The Providencia Treatment

Providencia, at first glance, is exactly what it seems: tropical, remote, lush and overgrown, hot, humid, and communal. Then, at second glance, it stays the same. The third look perhaps shades in some detail, but the portrait remains essentially unchanged. This is a place that grows in its acquaintance by the depth of its themes rather than their variety, a perhaps needed reminder that composition comes in myriad varieties.
From its start, the visuals echo the narrative: vistas of stunning beauty join run-down buildings of a sort that would be called “charming” by a particular sensibility in the same breath that it would turn around and look for a resort. If Providencia doesn’t distinguish itself from its stereotype, it’s because it has no need to. Why bother, when even the idea of an identity crisis here seems bizarre, and when ulterior motives of that kind would seem (to me at least) as foreign here as, well, me.

The breadth of the panorama here joins together abstraction and specificity. The oft returned-to water is glorious when seen as water, but when sitting and daydreaming it’s equally easy to lose reference points in the blue field. One scene at night had the horizon line vanish during dinner on the beach. The storm relegated the sky and water to the same monochromatic status, and beyond the shore and anchored boats, the dark could as easily have been a canvas positioned just past the light from the restaurant. Sounds are subject to the same principle: so many crabs scurry away at your approach that the accumulation of noise approaches the purity of its ideal, a sound effect of crabs rather than the crabs themselves.

Though a good portion of people here probably qualify as living below the poverty line, using the word “poor” has not yet crossed my mind. Superficially at least, none of the problems associated with poverty seem in evidence: crime, hunger, housing. It may be only because of the superficiality of the observation, but differences from the familiar here seem to stem from diverging in standards rather than failing to meet them. It’s a tricky judgment to make, and one that I would rather stay away from altogether, except that avoiding it falls into the reverse trap. Overcoming the fallacy of cultural solipsism means avoiding the avoidance of judgment as much as it means a relaxation of critical standards. When you encounter a new place, it seems to me that neither saying “Everything here is different, and thus wrong” nor “Everything here is different; but it’s okay, because they don’t know any better” is the right response. (Yes, it’s an exaggeration, but exaggerating renders point-making that much easier.)

But almost as if to compensate, the narrative offers opportunities for learning: language, motorbikes, different kinds of fish. Learning of the specific sort, not principles but skills, offers a concrete point of access. Getting a handle on riding a scooter is pretty much the same no matter where you do it, and language acquisition, though lengthy and trying, can be incredibly rewarding both in terms of convenience and genuine understanding: linguistic revelations often lead to other kinds of the same. Learning offers a chance to both take and expand, to preserve and focus inward by opening up to the world around you. Learning can offer immense satisfaction too, both in smaller doses and grander ones, when you’re done and have a new skill in your arsenal.

With learning under our belts, we tackle the slow process that is acclimation (and here, acclimatization too). When all is said and done, there’s no real climax or chase scene—there rarely is—just the slow and quiet revelation of what was already known. With this location in particular, it’s the truth that your first impression was right, but insufficient. It comes in the feeling that underlies the action, in the reasons learned and invented for courses already taken. The initial beauty is still almost as beautiful (and the color of the water in particular comes to mind), but now the stunned beauty of first contact joins with a small, warm feeling of possession and ownership to gain depth, and if not permanence, then at least durability. The narrative is no longer abstract (though it still might be just a little fictitious), but concrete. There will be a homecoming, and then all of a sudden, this particular story, without further obfuscation or philosophy from on high, will end.