Bubble building.

If it’s one thing I absolutely love, it’s unapologetically dropping off the face of the planet.

It’s my favorite side effect of undergoing a major life change.

For the past two months, I’ve been operating under the assumption that it’s completely acceptable to not communicate with anyone because, you know, I’m experiencing extreme internal turmoil as I adapt to my new environment. Obviously, communication with the outside world would hinder the tenuous equilibrium settling into place.

Obviously.

If we’re being honest, though, my transition to living in Costa Rica was about as difficult as writing the sentence “Then I moved to Costa Rica.” It’s been one steady exhale since I set foot in San Luis. Days and nights slip loosely from one into the next, and time takes liquid form.

I’ve spent the past month blissfully constructing a new, fancy-free bubble. Bubbles, however, have their virtues and vices. Living in a whirling fish-eye lens brings certain things into magnification and shrinks others into obsolescence. Moments of blithe joy can melt into stinging self-consciousness and irrelevance. I don’t understand why the shifts happen or when they happen, but I’m learning to appreciate the perspective they bring. To feel a little unbalanced and unsure, a little raw and rash, is good for the soul. Not everything that’s shaky needs to be steadied. Not right away.

Sensory input is partially to blame. I’m living in a place where I can get a headache from running into low-hanging bananas; where the only litter on the ground is from monkeys tearing apart of bromeliads; where night after night the sky is a swirling sherbet mess. It’s a place where every morning I descend the hill to a gradient of smells – freshly wet leaves replaced by the puffy lavender of the lavandería, then by the sweetness of frying plantains. It’s a place bursting with things I want to learn, people I want to understand, beauty I want to absorb. It’s a lot.

This is a super indirect way of saying that presently, all is good in the proverbial hood. Maybe I’ve been crashing into too many seedless fruits, but I am oh so content here.

[Author’s afterthought: Hammocks inspire introspection, for better or for worse.]