Shifting

I traveled to San Jose a day earlier than I'd planned. The rain was so heavy on Tuesday night and Wednesday that the rivers were flooding in Parrita. Karen´s spanish tutor came and suggested if I was leaving I should go then and not wait, just in case the bus to San Jose couldn´t pass later. So I went straight to Quepos and bought a ticket on the 2:30 directo and returned home to pack.



Karen sang Feliz Cumpleanos a mi just before I left. I made a birthday wish as I blew out my candle. Then, headed up the hill with my suitcase to catch the bus.



It was the longest bus ride ever. A guy I know from town, one I usually say hi to and keep walking, was excited to find me and my suitcase at the bus stop. I was less than excited as he sat down next to me on the bus. Small town. I was sort of looking forward to some quiet, reflective traveling as I made my journey from new home to old home for the first time in 10 months, but instead was squished between the window and a typical tico: no respect for personal space. I avoided his intentional arm presses and too intense stares the entire ride. I curled up in the corner like a shrimp, fidgeting every time he moved to make his arm touch mine again. He looked at me at one point and said, ¨You must be really difficult to sleep with! You move around alot!¨ Ay yay yay. Ticos. When I made it obvious I didn´t feel like talking, he pulled out his book. But then proceeded to laugh out loud and interrupt my own reading to tell me what he´d just read. He asked why I didn´t want to talk. Being polite, I told him I was tired. He challenged, ¨Why, what did you do today?¨ I wanted to say that I´d had breakfast, rushed to Quepos, packed to travel and lugged a suitcase up a mountain in the rain and put up with listening to him for two and a half hours, but instead I just looked out the window. The mountains were still amazing despite the distraction. Mounds of green earth, layer upon layer, some bigger, some smaller, but all so big and vast they reached right up to the clouds as if offering their trees to the sky. Ah, Costa Rica!



And now, the city.... It´s pouring. It´s grey. It´s cold. Everyone is in pants wet up to the knees and walking fast. There are so many umbrellas to duck and dodge! It´s like an obstacle course. Ah, but again, those mountains in the distance...they make it all ok. They contain the city in such a way that it can quite take hold. All the structure here just seems false in comparison.



Yesterday, I said that there was nothing at all comfortable about Juanca's apartment. And then I came in from a day of navigating San Jose in the pouring rain in a pair of Havaianas, the only shoes I brought since Mario gave away my only pair of real shoes. My long pants, necessary for the chill were wet more than halfway up. I made some chamomile tea, smoked a little joint and dug my comfiest sweatpants and pair of long socks (chamo print, of course!) out of my suitcase. I found a good radio station, audible from the open kitchen window, and the chair overlooking the river from the balcony. Comfort.



The river is unusually high, flowing fast enough to have white water. For the most part, though, it's the color of tea with milk for all the mud being stirred by the flow. The clouds are moving in the opposite direction, spechterlike in their drift across the peaks of the distant mountains. Which one is the volcano, I'm wondering. Juanca said one of them is Irazu.



A cab driver asked me earlier today which I prefer: mountains or beaches. I said I like either, just not the city. He said he likes the mountains better, prefers the cold to heat, but agrees about the city. "When it's raining in either of the other places, the mountains or the beach, it's good," he said, "but in the city, when it's raining, it's awful." I agreed, feeling the chill in my feet and all the way up to my knees under my wet pants. I prefer barefeet. It's that simple. So warm is better for me. But people I love and miss are in a city where it's most likely colder than here even. Especially coming from the beach. I was worried it'd be a rough transition back, but it seems I'm getting eased back into it gradually. There won't be palm trees, but there's a brown river or two in Philadelphia.



A lavender sky backdrop for the upraised hands of the pipa trees, slender fingers reaching skyward, deepens so subtly, bleeding into indigo, as if night is being airbrushed in. Good night, Costa Rica.