The No Name Diary

“A thought process breaks out in your mind and becomes a path you walk, sometimes a path you walk time and time again. How great it is to discover new paths, especially when you are tired of the old ones and where they lead…”

The master passed away in August, yet I can still see his smile and observant, expectant expression when I think of him. No other fighters ever trained in those spots that the wooden walkways lead to; he was alone in his practice before I came and then afterwards as well. Yet now suddenly I am told that another has appeared, another fighter training there in just the same place, as if the master has returned in another, another searching into sequences there, hidden combinations of movement, known by few, which lead to everywhere and nowhere, shapeshifting the body between liquid and rock. The prophecy therefore holds true: that the spirit of Kung Fu is immortal.

***

I’d spent about three days just sitting on a wooden pallet on the deck of that boat which had picked me up. I was out of the way there, tucked by the hatch that led down to the boat’s engine. Mostly I just watched the sailors moving around, taking up ropes, moving produce on and off to be sold on small islands, things like soft drinks and chewing gum. We all slept in hammocks at night and the days were punctuated by the different events; islanders coming onboard to get from one place to another, something getting caught in the propeller, the captain diving under to have a look, rough seas and calm ones, the chef frying things up from a corner at the back of the boat.

We arrived back in the port of Miramar concluding my first failed attempt to make it to Colombia by sea. I walked onto land with the motion of the waves still rocking me. I really didn’t want to see the guy who’d ripped me off for a night in that room by the port, or even the police chief who, for lack of a better tactic, had now taken to trying to bully me away from the place. Fortunately I’d be away again before long. That night looking out for somewhere else to sleep, I saw some guys climbing onto a vessel roped up in the dock. I followed and discovered a bunch of them up there, all waiting to travel. They passed the time before going to sleep by making me say funny things in Spanish. Alex, a slick looking Colombian who’d arrived at the port wearing a monster energy cap with about 1000 cans of the stuff, was the only one who spoke some English. He wore vests which showed his big muscles and negotiated as soon as a big speedboat arrived in the dock the next day. We paid the man and I truly appreciate it, because he took me under his wing to get that place on the boat for a fair price.

We got on coming high-noon, and I couldn’t have been more eager to leave again. There were the noises of motors around us, people driving a car onto another vessel. As I was getting settled in the middle of that white banged up speedboat, about 10 other people suddenly turned up with a load of luggage. It was all somehow accommodated. Then two big black pigs and piglets were brought out and down to the water where we helped haul them into the boat. They said that the pigs’d eat the hair on my legs to get me to move so I ended up making camp right at the top of the boat’s prow next to a guy called Camilo who casually lay there on his elbow. The journey got off to a rough start because one of the motors cut out about 30 minutes after we’d left. We were out in the middle of the sea, the sun beating down, and as they were trying to start that motor one of the pigs snouted one of the piglets into the water. There were words and we turned back for the port where I could feel the police chief’s burning eyes on me. They were chainsawing through the hull of a craft they’d got behind the station when we arrived, I was pretty low about being back there again, I reasoned that some places have claws, and understandably so. We waited there for a while and then our driver, who was a teenage boy with a shock of jet black hair, came back from refuelling saying that we’d have to wait for the repairs. Everybody’s murmur became full-on conversations and amongst them one quiet stocky black guy got up and walked over to the motor, he yanked on the cord with force and everyone went quiet, he pulled again and nothing, one more time in which he ripped at that thing with such force that the boat spun round as it coughed then roared quickly into life, almost hitting that vessel we’d slept on the night before. Suddenly we were speeding back away from those houses, that police station and the disco bar, the black guy negotiating his way back to the middle of the boat to sit next to his wife.

First we negotiating little islands and pathways on the coastline, crystalline waters with a bursting green forest of plant-life beneath, then in the twilight we went past the floating islands of stilt homes, people rowing in canoes. The darkness fell and that boy driving shouted out to Camilo and others to look down at the waters. There were times we scraped the bottom, others that fluorescent lights were thrown up from jellyfish we must have carved through in our relentless pace forward in the shadows. Soon I was watching waves rise and drop to reveal dark rocks. We continued on and the course became flat and open, two lights in the distant jungle of the coast guiding us. It was about seven hours we spent up there, Camilo calling his mum and somehow having a dialogue with her as we bumped along next to the spray. Myself also on my side in the pitch black, looking out feeling the freshness of the water, the image of a drowned sailors face and expression coming vividly into my mind, sunken resigned eyes and worn tanned skin.

Eventually we arrived at a border post which was tucked behind palm trees and grey sands that then became hard land and a humid party. A town of single story breeze block homes, painted reds and blues with zinc roofs was buzzing with the night of the 24th of December. Now our little combo walking down the main street was Alex, Camilo, myself, the guy called Costeño who’d had me saying jokes in Spanish, finally the strong silent black guy and his wife. A firework hit the Costeño’s shoulder burning his t-shirt. He decided to turn in after that so left us to watch a dance battle between a camp twin who did all the dancing in the town and then our teenage driver who started dropping the coffee-grinder, breakdancing on the ground with the crowd roaring. It was a good night. The twin came up to me afterwards asking my honest opinion about who I thought was a better dancer and I really couldn’t say. We got our passport exit stamps from two Panamanian soldiers for a fee. It was late and we went to bed, one step closer to Chinchiná, the name of my unknown destination.