I took a programming class in college and have had this inside joke url ever since
I would like very much to go
snorkeling with you —
Our pale, East Coast bodies floating like foam
in a cobalt salty sea
Where, fluttering alongside schools of flatfish,
darling you and I would speak
A new language
of air bubbles and gestures, pirouettes and
pipe-delayed gasps
as electric eels writhe below.
As is my custom when Leaving Home For An Extended Period Of Time, I began packing for Costa Rica a week before our flight’s scheduled departure. Bright flowery summer dresses draped off the ironing board, with corresponding undergarments and shoes nearby; tank tops made precise, cotton multicolored tiers on the rug, and piles of t-shirts, skirts, denim shorts, linen capri pants, sunglasses, and swimsuits overwhelmed the bed in a collage of potential perfection.
I love this ritual, and it stresses the hell out of me. It’s exactly the kind of thing I try to keep from a significant other for at least two years.
“Don’t . . . come in,” I told Jurvis. “I have . . . delved into summer storage.”
There were chargers, extra batteries, extra lenses, extra books, necklaces and earrings in appropriately-sized Ziplock bags. Two notebooks, an iPod, three purses, my favorite pen, eyeliner, travel-sized shampoo and conditioner — freshly labeled with pungent permanent marker. And when I had finally gathered and prepared everything in my possession I could possibly desire in Flamingo, I set about putting back ninety percent of it.
I like thinking of the suitcase as the harborer of a new life, where I am beautiful all of the time, in love with everything, and I never think to myself is this just weighing me down? Do I really want to carry it up five flights of stairs?
Leaving home for a time is — I hope — becoming a new person. The kind you see in catalogs.
Welcome to Miami. I went to the bathroom after deplaning in Miami, and when I came out the door, Jurvis informed me that our connecting flight had been canceled.
“Canceled?” I said. “But we have boarding passes.”
“Canceled,” he said
Since the next flight — on any airline at all, let alone ours — wasn’t until the next day at the same time, an airline agent gave us six airport meal vouchers and a night at the nearby hotel. But this was not entirely convenient: besides missing a full day in Costa Rica and spending a full freaking day in hideous airportville, Miami, we had no way of contacting my cellphone network-less parents, who we were scheduled to meet in Liberia in two hours. I envisioned their panicked faces, the checking and rechecking of watches as they stood in the midday heat in the middle of the world, uncertain, unmoving, purgatorial.
What if they mispronounced the Spanish word for “money” with the word for “testicles”? What if I mispronounced the Spanish word for “money” with the word for “testicles”?
What we meant to do while we were there: zip-line canopy tour of the Cloud Forest, wander near the molten sputterings of Mount Arenal at night, snorkel in the Pacific Ocean with neon fishes, read at least three to five books apiece, acquire golden skin and blonde-streaked hair.
What we didn’t expect to do while we were there: go to bed at nine-thirty every night, six hour cab tours, consume homemade sorbet from a fruit I can’t even google correctly. Was it a coz?
Greetings from … well, I wish I could still say Costa Rica, but last night we returned, significantly browner and peelier than a week before.
As a result of that trip, I am now a little bit more fond of monkeys, a little less fond of cats — which were feral and whining about it everywhere — and much more fond of paved, straight roads, which were stomach-lurchingly absent in our area. Also, I want a pony. (Whenever we wanted to go somewhere, we drove on dirt roads through green hills dappled with white oxen, grey-spotted horses and unicorns, apparently. It was always sunset, and there were always mountains in the background. I began to harbor fantasies of owning a ranch. It would have an wooden gate painted bright orange, and every morning I would enjoy a breakfast of Cream of Wheat with black coffee.)
(Step one: stop hating Cream of Wheat.)
(Step two: stop hating coffee black.)
How’s springtime in Kansas City? It’s kind of nice to be back home in Boston, even if it is a bit chilly and forecasted to rain for the next week. I like to think that I attained a level of zen in Costa Rica, because when a car tried to plow through me this morning in the middle of a crosswalk with a walk signal, my inclination to give him the middle finger was almost cavalier, dispassionate, like a friendly tip o’ the hat to his douchebaggery.
Sometimes I worry that I’ll become too accustomed to this city.