After enjoying an amazing weekend at a colorful, hippie-fied hostel called Rocking J's, I left (at 730 in the morning...groan) to return to San Jose, only to get bogged down on the road back for about 2 hours because of a terrible accident a few cars ahead. I hope I'll get the pics and memories about J's up in a few, but I had a rather interesting, strangely enjoyable experience during the traffic jam that I thought I'd share. I spent part of the time reading a book of poetry borrowed from my friend Smai from the IFSA program--the author Jim Dodge has an incredible knack for poetry and prose. Basically, I got so caught up, I felt I should write a bit myself (it's not poetry but I don't know) and spent most of my time on the extended bus ride doing so....here's the result, for better or worse.
Stuck in a traffic jam on a barely two-laned road cut through dense bosque nuboso between a weekend's vacation and San Jose, Costa Rica. It's Valentine's Day, and the only romance in the situation croons over the speakers in the bus...te amo...in a weak, half-inspired cookie cutter spanish ballad that doesn't half-match teh barefoot, dirty-fingernails, living-in-the-moment kind of love that filters through the gritty lingo of the best poetry I've ever read in a book borrowed from a friend. The radio's had a change of heart and switched to a pan-pipe lullaby rendition of The Sound of Silence, which somehow kind of works with the round-leafed brush and shreds of mist outside the windows, the dreary snatches of conversation in French, German, and English tourist tongues, while a happy little Spanish-speaking girl chatters at the front. "I think people died and their guts are all over the place," uttered with a chuckled insensitivity, who can blame him for his flippant, frankly disgusting attempt at humor when we've been sitting, butt-numbed in our seats for surely over an hour. I haven't been too concerned with the delay, (and to be honest, though I prayed for them already, the people who's guts are probably being scraped from the precious pavement or hurriedly packaged--I hope--back into inside as they rush to be saved from the terrifying brink, at a hospital--shoot "un muerto" announced the bus driver in hard simplified clarity) buried in mounds of dirty-down-to-earth but sparkilig words in the brilliant , rain-rippled pages of Dodge's Rain on the River, words I'm trying to imitate in the midst of what's probably a major crisis (or at least a minor speedbump for loaded holidayers hoppying from Caribbean to LA) with alot less creativity and spark than I'd imagined. The pins and needles in my bum are starting to get to me, but frankly my only other worry is finding a place to pee if we don't get moving within the next half-an-hour or so. Honestly, I'm rather enjoying this pause, prolongued moment, where I can cuddle my poetry, mud-stained legs and soles curled under my green jacket, happily suspended between forgetting and being blindsided, pounded, flattened--roadkilled--by responsibility. The engines are turning for about the fifth time, and the bored, sleepy tourists are eagerly turning back to their seats (again). With the chugging whir vibrating the vinyl-slipped headrest and the walls and the window, my bladder nudges at me like a child at the check-out, urged by tantalizing possibility. Funny how some random lapse of caution or over-eager lurch has landed us involved in these different positions: someone's soul left wandering by the edge of the road, damp and delirious and alone; passengers either stoic or boiling just under their apathetic exteriors; me, drowsy and detached, floating lazily on my back through the thick minutes, like yesterday in the perfect clear water, which moved rolling along my back up to the soft mess of hairs at the base of my neck. But since water does nothing for my impatient bladder, I'll leave my daydreams of poetic profundity for a few and devote my thoughts to a little more prayer and quiet relishing of words all at once comforting, rough, insightful, and electric.
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