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Seattle weekends, Costa Rica part 2 This weekend. Apparently I am not easing back into my Seattle life but rather am jumping into it headfirst eyes closed. This morning at 4 I went to bed even though I wasn't tired at all, and when I woke up at 8 I wasn't tired then either. I don't know if I can write about these things yet. I'm just going to have to wait and see. Is it good being back in Seattle? I'll just have to wait and see. What will happen? I'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, here is more stuff from Costa Rica. Yes you've already read the first one. Wednesday 2/22 20 birds fly in a perfect half-V - aka diagonal line - over a nearly empty beach in Costa Rica. Meanwhile I am independently inventing body surfing in water that is two degrees cooler than the air. (Measurements subject to exaggeration.) Meanwhile my swimming suit is independently inventing new ways to leave my body. Meanwhile everything is about to be illuminated in a book I have on my towel but at the moment I don't care because I am playing in the ocean. Meanwhile German boys are playing soccer - the universal sport - on the beach. Meanwhile crabs come out of their holes and scurry sideways. [After dinner] And now I finally understand why some people like the ocean so much - it is endless hours of fun. No I never got it before - water, yes - ocean, no. Yes I lived in Santa Barbara for three years but you go in the ocean there and tell me how you like it - it's murky, there's seaweed, and it smells like oil. And Spanish is a nice language and I am nearly fluent in it, except for all the parts that I don't know about. Ciudad y cuidado - the linguistic and social relationships between the two: discuss. It's dark at 6, it's light at, I don't know, too early, and I hate traveling and I always want it to be over. I miss Australia - everything reminds me of Australia. Not everything, but many things: the plants, the hipped tin roofs, the very vague vestiges, the ephemeral atmosphere of colonialism. I miss my bag from that trip, I miss my train rides, I miss my notebook, I miss Sydney, I miss Sydney Harbour and fucking Darling Harbour and Wooloomooloo Bay. I miss that hostel I always stayed at in Brisbane, I miss the farm, I miss Triple J. I miss Australian wit and Australian friendliness and Australian English. I also miss knowing the three things - thinking, writing, and listening to music - that were important to me. Today: Found a nicer place to stay, siesta, beach. Thursday Feb 23 Saying I was accosted by a strange Costa Rican would imply the wrong thing. It would also imply the wrong thing to say there among the foam and the waves in the warm waters of the Pacific I met Miguel. But basically you understand what I'm saying. Then I got scared and left. But also, annoyed, because I was trying to play in the waves and the presence of a male personage made that not so easy. (I was wearing a swimming suit that was not trying to fall off, therefore playing and jumping around was entirely doable. Still, I'd rather be alone.) I am a wild brumby, there is no taming me. Unless I want to be tamed. (Other people are tamer than me. What's my problem?) Earlier in the day a photo of my butt was made. You'd probably miss it but there's also a waterfall in the picture. Little did my butt know but it would soon become quite sore from all the trotting my horse insisted on doing. Which was fine - trail horses usually don't want to do anything. And this one - good old Gorboho - galloped quite a bit too. Galloping is way better than trotting - I don't know why horses even bother with trotting. We're heading back from the waterfalls. I am in the lead, Gorboho is galloping up a steep muddy bumpy rocky trail through the jungle. My riding lessons all come back to me, even though that was English and this is - not Western, but close, Costa Rican. I am on a strange feisty horse alone somewhere in the jungle. Gorboho is sweating and breathing heavily. We ford some streams, I slow him down, I let him drink. We walk a while. Eventually the mother from New York comes trotting up behind us, trying to steal the lead. Neither Gorboho nor I approve of this; we take off again. We finally all reach a truce and slow down, the mother from New York and I talk a little. Suddenly from nowhere at all comes the teacher fast on our heels. We take off again, galloping, a mad dash for first place. I'm laughing - this is fun, and hilarious. The teacher and the mother nearly collide - the mother has to push the teacher's horse's butt away from her. We go up a big hill, round a corner. It's anyone's race. Gorboho is sweating, panting - he might fall over and die, I don't know. I slow him down. He wants to trot, he wants to gallop, but jesus Gorboho walking's fine, let's just make it to the top alive, okay? We finished third. Today, a.m.: I declare that I am immune to the sun. [after dinner] For reasons known only to the person who packed my bag I find myself in Costa Rica with a fleece, a raincoat, and a zip-up jacket. I have never been cold in my life, I have no idea what "being cold" could possibly feel like, but come on, three of these things? Wouldn't the one long-sleeved shirt I brought have sufficed? So you don't flush the toilet paper - you don't flush anything other than your pees and (thankfully) your poos - making the bathroom garbage the vilest thing on the face of the planet and throwing away other normally thrown-away things, like Q-tips or contact solution bottles - seems so disrespectful to those things that I almost want to hang on to them until they can be disposed of in a manner worthy of their place in the garbage hierarchy. Here's why I love traveling - it takes a few days to leave your life, at first you're dreaming of everyday things, you hear a voice you recognize, you wonder what's going on without you, but then: your world becomes portable and all your possessions fit into one suitcase and it is so simple - where to eat today, where to sleep tonight. It all fits into something you can carry around with you to the next town. Got out my mp3 player tonight to listen to the radio but I can't stand it. I'm sorry, I hate Latin music and every radio station has that guy with the big booming shouting voice talking fast at you with exclamation points in between the crappy songs. So I'm listening to my old mix of songs that I used to listen to when I ran, before I started running au natural. Friday, February 24 I would have gladly ended the storyline with Miguel with "Then I got scared and left." However. We were walking up the road today and he came by on his motorcycle and stopped. "I saw you last night! I was talking on the phone. Where did you go? What are you doing now?" He wanted us to go see some people walking on fire. And then. Attention boys of the world: do not pursue me, it will do you no good, you will get nowhere (unless you buy me alcohol, and even then all you will get is laughs). It makes me uncomfortable when people are interested in me. I wanted to leave town. We were going to go to a restaurant to eat, he was going to meet us there and then we were going to go to the firewalkers. We were there (a little late oops), he didn't show up, I was perfectly willing to end the storyline with Miguel with "And then he rode away on his motorcycle (or I'm assuming he did, if he got it started)." However. We decided to go to the beach to look at the stars. We're rounding the corner and out of the grocery store comes Miguel. "Where were you?" "We were there, where were you?" "I went there 15 minutes ago, you were not there." "We were there." "Huh." "Huh." Anyway, blah blah blah, we walked on the beach, we talked about cocodrilos, a wave came at me, we got a beer, I was tired, I yawned, we parted ways. I really was tired, sorry, whatever, don't pursue me anyway because that 1. annoys me or 2. freaks me out. Leave me alone I am invisible. Tiredness. Saturday Feb. 25, 2006 Let us take a moment first to observe the birthday of Sean Astin. [Silence] Okay. I was perfectly willing to end the storyline with Miguel at "And then he walked up the darky bumpy road and out of my life." However. Tonight walking back from dinner with Gordon - I had a pizza that tasted like bologna BARF and I also had some of my sister's salad and some of Gordon's french fries - Gordon is some guy from Massachusetts, an architect - he's replaced the gregarious gay guys at our hotel who woke up early and loudly - we wanted Argentinian beef but they were out! As I was saying, we were walking up the dark bumpy road back to our cabinas and hey! It's Warner! Miguel's friend "for" my sister! He is in love with my sister, who he met for five minutes last night in the dark! Etc. etc. very persistent and I realize for the I'm slippery sometimes but also oh my god am I an easy target like that? Today I had a cappuchino frio. Today we walked to a wildlife preserve. It was hot and much farther than it was supposed to be. We walked for kilometers and kilometers, an expression that sounds so much more arduous with English measurements. Oh it was hot and sweaty, my shins were sweating and making my pantlegs wet. Shins. Pantlegs. HOT. I was not taking pictures, I don't care about vacation pictures, they never capture what you want to capture anyway so what's the point. Also I have my crappy little Canon. If I had my Argus oh yes the pictures I would take but I would never bring my Argus here. My Argus and I, as you know - in fact all of my cameras and I - like to take pictures of water and light. And no one likes travel pictures, they're always so disappointing. So I wasn't taking any pictures. We were walking on a trail beginning the hot sweaty arduous trek back to Dominical when - up ahead the trail is blocked by a woman, a camera, and a tripod. We stop. "It's okay, I'm just taking pictures of leaves, nothing will scurry away," she says. Leaves, pictures of leaves. Suddenly I begin to notice leaves all over the place, light shining through leaves, light shining on leaves, leaves and light, leaves and light. Thanks to that lady I am now taking pictures of leaves and light. They will probably all be crap, washed out fuzzy terrible things but oh if I had my Argus, the pictures we would take. Tomorrow, last day in Dominical, last day on the Pacific. You wonder about the fishes, but the dervish devils, or devilish dervishes, depending on what part of speech 'dervish' is, and what it means as well, but it sounds good in both of my uses of it, and you can figure out what I think it means by the context - those devilish dervishes and dervish devils leave me alone. Yes they are there, I have seen them and they have seen me, but we have an unspoken pact: they don't touch me, I don't stomp on them. Sunday Feb 26 Last night by the light of a fluorescent Costa Rican lightbulb I finally once and for all disproved the old saying that you can't give yourself a good haircut with one-inch safety scissors. What else, what else. I am reading A Confederacy of Dunces. It's supposed to be a delight, a corker, a grand comic fugue but if it is I will never know. It belongs to the Posada del Sol and if I had a book to exchange for it I could take it along but I don't. I don't want to anyway, it's big and falling apart. It's about a big fat guy. In other news I may or may not be under attack by angry flesh-eating bacteria, I may or may not be dying. Since I am now a little old lady here is a list of my ailments: shoulders - not so sunburned anymore, never mind So never mind, but all these things were hurting a couple days ago. Now I just have an itchy numb raised red spot on my leg.
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