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We are a landscape of all we have seen.
-Isamu Noguchi
"¿Qué tal, mae? ¿Cómo le va?"
"Tuanis. ¿Y vos?"
"Pura vida."
Pura vida. Literal translation... pure life. But to anyone who has spent time in Costa Rica, these words have a deeper meaning. Once you get to know the people on a little deeper level, and can feel yourself easing into the laid-back lifestyle that suites Costa Ricans so well. They use "pura vida" as the answer to just about any question. It can mean "good", "okay", "take it easy" and much more. Within their response to your worldy question, you might well find a deeper connotation in their words, as if they were actually saying "don't worry, man, its just life..."
Perhaps the Costa Ricans just have their perspective and priorities a bit straighter than many others. Either way, after a few days of struggling with the awkwardness of slang in a foreign language, you will find that the word comes easily to your tongue, and eventually just becomes your first response to a myriad of questions. You could write volumes about the culture of Costa Rica, but why bother when you can sum it up in two words... "pura vida."
(Outward Bound Costa Rica School)
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To the Unseeable Animal
My Daughter: "I hope there's an animal
Somewhere that nobody has ever seen.
And I hope nobody ever sees it."
Being, whose flesh dissolves
at our glance, knower
of the secret sums and measures,
you are always here,
dwelling in the oldest sycamores,
visiting the faithful springs
when they are dark and the foxes
have crept to their edges.
I have come upon pools
in streams, places overgrown
with the woods' shadow,
where I knew you had rested,
watching the little fish
hang still in the flow;
as I approached they seemed
particles of your clear mind
disappearing among the rocks.
I have waked deep in the woods
in the early morning, sure
that while I slept
your gaze passed over me.
That we do not know you
is your perfection
and our hope. The darkness
keeps us near you.
-Wendell Berry
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do not live according to yesterday,
do not live for tomorrow,
just live in the moment,
because you never know when that moment will turn into a lifetime
-unknown
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"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense."
- Rumi
Heading East or West, down the
Many years, how often we
have seperated here. Once when I left
The snow flakes seemed like flower
Petals. Now today the petals
Seem like snow.
- Fan Yun
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They can cut all the flowers, but they cannot stop
the coming of spring.
-Pablo Neruda
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Question
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean -
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly,
our whole life would change.
- Buddha
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The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
- Li Po
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