Yoga, Surfing, and Pot (El Yogi Cynico en Costa Rica Parte Tres)

If dogs run free, why not we, across the swamp of time?
Bob Dylan

...ubiquitous surfboards, dreadlocks, thongs, and tattoos...far more yoga teachers and artists than cops, doctors, or clergy...as many bikes as cars...t-shirt shops full of flagrant, fragrant smoke...Argentines, Israelis, and Americans intermingling with the almost invariably warm and friendly locals...a mellow postmodern trinity of, as my friend put it, yoga, surfing, and pot...


...of which, it should be mentioned, I indulged only in the first...along with so many of those less-than-$1 empanadas at the tiny bakeries...carne, pollo, frijole, queso...Bimbo chocolate cookies, and as much fresh tropical fruit as a body can safely digest....one thing about Latin America in general: you don’t go there to lose weight...and the crummiest little convenience store can be counted on for a produce section to make the northern jaw drop....and that’s not even mentioning that this is the culture that gave the world hot pants...


...they got the fun, they got the palm trees,
they got the weed, they got the taxis...
Joe Strummer, Safe European Home

...it’s always important, I think, for Americans proud of living simply out of their backpacks to remember that they’re probably sinking more money into their week-long vacations than most of the locals see in a year...and yet, Costa Rica can make one feel a bit less the great white imperialist...seeing little of the overwhelming poverty, trash, and heavily armed cops and soldiers impossible to avoid in much of the region...which, actually, has something to do with the country going without a standing army for more than half a century....relative prosperity deriving, to a significant extent, from putting funds that might otherwise go toward the military into education...

...that said, gotta confess to having made an attitude of semi-blissful semi-oblivion toward world events an essential aspect of my retreat....got on-line once early in the trip to give family members contact info in case of emergency, and then again in the bed and breakfast near the airport the night before flying home to clear junk accumulations from in-boxes, but that was it....and, except for stray bits picked up here and there...like last week’s snow in Philly we all hoped would delay our flights home...heard and saw nothing about the world beyond our beach...realizing when I got home that I hadn’t so much as thought about Tea Partiers, Sarah Palin, or the health care debate in over a week...and, with that, finding myself quite reticent about getting re-informed...spending far less time on-line now than before the trip...even if that’s meant unconscionably neglecting many of my blog friends, along with the news....sorry...I’ll be back...

...have always believed in keeping informed...taking part...little interest in being the kinda yogi who holds up non-attachment to justify non-engagement or the greater scheme of things as an excuse for apathy...but there comes a point when engaging with the wide world out there...particularly when doing so by surfing the interwebs ’til the early hours of the morn...becomes simply a mode of escape from the world nearer-by...and, perhaps most of all, just another of the infinite futile ways of trying to push away the vast universe inside...

...and sometimes, it seems, ya hafta go somewhere far away to see what’s really goin’ on with ya back home...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 12:291