirt, tattoos and what I could only discern as heat-branded, embossed, monogram initials set deeply into the skin on his upper arm. We said not one word to each other the entire way to Panama city, where until I slept.

At the Panama City bus terminal there was an apathetic attempt by the driver to locate assistance for me in getting the luggage down to the taxi parade. Within less than a minute shrugged his shoulders and excused himself to drive away. I looked around, and the other passengers on the bus had all evaporated into the night. Remembering my epiphany of "each step taking oneself closer" (to something) I decided to inch-worm the bags to the top of the ramp: roll one case set it down and stretch, repeat with the next case, and finally hoisting the duffle on my upper thighs, I managed to arrive at the top of the ramp with some sort of waddle. There I stood looking down at the ramp, at the amorous couple on the granite bench, the late night family at the switchback landing and at the taxis below. Just as I was meditating and preparing myself, and reaching to roll the first case again, a man appeared on the ramp, pushing a large dolly cart. He delivered all my bags to the bottom and where I secured a cab ride for $25 in a tiny car where the driver and a couple other guys helped him finagle the bags almost miraculously into the tiny spray-painted vessel. Away we went into the night through the lights of Downtown and on along the water, finally arriving at the airport which somehow seemed a dwarf in proportion to the number and size of Panama City's high-rise towers. The cabbie took the bags out and put them on a large cart for me and wheeled them into the terminal. Therein, the lateness of night was felt so palpably, empathically, with the lethargic scuffling feet of the seldom seen airport worker. As there were no prominent counter logos or markings, the cab driver inquired twice on my behalf where the Spirit Airlines counter would be. Looking around, I spied some line stantions, ropes and placards displaying Spirit Air, stowed along one of the nearby walls, and so payed the cab driver, and in gratitude, hugged him goodbye.

The wait was not too long as I found others to talk with who arrived later on the scene, including one Panamanian man from Volcan, who was on the same bus. He has a banana farm near Volcan but works in Boston part of the year for a company that makes lithium batteries for Motorola, NASA, etc. Naturally, my interests were piqued and as my questions became more detailed and specific regarding the nature and future of lithium batteries and their potential applications, he eventually confided that he simply solders and otherwise assembles the batteries. Another man showed-up who is returning to Florida, a former boat captain, but now a relatively "poor Gringo" that has exchanged citizenships through Panamanian matrimony. Another conversation ensued with a guy returning from a two week vacation in Panama, returning to his restaurant management position far north of Montreal, Canada. Soon enough, the line was constructed and the Spirit Air workers appeared around midnight. My bags were each about 5 pounds overweight. The first two he apparently let slide, and then came the negotiations on the second gray case which was 7 pounds overweight. I stated what he already knew, that I had paid $100 for the 3rd bag, which was already a formidable penalty. I suggested that it might be possible to remove some itms from the case, so we opened it and I fished-out some handlebar grips, and other parts, which on their own and out of context, looked strange somehow. When I suggested that this would only raise questions and further problems with security, he seemed to agree and so we closed the case and on I went to the security line, one much tamer than those I would be meeting in Fort Lauderdale.

While negotiating with the Spirit Air check-in agent, my former individual invisibility suddenly dissolved as the attentions from everyone shifted to the scene of Opening the Gray Box. It was if the magic I had been experiencing throughout my entire journey wafted out of the box like the ethers from a genie's lamp. The man became personal and asked me questions from the center of his own curiosity. Two women at the adjacent desk overheard me telling him about my journey. Before I left the counter, the two women began asking me more questions (in English) and scratched their way deeper into my "story". We were on the same flight to Fort Lauderdale and were seated only one row apart. Waiting at our gate, we shared really deep conversations about spirit and wakefulness. Soon we boarded, and soon the lights were dim and soon we all slept, though again for me as on the bus, it was only a half sleep - a purgatory sleep. The ladies reconvened with me later at baggage claim, and as they had no checked bags, we said our final goodbyes. One of them opened a a dedicated channel, like a tunnel, and said "I would like to give you a small gift to help you on your way. Just a small gift." She held out her fist to transfer something to my hand. She said "Don't look at it until after you get your bags." I promised to follow her request as she pressed a wadded piece of paper down into my closing hand. I put the crumpled wad into my jacket pocket and zipped it closed. We hugged goodbye.

A crowd of people formed around the carousel. One man, a gringo with a buzz cut, wearing a weight lifter's club t-shirt stood larger than anyone, a veritable giant. I approached him and asked, lightheartedly stroking his ego which he virtually wore, if he would help me lift my bags off the conveyer and onto the cart, that now cost $1 in the U.S. He looked at me as though pained and annoyed, but flanked by friends he agreed to help, but on made it clear that he had a connecting flight to catch. The first suitcase appeared in about 30 more seconds, which seemed like an eternity. He pulled it off and after another 15 seconds said that he had to go. I excused him and the other two pieces showed-up before he and his tagalongs disappeared around the corner. I slid them off the belt and onto the floor with a thud. With a turn of good fortune, a young Chinese man wearing an employee badge necklace appeared to pull as-yet unclaimed bags off of the conveyor. He loaded the other box on the cart and the two of us heaved the duffle high atop.

Soon I was facing a woman at the end of a fast-moving line that had the attitude of Condaleza Rice. While she verified my passport and U.S. immigrations form, the next available bulldog barked from his stall something like "I am ready whenever you are able to get over here." Whoa. Welcome home. The snide interrogations began about what I was doing in those countries, why I would even want to ride a bike, what is my profession, where I live, etcetera. Then in a seemingly warmer tone he instructed me to turn around and go around the corner where I will see a line and a red light. Spinning the cart around and seeing that I was looking for the almost illusive crack into the adjoining room where I was to go, he called after me saying that I was going the correct way and that he didn't design the system. Soon I was in the inspection room with the hulking x-ray machine resembling a half buried steam locomotive, cold stainless steel countertops, and lights that made everything seem hopeless and even grayer than the color of my own luggage. A few other people were there, mostly foreigners or people of color. One guy was explaining a new pair of sneakers. Finally I was asked to move over to one of the counters, only to be interrogated sharply by another man who asked "Who told you to come over here?!" The urge to be disagreeable began to boil in my belly. But I went through the same questions again. The man told me to turn around and go over to the far counter, by which he meant the x-ray machine. So I navigated the cart like stirring caramel syrup and made my way over to the x-ray machine. Another woman here. Somehow a softening one, with the compassion to listen as I explained that one of the reasons I was ending my journey was because of a spinal injury that made it difficult for me to lift much. Feeling somehow like Jesus dragging the heavy timbers of the cross through a sneering and jeering crowd, I asked the expectant man if he would help me get the bags onto the high counter at the mouth of the machine. The bags went through. The man walked away. The woman helped me load the cart. Nothing was said. I asked if they were finished with me and the woman affirmed with a nod of her head.

Away I went rolling through the labyrinth-like winding hallways and soon was pleading with an overweight and scowling black man at the baggage re-check point. Finally I escalated by telling the attendant there, flat-out, that my back was actually broken and that I required assistance. Grimacing with me for different reasons, he reach across the scale platform and drug the items across. He scanned the tags and said to proceed on to my gate.

Finally, I remembered my pocket. It was a one hundred dollar bill.

What a world. Each gate to each destination city has its own pronounced demographic. Atlantic City was no exception. I will spare you the remaining story of whiney Long Island accents, rudeness and the spoiling of children in ways unsurpassed. I had entered a maelstrom of utter madness. It is gruff and cold here. After some negotiating, I shelled-out $25 for a cab to drive me the 5 miles to the train station by yet another scowling dark face. He unloaded the payload into the mouth of a freezer-like elevator that took me up to a sunny, but cold platform. No one else was there. The elevator alarm sounded on and on as I again struggled alone with the weights to get them onto the platform. An older woman appeared eventually. She told me about her son, living in a schoolbus under some tarps in Oregon, who was now back East in Philadelphia  visiting her and his father in Philadelphia. The witty gray-haired woman helped me onto the train when it arrived after a two hour wait outside in the sunshine and brittle cold, but the abrasive attitude continued with the complacent conductors who made me relocate the bags, denying me any assistance, as one of them remarked "We have backs too!" Eventually, I lugged the bags off the full train, no one lifting a finger to help, at the dark underground platform in Philadelphia. People again vanished leaving me there with my load on the platform, grimy and stinky with a foulness of decades of machines belching with bad attitudes. Just as I began the inch-worm process to reach the stairwell, escalator and elevator structure in the gloomy distance,nearly 200 feet away, the voice of my friend Meg called out her quintessentially saucy "Hey!"

Together, we got the stuff to the elevator in two trips, me again holding the door of the alarming elevator waiting her return. Up to the high ceilinged stone and cement day-lit structure above, large carts in the appeared in distant gloom, Meg walked across the desolate annex where the elevator had deposited us to retrieve one of the carts. Not far behind, a man dressed in the vintage railroad conductors uniform, vagrantly smoking the last heavy drags of a cigarette where in the spaces of the train station was disallowed, followed her. Off in the distance I could see the exchange and body language of the agitated man telling Meg that she could not use the cart. She returned with this news and so we hauled the stuff another 200 feet to finally reach the curb to where she parked the car. Meg loaded the luggage and I loaded myself, and soon we were driving on the unkempt potholed streets of Philadelphia, finally arriving at her apartment. Therein were delicious culinary aromas and some warmth, and the gentle face of her boyfriend Salvador, a deeply sentimental Spanish artist from Columbia. We ate.

I checked my email, only to discover more madness from Diana, Helena and Ruby's mom. An unsolicited and neurologically short-circuiting communique that reads as follows:

Huh?!?! I just got back from a four-month 1,800 mile bicycle trip through Central America, during which time I managed to get through to the children about four of the hundred attempts to do so. No emails returned and the phone nearly always goes unanswered. Diana is a wretched anathema, like an injured weasel, in perpetual anger over her own staunch resistances to allowing a rich human experience and I seem to be her favorite target. Maybe she's had just a bit too much fluoride in her drinking water over the years - just incapable of rational thought. Who is she to judge me? And how does this corrosive virulence serve Helena and Ruby?

It is easy to slip into feelings of being forlorn, wasted and lost. This is a place of utter madness. From my own preemptive portending to physical arrival, the closer I came to be back "here", the more madness spun around me. Sprinkled, yes with avatars of good will, but as in The Matrix, few and isolated, surreal. I am in a sort of shock. My reason for returning barricaded by utter madness. I am in the temporary safety of Meg's apartment in Philadelphia, but there are crazy men screaming and shouting angrily out on the busy street for the last hour.

How am I? I am fine. I arrived safely. Welcome home, traveler.

Jahrun