Hello, December.

December 1st, 2010

It’s Christmas soon. I wouldn’t know this is it wasn’t for that looming date on the corner of my taskbar, or that faded out Woodstock calendar hanging dangerously from the termite-ridden planks of wood. To ring in December, we spent yesterday rolling joints and listening to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s Christmas hymns. And I thought I couldn’t get any more blasphemous.  I never imagined that I’d be spending Christmas in the tropics. Then again, it isn’t all that different from California – a little heat punctuated by bouts of rain. Here, however, the extremes are more intense. The heat is sweltering and humid. My pores drip and my shirt becomes soaked through. I am unable to differentiate between sweat and airborne moisture. Additionally, the rain here is never just a sprinkle, never just a light pitter-patter. It’s a tumultuous, thunderous, piety-inducing godlike roar.

I feel like I haven’t actually celebrated Christmas since I was 13. I miss the snow.

A moth just landed on me. I’ve learned not to flinch. It would be a frequent waste of energy to react every time this happened.

It’s 6 am and I’ve already been up for hours.

My grand fairytale is quickly drawing to a close. I’m beginning to panic about the future. What comes next?

I don’t want to answer this. It’s a rhetorical question. Even if I wanted to answer it, I couldn’t. I have my vague plans… taking a little road trip through the Western U.S. after we spend a week in Orange County. Stopping in Salt Lake City to visit my sister. Getting to San Francisco by way of Reno. Visiting Sondra there.

I found a place for us to live in the city. I’m going to try to get rehired at Peet’s up there. There  are six locations within a 20 minute walking distance (10 minutes by BART or bus) of the place we’re going to live.

I don’t know why I’m so focused on these things now. I have over a month left here. It’s just weird being unemployed for so long. Volunteer “work” isn’t the same. You do it at your own speed, for the joy of it, to pass the time. Getting a paycheck is something entirely different. I just hope I can get my job back somewhere up north. I’m afraid that if I moved back to Orange County my soul would die forever. Plus, once I’m in Northern California, I won’t have any reason not to transfer to Berkeley. It’s my dream school. I know I can do it, I’m just afraid.

Afraid of what? The question with a more concise answer would be this: What am I not afraid of?

I’m afraid of change. It’s very hard for me to disrupt my life once I’ve established a routine. Once the change has been catalyzed, though, I can cope. It’s just the anticipation that hurts.

I’m afraid of failure. I’m afraid of moving to a new place and getting a fresh start and just fucking everything up.

I’m afraid of inadequacy. I’m afraid of forgetting. I’m afraid of death.

My move here may have seemed fearless, but it wasn’t. There’s a clear distinction in my mind between fearlessness and recklessness.

I will miss the freedom and austerity of existing here. I will miss the miles of trails and earthy smells.

I won’t miss the dozens of bug bites, or the scorpion stings, or the dangers of snake bites. I won’t miss never having clean clothes. I won’t miss my books becoming moisture-warped science projects just from sitting on the shelves here. I won’t miss the hurricanes washing out dirt roads, I won’t miss not having an income.

I am in limbo. Some sort of quarter-life-purgatory. I can’t quite wrap my head around what I want, and I can’t comprehend what is “right”. These moral absolutes seem to be more like looming yet meaningless abstractions. Despite this, I still find myself compelled by the notion of doing what is “right” or “good,” yet, if I was asked to concisely define those words, I would falter.

Despite all of this insecurity and anxiety, I’m still really happy. Kelly makes me happier than I have ever been in my whole life. It’s strange feeling this much for someone. I never thought I’d be in a relationship like this.

Our six month anniversary is the day before Christmas. He’s the best gift I could ever ask for. 

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December 2nd, 2010

I don’t write well when I’m happy. Maybe that’s the real reason for the large gaps in between my entries recently. I make excuses, but really, I can’t form sentences if there isn’t something bothering me. I know that this blog is just regurgitation, cataloguing, remembering -- but it still takes effort.

I didn’t bother to stop to write in Panama. I was too enthralled by the Miami-esque skyscrapers looming over me and the diablos rojos zooming down the city streets. It was too familiar to be completely shocking, but too different to be completely comfortable. I can’t explain it. Everything was inexpensive. Everyone wanted my money. People called after me on the streets selling everything from shoes to oranges to headphones.

I did spend $5 on a tarot card reading from some sort of Panamanian gypsy in a shady head shop on a street corner. Six translated for me. My findings were interesting and all too accurate. Tell me something I don’t know already.

Being in Panama was like being in a different universe parallel to something that could have been familiar. Groups of native Kuna women wearing traditional clothes huddled in front of a Burger King.  Strip malls and suburbs on one side of the freeway, sprawling rainforest on the other. It was strange shoving my hands into faded jean pockets and having them emerge with fistfuls of dollars. The balboa and the dollar are used interchangeably in Panama. There is a fixed exchange rate. The coins are even minted so similarly that Panamanian change works in American vending machines, and vice-versa.

I didn’t take time to write in San Jose. I didn’t mention our beautiful yellow hostel, Hostel 1110. I didn’t share the pithy fact that it was once the home of a past Costa Rican president, or how the rooms were cramped but comfortable. How the tile covered concrete felt good and cold on my feet at three a.m. when I got up to brush my teeth in the communal bathroom. Every time I go to bed drunk, I wake up in the middle of the night to brush my teeth or read a little or write regrettable emails. I didn’t mention that the bars on the windows made me feel safe, and that the raucous street noise – car horns, sirens, drunken reveling – serenaded me to sleep. I didn’t divulge how immortal I felt lying next to Kelly – tangled in sheets – as the tropic sun crept through the city’s smog and penetrated our barricaded window.

Another day I didn’t share – Kelly’s birthday. We spent it in Cartago – just the two of us – getting lost on unfamiliar streets. Laughing, dreaming, dancing, baking in the sun. There’s no way it was November. It had to have been in the eighties without a cloud in the sky. He even got free ice cream because I told the counter girl that it was his birthday. It could have also been because he is cute. I am okay with either justification. We explored the basilica – I think it was called “our lady of the angels”. I am too preoccupied to verify the accuracy of that at the moment. It was beautiful inside. It made me feel a strange sense of reverence and piety that I haven’t felt for years. It’s amazing how architecture can create such feelings of grandeur and omnipotence. Then again, I shouldn’t justify what I felt purely based on apparent physical actualities. The air felt electric.  It could have been the massive line of people waiting to confess. It could also have been the dozens of people kneeling their way up the aisle in between the benches toward the front of the basilica. They were holding rosaries, some eyes closed, some open. Some with their hands clutched around their hearts. They were all praying. At first, I felt confused. Then I felt a little lost. They all had something I didn’t – faith, and the promise of redemption. I know that I will never be religious again; however, I cannot help but silently revere individuals who choose to live faithful lives in the face of a daunting and potentially meaningless universe. I think truth is a lot more complex than saying a certain belief represents an absolute correspondence to correctness while others are deemed erroneous or flawed. I would consider myself somewhere in between atheist and agnostic, erring on the side of the former, but I do not believe that religious people who devote their lives to some perceptively greater cause (Christians, Muslims, Jews, etc…) are inherently wrong. I can’t explain this realization that I came to, feeling so small inside that massively ornate basilica, but all I know is that I can’t know. I will never know the truth within this lifetime, and I will never pretend to believe that how I choose to live my life is better, more truthful, or more correct than the choices of others.

The more I learn, the more I read, the more I experience the world, the more I am humbled in the face of all that I do not understand. That I cannot understand. That I will never understand.

I suppose, my piety, my reverence, my faith – it all materializes shakily in the face of the unknown.

Later that night, back in San Jose, we reunited with the others and grabbed a few drinks at Viper, our favorite dive bar. Johnny (Yohnny!) Walker Rojo, dos tragos for only 1300 colones. That’s less than $2 a shot. It was not a bad night.

Somehow we ended up at an electro club with an OUSTANDING drag show. A most amazing climax to one of the best nights I’ve had here. The rest of the details of that evening become a bit fuzzy at this point, but really that is just an excuse. What happens in Costa Rica stays in Costa Rica.

Now, I’m back at the farm, listening to Cat Stevens and the rain, only able to write about the present after it has already become the past.

An overzealous affinity for nostalgia is my curse.