Costa Rica Diaries, Part 4

January 30, 2017

I awoke my first morning in Costa Rica to a knocking at what I thought was my chamber door.  When I checked, no one was there.  I lay back down wondering if I had been dreaming, enjoying the air-conditioned comfort of my room and immediately fell asleep.  When the tap-tap-tapping began again my reaction was, “Is this house haunted?”  I believe this area is one filled with spirits although I may be confusing Costa Rican culture with the Gullah culture in the Low Country of South Carolina and Georgia. I hope I am mistaken.  I was theoretically prepared for a band of marauders and even monkeys, but not ghosts.  Having experienced a ghost once in high school I was not looking forward to a repeat of that traumatic event.

I sat and listened and realized the knock was coming from the window.  I stood on the lovely aqua coverlet and looked out the window at a bird perched on the chains running from the edge of the roof to the ground that serve as a more efficient drainage system than drainpipes.  The bird was pecking at its reflection.  When I went down to breakfast and mentioned it to my host, the esteemed pale warrior Nick Halverson, he said it was probably trying to mate with itself.  There’s a story there; at the very least, an allegory.

Today was our first writing class and we discussed writing as an exercise, a workout.  According to our instructor Ezekiel (Zeke) Tyrus, Stendahl said everyone who considers themselves a writer should write 20 lines per day “genius or not”.  We were asked to bring notecards and I had 200 in my writing kit as that was the size of the package from Dollar Tree.  I was more than willing to share with my classmates and did so to one of my retreat-mates.  I won’t tell you his name but it rhymes with John Kapelos.

Toward the end of class, someone noticed two creatures about the size of my fist affixed to the eaves of the covered veranda.  When it was asked what they were someone said, “Moths.”  When I looked over, I said, “It looks like those moths are wearing leg warmers.  I think those are bats.”  And they were.   Welcome to the jungle indeed.

After dinner tonight there was great conversation and John K. was telling wonderfully entertaining stories about John Waters, Tom Waits, Tracy Chapman, Robin Williams, Elliott Gould and a host of other names in Hollywood.  Someone asked the question, “Why are we so interested in celebrity?”

This led to what I will call “Things I Learned from John K. While Eating Chiky Cookies”.   

                                      

To loosely quote Mr. Kapelos, "Celebrity is one of our cultural totems; a status game.  It’s tribalism, like sports.  We align ourselves with those who like the same things we like, people included.  This tribalism is a matter of taste; a matter of trusting someone’s opinions.  But we need to separate the person from the opinion.  We don’t really know celebrities.  We can’t if we’ve never spent time with them.  We just think we know them.  With writing, we can’t see a writer’s ability until they write.  Then we can have an idea of who they are.  However, timeless art transcends personality."

I’m thinking about his words as I mull over the questions and advice from the first workshop.  We must write to perfect our craft, not to always be good.  Tennessee Williams wrote every day as a workout.  Writing is like the first day of rehearsal of a performance. You have to sometimes force inspiration. You can’t break the rules until you know them. 

Questions to myself:  Why do I write?  Who is my muse?  Who is my audience?  Should that matter?  Why have I always been, and to this day remain, slightly pink and scared of horses? 

Tomorrow I have a one-to-one with the author of Eli/Ely and he is reading the 70 pages of my memoirs I shared with him.  I'm looking forward to the feedback from Zeke.  I'm interested in the reaction to my story from someone with whom I feel pretty certain I share only two commonalities:  we both love writing and we are both carbon-based life forms.

I'd rather my white trash ghost simply say Boo!

                The other night, The Dad hiccupped in such an aggressive and abrupt way that I didn’t know what was happening and actually reached for his inhaler.  When he caught his breath, he said, “That hiccup was so big it made tears in my eyes as big as a horse turd.”  While I refrained from speaking, my facial expression conveyed all that I needed to convey which he ignored and asked, You know what a hiccup is, don’t ya?”  Before I digressed into a clinical definition of said bodily function, he said, “It’s a fart that got lost!”

                Lately, when he makes any similar statement I have taken to looking to my left as if there is someone there to see me roll my eyes.  It’s not unlike the TV camera I always thought should have been but am now extremely happy was not there filming me for the reality show that is my life.  The Dad has caught on to this practice and asked who I was looking at.  I told him it was the ghost he swears lives in our house.

                While I do believe in ghosts only because I have seen one face to face (still not over that DeeDee Smith, thank you very much), I do not believe that my father has seen any specters in this particular home of mine.  A recent episode of Doctor Who solved the riddle of a ghost by discovering it was a time traveler stuck in a rift in the time/space continuum or somesuch quasi-scientific reason.  I realize that Dr. Who is not actually based on real science, I sure do wish I could have a closet that’s bigger on the inside because my colored chino collection is getting out of control, do you hear me?  However, as Lulu refuses to take sides in this battle, I have decided that there really is a ghost and she agrees with me.

                I can assure you if there were some supernatural force in the immediate area, the activity that takes place in and around my father’s bathroom would most certainly cause that force to flee to the relatively safe confines of purgatory or wherever they’re supposed to go.  Look, I said I believed in them, not that I had a doctorate in paranormal psychology or some other pseudo-science like physics.  What?  Physics is math parading as science.  I took it in both high school and college and still have night terrors.  Two pages of calculations just to get the formula before you enter the numbers to get the answer?  Madness!  Utter and complete madness!  Said the Journalism major.

                Of course when I mentioned to my father that I seemingly believed in his sightings, he began to talk about death and dying as many older adults are prone to do.  You have to understand that I have recently begun to realize that my Dad will be living with me until he passes on from this world.  I have already begun to acclimate myself to the very real possibility that I will forever be a bachelor because who in their right mind would want to marry someone with a 71 year-old belligerent and flatulent teenager?  No, really, who?  I need names, people.

                And with that thought in mind, I gave him a direct order as if he were an employee, that should he feel himself slipping from this realm, that he quickly retire to the yard as to not taint the happy feel of my home because I will never live, again, in a place where someone to my knowledge has died.  And Dee Dee Smith knows exactly what I'm talking about.  I love my house and do not want to move.  No, I don’t think it’s selfish and you’re rude to suggest that.

                The downside of his death, besides the fact that he would be dead, would be that, were it actually possible, he would come back to haunt me.  Of this you can be sure.  I would have history’s first farting, burping ghost who would somehow figure out a way to fry a steak on my stove just to keep it greasy.

                Because being haunted is not a father-son activity in which I would willingly participate.  Although, outside of eating and/or complaining about stupid people, what activity would appeal to us both, is beyond me.  Apparently, from the commotion to my immediate left, one of my father’s current activities is scratching his chest with his middle shirt button unfastened, like Napoleon, without the couth or the short man complex.  When he finished, he didn’t re-button his shirt.  When I asked why he was insistent on being unkempt, he said, “What if I have another itch?”  I can assure you, the Supreme Court hasn't judged anyone as much as I am judging him right at this very moment. 

                Seeing my look of mild revulsion, he sat and smiled like a cat eating sawbriars through a picket fence.  Yes, that’s what he said.  I asked him to spell sawbriars to ensure accuracy. Even I, with my fluency in redneck, several dialects of country and a passing familiarity with Mississippi-specific white trash, was unfamiliar with this particular phrase.  Apparently, sawbriars are a real thing, I binged it, and as you know eating any briar, saw or otherwise, would require one to chew very carefully. 

                And I truly don’t know what else to say at this point. 

I don't care if Casper IS friendly...

                When last we spoke, we had discussed language, stemming from my father’s use of the term “haint”.  That post lead to a conversation with my sister where she reminded me another word we pronounce incorrectly was “mont-ner”; meaning monster. 

                Being a naturally jouvous person, I normally make an effort to avoid all mention of scary things lest I conjure up some creature in my head which will cause me to lose precious sleep.  I don’t know what happened to me during childhood but I have been afraid of the dark since somewhere in the neighborhood of birth and lasting up to and including last night.  I don’t know what makes me skittish in the darkness but if someone were to scare me with, say, a chainsaw, I could outrun any Olympic sprinter regardless if they used steroids or not.  Once, as a teen, I just about outran a car when I thought the Blue Lady of Humble Lake was trying to “git” me.  The unfortunate situation occurred when I attended my first teen bonfire, wearing my best corduroy pants.  I mention the wardrobe choice simply because, during my flight, said pantalones eventually started to smoke from the friction of my chubby legs pistoning me toward safety.  Now where I thought I was going to find safety in the boonies of East Texas with ‘Flock of Seagulls’ bangs and 3 Swatches was beyond me.  All I knew was I wanted to be elsewhere.

                And elsewhere was where I wanted to be recently when The Dad told me he had seen a ghost in my house.  Now, I realize I am a big strong man (well, a man anyway) but I did not need to hear this.  Before he could describe this recently sighted apparition, he turned to me and said, “All this talkin’ ‘bout spirits ‘n’ stuff had put me to mind the stories my mama told me.” 

While he reminisced and I pretended to listen, I thought of several occasions of my own where I lost any shred of coolness I, or my friends, imagined I had by possessing a lack of bravery which would have gotten me banished from most any Disney movie.  While my friends never abandoned me, per se, most certainly my date to the Junior Prom was less than thrilled when I abandoned her, faster than a celebrity breaks their wedding vows, at the breakfast afterwards. The brother (I won’t tell you his name but it rhymes with Scott Holliday) of the hostess decided to dress as Freddy Krueger and casually tap-tap-tap, on the French doors to my immediate right in the den while I was actively pretending to watch “A Nightmare on Elm Street, Part XVXVIII” along with 7-8 of my closest personal friends and their dates. 

When I ever so jouvously turned my head to the doors and saw this particular face, I screamed like a peacock set on fire, shoved past my date (I apologize again, Denise) and ran down the hall to the bedroom of the slumbering parents due, I can only imagine, to the overwhelming belief Mr. and/or Mrs. Holliday would save me through the use of gunfire or fisticuffs.  I don’t believe either of them were the same after experiencing the invasion of their inner sanctum by a chubby tuxedoed youth and a full 1/3 of the remaining guests alert enough to have noticed my flight, quickly following suit.  Now, I may be exaggerating these points; this was, after all, 1987 and it's a bit hazy, not due to alcohol or drug, mind you. I was a good Baptist youth, although I will cop to an addiction to Aqua Net;  something had to keep that hairdo in place, people.  All I know is the the following year, the Prom breakfast was held in a well-lit hotel suite with suitable chaperones and, for me, a mild sedative.

The most recent event I will share happened in Alaska, while camping.  Now, anyone who knows me is aware while I am not a ardent fan of the outdoors at night, I can be shamed into complying with the requests of the nature loving pseudo-hippies I have collected as friends.

This particular outing was Memorial Day weekend in 2003 and, being Alaska, it was a balmy 40 degrees.  As I was much larger then, the lack of heat was a plus.  Precious I may be, but most persons, places and things are not improved by the addition of moisture.  And underarm sweat stains large enough to effect local weather patterns are not a good look for anyone. 

I had watched the movie The Ring just prior to this trip.  Suffice it to say it was not a romantic comedy about a wedding.  Yes, I know, why on earth do I watch scary movies when they actually scare me?  I have no answer other than peer pressure.  What?  I have peers, in theory. 

We get to the campground and as there were 6 of us, I felt my odds of surviving the weekend without being murdered were fair to middlin'.  I wasn’t the slowest, did not have the largest breasts and was never interested enough to investigate the source of random snapping twigs . I felt pretty sure I wouldn’t be one of the first to die, per the typical plots of axe-murderer movies.  Once we scouted out the restrooms, however, I discovered the source of my pain for the weekend.  Even though they advertised toilets, they were actually toilet seats attached to the top of very deep wells.  Like “Journey to the Center of the Earth” deep.  And if you’ve seen The Ring you know that the girl mont-ner, at one point, climbs out of a deep well and comes to git the people.  Well, I can assure you I don’t need someone to git me whilst I am conducting my business.  The psychological repercussions I don’t want to imagine.  Needless to say I spent the weekend avoiding the bathroom which became increasingly difficult while trying to digest elk cooked in a skillet over an open fire.  TGI Friday’s this was not.

I had yet to feel uncomfortable in my new home even when living alone for almost 4 months, but when he told me he had seen a ghost, my first instinct was to flee.  The high cost of real estate in the Bay area held me in place, however, and I asked him to describe this ghost.  When he stated it was a woman with a large hat and veil and a parasol, I was both delighted she seemed fashionable and suspicious of the accuracy of the fashion as my house was built in 1929 and parasols haven’t been used in any manner since My Fair Lady. 

As I left to cleanse the house of evil through the recitation of any song I could remember with the most Jesuses in it, I noticed a figure alarmingly like the woman he described!  Right in my face!  It was the lovely lady in the painting I have over the buffet in my dining room; my first real piece of art.  My Daddy was either all out of conversational topics not involving bodily functions or he was trying to scare me.  Rude.  I told him if the phantom was well-dressed, then we could co-exist quite happily and I strode off to bed with the full knowledge he had simply fabricated the story and I had nothing to worry about.  Dustin does mean “strong hearted leader” according to the book of baby names.  My parents had chosen well.

Full disclosure:  I left the light on in the den for a couple of nights.  You know, just in case.