Brief Update for the New Year, and some pictures of waves

There isn't much to say, actually, but there might be soon. I have a second job interview tomorrow, to become an assistant manager for two apartment/townhouse complexes owned by a small company. I like the idea of helping people become at home. I drank green juice today and lifted weights. I have sore muscles from getting back into the gym routine, which is nice. There is someone in my life who makes me laugh so hard I tremble, someone whose smile reminds me of the sun at high noon, and that's even nicer.

I think it's been half a year since I posted here. My summer was a whirlwind. There was a lot of love there, a lot of earth, sky, and water. The fruit festival was overwhelming but glorious. Costa Rica was strange and normal at the same time. I really got lost in it. I let myself get sucked into the ocean by massive waves over and over so that I could take pictures of the water towering over me with the waterproof camera I bought right before I left. It's so wonderfully bizarre that you can step into a body of water and risk your breath at the hands of the moon. The earth's daughter reached down and tumbled me like a dice. It was spectacular.

I got sunburned on a twelve mile bike ride up and down steep hills through the jungle on a rusty single-speed beach cruiser. I wasn't really dry for a week because of the humidity and rain. I woke up sticky every morning, and usually sandy, too. My mom once asked me if I ever wake up wondering where I am when I travel, if it takes a few minutes to remember where I've ended up. No, never, because I don't ultimately care where I wake up. Every place feels normal to me. Anywhere could be home. Impermanence has won itself a permanent seat at the table of my psyche. Wherever I am, I just am. Isn't that the only way it can be?

In the spirit of impermanence (and needing an income while looking for a "real" job), I've been temporarily working for Instacart as a personal grocery shopper for about four months now. It was fun for a while, and then it got really old really fast. But it gives me flexibility, time for myself, time for job applications, time for the holidays, and it gives me as few as two or as many as twelve hours of work every day that I want it. And the while endless aisles of soda and dead animals and highly-processed former food are slightly depressing, I do get to spend a lot time listening to audiobooks and NPR in the car, touring the Peninsula and seeing the outsides and insides of some of it's prettiest houses.

I'm still reading a lot. I just finished This Side of Paradise (Fitzgerald), which I really enjoyed. I also recently finished The Bell Jar (Plath), The Prophet (Gibran--so wonderful, will read it again very soon), Whole (Campbell--a great book about nutrition), Northanger Abbey (Austen--pretty ridiculous), and a half to most of a handful other other books, mostly non-fiction, the kind where you feel like you've gotten the gist of it halfway through and have no motivation to continue. (One of these was called "Excellent Sheep," about the problems with higher education in America. It would have been interesting if I hadn't gone to college, but I did, so it was all old news to me.) Tomorrow I am going to a Louise Glück poetry reading and reception at Stanford, which I've been looking forward to for months.

Today I started memorizing this fantastic poem:

The Song of the Mouth-Organ
by Robert W. Service

(With apologies to the singer of the "Song of the Banjo".)

I'm a homely little bit of tin and bone;
I'm beloved by the Legion of the Lost;
I haven't got a "vox humana" tone,
And a dime or two will satisfy my cost.
I don't attempt your high-falutin' flights;
I am more or less uncertain on the key;
But I tell you, boys, there's lots and lots of nights
When you've taken mighty comfort out of me.

I weigh an ounce or two, and I'm so small
You can pack me in the pocket of your vest;
And when at night so wearily you crawl
Into your bunk and stretch your limbs to rest,
You take me out and play me soft and low,
The simple songs that trouble your heartstrings;
The tunes you used to fancy long ago,
Before you made a rotten mess of things.

Then a dreamy look will come into your eyes,
And you break off in the middle of a note;
And then, with just the dreariest of sighs,
You drop me in the pocket of your coat.
But somehow I have bucked you up a bit;
And, as you turn around and face the wall,
You don't feel quite so spineless and unfit--
You're not so bad a fellow after all.

Do you recollect the bitter Arctic night;
Your camp beside the canyon on the trail;
Your tent a tiny square of orange light;
The moon above consumptive-like and pale;
Your supper cooked, your little stove aglow;
You tired, but snug and happy as a child?
Then 'twas "Turkey in the Straw" till your lips were nearly raw,
And you hurled your bold defiance at the Wild.

Do you recollect the flashing, lashing pain;
The gulf of humid blackness overhead;
The lightning making rapiers of the rain;
The cattle-horns like candles of the dead
You sitting on your bronco there alone,
In your slicker, saddle-sore and sick with cold?
Do you think the silent herd did not hear "The Mocking Bird",
Or relish "Silver Threads among the Gold"?

Do you recollect the wild Magellan coast;
The head-winds and the icy, roaring seas;
The nights you thought that everything was lost;
The days you toiled in water to your knees;
The frozen ratlines shrieking in the gale;
The hissing steeps and gulfs of livid foam:
When you cheered your messmates nine with "Ben Bolt" and "Clementine",
And "Dixie Land" and "Seeing Nellie Home"?

Let the jammy banjo voice the Younger Son,
Who waits for his remittance to arrive;
I represent the grimy, gritty one,
Who sweats his bones to keep himself alive;
Who's up against the real thing from his birth;
Whose heritage is hard and bitter toil;
I voice the weary, smeary ones of earth,
The helots of the sea and of the soil.

I'm the Steinway of strange mischief and mischance;
I'm the Stradivarius of blank defeat;
In the down-world, when the devil leads the dance,
I am simply and symbolically meet;
I'm the irrepressive spirit of mankind;
I'm the small boy playing knuckle down with Death;
At the end of all things known, where God's rubbish-heap is thrown,
I shrill impudent triumph at a breath.

I'm a humble little bit of tin and horn;
I'm a byword, I'm a plaything, I'm a jest;
The virtuoso looks on me with scorn;
But there's times when I am better than the best.
Ask the stoker and the sailor of the sea;
Ask the mucker and the hewer of the pine;
Ask the herder of the plain, ask the gleaner of the grain--
There's a lowly, loving kingdom--and it's mine.

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I think I'll leave it at that. I hope to report on my new career soon.

When in Puerto Viejo de Talamanca...

Well, if it's July, the main thing is that it rains. It rains constantly. It rains with a seriousness that you have to hide from under an awning and just stare at out of amazement and respect, because of the sheer volume of water crashing down everywhere, straight down, relentlessly, until the sky wears itself out, takes a four minute nap, and goes right back to raining like it has no idea that it can do anything else. The inexhaustible supply of water everywhere here makes it hard to believe that there are huge signs glowing yellow on California freeways right now announcing "serious drought" and begging people to conserve water. Between the rain and the humidity, my clothes and my skin haven't been dry since I arrived in Costa Rica two days ago.

I already have a hard red spider bite the size of a small pancake that I check on every fifteen minutes to make sure it hasn't changed size too drastically. I've efficiently located every vegan-friendly cafe in this somewhat touristic, very eccentric Rasta/Australian/French/Italian/Bribri/Tico-inhabited Atlantic beach town, and now know where I can buy vegan pancakes with strawberry chai jam, vegan chocolate cake with peanut butter chocolate icing, vegan mochas, vegan chocolate peanut butter cups made from scratch, pasta, hummus plates, burritos and everything else I could possibly wake up craving. Mostly, though, I want to eat pineapple and mango until I can't even stand the taste of them anymore. I even like the papaya here, which instead of tasting vaguely like puke (my experience of every papaya I've eaten in the states), fresh Costa Rican papaya tastes very mildly of cinnamon and pumpkin pie, and is delicately soft without descending into sliminess. (The strawberries here can't hold a candle to California strawberries, unfortunately). I ate a huge fruit salad for breakfast and watched the ocean.

My time so far has been divided between standing on the beach staring at the waves, wondering what's underneath them and whether the sun will be kind enough to stage an appearance that will allow me to go snorkeling, finishing The Book of Laughter and Forgetting by Kundera, eating in cafes, drinking lots of coffee, talking to other travelers staying in my hostel, and learning how to write a screenplay.

I really dislike the literary necessity of plot. It seems cruel to invent characters, only to set them up for disaster and disappointment. Writing pain into the lives of loved ones is an exercise in self-denial, and I'm enjoying it only because I haven't written fiction in a long time, and this is a new structure that appeals to me immensely.

So today is a day of almond milk mochas, grey ocean and grey sky, and grey macbook, and watching sleepy dreaded Ticos do their normal rainy day Tico things under umbrellas in flip flop feet. Tomorrow might be a day of bicycle rides to other beaches, or of baby sloths, or butterflies, or reggae clubs. There's a lot to do in this tiny place, and the best things to do are the things that people call nothing. I could live here.

The Masters Would Have Immortalized Me, and other summer realities

I haven't been writing here lately because I've been living. Summer always happens fast.

I went to a marriage celebration that seemed like it brought so many things full circle. It made me content, proud, and excited. And the lemony asparagus was so delicious.

I've gone up to Pinecrest a couple times. I pet my poodle a lot and relish her adoration of my attention. I went on a road trip and hung out with friends. When Sacramento strangers asked me what I do, I replied "I'm on vacation." In a few days, I'm going to Costa Rica. I have no idea what I'll be doing there, but I love Costa Rica. I love the soft sweet Spanish, I love "con gusto" and "pura vida", and I love salsa (the dance), gallo pinto (the food), and I LOVE guanabana (the fruit--you might know it as soursop, although I never did). So who cares what will happen once I get there. I don't care at all.

After Costa Rica, I'll be in Boise for the end of July. Then, somehow I have to get to New York by mid August. The dream is to ride my motorcycle, and second best would be to find other people with a car with fewer broken parts than mine who also are going to New York, and to share the ride. After that, I'll consider taking a train. Obviously, the worst thing would be to fly.

What comes next for the unemployed and savings-depleting Laralyn who wanders around California? This summer is so full, but then next, I don't know what to do with myself first. I have a lot I want to do, but I don't know what to do first. There are years in the making here. My self needs an occupation. Myself is this body that needs food and a little shelter. Myself is several decades left on earth if I'm lucky, and all the connections that my heart can carry.

I want to be a writer, I think, but I don't have anything to say. I've never liked plots. I don't like sad stories. This is why I don't write much fiction anymore. I might be in an independent film in the fall, if it gets funding. I want to crew a yacht cruising around the Galapagos. I want to live in a van. I want to learn to surf. I want to make coffee and drink coffee. I want Provence and Tuscany, mostly I want to be in the realness of the idea of loud dinners with big families with lots of bread and olive oil and wine. I want to grow organic vegetables, for someone else, with someone else's instructions, someone else's love in the soil, someone else's dirt on my hands. I want to feed people. I want the ocean. I want it deep in my heart, pushy and salty and terrifying me with its opaque indigo. I want fire in the palms of my hands in everything I do, and I want to forget the moon for a while and be a summer child, a sun daughter.

I've been reading a lot. A lot of it I forget, but some of it I don't. I thought about listing all of the books, but it'd be so deceitful. It would make it seem like I have all of those words in my mind or my soul, and I certainly don't. They just stretch me out and keep me company.

I wear sun dresses and big hats more fearlessly these days, and sometimes I catch my reflection and think I look fabulous, like one of the soft curvy goddesses painted by the masters. I found this wonderful project, and ever since, whenever I see my body, my skin, I see an oil painting, soft lines and deep curves, or a fresco, surfaces for reflecting light, or a watercolor, hazy and sweet and warm. I'm not at all into the fat acceptance movement, but I am into seeing those particular edges of my existence as quite lovely and strangely beautiful even while they are under reconstruction. I'm into being comfortable, like an artist's model. I guess what I'm saying is that I've recently discovered that the greatest men would have painted me, if I had lived near enough to them in time. And if they would have loved me, then everybody with any sense must love me, and I love me, and anybody who doesn't think I'm glorious has no idea that I quite nearly modeled for Botticelli (I only missed the gig by five centuries) and so I saunter and flow around California in this basil green cotton dress, knowing that I'm extraordinary when I smile, without having to bother being painted at all.

Maybe next I'll practice humility.