Fifth Time In Costa Rica, 3

I am cultivating the habit of rest while I´m here. Today, like yesterday, even though I wasn´t feeling tired, I came back to the bed and breakfast at midday, read for a while then had a nap for about an hour. I will see if I can continue this practice in Monteverde. It could be a bit of a challenge, as the housekeeping staff can get noisy and intrusive during that time of day, but I´ll see if I can arrange something with management. I can´t always be guaranteed a full night´s sleep. It turns out that I am far from abnormal, that really a lot of people wake up during the night, often can´t fall back to sleep, and this has nothing to do with psychopathology. It appears that the myth of the eight hour uninterrupted sleep is very much a fiction of post industrial Europe and America. The psychiatric industry, with its focus on treating patients, not towards wellness, but towards becoming good Little workers, really goes to town on this sort of nonsense. I did another walk just outside of town, but the área looked really ugly so I headed back, took a different route, then ended up walking in a rich área. I could tell it was a rich neighbourhood when a security gurard stopped me to ask what I was doing there. I asked him if this was private property. He didn´t answer, so I merely replied that I am not a criminal, then resumed walking. He let me go. Then I was stopped by another security guard a couple of blocks later. So I just told him that this neighbourhood is new to me and I want to stretch my legs. He was good natured about it, smiled and made the motions of going for a walk. I really don´r see what is so special about that neighbourhood. All the houses are ugly and made of ticky tacky and crowded together, but rather obscenely big, on small lots. I imagine this is where the Alajuelense One Percent must live. Well, the old mansions in Vancouver, in the Shaughnessy district, are much more beautiful, bigger, on much bigger lots and the neighbourhood is full of trees and lush landscaping. And no one tries to stop you from going for walks there. Now, I understand that some of my Gentle Readers, maybe certain Latinos, might be quite horrified about my cavalier attitude towards Aunt Authority here in Costa Rica. Well, I know who you are, and I know exactly what you are going to say to me when I get back, and I would counsel you to just shut up about it if you don´t want to face the consequences! I can understand this obsession with security in Latin American countries up to a point. But Costa Rica is a much more equal society than many of the others, but I also understand that they would also be heirs of the same kind of collective trauma that afflicts their brother Latino states, given the five hundred year occupation through genocide by their Spanish forebears, and this does not leave Canada off the hook, either, for some of the atrocities commited against the First Nations people by the English. But I also think that there is a bit of a military fetish in the Latino countries, more than a Little, and let´s just say that I find that troubling, even here in Costa Rica, which is the world´s only pacifist nation, given that they abolished their military in 1948. Irony much? It´s been very windy today, which has helped cool things down, given that it´s been rather hot the last couple of days, and gorgeously sunny. This is a very beautiful country and I can understand why many North Americans would want to live here. I only wish that more of them would show a Little more interest in contributing to the social wellbeing of this place, though they could probably do very well without those Yankee(and Canadian) invaders. I only had to spend an hour again this afternoon in the garden courtyard of the Cultural Centre to get a sense of this. All these budding musicians practising their instruments in loud counterpoint to the chattering parakeets in the trees. While chatting again with Santiago, the friendly security guard, I felt really moved by how strong, proud, and humble are these people. We need to learn more from them, methinks. I also had a bit of a close up view of some of the local parakeets, perched on a building ledge. They are cute, bright green with bright red foreheads. They do in a way remind me of the people who live here.