Costa Rica, January 2006

(photo: my Puerto Viejo beach house - rent $125 per month)

Against a slate gray/blue sky a gull soars by – as I try to pull a straggling hair out of my ear canal (God, what kind of location is that for a follicle?). 

Dusk begins to settle over the lapping waves, one degree of light contrast after the next steps us towards a black pin-hole sky. 

I’m still here and I already miss the sounds of palm fronds rustling against one another.  I’m trying to remember it all.   Two days until my scenery changes or rather a plane deposits me some 2500 miles north.

What does it mean to write about travel?  Is it the tales that capture a trip or the feelings, or both, and what use are words to describe feelings – like the “waa waa waa” of an infant never really clarifies “more pureed yams” or “please pick me up” or “I love you”.

Another shade darker and the animal world is in a state of flux.  Bats stir and salamanders tremble; so would the plantains in my kitchen if they could.

The gaping holes in the clapboards of my beach shack are simply front doors for my other animal roommates (mosquitoes and lizards and bats and ants and sand fleas and mice – at least I’m hoping they’re mice). 

My mattress and pillow would not appear alone under the microscope.  Good thing my skin is thick and that most of my orifices are closed during sleep.

Another shade darker and the temperature drop at knee level felt like a thud of atmospheric tectonic plates.  Well at least I’m not sweating for the first time today.

I wonder where the gull went.

A cat with gray leopard-print fur stalks the garden.

The first sign of red streaks the sky.  Darkness is close.  My eyes readjust nearly every moment.  The tectonic temperature plates thud again.  Night falls.

Costa Rica, December 2005

(photo: Playa Negra Beach - 25 meters from beach house)

Early morning, as I walk along the Caribbean in southern Costa Rica I ache for the frigid rain of the Pacific Northwest.  “The grass is always greener” they say.  The longing for something else mixed with the non-acceptance of the here and now.

Trying to make Puerto Viejo speed up to my pace is something like asking a coconut tree to yield cacao fruit.  Life always has a way of slowing you down, either by disease or injury or traffic jams, but what slows down the mind?  “They” say yoga and meditation.

Today, while preparing for a beginning yoga workshop, I began to wondering about the quest for knowledge, or rather the value of such an undertaking. 

The Hindus have this idea of “Jana Yoga”, or the yoga of knowledge, and they believe one can reach enlightenment simply by diligent study.

Or then there’s the Buddha, who reached enlightenment simply by sitting and following his breath.

What if we are not the last species in this chain of development?  In sheer mass we are outweighed by insects and we know that the most subtle temperature change will kill us all – thus all the fear around global warming.

What if this quest for knowledge and our tools – the Blackberries and Palm Pilots and digital camera and cell phones and the Internet – is preventing us from having a genuine experience?

Of course the Jana Yogis might see computers as amazingly powerful tools that help facilitate enlightenment.

One foot now steps in my own backwards facing footprints on the beach, a path leading back to where I began.  But isn’t that where all paths lead?