The Special Center for Children God Bird

We finally have transportation! I just drove to use the Internet now instead of walking half an hour! It was awesome! On Friday we took the bike to Aguadulce (where we get Internet) and back twice without any problems, so by island standards we’re good to go. It was the first time we went out on the main road, I was driving and Silvia was on back. And of course, because we have a very odd kind of luck on this island, on that first ride I had to navigate both a torrential downpour and a herd of cattle. (It was the first time we’ve ever seen cows on this stretch of road. There were maybe 20 of them and we just kind of honked and poked our way through). I feel fairly confident in our ability to deal with unexpected situations at this point, automotive or otherwise.

Also, I was bit by a fish the other day. It was like a marine blitzkrieg, it just made a beeline for my finger out of nowhere, attacked, and then darted away. It really wasn’t serious at all, there’s not even a mark, but it was off-putting all the same.

So my next post is going to be a bit odd. A little while ago somebody commented on one of my posts, referencing the literary critic Harold Bloom. It’s a name that I’ve heard before but didn’t really know anything about, so I went and googled him to see what popped up. I tried reading a few pages from one of his books, but more to the point, I came across a review he wrote in the Wall Street Journal about Harry Potter back in 2000. You can read it for yourself here, but the gist of it is that the Harry Potter series sucks. I happen to really enjoy the whole series and consequently was really irritated by his review, so I ended up jotting down some thoughts while reading it and then putting them together into a defense. (Hey, I’m on a remote tropical island and have plenty of time on my hands. And it’s a good activity while watching Futurama in Spanish, which I can only follow because I’ve seen them all before anyway.)

I’m going to post that review as its own post, but in case you really just came here to read about Providencia (very understandable), I decided to do a parallel post. Since I was already writing one review, I figured I’d do another, this one of something related to Providencia. It’s a bit of an odd idea, but it’s for a blog, so why not? Call it a review/treatment of a hypothetical movie. They should both be up in the next day or two (assuming our Internet connection isn’t interrupted by a thunderstorm or passing bird or something).

And now, for your viewing pleasure, some pictures. I haven’t taken a huge amount yet, as we’re going to be here for a while and I was going to wait until we had transportation and could get around more easily, but here's a small sampling nonetheless:

San Andres from the air


Front view from the shack


Back view from the shack


The shack

Bathroom area

Road to the beach

And a small narrative:
Look at the children playing and having fun!


Whoops.
(He was fine, but the game was over)

And in case you were wondering about the title of the post, it’s what’s written in huge letters on the side of one of the school buses here. It doesn’t really have to do with anything else, I just thought it was funny.

The Character of Places

Random movie observation of the day: the face-grabbing gesture that John Travolta’s family makes in Face/Off to indicate affection is extremely odd. There’s obviously some symbolism intended, but it gets totally lost behind how weird that motion is.

Unfortunately we haven’t managed to get a hold of a scooter yet. It keeps raining, which prevents us from learning how to drive because the field where we’re learning is too muddy to do anything in. And the guy who’s teaching us wants us to drive a few more times around the field before we go out on the roads (irritating to us because we have to wait, but in principle I can’t really argue with him). In the meantime we’re hoping for a stretch of dry weather…

The other night Silvia and I went for a walk on the beach. It was close to a full moon, and although the clouds obscured it most of the time, water was still startlingly lucid and clear in what light there was. Shadows on the sand turned into clusters of crabs and scurried away at our approach. We waded across the entrance to the mangrove forest (? swamp? whatever it’s called) to the bar of a guy who had been accosting us to come have a drink for days now. We sat there on the beach, sipping our “coco-locos” (less good than they sound), almost entirely alone except for the lights and the reggae music from the bar. It was a Saturday night, and although we were told the party had dispersed only because of the rain earlier, imagining the solitude of the moment as all-encompassing was effortless. It’s a common theme for me here so far, so posit living here and the life that would be. (Oh wait, I am living here. But in truth it’s still temporary.)

I love trying to discern the character of different places. It’s easiest with cities, particularly big ones, both because they come loaded with myth and preconceptions, and the sheer intensity of the experience makes its personality that much easier to ascertain. It’s also interesting that it’s a character that exists in conjunction with but not necessarily because of the people who live there. Such a character can be complex and difficult to articulate, and is perhaps as much my creation than anything intrinsic to the place itself. But whether arising from the perceiver or the object itself, it’s a personality that reveals itself quickly but deepens and grows richer the longer I spend there. New York is full, diverse, and rich; Berlin is young, vital and determined; Paris is French.

So what is Providencia? It’s remote, a bit run-down, friendly, and idyllic, but even together those seem to miss the pulse of life here. With only two weeks on the island it’s hard to pin it down exactly, and its diffuseness makes it that much harder. But that in itself is striking, that there’s no imposition on my sense of rhythm, just a suggestion and a strong inclination towards moving a little bit slower and lazier. Except for getting used to different accommodations, transportation, etc. (although that was a bit more of a transition than I anticipated), I feel comfortable sticking to my own objectives to a surprising degree. Moving anywhere new and doing your best to truly live there rather than just be a tourist always involves a negotiation between individuality and adaptation; residents of a place always remain independent to a certain degree, nonchalance being a necessary component of cosmopolitanism. But when you grow up in a place you can almost always choose to breathe its rhythms, and going somewhere new requires a conscious acknowledgement of what otherwise is near-instinct.

So what does all this say about Providencia? Just that since most of my traveling has been to cities, I expected to be struck over the head. Instead, I am finding that acclimation here means dialing back rather than ramping up, relaxing into new rhythms instead of trying to force myself into lockstep. It’s odd also, because I am largely isolated from people I know. In a way it’s wonderful to have the freedom and time for pretty much anything, but you also are reminded just how much other people factor into the idea of motivation in the first place. So that to me, living here for several months, as I am, seems feasible and enjoyable, and I am excited at the prospect. But really living here? I still have to figure out exactly what that would mean.

Water Pics

Here are some pictures to give you an idea of what I mean when I say I can't get over the color of the water:

Observations

Thankfully, we’re more or less settled in now. We’re set to start lessons on the bike this afternoon, so hopefully that’ll go well and shortly we will have wheels, freedom, and the wind in our hair. It’s a bit of a pain to get around exclusively by taxi, and both of us are looking forward to an easier commute to a functioning internet.

And now here, in no particular order, are a series of observations I have made of life in Providencia:

1. The instructions on gmail have now switched into Spanish without my guidance. I now know that “Acceder” means “Sign In.”
2. The seafood here is (unsurprisingly) fantastic. So far on menus I’ve only seen various kinds of seafood and then chicken, so it’s clearly the primary food on the island. At the place we go for lunch every day (a restaurant on the beach called El Divino Niño with a pink statue of a baby Jesus in front), we often see people carrying handfuls of fresh lobster or fish from a little boat to the kitchen, so it’s obviously fresh. If we order the mixed plate for two, we get: two whole fish; a lobster; calamari; crab; coconut rice; tomatoes; and patacon (smashed, fried plantains). It’s pretty fantastic. We could also get shrimp or conch. And Silvia particularly enjoys the vinegar garlic-chili sauce we use to flavor everything.
3. I had never seen crab roadkill until we got here. It’s understandable, seeing as there are crabs everywhere. When you walk along the side of the road, you here tens of them scurrying away as you approach, especially at night or after it rains. Unfortunately we missed the crab migration season, when they close the roads and thousands of them migrate from the mountains to the sea to lay their eggs, but there seem to be a lot as is.
4. There are a lot of mosquitoes and other insects. You learn that “itchy” is really just a state of mind. I recognize that I itch, but I choose not to be “itchy.” It’s all in how you think about it.
5. Heavy rainstorms blow up out of nowhere, last forty seconds, and then disappear.
6. My sense of time and urgency is much reduced from before.
7. It’s an interesting experience, being this disconnected. We still check the internet once a day, but we only really use it for essential stuff, and I know that for most of the day I am utterly inaccessible, and even more important, that it doesn’t really matter. It takes some getting used to, but it’s kind of wonderful. Not quite life-changing, but enjoyable all the same.
8. In the same vein, I am fascinated by what it would be like to live here, and particularly to grow up here, with a worldview that is unfettered and uncluttered. The primary pastime here seems to draw a fine line between hanging out and doing nothing. People sit on the side of the road, talk, listen to reggae, dance, and maybe play dominoes. How different is it from seeing movies in theaters, taking the subway to friends, and going to concerts? I’m not sure; sophistication (in its many meanings), maybe? Perhaps its just because I’m here for such clearly defined objectives, but I have a hard time imagining not moving towards something.
9. I can’t get over how beautiful the water is. Crystal clear and brilliant, multifaceted blue.
10. It’s hot. And humid. Thankfully it’s easy to go swimming.
11. Following that, the showers are only cool, because the main source of water is rainwater (and who has a heater on this island?), but it’s really great. It would be counterproductive to have a really hot shower here.
12. The people are very friendly and helpful.
13. There’s something nice about not being able to choose the movies you watch. You get an interesting assortment of films you wouldn’t see otherwise.
14. Pola ran away again last night, but we found her. Cats run away a lot.
15. Because everybody uses motorcycles to get around here, you get a really odd cross-section of people you wouldn’t expect to see on them. The oddest one yet was the two preteens coming back from school, followed by two women driving next to each other so they could gossip between motorcycles.
16. Life here is nice.

Silvia's Blog

Silvia is just getting her own blog started. You can check it out at sjmantillaortiz.blogspot.com, I'll put a link to it over on the side.