Digital Rabbit Hole

I was sick for months with an autoimmune flare up, and was finding it difficult to get back on my creative feet.

Nothing I tried felt inspired… and then I realized  why I wasn’t and what was wrong. They were my ideas that came from me…not from my Muse. Then an idea began forming, almost intuitively and this idea, that was not coming from me, was asking me to jump into my role as humble scribe, and write down the Muse’s thoughts as fast as I could.

She had been quiet during my illness, almost as if she had abandoned me in my weakest moment…but when I began to hear her whispers, her intentions  for me to take on…I was not angry…I was relieved…and I was intrigued.

It seemed like an awfully big project to  me …the more I thought about it, the bigger it became. The background story, how I got to where I was, when I had my transcendental epiphany (Everything Eats Everything), during a weekend in Escazu, Costa Rica, taking a personal retreat with The Barefoot Carmelitas of Santa Teresa de Avila in a monastery of cloistered nuns, was quite an undertaking. Well it seemed like it was too much… I mean, to explain how I got there I would have to keep going back and going back… sighs. I was thinking my muse had bigger ideas than I was  capable of realizing.

But, today I woke up thinking,  hmm I could start here:

Chapter One

1:30 pm sharp: the tide was totally in.
They had given me a tide chart, which at first seemed
unnecessary but  quickly became my bible.

Certain rivers and creeks could only be crossed safely at low tide; if it was half way between low and high tide, you might have to cross with the water at waist height…at high tide…you’d have to swim.

Our little house, we just rented, was situated at the mouth of the river Baru. That river mouth, at high tide,  sucked in all the brackish-water fish from the Pacific ocean and sent them upstream. It was a good time to fish along the banks of Baru river…it was also that same high tide that flooded our entire downstairs.
(That’s me back in 1975 fishing with a hand reel at the mouth of the Barú River)

(Our little house on and sometimes in the Pacific Ocean…that’s me washing dishes)
Poett was a real good dishwasher too…lots of elbow grease)

(Tide is coming in)

We had been warned, just another interesting fact about our wooden two story house we rented from the Rojas family. Doña Carmen was quick to tell us that our new two story rental was only a one story, the upper story, as the very high tide had a tendency to wash right through the downstairs, which at one time, when it was first built, was a kitchen, shower and bathroom.

I admit it was inconvenient, hauling water upstairs from downstairs, to cook, and carrying dirty dishes downstairs to wash in a plastic tub with a hose, but it was absolutely unreal at high tide sitting on the balcony, looking out to sea…. It was like being on a ship in the ocean, instead of a house on the beach near the ocean.
It was Magical!!

(In January you could see the whales swimming by)

My five year old daughter Poett and I had just been here a short time, and yet after months on the road, long-hauling it down the Pan American highway, being delayed for almost a month in Guatemala waiting for parts for my difficult-to find-parts 1968 Harvester International pick up with a double cabin and 8 ft bed…We finally made it to a small remote beach on the Pacific side of Costa Rica, called Dominical, and declared “We’re home! We made it!!”

There’s our truck, Buster, in back & our 1st friend, Mariela & her bf Carlos

There was no electricity in Dominical, or phone service, or refrigeration..or anything. In the evenings, I taught Poett to light the candles and our funky little upstairs glowed with Rembrandt lighting, while the waves crashed below. Only the stars and the moon lit up the sky, and it felt like we had gone way back in time, instead of to another country.

What can I get you? Coffee? Pineapple Juice?……

I spoke Spanish, which was a blessing, and after four years paying attention in high school Spanish classes, I actually had learned and remembered something. Costa Rican Spanish had its own particular dialect and its very own words for things, but I could still communicate. I was a little worried for my five year old daughter who spoke only English… I learned quickly I had totally under-estimated her or really any five year old you plunk down in a foreign country,,, They can literally start speaking in weeks…

Poett brought her first friend home after a week and I heard them sort of playing/fighting in Spanish.. “My doll is prettier” .. not in perfect Spanish, but Poett got her point across. “Mi muñeca bonita.. muy bonita No MI muñeca mas bonita” I was absolutely amazed and very proud too… Kids just soak in a new language like sun rays…Before I could even believe it possible, Poett was speaking Spanish and about to enter Kindergarten, in the one room/six grades school house that was walking distance from our little precarious home on, and sometimes in, the ocean.

Quiere Jugar Muñecas? Want to Play Dolls?

I was 27 years old and Poett 5…We were beginning another life.

I started realizing how new this life was going to be, when Poett came home from school one day and asked, “Am I baptized?”
I said quickly, “No…why?”
“Are you baptized?” she asked. “No, why?” “
Why aren’t we baptized?”
“Well, we are Jewish, just not practicing our religion at the moment.”

My father was Jewish and never wished to see me baptized and my mother accepted as she was not very religious herself. Neither of us is baptized and that’s ok…it’s a choice…Poett thought about it and an hour later came back and said, “I choose to be Catholic…all my friends in school are baptized…so I want to be too.”

“Well, I will have to think about that,” I answered diplomatically.

“Oh and something else, Doña Luz  is teaching me the rosary after school.”

“She is??? Why?”

“I asked her to…when I learn it..she will give me a rosary blessed by the Bishop.”

Oh boy, I thought…We are beginning a very new life indeed!

Poett in the Barú…perhaps on the road to conversion?? 1975

 To be continued…