Oh, Just Some Sundries

My love for papaya has reached the proportions of an affliction. I literally think I am twisting my stomach into knots with the quantity of papaya I eat. Also, somewhere along the way I have baptized it a ¨complete food¨, therefore able to substitute nutritionally for an entire meal. We always want to render what we love most into something more perfect in our minds.

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Our house now has cockroaches, it appears, although most of the ones I have spotted are thankfully of the on-their-back, dying variety. I will be honest, I don´t quite understand the visceral repugnance most people feel for them. I suppose they are proportionally more unpleasant than other bugs because of their unusually large size, but they are a beetle type of insect which means they only have six legs. It´s the centipedes that bother me. House centipedes. Thanks be it to every deity ever worshiped, I have never seen one in this house. I have woken people, namely my father, in the middle of the night to destroy those creatures because the very sight of them makes me almost hysterical. I mean, really, all bugs bother me on a dermatological level. So, logically, I have moved to a country with spiders as big as my hand?

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Yesterday Pablo said something that ruined my day. He told me he hates gay people. He might as well have killed a puppy in front of me. I felt so betrayed. Now, I´ll be honest, I don´t think of gay rights as something I care about on an active level. The environment has always been my big issue, and then genocide and indigenous rights. But yesterday made me realize that maybe I just took gay rights for granted. I mean, I love so many queer people, and homophobia just hasn´t fit into my world thus far in my life. The idea that you would hate someone because of who they love is so ludicrously preposterous I almost refused to believe in it. I told Pablo, ¨Don´t ever say that in front of me.¨ ¨Why not?¨ ¨My best friend is gay¨¨Ok, I hate all gays except for your best friend¨¨No! Don´t say that! Ever! I am not ok with that. I never want you to say that in front of me ever again¨. I had to walk away at this point because I would have attacked him with everything I had, and it wouldn´t have changed him. People here are stubborn. And my anger wouldn´t help. But I spent the next five hours or so walking around the hotel, sullen and feral.

Maybe what upset me most about the incident was that I began to start hating Pablo! Which is the worst. Because the only thing worse than people hating gays is people hating gays and then other people hating people who hate gays. That is way too much hate. So I am trying to put it beyond me, trying to continue to love Pablo the way I loved him before. Maybe in a few days I will ask him humbly why he feels the way he does, and maybe we can share our thoughts on the subject, but I don´t want an emotional scene. It´s not worth it. But yeah, that made me really, really sad. It really hurt.

Many Things

I don't know how I do it, but it seems to be the way things happen. For the first month of moving somewhere new, I'm usually unhappy, lonely, frustrated. And then, like clockwork, I become happy again. It's as though happiness is my natural state, and once I reach equilibrium someplace new, I become happy again. This week has been just so nice.

Our guests have been just lovely, some women from Tucson, AZ, and one elderly lady in particular who reminds me of Maude from "Harold and Maude". Yesterday some students from the University of Peace came on a field trip for their sustainable tourism class. I made friends with a few of the girls, and they invited me to visit them at the University! I'm so happy to meet people my age and have friends a close distance away. Last night I made lemon squares when the kitchen was empty, and they turned out delicious.

Windy season is here; it's dry, sunny, warm like spring, and gusty. I think I am the only person who likes the wind, but I luxuriate in it. It makes me feel totally alive and exhilarated.

I have been focusing on artistic endeavors. I painted a road sign for the hotel, spending many hours down in the basement mixing paint and thinner, making a huge mess and a very handsome sign to tell the drivers on the road not to honk. I also made a lantern lampshade for my bedroom. It was a naked lightbulb before. What I did was I boiled scrap office paper and then put it in the blender and spread it out thin on a screen to dry. Then I crumpled some other office paper and stained it in tea, the way we used to make treasure maps as kids. After letting that dry, I rubbed it with vegetable oil to make it translucent, and stored it for a few days between sheets of paper to wick out any extra oil. Once the handmade paper was dry, I folded it into four to make an open rectangular cube. I cut a window out of each side and glued the oil paper over. Last night I hung it in m room and it's soooooo beautiful! I also got a little desk for the hallway, and it has totally changed the whole house. It has a checkered table cloth and a stack of poetry books and a little blue lamp. I cut wildflowers and put them in an empty soda bottle with the top cut off. Finally, something nice! And I can write there. I am writing a short story, my first short story since I was a kid! It's going ok. But I'm reading "100 Years of Solitude" right now, and it is absolutely the most enchanting and delightful story, but it puts my writing to total shame.

I have been walking uphill from town to come into work on some days. It takes the better part of an hour, and it's way uphill. So it's a good workout, and I'm slowly meeting the people who live along the road, and the dogs are gradually beginning to get used to me and they bark less. Sometimes I stop in the Super to buy snacks for the walk up. I've been exploring their different dry cookies and plantain chips; everything is sort of gross but enjoyable just the same time.

The town has a new mayor! Mourning doves are building a nest outside my window! Mornings I don't have to work, I walk around the house in my wrap, with the doors open, eating papaya and writing.

Casper. Casper is gone from us forever. Kenny let his crazy stalker fuck buddy take care of him, and now she won't give him back or stop calling. He changed his phone number, and told her to just take the dog. It's sad, but I know that it's best because Kenny had no time for a dog. He couldn't take care of him and kept boarding him in Puriscal: he's only been at the house 2 nights all month. So goodbye Casper! You will be missed!

The bug situation is getting pretty hairy. I have to admit, my repugnance for bugs seems to grow daily. It is because there are no limits here! No boundaries! The bugs are lawless and prolific! The little ants here cover everything so indiscriminately as to be the universal texture of objects. Last night there was a scorpion in my bedroom. I tried to catch it in a water bottle but as soon as it moved I screamed and had to wake Kenny up because I couldn't sleep knowing it was in the room with me. Needless to say it was a humiliating experience that skeeved me out to the max. I can't put my hand anywhere dark or hidden because god knows what is in there. It's sort of like everything is covered with poopy slime, but invisible or small, moving poopy slime, and my bed is an island in the middle, a little safe haven in a world that belongs, most certainly, to the insects.