Pura Vida

Ok, I will admit to not understanding Costa Rica´s tourism (?) motto: pura vida. It means pure life, but that just seems nonsensical to me. Well, it didn´t make much sense until recently. I realized that without some major barriers to life experience (ok, so my computer won´t start up and I have virtually nothing left to read) there is an extreme point of experiencing your surroundings. Probably something similar to a trek through the Costa Rican rain forest...though I am in the hot dry flatlands of Panama. Truly, I feel that I am vibrating at a different frequency, that when the breeze blows and the leaves flutter, part of my spirit is similarly fluttering and enjoying the ride. So, I´m super duper bummed about having potentially lost ALL the photos on my computer (archives which went back to my NYC days), though I haven´t given up hope in the Mac Genii in the USA. However, I´m spending even more time hanging with my community, I´m reading books in Spanish (Gabriel Garcia Marquez...it is quite a challenge but the only novel I have left), I´m listening to the radio in Spanish (generally trying to find a decent station that plays non-80´s, non-DJ sound-effects heavy, non-romantic Spanish, non-religious music), I´m standing in my front door smelling the air (a mix of wonderful blossoms and smoke because we are in the burning-grass season). Obviously, if I had a lot more time left to go, I may not be feeling so free and easy. But I recognize a change in myself: less freaking out about immediate problems, more faith that issues will get resolved in time, a lot more ability to just be purely alive and within my surroundings. Completamente viva (completely alive) doesn´t quite have the ring that pura vida has, but I think that´s a good way to understand it.

Stay tuned for my list of lessons learned...which I have to re-write from memory since it was saved only to my computer.