"Those who serve revolution, plough the sea." -Simon Bolivar

Sept. 6, 2009

Departure.   The familiar begins to fade now.  The black leather seats in the international airport are sparsely filled by fellow travelers.  I can see each face, beside bits of baggage and newspapers.   I can see the personal tale. The bone structure in the face.  The new country of mannerisms.  The difference in hands making gestures, like small string quartets of clock and space.  Something is revealed.  

Waiting...In the act of the departing we venture into the process of being exposed.

Where am I?  Flight 681 to Quito.   

Pilots need special certification to land in Quito.  To fly this mission.  And by looking out the window, one can easily see why.  But you stop thinking about that all together.  Because landing in Quito is like entering into some ancient ceremony.   How this is created I don't know.  Maybe let it be it by pillow upon pillows of clouds fondling mountains, or let it be by the night-scape of one million lights in urban density illumination.  Either way there is unmistakable awe to be felt.  

Refuge is found in a hostel on Avenida Wilson.  A few blocks north of 'Gringo Landia.'    Just far enough to escape the noise of new-town dancing and the pheromone release of muggings.  In the room across from mine, a traveling companion from Norway disappears into his room.  His name is Geir Bethelson.   In a seperate bed, sleeps a film-maker.  His black camera resting on the floor.  For purposes of this journal I try to forget he's there, but he comes through.  Everyone comes through.  His name is Jason Miller.

These guys aren't coffee guys.  They are strangers.   I chew a tooth pick till it is frayed in all directions. Thinking about roasted coffee samples sent to Vermont and Seattle from earlier in the day.  They will be judged, I will be exposed for good or worse.  Defined, for a moment.  I am eager to get going looking for more new coffee.  But tonight I need to find rest.   

Who am I?  Searcher.  Wittgenstein once wrote that when one person meets another in the street the greeting should run as follows: "Take your time."   I am going with these two first lines as the answer here.  For I need more time here and I am still searching for understanding this.  Right now I am a man in Quito, here to look at coffee.  With a man from Norway talking about slowness, and a man from Athens running the tape.   These aren't coffee guys.

Go to sleep.

Sept. 7, 2009

In the early morning Rodrigo meet the three of us at the front desk.  He has been a loyal business partner and friend for three years and it is good to see him in the morning fresh and ready for movement.   We drive in a white truck with four doors out through the graffiti traffic and into the plush rolling hills just past the middle of the world(mitidad del mundo.)

Very soon I am swept up into familiar sights of rainforest and unspeakable mountain roads.  Every turn takes five seconds along deep sloping curvatures.  We lean as the car runs through the pathway to the where the Choco Andean Corridor begins.

Our first stop is a community where no coffee is grown.  I am put to patience, as we are led through the rooms and livelihoods of Yungilla by a man my age answering the difficult questions of today with a sense of confidence that is spoken of directly and felt.  The bricks on the houses catch my memory when I think of recalling him in days not yet here.  Each brick is long on each building, and the cement in between each brick is used in abundance to form these places of craft and kinship.   We walk through the brick buiding of jams and jellies, through the brick building of cheese making where a older woman sweats in keeping the room meticulous, and finally into the brick building where we eat chicken spread out on long wooden tables.   Outside a nursery of Orchids waits in patience as well, while we eat good fresh Ecuadorian cuisine made from land to mouth, and spirit to place.

We are all swept up by this spirit and practice of this community.  Rodrigo tells us that Yungilla stands as a model for what he hopes coffee communities further down the road will emulate.  Confidence, brick, sustainablity.

Again to the road.  Again curves.  The road stretches longer than the horizon.  A corner everywhere, though no end to be had.

In the evening we escape the cemented road and move to a more complex dirt road.  Riddled with bumps and age, that send our truck in all directions with each turn of the wheel.  It is evening as we finally cross a river we had been traveling beside for some time and enter into the gates of Maquipucuna.  The bamboos huts and straw cross hatched roofs are silent.  After a long day of driving through mountain roads, we are swept up into our rooms after drinking three big beers of Pilsner to calm our nerves.

Moving from urban ecosystem to rural ecosystem.  I am driven to thought about Brazil's Moviemento Sem Terra, and what it means for people locked as security guards and taxi drivers to return to the country side where some many of their forefathers learned what it means to be a man by ploughing soil and feeling sweat on their brows as they pulled the carrots and potatoes of supper.  Part of this comes from my desire, to see more of this precious land farmed in specifically coffee-farmed, though that is not all.  I think of what ownership means in terms of place.  I am now familiar in my travels through the rural landscapes of coffee producing country side in Central and South America as to how little their central governments have invested in maintaining healthy roads, schools, and hospitals in these outsides of the city center.  The urban voters have amnesia to the past, they occasionally encounter it but more often then not are forgetful in the pragmatism of the heartlands.

I am scribbling maps now of coffee models that encompass this thinking.   Feeling foolish in my scope, exposed by a day of travel.   In evening the river soothes me into sleep.  In the morning we will interview Geir near the river, it makes sense.

Where am I?  A eco-lodge.  Closest to the township of Santa Elena.  Where their is a soccer field in the center and small wooden houses around.   I am nowhere though, this place is embedded in nature.  A place where people can connect that which has been lost.  Nowhere is a great place to be sometimes.

Go to sleep.

Sept. 8, 2009

"They live on land, and in houses, and under skies and seasons, which all seem to me beautiful beyond anything else I know"  -James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Great Men

Faint white brown and soft orange.  A early morning room overlooking bamboo.  Pleasant shacks of vertical fence lines.  Dead tree's holding life after time.

The time held in this morning is inescapable and uncalculable.  Every angle of the rainforest streeming in though my window marks both bloom and unbeatable green.   The moisture of the cloud forest overhead, drags it's not metaphorical feet across all, true 'green-washing.'  So many various scriptures on each plant on light and shadow, tiny dissertations too profound to be held in academic halls.  Too much to describe even here, I know not the words for so much life.

Jason finds me staring out the window, listening to Buczak string quartets and dreaming over coffee stained porecilin cups.  He beckons me to come down and help interview Geir near the river.  I am beginning to come to peace that maybe I won't visit a singe coffee farm this trip and walk softly down the hill to the river where Geir is sitting facing the camera.

Since the interview is filmed now.  It seems empty to write down the words.   Still the engagement is one of the first major dialogues on what it is we are doing together, why this non-coffee man is in my life here and now.  His accent is thick with Norway and his words are focused.