On our way back to the city from the Monteverde region, our driver, an ecotour veteran, stopped suddenly on the road after hearing familiar noises.

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Part 1 - Part 2

新年快樂! I would have photographed the madness that was Chinatown yesterday, but I am still without a camera... or, come to think of it, any training in photography.

Got a flickr account as ironed_orchid suggested; more photos from Costa Rica are forthcoming. Unfortunately, the maximum photo size allowed is 1024 X 768 pixels, and I can only upload 20 MB per month. For those of you who care: Which would you prefer, that I upload more photos at a lower quality or that I upload fewer photos but a higher quality?

So apparently my scrapbook is being held hostage.

( a friendly message from LiveJournal )

Has it always been that way? I wish I'd read this before spending all those hours uploading, annotating, and organizing photos. I really wanted to show you the cloud forest. Maybe I'll find another service.

Unfortunately, my paid account has expired, so I'll only be able to show in high-quality whatever I managed to upload.


The end of another field trip, a long drive back to Heredia with plenty of time to look at the scenery, watch a movie, write, or daydream... or so we thought. To our surprise, we stopped at a touristy research center with butterfly and frog gardens, crocodiles, and caimans (which I won't show).

After a briefing on the events for our visit, we split into two groups, one for non-Spanish speakers and the other for those proficient in Spanish. I chose the latter group although I wouldn't understand half of what the guides would say.

My group was led into a sweltering, insect-filled forest, where we all rushed to spray and rub on insect repellent as our guide spoke. Outside the frog garden, the guide instructed us to search for frogs by poking through the fallen leaves with pointed sticks. I didn't have much luck.

My soul aches for beauty and the company of trees.

( hummingbird & me )

Tomorrow I turn 21. Since the poem-writing last year was a flop, I've decided to take you all with me to Costa Rica (minus the sunburn, insect bites, and horrible rashes) as my gift this year. But damn, I should have written the captions in advance. In any case, tomorrow will be all mine for depressive reflection and psychological breakdowns... and inspiration.

Welcome to the Osa Peninsula

When the air is dark and damp like this, there's no contentment like that of listening to recorded voices looping like a tag team of lazy flies caught in a honey jar but only half-looking for a way out. For the moment I'm at home^† here with no company but my lamp, my laptop, and the voices that will buzz pleasantly around until the last lands on my ear drum with a static stop. Every now and then I piggyback on my voice, which becomes one of the flies and joins in the aerial dance until the vibrations fade or break into laughter that also lands on my ears. If this experience had a taste, it would be like lukewarm Sunkist orange soda gone slightly flat.

And there's the chill, of course; but it's hard to tell just by feeling whether the chill is present or the warmth is absent, if either. Regardless, the cold ache of hands and feet only highlights the warmth of the light on my skin and of the keyboard beneath my fingers, and vice versa. It's exquisite. The echoes of nonpresent people are delicious like magicians' tricks you know the secrets to. There's not actually anyone here with me; indeed, it would be much noisier if anyone were. But I don't feel the absence of people in any negative sense. These allusory presences are company without claustrophobia, room for reflection. Plus I get to sit around in my underwear.

All these experiences emerge from, among other things, crazy chemical dances on catabolic and anabolic pathways where macromolecules breakdown and are assembled, where energy stored in the bonds between atoms are converted to and from the kinetic energy of colliding molecules--the warmth of the body. Maybe you don't want to hear that, though. It is intimate yet alien and occasionally sets the aesthetic alarm bells blaring in me because I know what it means: these dances, persistent yet contingent, become other dances, and at some point I won't be around to reflect on it nor witness anymore.

Just being alive is so beautiful that nostalgia edges up on me because I know it, or rather I, must end. Who knows whether the last steps will taste more bitter or sweet? I'm guessing bitter because I don't think a little thing like me will ever run out of things it wants to do and experience. For the moment, though, I can't complain.

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^† But now the moment has passed and I have no home to return to. I change too fast and my house becomes decrepit and falls down, so there never is. All that's left is splintered wood, broken glass, disintegrating cardboard, vacuous memories, and nausea.

Regardless of what I used to think: always separate, I have never really known anyone or anything well, nor truly loved anyone, nor been seriously and irreparably injured by anything... and have only come close through my foolishness or naivete. It's as if I'm just a piece of driftwood (but I'm not).

Well, I've still got time.

.
.
.

There's too much I want to say that would take too much time and effort to articulate. Since I've been in contact with people and have told them some of these things already in a casual, unartistic way, writing them would seem repetitive. Do others need me to inspire their vitality, to help them see beauty? Would they benefit from hearing my complaints? Perhaps not. I feel no need to preach or prove myself either (though I will argue about truth, knowledge, meaning, and aesthetics when the time is right); I'm not as insecure as I used to be.

Oh, I am filled with such restlessness. Is this just the sugar I've ingested, or is it something else? My leg is twitching, I have energy, and I have homework, but I'm tempted to go jogging. Such East River lovely ugliness that would be, but so time-consuming. Time with non-horrendously-ugly people (friends, the few—for why should I join the ugly in their pseudo-lives?) was enjoyable but I could have spent some of that time walking by the East River and feeling cool existential exasperation. I can't decide how I feel. Perhaps I can spend the weekend in isolation. Or I could go home and take care of business.

I've ingested too much and need to release this energy. Sugar, starches, spices, life; delicious, but I'm sorry I made myself overfull. Cooking has become something beautiful to me: an energy-release, creative entertainment—expression, art, energy conversion. I love the anticipation of the tasty food, the imprecise, creative experiment, the joy. There is something wonderful about it. It's alive, that is, an activity for the living. It is vital. Scents of toasted almonds, garlic & onions (I let them make me cry) frying in sesame oil, turmeric, paprika, cinnamon, pepper, vegetarian oyster sauce and soy, garam masala, burning peppers, fresh organic tomatoes—I am rich with life. But life is much richer than these painted scenes.

I felt so dead earlier (in listless afternoon doldrums) and so alive now. But it is constrained vitality, its expression muted. If I tap and shake and shift, I am still here sitting and writing with the aching teeth and sweat and skin itching and legs locked in a tilted near-pretzel. I could brush my teeth, I could go jogging, I could do my homework, I could let my skin burn against the upholstery of the chair as I write more; the situation is saturated with potential.

There's still time for cool existential exasperation before Theory of Knowledge reading. Now I'm going to brush this bacteria off my teeth with cool minty paste and—it's raining, forget teeth and get out there!

( live pour )

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This poem is lacking... Oh, public it is. Uncrafted clumsy I am a poor craftsman, but it is beautiful.

Spontaneity, I love you.
Now the acrylic upholstery is burning the skin of my feet again, and I'm inspired to move.

Ugliness, beauty, exasperation, inspiration... it's so good to be alive.

(Photo taken by Nina)

Suddenly you realize... you're free, competent, unafraid, and ready to explore the world.

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Why am I back here again in this room, in this lifestyle?

But things are changing. What a relief.

Sitting on my family's deck in Brooklyn and cloud-gazing alone, I felt possibly as content as I'd ever felt in my life. I understand now why someone would want to spend her life capturing and creating beauty.

A chapter of my life is closing, and I find myself wanting to say so much and yet strangely mute but for the scribbles in my paper journal and the remnant ramblings by which those who have spent time with me during my loquacious spells have come to know me. The message is clear more or less, but I do not have the time, energy, and patience to express it in such a way as will do it justice. It is always this way.

The best days of my life so far are coming to an end. After the unexpected five-day, four-night tour of Canada that my mother and sister are planning (and generously funding) for the 17th-21st of August, I may not have much to look forward for a year or more to but philosophy and what little beauty I can find in the city. This is quite depressing (I've been mourning the end of this trip on and off since it was halfway through) but not too worrying. I'll have the memories of that one clear night where I lay on the beach in Montezuma beneath the only star-filled sky I've ever seen, of that brilliant sunset of pinks, oranges, purples, and blues behind tree-covered hills that I watched on the road, and of the refreshing hikes through the cloud forests of Monteverde and Santa Elena to look back on whenever I'm deadened and hopelessly uninspired (as I am used to be perpetually whenever I stay stayed in a city).

Life is too short to waste missing dazzling sunsets and nights of stargazing and/or living in a routine ignorant stupor. I want to be on the road chasing those sunsets with the wind blowing in my face while trying to understand... everything.

I was going to delete this entry or abandon it like everything else I've been writing, but I'll never get around to finishing the tortured metaphors on which I've been operating, so this will have to do.

Sun 24 July 2005
I have to write something meaningful before this pen runs out of ink.

That sentence is what I wrote in my diary after spending about a minute scratching out the date and trying to get the ink to flow out of my pen. I was riding back to Heredia on a bus filled with other, arguably less preoccupied and pensive students after an overnight trip to Volcán Arenal and had just watched Exterminador^† between long stares out of the window. Seeing the movie again after so many years was an odd experience. I think I remember sitting on my parents' bed in their little bedroom in our apartment in the projects watching the movie for the first time on our ghetto old television set (which I had already marked up with crayons) when I was a little girl. I never would have guessed all that's happened to me since that unimaginative time in my life, and yet I don't feel like I've come particularly far. My eyes are still very young. The movie made me think again of my mortality and the future. I am in my twenties now, I haven't done anything yet, and at some uncertain time, I am going to die. What do I want to do with the next decade of my life if I should live through another decade?

Short answer: I want to learn, to explore, to be on the road, maybe start or participate in a revolution or two...

I can't wait to see what happens.

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^† That's right, the original Terminator, en español.

Somebody help me identify this bird! (Lorikeet? Parakeet? Conure? Red lored parrot? I should take a class on taxonomy.) I've got to learn more about this bird so that I can appreciate more than the splendor of its presence (from memory). What is the niche of its species (e.g., specific kinds of... seed dispersal, herbivory, insect predation, part of nutrient cycles...)? What are its habits (social, feeding, mating, nesting, breeding)? What is its history (developmental, (co)evolutionary)?

Of course, I can't really expect a species identification without an expert and from a photo when there is such diversity in the tropics. That would be ecological naivete.

Unidentified Bird A local brought this bird to a fútbol game in a town on the Osa Peninsula of southern Costa Rica.

It kindly perched on a branch while I snapped a few photos.

Once again, I recommend androkles's journal.