Love and Other Things: Reflections from Costa Rica
“The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.”
― Wendell Berry
Words are about the closest thing we get to taking a peek inside someone else’s brain. Think about it: here you are reading this sentence which started out as small synapses inside of my head that, somewhere along the way, converted into words that you’re now reading in yours.
I can’t help but imagine all these half-baked thoughts in my brain dressed up in tiny tuxedos―these small, black and white letters on a page, ideas trying on their new tailored suits for size. Some are too big, some are too small. So I edit, add, and delete until I feel like the words more or less fit. And then, when they reach you, they once again change into something else entirely―they morph and evolve. They assume a new shape, a new tone, a new meaning.
To me, there’s something magical in that process: how words give form to the formless. How they can take all that intangible clutter inside, polish it up, and make it presentable―something I can look at face to face and try to understand. How they can shapeshift as they travel from person to person―allowing us to connect by simply giving something a name.
Perhaps that’s why, for as long as I can remember, I’ve jotted down notes to myself when I travel—something beautiful, or sparks an idea, or does something else altogether that I can’t quite explain. A phrase will strike me, and sometimes it sits there like a word on the tip of my tongue: vaguely familiar, but far enough away where I can’t completely grasp it. So I write it down and save it for later, gleaning pieces that feel like they belong to a whole.
Once I’m back home, it’s as if I were assembling fragmented papers leftover from a fire, edges singed where the larger story used to be. “Jorge built a treehouse in a mango tree.” “The lost corner.” “Surrounded by cinnamon trees and towering manzana de agua trees. Butterflies. Sound of the jungle, the deafening buzz of cicadas.” “Lime green firefly. Warm air. Bare feet and a sundress.”
Sometimes they don’t make sense at all. But when I’m lucky, it’s the rarest kind of puzzle—a mosaic made up of piecemeal souvenirs from afar that all fit together to make something sensible. Something that, I later realize, was living inside of me all along; I just needed the words to tell the story.
***
As the city of San Jose recedes in the rearview mirror, we reach a long stretch that’s straight and flat. It’s something you might see in the country back home, except the jungle here in Costa Rica is thick and tangled on either side of us, sloping up on one side toward high mountains. It’s a rich, saturated green—a color that if I wasn’t seeing with my own eyes would seem unnatural. But there it is, this wild, bright, intertwined chaos of roots and vines and trees that’s breathtaking and beautiful.
Every so often, the jungle has been cleared away in patches to make room for palm tree plantations and cows, the latter of which graze contentedly in the open fields. Above, clouds hover in patches of white and grey, shading the mountains in lacy patterns. It’s then that I notice how heavy the air feels, the way it does just before a heavy rain—hot and sticky on my skin.
As we drive, we pass by small fruit stands: plantains and bananas hanging in tight bundles, papayas and watermelon and pineapple clustered on tables below. A true kaleidoscope of color under those thin corrugated tin roofs.
Here, the jungle is everywhere. Roots push up through the deep rust-colored earth—cracking cement in places where it once lay heavy and firm. Vines reach around buildings with their long tendrils. Homes are banked by banana trees, their leaves batting in the wind like long eyelashes, coquettishly waving hellos to passerby. Even the homes look like they are emerging from the jungle, hidden bungalows blooming from the undergrowth like dormant tulips in spring.
It’s all oddly reminiscent of an Indiana Jones movie where abandoned, dilapidated buildings have long succumbed to the jungle. Where nature reigns supreme and, with time, the jungle always wins.
But here, I’m not so sure. I can’t help but feel there’s a kind of tug-of-war between the two: city vs. jungle. I see it in the way the long stretches of cement roads are paved neatly over the earth. How the roots sprout up through cracks and crevices, finding the weak parts in the pavement. How new buildings force the jungle to retreat, the jungle fighting back to regain its lost territory.
It’s one of those moments that, at first glance, seems like another burned scrap, salvaged from the fire. A fragment that was lost, orphaned from the rest of the story. But sometimes that’s all you need to make sense of something, to come to a realization. Sometimes you just need words on a page.
***
From an early age, we’re taught to curate how to feel and think and do. We define and structure, both of which help us understand the world. We perfect the art of building the city, manicuring the lawn, paving the roads. But in doing so, we pave over all that wildness underneath. And when that wildness finds the weak parts in the pavement, and comes splitting through the cracks, we don’t know what to do with it.
I’m learning love is a lot like that. A battle between what we can define and understand, and what remains wild. When we want so badly to give something a name, but we don’t have the words. It’s that feeling in your stomach and your head and your heart and your chest, that feeling of being split open like a cracked egg, as if everything that’s soft and breakable comes pouring out. And we’re left feeling raw and exposed, all those emotions dredged up from the bottom, out of place and in the open.
The weeds through the cracks. The wildness in the city.
Words are like mental enzymes, allowing us to break down and digest the world. They help us tame all those thoughts whirling around inside, to capture them in black and white on a page. Happiness, anger, sadness: we give them names. We alchemize the intangible into something tangible. We’re able to see it, feel it, understand it.
But sometimes we don’t have the words. We can’t define. We can’t fit these feelings into something structured and neat because they’re not that black and white. Because sometimes it just doesn’t make sense. We’re left wondering why we fell in love with the wrong person. Why we didn’t love the right one. Why we felt full and empty at the same time.
But here’s the thing. We’re not meant to understand everything, nor are we meant to define everything. Not all experiences are meant to fit within our neat little boxes, our nicely curated words on a page. Because sometimes, it’s more grey than anything.
The truth is, no matter how much we try to beat back the tangled trees and build the manicured cities we want, the wildness always finds a way to creep through—the vines snaking through the pavement, the weeds peeking through the walls. The wild, tangled mess of our humanness pouring out.
And that’s just it. It reminds us, we’re human.
Love isn’t neat and tidy. But it’s real, and there’s something to be said about that. Not knowing means we’re not static. It’s the only way we grow and evolve. And as I get older, I’m beginning to see the beauty in that—the cracks in our being, our raw and imperfect humanness.
Even as I write this, words are my crutch to understand. But sometimes thoughts and emotions are simply too big, or too raw, or too muddy to boil down into such tactile terms. And I get to thinking that maybe that’s a good thing.
Because after all, maybe we’re not meant to be these well-manicured beings. Maybe we’re meant to explore that wildness inside of us, the parts that make us human. Maybe it’s about allowing ourselves to break open and explore even the most remote parts of ourselves—to get a sample from the depths, put it under a microscope, and see what we’re really made of.