TheExpatJournals.com

Had a guest in town last night who is buying a building to renovate in Casco Viejo. So we went to Manolo Caracol’s for dinner and then walking around. First, the turnover in staff at Manolo’s resulted in a very different menu from everything I had ever had there. Always an enjoyable experience, but I’m not so sure it stacked up against what it used to be in terms of food.
Don’t know where you can find any photos of this young El Salvadorian’s paintings, but a couple of months back, Manolo did exhibit Antonio Cañas and wow are his paintings great! I’ve done a google search and can’t find anything. I do have his email address and will see if I can find a way to share the art with you.

Saw all my old neighbors and that was fun. I’m reminded of how Casco Viejo feels like home and cannot wait to get back over there. Don’t plan to question it anymore. The sleazy aspects of development exist everywhere and if one steers clear, life is good.

So my new friends and future neighbors hope to do something very interesting with their planta baja and I, for one, look forward to it. The husband is an incredibly accomplished photographer who says he will help teach me photography. I cannot understate how exciting that is to me because I cannot take courses here in Spanish and end up too busy doing everything else to teach myself the technical aspects of it. So here I sit with this decent DSLR camera using it like a point and shoot.

It was a lot of fun pointing out simple things like corners, that, during a certain time of the day get shadows from the light in such a way that the composition in a photo looks like a beautiful abstract painting. It was the first time I had walked around with someone who is as visually oriented as I never really knew I was before this place. Sharing a passion for that was a rare gift. It is always fun to introduce people to the beauty of Casco Viejo, but it was fuel inside me to share that with someone who shares my aesthetic appreciation in the same kind of passionate way. This man described pictures to me that he never got…there are moments, I keep saying/understanding, that are clearly meant to be experienced rather than captured, but sometimes, it feels such a pity that they are strictly alive in my head with no way to share them. One of the things (and A.L., I hope you don’t mind) he described to me was flying into NYC as the sun was coming up over a thick cloud cover and looking down over the city only to see the top few floors of the WTC above the clouds as well as just the needle of the Empire State Building. And now, I have that photo in my head as clearly as though I had seen it. And I won’t forget it. How beautiful! And I thank you.

The lovely things that do happen just for being a part of the incredibly special community that Casco Viejo is. I do miss it and just like the time I moved away from NY, it feels so wrong not to be a part of it. Visiting is not at all the same thing as living there. Too bad Frank is gone…Casco Viejo deserves it’s own song for us gringos. “I want to be a part of it…”

BTW, for those of you who never got to attend a Yankees game in Yankee Stadium, did you know that, “New York, New York” blares over the speakers as people depart the stadium? And if the Yankees win, they play the version by Frank Sinatra. But if the Yankees lose, they play the version by Liza Minelli. Love that. And I guess I can overlook the fact that A.L. didn’t know who Mariano Rivera was. As I’ve said many times, before the Panama bug bit me, the only two things I really knew about this country was that there was the Panama Canal here, but more importantly to me, this is where Mariano Rivera is from. Later it sunk in that Ramira Mendoza is, too, and yes, Carlos Lee, et al…but I’m a narrow minded Yankee fan and the world of baseball does revolve around them…just like the famous poster of NYC that has the map of Manhattan and outside those barriers is ‘the rest of the world.’

Friends have been trying to get me to look at other parts of Panama. Apartments are bigger, better for cheaper in otherneighborhoods. Other neighborhoods are a lot more convenient. But like, NYC, Casco Viejo is not something you sit on the fence about. You love it or you don’t, no waivering. And once it’s in your blood…