1/30/11
Today is what I imagine Sundays should be:
Wake at 7 to do laundry (I can already hear some of you thinking “What? This sounds like a horrible day already!”). I love doing laundry here in Costa Rica, especially in the dry season. Today it is cool and sunny and windy. A perfect day for laundry. Doing laundry on my front porch in Costa Rica means this:
1. Fill left side of machine with water and powdered soap. Put in clothes. Set timer for 12-15 minutes, depending on how dirty the clothes are. The ridged disk at the bottom of the tub turns this way and that, washing the clothes.
2. Drain left side tub, put clothes in cylinder on right side of the machine with holes in it. Set timer to 3 min of fast spinning, throwing water out of clothes, through a hose and into the garden (lets not talk about the environmental ramifications of me washing my clothes).
3. Fill left side of machine with water, again. This time add a capful of wonderful smelly chemical rinse stuff that I never would have used in the States but is a fine ally in the battle against mildew and must and mold here in my mountain cabina. Set timer to 12-15 minutes.
4. Drain left side tub, put clothes in cylinder on right side of the machine with holes in it. Set timer to 5 minutes of fast spinning, throwing water out of clothes, through a hose and into the garden.
5. Hang clothes on the line on my porch balcony.
6. Sit back and watch my clothes dance in the wind, breath deeply (ah, the artificial aroma of clean clothes!) and feel like I’ve done something good in my life.
Feeling extremely satisfied with myself, I continue putzing around, picking up from last nights book club meeting, washing dishes, putting dishes away (which really means taking them out of the dish drain and spreading them all over the counter so they can fully dry before I put them in the dark cabinet again). We are reading The Bone People by Keri Hulme. This morning I wonder if I am like Kerewin Holmes as I cook myself an egg and cheese sandwich, heat up sweet potato soup and pour myself a glass of red wine, smiling to myself and to Patrick Cox on The World in Words pod cast that keeps me company in the kitchen.
This is what happens when I am alone: I read and listen to pod casts almost non-stop. Not in the shower. Today I listened to Radio Lab (all about science) and The World in Words (all about language) and read parts of An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks and The Bone People. I think I probably retain a very small percentage of what I take in, but that’s ok with me.
This is why I love Oliver Sacks: after reading a detailed 40 page of a case of a painter who loses his ability to see color due to a car accident he ends the chapter with this sentence: “Three centuries later, we still have no hypothesis, and perhaps such questions can never be answered at all.” I like this so much more than Laurel Zuckerman’s painful two part interview on The World in Words (#55 and #56) in which she proclaims to understand the flaws in the French educational system in regards to teaching English, and lays out steps on how to fix it. I find her hard to listen to (I originally wrote “I want to kick her”, but then though better of it).
Now I will temporarily bid farewell to my friends Oliver, Keri, Jad, Robert and Patrick and go to meeting.
Monday, January 31, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
January January
Monday January 24, 2011
This is decided: I love having visitors. Please come visit. Jane and Ann were here for a week and now they are five hours away on the coast and I am hearing the echoes of their visit bounce around the walls of my little mountain cabina.
This is the story: Jane is turning 60 and her eldet-of-3 daughter, Julia (very good high school friend of mine), has been planning her b-day trip to Costa Rica since last May when Julia spent a few weeks here with me. It’s a sweet idea, but not that remarkable until you consider that Julia and her family kept the destination of Jane’s two week birthday trip a secret for six months. Jane did not know that she was going to Costa Rica until the night before she left. Even more remarkable: her very good high school friend, Ann, also came along. As a total secret. Jane didn’t know until she and I had arrived in the San Jose airport and Ann tapped her on the shoulder.
I realize that I am leaving large logistical holes in my story here, but the point is this: we had a good time and now they are gone and I miss them.
I am trying to think of highlights from their stay, but I find myself marveling instead at the nature of relationships, in general. How wonderful to cook and talk and laugh with two women 30 years older than I. How delightful to hear them talk about their children, their families, their lives, to hear them reminisce about high school days and college road trips.
And at the end of a week this is how I feel: I am lucky to be able to live in this beautiful place and want to share it with as many people as I can. So please feel free to stop by.
******************************************************************************************
Tonight there is a ferocious sunset. An explosion of colors. I sit at my dining room table and think of Jane. Jane loves sunsets. One could appropriately use the word “obsessed”. Sometimes I had trouble understanding what she was so excited by: until she had dragged me out and there I stood in front of it, heart opened to the world.
Tonight I stayed inside. I looked out the windows, through the trees at the splashes of sunset instead of walking five minutes down the road and through the bushes to see the entire sky ignite. A sadness, a regret came to me as I watched the colors fade: no one to share the colors with, no one to eat dinner with, or share dish duty.
I know this feeling and it is called LONELY. It’s not an entirely bad feeling, for it could not exist without the counter-balancing existence of love and good times. Yay – I have such good people in my life that I get to be sad when they are far away.
******************************************************************************************
SOME WONDERFUL THINGS:
→ The five hour ride back to Monteverde from Tamarindo, the beach town where Ann and Jane left me off to catch my shuttle. The last hour was over hilly mountains with the sun setting on the right and an uncovered Arenal Volcano on the left. Rodrigo, the shuttle driver, reached into his bag to snap some pictures of the volcano.
“Even living here you don’t get tired of the view?” I asked. He is from Cerro Plano, right next to Monteverde, and had been driving the Tamarindo – Monteverde evening route for years.
“It’s always different,” he told me.
→Just a few moments later as the sun’s last rays were bending around the curve of the earth, stretching, reaching, pushing, losing against the spin of the earth. The world was golden. Someone had spilled ink all over us as we wound through the mountains to Monteverde. We were on fire.
→This morning’s cold coffee and whole milk. How can something so simple be so delightful?
→ Sunday morning Jane and I left the apartment at 8 a.m. to walk the beach. After about 20 minutes we came across a hermit crab. I bent to examine it and heard Jane laugh.
“Oh my gosh – Ginna! Look at this!” I looked up.
“They are everywhere!” she said. At first I didn’t see, but then I stilled my eyes (now there’s a metaphor for life). Briefly frozen in place when they felt our footfall on the sand, hundreds of hermit crabs started their engines again when we stopped walking. I laughed out loud. All sizes – from pomegranate seed to walnut – they cruised up and down the beach, each zipping toward their own urgent appointment. I could almost hear the zoom-zoom-honk! of the Hermit Crab Highway.
→ That same morning I showed Jane how to use the macro setting on her camera and we took cool pictures. Spread the macro love!
******************************************************************************************
Tonight I tell Ji stories from my beach weekend with Ann and Jane and try to get a handle on my creeping loneliness.
This is decided: I love having visitors. Please come visit. Jane and Ann were here for a week and now they are five hours away on the coast and I am hearing the echoes of their visit bounce around the walls of my little mountain cabina.
This is the story: Jane is turning 60 and her eldet-of-3 daughter, Julia (very good high school friend of mine), has been planning her b-day trip to Costa Rica since last May when Julia spent a few weeks here with me. It’s a sweet idea, but not that remarkable until you consider that Julia and her family kept the destination of Jane’s two week birthday trip a secret for six months. Jane did not know that she was going to Costa Rica until the night before she left. Even more remarkable: her very good high school friend, Ann, also came along. As a total secret. Jane didn’t know until she and I had arrived in the San Jose airport and Ann tapped her on the shoulder.
I realize that I am leaving large logistical holes in my story here, but the point is this: we had a good time and now they are gone and I miss them.
I am trying to think of highlights from their stay, but I find myself marveling instead at the nature of relationships, in general. How wonderful to cook and talk and laugh with two women 30 years older than I. How delightful to hear them talk about their children, their families, their lives, to hear them reminisce about high school days and college road trips.
And at the end of a week this is how I feel: I am lucky to be able to live in this beautiful place and want to share it with as many people as I can. So please feel free to stop by.
******************************************************************************************
Tonight there is a ferocious sunset. An explosion of colors. I sit at my dining room table and think of Jane. Jane loves sunsets. One could appropriately use the word “obsessed”. Sometimes I had trouble understanding what she was so excited by: until she had dragged me out and there I stood in front of it, heart opened to the world.
Tonight I stayed inside. I looked out the windows, through the trees at the splashes of sunset instead of walking five minutes down the road and through the bushes to see the entire sky ignite. A sadness, a regret came to me as I watched the colors fade: no one to share the colors with, no one to eat dinner with, or share dish duty.
I know this feeling and it is called LONELY. It’s not an entirely bad feeling, for it could not exist without the counter-balancing existence of love and good times. Yay – I have such good people in my life that I get to be sad when they are far away.
******************************************************************************************
SOME WONDERFUL THINGS:
→ The five hour ride back to Monteverde from Tamarindo, the beach town where Ann and Jane left me off to catch my shuttle. The last hour was over hilly mountains with the sun setting on the right and an uncovered Arenal Volcano on the left. Rodrigo, the shuttle driver, reached into his bag to snap some pictures of the volcano.
“Even living here you don’t get tired of the view?” I asked. He is from Cerro Plano, right next to Monteverde, and had been driving the Tamarindo – Monteverde evening route for years.
“It’s always different,” he told me.
→Just a few moments later as the sun’s last rays were bending around the curve of the earth, stretching, reaching, pushing, losing against the spin of the earth. The world was golden. Someone had spilled ink all over us as we wound through the mountains to Monteverde. We were on fire.
→This morning’s cold coffee and whole milk. How can something so simple be so delightful?
→ Sunday morning Jane and I left the apartment at 8 a.m. to walk the beach. After about 20 minutes we came across a hermit crab. I bent to examine it and heard Jane laugh.
“Oh my gosh – Ginna! Look at this!” I looked up.
“They are everywhere!” she said. At first I didn’t see, but then I stilled my eyes (now there’s a metaphor for life). Briefly frozen in place when they felt our footfall on the sand, hundreds of hermit crabs started their engines again when we stopped walking. I laughed out loud. All sizes – from pomegranate seed to walnut – they cruised up and down the beach, each zipping toward their own urgent appointment. I could almost hear the zoom-zoom-honk! of the Hermit Crab Highway.
→ That same morning I showed Jane how to use the macro setting on her camera and we took cool pictures. Spread the macro love!
******************************************************************************************
Tonight I tell Ji stories from my beach weekend with Ann and Jane and try to get a handle on my creeping loneliness.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Female Awareness
Ji-Soo got me this two hour class for Christmas and it was fantastic. The woman who gives the class is knowledgeable, funny, engaging, patient and encouraging. I wish I could gift this experience to every woman I know. The best part: the entire first hour was all about how to avoid physical confrontations, which for me was as or even more useful than the second hour of strikes and breaking holds. Check her out and pass on the word to any woman you know in the NYC area!
http://www.femaleawareness.com/
http://www.femaleawareness.com/
Monday, January 3, 2011
Recipe for Tears
Ingredients:
1 monthly surge of hormones
1 very good friend driving back to VA after a wonderful visit
1 vacation in NYC half over
1 movie - "UP"
Directions:
Mix.
Results:
Ginna crying on the couch. "UP" was in the "Children and Family" section, but I think it was misclassified.
Tonight over dinner we hear the Sam Phillips song "One Day Late". The opening lyrics,
"Help is coming,
Help is coming,
One day late,
One day late"
prompt me to say, "That's so sad."
Pause.
Ji-Soo, sounding a little desperate, says, "It's ok."
I laugh and say, "Don't worry, I'm not going to cry!"
1 monthly surge of hormones
1 very good friend driving back to VA after a wonderful visit
1 vacation in NYC half over
1 movie - "UP"
Directions:
Mix.
Results:
Ginna crying on the couch. "UP" was in the "Children and Family" section, but I think it was misclassified.
Tonight over dinner we hear the Sam Phillips song "One Day Late". The opening lyrics,
"Help is coming,
Help is coming,
One day late,
One day late"
prompt me to say, "That's so sad."
Pause.
Ji-Soo, sounding a little desperate, says, "It's ok."
I laugh and say, "Don't worry, I'm not going to cry!"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)