GOLFITO, lessons in the POWER OF NOW.
GOLFITO, lessons in the POWER OF NOW.
“….har? arh…what time is it? where are we? que? Arrr…. “No Hablo Espanol…”..
“Oh….the border…? and its’ everyone off the bus? Right?
Ci ci….OK….I’m getting up senor.”
This was my introduction to Costa Rica. Just after dawn. Still in and out of a deep, over-the counter-Valium-induced sleep….alone on the back 4 seats, of some luxury bus, $25 worth, from Panama City to Costa Rica, overnight.
From the bus to the immigration cues, the Aust-gringo in amongst the locals was too blurred to really give a shit. First the bye bye Panama cue, then, 400m up the truck stop come border post , to the hello Costa Rica cue>>> 2-3 hours of waiting whilst eating weird fried things in the dawn light, bought from the cue hustlers. Another 30 k’s north, and the same bus dumped a lone Aust-gringo at roadside mud puddle in Coast Rica’s Rio Clare, and from there into an instantly and not so carefully negotiated $5 taxi ride to Golfito harbour.
As per my regular international first day arrival skill, the first taxi ride is a $burn, $25 worth against the $5 negotiation. I gotta get my cinqo’s in order.
From the taxi boot to the pontoon, at last 45kg of kit had a looming rest.With the synchronicity of military excellence, as I was lugging luggage, the motor yacht Ave Maria was approaching the dock….nothing to schedule, just immaculate coincidence.
This was Banana Bay Marina. US $60/night, negotiated down from a rip-off $120.
Golfito is one of those Refuge Bay grade anchorages, that in more colonial days, was the export heart of the Costa Rican banana trade. Trading with the US only has one eventual outcome, and it ain’t happy, that is, if you ain’t American, or should that be, North American.
So now, the “company banana town”, with the company’s’ school, docks, dorms, and managerial quarters was abandoned, and is now a mix of marlin men, yachties, and giant duty free zone, where half of Coast Rica shops, so it seems. You can only shop, the day after you get your permit, in some sort of compulsive way to attract overnight tourism. With duty around 40%, duty free is an issue.
Banana Bay Marina has a wilder competitor, next door, called Fish Hook Marina, where the boys are shitload more fuelled up>>> on cigars, diesel (by the $5000 tank load), pot, other Columbian stuff, ( judging by my observations of the fast disappear and reappear reinvigorated observations), all thrown down with a liberal and loose libation foundation. Daily. In fact all daily.
Hymie Abrams, hip hard partying US owner, had just redecorated the bar, with the best looking barmaids within 400K. With seemingly endless budgets for tight and tighter dresses, the boys, the barmaids and the pumping stimulants, made Fish Hook more addictive than just marlin fishing. Hymie was no regular marina owner. He was ambitious…about as ambitious as Chris Skase. Late 2008 is not a good time to be pitching a 300 berth marina, and Hamilton Island size village. But Hymie was committed. The trucks were rolling in the fill, and he already owned most of Golfito’s waterfront, so relaxing, Hymie style, needed a lot of booze and other stuff.
One quiet, rainy Sunday night, Hymie hired in the mobile disco. Not just any mobile disco. This kit could have powered David Bowie’s 1974 Sydney showground’s live performance. The one you could hear in Bondi. Most punters, including some very disturbed marlin men, were pinned to the walls like bugs on the radiator, just trying to protect the last semblance of their audio senses. Tinnitus was the order of the day, for the whole marina, the next day.
My ears are still ringing.
With CNN on the bar’s flat screen, Mumbai hotels on fire, it seemed the Indian terrorists were on similar path to destruction as Hymie’s ambition. But unlike all those CIA employed Bali and 911 terrorists, these Indian guys were going down in a hail of bullets, and they were going to take a 20 to one kill ratio first, including India’s crack terrorism chief ( there’s an oxymoron , or a moron at least)…and seemingly, Hymie was going to do the same thing, just with berths instead of bullets.
So Fish Hook was fun. Wi-fi everywhere, we got busy, ordering autopilot circuit boards, sorting Panama Canal passage, plotting waypoints over Google Earth, in cahoots with yahties sailing north….and chatting away over VOIP, all around the planet, for zippo. Its 2008..use it.
But Golfito was not about bar chat….it was all about 11 days of hard fucking boat work. Everyday, more trips to the local hardware, where I would master the art of hardware charades, to describe a jubilee clip, or a plug, or a metal drill, rat tail router, all in an enacted sign language. There were 4 old style hardware shops in Golfito, where all the goods were on the other side of the counter, and all saw several performances from me, daily. Then I got a dictionary. But not a dictionary with Spanish for Jubilee clip, regretfully. So it was on with the show.
I was racking up miles and miles, walking the waterfront each day, so it was a great relief, when headed to the duty free zone, (for $5 Vodka keg), to spot a $40 Chinese mountain bike special, and a few doors up, a $200 inflatable Chinese, 2 man kayak. An afternoon on the air pump, and the spanner, and I had full land and sea capability. A threat to US Naval supremacy….that was me. Mind you, maybe my equipment prep was not all that amphibiously perfect, and as I rode off proudly into town, on my new Chinese bike>>>> it was just luck that Pablo noticed a small part of the bike I had not included in the assembly….the wheel bearings. Brakes were an issue. Especially when I kept up that bad habit of riding on the wrong side of the road. This problem remains unresolved. But the comfy kayak had me see miles of Golfito harbour that I had only spotted from afar, within minutes of launch.
In memory of my first canoe as a 10 year old, the Chinese condom canoe was boringly named Viking 2.
I dutifully got to work, trying to figure out how to make the condom canoe turn into an elegant inflatable skull, with oars, rollicks and ease. It’s a W.I.P…..and could remain so for some time, despite the fibreglass and resin under my bunk.
On the subject of condoms , Rod’s major task in Golfito was to restore the Zodiac. ( phonetically spelt ssssssszodiac). This fuca had more leaks than Labour Government. If it were a condom, it would have done a ten day recycled stint in a Mexican brothel. This fuca leaked air like wind in a Mel Brooks Mexican bean fart movie, and did so whilst flooding the floor instantly.
No end of sssszodiac patch material charades, could produce anything roughly resembling hypanlon cloth. And as for U beaut ssssszodiac glue…forget it. So it was improvise time.
Fortunately, some mad chemist has invented some new squeeze gun goop called 5200.
This new goop puts the shit in ‘shit to blanket”. And blanket the sssszodiac I did… so the new look ssssszodiac now features this year’s fashion in Costa Rican vinyl flooring and 5200.
More patches of this vinyl flooring now cover the sssszodiac than a bib and brace from the 20’s depression.
I think something like 4 carton canisters of this 5200 goop now hopefully will keep the ssszodiac afloat as long, as well, as ah, a re-cycled condom in a Mexican brothel stays hard.
This project took several sticky hours each day, followed by me returning to the boat in a foul mood, swearing and muttering words like, “Buckleys chance”.
It was all conducted under daily last-of-wet season showers, in some 95% humidity>>>> not exactly factory specified conditions, under a small roof annex outside the Fish Hook Marina’s sub-station…basically, some micro industrial wasteland, with a great view.
I hate fucked inflatable’s, and along with outboards that won’t start when on a dramatic lee shore, they are, and remain the pain of my boating career.
Pain was a good teacher in Golfito. Along with some writer a, marvellously named author called Eckhart Tolle. Eckhart Tolle was maniac depressant on a road to destruction. Then he cracked it. His idea of ‘cracking it’ wasn’t exactly mainstream. Sitting in blessed out joy for a few years, park bench style was his win. But what he figured, then wrote, is brilliant. NYC best seller and Oprah worship status took its Tolle to millions.
The book is called the Power of NOW. This book, as all my deeper nutrition, just turns up, at the right time, at the right place, just like Shirley MacLean breaking down infront of Melrose’s Bodhi Bookshop.
I’m not bad on the esoteric insight stuff…the Vedic, mystic meats quantum physics stuff, to me is very interesting. But the concept in Tolle’s book is something new, all embracing and ridiculously simple, for those who know you don’t buy enlightenment on the floor of a BMW show room.
The Power of Now is about the noise that is running around in ya brain, right now, right here. Sure, Budha, Jesus and the whole panoply of cosmic masters have given us the tip on the inner peace/joy shit. But Tolle grabs the ball a kicks a field goal from 50m out, to the gasp of the reader. Freud sure as hell could have done with Tolle’s insight. 
The egoic self, almost an ugly entity unto itself, is a self serving short circuit between ya mind and ya emotional body, that only works when it’s is dealing with either the past or the future.
The mind has no NOW function button. The human race, has some bad problems, from this short circuit of the mind, and for example, the mind says a sharing caring community is good thging, and in the process, some 50 million people have been murdered in an attempt to introduce communism is in China and Russia, based on the communal ideas embodied in communism. What the? Such is the mind of man. Its insane.
The noise of the mind is endless, worrying about issues in the future, and eating up itself over issue from the past. That fucking mind created a version of who it thinks its owner is, in terms of its position, achievements, fuck-ups and past. Mistake. No one is who they are en-structured to have been. Ya just ya you…ya undefined, inner you.
It’s the end to the endless chatter of the monkey in the mind that is the whole purpose of meditational, chillout enlightenment pursuit.
Tolles’ observation is simple. When ya in the now, or you have presence, where you don’t get bombarded with the mind chatter over the past and future, where you find peace.
RIGHT HERE. RIGHT NOW.
Surfer’s do in in the tube. Skiers, bikers and car racers do it in the berms. You are either focused in the now, or ya deadmeat,in action sport.
This is the reason for focued sports addiction. It’s the joy of only only conscious of the now. Get that same now consciousness in ya daliy gig, and ya life is the real, inner, perfect you, not ya shitful, worried or pissed-off mental as anything you.
So how the fuck do ya stop the mind perma banter?
Try this trick. Ask ya self, just quietly ( try this )….”what will be me next thought?”
Notice the pleasant gap in proceedings?
Fuck ua mind. It’s an overused tool. Especially mine.
Ya true self is found when ya mind stops hammering you with noise. Like Hymie’s 200DB disco, the tinnitus never stops. So stop it. This is what I’m just starting to practise, as a complete novice., but with a new found noticing of how, where and why i do crack it, already.
So if you are only focused on the here and now, there is no room for the minds past and future reference arguments…. the mind’s noise is fucked> no fuel, nowhere to go, and its replacement?>>> a quiet creeping peacefulness, then the odd inner joyous giggle. Noice.
The good esoteric arguments about the only existence being now, have a disarming truth about them that ya mind fights like fuc to demount. A good mind, nonetheless, is like a really useful tool from the workshop. It’s meant to be used, then put back into the tool shed, and not kept running 24/7. But in Western living, we take the tool out, keep it running 24/7, and never turn the fucking tool off. Mistake. 100 million dead, this century, from mans mad murdering mental disposition. Abos’ lived happily in the now for 70,000 years. What went wrong? Answer>>> The mind of mankind, my mind, your mind, our shared mental conscioness. That’s what went wrong. Fuc the silly computer…turn it off sometime. This laptop is almost outta battery now, but not so my mind….oh for the off switch. But the off switch is simple….stay in the now , or so Eckhart argues. No computer is needed, to be focused, alert and simply doing the now>>>>>fuc the past, don’t worry about the future…simple. What’s infront of me, now, here?
This, in a few painful moments were my lessons from Golfito. Its was simply page one of a new view. Let’s see how it works out for me in year ahead of practise.
Here’s an example< Golfito is all work and lots of cost. The mind logically says, throw the ropes and spilt. It then orders things….so if we need to leave Sunday, we need more cooking LPG on Saturday. But our gas bottle needs a gringo-esque, special depot to refill it. It can be left with smiling, nodding, can-do supermarket guys, for return, filled, for sure, Monday. Monday we can spilt…so OK. Monday it is. Ready to leave Monday, Rod arrives to collect the gas and spilt. But fuck you mate…what, you didn’t load my bottle last week? And ya kidding me..its gunna be Wednesday before I can get it refilled? Mind if i sink my machete inta ya counter, me thinks. Anger. Not happy Jan.
No acceptance, just fight anger. Not healthy.
There comes a time, when time is and its mate the mind, are nothing short of dumb fuck-nuckles. Such was Monday morning in Golfito.
That Monday morning was my snap point. And realisation point. Fuck the drama. Fuck the mind’s angst. Give in. Chill out. So 2 more days eh? And the issue, simply, that life is about the journey, not the destination.
The moment I said fuc it, let/s do now, rather than. Wednesday, the happiness gates opened. Down the Esplanade I peddled happily. Ipod hammering. Tropical Latino chill everywhere. Lunch alone was delicious. The streetscape came alive with 200 Latino, arse swinging school girls and their drum hammerings boys. Latino types love their rhythm loud, and their punani hot. I was in the now, fuck Wednesday. All was alive, and here, and now. Fuck the future, who gives a shit about the past. A worthy lesson for Rod’s anal mind.
This brings to mind another lesson courtesy of a pony tailed, surfing golden oldie, called Harry Abrams. Another jewish sounding misfit at the Fish Hook bar. Harry is few years older than me, and is proof of one of my more practical observations: if you put 5,000,000 Croc shoes on the world every year, given their deadly slipperiness when worn, you can expect at least a few thou to be hospitalised at ant one time, from Croc falls. Harry was one. Broken arm, his affliction.
Harry was one of the world’s super surfboard shapers. He saw it all. He is, to the trade, the “Flowmaster”. In Cost Rica, he lives on one of those properties, overlooking a world famous surf break, is botanic heaven, shaping philosophy and farming more than glass fibre.
Harry once was the coolest barman/doorman in Long Island, the NYC’s Palm Beach, after his board factory burnt to cinders. Harry and I got a tad excessive with the white mans drugs, at few bars… and despite the fact that I swore my side of the car was missing a steering wheel, we made from bar to bar, via Golfito’s cute and pumping red light district, to say hello to a few of his rent-by-the hour hotelier mates, from the sanctity of Harry twin cab four-wheel drive front seats.
Harry the ‘Flowmaster” had his own take on life in the now, from the perspective of life in the tube. The wave tube, stupid. Basically, when it gets down to it, Harry argued, as he passed my next Vodka on the rocks, the only thing that is really important right now, right here, is ya next breath.
It didn’t sound like much, but it was a profound observation. Go the flow.
