Manuel

Sit in the ocean, facing the rhythmic pulse from the horizon, pelicans swoop along the cresting waves. They always head north, up the endless green coast. Fishermen grunt when they roll out of their hammock, get in the boat, and finally again when they settle back in 12 hours later. Rhythms.

Maybe you’re only born with, or only capable of exacting so many motions. You have 1000 micro habits, tics, subtle machinations of your body and psyche that you can use in endless iterations throughout your corporeal life. I remember when I was really high at basketball camp trying to explain this theory to my friends.

You only get a fixed number of moves; like a chess piece with a certain range of motion that you aren’t fully aware of, but is hardwired in. This walk, this greeting, these 25 steps to the store. Open door and smile, ask if they have the cake today?

Some people exert way more, build up a scary arsenal. Others have considerably less, out of lack of necessity, or they just excel with their small amount.

Fishermen: Wake up, grunt. Bead of sweat wiped off forehead, pee. Back hurts. Step outside and feel the first rays of sun slant down onto the dusty street. Hack open coconut, have a drink. Put on pants, hop in the back of the truck speeding down the road. Get on the boat, squint up at the gulls.  

Day- Night—Party—Day—how many motions were required? How many minute synaptic calculations fired to send him through the day? The grid was laid out early and he plods along it day after day. The same environment the same maneuvers, recreated like a sentient zombie. Snapshots carried over.

I understand how they’ll do the first prototype of AI robots. Manuel, the fisherman. He’s programmed away in the vaults of the highest security Pentagon laboratories. Created as a middle-aged Ecuadorian tio.

He’s somebody’s uncle from Guayaquil who had a daughter, got laid off, then moved in with family in a tiny brick house on the coast to find work. No one in that family had ever met him but welcome him without question.

He has the distended gut of beer, tropical fruit, and hammock time, but the worn hands of the fishing lines and scars from accidents at work or drunken quincinieras. He has just enough teeth. On his head a plume of black hair, the pride of his lineage, he keeps that full bush well into his stooped over days. He sleeps in his hammock in the living room, plays cards under the buggy lights at night.

He poses for pictures at his nieces graduation party which is on the street outside the house. There is a display of roses and pictures plastered against the wall for everyone to pose in front of.

Is he like anyone else? That crooked smile is tired but warm. A lovable program plopped into the heat and rhythms of the coast, bound to carry on the traditions, the celebrations, the noise.

In his small town all life takes place on that 3-foot strip between the wall and the dusty road, pushing boundaries of plastic chairs and crates and tables filled with fish bones. These often spill well into the street for birthdays or football matches.

In Montanita the party rituals are more ornate. One warranted renting huge speakers and a blow-up pool put directly in the middle of the road, yelling and cumbia music going until around 3am. Another hired a clown and put 30 chairs in the middle of the street so he could perform at midnight to a crowd of bored mothers and kids running around. It’s only a party if your ears are being blasted off by the shoddy equipment, makeshift carnivals at a moment’s notice. Walking by a 5-year old’s birthday in a parking lot, a full PA system is blaring Miley Cyrus to a circle of girls in chairs twiddling their thumbs.

The piece de resistance was the man across the streets 70^th birthday.. I should have known walking home at 9pm to see them just starting. 2 huge speakers, no doubt brought in by the wild cousin from the city who’d made a backhand deal. He’s got an earring and perfume so strong the neighborhood dogs cowered away. 70 years old represented some sort of impending spiritual death for my potbellied 5-foot-tall neighbor. There were the holy speakers, the pavilion was filled with streamers, somebody conjured up a mixing board that intermittently broadcast “feliz cumpleanos, es tu dia vamoss..!!” along with other unintelligible hype. My window was directly across the tiny dirt road, full volume.

 By 12am it was picking up steam, I peeked out to see the corpulent tias hooting as they nimbly stepped to the beat. By 4 am, with no change, I walked out in the road in my boxers and stared at them, only to have the birthday boy stumble over to tell me he’s on his property, there is no issue, have a drink.

I lay awake plotting how to cut the wires, throw a rock, file a complaint with god, eventually 9 am rolled around to no volume change, and a look out the window revealed 5 men passed out drunk in a circle. Mission accomplished.

Song, and noise in general is an important ritual. There is no silence, so however you can fill the void is how you participate in the journey.  I was delighted to find there are no scheduled times for the garbage truck, but rather a tune blared from a speaker on the truck signifies that it’s time to take the trash out. Every time I’d hear it, 7am, 4pm, I’d hustle to find the source and sing along. I picture the moms’ ears perking up from making food while holding a baby, spanking her older hijo, ven, sacalo! And he scrambles out with the enormous bag barefoot into the street.

Noise is celebration, part of the rhythm, but it ebbs and flows. The quiet rainy nights are for reflection and watching plumes of smoke sift up through the dim light. The dawn where the gulls swoop along the waves, crabs skitter around the incoming tide, and the breeze comes across the awakening sea offers a brief reset. Once the garbage trucks sound, the store fronts are swept, and dust kicks up, the silence gives way to another round of life, another crashing swirling sequence of everyone’s programming, predictable but beautiful in its synchronicity.

The heat pulses down and sweat blends with the smells of the tiendas and fruit stands, rusty trucks accelerate down the highway at the edge of town. Nothing was planned, but by the time the music dies off, the street dogs curl up, and all you can hear is waves, it all gets done. Manuel is in his hammock watching the kids playing silently.

Somebody delivered a palm tree to be planted but it sat on the pavement for a week until the roots dried up. It was just a sad teeter totter, so people scurried around it and kids kicked soccer balls off it under the moonlight. It found it’s place in the noise.