Journals from the Jungle XII: It's all here now

How many words, how many thoughts, how many pages, how many journals did it take to get us here? Every single one.

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Welcome to Journals from the Jungle—a series of stories from my recent travels, drawn straight from the pages of my journals. These are reflections on breaking free from a life of structure, convention, and societal expectations, and finding my way back to an embodied, authentic self. Through journeys in nature—and into the nature of self—through adventure, challenge, rest, and the dramatic dismantling of old beliefs, I explore themes of freedom, pleasure, love, and the strength that comes from shedding what no longer serves us. I hope these stories inspire you to embrace change, reclaim your vitality, and live more freely.

5/23/24 continued

I feel like I can finally relax. And, I do. I nearly fall asleep outside by the pool, dozing, forgetting where I am, feeling myself particularize, atomize, float. I walk to sunset and lay on the warm, solid sand, happy. I cook red snapper perfectly and eat it mostly with my fingers, wrapped in tortillas with mayonnaise, boiled yams on the side. I walk through the thick black night to an event at the local wine shop and meet new people, but it’s too much stimulation. Fun, but I leave early, back into the night that’s a little scary in its purity; I can see nothing beyond the dirt road lit by the flashlight from my phone. As I’m nearing home, a jungle rain starts and …

… I love it. Large drops, soft of course, warm and heavy, fall on and around me. It’s beautiful. The jungle is alive with sounds and I feel perfectly content.

5/24/24

Losing track of time—the day, the month … my orientation in time and space faltering. It’s a damp, lightly overcast morning—gentle and quiet now. I’ll surf and then rest.

Post surf: Sleepy from the exertion. Tan and bug-bitten. So pleased. I nap. I think: Beauty never gets old. As I watch this liquid light froth and seep into the horizon—rose-gold ripples and fractals, patterns that soothe and hush, wash over and wash away thoughts, concerns, importances, all … I keep forgetting things. Day, week, tasks, people I’m supposed to text back, things I’m supposed to be thinking about. Or, maybe that’s it. Maybe I’m not supposed to be thinking about anything. Maybe, I came here to feel (I did) and maybe it won’t “tell” me what I thought it might—or, tell me anything. Maybe I will just feel … and the rest of life will wait for me (or not wait for me).

A curious, unexpected idea: Could I work here? Could I write a book here? God, remember all of that sitting, in front of screens, inside a little room, in a horizon-less place, pining for this. To be right here.

I feel emotional. Letting go. Letting go like the shawl I’ve worn on every single trip into the wild for a decade, searching, searching, searching for … this. To reach … this. The shawl that just today finally gave out—holes emerging seemingly overnight and the thin fabric letting go into tears. The shawl, that I realize, is the same colors as this place.

On the walk home from sunset, I exhale most deeply, my face tipped to the sky as it blossoms into cotton-candy wisps, spirits, beauty—over the bright green jungle, which never dies here. The leaves never fall, the life never withdraws. Instead it gives and gives and gives and gives—growing toward you, over you, up from beneath and out from above, pushing life.

I am here. I am home. I love it here so much. This feels so good, so right. And so far from everything else.

Fresh fish from that writhing sea in my mouth, the life within and around, filling me. And on and on and on and on and on.

A quiet evening in was a good idea. I have a whole hour to read and write, relax now before early bed. I feel really wonderful and oh, look at that: the last page of this journal. How perfect. How many words, how many thoughts, how many pages, how many journals did it take to get us here? Every single one—and now here we are, here we are in the perfect place in the perfect way at the perfect time. It’s all here now, beyond and full, abundant, rich, sensual, exciting, and secure too. It’s all right. You are you once again. You have made yourself, found yourself someone, somewhere, that you once dreamed. You know, and you know because you’ve trained to, burned to, strived, fought, fought, fought, given into, honed and trusted and leapt. This is all absolutely incredible and I am so, so happy, in a deeply sure way—below all I don’t know yet. I love you. Bigger than the world.

~

5/25/24

Who is this new version of me? Or is it not a new version at all and just actually, me.

I feel nearer to feeling something new … like, why I am here … like I am … celebrating my whole life up to this point. That is how Costa Rica makes me feel. I felt it on that first trip after the pandemic, and Dad’s death, in that other town—it was a celebration of life. Now too—accomplishment, arrival, the reaching of a time and place that is the reward. The reward for life is more life.

I cannot believe how perfect this place is, for me. Not by chance I suppose, I have found my idea of heaven.

One week into this experiment in feeling and I feel a lot, though not yet any “clarity” about, or rather no indication that anything is going to encourage me to leave. I wonder what that means.

I remind myself to simply trust the process, because it is occurring whether I know it or not.

The day stretches out ahead of me now. Maybe sola, maybe not.

~

I love: Leaving my journal open and around, awaiting anything I want to jot down at any time.

I meet someone new at a local cafe for food and the conversation is, as is so common here, quickly connective, quite immediately into topics not at all superficial or polite, per se. There is a simplicity here, certainly, but in that, a depth. As if everyone has been stripped of artifice—as they’ve also been stripped of dress and appearance accessories (makeup, jewelry, presentation)—leaving only the essentials. (For example, when I meet someone new months later, their first questions for me are “¿Cómo piensas? ¿Qué importa para tu forma de vivir?” How do you think? What matters for how you live?) Over soft eggs on sprouts with avocado and homemade toast we talk about her art, and flow, even understanding each other about “‘ness,” my made-up word for something akin to the life force, which I rarely talk about. It surprises me how open I am here, to all of it. Though that makes sense as I too have been stripped. Stripped is also the english translation for the name of the beach that I watch sunset from every night. I say that I want to write about how we know when we know and what that feels like and she says, “That’s what I want to read about!” She bursts into a little song about las plantas and I marvel at these little demonstrations of freedom, which abound here. We talk about how lovers (common here) and places are similar. She says that this place “will take everything from you that doesn’t belong.”

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