Got My Mind On My Monkeys And My Monkeys On My Mind (El Yogi Cynico en Costa Rica Parte Cuatro)

...everything we do is music...
John Cage

... returning from Casa Zen to Punta Coco on the last afternoon, heard unmistakable barbaric yawping of howler monkeys in the trees by the tiny escuela across the street...unmistakable not because I recognized or had heard them before...but since, having heard of them, could imagine no other answer to the inevitable what the hell is that??!!...like a roaring hippo mixed with a cement mixer and filtered through a wah-wah pedal...


...though it wasn’t on the official agenda, managed to wander out every morning straight from bed to sit, legs crossed, back relatively straight, on a folded up towel on the rocks, peering hazily out to the sea for half an hour...though morning yoga was at the ungodly-for-me hour of 7:00 AM...sometimes was out even before the sun rose at around 6:00...on the last morning, when we needed to catch an early morning bus, it was closer to 4:30...with a bright red moon and a shooting star...made somewhat easier by the near-unimpeachable logic that peering out to sea while the moon goes down and the sun comes up is better than sleeping, anyway....

...Zen Buddhists...when not talking about the pointlessness of talking about anything...talk about something called monkey mind...a term which describes the way thoughts go leaping through the leaves and branches of consciousness...so quickly...in seemingly random motions...that convincing them to be still seems close to impossible...and even to calmly follow and watch takes great skill...

...ended up taking nearly seventy pictures up into those trees, in crappy light, of creatures that, like my thoughts, won’t seem to keep still...hoping one or two might come out okay...(now that I think of it, this rather forced metaphor might relate more to writing than meditation...whatever works)...and, like denizens of the deeper recesses, don’t, apparently, want to be seen very clearly...though ever ready to leap out and disturb any seeming calm...

...back home, I’ve managed so far to keep the morning meditation thing going...if a bit later...and just so long as I’m willing to let the monkeys howl...

Sutras While the Sun Sets (El Yogi Cynico en Costa Rica Parte Dos)

...it really says something about this town that a big hairy guy can get picked up hitch-hiking in the dark by a girl in a bikini...or so I announced, manic frenzied energy bursting into the improvised yoga studio on the cabana’s front porch facing the ocean as everyone else prepared quietly for candle-lit kundalini...and I think I was misunderstood...

...getting lost is often essential in getting where you need to go...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 18:339

...first day or so in Santa Teresa found me gravitating between a kind of elated relief and lingering dread carried over from home...shedding layers of clothing and watching the mountains and jungle go by on the six hour bus and ferry ride to the Nicoya Peninsula, buying armloads of fresh papayas and mangoes, avocados and bananas...body where I wanted it to be, but another part remaining, as if caught in a web of ice, elsewhere...

...but working on it, getting up to sit on the rocks as the sun came up, morning yoga and running out into the waves to wash off the sweat...setting out to make a meditation of wandering through the day...

...culminating in a long afternoon walk, about as far down the beach toward the south as bare feet could comfortably take me, before turning around, expecting time to kick back a while, maybe take another swim, before evening yoga...just had to turn right into the trees at the rocks in front of Punta Coco...purple i-pod playing Buenavista Social Club, Peter Tosh, Astrid Gilberto, and Cowgirl in the Sand...(Fillmore East version)...orange sun fading from sky to sea...

...and yet, after some distance, nothing, apparently, but thin sandy high tide beach up ahead...seeming to go on and on...sun now red, continuing its descent as I moved faster, fueled by just a bit of anxiety in paradise...thinking, after a while, I must have gone too far but certainly didn’t recall seeing those rocks...then worrying I was gonna miss yoga class, and racing into the descending darkness...adrenaline coursing through every capillary even with the realization that I was likely running away from instead of toward home...feet padding rapidly on wet sand as light diminished...

...it’s not an adventure unless, as some point along the way, it really sucks...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 532:42

...and yet, the beach only seemed to get more narrow, unfamiliar...just about ending....no doubt about it, I’d gone too far...possibly way too far....turned off on the first dirt and gravel passageway, finding a strange collection of houses connected by wooden walkways, followed by a steep rocky hill...though things were completely flat where we were staying...meaning I was way off...shit...not wanting to go back to the beach, though, with little reason to think I’d have any more success finding Punta Coco going the other way, with even less light...so continued trudging upward...barefoot, on gravel...finding this little jaunt had stopped being fun some time ago and showed little promise of getting anything but worse...at last reaching the road, now in full dark, turning knowing I had quite a way to go on it, though still not at all sure exactly where in this strange foreign land I was...and my feet were already sore...

...saw an SUV coming...not many cars other than SUV’s and ORV’s in those parts...the roads are too rough...and, just for the hell of it, stuck out my thumb...hoping, from past experience, for some big burly guy...typically the only kind of person who picks up big burly guy hitch-hikers...though even they generally don’t so in the dark...

...instead, the Spanish speaking surfer girl in the green bathing suit calmly pulled over upon sight of my upraised thumb....even if she seemed a bit nonplussed when her dirty, barefoot passenger seemed unclear on where he was or where he was going...and what I could explain she couldn’t understand...finally managing to sputter out perdido...en la playa...she smiled and said aaaah...fully aware, it was clear, of the intoxicating nature of the Costa Rican sunset...

...all in all, take a poet over a guru any day...intrepid searchers make far better conversation than those who claim to have found...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 561:87

...seemed at least two miles before the sign for the little hamburguesa joint near the gate to Punta Coco...and so, after another barefoot jaunt down the short jungle gravel road to the cabanas, made it to yoga class on time...heart pumping, crazily invigorated...there, completely...

Pressure Drop (El Yogi Cynico en Costa Rica Parte Uno)

When it drop, oh ya gotta feel it...

Toots Hibbert

...she said I know as little about it as you do...and I thought, but didn't say, you have no idea how little I know...

...sitting, unable, sometimes, to tell rocks from reflections of rocks...

...and nothing in this world was more difficult than love...

Gabriel Garcia Marquez