CR09.12.09 8:01am

CR091209 8:01am

SYNOPSIS: Kassidy begins to paint, inspiration, why Costa Rica smells like pot, Spanish lessons for Spanish teachers, torrential downpour, dinner with two Ticos

“In life there are no ordinary moments. Most of us never really recognize the most significant moments of our lives as they’re happening.” – Kathleen Magee


INSPIRATION
I wake each morning, brush my teeth, grab a glass of water instead of Chai (sigh) and walk out to the balcony with my laptop. I read from Thich Naht Hahn’s “The Art of Power” and then I write. I’ve been encouraging Kassidy to start writing, too. She’s a lovely writer, but the idea of pecking her ideas onto a computer doesn’t appeal to her. She likes to write long hand. Yesterday she woke up and asked where the old towels were. She spent the next couple of hours painting. I’m posting a picture of her painting. Her description and interpretation of it is lovely, too. I do not understand painters or painting, but I understand the desire for expression that wells up inside and makes the fingers itchy. Artists don’t create for anyone else. They create because they can’t NOT create. This voice of mine, I realize now, has been squelched. I have lost touch with it and when the undeniable urge to let it spin and whip into a torment that results in something tangible, I have delayed it and put it off and told myself I didn’t have anything to write about anyway. One night I stayed up all night, unable to stop writing. In the morning, Isabela was born. A year later, Isabela had been edited by 25 people and was published. But I was most proud of the birth because I let her rip and in the morning when the sun came up, I went to bed, exhausted and happy, but not empty. My mother used to say that it was useless to ground me, because I’d just go to my room and write. An only adequate punishment, she said, would have been to take away my paper. I am learning that when we teach that voice to subdue itself, that it suffers from the neglect.

The book that is taking form in me now is not the one I’m supposed to write. The book I’m supposed to finish is the one about Carlos that is almost done. The book I’m supposed to write should be appropriate for beginning Spanish students. We shall see. If you write or paint or draw or compose you already know… creation is intoxicating and fun. Triplets and quintuplets…. they’re distracting, difficult to keep quiet and it’s impossible to feed that many mouths from so few breasts.

I love the rainy season. It has been so hot, but finally the monkeys howled and it rained for about ten minutes. I stood in the pool and watched it dimple the surface. I was disappointed when it ended. About 6:00 when we were at the restaurant a torrential downpour began. “Inundación” José Cruz started to explain. Yeah…I got that one. It dropped the temperature while it came down in sheets. I made another mental note to never leave home without the umbrella on monkey howling days.

I know now why Guanacaste smells like already smoked pot now. They burn the leaves. There are smokestacks in every direction of burning trash and burning leaves.

SPANISH LESSONS AND DINNER WITH TICOS

Okay, Spanish teachers and students…. I think we need a new section. This will be a combination of words I am learning because Costa Rican vocabulary is different and words I am learning that are simply standard Spanish that I’ve never had occasion to use before. I’m not sure I’ll know the difference.

Mesero is the word I use for waiter. I have also heard Mozo. The correct word here is salonero or salonera. Because, it is explained to me, a mesero would only serve your mesa. A solonero serves the entire salón, and he waves to the entire room.

Oh. Es obvio.

Mono is a generic word for all monkeys. In the same way that Eskimos have so many words for snow, Costa Ricans words for every kind of monkey. Congo Aullador is the howler monkey.

Cielo raso means ceiling. Hay catorce geccos en el cielo raso. Leño means wood, which I’m sure I already knew, but I was using madera. Leño is what you cook with. We use the one word “wood” pretty liberally in English. I need some fire wood. It’s a wooden chair.

La pescaderia y el restaurante son contiguo. I stop him for a definition of what I think I’ve heard, “contigo.” It sounds the same. My head is translating, “The fish market and the restaurant are WITH YOU.” Huh? Contiguo. They give synonyms. Al lado. Oh.. like contiguous. Got it. Never heard it before. It is not plural to match son.

But I’m having so much fun interrupting the conversation to learn new words, that they start teaching me slang. Nolberto is talking to the salonera and she asks him what he’s going to do tonight. He says, “Voy a echarme un rol”, which means, I’m going to go to bed. “Voy a echarme un rolcito” Means I’m going to take a nap. José Cruz says that this is a “palabra pachuco” but that I have to be careful. Among friends saying, Es una palabra pachuco” is fine, but telling someone you aren’t friends with that he is a “pachuco” is an insult. I think it’s connotation is uneducated, crass.

This last piece of slang I’m just not getting. “You know that black stuff,” Nolberto points repeatedly to his ear, “that you put on an infection? You get it at the pharmacy. It’s black. “ Still pointing to his ear. “It’s medicine.” It’s called “jodo.” I’m clueless. “It looks like coffee.”

Iodine? Yes, iodine, they both say with absolutely no certainty. I’m equally as uncertain, but at least now they can finish the story. “Voy a tomar un jodito” means I’m going to have a cup of coffee. Totally slang. If I say it, I am told, I will sound like a Tica.

I’m thinking of drinking coffee again. I miss my Chai, which I cannot get here. But I haven’t had coffee in more than 3 years.

Okay Spanish teachers…. Here’s the kicker…. I’ve been thinking about this all night and I’m trying to talk myself into this not being as egregious an error because it may be because they use the Usted form all the time here with everyone.

Here’s the conversation:
He says, “La mama de mi hija es dentista.”
“Su mama es dentista en San José? I ask. (Her mother is a dentist in San José? I think I’m saying. He says I’ve said, “Your mother is a dentist in San José.)

He smiles and says, “No. No mi mamá. La mamá de ella.”

I can only use “su” if she’s here, he says.

I do it again a minute later when I introduce a member of the big family of the torn down houses to José Cruz.

“Su papá es el dueño del restaurante.” (I think I’m saying, His father is the owner of the restaurant. José thinks I’m saying, Your father is the owner of the restaurant.)

José Cruz smiles again and says “El papa de él.” (The father of him.)

Darn it. I tried arguing with him that “Su” means his, hers, theirs or yours, but he’s pretty sure he can speak Spanish. I also try to argue that Vladimir is, in fact, here, so I should be able to say su. But I’m still wrong, and now I’m not sure why.

I’m going to go with this… when you eliminate the “tú’ form, su is used it its place, so it cannot also then refer to another person and you are required to be more specific.

Or maybe I’m just wrong everywhere. It’s possible. And it is shocking.

I am explaining our travels in Paris two years ago, and how we were there during the strike. “No podíamos viajar en tren. No podíamos mover…” He corrects me. “I see the problem.”

He says, “PodIamos.” I am horrified… did I conjugate a verb incorrectly? What did I say? He says it again. PodIamos. With a stronger accent. (This is so odd translating a Spanish conversation from last night back into English.) I try. I cannot hear the difference between that and what I’ve said. He wants me to sound less American, so at random intervals he punctuates a word I have said too fast with forceful accents.

Kassidy is counting geccos in the restaurant while we talk. It is a high ceilinged, large windowed modern wooden structure with a big sign that says, “National Sarcasm Society”… “Like we need your support.” (In English.) But has a T-shirt hanging from the rafters that says, “I don’t speak English.” The menu is entirely American, but the two Ticos who have asked us to join their table are eating scallops that they caught today and brought to the restaurant so that the kitchen here could prepare it for them. I THINK the salonera might be the girlfriend of one of the guys. Can’t be sure. Hard to read. But the shoulder rub after dinner gave me a clue. By the time we leave she has counted over 60 geccos (tiny lizards) and taken pictures of them. The Ticos laugh at her because they say she is counting the same ones over and over. They move really, really fast.

They are the owners of Papagayo Tours. We have come here to this building to check things out. There is a small gym that I can use for about $30 a month, a movie theater that shows previously released English movies in Spanish with English subtitles, a Sports Bar and a tour information office, which turns out to sell printer supplies and has to call the tour guy to come talk to us. By the end of the conversation I am entirely uninterested in the tours that have been described and I’ve had an extremely difficult time getting him to cough up prices. I am learning that any time someone gives you a quote in American dollars, that they are marketing to tourists. I make a mental note to convert everything to colones and live like a Tica.
José Cruz is telling me that when the tourist guys at every corner wave your car down to try to get you to go scuba diving that all I need to say is, “Soy Tica” and they will leave me alone. I love this idea… but I think I’m going to wait until I can punctuate my syllables with a more Costa Rican accent.

The problem is… I do want to learn how to scuba dive. Just not as an American.

I use them to answer my biggest questions… do I have to tip the guy who helps me back my car out of the parking lot? No. Definitely not. They are there to protect your car in the lot while you’re inside, but if someone comes along and tries to break into it, they will run away. So, no. You don’t have to tip them. I am relieved until he tells me that he does tip them.

At about 7, we go home, still intending to return to the movie theater at 9:30 for Hancock. I am dubious and tired. Each of the men kisses me on the cheek as we leave. Kassidy artfully hangs back and waves. She likes the two guys we’ve been hanging out with all night and would have said goodbye, she says, but Vladimir has been drinking and is a little sloppy drunk. “The night we met I had a dream about you and me” he pulls me close to say as we leave.

So, apparently, in Costa Rica, people say things they shouldn’t when they’re drunk. I’m glad that’s not true in Colorado. I have appropriate responses in English all ready to fire. In Spanish I can only come up with “Gracias,” and we leave.

The difference among these men is striking. The Papagayo Tours people are educated and intelligent. Nolberto went to Canada to study French in a month long immersion program. He speaks fluent French and his English is pretty good. They like Americans but hate Europeans. Many of both have come to Costa Rica and started their own tour companies. The Americans are polite, they say. The Europeans treat them like slaves and Indians. “I am not an Indian.” (All his words… I would have politically corrected it.) They teach me about universities (which are free if you can get accepted) and trade schools (also free). They teach me about geography, and now I have a hand-drawn map on the back of the movie schedule of all of the regions of Costa Rica. Vladimir, whose father’s house has just been torn down, is a fisherman. When we met them with the family, they were all kind. (Although the grandsons in their mid-twenties were awfully attentive, come to think of it.) And now he seems out of place here. I wonder how much of a class system there really is here. Is education an opportunity provided to everyone, or only those who aren’t required to bring in the fish for the family from a young age?

I like these Papagayo Tours owners. They are proud to have a Tico owned company. When I tell them about going to Liberia and wanting to castrate the men who were looking at Kassidy they said, “What? How old is she?!?! 12?” And were angry. Nice reaction. Kassidy is involved in the conversation and every time she tries to say something in English they stop her and ask her to try again, feeding her the words she is lacking.

I am deliriously happy that I have gotten to speak Spanish for an entire evening. I plow into those conversations with reckless abandon, hoping I make mistakes and hoping they will be corrected. Language acquisition theory says not to, that eventually I’ll figure it all out just by listening. But there is a certain finesse in a language that comes only through this process. I have studied Spanish for 24 years. I’m ready for finesse.

Pura Vida, they say to us when we meet. I don’t know what it means. I don’t mean that I don’t know what the words mean. I mean that this is the entire philosophy of the country and motivates the pace and the decisions and the relationships. I’ll define it when I’m sure I have a handle on what it looks like to live a “Pura Vida.”

I feel like Andreas, a wonderful German man we met at CSYP and adopted into our group of friends and volleyball players. “Monkey tennis?” He dove into the experience heartily, although I’m not sure he enjoyed playing volleyball.

9/11

We come home and are too tired to go back out to the theater. I work and Kassidy flips channels. We land on the History Channel and watch the documentary on 9/11, When it happened she was 4 and I didn’t tell her. I picked her up from school and never turned the T.V. on again until after she was in bed. What she over-heard at school I glossed over. Now she watches horrified, “Why didn’t you tell me?” Because it would have tipped the balance of good and evil in the world and at 4 years old she hadn’t seen enough good to keep this in perspective yet. She wouldn’t have been innocent anymore. She wouldn’t have trusted me to keep her safe anymore. It would have changed the trajectory of her childhood the way it changed the trajectory of all of our adulthoods. I didn’t say that, though. I just said, “You were little.”

We saw only about 50 minutes of the 102 minutes before she turned the T.V. off. I understand. Even at 12, 50 minutes is all she can keep in perspective. Before the Pentagon. Before the Pennsylvania flight. Before the second tower came down. That was enough.

My heart was with the people impacted first hand yesterday, whether they sent someone off to war or lost someone on 9/11. The people who are still impacted by it on a daily basis and have endured far more than 50 minutes.