Maria Elena Larsen, July 23, 2004

I recently moved my bones to San Jose, Costa Rica, leaving a well-defined, shared life in Santa Fe for an as-yet undefined one in a different culture and a different language. Over the years in Santa Fe, living my life created a sense of connection tied to place; and in this new place, physical and mental, there is opportunity to revisit for myself the whole process of the experience of community. It’s an elusive thing, this sense of community, something like being a fish in the ocean, suddenly deciding to examine “water.” Perhaps, as in the case of a fish in water, it becomes a lot clearer when the water is not obvious. What is this experience that means so much to me? If I take away all the external measures of it, what remains?

Sometimes words confuse. By “magic,” I mean the sudden influx of joy and understanding and meaning that comes when I resonate with something or someone outside of what I limit or expect in my mental process: all those situations where 1 + 1 = 3 and the heart jumps, the ordinary becoming extraordinary and there is no “no” to say. I can’t make the magic happen; I can only allow myself to perceive it. When 1 + 1 = 3 happens, it’s because, for a moment, I have perceived the interaction as 1x + 1x = X and allowed the “X” to be there without reflexing away the x-tra-ordinary. The magic also shows me the wonder of the differences between the parts, the differentiation between the parts. Habits, expectations and assumptions have a way of numbing us to wonder.

Being an American in these times, and living abroad, brings lots of opportunity to observe habits of expectation and assumptions. The part of me that is “anthropologist” is fascinated by the conflict between different meaning systems. (Anthropologists call that “conflict of culture.”) It’s like looking into a kaleidoscope: there are bits of reality in that defined space. In order to see them, in your mind, you have to organize what your eyes see, somehow, and the unconscious process of discriminating along one set of criteria automatically cancels out other possibilities. There is a subjective difference, for example, in organizing by “green” or by “red.”

One of things that drives Anglos wild about San Jose is how location is described. Giving and getting directions in a culture that places a high value on relative specific place can be maddening for those who perceive location as a thing in itself. In San Jose, every area has a specific landmark, and that is the reference point. Location is relative to that landmark. My official address here is: 200 meters east of Matute Gomez’ house on the left. It is not 2301 Tenth Avenue. Every Costa Rican always knows directionally where (s)he is, and how far away relative to both a specific landmark and in the whole country. They always know exactly which direction they are facing.

These directions also mean more than I hear; 25 meters east of the Hilton is vague to me, but a Costa Rican friend can hear the same thing and get there unerringly. The approximate-ness of it, the impreciseness of it, doesn’t register with the same judgmental quality that it does in me. On the other hand, I never know which direction I’m facing, and they find that incomprehensible. You wouldn’t think there could be so much difference on the physical reality of location, but there is. Hundreds of thousands of dollars have been spent trying to fix this “primitive” “problem.” The Canadian Trade Association is the latest organization trying to fix this cultural discrepancy, by funding a GPS system survey of the city so that the government will know “exactly where everything is,” only to meet with the collective incomprehension: “but we already know where everything is.” Whatever happened to “When in Rome...?”

I have to say that having my address be relative to the Gomez house is richer in texture than 2301 Tenth Avenue. My house is always in context of my neighborhood and my barrio. As a person having tried it, I prefer it. There are far, far more opportunities for magic and the unexpected, and opportunities to interact. Still, the gringo part of me doesn’t trust the mail to arrive 200 meters east from the Gomez house, even knowing that the postman cannot trust the 2301 Tenth Avenue address, because it is meaningless data and does not tell him where the house is.

I love this difference; I love the fact that there can be this difference. I don’t need to change what’s different. I am working on making it real for me – realizing that I am not the one delivering the mail; I am the one receiving it – and that I could do that more gracefully, and at the same time accept that trust develops over time and depends on willingness to have experiences that create the trust. My lack of trust in the very recent past has resulted in my not checking the box and therefore missing the telephone bill – which is why today I don’t have a telephone or internet and I do have a number of inconvenient changes in my plans for the day. The cultural difference expands my understanding of myself and others and my relationship to others. That is what that word community means to me:

It is chaotic and stable, the normal state for non-linear systems, always evolving, never “it.” Community spirit is process in the direction of allowing and experiencing connectedness.