This is the second time that my little surf shop in Costa Rica has flooded. The second time in three months. Perhaps a sign.
Perhaps this low lying house in an open field in a quiet Central American jungle town is not the entre of art and style I’ve imagined and thoughtfully willed it to be. Perhaps the thick layer of damp mud and the pools of water generously collected in the central showroom are a crack at my humility and endurance. From the comical heavens these cocky puppet masters of destiny are laughing and tossing peanut shells at my laboring front door.
They giggle and point and spit and sleep late and nap often and gossip much. The fiddlers of my future reminiscing about gentle lovers and lazily nodding while the rivers over flow and the waters deluge the shop, again.
In a way we are all hiding out here. We are siloed in this mid 20th century jungle existence. We are negotiating roads with massive holes and over flowing rivers. Barefoot over sand and mounds of ants. Watching the clouds arrive from the temperamental eastern mountain ranges, full and grey, intertwined and foreboding. This time of year….. September and October are reliably wet. All months are precursors to this opera of rain and mud. Climate appetizers.
All these previous weather cycles have lulled us into relative comfort. Daily observance of the dark river that borders the southern portion of Marbella, this quizzical simplicity, commenting how low the water levels seem this year; how odd for the river banks to be so bare this late in the season.
Then, with a celestial confidence the low pressure in the Atlantic and the Pacific, these twin oceans with divergent characters, awake from their atmospheric slumber and cough up hurricanes and squalls like a drunk party of clouds cavorting across this narrow country. Stumbling with ambitions of water and destruction. Absolute negligence like the roaring 20’s on hydrologics.
The further I drive from the international the airport the greater the rural simplicity. A directional reverse in time and convenience. Leagues away from AI destinies and robots. The technological revolutions of this country still nearer to the ox and cart. Cowboys without the propaganda. Cattle without the tourism. Kilometers closer to madness.
Negotiating tight turns past open fields and thick jungle ferns, the street signs disappear and the pavement ends and the cracks in the road appear impressively. Every embankment a tale of a flood recently drained. The usual downed trees and misplaced earth. Freshly cut limbs from the chainsaws of local men intent on re opening the roads to traffic. Amazing how quickly the people and the land here rebounds. Disaster quickly becomes a distant memory while these people of great self sufficiency rise and rearrange their flooded homes and simple lifestyles. A durable character pervades these rural jungle areas that is fascinating to my American comfort and expectation. The locals here employ an iron regiment of acceptance capped by continuance. Forged by the lack of choices and absence of pity or alternative. Horrifically wonderful. Light years from uptown Manhattan.
In the late afternoon I use a garden hose to spray down the shop. The water collects in the center of the room where the tile floor slopes inwards. I spray into the corners and around the edges first then work inwards towards the collective center. My used Timberland books slosh across the giant puddle that is my shop now. Once critical mass is reached I exit through the back door off the workshop room and turn off the spiget. Then I re enter with a broom and begin the repetitive task of pushing the mud and collected water out the front door, past the front porch, and into the waiting yard, where the dirt will collect the dirty rainwater and return all the droplets to their respective homes. The cycle of life in full motion here.
This process continues for the next few hours. The room fills up with water from the outdoor hose and I sweep the dirty water out the front door. An almost zen submission to retail scrubbing. Sisyphus cleaning a surf shop floor……. Geese plays steadily from a small JBL speaker positioned on the coffee bar. I’m scared to turn on the full soundsystem till the shop is fully clean again. As if all the dirt and mire and mud could by osmosis kill the delicate audio system I’ve coupled together. The combination of the system not working on top of the flooded conditions would be too much disaster for me to digest at the moment, and I might simply walk out the front door, like a dazed philanderer, and never return. Take the surfboards and the leashes and the coffee bags and the fins and the t shirts, I’m done with this ridiculous affair. Such privledge…….
The next day reinforcements arrive and we continue the exercise of wet and sweep. The additional help allows the job to move faster, though we still toil for hours, mastering the simple repetition. It dawns on me that this routine comes to represent further insight into the world of forced simplicity that governs this country. Again faced with reconciling my New York expectations with this Costa Rican reality. Again I am sweaty and tired and working with my body to accomplish some task so outside the protocols of my upper west side birth. Again I am connected with near strangers, alternative cultures, gentle faces and easy spirits, laughing and gossiping while pushing mud and bacteria. Again the Gods in their ultimate wisdom humble my arrogant tendencies with floods and cleaning.
By mid day the shop looks almost regular again. I pay my flood relief accomplices in cash and express some sincere gratitude for their arriving to my rescue — another soft gringo in need of a tow. Oddly I get used to it. Incredible what one can get used to. This country and her climates and terrains and unpredictable waters forever pushes the boundaries of sensibilities and perceived acceptance — the daily goals always demanding a little more grief and inconvenience, subservient to some unassuming master. Surprisingly I am an absolute slave to her rambunctious wills and tropical outrages.
The relief this shop provides is like grasping onto metaphorical ropes of sanity. Tether me to the cleats and steady this daily existence. Blessed in the sunlight and drenched by the rains, a constant cascade of water that drives the turbines of this insane yet persistent existence.
Days later the winds pick up and the sky clouds and I wonder if will rain again. Of course it will.
