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.