Energies of Place

I write this from Orosi, a small Costa Rican town in narrow valley of shapely green mountains beneath textured grey sky. A town where i will write about in the following week, as this is where i will remain for a week. Will have time to get to know it and to be embraced in its feel.

It is a small walkable town of  about 5000 people so i read. It has a main street, a language school which is why i am here, a few stores, restos, warm bathing pools, a historic church, and more i am sure. It also has a calmer way of life which i notice as i stroll up and down the main street, and down the middle of some side streets, with few cars and still unpaved. The air is rich and it is green.

And how far away this morning seems (never mind yesterday afternoon or last week). This morning i awoke in Alajuela, sun shining bright, listening to another snore. went out in the early morn as town was waking up, most shops still closed, stands setting up, a few milling about, trucks unloading  and it was hot. I went out later, to shop a bit, the market getting busy on a Saturday and traffic picking up. I looked for a shop i had spotted the other day, but they fell into a blur. which one of the many that look all the same was it. I left the hostel, walked a last time on now familiar streets got onto the bus to San Jose. I left the now familiar behind.

The bus, on the autopista, i enter another zone. Going into San Jose, a traffic jam, another, though this time i had a vague idea of where i was. Off the bus, a busy pedestrian mall full of people and stores, bigger shops and a few more international chains that in Alajuela. The main square by the museum, it seems alive, i think i might like to stay for a few days next time i pass through. down another street i walk, away from the center and onto another bus. Zone transition time. Bus goes out of town in other direction, through traffic, and then out to autopista, past some shanties on the way.

Into Cartago, coming in it looks provincial as guidebooks say. Fields, then homes, then center, pass through quickly, another zone. Off the bus, near las Ruinas, the square, a panderia, a line of buses, the ruins to check out, the centre of this town, try to cross the avenue with others and traffic does not stop. no one know where my next bus is. i eat and smoke, and walk a few blocks. Another zone, one which i will visit more when i pass through again.

Find the bus, pull out on secondary road, through Paraiso, past a mall and a university, down semi-rural roads, all new. Then we descend – from the top look at town on valley floor, a river, a magical walls of green as we twist on down, shade grown coffee, green beneath a canopy of green, another zone, and into down, main road, a church, square, soccer field, the store where i am to get off, another zone – one i will explore.

Into the hostel where i will stay – that a zone in itself.

As i pass through many places, most new to me, some barely familiar,  time shifts differently that if i had stood still. It becomes a bit of a blur for i have passed through much in such little time – a blur. And in that time i have also passed through many versions of me – concerns of this morning now disappeared, intense sensations forgotten. In motion time and space blur and all seems more rapid.

On the journey through life,there are times when you here a call – a call of place.  Somewhere calls to you in your mind and you just have to go there though it may be many miles away, and you really do not know why you are going. It is only when you have arrived, that you begin to understand.

Sometimes it is not even a place you wanted to go, or even a place that you said you did not want to go. It may be a place that is familiar or it may be one that you really knew nothing about. But wherever it is, it beckons to you.

 At times it is whisper or a soft melody. Other times it is more like a nagging voice or a loud scream.

You may resist the call, sometimes for years or even a lifetime but it does not disappear. Yes, some inklings fade away over time, for some calls are for a special moment, and other inkings fade away and return when you least expect them. You may embrace the call and journey forward with an open mind and heart. Or you may grudgingly give in and travel forward with anticipation, worry or dread.

At times you wonder if it is your memories of a place that call you back and make you want to return – something you began, but did not finish, or something you failed to see. At times it is a longing for something left behind, but only if you listen hard can you tell if the call is really something larger than you, or a projection of energies for something that should be put to rest.
When you hear the call to a place you have been before, you look back and reflect and wonder why you are listening to this. You begin to analyse – are you moving forward or crawling back. And when is this questioning your ego blocking the higher source and when is it the higher source interfering with the call of the ego. If it was a place you did not stop, maybe you were’nt meant to, or did other chatter get in the way and make you resist. At times there is a warning with the call, and you wonder what is real, but if you do not follow it you will never know.

But maybe it is a place you have never been to, or even a place that you had ever imagined going. Yet it pulls you forward, towards it. Maybe it is a buzz in the air, the latest place in a given circle and you feel the energies of others being directed there, or maybe you have just read or seen too much about it. But other times it is something you stumble on, a random flyer, a conversation overheard, a chance encounter and the buzz enters your mind and makes you smile and say go. You do not know what will be there, but you know you need to go and you cannot explain why.

Sometimes the call is just for the road itself, for movement through place, a break in stagnation, for the journey through life.

There are other times where you feel a push from somewhere, and just want to or have to leave, but you do not hear the call or cannot listen. The mind goes fuzzy or stale, and you end up in stasis or you end up in a panicked flurry of activity as you race around looking, searching, beckoning. This is when you are lost. But if you can calm yourself and listen a call will emerge.

Sometimes you may forget about a call and then suddenly, after time has passed, you find yourself in a place that you had once yearned for. And what is this yearning.

Is it that we are looking for something outside of ourselves, or is it the journey that is paramount, the learning to listen to life, and to embace the flow, both within and without.The call of place is like a journey within linked to the flow of life.