Awareness of Home

Awareness of Home                      

Just before leaving Dallas for Costa Rica, I treated myself to a new pair of lightweight Nikon binoculars which, like most things in our lives, has turned into both a blessing and a curse.  Of course, some curses are so benign as to be ALMOST benevolent, and such is the case with the binoculars.  The scarlet macaw in the distant tree becomes a red leaf.  The whale cruising slowly along halfway to the other side of the gulf becomes a wayward log.  Such is the occasional disappointment that reality brings to imagination.

But the blessings, ah the blessings of clarity from these far-seeing glasses completely outweigh those minor hiccups of the imagination.  An indistinct object on a limb becomes a nuanced study in avian behavior, the view through the lens affording the capability to denote the difference between a look of curiosity or a wariness, a readiness to fly, a preference for a certain type of hopping, a quickness of purpose.  Birdwatching is such an acceptable form of voyeurism, even including the scatological aspects.  I mean, there’s absolutely no reason to be embarrassed and look away as the sergeant bird lifts its tail to defecate, eh?  Or to disguise a fascination with observing the upside-down mating habits of macaws?

On a day such as today, after a night of frenzied, frenetic homage to the local DJ at Martino’s Buena Esperanza bar, observing the world at close-hand from the comfort of a reclining sling chair on a shady porch is a welcome activity that has so little emphasis on the “active”. My day is focused on two distinct goals, the first being the aforementioned immobilized observing.  The second goal is interwoven within the first in that I am continuing to explore the pura vida concept that time and goal-orientation become relatively meaningless when appreciating the awareness and harmony of the now.  It is the Tico mantra, their salutation and leave-taking, their daily grail.  By now, my gentle, intelligent reader, you are expressing your …. delight?...confusion?  in catching the obvious contradiction.  How can my goal be to eschew goal-orientation?  What an oxymoronic endeavor, with the emphasis on “moronic”!  Of course it is!  But we start with baby steps for every undertaking, and give ourselves credit for the small incremental change in our learning. 

So here I recline, beside the resident basilisk lizard, allowing the hawk to observe me observing him, allowing this place of fierce sun and verdant beauty to become, briefly, my home.  These days, for me, it is the most important aspect of what I do to change the way that I relate to the world in a joyful way:  I try to make wherever I am my home, a baby-step in discovering that home is within my heart; therefore, I am only as far away from home as I choose to believe in my imagination.  Maybe Nikon will soon make a pair of binoculars that will allow me to peer inside there as well.  To become a voyeur of my own behavior, thereby remembering more often how closely my own resembles that of everyone and everything else.  I am home.