Talking Back to the Night
Our friends and volunteers were having a blast soaking in every nuance of Costa Rican culture. As we returned to the center from dinner one night, we passed a street dance like none I'd ever seen. An entire block was filled with bodies writhing in unison, and the scene held me in a trance. The drumbeat was so elemental it felt like a pagan rhythm preserved from a time when early humans were burning fires in caves to keep warm.
The energy of each soul was so alive it was as if it danced beside the person holding it enslaved. As the bodies dripped sweat, the street vibrated and the air convulsed with the sound of the drums. These were people possessed, conspirators in the spell they cast over the shifting, swaying crowd, its participants looking on enviously though far too self-conscious to join in. I did not move my body, but my spirit gyrated beside me, and I thought about Steve Winwood's lyrics, "I can feel the beat like a Spanish dancer." I was aroused and I was jealous: I wanted to dance like that, but with abandon, and that was impossible given the reason I found myself in this primitively stimulating situation.
It was so evident that people in Costa Rica loved the street and there were usually so many worshipers that it was difficult to tell where the gravel-strewn pathways ended and the crowd began. I thought about how it seemed they were talking back to the night because they were joined in a communion of passionate engagement with the inky air but their ardor was contentious at times, especially when the rain began. Storms had been a persistent challenge since we'd arrived but at least nighttime monsoons were less frequent than those bombarding us each afternoon. As the daytime rain waned, it would usher in the glare of weak sunlight, which painted the slick pavement silver through a lingering misty haze.
Post-squall, water-filled potholes shown like odd shaped mirrors in the rugged, rocky roads. As I thought about the visage I would find if I approached one of these reflective surfaces, the question loomed: How can I begin to feel comfortable in my own skin in this place? I spoke of having depth, but was I really so shallow that I couldn't understand the reasons for wanting to come back time and time again? Or was it merely selfishness that limited me? Was it the fact that it was Jim's commitment and not mine that was causing me to fall short in handling things gracefully?
I did have great weaknesses where this part of my life was concerned. I loved home and all the beauty it held beyond the physical charm, as the emotional loveliness of familiar things and friends mattered so much. I was flooded when I thought of them, inundated as if I were being swept up by a heaving tide. This engulfment was always followed by feelings of loneliness and homesickness as the water rushed back out to sea, leaving the sand drenched and barren. I missed reading and writing but there was so little time given my duties as hostess to the female volunteers. I'd only managed to skim the latest copy of Byline since we'd arrived. In it Kathryn Fanning wrote, "The Past is unalterable; the future, beyond our control. All we have is now, and all we can work with is our present attitude and behavior."
The days I had time to read over the drafts of poems I had logged in my writer's notebook improved my attitude, as this was one of the few things that soothed me. I had been working on one that I'd titled "Cellophane Dancer," which was inspired by shyness and the idea that as I drove my car—feeling too bashful to move with abandon to the music blaring from the speakers—I asked my shadow, or a cellophane dancer that lurked within me, to move for me. I thought it the perfect poem to revise given how the street dance had moved me.
My notes were about hypnotic beats, flowing verse and the premise that the protagonist was the part of me celebrating music, the piece of my self that loved to move. I achieved some okay moments—"You won't see her driving my car; she's hiding in the music"—but the overall poem never gelled. I was studying it one afternoon when Jim disdainfully asked me whether I was going to help the group move forward or sit and read the afternoon away. I snapped my notebook closed and trudged to where Tobie and Christy were sifting sand for the end-of-the-day cement mixture, my heart heavy with guilt and anger.
As I held my third of the grate that allowed the grains of sand to slip through while keeping the small pebbles in place, I unleashed the dancer inside, imagining the music she would enjoy. I closed my eyes as she rose slowly, moving to the tongue of my heartbeat. I let her hold me captive with her urges and watched as she turned up the volume, abandoning propriety and all that it implied. She pulsated—her knees flexing, her hips swaying—as I rhythmically swished the grate side to side. I tried to make a beat that would draw her out even further. She responded, setting the rhythm free, and in that moment I felt her blood sing, joining with mine—my pulse quickening as she twirled.
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