Lluvia mucho ahora

Monday Afternoon

Why doesn’t it rain indoors here? It seems like it should. The rain has rendered it obvious, now, at this soaking moment, that the Book of Genesis was written by desert nomads who simply could not comprehend large amounts of rain. Forty days and forty nights of continuous rain would produce what? Destruction?

No indeed.

Toucans.

Two species of the birds, and also, a rainforest full of toxic plants.

The logic is irrefutable. As hard as it rains, the water runs downhill. It goes somewhere else, down river and waterfall, past iguana and through gorge after gorge, taking every soluble nutrient with it. The nutrients are all locked in the plant life, just as I have been teaching every year.

Even if it pooled up, at a rate of eight inches a day/night, that would give 320 inches of freshwater. That depth of water would not inundate the globe unless the sphere were as flat as Chicago. It is barely deep enough for paddlefish. The water does not pool, though. It moves. And even after it stops raining, it continues to fall from the trees.

Toxic trees, yes. These include various species of Virola tree, the dark red resin of which is full of DMT. Two species of toucan; the keel-billed Ramphastos sulfuratus, and the chestnut-mandibled Ramphastos swainsonii.

Dendrobatiid frogs (the red one, Dendrobates pumilio) calling restlessly for mates, the guide said that the rain made them “happy”, and affirmed that the tadpoles are indeed transported to bromeliads in the canopy. It seemed a crazy notion to me before. It makes sense now. There are bromeliads everywhere. A great Curasssow, idly strolling the pavement in the morning, a strange forest turkey called a crested guan, a coven of black Trigona bees robbing a banana flower, gold-headed tanagers, scarlet rumped tanagers, collared peccaries, bats sleeping in the shade of a wilted Heliconia leaf. The mouse-sized creatures had cut the veins to produce a rain-shade for themselves. Philodendron vines everywhere, strangler figs, the Mayan tree of god, the Ceiba, reaching between this world and the next.

Feral cocoa, leafcutter ants everywhere, lemur anoles, some gymopthalmid lizard, clearwing butterflies, Heliconia butterflies, owl butterflies, and a few things so strange I am wondering if they were real. That is the unmistakable impression I got, this morning, over coffee, looking at the birds. The gold hooded tanager, the green honeycreeper, and the scarlet-rumped tanager looked cartooney to my eye.

In fact, for the first time in several years, I do not need drugs. Perhaps they would be nice, after all. I have a feeling that any random tea made from that wall of green out there would either send me to my grave or have me sitting at the right hand of Aztec Elvis.

Bullet ants, Paraponera sp., unnamed ants and spiders, walking palms, mealy parrots, agoutis, howler monkeys, and mushrooms to mention except that some were ghost white doileys and others resembled little brown baseball bats.

An old stoner trick-If the washing machine is full, or too expensive-dry the clothes instead. Most of the unpleasant volatiles escape in the air. In fact, one washer was full, and the other accepts only alien currency. As I write this, lukewarm laundry cools on the bed. I stare at a pastiche of second-growth whatnot near the river. This morning, the guide told me that part of La Selva, near the Rio Puerto Viejo, used to be a Cocoa Plantation. Fungal disease wiped out the crop, year after year, taking most of Costa Rica’s enthusiasm for the crop. Some of the trees are still there, but most have been removed to speed up the process of ecological succession. I see at least one chestnut-mandibled toucan, and hear the sound of the river. On this side of it, a hill covered with ferns, Paleocene-style, making me wonder as to its origins.

Birds and lizards nest alongside each other amid the clay banks of the trail. Like Vegas, the forest does not sleep, making me pause to budget my energy. I am about to go out alone.

Holy Christ! More cool birds. And another two, nearly sideswiping my head from behind as they flew by. The animals here seem either totally oblivious to humans (mating millipedes, Trigona) or nonchalantly curious. None of them look like they have ever seen a rifle. Or a jaguar.

More. What will my brain retain, and what will regress into that dark velvet land I visit as I sleep?