Where I am

My place is in the middle, not so much boundary as mixing point, where country peters out and city starts to fill its many voids. In one direction The Clouds, a village called Las Nubes known for fine cheese and honest horses. The other to San José, sprawling seat of government, capital of Costa Rica.

Most mornings I am awake with street dogs, early and reticent, sniffing at mountain air laced with bus exhaust and baking bread, trying to decide which way to go.

When I go up, the road courts a river through farmland, past hundreds of dairy cows knee deep in emerald swell. I find a trout pond so full I can reach out and touch the fish, fingers sending spasms through the mass of slick muscle. It takes just the flick of my wrist to catch one with a bit of chicken grist and a hook on a string. I eat it, eyeball and all, a few minutes later while a smiling woman of about 70 scrubs the pan, sharpens her gutting knife.

Upwards still the pavement ends, a whole lot of mud and rock held together at certain points by flecking scabs of asphalt. Water takes the right-of-way, road unraveling into tangle of muddy skeins cut from forest and cloud. I have no idea which way is north, only that in profound confusion, I can always follow the water back down.

In the city water has a way of hiding, darting into dark tunnels, buried pipes. It leaves me scratching my head where I swear there used to be a river. But then, I guess everywhere used to be somewhere else.

The children’s museum was a jail. The national museum was an airport. The art museum a liquor factory. At a bar that used to be a radio station I watch the soccer team play the World Cup quarter-finals, this country’s first time to advance so far among superpowers of the sport.

On the barroom screen a distant cheering multitude seems divisible only by the megatron singling out really avid fans. People around me sing along to the national anthem with tears in their eyes. We all rally fiercely around the band of ideal men in white uniforms, the guys nobody thought could do it. We scream for their blood and sweat on a field built especially for that purpose. It's pretty weird, actually. As the zeal grips me, begins to remind me of something else, I think, "Well, at least Costa Rica doesn't have a standing army."

The game stalls to penalty kicks, the agonizing overtime of overtime. When the Dutch keeper blocks a goal, clinching victory for his team, the air goes out of this city like a popped balloon. But in a matter of seconds the barroom breaks into applause, incessant honking on the street.

Minutes, then hours, the cheers don´t stop. I start to wonder: “They know they lost, right?”

People dance in the city’s main thoroughfare, closed to traffic. Confetti rains down on us. A petite woman all in white hands me a flag to wave. I think she says “Welcome to Costa Rica,” but it’s hard to hear over the bleating of vuvuzelas.

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reposted, more or less, here