Blog
The Witches
The road to the house was long and steep. In front of me, the mountain; behind, an abyss that revealed, through the mist, the back of the water. My grandfather Ramón had never seen the sea, and yet...
A Malachite Gazebo
Some nights, when I stayed over at my maternal grandmother’s house, she would recite a poem to me. She knew it by heart, never hesitating. Sometimes we would begin together and, before I noticed,...
Crucitas: The Conversation We Still Need to Have
A few days ago, Glenda Umaña and Hugo Famanía interviewed me to hear my views on the environmental situation in Crucitas, as part of a report to be broadcast by a Panamanian media outlet. We sat by...
A Promise of Relief
On Wednesday nights we play basketball as if we were still twenty. We arrive with our enthusiasm intact, we play a first warm-up game in slow motion, and for two hours we try to convince our bodies...
Milkweeds, Caterpillars, and Monarchs
Then came the warning, delivered with One Sunday, like so many others, we arrived for breakfast at my in-laws’ house. As usual, I stepped out into the garden to admire the plants growing as if all...
In praise of insomnia
One of my earliest childhood memories is marked by the battle with insomnia. On those long nights, my mother, patient and resigned, would prepare me a cup of hot milk that she would baptize with a...
Caring has a cost
The Bible relates that, before and during the crucifixion, Jesus was accompanied by three women: Mary, his mother, Mary Magdalene, and Mary of Clopas. It is not surprising that, two millennia later,...
In Praise of the Fly
Once, for four or five weeks, I was a fly nest. This happened when I was ten years old, during a vacation with my maternal grandparents, on a farm in San Carlos de Alajuela. Those were days of...
Our giants
Sometimes, by accident, someone notices a shape, takes a photo, and raises the question: is it a bone or a piece of wood? A fossil or just another fragment of the landscape? The answer becomes a...
The neighbors
The neighbors began to arrive at six o'clock. First a couple arrived with flowers; then another with a bottle of wine; then one more with sandwiches. They came two by two, smiling, generous,...
Learning to Care
My father kept an orchid greenhouse for many years. It wasn’t very large, but to me it had the density of a world of its own. I remember the filtered light, the humidity in the air, the flowered...
The rhythm of the machine
In Charles Chaplin's film Modern Times, the protagonist appears trapped in a factory production line that never stops. His task seemed simple: tightening nuts over and over to the rhythm of a...