By Douglas Evan Weiss
This morning I went to the local farmers market in San Juanillo and was so inspired.
The market has recently moved from a small cafe to the larger community salon just west of the football field. The space, while old and damp and requiring ceiling repairs, is larger than the previous market location, and the added space makes the whole experience more fun. More space for the vendors to spread out and generous social areas for shoppers to convene — weekly catch ups, abbreviated gossip sessions. In these small towns, especially this time of the year with the rains, we all see each other far less, often cocooned in the house or busy running errands along bad roads. So these Saturday mornings provide an invitation to touch and smile and converse and are all sorts of precious.
We all see each other less, it feels. Sure the climate in October is challenging. Sure the cloudy days ware on a person. Sure there is very much a shortage of public commercial spaces to meet or sit and watch humanity stroll by. We are far from the grand boulevards of Mexico City or Manhattan. The culture here is less contrived towards connection and more inclined towards survival. The beach in the morning brings a few people. Perhaps a quick conversation at the local shop in town. A head nod and wave along the road while driving past each other. I find it all very isolating, actually. For as close as we can be here, especially in the village, we are also at a great personal distance.
The tables at the new market location are set up further apart, which is ironically more inviting, I think. My conversation with the gentleman who makes the hand carved cutting boards out of Guanacaste wood is leisurely. He just had a big sale so the air conditioner in his bedroom can finally be replaced. Fifteen years of cool air service until the unit died on a humid night in September. He fills the deep cracks in the cutting boards with colored resin, then polishes accordingly. Bright oranges and turquoise swirls perfectly embedded in the natural yellow colored wood. The work is thoughtful, clean and elegant.
I love making these, he says.
The women who sells beach clothes and rattan bags with thin leather handles is talking on the phone when we hug.
How are you doing? She asks.
Am alright, I reply. Work is slow but steady. Busy enough making things.
She smiles. Her bright pink lipstick lights up the room.
Sure, she says slyly.
I like your new haircut, I tell her. An undercut — very cool.
Thank you.
The line for fresh vegetables is short this week. Short this time of year. A long table with foldable metal legs is set up on the north end of the hall and filled with boxes and baskets of vegetables trucked in from a farm on the other side of Ohancha. By 11am the display is mostly empty. But now the greens are abundant and the fruits are well stacked. In front of the table is a small island of potted flowers in cute plastic containers. Golden Marigolds slightly drooping from the long morning drive. Red leafed tropical plants well placed around the Marigolds like an offensive line. Plastic stakes set amongst the arrangements to display prices. I buy a large healthy broccoli and cauliflower. A box of Papayas sits on the floor in front of the register. I feel for a firm one and add to my haul of veggies. The seated farmer is stationed at the end of the table. All roads lead here, weighing and adding my selections.
How are the Marigolds in the full sunshine? I ask.
They are fine, he answers. But rain will hurt the flower. They are delicate. It rains hard here.
At the exit I cannot resist and buy a bean and cheese empanada. The seller lives in town. The fried empanada is noticeably greasy. An unexpected breakfast when I get to work. Usually I do not love these local delicacies, but I enjoy supporting these little markets, and the money spent in these small towns usually stays in these small towns, providing an economy for these local entrepreneurs that pays the rent and bills and hopefully puts some food on the tables and keeps the kids off the streets and older sons away from the drugs that are easily accessible here.
There is nothing I see overtly processed at the market this morning. No sugary temptations or name brand packages. It’s actually local and natural, with real people in front of you — a face and a life and a vibe and you have to interact and be somebody. Own up to whatever views or comments or opinions you have. At the market we are all just up in it and the convenience of our tech laden walls come down. We are who we say we are. So old school……
This morning I’ve been obsessing on Zadie Smith. Specifically a photo in British Vogue to accompany her essay on glamor. Zadie in short yellow pumps and a low cut long brown dress with white and blue lines vertically down the front. Her hands taughtly bent into fists, confidently placed on her wide hips. She stands above a white shag carpet with an obedient white pug dog laying down, looking up at her. The queen. The whole image stuffed into a small space next to a bold headline
Can you be serious and seriously glamorous? The essay asks.
I soon discovered there are no Clive Bells in Lower Manhattan, she writes. You really have to push the boat out to get as much as a head turn from anyone at all.
Else where on the internet I search up her quotes.
You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence, she writes.
Supporting these small business market sellers at these local markets remain crucial to the economic eco system of these jungle villages. The money spent here joins an economic river that irrigates all the homes I pass on my way from here to there, quickly in the style of my North American culture.
Strolling among these tables and driving these roads I consider the intimate nature of this lifestyle here, with over grown plants and swelling rivers and foreign landscapes. As a foreigner in this country my access and roots only go so deep. Often it feels that my economic connection is the sole tether to a larger community which welcomes me, tolerates me, but ultimately calculates my contributions in numbers. I accept this. A sort of pay to play existence. My ongoing fee for entrance into this tropical milieu. This country supplies a certain lesson in simplicity, access to nature, an opportunity for adventure, and in return my dollars are re invested into these tightly knit towns which no matter how much time I spend amongst them will always be foreign to me, and me forever an outsider to their populace.
This entire cycle is very human to human. In all our generous flaws and eager failures. Walking between the tables sampling the wares and dropping a bit of cash is how we communicate. What is money if not, in some way, a substitute for language. I like this thing that you’ve made so I give you money to show my enthusiasm and appreciation. Is retail not love? And then perhaps these rural centers for commerce are valuable third spaces to show our love for each other. Two dollars for a head of broccoli. Seventy dollars for an artisanal cutting board. Just numbers to translate intension. If I am fortunate enough to have a bit of cash in pocket is it not then my responsibility to spread that wealth amongst my neighbors in an effort to make us all more connected. Is that horribly capitalistic and shallow? Maybe. But everybody needs to eat.
How we spend our time, our money, our love……. The things to ponder on a Saturday morning.
Someday my time here will end. No idea how far along that might be. But maybe at the end, if in peace, there will be a moment of introspection, an induced long view, like looking from a high perch above a wide valley at all the trees and buildings settled below. Maybe these dots along the horizon might represent an accumulation of my actions and their consequences. I hope the valley is beautiful, colorful, rich and full, like the Hudson Valley in the Fall, or the Costa Rican jungle after months of rain.
That lady and her empanadas, that woman with her pink lipstick, the wood seller and the bread seller and the hot sauce seller and the vegetable merchant — all of us huddled around this salon on a dry Saturday morning navigating the days and years and each other — these are moments I might remember, and perhaps, hopefully, the fortunate accumulation of my simple dreams realized.
