Okay. So it's clear that another reason for not writing is the huge work of editing. Life here is slow-mo, yet it seems my days are filled with small events of great but not-so-interesting import. The sun came up! It is getting warm! It is raining, and cool; the palm trees are blowing in a strong wind. I found a real Mexican restaurant and can transfer my lunch addiction: sneak-off-and-eat-Indian food, to sneak-off-and-eat-Mexican.

Early on I did the laundry, so deliciously near to our spot, and there were enough washers and driers available. Better still, I met Ronda from Missouri, who has been coming here for years. She was friendly, and in our extended conversation kindly filled me in on elements of life at Portobelo and beyond. Big news was the huge hailstorm experienced the week before we arrived. With tornado or tornadic winds. At 3am. With no warning. Her hometown friend came in and said when the storm came, she had to get up out of bed and put on some underpants. When she suggested her husband do the same, he didn't share her concern. Obviously she had the same fantasies experiencing the storm that I had hearing about it. Among them, having no basement or shelter to run to; having knowledge of what happens to motor and mobile homes in big winds; imagining oneself being sucked out of one's bed and home to be found later stark naked. All of us laughingly agreed that underpants in that situation would be essential. Whether or not they were clean was unimportant. Thus I began my stay here having bonded with these women in my heart.

I can report disappointment at finding that the give-one-take-one bookshelves at the laundromat are filled with romance novels. However, that opens the door to my sneaking books onto the shelves that are either rabble-rousingly new age—2013, a book of prognostication, essays about events that might occur in 2012 which I took from another take-one shelf last year in Elephant Butte, NM.—or obscure but literary delights like Bookends, written by 2 lovely old women who spent their lives together collecting rare books.

I was thrilled that after several days 2013 disappeared; likewise Bookends, which I put out a few days later. Heartening.

Tuesdays there's country music by the residents from 7-9. Sundays, jamming from 2-4. The highlight on that day was talking to Bonnie, who at 74 is sparkling, and totally alive after a list of horrible health problems that could have killed her several times but didn't. Although this conversation stressfully lengthened my list of unknown-til-now bodily malfunctions, the miracles of her survival and personality were uplifting. A few minutes of experiencing her spirit, our eyes meeting, being real, laughing—that'll do me.


We've eaten, driven, ferried and survived, walked the half-mile road around the inner RV village. One observation about this area, heavily fifth-wheeled (a kind of truck-pulled RV), there are huge numbers of pick-ups. Plenty are diesels, and big-assed too.

Once, rain sounded on our roof all day and into the dark. After dinner it stopped, or gentled, and I stepped out to take a walk, I loved the clouds moving perpendicular to the road, and had to get out my camera and let the light work inside the shutter.