Laughter and Forgetting

There's a book I read, "The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting". There's a lot of laughter in life. And a lot of forgetting. But how is it that we come to forget the things we forget? Or remember the things we remember? I like laughing. Depends on what I'm forgetting if I like forgetting it or not. Funny thing huh?

Anyway....Central America and all of its peculiarities don't cease to amaze me. I'm made fun of for lawn furniture in my bedroom and suicide showers. Today at my old apartment, where friends of mine now live, there was a nasty sounding snake found in the doorway, literally of their apartment. Black with yellow or red or yellow and red diamonds on it. Small head. Literally between the wooden door that gets shut and the iron gate that sits outside of the door. I've found large frogs/toads in my kitchen sink and under my sink, I've had cockroach madness, and I've seen stingrays in the water, hell, I've even seen a snake on the beach and in the rainforest, but never in between my two doors at my apartment. Creepy. Last night I was sitting in my bed and I saw an ant carrying a small (but bigger than the ant) dead black crunchy looking spider across my wall. The circle of life won, I killed it with my shoe. That won't stop more from wandering around in my house in the jungle.

My favorite store, wait, no, my favorite two stores here are the Libreria and Gollo. The Libreria is kind of a mix between a toy store, a paper store and a craft store. But you can get all sorts of stuff there if you know what they have. Backpacks, toys, games, wrapping paper, notebooks, coloring books, crayons, erasers, drawing paper, paint, glitter, learn Spanish books, Costa Rica hand held flags, memory sticks and SD cards, adapter for international plugs, pens, graph paper, music paper, all sorts of fun crafty stuff. Gollo is magic. I bought a mirror for $8 where the hardware store (Ferreteria) wanted $40 for a cheap flimsy mirror. Gollo is the answer to every cost effective person's dream in Jaco. Ashtrays, makeup, dog beds, closet organizers, candle holders, towels, linens....i guess it's just like a walmart or target but cheaper and smaller. Hard to explain, kinda like a dollar store.

Yep, now I lay in my bed and look at my beautiful green surfboard and hope that I can get all my work done so I can go surfing soon. It's very interesting to reflect on how I felt when I left Jaco and how I felt when I arrived in Chicago and how I felt when I left Chicago and now how I feel upon my arrival in Jaco this time. I've met new people, got to know others that I felt farther away from before whom now I am closer to, both here and back home. Life is so interesting isn't it? Kinda had a doldrum day but thinking about how weird and fun life is makes me remember, and laugh. :)

Sleepy Daze Blogger Madness

My job is not hard. It simply requires me to post 20 blog entries a day. Currently its 10:30 and I'm on posting #4 with a 2 year old on my lap. It's no different in Chicago. Friends call, they stop by, they want to gchat, I distract myself with boxes to pack. Hmmmm...it's REALLY hard to tell the kids no, that if they let me be for three hours I can play with them the rest of the day. They don't understand that concept and I hate trying to explain it because all I WANT to do is play with them. Speedy blogging speedy blogging today Staci!

Guess that means I shouldn't be posting on here. But I want to. So I am. I am on my computer now. Meaning not the mini Dell, the nice big functioning Dell. It is soooooo nice. I miss it. I have to start my sister's computer over first before we trade computers back but I can't WAIT for the day.

Going for surf and turf tonight. Lobster and steak. I'm excited. I supposed other than that I don't have much surface talk to talk about. I always have something more observant or poignant to say, but that could take hours, of which I don't have right now. Usually I think of things as they are occurring and then forget when I want to blog. Still looking for something to give readers a laugh. I seem to recall busting a gut yesterday but I'll have to remember what it was about. Until then, keep it real. I'll give y'all full status reports of Innnddiaaana....ohhhh and there will be an earful that's for sure!

My Life The Earthquake

For those of you who didn't know, I witnessed my first earthquake in Costa Rica. It wasn't damaging and I didn't know what was happening until it was over. It felt like vertigo. I'm using this parallel to describe my life right now. My life is not an 8.2 on the richter scale, but I definitely feel vertigo between the two worlds I'm living in. As I've said before, I don't feel weird being home but...how to clarify...the anxiety level I used to experience here has returned. I didn't sleep but two hours last night. My mind is here, in Chicago, trying to keep everything paid and in balance, in addition to work and seeing family and friends. All of this is stressful enough, just in a normal sort of way but at the same time I have anxiety about returning to Costa Rica. I won't get into the reasons, but I have them. All I wanted when I came home to Chicago was to feel comfortable, at home, no stresses. The same is what I want in Costa Rica. In fact, home is supposed to be a comfort zone. That neutral zone when you can shed everything else and slip into your own. I'm very sensitive to energy and home is one of the most important places to create positive energy. If that is off balance, I am off balance and it's not such a great time.

On another front, I am going to Indiana in about ten minutes. Going to have to finish this now or I will miss the train. I'm already late but that's because I barely slept last night. I have 25 posts to do and my brain is all over the scene. This is one thing I like about CR. I don't have all of these things to think about. The here and the now is much easier there. Can't wait to go camping and drink some whiskey, dance with some hillbilly's and rock out to some GREAT music. Pictures to follow my friends.....sorry no funny, witty stuff today. Not a lot of time but wanted to say hi!

Perspective

Back to the perspective thing. Maybe this won't be a book. I'm reflecting on my writings and they just seem like journal entries to me. But I do have another idea for another book and I'm still going to pursue my initial concept of All In Rhythm hence "Perspective". I don't know where any of it is going....I just want to write. Perhaps I will be dispensing a dose of my own medicine as I write about perspective so take note, I'm probably the most self-aware person you know. When I step outside who I am to logically speak about an issue, I'm aware that it's easier said than done so I'll call myself out on it when necessary.

Dictionary definition:

the state of one's ideas, a mental view or prospect: example: the dismal perspective of terminally ill patients.

Soooo....really the idea of quantum physics ties into perspective and reality. Yes, I just went there. I have always known that the mind is much more powerful than people give it credit for. There was a large chunk of my life where I pushed away all of the things I had believed from birth to say maybe age 25....somewhere along the way I thought it was all poppycock. But since graduating ....maybe like 2003 and experiencing the real world....there's a reason why they say be careful what you wish for. Because your mind, not God or Allah is what creates your world. Finish thoughts later, late for train. peace and love my young padouins.

Perspective & Booty Pops

Before I meander into the rantings of my mind, let me ask you WHAT THE HELL IS A BOOTY POP? I know WHAT it is, but the real question is WHY? Ok ok ok, I get it. America is the capitalist pig nation of consumers and sellers, one wanting to always look like or be someone who they are not and the other wanting to make as much money as possible. I get it. But why in the hell are they advertising for a fake booty in the Bed, Bath & Beyond weekly flyer that comes in the newspaper? I'm dumbfounded. Seriously. Thank you parents for endowing me with a perfectly nice and round booty. I would be so embarrassed if I had to wear a Booty Pop!



Whew. There's a lot going on. I've been back in Chicago foooor....six days now. It's been difficult to get into a routine for my job in online reputation management. A combination of the air conditioning, my nice comfortable bed and the daunting number of tasks I have to accomplish before leaving for Costa Rica again makes my head spin. But as usual, I manage. Today I was given a new responsibility and my pay will increase by $100 more a month! That may not seem like a lot, but when you are operating on nearly nothing, it means the world (and food in my stomach) to me!

One this is for sure, being home has opened up a whole new set of realizations about myself, my friends, and how I want to live my life versus how I was living it before. I've ended friendships, I've chosen my own path and I've done things other people will consider insane forever. And I am still here to tell the story.

Anyway...Chicago is alive and well. The only wheels I have are rollerblades so my legs are gonna be hot hot hot when I'm done with this city. :) Surfing and rollerblading....GOOD combinations for exercise! I've been to High Dive, Streetside, and tonight I am getting a six pack with Katie and we are going to study Spanish in the park. My intellectual muscle is being flexed with vigor and I am very happy about that. I am dying to get to Indiana and give my nephews a BIG GIANT hug and sloppy sloppy kisses. I don't think I am going to let them go. They might just be hanging on my back when I get back to Costa Rica. Oh how I would love to teach Karlo how to surf. My little man. Love you Karlo!

All in all, everyone has shown me the love. At my barbeque Katie held for my return there were best friends of mine who hadn't even met other best friends of mine. How does that happen? I start to realize that I am like the social glue sometimes. It's a good feeling, but I hope everyone continues to remain family in my absence.

Still prosing and writing more for my book in my head. Perhaps tomorrow I will get on with the "Perspectives" chapter. What is life than merely the perspective you see it through? :)

I will have gas on Saturday! Hot bath, meal in the oven....new roommate. Life is good.

Sweet Home Chicago

Everyone keeps asking me if it's weird to be home. The answer in short is no. The longer answer is yes. lol. Yesterday was pleasant. I ran into a friend from Jaco going to San Jose with his girlfriend and the 2 hour ride to the airport flew by. On the plane, a very smart little 6 year old girl talked my ear off. Actually, we had a mutual conversation. She quizzed me on some things....I got all the answers right and she gave me a piece of gum as the prize. She sang me a song in Afrikaan and French. She speaks English, French and Spanish. She told me three boys like her at school and gave me dating advice. We talked about all the places we had been in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. She was matter of fact about her trip to Panama. Told me her mom had been to Egypt and she was really impressed with her mom. We exchanged email addresses! Turns out her mom is from Spain and is a professor to keep her visa here. Nice people.

On the second plane a four year old was on his way to China and was commenting on being on a plane. I can't hear you there's something in my ears (ears popping). Then he started going whoaa whoaa whoaaa why is the plane falling? (as it was turning). Needless to say he kept me occupied.

Home still looks like home, minus a few plants and herbs and not knowing where some of my stuff is but for the most part it's home. I would like to cook but have no gas. What to do, what to do? I am going to splurge and go to my favorite taco joint in Chicago. Of which I can't remember the name, EVER, but luckily I remember where it is. I'm glad it's Saturday. I'm going to catch up on work, rifle through all of my things, enjoy my yellow living room and take a cold shower! I'll get around to fixing computer viruses and stuff LATER. :)

All In Rhythm

I have finally put pen to paper, so to speak. I've come up with the idea to title my book, All In Rhythm based on the idea that life itself is rhythm and keeping in rhythm is crucial to living a fulfilled life. Going back home to Chicago tomorrow and lots of changes have occurred since I left Chicago. My thoughts might get deep sometimes but don't worry, I'll take you to places that are so hilarious you will fall off your chair laughing too. And well, just in general I'm going to be blogging more. Lot of good things going on right now all of which you will find out about in due time. For now, All in Rhythm.......

April 2010

When I told my dad I was going to live in Costa Rica for 3 months he told me I was crazy. I told him life is short, the world is big. There's nothing cliche nor mundane about this statement. Life is SERIOUS. Now that statement is loaded with irony. A friend and I use this phrase "that's serious" or "life is serious" when shit happens in life and then we laugh hysterically. Because really, these things that happen in life are really never as serious as they seem. I'm not talking starving or being in a war torn country, yes that kind of is serious. I'm talking like when you lock your key in your car or your hard drive on your computer crashes.

Anyway, five months later, a cultural world away still and I'm on a bus, headed to Nicaragua, tears in my eyes. Not bad, not good, how else can I describe in words tears of life. You think a large wave crashing to the shoreline in the ocean is powerful, but nothing can compare to those moments of awe I feel about life. I'm gazing out the window watching dry Costa Rican countryside fly by. Earlier today I went into my place of employment near Jaco, granted I was stoned but I had one of those moments again and I almost lost it. In one moment my brain is fiddling with worry over filing my taxes, figuring out how to keep and pay my car insurance back home, how I'm going to survive for a month when I get back to Chicago, how I can save $20,000 to pay off my debt, get dental work and go to yet another country to live for another 6 months. Because if I don't go again, I'll suffocate.

So yea, mind fiddling with worry sitting at my job waiting to catch a ride to the border with my friends, and then the wave of life hit me. I think about hugging my nephews, my sisters, my parents, my friends. I think about laying in the park by my house in the fall, gazing up at magnificently colored trees, rich hues of yellow (much like my living room) red, brown and orange. Climbing trees. The random summer nights of O.E. on my back porch, my cousin in California. Deep thoughts. The world. Growing my own food. Laughing so hard in Costa Rica I seriously thought my face would fall off. Making a conscious effort to keep things in the here and now. And everything's gonna be all right. It always is and your mind manifests what the universe provides you.

The last three statements in particular are ones I instrinsically and soulfully know to be true but have continously had a hard time actualizing in my life. Well, particularly the "everything's gonna be all right" I've always been wound up and worried about everything. Over thinking everything and carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders is serious. *insert laugh*. I can't say that I'm not still wound up, nor can I say I don't think a lot. I think about thinking. Not sure if it's a Capricorn thing or just the way I was born, but it's a blessing and a curse. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Thank hormonal fluctuations for my extreme motions today because I've done it. I've started writing again. I don't know the first thing about what human kind is supposed to do with life, but then again, maybe I do and just don't give myself enough credit. I certainly have enough thoughts and theories on life and all it's components, both esoterical and mundane. The only memo I'm gving you about my writing is that I'm ADD as hell and a stoner. So sometimes I'll run off on a tangent, or switch subjects only to come full circle and finish what I was previously talking about. Truly everything me is quixotic, neurotic, erratic, non-static.

July 2010

I had no intention of waiting this long to begin writing again. I haven't even read what I wrote for three months. You're not going to even believe this it sounds so fictional. In three short months I've managed to somehow find a job that I can do online, anywhere in the world. I am renting a beach house on the Pacific in Costa Rica. I am going home to Chicago in two days after being gone for 7 months and I'm coming back to Costa Rica in August to live in this beach house with 2 incredibly amazing people I can't even begin to touch that story this early in the book. I have no phone, all my credit cards are maxed out, my student loan is three months due, I don't know how I'm going to pay my rent back in Chicago (my current job is meager pay but I got a raise and will be making enough in about six months), and I have only the slightest bit of concern. Concern that creating things back home to take care of all of this stuff and more (like packing up my apartment, selling my car and finding subletter for my apartment) is going to stress me out because I've become accostumed to a slow pace of life here in Costa Rica. I'm not concerned with how I will take care of those things as I previously would have been raving mad. How did this happen is all I'm left wondering with a smile on my face.

I came to Costa Rica seeking something. Seeking many things. I had ambition to find a purpose. Everything from birth to now is the culmination of this junction in my life. I've found more than my wildest dreams. And I found that having less has given me so much more. I couldn't help but want to share my experience with the world and hopefully inspire someone to get off their ass and do what they've always dreamed of doing.

Motion is a powerful energy. We are all in rythym. The ocean is a rythym and your heart beating and blood pumping through veins is rythym. There's a reason why humans feel the need to dance and sing and make music. Because life is rythym.

Chapter One: Perspective

Born and raised in Northwest Indiana, living in Chicago for the past 13 years of my 34 years of life, I had a great childhood. I am super blessed for the way I was raised and the love and support and sacrifice on my parents part to raise 3 smart, polite, itelligent and very aware girls. We didn't have a lot of money and of course like every other family dysfunctional in a functional way. I wouldn't trade the days of mismatched socks, thriftstore clothes or camping trips to Kanakakee River for anything in the world. We saved here and there but we got to do everything we always wanted. I was in every sport imagineable. I tried out a musical instrument one summer. All of this costs money and my parents did what they had to do to allow their children creative freedom. So if a vacation was made out of our trip to Tennessee for my sisters softball tournament then so be it that was vacation. I loved it. As long as I was with my family and we left our home city it was exciting for me. I can't say that I didn't know any better because I did. I was the curious kid whose passport was books and curiosity. Oh and VHS tapes. I remember when I was sick and had to stay home from school I would ask my mom to get travel videos from the library for me. I would watch videos about Greece, Ireland, Italy or wherever.
Anyway...enough about me.

Perspective in life makes all the difference in the quality of your life. If you are negative and pessimisti

Writer Without Borders -- In These Times

Writer Without Borders
By SCOTT WITMER

Eduardo Galeano disdains borders, both in life and in literature. Exiled from his native Uruguay after the 1973 military coup, he returned to Montevideo in 1985, where he continues to live and write. Galeano’s books subvert the distinctions between history, poetry, memoir, political analysis and cultural anthropology. With a graceful sense of craft, he uses “only words that really deserve to be there” to convey a humanely moral perspective on matters both personal and political. His writing honors the experiences of everyday life as a contrast to the mass media that “manipulates consciousness, conceals reality and stifles the creative imagination … in order to impose ways of life and patterns of consumption.” By multiplying seldom heard voices, Galeano refutes the official lies that pass for history—his work represents an eloquent, literary incarnation of social justice.

His most recent book, Voices of Time: A Life in Stories (Metropolitan Books), combines 333 prose poems into a fluid mosaic of humor, despair, beauty and hope. During a recent visit to Chicago, Galeano talked with In These Times about his life and work.

Your book Open Veins of Latin America (1971) analyzes the brutal exploitation of Latin American resources by the U.S. and European powers. That book, now a classic, was published at the beginning of an especially turbulent period of Latin American history. What was your life like at that time?

I was working as a journalist, always in independent jobs, working for weeklies—the mad adventures of independent journalism. So I earned my living quite difficultly, writing other things or editing books on the sexual life of bees, or something like this. I was also working in the publishing department of the University of Montevideo. And at night I went home to work on the book. It took four years of researching and collecting the information I needed, and some 90 nights to write the book.

Did you ever sleep?

I suppose I did not. I remember now, I was drinking rivers of coffee. Later I developed an allergy to coffee, but fortunately I overcame it, and now I’m a very good coffee drinker. I love it.

You were then forced into exile in Argentina, where you edited Crisis.

In the beginning of 1973, I was in jail for a short period in Uruguay and I decided prison life was not healthy, so I went to Buenos Aires. The magazine was a beautiful experience. We invented it with a small group of friends, trying to open a new way of speaking about culture.

Did you continue to publish when the military regime initiated censorship?

For two or three months, and after that it was impossible to go on. We were obliged to choose between silence and humiliation. We could stay alive if we accepted the obligation to lie, or we could shut up. We decided to shut up entirely and not pretend to be free, because that would give an alibi to the military regime to say, “See, there is freedom of expression here.” Many members of our staff were killed or disappeared or jailed or went into exile, and so it was a good decision to go away and abandon it. We left behind a very good memory of an exceptional cultural magazine. We showed that it was possible to have a different conception of culture. Not culture made by professional people to be consumed by non-professional people, like workers or anonymous people. Instead, we were trying to hear their voices. Not only to speak about reality, but asking reality, “What would you tell me?” This conversation with reality was the key to our success. That’s why one of the first decrees of the military regime was to forbid the diffusion of “non-specialized opinions.” We were trying to show that the best voices come from non-specialized mouths.

In the middle of 1976, I was obliged to fly away from Argentina because I was supposed to be on the death squad list to be killed. Many of my friends had been killed, and being dead is so boring, so I chose exile in Spain.

In Spain you began writing the Memory of Fire trilogy, an epic tapestry covering more than five centuries of American history and culture. What motivated you to undertake such a monumental project?

It scared me at the beginning. It was first conceived as a way to tell Latin American history. Then a close friend of mine, the Argentinian poet Juan Gelman, told me, “Why not go with all Americas, not just South America or Central America? We share a common origin and a lot of common stories interlinked, and we may perhaps have a common destiny. Not the official destiny built by the professional liars inside the sanctuaries of power, but a counter-history could help to find a counter-destiny.” He tempted me with his words and so I covered all the Americas as a way of promoting the fact that “America” is all America, from Alaska to Chile.

Immigration, which remains a crucial issue in the United States, recurs as an important motif in your new book, Voices of Time. Could you talk about how immigration is perceived in Latin America as opposed to how it is perceived here?

It always depends on your point of view. Immigration may be perceived as a menace, as intrusion, or as a legitimate right. We are all immigrants. Except for a few black people in South Africa, we all come from some other part of the world. We all come from Africa, which is not good news for the ignorant racists. I’m sorry, but we have all been blacks once upon a time. So we are all immigrants. This is our way of life since forever. It’s the same with butterflies, with animals, with birds. We humans are the only ones that create borders for immigration, saying, “You cannot go inside this line. This is the end of a country, and here begins another one.” I’m afraid our time will be remembered as a sad period of human life in which money was free, but people were not.

Why are we seeing a resurgence of the left in Latin America?

This is the popular will, the will to change reality. They have been cheated by all those years of so-called liberal experience, which is not liberal at all. It’s just liberal for money. And it won’t be easy to get out of it, because we have become prisoners of what I call “the culture of impotence.” It’s very difficult in Latin America to build a democracy after so many years of military terror and in a non-democratic world that will veto your attempt to change something. The experts will come. Not soldiers, now—experts. Sometimes experts are even more dangerous than soldiers. They say, “You cannot. The market is irritated. The market may be angry.” It is as if the market is an unknown but very active and cruel god punishing us because we are trying to commit the cardinal sin of changing reality.

Just look at Evo Morales, the president of Bolivia. Bolivia was the richest country in all of the Americas at the beginning of the conquest period. They were the owners of the silver, which made possible the enrichment of Europe. Bolivia is now the poorest country in South America. Her richness was her main damnation. Morales is now trying to break with this shameful and humiliating tradition of always working for another’s prosperity. When he nationalized the gas and the oil, it was a scandal all over the world. “How could he? It’s terrible!” Why is it terrible? Because recovering dignity is a cardinal sin. But he’s also committing another cardinal sin: He’s doing what he promised he would do. We in Latin America are suffering with special intensity the divorce between words and facts. When you say yes, you do no. When you say more or less, you do less or more. So facts and words are never encountering each other. When they pass each other by random accident, they don’t say, “Hello, how are you?” because they have never met before. We are trained to lie. We are trained to accept lies as a way of life.

You have said, “Reality is not destiny; it’s a challenge. … We are not doomed to accept it as it is.” How do we avoid becoming cynical when change seems impossible?

By keeping alive the memory of dignity. It’s the only way. By telling and repeating that we are not born last year; we are born from a long tradition of betrayals, but also a long tradition of dignity. Here in Chicago, for instance, it is important to recover the memory of May First. The first time I came here, years ago, I was amazed that most people I encountered didn’t know that this universal worker’s fiesta—at once a tragedy and a fiesta, an homage paid to the Haymarket martyrs at the end of the 19th century—came from Chicago. And Chicago has deleted this memory, which is so important for the entire world. In present times, it’s more important than ever, because each May First, crowds and crowds of people, different languages, different cultures, different continents, all celebrate the right to organize. Nowadays, the most important enterprises in the world, like Wal-Mart, forbid unions. They are deleting a tradition of two centuries of working-class fights. It’s important for Chicago and for the entire world to recover memory. Not to visit it, like when you visit a museum, but to get from it fresh water for your thirst for justice, for beauty. It’s a way of knowing that tomorrow is not just another name for today, because yesterday tells you that time is going on.

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Scott Witmer lives in Chicago. He is currently working on a comic book about the life of socialist agitator Eugene Debs.

READER COMMENTS
The experts will come. Not soldiers, now “experts’ . Sometimes experts are even more dangerous than soldiers. They say,
”“You cannot. The market is irritated. The market may be angry.””
It is as if the market is an unknown but very active and cruel god punishing us because we are trying to commit the cardinal sin of changing reality.
When I hear our frog politicos, and yours, exhorting all of us to be ever-more competitive, I can now identify them more clearly as the acolytes of a cruel religion, demanding sacrifice of all that makes us human, like so many cattle going to the slaughter.
The destruction of memory and critical intelligence is a vital part of their campaign, as they work to dumb us all down into accepting their , and only their, History.
Follow the links back, forward and sideways from this analysis of the modern “MIS- education system” by John Taylor Gatto (merci bcp, wileywitch)
Chomsky wrote this
...it was like falling into a black hole or something. For one thing, it was extremely competitive -because that’s one of the best ways of controlling people. So everybody was ranked, and you always knew exactly where you were: are you third in class, or maybe did you move down to fourth? All of this stuff is put into people’s heads in various ways in the schools -that you’ve got to beat down the person next to you, and just look out for yourself.
here .
How many Americans have read Howard Zinn’s Peoples History of The USA ? ( required reading in our local university first year. for students of english. Merci , daughter)
In their achieving that , we become eminently manipulable, willing victims for the simplistic soundbite of the TV Politician.
Dumb animals give way easily to fear and panic—try moving a flock of sheep.
PS I’d already recognised the (sincere ? ) Globalistas as possessed by an ideology, but the religion of the Cruel God is more apt.
WORSHIPPERS of THE INVISIBLE HAND.
Morons.

PS what is this with the german flag ? Frog is in frogland .
Posted by frog on Jul 18, 2006 at 6:26 AM

Long time ago, I read “Memory of fire”, it was in time when other rules order my country. Now in this age, in this reality this book appear much rich in spirit of contradiction. A couple of days in time, in my country was a referendum (election day), not important result of this election, important is intern concern (like a “civil war”, may not in true sense), but in my mind was Latin America, was Uruguay in “1800 autumn”! Thanks for this book, for a history far, far away from this! Thanks Eduardo Galeano!
Posted by VIZI on May 21, 2007 at 4:00 PM

It's Been Awhile

I've been in Costa Rica now for...what, almost 5 months. Super homesick and at the moment realizing what life in Costa Rica REALLY consists of. People coming and going, in and out of your life. I've resumed blogging with some inspiration from the wifey. The first four months here were observation and fun. Then I got a job. And now that I know my halfway point has passed, I'm looking forward to being back home. I've always been one to get attached to people and places and I am also dealing with coming home to a blank slate, literally. I have no idea how I'm going to make money, I don't have a cell phone anymore, I won't be able to afford car insurance for a few months and I DONT want to return to the same lifestyle I had before, meaning I would rather NOT work 9-5 M-F.

Hmmm....I think it's been so hard for me to return to my blog because so much has transpired between then and now I don't even know where to start. But in the spirit of not giving up, I'm just going to start with right here, right now.

I haven't been in a bad place, per se, but I have definitely having a little anxiety about my future in all aspects. I am realizing the truth to what I have always believed in, which is the universe will provide for what is needed and that thoughts create things for us. I've always been one who has conceptually known this since I was a small child but after having lived it a few times literally not knowing where I was going to live or how I was going to eat, I lived it instead of reading it in a book. AND I'm surrounded by good people right now whom continually remind me of laughter and happiness and thinking positive thoughts. I think that's my biggest issue....when I begin to get down or become hard on myself for what I'm not doing or what I should be doing or why I don't have something whatever it be (Masters Degree, true love, no debt...) I instead should replace these thoughts with what I do have, what I have done.

Anyway...I just came off a long week of hard partying, not gonna lie. It was amazing fun. It was "Zion's" birthday. 30th birthday at that. I love being part of people's important memories. Not that he can remember the whole thing but hey, he knows I was there. lol. The whole time I was in Costa Rica I refrained from becoming friends with foreigners...I was here to experience local culture. And then I met the Swedes. I fell off the Jaco map and took up semi-residence in Hermosa and the land of the Swedes. In fact, I have to check myself and stay in Jaco sometimes because I wonder if I'm wearing out my welcome. ha ha. And of course they are dj's/independent entrepreneurs/house music fanatics/like minded/off beat/abnormal people like my dear friends back home. Never fails, everywhere I go, the house community rears it's beautiful head. I can NOT say enough good things about those boys. I want them to adopt me and let me come live with them in Sweden for awhile. I'll be the cook/housekeeper and they can just make me laugh all day long. love. love. love. So yea, without implicating anyone I can't really tell all my stories on here but I will say I went to a strip club and had my first lap dance while hanging with these crazy people (I'm not crazy....BWWHAAAHHHA)

My friend Maghen I met while I was down here and ironically is living in Chicago when she leaves here. I'm so fucking happy to have a fellow Costa Rica friend to share my experience with. I'm getting sad thinking about everyone leaving but it makes me happy to know I can share my memories with her. And obviously hang out at a time when Chicago is literally the best city in the world.

I am sorry if anyone back home feels slighted because I haven't called or kept in close contact with. The pace here is different. The motivation is considerably less...it's like ocean early morning, sleep or rest and then chill. And usually when that occurs there is no internet around.

Aaahhhh I'm rambling now. I'm just in a weird mood. Not feeling witty, interesting or anything else for that matter at the moment. Got a lot going on in my head which would all sound nonsense to the casual observer. So I refrain. Emotions are but a passing feeling, like clouds in the sky. Love you all, miss you all, every minute of every day, near and far.