Today I'm moving from the beach at Tambor, Costa Rica to Panama City, Panama. Although the weather is going to be very similar and Spanish is the language of the realm in both places, the contrasts in other areas will be truly amazing. In Panama there will be no more walks on the quiet deserted beaches, no more countless monkeys and birds chattering in the trees. But, I will have a fast Internet connection, which is one of the main reasons for the move.

The past few days have been trying. I've spent countless hours starting to get my immigration paperwork done. For just one paper, my police letter of good conduct, I've had to endure the following process:

1. Fill out a form at the Panamanian embassy and pay USD 5.00.
2. Come back the next day for a letter to the OIJ (Costa Rican Federal Investigative Police) requesting the report.
3. Find the OIJ building, several kilometers away.
4. Wait in line in one building to buy USD .50 in stamps to pay for processing the request.
5. Wait in line again in another building to get a signed computer generated report.
6. Find the Ministery of Foreign Relations, about a kilometer from the OIJ building.
7. Wait in line to buy half a dozen stamps for USD 1.00, to pay for authentication of the OIJ signature.
8. Inquire at the help desk as to where to affix the stamps correctly, as the stamps must be correctly done before you arrive or you have to wait in line again.
9. Take a number and wait (this time in a chair!) for someone to authenticate the signature.
10. Go back to the Panamanian embassy, turn in the letter, and pay USD 30 to have the authenticator's signature authenticated by the consul.
11. Return to the Panamanian embassy the next day to pick up the final documents.

So the whole process took many hours and three days. I know all this is affecting me, because I woke up this morning with this dream.

I was in a museum somewhere, looking at a huge sculpture.The sculpture was a man in an iron cage. The man was in an absurd upright position, with his arms and legs splayed in unnatural impossible reaches. His only connection with the ground was by one of his big toes, which touched the arm rest of a crutch. The crutch was the highest point of the floor of the cage, protruding slightly from a thick layer of trash and garbage. The garbage was of all kinds, as you might see in a dump; but there were also various dead animals, birds, and fish. The cage had no door. In the four corners of the top of the cage were security cameras pointed at the man. There was a huge TV screen hung in front of the man on one of the walls of the cage.

The man was for the most part naked; the largest piece of clothing was an oversized pair of Elton John style sunglasses, all hot pink including the lenses. The man's penis was huge, red, and distended, curving up like a stubby sickle-shaped baseball bat; but he had no testicles.

The man's expression was a huge satisfied smile. A forked funnel-like tube went behind the sunglasses into his right eye. The other fork of the tube went into his right ear. At the large end of the tube poured various flourescent colored three-dimensional numbers and words. His posture was as if he had been frozen in mid air while running wildly; but then as if someone had come up and kicked him in various places, into positions only possible if he were made of pipe-cleaners.

All over his body were large hooks into his flesh. The hooks were connected by chains to weights of different sizes; each weight had a decimalized legend like "2.756 Kg". There was a huge chunk missing from his abdoment. the man had various alligator clips on his skin, each attached to colored coiled wires which all went up to an osc illoscope-like instrument on top of the cage. I was looking for the title of the sculpture, and can't remember actually seeing the title; but it was something like "21st Century Man".

The strangest thing is that I awoke feeling very excited about moving today. What a contrast.