Um...did I mention I´m a horrible blogger?
This is my last week in Costa Rica, so I promise promise promise that every day I´ll make entries trying to get you guys up to speed. So much has been happening that it would actually do me some good to spend the next week looking back at it all through writing.
When we last heard of Mike Faulk, it was July 12, and on the 14th he took a bus to Siquirres to stay at an eco-resort called Finca Maquengue, for free, to write a hotel review for the newspaper. It was on top of a mountain facing the Caribbean, which you could see even 20 miles away. When the sun rose, it was like watching some natural phenomenon, because inbetween the earth and the sky there was just a sparkling ring of the sea stretched across the horizon. I went horseback riding for the first time in...I can´t even remember the last time I went horseback riding. We rode through open areas and jungle trails, and went out to the dirt road for some running. It was there I discovered how few things are as fun and exhilarating as kicking a horse on his back leg and just going with him at full speed through open country. There were six waterfalls on the property, and the photographer and I went swimming in one of them, where a giant boulder at the top (put there by the Turrialba Volcano) split the stream into two parallel waterfalls. Clear water surrounded by jungle and no other signs of man, it was refreshing to say the least.
The next week I went to another press conference for yet another music festival with more free, delicious food. The highlight was hearing footsteps come up from behind me and then someone say ¨Michael! My friend!¨ It was good ole Patricio from Channel 13, and I´m pretty sure the last time I´ll see him. Bottom ups.
Here are some observations I´ve made about daily life in San José/Coronado:
-Every morning and evening I take a 40 minute bus into and away from San José to get to work and home. Most are falling apart, one of them is decent, but one is my sworn enemy. This bus can be heard long before it turns the corner to get to my bus stop in Coronado. Squeaky squeaky sigh sigh squeaky errrr (that´s the break). Something like that describes it´s noises. The bus is pink. On the side, in faded pink lettering, reads the name of the bus, ¨Don Pancho.¨ I´ve seen a lot of buses with names around town, but this is the only named one in the Coronado fleet. This bus is worse than any creaky sweat machine you may have ridden in high school, even if you went to high school in the 1960s. The bus driver is constantly restarting it because it shuts down in the middle of traffic, and it doesn´t make it any easier to get it to go somewhere when the drivers literally fill the seats and aisles of the bus to the point where you can´t even move around to find the door out. The worst part about Don Pancho is that it naturally shakes, accompanied by the bumpiness all the awful roads provide, and the height limit is 6 feet. If you have forgotten, I am 6 foot 4, so my head is tilted and pressed against the ceiling during all of this bumpiness. There are also light fixtures on the ceiling, which I position my head inbetween, and then my head is subjected to a painful game of pong for the next 40 minutes while all the Ticos snicker at the tall gringo trying to keep his balance.
None of these buses were made for me. When I sit down, I always have to spread my legs out because otherwise my knees are digging deeply into someone´s back. I try to be considerate with the space I take up though. On the bus rides, sometimes there are considerate people who sit next to you, and other times they make you even more anxious to just quit and take a cab. I was already in a bad mood one day after work, sitting in the bus in downtown waiting for us to take off, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a giant, glowing, green meteor falling from heaven at a kind of rate I had never known to exist. It hit me and smashed my right leg, the shock was so much that I jumped and shouted, but I was just pushed closer against the suffocating wall of the bus. It just turned out to be an abnormally fat lady, and even though she knew she had quite literally slammed me (imagine turning to see someone lift up and then slam, just as she did with her butt, a 15 pound bag of potatoes on you, and you might know how I felt) she didn´t even look at me. Then she pulled out a bag of cookies and began munching away, while I scowled from underneath her.
Another guy I set next to on the bus always rested his hand on his knee, and then somehow every five minutes had moved on or two of his fingers over to my knee adjacent to his. I´d make casual, increasingly violent, shifts and his hand would go back to fully resting on his own knee....but sure enough there it came over again. When he moved his hands away to answer his phone, I put my hands on my knees. Sure enough, he put his hands back and this time he was reaching over onto my hand. Then I just looked at him. And looked. He folded his arms and that was that.
-Absolutely nothing happens in Coronado. The young and old all go to bed at 8 pm, and I´ve had hardly any social life outside of the people I work with because of it. Despite this, I´ve become very fond of my family here. One morning at breakfast both Margarita and Uncle Tony told me they love me like a son, and I was smiling so big I forgot how to speak for a second. The people in Coronado are very good and caring...maybe it´s because they´re well rested.
-I have been measuring my time in Costa Rica through a piggy bank that I painted with host aunt Iris in my first week here. Every day after work I would put any of my coins under 100 colones in the piggy bank, and I knew that the heavier it got the closer I´d be to coming home. Where I was bad at keeping up with my blog, every day I´d remember to stick the coins in the blue and green piggy. Yesterday I tried putting a 20 colon coin in, and it got stuck sticking halfway out. Time is just about out; that´s some accurate pig.
As for life at The Tico Times:
-There are only two reporters who have been at the paper longer than me. In three months I saw the departure and hiring of two new reporters. The turnover rate is high in the world of international journalism, I guess, with people ready to jump from one project to the other. About a month ago, the editor called this big staff meeting and announced that she was retiring. So I´ve been here for some momentous changes in just three months.
-Telling people you work for The Tico Times is an automatic cred winner here with tourists. It´s a great asset for someone trying to make friends like me who´s travelling alone and lives in sleepy Coronado.
-My Spanish has improved by leaps and bounds only because working for the paper has forced me into constantly making contact with Spanish speakers. It comes out of me much more naturally now, and often times, like when I´m waiting on the bus, I can think to myself in Spanish.
-I have a lot in common with the people I work with, so I can´t complain that I spend so much time with them. They´re all fun loving but still responsible. We took a staff beach trip to Esterillos, south of Jaco, on the Pacific this weekend and had a jolly fiesta in the surf. Even though I haven´t written much for news, I don´t think I could have asked for a more helpful and interesting internship experience.
Alright, look forward to updates on:
-Walking a 25 km pilgrimage alone to the city of Cartago.
-A four day weekend in Nicaragua.
-My last week in Costa Rica, and returning to beautiful, sunny, hot, American, humid Alabama.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
A place I know, where the train goes slow
There´s a man who waits at the Coronado bus stop every day. He´s short, with dark skin, grey, parted hair, and gangly teeth he keeps covered up with a tired but relatively handsome face for his condition. His fingers are always curled. I´ve only ever seen him lift is a cigarette, a broom and his coin bag. He walks with a gimp, moves left foot forward with head tilted in front and right foot forward with head tilted back, and when he moves fast he gets ahead of himself and needs to lean against the bus. He has no home, and makes his money off donations from people getting onto the bus, who he´s hardly able to speak to anyway. He just hangs his head and looks at the ground with blinking, starved puppydog eyes. His name is Mario.
At one point the bus stop managers gave him a bureaucratic job of sweeping the floor. I say bureaucratic because that floor will always be dirty, but for some reason it didn´t last because I haven´t seen him at it in a number of weeks. The other day he was wearing a new jacket. Not actually new, since I judged by the sky blue color and long, rigid collar ends it had to have been from the 70s. But you could see the color in it, not yet molested by the dirt stained into his other clothes.
There are plenty of beggars I turn down. A variety of factors come into play: maybe I don´t have time or money at that moment, or occassionally a bum is way too threatening to even stop and think for, like this one muscular bald guy with half his face doused in green paint (Why? No clue.) who emerged from a bush and followed me for two blocks. They, like everyone else, come in all shapes and personalities. Avenida Central is a mix of open-air mall and middle class society rung on the corners by the equivalent of a circus freak show. People with no legs limp around on special-made seats like dirt saddles; dwarves with stubby fingers play three-string guitar and sing in indiscernable howls; and at any moment when you´re buying ice cream a man can walk in, show you the bruise where he last shot up, and ask for money to buy more. There are plenty of Costa Ricans in this shape, but many of them are immigrants from even poorer Latin American nations who heard about the more developed Costa Rica and didn´t know they´d be out of luck before they even got here. They pass out on the sidewalk in front of the Supreme Court, light up crack pipes in cardboard boxes, and dig through the trashbins to find anything to eat like rotting pineapple skin to something they can at least wipe themselves with. These are the treasures they found. San José is riddled with the human aftermath of busted dreams.
Mario is one of the better cases, if only because I´ve seen him smile. I can never tell if he hangs his head while the line of people walk by because he´s just tired, lost in thought or actually ashamed to be begging. Every day for the last two months I´ve dropped a 100 colones coin into his bag (only about 20 U.S. cents). It´s helped us become friends though, and now he looks over other people´s heads when he sees me coming and slowly lurches up past a few people to get closer to me. I asked him his name about a week ago, and now he knows mine too. We don´t say much, because it´s hard for him to talk, but it reminds me that sometimes a look in the eyes coming with a smile can do a lot for people. Mario is one of the most important friends I´ve made here. He reminds me of several things: that an upper-middle class white boy from Alabama can be friends with someone from a completely different world, that my problems aren´t as bad as what others got dealt, and despite what you are handed, despite all the evil forces in the world waying down on you, there is still room for compassion. And maybe with that comes a little bit of hope...for all of us.
At one point the bus stop managers gave him a bureaucratic job of sweeping the floor. I say bureaucratic because that floor will always be dirty, but for some reason it didn´t last because I haven´t seen him at it in a number of weeks. The other day he was wearing a new jacket. Not actually new, since I judged by the sky blue color and long, rigid collar ends it had to have been from the 70s. But you could see the color in it, not yet molested by the dirt stained into his other clothes.
There are plenty of beggars I turn down. A variety of factors come into play: maybe I don´t have time or money at that moment, or occassionally a bum is way too threatening to even stop and think for, like this one muscular bald guy with half his face doused in green paint (Why? No clue.) who emerged from a bush and followed me for two blocks. They, like everyone else, come in all shapes and personalities. Avenida Central is a mix of open-air mall and middle class society rung on the corners by the equivalent of a circus freak show. People with no legs limp around on special-made seats like dirt saddles; dwarves with stubby fingers play three-string guitar and sing in indiscernable howls; and at any moment when you´re buying ice cream a man can walk in, show you the bruise where he last shot up, and ask for money to buy more. There are plenty of Costa Ricans in this shape, but many of them are immigrants from even poorer Latin American nations who heard about the more developed Costa Rica and didn´t know they´d be out of luck before they even got here. They pass out on the sidewalk in front of the Supreme Court, light up crack pipes in cardboard boxes, and dig through the trashbins to find anything to eat like rotting pineapple skin to something they can at least wipe themselves with. These are the treasures they found. San José is riddled with the human aftermath of busted dreams.
Mario is one of the better cases, if only because I´ve seen him smile. I can never tell if he hangs his head while the line of people walk by because he´s just tired, lost in thought or actually ashamed to be begging. Every day for the last two months I´ve dropped a 100 colones coin into his bag (only about 20 U.S. cents). It´s helped us become friends though, and now he looks over other people´s heads when he sees me coming and slowly lurches up past a few people to get closer to me. I asked him his name about a week ago, and now he knows mine too. We don´t say much, because it´s hard for him to talk, but it reminds me that sometimes a look in the eyes coming with a smile can do a lot for people. Mario is one of the most important friends I´ve made here. He reminds me of several things: that an upper-middle class white boy from Alabama can be friends with someone from a completely different world, that my problems aren´t as bad as what others got dealt, and despite what you are handed, despite all the evil forces in the world waying down on you, there is still room for compassion. And maybe with that comes a little bit of hope...for all of us.
Monday, July 9, 2007
Mall shootings and free resorts
Next Friday (the 29th) I went out to the San Pedro Mall (in a suburb of San José) with this girl named Katie (pronounced Kah-tee) who works down the street from the Tico Times office in a little convenience store. She recommended we go see a movie at the mall when she got off work at 4:30. I had stories that were due so I told her 5.
This time difference is important because it´s a good thing we weren´t in the mall at 5 o´clock when we pulled up front in a taxi, because that´s when 10 shots rang out inside and all hell broke loose in front of us. People running in and out of the mall, falling down stairs; pedestrians running in herds around the corner; more shots going off; people locked out on the second and third floor balconies; mass hysteria.
The taxi driver let me use his cell phone to call the Tico Times, and they told me to start grabbing witnesses. So, suddenly, on my date..thing, I was interviewing witnesses who were inside when the shooting started. And speculation was there were anywhere from 2 to 3 guys, but only one of them was caught on the scene. Two cops dragged him out flailing and shouting. He was shirtless, fat and had a shaved head. He kept shouting in Spanish and English, the only English part being ¨You wanna fuck with me?!?!¨ I was interviewing people right next to the police van that they shoved him into, so I actually have him shouting it on my digital recorder. Traffic in front of the building was at a standstill with everyone trying to get a look, and the same went for traffic on the bridge across the street where people had parked their cars to walk out and get a bird´s eye view. I have pictures of all of it too, crazy stuff. And that was how I got my first news assignment for the Tico Times.
About an hour later, we were on our way to another mall, and we watched the only movie playing other than Shrek, Duro de Matar 4, also known as Die Hard 4.
I spent that Saturday and Sunday at this resort on the Pacific in Punta Leona, maybe 10 kilometers north of Jaco, this popular beachtown for gringos that I have dubbed ¨New Florida,¨ for its significant Latino population, overwhelming number of American restaurants, and array of hooker-hunting men who resemble Jimmy Buffet. I can´t stress enough that maybe 1 out of every 10 upper-middle class suburbanite (and richer, like company CEOs) you see in their 50s or 60s has probably come down to Central America for some afternoon delight with a side of VD. There are books on how these guys develop obsessions with this dirty lifestyle down south. There are so (so so so) many of them here, and they´re all here alone, and they´re all flanked by 18-year-old(?) prostitutes.
But I´m talking about Hotel Punta Leona, which is a resort that´s actually fairly balanced between Costa Rican and Latin American clients and North American ones. And it´s family friendly. I stayed there for free because it was the host to a press conference on the 17th annual Festival de Musica, which sets up shop in all these resorts across the country and brings in these classical music acts from all over North America and Europe. The (new) photography intern Allison and I also happened to be surrounded by journalists from every top media outlet in Costa Rica, and were (I´m getting used to this) the only Americans. I said before, it was all free, and I lived better in those 24 hours than I may have ever have ever erverner. The beach was clear and blue and beautiful. The press conference lasted for one hour, no one took notes, and we just drank expensive Spanish wine and I told Allison that at no other point in our lives will we be treated with this kind of respect for being journalists.
After that they bused us to another resort for dinner, called the Zephyr Palace, because it was like something from Indiana Jones on the outside with stone walls like the Incas built and huge red columns. It´s right on the top of a mountain bluff that just cuts off at the Pacific Ocean. We were so high up that some of the people we were with were able to identify cities that were an hour away up the coast or on the peninsula in front of us. The dinner included salad, sorbet, a main course that was fish topped by steak topped by shrimp and it was all SO GOOD, and then we had this chocolate mousse desert and I had one of those yuppy travel show moments when I took my first bite smiling and thinking about how awesome life is...because of fancy pudding.
Anyway, they continued to pour on the wine, and then amaretto, and then vodka, and then whiskey, and suddenly I was surrounded by a lot of extremely happy Tico journalists. On the van ride back to the resort we were staying at, the Ticos all burst out in these Costa Rican drinking songs that I´m going to have one of them write out for me before I leave. I made a lot of new friends, and I think my favorite is the ex-chileno now Tico journalist Patricio from Channel 13, who was more than up for talking and celebration as long as the night would last. As we sat around by the pool with some of the other late nighters, he sparked up this passionate talk about CAFTA* (*Costa Rica is the only country in Central America yet to approve the free trade agreement. The opposition was so great that it forced the decision out of the hands of Congress and into a public referendum to be held Oct. 7), and how the movement against it was the strongest the nation had seen since the formation of the second republic after the 1948 revolution* (Led by José Figueres, the father of Latin American democracy, whose wife at the time was named Henrietta, a young girl from Birmingham who is now an octagenarian woman living in Montgomery and in-law of the family I´m staying with). He talked about businesses exploiting the poor, how the future of the world in the face of these special interest forces was all in the hands of the youth (as the younger journalists sat there silent with eyes like those of deer in the headlights), and how if the public voted against CAFTA they would make the wheels start turning...
It was on that note that I, too opinionated to hold back my opinion on another country´s affairs (I try to stay out since it´s technically none of my business), suddenly was giving this political speech to everyone around the table how CAFTA failing in Costa Rica was not enough. That the world is changing every day and it´s all in the hands of a few people, and that these businesses will always find a way to get what they want, no matter what the human cost (It´s true and you´re crazy if you don´t believe that.) and one tiny nation cannot stand alone in the battle. I talked about how there needed to be a global movement to overcome them, and somewhere in the middle of that I realized that they were all really listening to me more than smiling at my broken Spanish, and taking me seriously and that got me even more caught up in it so I just kept going...and when I was done, I don´t know, the mood was something I´m still dwelling on. Serious but excited, hopeful but sad. Suddenly though we all connected on this very important level. Talking about global unity with people from other countries who agree with you does that, I guess.
Later that night it was confirmed to me (after flipping the channels and finding this movie for the umpteenth jillionth time) that whenever I miss home, something to remind me of it is never too far away. At any given time, you can find Forrest Gump playing on at least one Costa Rican channel. The other piece of him that follows Alabamians is when you introduce yourself to anyone, from anywhere. ¨Oh, you´re from Alabama? Sweet home!¨ Yeah, get used to it.
This time difference is important because it´s a good thing we weren´t in the mall at 5 o´clock when we pulled up front in a taxi, because that´s when 10 shots rang out inside and all hell broke loose in front of us. People running in and out of the mall, falling down stairs; pedestrians running in herds around the corner; more shots going off; people locked out on the second and third floor balconies; mass hysteria.
The taxi driver let me use his cell phone to call the Tico Times, and they told me to start grabbing witnesses. So, suddenly, on my date..thing, I was interviewing witnesses who were inside when the shooting started. And speculation was there were anywhere from 2 to 3 guys, but only one of them was caught on the scene. Two cops dragged him out flailing and shouting. He was shirtless, fat and had a shaved head. He kept shouting in Spanish and English, the only English part being ¨You wanna fuck with me?!?!¨ I was interviewing people right next to the police van that they shoved him into, so I actually have him shouting it on my digital recorder. Traffic in front of the building was at a standstill with everyone trying to get a look, and the same went for traffic on the bridge across the street where people had parked their cars to walk out and get a bird´s eye view. I have pictures of all of it too, crazy stuff. And that was how I got my first news assignment for the Tico Times.
About an hour later, we were on our way to another mall, and we watched the only movie playing other than Shrek, Duro de Matar 4, also known as Die Hard 4.
I spent that Saturday and Sunday at this resort on the Pacific in Punta Leona, maybe 10 kilometers north of Jaco, this popular beachtown for gringos that I have dubbed ¨New Florida,¨ for its significant Latino population, overwhelming number of American restaurants, and array of hooker-hunting men who resemble Jimmy Buffet. I can´t stress enough that maybe 1 out of every 10 upper-middle class suburbanite (and richer, like company CEOs) you see in their 50s or 60s has probably come down to Central America for some afternoon delight with a side of VD. There are books on how these guys develop obsessions with this dirty lifestyle down south. There are so (so so so) many of them here, and they´re all here alone, and they´re all flanked by 18-year-old(?) prostitutes.
But I´m talking about Hotel Punta Leona, which is a resort that´s actually fairly balanced between Costa Rican and Latin American clients and North American ones. And it´s family friendly. I stayed there for free because it was the host to a press conference on the 17th annual Festival de Musica, which sets up shop in all these resorts across the country and brings in these classical music acts from all over North America and Europe. The (new) photography intern Allison and I also happened to be surrounded by journalists from every top media outlet in Costa Rica, and were (I´m getting used to this) the only Americans. I said before, it was all free, and I lived better in those 24 hours than I may have ever have ever erverner. The beach was clear and blue and beautiful. The press conference lasted for one hour, no one took notes, and we just drank expensive Spanish wine and I told Allison that at no other point in our lives will we be treated with this kind of respect for being journalists.
After that they bused us to another resort for dinner, called the Zephyr Palace, because it was like something from Indiana Jones on the outside with stone walls like the Incas built and huge red columns. It´s right on the top of a mountain bluff that just cuts off at the Pacific Ocean. We were so high up that some of the people we were with were able to identify cities that were an hour away up the coast or on the peninsula in front of us. The dinner included salad, sorbet, a main course that was fish topped by steak topped by shrimp and it was all SO GOOD, and then we had this chocolate mousse desert and I had one of those yuppy travel show moments when I took my first bite smiling and thinking about how awesome life is...because of fancy pudding.
Anyway, they continued to pour on the wine, and then amaretto, and then vodka, and then whiskey, and suddenly I was surrounded by a lot of extremely happy Tico journalists. On the van ride back to the resort we were staying at, the Ticos all burst out in these Costa Rican drinking songs that I´m going to have one of them write out for me before I leave. I made a lot of new friends, and I think my favorite is the ex-chileno now Tico journalist Patricio from Channel 13, who was more than up for talking and celebration as long as the night would last. As we sat around by the pool with some of the other late nighters, he sparked up this passionate talk about CAFTA* (*Costa Rica is the only country in Central America yet to approve the free trade agreement. The opposition was so great that it forced the decision out of the hands of Congress and into a public referendum to be held Oct. 7), and how the movement against it was the strongest the nation had seen since the formation of the second republic after the 1948 revolution* (Led by José Figueres, the father of Latin American democracy, whose wife at the time was named Henrietta, a young girl from Birmingham who is now an octagenarian woman living in Montgomery and in-law of the family I´m staying with). He talked about businesses exploiting the poor, how the future of the world in the face of these special interest forces was all in the hands of the youth (as the younger journalists sat there silent with eyes like those of deer in the headlights), and how if the public voted against CAFTA they would make the wheels start turning...
It was on that note that I, too opinionated to hold back my opinion on another country´s affairs (I try to stay out since it´s technically none of my business), suddenly was giving this political speech to everyone around the table how CAFTA failing in Costa Rica was not enough. That the world is changing every day and it´s all in the hands of a few people, and that these businesses will always find a way to get what they want, no matter what the human cost (It´s true and you´re crazy if you don´t believe that.) and one tiny nation cannot stand alone in the battle. I talked about how there needed to be a global movement to overcome them, and somewhere in the middle of that I realized that they were all really listening to me more than smiling at my broken Spanish, and taking me seriously and that got me even more caught up in it so I just kept going...and when I was done, I don´t know, the mood was something I´m still dwelling on. Serious but excited, hopeful but sad. Suddenly though we all connected on this very important level. Talking about global unity with people from other countries who agree with you does that, I guess.
Later that night it was confirmed to me (after flipping the channels and finding this movie for the umpteenth jillionth time) that whenever I miss home, something to remind me of it is never too far away. At any given time, you can find Forrest Gump playing on at least one Costa Rican channel. The other piece of him that follows Alabamians is when you introduce yourself to anyone, from anywhere. ¨Oh, you´re from Alabama? Sweet home!¨ Yeah, get used to it.
Weekend on the mountain
So, I am a very bad blogger. It´s been two weeks since I´ve updated. I´m a bad blogger. So for the next three days (the deadline I´ve given myself) I´m going to try very hard to catch you all up.
(Scene of Mike at Uncle Tony´s laptop computer rapidly pounding the keyboard with his index, middle, ring and sometimes pinky fingers fades into obscurity, and suddenly it´s the afternoon, and we see Mike in a taxi cab curving along an old road up a mountain somewhere in Costa Rica. The day is June 23.)
I´ve made a lot of interesting friends in Costa Rica, from a variety of places and generations. One of them, we´ll just call him Turbo, invited me to his bed and breakfast for a weekend to stay and meet some of his friends and family. An older hippie who´s seen the world a few times over and can´t get enough of it, we seemed to know we stood eye to eye on a lot of things before I´d even got halfway done with my interview with him a few weeks back. He´s a radio host and journalist, and I admired him because I basically saw him living the dream I wanted for myself: to just travel, meet important people, do what you love and keep going with it. I wanted to know more about his life, and maybe learn a thing or two.
The bed and breakfast had a 14th century look to it at the front, with a black painted steel door that stood maybe 7 or 8 feet high and a peephole at the 5-foot mark. Aside from a few tiny houses and closed up shops, there wasn´t much else to be found on this mountain road where the taxi driver left me, and it actually brought me a sense of peace as I rang the doorbell. San José is so crowded, so loud and so filthy that it makes you never want to take the boring but innocent countryside for granted ever again. Turbo invited me in, where it was much more like a modern villa, with a wall garden, a long patio for dining under the shelter of the second story walkway, and showed me to my room, which came with a view of a sprawling green mountainside full of coffee plants and clouds in the distance covered up the summit of Poas Volcano. That afternoon me, Turbo and his wife listened to music, and I heard him talk about living on the West coast in the 60s and I told him about living in Alabama now and how I got to Costa Rica. He´s had radio shows in Turkey, Europe, Seattle, and Central America. He´s worked in Hawaii and in Cuba. He´s friends with Woody Harrelson. As we talked and I basically sat back and unexpectedly let him give me some much needed advice on life, the clouds rolled over the mountain top and the patio filled with fog. He talked about how life´s an adventure, and you should try to expand your mind, not blow it, then the rain began, and it rained.
Turbo´s friend Steve from Toronto, who along with his Phillipino wife Sarah will be running the restaurant at the bed and breakfast, showed up as it was getting darker. They´d been at the market all day looking for the best vendors to buy their groceries from. I was lucky enough to come when they still hadn´t decided what would be on the menu, and Sarah was cooking experimental gourmet dishes to find out what might work. She´s a good cook. That weekend I would eat steaks, pastas, salads, an omelette and fresh breads for free, and all they asked in return was ¨D´ya like it?¨ The restaurant is towards the front of the bed and breakfast, and it has this romantic, European accent to it. Along the walls is a line of wine bottles from all over the world, except for in one spot there´s wedged a canister holding the ashes of Turbo´s father. His father, who spent his life being contracted to ship cargo by plane all over the world, has a story of his own worthy of an epic novel.
Steve, who admittedly looks like a character from the Sopranos with grey, slicked back hair and darker skin from his Spanish ancestry, is also a freelance journalist. As a young man out of college he came down to Central America on his own to report on what was happening with the Contra scandal (thanks to Ronald Reagan, the greatest American, cough cough, puke puke) and also spent seven years living in Cuba. All of his journalistic travels and writing he did on his own, and supported himself without the assistance of any one particular media outlet. Steve, who wears copper bracelets around his wrists because he says it helps the blood flow, has never been to the deep South, but said a number of years ago he developed this obsession with Civil War history. After dinner on my one night stay, the three of us guys sat around with Cuban cigars and a bottle of Jim Beam on the patio with candles flickering and a few rain drops still pouring, and I felt like some hot shot telling stories about my homeland and family with Steve hanging on every word.
As I walked up the stairs by myself that night, and looked out into the distant valley where the lights of the nearest pueblo could be seen, and the hard beat of Reggaeton could be heard faintly emanating from the local discoteca, something happened to me. I knew there wasn´t a single thing around me that reminded me of the world I´d always known, and I counted up every day of the 21 and a half years I´ve already managed to put behind me, all the way up to that night when I found myself on a balcony in the mountains of Costa Rica thinking about the past, and what I could or should or might have done. And I let it go, and slept easy.
(Scene of Mike at Uncle Tony´s laptop computer rapidly pounding the keyboard with his index, middle, ring and sometimes pinky fingers fades into obscurity, and suddenly it´s the afternoon, and we see Mike in a taxi cab curving along an old road up a mountain somewhere in Costa Rica. The day is June 23.)
I´ve made a lot of interesting friends in Costa Rica, from a variety of places and generations. One of them, we´ll just call him Turbo, invited me to his bed and breakfast for a weekend to stay and meet some of his friends and family. An older hippie who´s seen the world a few times over and can´t get enough of it, we seemed to know we stood eye to eye on a lot of things before I´d even got halfway done with my interview with him a few weeks back. He´s a radio host and journalist, and I admired him because I basically saw him living the dream I wanted for myself: to just travel, meet important people, do what you love and keep going with it. I wanted to know more about his life, and maybe learn a thing or two.
The bed and breakfast had a 14th century look to it at the front, with a black painted steel door that stood maybe 7 or 8 feet high and a peephole at the 5-foot mark. Aside from a few tiny houses and closed up shops, there wasn´t much else to be found on this mountain road where the taxi driver left me, and it actually brought me a sense of peace as I rang the doorbell. San José is so crowded, so loud and so filthy that it makes you never want to take the boring but innocent countryside for granted ever again. Turbo invited me in, where it was much more like a modern villa, with a wall garden, a long patio for dining under the shelter of the second story walkway, and showed me to my room, which came with a view of a sprawling green mountainside full of coffee plants and clouds in the distance covered up the summit of Poas Volcano. That afternoon me, Turbo and his wife listened to music, and I heard him talk about living on the West coast in the 60s and I told him about living in Alabama now and how I got to Costa Rica. He´s had radio shows in Turkey, Europe, Seattle, and Central America. He´s worked in Hawaii and in Cuba. He´s friends with Woody Harrelson. As we talked and I basically sat back and unexpectedly let him give me some much needed advice on life, the clouds rolled over the mountain top and the patio filled with fog. He talked about how life´s an adventure, and you should try to expand your mind, not blow it, then the rain began, and it rained.
Turbo´s friend Steve from Toronto, who along with his Phillipino wife Sarah will be running the restaurant at the bed and breakfast, showed up as it was getting darker. They´d been at the market all day looking for the best vendors to buy their groceries from. I was lucky enough to come when they still hadn´t decided what would be on the menu, and Sarah was cooking experimental gourmet dishes to find out what might work. She´s a good cook. That weekend I would eat steaks, pastas, salads, an omelette and fresh breads for free, and all they asked in return was ¨D´ya like it?¨ The restaurant is towards the front of the bed and breakfast, and it has this romantic, European accent to it. Along the walls is a line of wine bottles from all over the world, except for in one spot there´s wedged a canister holding the ashes of Turbo´s father. His father, who spent his life being contracted to ship cargo by plane all over the world, has a story of his own worthy of an epic novel.
Steve, who admittedly looks like a character from the Sopranos with grey, slicked back hair and darker skin from his Spanish ancestry, is also a freelance journalist. As a young man out of college he came down to Central America on his own to report on what was happening with the Contra scandal (thanks to Ronald Reagan, the greatest American, cough cough, puke puke) and also spent seven years living in Cuba. All of his journalistic travels and writing he did on his own, and supported himself without the assistance of any one particular media outlet. Steve, who wears copper bracelets around his wrists because he says it helps the blood flow, has never been to the deep South, but said a number of years ago he developed this obsession with Civil War history. After dinner on my one night stay, the three of us guys sat around with Cuban cigars and a bottle of Jim Beam on the patio with candles flickering and a few rain drops still pouring, and I felt like some hot shot telling stories about my homeland and family with Steve hanging on every word.
As I walked up the stairs by myself that night, and looked out into the distant valley where the lights of the nearest pueblo could be seen, and the hard beat of Reggaeton could be heard faintly emanating from the local discoteca, something happened to me. I knew there wasn´t a single thing around me that reminded me of the world I´d always known, and I counted up every day of the 21 and a half years I´ve already managed to put behind me, all the way up to that night when I found myself on a balcony in the mountains of Costa Rica thinking about the past, and what I could or should or might have done. And I let it go, and slept easy.
Friday, June 22, 2007
I had a weird encounter last night. I was waiting at the bus stop (a big empty cavity in a long line of rundown buildings surrounded by strip clubs, casinos and homeless people of various unfortunate dispositions) and this 70-year-old man in a white suit and vest sits next to me and sparks up a conversation. Not much of his hair is left, so he has this comb over that goes from one side of his head to the other and all the way around to the back. It still doesn´t cover up much. The faded white of his eyes and hoarse breathing is more or less a sign that his body is running out on him. I had trouble understanding him because his voice cracked and he spoke very softly, but he happily told me about how he writes books (and pulled some out of his old leather briefcase to show me), how most English speakers are pompous (but how I´m different), and how wonderful it is to live in Coronado. I wasn´t sure if he was about to sell me something or if he just wanted to talk to someone, so I kept up the talk while we waited for the bus. Then he asks me if I have found El Señor, the Lord, and trust Jesus Christ. Of course, I know better from my encounters with random old people in Alabama to say yes to this question, and he just lights up and elbows me saying ¨Que bueno muchacho.¨ As we´re getting on the bus he says something along the lines of ¨You´re going somewhere señor, kindness and goodness will take you there!¨
He sat in the back of the bus and I sat up front. I don´t know if that was rude but I still wasn´t sure if he was going to start asking how much I wanted to buy his book for. 45 minutes later we were in Coronado, and I got off the bus. I had walked about half a block when I had this feeling to turn around and look behind me. The old man, Manuel, was flat on his back in the street. He didn´t budge an inch, even as cars came swooping by his head, sharply veering to the left as they came up on him and noticed him. I ran back up the street and stood over him asking if he was OK. He opened his eyes and looked at me. ¨I fell. I fell. I fell,¨ he kept saying. So I reached my hand out and lifted him to his feet, and asked him again if he was alright. ¨Sí señor, por supuesto!¨ with the smile and tone of a man who did not just fall off a bus and almost get run over. At that moment I knew he was eccentric but completely genuine. After a few other words I told him goodnight and started to walk off, then with what effort he had in his lungs he shouted back at me ¨Just like I told you, young man! Kindness and goodness!¨ Then he walked up the street, turned the corner and was gone.
The end.
He sat in the back of the bus and I sat up front. I don´t know if that was rude but I still wasn´t sure if he was going to start asking how much I wanted to buy his book for. 45 minutes later we were in Coronado, and I got off the bus. I had walked about half a block when I had this feeling to turn around and look behind me. The old man, Manuel, was flat on his back in the street. He didn´t budge an inch, even as cars came swooping by his head, sharply veering to the left as they came up on him and noticed him. I ran back up the street and stood over him asking if he was OK. He opened his eyes and looked at me. ¨I fell. I fell. I fell,¨ he kept saying. So I reached my hand out and lifted him to his feet, and asked him again if he was alright. ¨Sí señor, por supuesto!¨ with the smile and tone of a man who did not just fall off a bus and almost get run over. At that moment I knew he was eccentric but completely genuine. After a few other words I told him goodnight and started to walk off, then with what effort he had in his lungs he shouted back at me ¨Just like I told you, young man! Kindness and goodness!¨ Then he walked up the street, turned the corner and was gone.
The end.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
From The Crimson White, 6/21/07
"Learn it while you've got the time"
My last final exam for the spring was May 10, and for me that day was all about what the future would hold. In one day I was going home to Mobile; in two days I was going to board an airplane to Costa Rica.
That night I was rushing to say goodbye to a few friends still in town, clean up my apartment and pack for my trip. In Spanish Fort, I knew that my mom and grandmother, "Grammy," who lived down the street from us my whole life, were expecting my arrival. I was supposed to go down the same day I finished exams, but my errands were too much to accomplish by then.
Some time between doing the dishes and moving boxes I got a call from my sister Rachel. I was sitting down, the lights were dim, and that's all I remember aside from the first words she told me.
"Grammy died," Rachel said, followed by details, followed by questions. But the world was mute all of a sudden, and I looked side to side without a clue of what I was searching for.
My heart sank, and even the voice of my conscience was hoarse. I didn't know what to think, what to do or what to say. So I sat on my living room couch for a long time and didn't say a word to myself.
Had I gone home that night, I would have been with my mom when she discovered my grandmother. She was in her chair, across from the television, as any guest found her when they stopped by, normally just rising from a nap. When you knocked she would turn and throw you a big, giggly smile that would rush the color back into her pale face. She loved people; her heart never failed her in that sense.
But that night she had gone to bed for good, and I was lying on my back, with a million unfinished projects around me, trying to make sense of it all.
I was not the best grandson. I didn't visit Grammy as often as I could have or, more importantly, should have. I don't know what made me do it, because any time I passed up a chance to stop by I knew I was making a mistake. My other grandparents had died a long time ago, and she was the only one I ever knew personally.
And this is what was so profound for me on that Thursday night: I knew the lesson of my grandmother's death before it even came to pass. That all the time I was going to make one day to catch up with her was running out while I watched it pile up.
She used to pick me up from school. She would make egg sandwiches and let me watch cartoons at her house. When I was sick, even on the many days I was faking it, she would visit and make sure I had everything I needed. She loved me and I loved her, so why didn't I ever open up to her about it?
The only thing I know now is it's too late to settle any of that with her. I pushed my flight back one day so I could go to her funeral in Robertsdale that Saturday. My own feelings aside, I knew Ruth (Grammy) Newcomb was one of the fortunate people who got to die peacefully in their favorite chair in their own home, not in a hospital or nursing home where the staff members can be as cold as the tile floor. It was what she wanted, and the peace of having that almost seemed to glow from her body as she lay in her casket.
Without much time to think, I swallowed her passing with a straight face and left for Costa Rica, where I'd have three months to let it sink in, and now two months left until I see her house as an empty one for the first time.
On June 13, I got more bad news from Rachel. My 79-year-old cousin Louise, one of the few lasting gems of Old South society and whose story is worth a series of columns, died from a stroke. If my grandmother's death brought home the point of not putting things off, Louise's death nailed it to the wall just for the sake of cruelty.
Family life is going to be different when I get home. The death of loved ones is always the start of a new era, but that's another point. The important thing is to make the most of your time and that of others, even if you see them every day.
We don't know when "goodbye" will be, where it will happen or who is next. People die, and unfinished business can last forever, so choose your priorities carefully. Put off mowing the lawn and put off getting your hair cut, but when you need to say something to someone you love - for your own sake - say it.
"Learn it while you've got the time"
My last final exam for the spring was May 10, and for me that day was all about what the future would hold. In one day I was going home to Mobile; in two days I was going to board an airplane to Costa Rica.
That night I was rushing to say goodbye to a few friends still in town, clean up my apartment and pack for my trip. In Spanish Fort, I knew that my mom and grandmother, "Grammy," who lived down the street from us my whole life, were expecting my arrival. I was supposed to go down the same day I finished exams, but my errands were too much to accomplish by then.
Some time between doing the dishes and moving boxes I got a call from my sister Rachel. I was sitting down, the lights were dim, and that's all I remember aside from the first words she told me.
"Grammy died," Rachel said, followed by details, followed by questions. But the world was mute all of a sudden, and I looked side to side without a clue of what I was searching for.
My heart sank, and even the voice of my conscience was hoarse. I didn't know what to think, what to do or what to say. So I sat on my living room couch for a long time and didn't say a word to myself.
Had I gone home that night, I would have been with my mom when she discovered my grandmother. She was in her chair, across from the television, as any guest found her when they stopped by, normally just rising from a nap. When you knocked she would turn and throw you a big, giggly smile that would rush the color back into her pale face. She loved people; her heart never failed her in that sense.
But that night she had gone to bed for good, and I was lying on my back, with a million unfinished projects around me, trying to make sense of it all.
I was not the best grandson. I didn't visit Grammy as often as I could have or, more importantly, should have. I don't know what made me do it, because any time I passed up a chance to stop by I knew I was making a mistake. My other grandparents had died a long time ago, and she was the only one I ever knew personally.
And this is what was so profound for me on that Thursday night: I knew the lesson of my grandmother's death before it even came to pass. That all the time I was going to make one day to catch up with her was running out while I watched it pile up.
She used to pick me up from school. She would make egg sandwiches and let me watch cartoons at her house. When I was sick, even on the many days I was faking it, she would visit and make sure I had everything I needed. She loved me and I loved her, so why didn't I ever open up to her about it?
The only thing I know now is it's too late to settle any of that with her. I pushed my flight back one day so I could go to her funeral in Robertsdale that Saturday. My own feelings aside, I knew Ruth (Grammy) Newcomb was one of the fortunate people who got to die peacefully in their favorite chair in their own home, not in a hospital or nursing home where the staff members can be as cold as the tile floor. It was what she wanted, and the peace of having that almost seemed to glow from her body as she lay in her casket.
Without much time to think, I swallowed her passing with a straight face and left for Costa Rica, where I'd have three months to let it sink in, and now two months left until I see her house as an empty one for the first time.
On June 13, I got more bad news from Rachel. My 79-year-old cousin Louise, one of the few lasting gems of Old South society and whose story is worth a series of columns, died from a stroke. If my grandmother's death brought home the point of not putting things off, Louise's death nailed it to the wall just for the sake of cruelty.
Family life is going to be different when I get home. The death of loved ones is always the start of a new era, but that's another point. The important thing is to make the most of your time and that of others, even if you see them every day.
We don't know when "goodbye" will be, where it will happen or who is next. People die, and unfinished business can last forever, so choose your priorities carefully. Put off mowing the lawn and put off getting your hair cut, but when you need to say something to someone you love - for your own sake - say it.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Hey, that´s The Tico Times!
Moving on...
Is it true that I ate lunch in a brothel yesterday?
True.
I had heard that this place (which I will not name to protect, whoever) catered to prostitution, but I was asked to at least take a look at it for my story on popular American hangouts for the July 4 supplement I've been working tirelessly on.
(This commentary flips from past to present tense a lot, but I`m afraid you`ll have to bear with me)
The front of the restaurant/hotel looks like one of those mansions in well, you know, those kinds of movies. The security guard out front meets me with a wide grin and a handshake. This is not how I have ever been greeted at a sportsbar. The big, polished wood doors open, and there´s two young ladies in short skirts, hair done up and breasts popping out of their shirts, just standing in the hallway. I try to move past them ¨Con permiso...disculpame...¨ and they just stand there and smile at me, slowly moving to the side to let me through, and even as I´m passing, through the corner of my eye I see them sizing me up.
There is a big, bright main living area with a fountain, and down several smaller hallways are all these rooms with the same polished doors, each with a gold plate on it saying ¨PRESIDENTIAL SUITE¨ or ¨AMBASSADOR SUITE¨, the exact kind of name you´d give a room for a businessman with that kind of ego complex.
Past the big resting area (ooo, and whats that in the corner? Free internet! Thank God! The old man using it is getting to shop for...lingerie?) is the bar, which looks exactly like any dive bar in your crummy old hometown, with hats from all these football teams and universities on the wall (I did not see a UA cap; did see 2 Florida Gators caps), and it´s just a strange, dark add-on to the otherwise grandiose and bright hotel. There are maybe 6 men in the bar area. They are all old. They are all white. They all have briefcases, and are wearing a Hawaiian shirt or T-shirt with fish on it. Each one of them (and they know no Spanish at all) is flanked by a Costa Rican girl more or less just like the two I saw at the entrance. And they were melting on these guys for just...anything that would make them feel like some brilliant stallion from their good old days. And of course, ANYTHING works. One giggly, tubby fellow I took a distinct disliking to kept repeating little Spanish words as they came up. One girl was laughing and rubbing his arm while he said something like ¨See I´s learnin baby¨ oh eat it you bastard... Sorry. Anyway
The untaken girls sat at one end of the bar in a line, like the taxis in Parque Central waiting to pick someone up, talking in Spanish about their DAUGHTERS and then turning occassionally to smile and wink at one of the old men playing pool behind them. I sat at the opposite end of the bar eating my meal, already positive that I was not including this place in my story, and had to keep looking down because there wasn´t one second when those girls weren´t looking at me either, with this look like ¨Is that guy here for the chicken or...¨ and they brushed my shoulder when they walked past me and waved...and I ate my chicken like a good sonny boy.
I paid my bill, stood up as the change was coming and glanced over at the line one more time. They were frowning at me. Of course, I was frowning from the moment I arrived. Then I caught a cab offered by the restaurant to the main courthouse, which is near my office. The best thing about a place like that is no questions (though I struck up a funny conversation with the cabby about older gringos), so no one had to know why a gringo was leaving lunch to go to the court, and thus not know that I may or may not have been writing about them for a newspaper. Fortunately, I am only writing about them for you people.
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