At the parents’ house outside of San Jose, the wind blows furiously, sometimes for days on end; it’s a loud and constant whine, too irregular to tune out. We drove through the rain, past the mudslides and waterfalls and bloated brown rivers to the beach, where the rain continued to pound the corrugated metal roof of our cottage for another two days. Everything was wet, everything was green and glossy and grown over; even the plants here are covered in layers of green and growing things, bromeliads, orchids, and mosses. The towels stayed wet, the clothing inside our bags mildewed and the sheets were damp when we got into bed. The indoors and outdoors are not separate here. Even if the windows are screened, they aren’t glassed. It takes some getting used to each time, in the way the proximity of so many other human beings on the subway does. Nature is leaning up against me, breathing heavily down my neck, and reading over my shoulder, indifferent to sighs or dirty looks.
Another thing that takes getting used to is driving a Mercedes. We have been lent a fancy car while we’re here. It’s a dream to drive through the mountains and on wet roads, especially compared to the tinny rental cars we’re used to, but it’s a little like being in disguise. I’ve never really known anything about cars and after living in NYC for a decade I know even less, so I don’t know the model or anything, but I can tell you that this one looks like it should be driven by an elderly diplomat and his hairsprayed wife. It makes me think of pantsuits and designer sunglasses. I wear the Bottega Veneta sunglasses passed along to me as a freebie by a magazine editor friend years ago, the lenses now rubbed to a fine mist, and the arms held on by a naked twist tie and a mismatched screw, but I don’t think we’re fooling anyone.01 Or maybe we are. On the way into town, a cop stopped us and checked the trunk. What brand is this car, he asked. Mercedes, V told him. Exactly, he responded in mysterious satisfaction.
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I am reading Fuschia Dunlop’s book, Shark Fin and Sichuan Pepper at the same time as I am reading Julia Child’s My Life in France. The latter is awkwardly written, but is exciting and gossipy enough that I can’t put it down. The former is as good as I expected it to be. The author is remarkably self aware, really thoughtful. I will undoubtedly reread. It is getting me all excited to continue to work on my interview project back home in the Bronx. When I have a reasonable bulk of information I will put that whole project online.
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And a list:
Pan Toasted Watermelon Seeds (Just toast them in a pan.)
Taoist pills of immortality, among other things
We are in the land of happiness and spousal ancestors now, at the beach in the southern Caribbean coast. I have been looking forward to being here for months, but as usual I spent the first three or four days trying to stop feeling inexplicably late. I would sit on the beach for a while, remark on the waves, sunset, trees, you-name-it, and bound up to demand what’s next. Yesterday I finally unsnapped and took a two hour sprawling snoring sticky nap with the baby in the afternoon while V worked. (He’s staying on top of things, though I’m not getting much done. Next time we will arrange for a babysitter in advance.) Afterward we went to a little place near the beach to drink Campari and snack happily on french fries and a “carpaccio” of raw fish. On Saturday we went to the little farmer’s market where we bought, among other things, some of the most complex and delicious honey I have ever had. It tastes first of pure honeyness, then flowers, then like a fruit reduction of cas and lime and passionfruit and some other tropical fruit I can’t identify. (I have eaten up half the bottle already in an effort to understand the flavor.) The farmer and his wife from whom we bought it have a workshop up the hill north of town, which we visited two years ago. I will go back and buy banana vinegar, cacao butter, coconut oil, and lots of chocolate in a variety of forms before we leave. We tasted a snake fruit and spoke with Ancel Mitchell. I bought her booklet on local plants and food and lots of her dried fruit for Aure. The booklet describes local produce and edible wild plants. For someone from a temperate climate, the riotous fecundity is dizzying, the vivid colors and mad shapes all look suspiciously fleshy and potentially poisonous. (I’m pretty sure I wrote once about tasting some fruit at the beach that numbed my whole head, throat and hands. Tasty! Lethal! Yesterday a Canadian woman was telling me how to know when you’ve eaten a piece of fruit recently sat on by a poison dart frog. She claims it feels about like that.) It’s impossible to know where to start. (Ancel describes people who come to the farmer’s market, look around and end up sheepishly buying an apple from Washington state.) In fact, maybe it’s that way for the Costa Ricans too. I’ve always wondered at the simple and mostly quiet food here. The common dishes rely on a few consistent ingredients. Made indifferently, they taste, well—indifferent. Though there are exceptions: the grilled pork belly on a corn and flour tortilla with a heap of pickley vegetables and carroty hot pepper sauce on the street, spit roasted tepesquintle downstairs at Le Monastaire, a sticky-tender-crispy pork chop in chocolate sauce in an anonymous Caribbean soda, a simple fish tartar and a tropical fruit flambé at La Parcela, some astonishing fish tacos and cold avocado soup at a tiny hotel south of Dominical, brothy corn and pork tamales wrapped in banana leaves, cheeses and raw creams from Turrialba, a very spicy patty from a covered basket on the arm of a fat old lady who waddled out of the forest like an arthritic good fairy in the park at Manzanillo, Torta Chilena (not Chilena at all, but very Costa Rican and dreamy and easy to find), lots and lots of chicharron and gin with gingerale. Oops– now I am just listing good food I have eaten here and I will stop because it is easily findable in the same ways it is elsewhere.
The other day I got this craving for the literature of my early youth. (The ladylike literature. There was also a good amount of Edgar Rice Burroughs in the same epoch.) I loved all things L.M. Montgomery, but the Emily books were my favorite because they were a bit darker than some of her other stuff, though there were no walking heads or thoats. I found all the Emily books online, but of course forbore to read them because copyright is such a vital institution within our culture. While I was not reading them I thought of a few things. Thing 1: Boy, are these ever about a pretty naked ambition. Getting paid and being published was just part of it so it wasn’t all Room of My Own business. There was a grand obsession with fame. Huh. Did I want to be famous when I was little? I don’t remember, exactly. I also don’t recall how shadowy all the other characters in those books actually were. Emily was the only person with a real face and personality. I’m pretty sure I didn’t mind that at the time, though it bugged me a bit as an adult. Finally, I started thinking about how people used to live in one place all their lives and how some people still do and how one’s actions accrete and everyone knows everything about you and the only way to live anything down is to keep on living, right there in the same place, to keep laying down layers of yourself. I and most of my close friends grew up saving our energy to go bursting out of the places we grew up. It’s so (modern) American to start fresh over and over again. I can’t imagine the weight of knowing that all of my actions were public and known and that I would have to live right there among them for ever and ever. Even if the reality is that more of me is known now, electronically, it’s not the same. I can unplug and walk away. A friend of mine once said, I don’t mind people staring at me when I’m naked as long as I don’t know about them. Exactly.
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Some things Aure said recently. I note them because I haven’t got a clue where some of the language and ideas are coming from… I mean, I did read many of those essays on research babies aloud and probably I should keep the uncensored National Geographics full of disemboweled mammals out of his reach.
I don’t like tigers to eat my brains, I like them to eat greens. Greens and leaves. From a tree. And mud. They can eat mud. Gusanos eat mud.
Congratulations, Keeker. You are so crazy! Hmm, what’s your schedule? (To the cat.)
I’m spanking you, I punish you! I hate leche, I don’t like it! I punish you! Go lie down! You need a nap. (To me.)
I eat peppers with gusto. (I double checked this one. You eat them with what, I asked. With gusto, he said.)
I realize I’m a little bit gorgeous and sticky. (Sitting in a pee puddle in the bed.)
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Watched Julie and Julia online. I’m sorry to say that was not a very good movie, fellas. I loved the blog and everyone loved Julia Child, but bleh. What was I expecting, it is a movie about typing, and sure enough there were a lot of typing scenes with voice overs. I laughed at the first one, but then I realized they were really going to continue with the typing and I sighed and went back to eating my bean stew and tried to concentrate on how adorable Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci were. (My sister once sat next to Meryl Streep in a restaurant, so it’s sort of like we’re friends.) I got up and went to the bathroom when the younger characters started in on the inevitable flight about how narcissitic blogging is and how it makes you not have enough sex with your longsuffering husband. Fortunately everyone got published and lived selflessly ever after because once something’s printed and the author gets paid, the writing magically transforms into a sort of postdated community service coupon with which she can be excused from any of a variety of future misdemeanors (up to three jaywalking or one drunk driving conviction). The dialogue between the contemporary couple was bad. It reminded me of Woody Allen’s younger characters in his more recent movies. The twenty six year olds dress and move and speak like they were twenty six in the early seventies. But no one really says anything in the reviews. It’s odd. Leaves me wondering if I’m crazy, but then, sure enough, I watched a bit of that tennis death movie again and the characters are totally unbelievable. The last few films were so awful (actually I couldn’t bring myself to watch the last two), that they actually soured my recollection of his older stuff. Then I watched Annie Hall and remembered why it’s really one of my favorite movies. I will watch it over and over again forever and ever and not get tired of it. I feel annoyed with him for making me have to like his older stuff better. It makes me sound like some music nerd. Oh yes, speaking of music: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins: Ice Cream Man. There you go, a very good earworm.
