hello world

Okay, so apparently the farm doesn't have an internet connection. I'm able to check email on the cell phone there, but that's it. I'll still be writing every day, I'm just going to be able to update only once a week when I go into town. Also, I don't have any pictures uploaded yet, but next time there will be many. 

quick facts about my farm: 

it isn't really a "farm house" I'm staying in. It's basically a wooden shack with chicken wire windows and a tin roof. I get to sleep on a slab of wooden planks with a deflated air mattress and a holy mosquito net. dios mio. 

the shower is outside, there is no hot water. it's a spout raised about 6 feet high surrounded by leaves from the banana trees. if you want a show, just walk by while I'm washing myself. plan accordingly: it only happens about once every 3-4 days.

I don't need an alarm clock. The rooster never fails to crow starting at about 4:45 every morning. there is no snooze button. it goes on for at least thirty minutes.

THE BEST PART: there is no toilet. that's right. you heard me. If I have to tinkle, I get to just the way god intended: pick a spot and crouch. For solids, there is a compost bucket that we empty into the compost pile once it gets full. Yep. I am really roughing it. 

Also, we have a collection of machetes at our disposal. I spent half the day yesterday hacking bananas down from the top of one of the trees just for fun. 

The bright side: this place is PARADISE. I've never seen anything like the wildlife and greenery here. pictures later. 

Here are my ramblings.

Friday, August 06, 2010  --  6:04 AM

Today is our first full day on the farm. Getting here yesterday was hectic at best. Actually, no. Hectic is the wrong word. Terrifying would be more accurate. We travelled for about 28 hours straight. This included our plane transfers, bus rides, taxi trips, etc…

Liz and I were both scared shitless even before we left LAX. We ended up drowning our sorrows in overpriced margaritas and tequila and beer before boarding our flight. We continued on the plane. My last day of excess. Looking back on sitting in the airport, the world here couldn’t seem more different from there.

When we arrived at the airport, a well-seeming taxi driver asked us in broken English if we needed a taxi. We were relieved to see someone who spoke our language. I’ve never felt so out of place. So, he proceeded to load our bags into a tiny red Toyota Tercel. I still have no idea how everything fit. My attempt at being cultured for six months – my gigantic bag of books and guitar – was seeming regrettable throughout our arduous journey to the farm. Anyway, we ended up paying $40 U.S. dollars for a cab ride that was only a few kilometers and getting ripped off due to the language barrier. This is where I vehemently declared to myself that I’m becoming fluent in Spanish. We then got to the MUSOC bus station in San Jose where no one spoke English. Liz somehow was able to decipher the bus routes and discovered which bus we had to take to San Isidro and then to Las Esperanzas. There was also a really kind woman in the bus station who helped us. I don’t know how we got through to each other, because she knew even less English than we knew Spanish. I guess, on a universal level, there is a way for humans to communicate with each other outside the structure of language.

We then took a three hour bus ride through the mountainous regions to our next transfer. The road was narrow, steep , and curvy. It literally seemed like it had been haphazardly carved out of the dense foliage. After arriving in the small town of San Isidro, we were able to get help from a nice local restaurant owner who spoke English fluently. He said, and I quote, that the “fucking taxi driver” had ripped us off and he would find us a decent one to take us to Las Esperanzas. We were going to take the bus half way and then walk the remaining 2 km with all of our luggage. Thankfully we didn’t. The farm was located about 10 miles from this town via an incredibly steep and undulating washed out dirt road. Hiking there would have been difficult without 6 bags of luggage, two backpacks, and a guitar between the two of us. Granted, this is the trek we’ll have to take every time we go into town (on foot!) but I’m going to be much more excited about it when I’m not feeling like a pack mule. Our taxi driver who took us up the road had a small SUV. The restaurant owner had called him specifically because most of the taxis wouldn’t have been able to make it up the hills and over all the rocks and gravel. His name was Didier, and between his limited knowledge of English and our smattering of Spanish words, we actually had a really entertaining conversation. He asked us if we had boyfriends, and he told me I’d be leaving here with one either way. Ha. I was able to say a few phrases, he seemed to like talking to us. He gave us his number in case we ever needed a ride anywhere.

The first night sleeping here was, in the truest sense of the word, intense. The “Farm house” that we’re staying in is essentially a wooden cabin with chicken wire windows and a tin roof. My bedroom consists of a small space with an air mattress on a wooden platform (to make it more difficult for scorpions and other friends to cuddle with me while I’m sleeping) and a massive mosquito net. The rain begins in the late afternoon around 2 pm. It starts with a slow but steadily dripping trickle and then crescendos into a roaring thunderstorm. This goes on for about eight or ten hours. The lightning and thunder combined with the cadence of the rain and the orchestra of wildlife is intoxicating. The symphony projected by the cicadas and tropical birds basically serenades me to sleep. It gets dark early, around 7:30. Despite the intense humidity, it’s comfortable and easy to fall asleep. In the mornings, it’s hot and incredibly humid. The sun rises at about 445 or 5, the roosters crow at about 515. It’s impossible to sleep in. This is good for me.

Today, we woke up at 5 and fed the chickens, then let them out to roam around the farm. I did my daily routine of smothering myself in SPF 50 sunscreen and then bug spray before setting foot outside the house. I’ve even been sleeping in bug spray. Liz has had a decent amount of bites over the last day. I think I only have a couple.

We made breakfast: brown rice with garlic, onions, and a small pepper we picked from the garden. Delicious! The coffee here is outstanding. It’s brewed by putting the coffee in a small sack that is suspended over the cup. You literally pour the hot water over the grounds and it seeps through into the cup. The raw cane sugar that is available for the coffee was grown and processed on the neighboring farm. I’ve been drinking it black.

10:20 a.m.

After breakfast, we did our first farm-related task and weeded the pineapple garden. I feel like such an ignoramus when it comes to produce, I had no idea that pineapples grew from the ground. They have these giant spiky head that poke up from the soil. Due to the humidity and richness of the soil, weeds are constantly springing up and choking the plants. It was extremely cathartic to reach deeply into the soil and uproot the thick weeds with my bare hands. We did this for a couple hours. Apparently it’s a once a week job.

Sunday, August 08, 2010 – 6:28 a.m.

Yesterday was rough. I really don’t have adequate words to describe it. It had been overcast all day. The sky felt heavy with moisture. Even before the rain started, it felt like I was breathing through a soaking wet cloth. We got a decent amount of work done in the morning, and Liz made some headway with the horses. We headed back to the farm house around 11 a.m.; right before the torrential downpour started. I was making tea for Liz and I when the phone rang. After she answered and was silent for a moment, I heard her voice quaver.

“My little brother died.”

Liz is one of the strongest people I know. At times, due to her passion for life and her unending youthful vigor, she even seems immortal. It was at this moment, when I saw her fall to the floor and clutch herself before completely breaking down, I was confronted with the reality of my own mortality. I held her for awhile. I had nothing to say. What can you say to someone who is experiencing something that you cannot even fathom? I had no experience in my repertoire of memories that could even come close to paralleling what she was going through right that second. We eventually got it sorted out for her to leave that night and catch a flight from San Jose in the morning. It was sheer luck that she made it. We walked to the bus station – this walk destroyed me – it’s at least a few miles at a complete 90 degree incline. Liz, somehow, wasn’t even phased. I guess she had some driving force behind her that I couldn’t even comprehend. We eventually made it to the bus stop which was situated across from a washed out soccer field. It looked like a game had just ended. There were a lot of locals congregated casually who began to slowly disperse.  After being unable to locate a bus schedule, we asked one of the locals when the next bus into town was. There weren’t any more for the day, she informed us. Then the rain started again. I sat next to Liz in the dirt while the other volunteers called a cab. As the sheets of rain fell upon us with increasing intensity, I wasn’t sure what was rain and what was tears. We were both so far from home. The taxi came about 20 minutes later. We were able to get her into town just in time to catch a bus to San Jose, which is another three hours away. As the taxi stopped at the bus station, they let us know that the last one of the day had just left. Aaron, one of the other volunteers, grabbed her hand and they darted across the rainy six-lane road. The bus was on the other end. He flagged down the bus and helped her board before running back across the road. “Muchas suerte,” the taxi driver kept saying. She was very lucky. Or maybe, the universe was giving her a break. After all, it hadn’t been the easiest day. We took the taxi back home. It dropped us off three quarters of a mile outside the farm gate – all downhill. After all the rain, and due to the fact that it was pitch black at this point, I would have gladly trudged uphill instead. Gravity is not a friend when traversing a steep downhill incline on slick muddy roads. By the time I got inside, I was muddy from head to toe and soaked to the bone. Sleeping alone that night was strange. This experience is terrifying enough as it is, but alone, I don’t know if I’ll make it. She said that she’d be coming back, she left most of her stuff here, but even if she didn’t I’d understand. It’s the most selfish thought I could have right now to imagine being here without her. I guess only time will tell.

August 8, 2010 – 7:04 p.m.

Today was difficult. I finished two books. The Words by Jean-Paul Sartre and Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman. I highly recommend both of them. Sartre touched and penetrated me to the core. Reading it was like having sex on your deathbed – enjoying the motions and the tumultuous waves of pleasure, but being simultaneously covered in your own tears because mortality is mere seconds away. The end is inevitable. The Words is comparable to a chronically suicidal man who has finally found happiness --  and, as he decides to embrace the rest of his life, he is diagnosed with a terminal illness. It is receiving that which you no longer wanted. But maybe that is the case – perhaps death is just rebirth. And birth itself, the purest form of death. Reading so much is starting to affect my own consciousness. I’m seeing the world around me in black and white instead of color. Actions become verbs. Emotions become adjectives. I thought reading incessantly would make me more intuitive – I guess I wasn’t entirely wrong. The problem isn’t my lack of introspection; it’s my hyper-introspection. I just started Heidegger’s Basic Writings. I’m going to read it from cover to cover. If simple prose and short novels are affecting my perception this much, I can’t wait to see how fucked up I become after I digest nothing but straight metaphysics for a week. Here, there are no distractions. Here, I can only relate reading to being force-fed. My hands are tied to my chair -- my mouth is pried open by a sharp, angular contraption of oxidized metal – cardboard binding and faded parchment imbued with veins of text -- and the words flow down my throat in chunks – straight into my stomach – straight into my psyche. I barely have time to taste them on the way down, because despite my gluttony -- my avarice for more knowledge -- I can’t move fast enough. I can’t swallow fast enough. Reading Sartre for six hours straight impaled me. I am over stimulated in every sense. Physically, mentally, emotionally. My muscles are constantly searing from the hard labor and the miles of hills I’ve been running. The structures, the distractions that previously held my mind captive have been removed. Destroyed. All of my bridges have been burned by my move here. I don’t have my crutches – I don’t have any means for weakness. I am forced to be emotionally stagnant in order to make it through the interminable days. I am forced to push beyond my means physically every day in order to continue to survive. I am forced to expand my mind – in learning new tasks, a new language --  in reading new books.

I smell you sometimes. I smell you in the trees, in the soil, in the foliage after the rain. I smell you in my hair. I pretend that there’s some of you left somewhere on me. I pretend you’re next to me, my hand dwarfed in yours.  I pretend that I’m on your driveway and it’s after dark. There’s that lingering smell of wet paint and gardenias. I only recognized how I thrived in that ethereal paradise of power lines and concrete – that garden – after my expulsion. After I was tempted by the snake of adventure, lured out with the promise of knowledge and new experience. I swallowed the apple. And now I’m here, naked, expelled, an eve without her adam. I close my eyes and pretend that you’re holding me close, and you’re kissing me, and even though we’ve arrived at your house, we’re both too enthralled to make an attempt to move inside. I’d choose immortality if it were comprised of moments like that. Moments with you.

I’m running up the hill, the ninety degree incline. I am Sisyphus, my rock is the visible indulgences of years past – my attempt to make myself conversely invisible and grotesque to the world. But unlike Sisyphus, I am chipping away at my rock, one heavy blow at a time. Instead of embracing my struggle, I am demolishing it. I am no Atlas – I am Aphrodite. Every mile I run, every time I go further I silence that scream inside me that is begging me to slow down, to stop, to go back. I am relentless. I will become whole in my endless becoming. I will reach my potential in never accepting that it has been filled. My finite identity will be defined by my constant revision. Like the union of the two conflicting individuals who made me, like endless my dualistic nature, I am a true Gemini. I am my own doppelganger. I am my best friend – I am my archenemy. I am birthed only from contradiction.

This much time alone in my own head -- It has made me reflect on my own childhood, it has forced me to swallow memories as they re-emerge: there they are -- stinging at the back of my throat -- searing hot vomit coated in stomach bile --  begging to be regurgitated.

I haven’t even been here a week and I would give anything to come home. I am learning quickly to silence my weakness. It has no place here. There is no room for laziness, for longing. The next six months are going to change me. They’re going to make me unrecognizable. After my time here, I will fear nothing. I will conquer everything.

August 9, 2010 – 5:08 a.m.

Myths about roosters:  

they crow once, majestically, at sunrise.

Truths about roosters:

They crow EVERY TIME THEY WAKE UP for at least 30 MINUTES. The chicken coop is 20 feet from my window; needless to say, it is impossible for me to sleep in EVER. They begin wailing at around 4:30 a.m. and don’t really stop until 5:15. They will also take naps in the afternoon and crow upon waking then also. ROOSTERS DO NOT HAVE SNOOZE BUTTONS. They are also stubborn as hell. Our rooster, Oscar, is definitely a pimp and a bastard. He has seven lady hens that he gets to hang out with; yet, he is still peckish and whiny all the time. During their free-range wanderings throughout the day, the chickens just follow him EVERYWHERE. And, if I let them out without feeding them first, he follows me right at my heels and will whine until I’ve put their grain out. You know what this means. I have a parade of chickens following me almost every morning, clucking and cawing. They’re ridiculous animals, and they’re extremely reptilian. They have scaly little claws and I swear during the day they sound like screeching pterodactyls.