Wish Fulfillment

Just back from a week in Costa Rica...

a musical travelogue of sorts...




"Pull up to the bumper baby..." Grace Jones in my earphones as the cab swept me through the prodigious exhaust fumes of San Jose to the Musoc bus station. Bus ride over the mountains was so full of radical altitude changes that my ears popped worse than on the plane. Road full of switchback twists and turns overlooking sheer drops into the rainforest. "Jungle love, o-bee, o-bee, oh." Morris Day and the Time.

"Gimme 'nuther hit of vitamin C..."Big Audio Dynamite. I narrowly avoided getting a cold that wanted to get its teeth in me at the beginning of the trip. Was dropping vitamins with great urgency. "Positivity; have you had your plus sign today?"

Prince, from the Lovesexy album.

Finally at my sister Jenny's place outside Dominical, finally get to meet my beautiful 2-yr-old niece, Alana. She's perfect. Why do people have to grow up?

"Rain....feel it on my fingertips, hear it on the windowpane..." sitting with my sister in her candy red VW bug on the patio cranking Madonna while a tropical rain beat down on the roof, overlooking the miles of severe green hills that surround the one-story she shares with her boyfriend Raymond and daughter Alana. Horses, dogs, a cat. The rain banged down relentlessly, non stop for those first two days. Music to sleep by.

The humidity is intense down there but it's a healthy, tropical humidity that makes moisturizer almost beside the point. "Hang me up to dry..." Cold War Kids.

I check into the Tortilla Flats in Dominical after spending two nights at Jenny and Raymond's place. I'm listening to Annie's "Me Plus One" on the discman. Jared shows up that night.

The rest of the trip is a blur of bloody marys and Imperials.

"In the shadow of the sun..." Love Like Blood. Reading on the beach, watchin the surfers. Finished Ian McCuen's Atonement....what a book.

"Walking in the rain..."

(Grace Jones again...)

Rain again, tropical rain, heavy showers passing through every day. The beach clears out but Jared and I decide to go run down the beach in it. Swam in the warm roiling surf, rain pounding down, for like an hour. It was awesome and surreal. Not another soul in sight just the violently green mountains, the riotous ocean and the sky. Jared: "that was one of the highlights of my adult life." It was definitely up there. Wish I could've taken a picture. My sunglasses swept out to sea...

"when I see you high as a kite..." The Cure. Extended remix.

Same three mix CDs, over and over....X...Lily Allen...Ramones...Descendents...Swervedriver...Mew...Chainsaw Kittens

We sample all the bars, all the restaurants. Any bartender who could make a bloody mary made us one. Everyone we met knew my sister, local surfing legend. Everyone. All the tourists we met were taking surfing lessons from her.


"I like small rooms..." Papas Fritas. Bunk beds and cool showers. Sand on the floor.

Steamy sunshine followed by more rain. "Put out the fire on us; bring the buckets by the dozens..." ColdWar Kids again.

"I know I'm unloveable....you don't have to tell me..." My sister's overactive, misbehaving dalmations, forever banished to an outdoor existence. Bodi and Magoo. Boisterous animals they were! But certainly not unloveable. The Smiths on the discman.

Geckos everywhere. On the walls and ceilings, in restaurants. Good little critters, they eat mosquitoes and spiders...Alana, points, delighted; "gecko!"

"Zombie Eaters," Faith No More.

Too muggy for a hairstyle. My close-cropped mohawk doesn't care. "I'm so tired of my guns and my vanity, I'd like to trade 'em in for some sanity..."

Luscious Jackson,"Ladyfingers."

"Wish Fulfillment," Sonic Youth

Back over the mountain...Prince in the headphones...RHCP...Shudder to Think...cab to the aeropuerta (9,500 colones). Cloying emissions...exit tax...ascent into the clouds.

"Take a Bow," Madonna

(again)

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