peace

This is Monday April 1st. Somehow, in one way or another I’ve been too occupied to blog. I’m hoping for more time in the day. I wish all my expectations could be so subtle, so small and easily managed.

It’s dark, but the moon in all her beautiful fullness has risen behind me and lights up the sky to the point where you wouldn’t believe there are stars. I’m at a party, Nirav has his birthday today and he’s Djing his own event, the music is very chill, ambient trance and no-one is dancing. There’s a fire and mats and rugs and everyone is milling around talking or sitting staring into the space of the fire. Hoss is playing with a dog I don’t know, running back and forth along the periphery of the firelight. I’m sitting typing on a deck off to one side. I’m tired, I’ve been ‘out’ this weekend and haven’t caught up on missed sleep. I look at these faces, so beautiful lit up by orange glow, and I find myself loving them. Each one is unique and yet there are similarities brought on by shared experience, age, culture. Long dark hair tied back, beards on the men, narrow necks, slim shoulders and hips. Beyond the fireglow palm trees, further the ocean winks at his lover the moon. People move around the fire speaking softly to one another, touching hand to shoulder here, arm to arm there. Their movements are fluid in the fire’s staccato light and as the trance picks up its rhythm, they sway, rock a little, voices lift and fall. Who are they, why are they here, how long will they stay. Sufi comes and talks to me, Sufi the gentle incredibly lithe greek girl with her lilting voice and her soft brown eyes. She tells me about the parties that were here before the river opened up, of the space where the sun rose and set while people danced. The greeks are storytellers and weave their myths into their tales with such harmony I’m struck by the humble musical nature of their speech. So understated, floating and yet steady, true. Nirav is beside me, talking shop with Rassana about the house he wants to build. He looks happy, the two gold hoops in his left ear gleam in the fireglow, there’s a twinkle in those arian, double leon eyes.

I was ‘out’ this weekend. Arya, Lisa, my friend Victoria who’s visiting from the states and I left Pachamama on Friday and traveled an hour south by taxi to Samara. Costa Rica is a tourist destination and always surprises me as such. Perhaps growing up with trips to Europe spoiled me, my expectations for tourist towns are always too high. Samara has a beautiful beach: south facing, white sand, shallow warm water dotted with islands too far away to reach by swimming. The town is small and nondescript with several shops and hotels. By the standards here it’s considered fairly upscale with lots of visitors from the u.s.. It served our purposes: we wanted to eat dairy, wheat, meat, drink caffeine, watch tv, drink alcohol, shop, spend money, have a.c.. It’s incredible how we crave whatever we don’t have. And so I did, I ate bacon, twice. I had pizza with cheese, I drank coffee, I had more alcohol than I needed, I watched tv, I had toast, I had pancakes. And we talked, we talked about it all, everything under the sun. And beyond. We swam in the warm ocean water and in the warm still water of the hotel pool. We went to the gringo bar looking for music, something we could dance too, and finding nothing we went to the tico disco and stood in the spilt beer under the fog machines and the strobe lights and we waited for music. People around us were moving, some people were thumping to the one steady, constant beat. But we couldn’t. Dancing is a meditation, something spiritual, the connection of soul and music. This lacked the spiritual, it had no heart connection, I couldn’t understand the language. We left and sat on the beach, allowing the moon to reawaken us to something we knew. This morning I felt sick, too much indulgence in things I craved but didn’t, don’t need. It was good to come home.'