Today’s our last full day in Costa Rica and if it hasn’t become disgustingly obvious to you, it is very much clear to me how spoiled we’ve been here. It almost breaks my heart to feel this refreshed and renewed.
This is where we’re spending our last few nights. How is this our life? It isn’t — this is only temporary. And yet, what is life but temporary?
Is this disassociation, or is this mindful presence? It’s both. It’s the shoreline of our dual realities, sometimes lapping, sometimes crashing, always churning and changing — life’s metabolism.
The creation myth of Costa Rica’s indigenous people (the Bribri and the Cabécar) apparently involves human life springing out of bat shit. This rings quite true for the world we live in.
More than this, the primary god, Sibú, created the earth through vampirism, sending out the bat, Dukur Bulú, to suck the blood of Iriria, the Earth Girl, which he did through an act of deception. This, too, rings true.
Humans were made from Iriria’s murder. But, the story goes, her mother Nãmãitãmĩ’s tears made every other species on this planet. So, we are blood spilled and they are tears shed. This also rings very true.
Yesterday afternoon, we went to Tamarindo, the most popular surf town and tourist destination in Guanacaste that was apparently made famous in the 80s by a Texan who bought up a bunch of oceanfront properties and got the place featured in a cult surfing documentary called The Endless Summer II. I’ve never heard of it. But the vibes were pleasant.
I actually really like it here. I don’t have anything more profound to say. Just an oceanic feeling — a deep blue. Azul profundo.
I don’t easily trust my feelings. I know they’re bounded by structures that shape and condition them, little gated communities of manufactured bliss. Like how an old Foursquare review gushed about the clean bathrooms at a gas station we stopped at, adding that the man with “big black machine gun” will check the stalls for you to make sure no one is hiding there. Feelings like that. Bounded bliss. But blissful nonetheless.