NaPo 24 Day 13: Face Time

Missed a couple days and went off-theme, that’s the way art is, you can’t control it.

Face Time

The ceiling fan is like a dangerous halo
behind him and the sounds echo and shift phase
between the living room and the dining room
as he bangs on the piano and sings
about looking for the eldest, who finally answers
from Budapest which is the most beautiful city
they’ve ever seen. City of caves and hot springs
and ancient edifices unlike any in Texas.
He moves to the car with the younger,
we lose connection but the eldest calls back.
I say, don’t go to any private parties. He says
he has a particular set of skills, but none
that could save a young person in Europe.
He could preach a sermon to the kidnappers,
the younger pipes in, her bottle-blonde hair
blowing in the sunroof and we laugh
and they’re gone and I’m alone
with the roses and poetry, the laptop
and books and phone, and my thoughts.

NaPo Day 20, 7 of Roses, The Journey

I won’t reach my goal of writing a poem every day this month, but here’s more about NaPo/GloPoWriMo. I’m using the Akashic Tarot for prompts.

7 of Roses, The Journey

It is time to leave the known
and civilized city, the massive
structures with polished stone columns,
and the gentle waters of a safe harbor.
Sailing into the sunset means
something has been completed
but it’s equally a new beginning.
It’s okay if you don’t know
where you’re going. No one
ever does, really. Try not to think
about all the years of your life spent
a thousand miles from any ocean, think
about the power of wind and current.
Instead of thinking about how you could
walk a thousand miles through prairie,
desert, and mountains if you had good boots,
a knife, and a sleeping bag, rather
feel yourself being cradled in a stout vessel
by the loving ocean. It is the nature
of the body to float in water.
Embrace the journey.
Others will take care of the baggage,
and only time will tell
if you have brought too much.

NaPoWriMo Day 16: We Three

When one is taller than I and the other isn’t yet,
it’s special to walk a strange city with them,
we three who look alike enough to be
the family we are, but all our own selves
too. One’s dyed her hair blue, the other wears
hers long and brown. We get in the car
and one navigates to a coffee shop.
She likes coffee shops. One orders a fruity drink,
the other has mocha. We eat and drink
and one goes to the bathroom, the other
puts money in the tip jar. One wants help
finishing her mocha. I sip and realize
I just bought my daughter a coffee drink.
(It’s delicious.) We go back to the room
and one plans the day, the other reads a book.
Back in the car, one sits in the front seat beside me,
the other in the usual back. City driving.
We drive around several blocks to find parking.
Navigator wants to give up. Little sis
says, “You can’t give up, or we’ll drive
around like this forever!” I say, “You’re doing
fine, you just don’t have all the information.”
She picks up the phone again, and we get there.
Walking from the parking garage, I tell her
the phone navigator doesn’t work for walking,
but she’s sure it’s fine. She leads us into
a building which is obviously a courthouse,
complete with uniformed officers behind a
desk. We laugh as we walk across the street
to the Visitors’ Center. We like the museum there.
One wants to listen to the story on the phone,
the other wants her picture taken with her face
peeking through a cut-out picture of the
statue on top of the Capitol. We don’t want to go
in the Capitol. One wants to take pictures
of the outside, the other sits under a tree and waits.
One loves the grackles and squirrels, the other
makes friends with every dog that passes.
We get in the car, the girls trade places
from the last ride. She navigates us
to the spectacular 1880s hotel, which is said
to be haunted. I don’t see any ghosts,
just a building like no other, light pouring in
through the round window surrounding
the rectangular doors. Woodwork painted
brown and gold in meticulous detail. The contrasting
brown and white marble floors almost but not
quite too much. One reads the ghost fact sheet
to us, the other takes pictures of all the paintings.
One is taller than I, the other not quite, yet.

Costa Rica Diary: Social Strata and the City of San Jose

I really enjoyed the city of San Jose. It has a distinctly different flavor than the North American cities I know. I never saw a central business district with skyscrapers; everywhere, buildings are low, mostly one or two stories, even though they are crowded onto narrow streets winding around between the mountains, which surround the city in every direction.

The socio-economic strata are unabashedly evident in a way very different from the US. Shiny high-end stores display imported goods for prices —in dollars— that startle me (not being a recreational shopper, myself). At those stores, you approach the door and wait for someone to buzz you in. A few minutes’ drive away, grimy buildings with peeling paint press against the street, bathed in a sauna of diesel fumes. And everywhere, every store has gates. Every residence of every size has a tall stucco wall around it, painted in a pretty coral or sky blue, with razor wire spiraling along the top.

The strata were particularly evident when we went to the bank. It was late on a Friday afternoon and we wanted to change some money before we left the city. Kevin and I took a cab to the only bank in the area that was still open. It was at the Multiplex, which turned out to be a large, brightly-lit mall with trendy shops, some whose names I recognized from malls in the US. Who shops at this place? I wondered. I guess tourists and rich ticos.

When we were in Costa Rica twelve years ago, we noticed the guards at the banks always had automatic weapons. So I wasn’t surprised by the security at the bank; but the system was complicated and the guard didn’t apparently speak English. We had to wait for him to buzz us in, then go through a tiny metal detector booth, then choose our purpose from a menu on a screen, to get a number. Fortunately a kindly tico hippie boy who knew English explained the system to us.

The lobby was filled with rows of chairs, mostly taken. Why did I feel like such an obvious tourist? Let’s see, maybe it was the bright tie-dye dress I was wearing, in contrast to the black jacket and super-tight jeans sported by every other woman in the room. We waited for a while. I kept my eye on the nice hippie boy, thinking he would get called shortly before we did, so I’d know when our number was about to come up. I looked at a screen above the waiting area and tried to translate to Spanish, but it turned out that my poquito Spanish was even more pathetic than last time we came to Costa Rica. The screen showed a series of messages, including exchange rates, but only for colones and euros. Kevin was doing something with his phone, until the security guard came over and told him in Spanish that using cell phones wasn’t allowed. “Oh yeah,” I said. “See, it says on the screen, ‘está prohibido el uso de teléfonos celulares.'”

A few minutes later I heard the guard speak perfect American English to another person. I think he was from California.

We waited some more. We watched the numbers carefully as they came up on the screen. Finally it was our turn. Kevin had the money and he changed most of our money to colones, as well as some that his mom had asked us to change for her. Naturally it added up to a larger transaction than either of us makes regularly at home. We aren’t rich by a long stretch at home, I’m not even sure we’re middle class. But to a poor Costa Rican, we might look obscenely wealthy. I thought it was a good time to watch our backs. While Kevin handled the transaction, I turned and looked back toward the waiting area. No fewer than three people quickly looked away. One was a broad-shouldered man in a pink t-shirt. As we walked away from the counter, he stood up and walked toward the door. We went out and I tried not to be too obviously keeping an eye on Kevin’s pocket with the money in it, while scanning the crowd for Mr. Pink Shirt. There he was. We needed to get a cab away from here. I saw two men in uniforms, mall security, and I quickly walked up to them. It turned out we were right by a cab stand, and there was one ready.

Driving away from the mall, I settled back into the cab and enjoyed the ride through the winding, busy streets. I could write a lot of stories about this city, I thought. But I’d have to stay here a while to find out what they are.

Costa Rica Diary: Flying Into San Jose

When Kevin and I married, his brother Korey gifted us with airline tickets to wherever we wanted to go. He suggested Paris, which I’m sure would have been a wonderful choice, but our friend Amy Carlson had raved about her travel in Costa Rica, and it was much cheaper to go there, so we chose to stay in the western hemisphere. I had a pocket-size notebook that I decided was perfect for a travel journal, but I only wrote a few entries. It seemed to take so much time, which I could be using to do more stuff, instead of writing about the stuff I’d done. I quit, literally in mid-sentence, on the third day.

This year, several factors converged to make it not only possible, but almost necessary, for us to go back to Costa Rica. Strangely, I knew exactly where my old journal was. (In the pile of miscellanea on my dresser. Why on earth was it there? I have no idea.) I picked it up and began to read to my daughters.

1/6/03
When we arrived in Costa Rica it was so beautiful I almost cried. The city of Alajuela* felt strangely familiar to me, like a place I might have been as a child, too young to remember— only to recognize. Even in the city, the air smells sweet, like flowers. There are brilliant colors everywhere. The buildings are painted in blue, yellow, orange, and green . . . .

Oh, journaling can be magical. This trip, I brought that same little book, and I made a point of writing as much as I could, most days. It didn’t interfere with my being present in the moment; it inspired me to experience everything in more detail, with greater presence. And, like a shaman or hero on a journey, I return to the regular world with gifts for everyone back home, with words and stories to share.

We begin with our arrival.

1/9/2015
Well, here we are in Costa Rica again, twelve years later. This time we’re with Pat and Mike [my in-laws] and our two hijas, Rowan, 10, and Kiran, 7. When I wrote the previous pages, I certainly wouldn’t have had the slightest idea of how our lives would unfold from that time.

As the plane descended toward San Jose, I was again struck by the beauty of the mountains, the verdant forests, wisps of clouds floating among the mountain tops. But as I watched the landscape, I was somewhat dismayed at how much of the cloud forest had been cleared. I remembered Memo, our guide in our cave tour on the last trip, who told us that the area around La Fortuna had been mostly forest when he was a boy; but which had, by then, been largely cleared for agriculture.

There’s been a lot of work toward restoring and preserving the forests over the years. The clearing no doubt continues. People have to eat. Money has to be made. (Doesn’t it?) We do the same in the US, but in most places the destruction took place so long ago that nobody remembers what was there before.

So, as I watched the landscape from the window of the jet, I had mixed feelings. I was reassured when I saw turkey vultures circling over the mountains. Despite the destruction, the cycle of life persists. Kevin said that maybe some of those very birds had been in Chase county only a few months ago.

Next entry will be about the city of San Jose.

This is from a different flight than the one I wrote about in this post, but it’s the best shot I have of the mountains from the air.

*San Jose is the capital of Costa Rica. Alajuela is the location of the primary international airport, Juan Santamaria International Airport, and is part of the greater San Jose metropolitan area.