Jiggity-Jig!

I am home again, but I'm afraid I've bought no pigs or hogs.  The trip.  Was.  AMAZING.  Never have I felt so constantly and completely connected with and integral to Creation.  I know that may require a second glance.  Sorry 'bout that.  The rainforest was everything you ever learned in school.  Compared with my expectations, we were practically accosted by monkeys.  We saw an anteater, a sloth, a pizote, a saino (no, I didn't know what those were before the trip), toucans, macaws, parrots, parakeets, and ants that build their own roads.  I was floored, and delighted to be there.  The flora were vibrant; everywhere were vines, moss and flowers covering the already-vital trees.  It rained every day for at least a few hours, usually in the afternoon.  We were constantly surrounded by the sounds and smells of life.  It was... awesome, in the truest sense of the word.

I also kept a pen-and-paper journal of my trip, from which I will be copying in part for your viewing pleasure!  I can almost guarantee you won't get the full version here.  C'est la vie.

Costa Rica Trip '08

3-5 April

Unfortunately, I left the notebook I meant to use at home. Not a big deal, but it does translate to a lag between thinking and recording.  Today, Jesse and I are headed to the deep south of the country, to a town called Puerto Jimenez.  It's supposedly between 8-10 hours, so we'll see how that pans out.  We worry quite a bit about item placement, vis-a-vis mugging.  Jesse instructed me in the ways of the dummy wallet.  Clever yet simple, and something I hadn't even thought of.  Even after living in New York for four years, I don't do well with defensive thinking.  I started The Great Divorce on the plane and finished it this morning.  Not good, since the only other book I brought is The Problem of Pain, which is no thicker.  Anyway, observations:

--San Jose--

At once a lovely and ugly place.  It also depends on where you are in the city.  There are little parks everywhere, and one big one on the western edge of the city (also where the US Embassy is).  There is no shortage of plant life, with varying amounts of visible vitality, but there is also no shortage of poverty and its entourage.  I had a young boy hit his knees begging me for money yesterday, right in the middle of the sidewalk.  Even in New York, I never saw someone really beg like that.  I didn't give him anything, a fact which still bothers me now.  I know we're called to charity, but so many beggars are either liars or will simply use their "earnings" for booze.  It also seems to me an all-or-nothing philosophy - either give money to every beggar or to none.  Otherwise, on what criteria does one base their judgment?  Essentially, it's like saying you can tell who's lying and who isn't, and that your decision of who is deserving is the right one.  Still, perhaps erring on the side of charity is better.

More later. (1007, 5 April)

"You asked for a loving God: you have one.  The great spirit you so lightly invoked, the 'lord of terrible aspect,' is present: not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate, nor the care of a host who feels responsible for the comfort of his guests, but the consuming fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist's love for his work and despotic as a man's love for his dog, provident and venerable as a father's love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting as love between the sexes... it passes reason to explain why any creatures... should have a value so prodigious in their Creator's eyes."

--CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain