Outside my front door there's a huge butterfly bush that I find magical. But I'm not writing about that now. I'm working on my Costa Rica Memoir. This is a longer post, but I want to share it.
Before we moved to Coco we lived in an even smaller town called Heradura. We weren’t really in the city, proper, but on the outskirts, renting a house from a Canadian man who I don’t think had ever even been to Heredura.
Every day I would ride the bus from our street through the little town of Herdura, past the fruit stands, the school, the major supermarket. From the window you could see yards full of ducks and chickens, people sitting on porches, or lying in hammocks scrolling on their phones, kids riding bikes. Occasionally a pair of macaw parrots would fly by in the distance. I’d see them in pairs, like two brush strokes painted against the sky, all black silhouette. But if they landed in a tree you could see how bright and red they are.
In Jaco and all over Costa Rica, bus drivers are beacons of their community. Get on a bus and you’ll see the bus drivers waving to people on the street, people in cars. They make chit chat with those getting on the bus and off. If someone is running late and a driver catches them in the rear view mirror, they do a miraculous thing I’ve never seen in Los Angeles. They stop and wait for the person to catch up.
It’s always packed with children and the elderly. Teen boys stand up to give their seats to old women, and nursing mothers. Mothers hold their children close on their laps, crowding two toddlers and themselves into one bus seat. Kids see their friends on their way to school. Little girls in plaid uniforms gossip with each other in Spanish. Little boys help their mothers with younger children.
For a while we sat in the back of the bus, and we never could give up a seat to an older person because someone at the front of the bus would do it first, and I felt a little bit like an asshole.
Here in Coco we live so close to town we never need to take the bus anywhere. Just get on our bikes and ride down the road into the main drag, then walk the length of the beach to get from one side of town to the other. We only take the bus when going into Liberia, which we avoid as much as we can because most of what we need we can get here, at the beach.
Today I did get on the bus to make a special trip into Liberia and the Walmart there so I could get a bag of Starbucks Dark Italian Roast.
The bus ride to Liberia is beautiful.
On the ride we pass houses with tin roofs shaded by overwhelming banana leaves or trees full of mangoes, pastures full of Brahmin cows, fruit stands piled with pineapple and fuchsia colored dragonfruit, when it’s in season. Sometimes a blind man and a woman get onto the bus and the man sings, holding out a hat for spare change. I’ve seen this happen all the time in New York or Los Angeles on the subways, and people usually just stare ahead, pretending they don’t see what is happening. In Costa Rica though, the bus riders seem to expect this, and consider helping the man mandatory, so they reach into their pockets and pull out whatever change they have and put it in his hat, making a generous music of their own.
My one-day weekend got away from me. Maybe there's some magic in thoughts that go round and round. Workweeks long as comet tails. Rich men in Woodside dangling their money at me like forbidden carrots. Isn't it enough to know I'm beautiful to someone? Even if the someone is old and ugly and Trump-like? I'm beautiful. The redwoods and ocean and winding roads and my own limbs like rivers of lava--all tell me I'm beautiful. And I believe it. I do.
Sounds like it will be a fascinating memoir. Love how you make the setting come alive
Outside my front door there's a huge butterfly bush that I find magical. But I'm not writing about that now. I'm working on my Costa Rica Memoir. This is a longer post, but I want to share it.
Before we moved to Coco we lived in an even smaller town called Heradura. We weren’t really in the city, proper, but on the outskirts, renting a house from a Canadian man who I don’t think had ever even been to Heredura.
Every day I would ride the bus from our street through the little town of Herdura, past the fruit stands, the school, the major supermarket. From the window you could see yards full of ducks and chickens, people sitting on porches, or lying in hammocks scrolling on their phones, kids riding bikes. Occasionally a pair of macaw parrots would fly by in the distance. I’d see them in pairs, like two brush strokes painted against the sky, all black silhouette. But if they landed in a tree you could see how bright and red they are.
In Jaco and all over Costa Rica, bus drivers are beacons of their community. Get on a bus and you’ll see the bus drivers waving to people on the street, people in cars. They make chit chat with those getting on the bus and off. If someone is running late and a driver catches them in the rear view mirror, they do a miraculous thing I’ve never seen in Los Angeles. They stop and wait for the person to catch up.
It’s always packed with children and the elderly. Teen boys stand up to give their seats to old women, and nursing mothers. Mothers hold their children close on their laps, crowding two toddlers and themselves into one bus seat. Kids see their friends on their way to school. Little girls in plaid uniforms gossip with each other in Spanish. Little boys help their mothers with younger children.
For a while we sat in the back of the bus, and we never could give up a seat to an older person because someone at the front of the bus would do it first, and I felt a little bit like an asshole.
Here in Coco we live so close to town we never need to take the bus anywhere. Just get on our bikes and ride down the road into the main drag, then walk the length of the beach to get from one side of town to the other. We only take the bus when going into Liberia, which we avoid as much as we can because most of what we need we can get here, at the beach.
Today I did get on the bus to make a special trip into Liberia and the Walmart there so I could get a bag of Starbucks Dark Italian Roast.
The bus ride to Liberia is beautiful.
On the ride we pass houses with tin roofs shaded by overwhelming banana leaves or trees full of mangoes, pastures full of Brahmin cows, fruit stands piled with pineapple and fuchsia colored dragonfruit, when it’s in season. Sometimes a blind man and a woman get onto the bus and the man sings, holding out a hat for spare change. I’ve seen this happen all the time in New York or Los Angeles on the subways, and people usually just stare ahead, pretending they don’t see what is happening. In Costa Rica though, the bus riders seem to expect this, and consider helping the man mandatory, so they reach into their pockets and pull out whatever change they have and put it in his hat, making a generous music of their own.
My one-day weekend got away from me. Maybe there's some magic in thoughts that go round and round. Workweeks long as comet tails. Rich men in Woodside dangling their money at me like forbidden carrots. Isn't it enough to know I'm beautiful to someone? Even if the someone is old and ugly and Trump-like? I'm beautiful. The redwoods and ocean and winding roads and my own limbs like rivers of lava--all tell me I'm beautiful. And I believe it. I do.
Oh, I love this. This is a full poem, yes? I want to eat it up. "Isn't it enough to know I'm beautiful to someone?"
Thanks for seeing a poem in it. I played with line breaks and chronology:
A Date With Magic
My one-day weekend
got away from me. Thoughts
magic in their round
and round. Work weeks
long as carrots hanging
before my hands. Men
on rose petal driveways
dangle dreams of diamonds
long as comet tails. Is it
enough to know I’m pretty
to someone? Even if
his hips hold years
like thick politicians? Outside
his gates the roads wind
through redwoods to broken
glimpses of salt. My own
limbs, liquid as lava, tell me
I’m beautiful. I believe
in it. I do.
I still love this poem. Consider starting at "The work week hangs/ in front of me...."
Yes! Much stronger first line! Thank you!