I've taken a nap, and now I'm in that submarine reflective mood that isn't a mood-- a state of mind with tentacles in melancholy and wonder, where the membranes between worlds seem impossibly thin. I'm in Costa Rica. The city of San Jose hadn't recieved my visit since I was eight, fleeing hom after the electric incident in Manuel Antonio. Really, given that association, it's a wonder I ever came back. The city's penchant for thwarting me continues, as upon my arrival I realized that the reason my card wasn't withdrawing money was because Union Bank was guarding my back a little too thoroughly. They had frozen my account, assuming that the online purchase of a plane ticket in Central America was highly suspect. The rigmarole I ran to get it sorted is a story for another time. Point is, I did get it sorted, and after a fairly minimum amount of navigational confusion I got to the Hostel Galileo, base of operations for my 24 hours in the city.
The city. It's big. It feels good around me, unwieldy and inexplicable like a too-long skirt or like a meadow that just pushed up mushrooms. Its denizens couldn't care lass what I do. There's none of the Antiguan tourist-fishing and none of the small town surprise at my presence, and this absence of any assumed right to notice me is blissful. I get to drift unmoored. Thus far this drifting has cast me toward the biggest huarache i've ever consumed (covered in peppery picante and salsa cruda), to the local AM/PM (sigh) to test the theory that Chikys get more unbearably delicious the closer you get to their Costa Rican Source (theory confirmed, though I might still prefer my Chocositas), to a small park with dark low tangled trees, dotted with a passed-out fellow or two, and with one hygiene-dedicated person bathing in the fountain (well, personal-hygiene-dedicated at least-- i doubt he was overly concerned with anyone else's).
This drifting finally parked me back at the hostel, at which point the nap took hold. When it relaxed its sticky fingers I thought to go in search of a new notebook, since I've finally filled the homemade flower-clad beauty Mom gave me before I left. Instead I found myself in a different park. On its outskirts was the Museo de Arte Costarricense, and though I had neither the funding nor the time-before-dark to enter, I roamed its outdoor sculpture. On the wall that contains these blocky carvings of kneeling men and women was strewn intricate graffiti, whorls of spray paint, faces showing signs of Picasso and Guayasamin and Mayan glyphs, clouds bearing eyes, fanged skulls, contextless words. I sat among them for a while, inviting those who would most appreciate them into my mind one at a time. When I finally stood, I followed their flow to the seemingly infinite stand of eucalyptus that spread behind them. Every hair on my arms tried its best to reach their stature as I floated among them (not as if in air but rather as though my feet were buoyant and supported by liquid instead of the tan bark path that actually held them up). It was love.
And here's the place for a flashback. This past Thursday, for the first time in the recorded history of GVI, the English teachers went to sports day in Santa Maria. It is always on Fridays, when we are teaching in Itzapa, but due to Christmas Party conflicts it was bumped forward to Thursday this week. I trailed a string of younglings into the campo, to a hillyish patch of grass near cornfields where they set up goals and play fierce football. In the morning I through a frisbee about with a series of the chiquititos, but by the afternoon I was tired enough to succumb to gender norms and sit with the girls making friendship bracelets. Soon 3 of my extremities were employed to anchor their creations, and we settled into the serious business of student teacher gossip. They'd pry, I'd tease (usually by turning their questions around on them), they'd protest or giggle, I'd crow, they'd return to prying. Finally the ever popular 'Do you have a boyfriend?' was trotted out. Being far from camp and the States' restrictions on kid-appropriate interactions, as evidenced by the full body hugs i'd been getting all day, I answered with a straight no. I'm not sure who suggested the alternative first. It could have been me, but if it was, they ran with it and soon, all the trees in Guatemala were my lovers.
At the time it was largely a convenient dodge of a question whose ramifications I didn't really want to explore, but sitting underneath a rough-barked beauty this afternoon, tucked into a fold of its trunk, I started thinking they had a point. Trees feel good. They are reliably there when you need someone to witness your sadness and they can be the apex of glorious playfulness. They have roots and patience and loveliness to spare. You never quite know what they're thinking, but they hold you and things improve. This is how I peeled back the shell that I'd been building around myself in Antigua. Hopefully each leg of the journey will slough away another layer, and I will return having shed the things I don't need, ready to re-engage with the place and the people and the work on new terms.
