shaman

Shaman
The whole grade school went camping this week, to a finca in the mountains, attending part of a workshop on traditional building. The local indigenous people here are the Bribris and their shaman came to begin the ceremony for the construction of the casa cosmico, a traditional scared space. The shaman and his apprentice are quiet men with an energy like trees standing beside a clearcut. All around them was western hustle and bustle: the people who live on the finca and those attending the workshop are foreigners: Italian, Argentinean, German, Spanish, Canadian. The finca workers are Bribri. The Bribri worked while we went fluttering from one activity to another. It feels awkward to me this life I lead when I see it from this perspective. We have workshops to preserve indigenous culture only because we have destroyed it with our presence. They are a beautiful people, small and compact, strong and serious. They work hard and steadily and with respect for what they do. I worked with them as much as I could, learning the thatching process and spending time with the women in the kitchen. I’m an outsider here no matter who I’m with, with the Bribri I’m so starkly different it isn’t even an issue and there was peace in our working together. They were surprised and amused by my wanting to work.
The shaman had 3 sanyasin women fluttering around him trying to attend to his every need. He had no needs and looked strange amidst these 3 taller thinner women in their flowing white clothes and sanyasin malas . The image disturbed me. Even on a spiritual level we westerners can’t leave it alone. Of course the missionaries did so much harm, but even now these hippy style spiritual seekers on their individual paths were laying their own beliefs on the shaman’s. Perhaps it’s not so important, we are all free in our own beliefs and faiths, and development and evolution will happen one way or another, perhaps this is my own issue, my love affair with a different, older, simpler way of life that causes me to squirm.
The ceremony was brief and simple: a fire, herbs cast into the fire, a quiet song welcoming the spirits of the fire, the place, the plants which would be used in the construction. He left after talking with the Bribri.

After 4 months of sitting on a stool in the kitchen watching the world through my open door and window, this morning I tried stretching my extension cables outside, and lo and behold it works, I can’t believe it! It feels so much better to be sitting outside and writing, without the time pressures of battery. My computer came back better but not fully well: seemingly I need more memory, too much stuff on the mind. Isn’t that the truth?
It’s so difficult to rest from the endless internal babble about nothing, it’s like a box of mixed jigsaw pieces that I flick through – school, garden, future, past, family, friends, lovers, animals, work, worries, memories, plans, ideas . . . once in a great while I see the big picture having somehow managed to put the right pieces together, but no sooner does it come than it breaks apart again and I am full of small thoughts about nothing.
I only know this to be a true phenomenon because I have experienced otherwise. I’ve had moments of stillness devoid of babble and it’s incredibly beautiful, floating in an ocean of eternity where everything is light. Fleeting moments before one sinks again below the waters and finds oneself in the midst of shoals of darting, turning small thoughts.
The most I can do is to stand back and watch what’s happening in my mind, not allow myself to be caught in the current, because I know that in a flash it will change and flow another direction.

a dish of flowers

15-20 male pumpkin flowers
Oil or butter for frying
Soy sauce
Garlic
Gather flowers late in the day, this way you can be more certain that all the trapped pollinating bees have chewed their way out of their golden prisons. Pumpkin flowers open before dawn and close by midday but do seem to trap the occasional visitor in their petals.
Rinse flowers in water (save this pollen suffused water for the plants), shake out and chop. You can also chop the long flower stems, just chop these finely, they can be stringy.
Chop the garlic (today I also used some male papaya flowers – aromatic and peppery), heat the oil or butter and throw everything in. cook for about 7 minutes stirring fairly frequently. Serve with soy sauce. The closest taste I can think of is bok choy. The flowers contain vitamin A, C, some calcium, iron and protein. You can steam also but vit A is fat-soluble you can always add fat later.
Another lovely way to prepare pumpkin flowers is to dip whole flower heads in tempura batter and fry. The dogs like them too.

nomadic ants

The red assed ants are on the move again, every week another horde rampage through the garden flushing all the insects and lizards before them arousing the interest of flycatchers, warblers, even hawks. I guard my stairs with a broom ready to fight them off. I’m sure they’re passing through, but just what if they wanted to stay? While I was picking cherries I accidentally stood in their haphazard path. They bite hard. So, I wasn’t paying attention and now the ants are on the deck inspecting the laundry that’s hanging to dry. I watch a spider get excited. He’s out of his hiding place, a pale green gold and he’s made himself look very much like a grasshopper. The ants are nearby but not close enogh. I wonder if he’s preying or prey? Ah, another lapse of attention, gathering supper, both ants and spider have gone.

lizard day

Watering the pumpkins I could hear a rustling noise by the house. No movement in the trees so it wasn’t monkeys, the dogs didn’t come when I called, so it had to be something else, a fair size by the sounds of it too. Took a break and no sooner had I sat down than 2, 4 feet iguanas came thundering towards me. They saw me and took off in two different directions so I was forced to just watch one: a big black iguana with rust red orange sides and an orange and black striped tail. They seem to use their tails for propulsion as they run, swishing them actively behind them. their limbs branch out at right angles as they go and their feet / paws / claws (none are right) turn slightly in giving them a butch bulldog look. And they run fast. It’s a day for lizards: I saw a female basilisk run across the river as I was fetching water, the jesus lizard who’s large hind legs enable them to run – paddlesteamer fashion across water, with their legs seeming to turn a full circle as they go. They make such a great noise a flap flap flap on water. Nearby I saw a big blue tail of someone disappear into the ginger. Behind me a house geckoe barks.

fear and dependency

My computer’s not working. I switched it on and nothing and I was suddenly overwhelmed with a sickening heaviness. Everything is on there – all my music, photos, documentation, blogs, letters, 2 books I’m writing, articles for suite101, lesson plans, notes, research for school, recipes, gardening notes – everything. I took it to the only place in town where someone might be able to help and left it there – without a receipt, a phone number, a name. nothing. Just left it there and felt like I was leaving a sick puppy at a pet shop. I called when I was told to and they hadn’t looked at it. I called again and was told it had issues and a virus and they couldn’t save my data. I felt oddly alone and vulnerable. Losing my computer has been my biggest nightmare. Not having my music or a way to write brings out pangs of isolation. It’s an interesting addiction. Without music I am alone with myself . . . it makes me realize that I provide myself with lots of distractions to avoid this feeling. I look at this sideways, not quite prepared to examine it fully or get to the bottom of it. Clearly I’m afraid of it. I’m going to have to deal with it. Costa Rica is such an incredible place for bringing up one’s shit. Perhaps it’s the lack of distractions which force one to just be. Obviously I’ve found a way around this. I better deal with it before I lose my computer for real.
Postscript
My computer’s back home and speaking Spanish, they were able to clean it but when they re-installed the programs they installed the Spanish versions. My Spanish sucks, my technical Spanish sucks wad, but I have my computer . . .

buy buy green

Buy buy green
I joined a blog directory and as usual looked around to see who’s company I was in. There were over 1000 listed as “green”. As usual I didn’t have the luxury of surfing for hours (I was paying by the minute), but was surprised to see that the majority of sites I looked at were trying to sell me something. Why are people buying green? I mean, why are people buying at all? There’s trickery here – basically these sites are saying it’s still okay to consume, just consume differently. Somehow this doesn’t seem to fit. Last week I got my hands on an actual hard copy of Mother Jones magazine. Of course I read it cover to cover, literally, and was more struck and amazed at the advertising than the articles: visa cards, investment plans, cell phones – all touting their eco-friendliness, even saying (credit card and cell phone) that using them more would help the environment. How cynical. But it must work, given the number of ‘green’ sell sites I saw. Is it possible we can think this one through?

bye bye banana

Outside my kitchen window is jungle. But behind my cabin is a clearing and in this clearing are some bananas, a bitter orange and some infant papayas. The tallest banana has had fruit on it since I moved here, winter solstice last year. I’ve opened my shutters to those bananas every morning since, watching them grow and the flower shrink. Today I cut them. they’re not ripe, but they’re ready. They’ll ripen on the deck over the next week or so , everything will get covered in bat shit as they come to check on their ripeness. My view is different now, ah, it’ll never be the same. What an odd idea, nature is eternal yet never the same. How marvelous is that?

patangas, the Surinam Cherry

It’s best not to look too closely when eating cherries. Especially at the moment. It seems a colony of ants have taken up residence and they make tiny holes in ripe cherries and do what in there? Last week I was eating around the holes – the surrounding flesh was softer and a deeper red. Then – as must happen – I popped one in forgetting the ants and discovered it was so much sweeter than all the others. Somehow the ants do something to make sugar – or maybe it’s the air and sunlight penetrating the hole? Whichever, the cherries with the ants taste better. So now my cherry picking involves picking, shaking, a cursory glance and then popping. Maybe it’s the ants which taste sugary?

april 1st

It’s a bright, bright sunny day with a good breeze – perfect beach weather. Not so good for the gandul transplants. They’ll make it I’m sure but this sun will set them back. I hung a sarong over them to offer some shade, but I think they’ll lose their leaves.
The watermelons seem to be taking such a long time. I read 80 – 85 days from shoot to harvest, we are over a third of the way through but they only have 7 leaves.
The white spots I thought were mold from all the wet humid weather we had last week turn out to be aphid abodes, white aphids, I’ve been removing them whenever I see them, the grasshoppers are much more dangerous.
It looks like there’s new growth on the wild spinach in the leaf bed. It’s been 12 days since I put them there. That’s great! I’d like to move more. I put some beans on the leaf bed too and they sprouted and sent out growth but the 4 days of strong sun this week has fried them. I’ll wait for more rainy weather and try again. There are enough leaves to rake and add to the bed too. It is now just under ½ of its original size, inside it’s mulching down nicely and we haven’t had much rain.
Yesterday I picked some perennial peanut for transplanting. It’s a pretty groundcover, a legume with a nice yellow pea flower and clover like leaves. It can withstand flooding and droughts and can be mowed. I was thinking of putting it in the low land under the mangos and using it as a nitrogen fixer and longterm soil builder, and of course it will look better than the sparse grass that’s there now.
Coming along the drive last night there was a sound like rain coming from the pejabayes. I thought it was pissing monkeys but why would a monkey sit in a spine covered pejabaye palm? Then in the garden I was collecting guavas and got hit by many small round hard white flowers – like hail. Pejabayes are flowering and drop their flowers at dusk. I wonder if we’ll get the fruit? The pejabayes in the garden are 30 feet tall and impossible to climb, the fruit hangs in clusters at the top. I think the toucans will be lucky. The fruit is very popular here, a starchy nutty vegetable which is steamed and eaten with mayonnaise. All over San Jose street vendors sell them straight out of great steaming cookpots. the pejabaye is also a great source of palmitas – the white heart of palm that’s eaten fresh or in brine. We cut down a young palm, about 12 feet tall and got about 2 feet of palmitas, so good we stood there over the fallen tree, machetes in hand, gorging ourselves.

garden notes

I notice another katuk is sprouting, this one was a stem cutting, not a tip – that blows my theory. Should they all survive it’ll be a good start to a salad. My lentil sprouts are about 4 inches tall and delicious. I’ve tried over and over to sprout things here and they start well and then usually dry out between rinsings or rot if I try to keep them wet. These ones I soaked overnight and then partly planted in a sandy compost mix. They are doing really well, must be time for me to start a bigger batch. These lentils grew in Canada, I’m going to keep a couple of sprouts to grow, see how far they get anyway, I have no idea what a lentil plant looks like.
Been thinking about new beds. Which is better – to produce enough food for me or to grow surplus and store? Subsistence or what – materialism, plenty, abundance . . . what would one call it? I am following the development of humankind: I was happy as a hunter/gatherer/forager and then I became a farmer and now I’m thinking about the next step, growing more than it takes to feed me. It’s an interesting feeling this, where does the desire for more spring from? Is it fear based, natural. I’ll sit with it for a while longer.
I would like to try other plants; sesame which grows commercially in every other Central American country but this one, chickpeas, cucumber . . . I need more bed space to do this. Excuse?
But where? Behind the datura cresent bed is a possibility it gets morning sun. I was picturing the garden differently – the carambola and the soursop in the orchard and all this space for veggies.
There are 13 types of hummingbird in this area, I’ve seen 5 thus far in the garden, the boys say they’ve seen all of them.

scarface

I was sitting on the deck having my morning coffee, frowning at the pumpkin patch and wondering why I haven’t seen any white faced capuchins for two weeks, when I heard a commotion in the bamboo. There they were, the same old troupe, my good friends the banana rustlers. And who should be grimacing at me from the mango tree but Scarface himself. Of course I crossed the deck to say hello and was greeted with such a wonderful display of threatening behavior from these tiny gargoyles it made me laugh. Bouncing up and down, baring their teeth and widening their eyes, banging thin branches against the trunk. Oh how I’ve missed these mini rebels. I wonder if they miss this sort of thing in the forest, they do seem to enjoy it. There’s really no need to taunt the dogs or myself, but they come so close deliberately just to send a shower of leaves at us and hurl facial insults. They are so beautiful in their way, such perfectly rounded tails, such glossy black fur – not straggly or uneven in colour like the howlers or spiders. These monkeys are perfect in their black coats and white cowls. Their naked faces look skeletal and oddly human. They have certain expressions which remind me of my grandfather. But with their pointed canines and maori-like poses they look quite scary too (which of course is their point), like a Japanese No mask. They are foresters too, purposefully breaking dead and weak branches as they go. Sometimes I think they are looking for insects, other times I think they must be taking care of their pathways through the trees – who knows when they’ll come through in a hurry and won’t have time to check the strength of a limb. The capuchins are noisy in the trees, not like the others here, they crash through like noisy teenagers, making faces and posing when they see more threatening creatures.
Scarface came closest as usual. It’s not so much a scar he has as a disfigurement, there’s something misshapen to the area between his nose and upper lip. I’ve been told that some previous occupants rescued a young white face and cared for him until old enough to cope for himself, I can’t help but think Scarface is the same monkey.

crabs

There are holes in the banks and the ground, not in the lawns, but below hedges and tucked away in corners. I thought they were crab burrows. The crabs at the beach are very bright with purple brown bodies, yellow legs and red claws with dashes of blue below, there are also brown crabs with red claws. I’ve also seen them around here, but the one who just left his burrow below the orange tree was different. A big round liliac blue creature with white spectacles around his eyes, his claws are fairly small and look more like legs and his body is disk shaped and smooth, not with the bumps and raised portions of the others. He looks like a child’s drawing of a crab. I really would like a camera with a lens.

afternoon show

When I was a kid I never, ever, in my wildest dreams for one moment thought this would be my life. I’m sitting drinking my afternoon coffee, winding down after a day at school. It’s overcast and rained about 2 hours ago. There’s noises everywhere. To my left in the trees by the river a mother sloth hangs from a limb, clinging to her back is her baby. They are watching a small group of howlers in the branches above them, a baby comes down very close to me, about 8 feet away and poops on my laundry line. To my right two hummingbirds chase each other through the hibiscus. A morpho flits below me through the pumpkins. The coffee tastes good. I won’t have to water the garden tonight.

dinner

I’ve been eating from the garden for a few weeks now, I’m still buying basics – lentils, garbanzo beans, brown flour, tapa dulce, oil, eggs, milk, cream cheese, chocolate and coffee, and some spices, but everything else is grown here. Tonight I made some curried lentil soup with pumpkin and papaya leaves and my new favourite: pan fried male papaya and pumpkin flowers. I’m eating the male flowers which have completed their task of supplying pollen: the female flowers will become fruit so are not for eating until they too finish their task. The flowers are surprisingly good just sautéed with some salt and pepper. And they keep their color and look so very pretty on the plate. The papaya flowers taste peppery and have a beautiful scent (while raw), they can be eaten raw just as well. I have quite a few edible flowers in the garden: banana, hibiscus, ginger, Madera negra, papaya and pumpkin – pinks, reds, yellows and whites. I could also use the bean flowers and the chayote, but would miss out on the fruits, I don’t know that they have male and female flowers. It would be something to make a whole dish from flowers alone. I’d feel like a big bee. The other day when I took some pumpkin flowers from the fridge to prepare them, I released a black bee, poor thing was quite chilled. The flowers open at dawn and close again by 11am, he must have been sleeping inside and got caught. We have lotus in the pond and I hear the flowers are delicious. Unfortunately the black bees think so too and they ate the last one completely.

muscle rub

It seems that age does take its toll on a body, I awoke the other day sore from working and in need of a good massage. Finding a serious lack of available masseuses in my cabin, I settled on the idea of making a muscle rub. We have plenty of tumeric and ginger in the garden, both are excellent for sprains, bruises, aches, muscle pain, inflammation and just about everything else. I added some lemongrass for scent and its relaxing properties and then ventured out of the garden to find two local plants. Redhead or firebush or zorillo real is a small pretty tree with orange red tubular flowers and reddish leaves, it’s one of those crush and apply to insect bites type of plant and is good for easing aching muscles and relieving tiredness. Hoja de estrella is a small, bat pollinated tree with short upright wands covered in tiny non-descript flowers. The leaves can be rubbed directly on sprains or bruises or stiffness for near instant relief. Both grow right outside my gate. The whole lot got chopped and mashed and added to a jar of sunflower oil (available and inexpensive). It looks like a really good green salsa, and if the last two plants were not for external use only it’d be a great oil for cooking. I have to shake it when I think of it for a week and strain before I can use it. In the meantime I’m still looking for a masseuse. . .

cacao mulch

I tip my bucket onto one of the new beds I’m preparing. It’s a wide mound of paper, sticks, rotting wood, leaves, decomposed kitchen compost, cacao and more leaves. No actual soil as such, my supply is running out so I’m experimenting to see if I can create a bed without. So far it looks good, I don’t know how long I’ll leave it before planting. I think it would be best to plant creepers that will spread over and sink roots down rather than planting directly. Leaf vegetables would probably be better suited. I have another similar bed and I stuck in some wild spinach yesterday. This variety grows on a spongy sick that will resprout very easily, if it takes I’ll be delighted.

into the forest, kinda

It’s an earlyish morning habit at the weekends to collect cacao shells and trim the trees. It has to be at the right time, after the daylight comes but before it gets too hot, around 8ish seems best. The timing has to be right because one doesn’t want to disturb any snakes on their way out or home. And the mosquitoes are worse at dawn and dusk, though in the forest they are a constant. I wear a sweatshirt, hood up and sleeves drawn over my hands, long trousers and my boots, so I need to go before it gets too hot: the smell of sweat draws even more mosquitoes. I go armed with my bucket and machete. It is always disorientating in the forest – getting in is easy, coming out is often a job as one giant tree or cacao is much like another and the light changes quite rapidly. Also walking in the forest is an exercise in consciousness – one has to be aware of where one is stepping and on what one is stepping and I am looking at trees and trimming and chopping or picking up old cacao as I go. And of course my direction changes like a butterfly’s as I see something interesting over there, or want to look at that tree, or inspect the cacao that was flowering last time . . . and so on until I fill my bucket, can’t take any more mosquitoes and head for home. Now what way did I come? It’s a lesson in careful observation while treading with equal care and usually combating a feeling of being lost in the jungle forever. The spiders I collect with the cacao are usually on their way up my arm at this point too, but they are only those stilt-walkers with the rust bobbin body and the long wobbly black legs and are harmless. Often the dogs will come to find me and look at me as if to say, just use your nose, it’s this way.
It’s not the real forest, it’s been transformed and farmed and then abandoned and slowly it’s reverting, there are no pumas, no wild pigs. But when you’re in there, surrounded by green and the wind doesn’t blow through and all you can hear is insect and bird noise and underfoot are ants and millipedes, frogs, spiders and scorpions and overhead are toucans, hawks and monkeys, it feels like the forest.
When I was a kid we would go into the highlands most weekends. We had a place beside one of the last forests, of pine and some birch. I spent many many hours in there enjoying its eery quiet, its darkness and stillness with sudden magical spots of bright sunlight where a tree had fallen. I lived by a redwood forest for several years, spending time with those giants who daunt you with their age and size and bring everything around them to their knees. The forest here is very different, it has none of the somber atmosphere, the mature trees are so high that you can’t tell what they are, looking up one sees only vines and creepers. Below is the shade loving cacao, twisted with age and transformed by the vines into great shaggy heaps with far too many shoots. Below this are the ferns, mosses and wild heliconias and the few saplings from the giants that have survived thus far. And below that the leaf litter which is the source of life in the forest. Layers of green life. I found a little hill and climbing it into the sunlight. On top I found myself in the lower canopy, how different the jungle looks from there, suddenly one is lifted into the active life, noise and bustle and movement.

early morning, easter sunday

The spider monkeys came through this morning as I was making pancakes. They travel in small troupes – the one I see the most often has 3 adults and one baby. They are very agile – almost running through the treetops, swinging and leaping with all limbs. This is very different from the Howlers who move slowly and steadily and seem to prefer to have two limbs connecting to branches, or to the white faced who jump and scurry paying attention to everything as they travel. The spiders have long thin limbs, almost gibbon-like, and a orange-red fur which backlit can look like an orange halo, especially along their torsos. They knocked the fruit from the cannonball tree as they went through and it bounced down the trunk exploding, sending seeds everywhere.

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