There are many things I loved about Costa Rica, the coffee
not the least among them. I have a case shipped in for Christmas every year.
People will talk about the rhythm there – the Pura
Vida – and it’s all true. But what they often don’t mention is that the keeper
of the rhythm is the rain.
The sun wakes you before your alarm can, no matter how late
you were up, and it shines straight through to 1:00ish. Just bright, hot
sun.
From 1:00 – 2:00, its
beautiful blue skies dotted with innocent white clouds. It’s beautiful. It
looks the sky over a prairie, not an ocean.
At 2:00 it rains just like it’s raining tonight – heavy and
loud and straight down like someone has a giant watering can just above you.
Everything is soaked inside of 2 seconds, if you stayed outside (the locals stay outside, and by the end of the week so do you). It starts like
someone turned a faucet, is amazingly steady & monotonous for 30 minutes,
then turns off like a faucet between 2:30 & 2:45.
The rain stops and the sun is out within one
minute. Bright as Dawn. Within three minutes, anything you left out is dry.
The sun shines till sunset, no clouds to be seen.
Every. Day.
That’s what tonight’s rain made me think of. The rain in
Costa Rica, and its inherent & blessed predictability.
I want this for my life. I think, in any given day, if could
just squeeze all the bullshit into one hour and know that the other 23 would be
golden, I could do it. I would so prefer this to 2 minutes of bullshit every
hour. Because it’s not the 2 minutes of bullshit, it’s the 20 minutes of seeing
it coming and dreading it, and the 20 minutes of being pissed about it after,
which leaves like eight minutes to not be annoyed. If I could do that ONCE a
day instead of TEN TIMES a day, just for longer – sign me up. I can plan around that.
That is, unfortunately, is not the way rain works in my
life. This week, it’s like just barely
shitty enough to keep you inside, but not so crazy as to offer you a decent
excuse for it. My life has been drizzling for weeks. I want a 40 minute
downpour, and be done with it.
