Good MORNING, Bejuco!

It isn't always cloudy in the mornings, and yesterday was one of those perfectly blue, sparkling days with Costa Ricans (Ticos, as they are called here) grouped in large family bunches along the beach, grandmas on chairs under umbrellas, babies splashing chubby legs in the water, boys surfing and boogie boarding, and clusters of women, poking through the shells, strolling, always chattering and all enjoying this week of complete shut-down for a soul like me who needs a lawyer to issue me some legitimate documentation before ICE, the electric company, will put on my electricity. Don't MESS with the institutions like ICE! If you have a $4.00 invoice, PAY UP.

Batteries on my flashlight are running low, and I bought some more yesterday, thinking they looked big and fat enough, but alas, they are Cs, and I need Ds. There's the project for today. Life is rough down here...

Filled up the hummingbird feeder, but they seem to be onto me; nary a one has set its little beak into one of those fake red flowers! I wait and I watch.

Hammock is hung, car has been watered...

and chairs are out. I have boiled the sugar water for the hummingbirds to cool for tomorrow's feeding; every lil' critter here is happy, including my dog friend, Playa, who came over to visit and began to weep and whine with joy at my presence. Life is good despite no electricity which requires a visit to a lawyer's office, documentation, and another trip to the electric company to get it re-established... In the U.S. if we don't pay our water bill one month because $12.00 isn't really worth writing a check for, we just wait until the amount is big enough; nobody turns OFF the water! Here, if you miss two payments (approximately $4.00 a month when I'm not here), they shut down your entire account, and to open it up again, you must get all sorts of documentation. Then there is the "marciamo," which is due on your car every year by Dec. 31; depending on how much your car is worth, you can pay up $1,000 or $100. It's like mandatory insurance, but nobody pays taxes and cannot afford to pay for tickets, so the country is perpetually out of money. Much to my delight, however, the main road has been repaved, taking some of the "fun" out of driving but probably saving some serious wear and tear on my friend the Galloper.

The sky is partly overcast but has moments of sunshine. The temperature is sublimely warm, so I'm worrying about nothing and just letting my soul catch up to my body.

Thinking of going up to San Vito to visit some people who have recently built a house up there where the Italians first settled (go figure), but driving the dear Galloper up the "mountain of death" may be a challenge I defer; I'm going to see how far I get with my books and see whether I need a diversion. There are loads of fireworks at the beach on New Year's Eve if I can stay up that late, but another week without electricity may force me into the car and on the road...

This is really a dull entry for which I am sorry - a waste of my time AND yours!

The kids up the road...

I went to the local school in Bejuco at the top of our dirt road today to meet the teacher(s) and scope out my teaching possibilities. The kids who were there were to die for, but most kids just don't come to school in this rural, poor part of Costa Rica. Having seen the three rooms of the school, one a "kitchen and cafeteria," I drove to Parrita and spent $40 on supplies. They have very, very little, as you will see from the photos. But who could resist this smiler? Or this yummy little girl? Broken equipment is just stacked outside or on this hall; they had no PE today because the teacher didn't show up, and one of the teachers went to a conference so 4 classes didn't come to school. They teach two sets of kids, different groups in the morning and then in the afternoon. These photos are of children in Pre-school, ages 4,5 and 6. The older children are grouped together in the same classroom, as there are only two. There is one "special" room set up with a desk, a black board and a chair, intended for one "special needs" child who was not at school today. The younger teacher told me that her biggest problem is getting the parents involved; clearly education is not a top priority for the agrarian poor in this country - or the corruption is so bad that funds allocated

here are being swiped.

This is the "cafeteria," and the kitchen has two burners; the refrigerator looks a little worse for wear, and the table along the wall was so rickety that if any child sat at it, he or she would probably fall into it when it collapsed in his/her lap!

Tomorrow I will take in my version of Concentration, modeled after the song "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes," which they know in Spanish but will learn in English. I will see who comes to school, but I have DOWN the names of the four who were there today!

When I got back, I noticed that a dog had come bounding through the entrance to our community, running all the way to someone's pool where he immediately sat down and pondered life as he knows it. I raced to take his picture, and here was his response.Have I just taken ALL the joy out of his pool visit?

Back in the saddle

Yesterday's walk on the beach brought me to this exquisite combo of wood detritus; now, if it doesn't look like a couple in bed, I don't know what else to show you! See the woman's hair? Need I point out more? I love this image, and then there were the two people motorcycling through the waves - something I could not figure out; sometimes living things are much too unpredictable and confusing for me, which is probably why I love to paint sturdy stuff, a coconut, a pineapple or a pair of running shoes...

Today was mostly gray after a gorgeously sparkly morning for awhile after I ran, but then maybe that was just the way I FELT about the prospect of the day. When I saw the sunset in a warm golden glow that counted to my mind as pink, all I could think was, "Pink at night, sailors' delight." Tomorrow should be a smash hit!

I'm not just sitting here, doing nothing, you know. I am at the very least painting: this is Three Friends and Agua de Pipa.

And yesterday's work is Just One Bite...

Back to Basics...

So, I get down here and discover that my electricity has been turned off, my car doesn't start, and I have nothing for supper, the worst of ALL possibilities! My neighbor drove me the 20 some miles to Parrita where I went dashing into the ICE office at five minutes to 5:00, thoroughly expecting them to say, "Sorry, we're closing," but they were opened until 6 and promised to have the electricity back on tomorrow after I paid an outrageous sum of money for electricity that was used during June when I was in Malaysia; I figure it was from the broken hot water heater that ran for goodness knows how long before I realized I was burning up my laundry room! The heater is bust, and I'm not replacing it until after Christmas, if then. Who needs hot showers in a climate and an environment like this? Ask my prima!

This is what I love about being down here - no guilt! I don't feel I have to organize or clean up or DO! Instead, I run early, go to bed early and take photos with my zoom lens that really WORKS! I could never get close enough to these little birds, but with a 13X zoomer that sister Lisa urged me to get, look what I can photograph! Now, if only my hummingbirds would stay still enough for me to photograph them! And it seems the waves are much crisper and clearer in the photos than they were on my little camera from Kathmandu, which was MUCH more expensive than this little Fuji that Lisa and I bought in NY at this WONDERFUL place run by hassidic jews who are the most helpful, well informed folks ever; it has a name like H and B or something not terribly telling, and the place was mobbed on a summer Sunday in July - the best.

Here are some flowers from the communal garden back by the pool, and the white ones are a form of ginger; they smell rich and sweet like a gardenia or jasmine, but then there is a little whiff of ginger as well; I can catch the scent every time I go inside or outside because I have the flowers on a little table at the front door.

San Jose is going to perform Carmen at the National Theater, a gorgeous old building, and I'm going to risk driving up to the big, bad city to see/hear it. What a TREAT in July to go hear Carmen in a spanish-speaking country!

Frogs, Toads and the last day...

I have a new guest who seems to think the top corner of my front porch is THE place to hang out, and he's made himself as yellow as he possibly can in order to camoflage himself. It's rather sweet to have another friend living here with me. These are the kinds of invisible frogs that the guides show you under big leaves when you pay your $30 for an hour's tour to learn about lizards and to see spider webs and maybe a frog or two; forgive my cynicism.

Then, there was this poor little feller, flat out on the the little road that winds around our little community here. I wished I could help him, but he looked like a goner; I think he must participate - or have participated - in the great chorus that is the dark here. We have almost exactly 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of dark everyday, which is a good thing for those of us who love to get up at the crack of dawn (5:15) and exercise, drink coffee and be productive and then hit the sack to read by 8:30. Life is so simple when it is warm and you don't even need hot water!

I think this may be the final version of The Beast for this visit; I will wait until July when I return and can putter with it. Paintings always look different after time and distance; actually, that's when I realize what a joke it is that I even TRY to paint, but I do seem to have a drive to do it, and it is pretty harmless, even if not quite as productive as quilting. It's certainly WAY less expensive!

Today I walked the opposite direction on the beach, crossing the brackish inlet where the water was up to my waist, rushing madly with contradictory currents pulling and tugging; then, I remembered that there are crocodiles in this inlet, so I really hauled ass! I walked along the beach on the other side where there were no houses, roads or paths. At one point, I noticed a man lounging up in the debris of logs and other things washed up on the high shore. I looked closer and realized he was naked, so I walked more quickly; he very politely waited for me to pass before he moseyed on down to the water for a little dip. I surmise there are more people living on the beach than I care to know about.

Finally, this is for all my Yoga friends, especially sister Lisa who is a whiz at it. I'm not sure what pose this would be considered, but it certainly looks like it would work your core and your quads, if not that high hamstring, about which I've been meaning to ask a neighbor here who has a little chiropractice right outside his house behind a straw-like screen. As I pass, I always smell the aromatic oils he must use on his patients. He's a surfer, his wife is a runner, so I figure they must know what they or doing. Either that or they are too young to have had any serious injuries!

The Beast

I am beginning a painting of my rickety but raucous Galloper, the car that has seen me up and down, in and out of ditches, roads, creeks AND the riteve. My friend Bill calls it "The Beast" and would like to drive it while I am back in Philadelphia; I am fearful because while he drives, I am responsible for any accidents or tickets or problems, and that makes me rethink leaving it with him.

I reworked this boat from a dreary day last summer during the rainy season, making the sand less pink, but still the boat is wrong, I know. I still kind of like it.

My friend Eva gave me a huge bottle of miel, as she had promised taking me to the spot where I could get it; I was so delighted when she pulled this large bottle of golden bliss from under her desk at the bank. She speaks no English, and my Spanish is limited, but we do seem to get along and read each other! In her honor and in honor of all the delicious, sweet joy of Costa Rica, I painted this one; I had already bought another bottle of honey, so I've put both in the painting, but hers is center stage. Hibiscus flowers are in the middle.

I ran out of canvasses right around the time I had to leave my car for two days with the mechanic who got it through the riteve by fixing it up so that it could pass. One morning I pulled out my water colors and tried to create a still life of sorts, but I was out of fruits or delicious things to paint, so I pulled three eggs out of the fridge, the frying pan and a bowl. There was a knife somewhere too, but it didn't seem to make it into this little sketch. I know the frying pan looks as though it's bleeding; I'll fix that...

Trying to prepare for my proposal for SVA's conference in the fall and hope to do something on my trip to Bangladesh but cannot seem to get it into 200 words; because the conference is around Denis Dutton's notion of the "Art Instinct," I listened to a 15 minute lecture of his on TedTalks. Who knew? Now I do, but I've got to work his notion into my reading of one banned Bangladesh author and two who write in English and don't even live in Bangladesh. Maybe there is an instinct to have an audience! I'm not happy with that and think more along the lines of the art of language so that I can look at texts and signage in Dhaka and wherever else my 10 days take me.