Sinfonías de San Se
Word Count Total: 3,754
Creative Nonfiction / Film Poetry
I. Secret Study // Tierra
“Can you hear the crickets?”
“No.”
“Listen…it’s the lowest sound.”
“No, I can’t hear them.”
“Really?”
“I guess my ears haven’t adjusted to being here yet.”
“What about now?”
“Nothing.”
We’ve made it to the top of our hike, a pretty look-out built of wood.
Quite frankly, I cannot hear past the sound of my own breath
fighting with the muggy evening air, let alone chirps ascending
from the forest floor 500 sum feet below. The trees–lush and
dense–they climb high, and we are now eye-level with the
birds flitting about their branches. I do not know who we have here
with us–I have many names to learn. The wind is loud; it
whistles and whips. And the sun is setting, a hazy warm glow,
like a milky herbal tea. We share a smoke and head back down
to the car. From the edges of San Sebastián, we cruise
through the windy roads to get back home, our little
haven in the mountains.
This built-in friend next door is a true mentor of stewardship.
He knows this tierra well; her mysteries and the intricacies
of growing food, medicine, and carnivorous plants.
Everything I wish to know spills effortlessly from the archive
of wisdom stored in his muscle memory; it’s in his DNA.
The knowledge pours from him as naturally as
from the sky falls rain, which I carefully
collect in buckets. “Spray neem oil to treat those pesky
aphids, plant gandules on Holy Friday, expect
avocados during hurricane season, use molasses
to protect your watermelon roots.” Noted.
I rise early with the sun to beat the midday heat. I put a
pot of water on the stove to boil. In the meantime–I fetch
a coconut and plump papaya from the backyard. The first
slice of my own harvest is juicy and sweet like cotton
candy. I rub the peel all over my face and let it absorb
into my skin as I bust open the coconut. Inside, I set up
the french press with beans grown in San Se. While
the coffee brews I chop up the coco and blend it with
honey and cardamom, removing the pulp to reveal
a creamy milk for my morning cup. Oh, this is luxury.
Leaving the door open for my cats to join me, I step
outside to bask in the low sun, sipping slowly, admiring
this colorful crown of thorny Trinitarias surrounding the
entrance of my home. I think I need to trim these back
to avoid another scalping. Blown by the wind, pink
Bougainvillea flowers pile up in my garage. I scoop
them up to mulch my batata patch; sweet potatoes
and other root veggies nest here, with radish sprouts and
transplanted taro. I bury composted ginger, turmeric and garlic
roots in the empty spaces, hoping they’ll harbor new life.
There’s much movement to be made today. Arranging of the
arrowheads and bromeliads, spreading around oregano
cuttings to protect from disease–speaking of which, the citrus and
guanabana trees need neem before the sun can burn the
leaves. I’ve got ten aloe to put in the ground with the mother
oregano, rosemary and recao. Pepper plants need tucking in
between the fruit trees; those long and green, round and
sweet, small and spicy. Sprinkling spinach and parcha seeds
along the fence–soon to be a magnificent tangle
of delicious vines.
The ruminating quiets down as I get into the groove
of getting my hands dirty. I aggressively rip up these incessant
weeds, to make space for something new. This intentional
destruction has become a cathartic chaos. I move in mango
and palm saplings where they’ll have more room to stretch
and breathe.
My cats scratch at the trunk of the ceiba tree and chase
butterflies around its base. Good luck to live with this sacred tree.
Towering at least fifty feet, she is a symbol of the universe.
I sit down to take a break and listen. What’s the furthest
sound I can hear? The birds in the branches above me?
The wind chimes from the garage? The neighbor’s dogs’
collars jingling from over the hill; they’ll be starting their
escape, him chasing after them through the pasture, startling
the fowl into aggressive warning squawks, giving him a
run for his money all the way down to the river. I hear the
stoic cows–moo. I walk down the street to visit them.
I’ve just missed the birth of a calf. Her placenta still hangs from
her mother’s rear side. She licks her still-wet stumbly babe while
it suckles on her teet. Another baby lays sprawled out under the
shade, already mastering the art of life. Coos and tweets,
crinkles of falling leaves, and reggaeton blasting from car
radios of passers by. The cow is a pinnacled emblem of San
Sebastián, representing a not-so-distant past of fields rich with
coffee and sugar cane.
I turn in to rest until evening, still listening. The sounds begin
to blend together. Is the bird cawing, or is the child in the park
feigning parrot calls? Is the boy thrumbing his fingertips on the
basketball tight with air, or are those high-pitched taps coming
from the tightly pulled drum head of the mountain man who
plays in the rain?
As night falls and the cool breeze pulls in a storm, the shrillest,
ear-splitting shrieks build up quickly out of nowhere until they
drown out everything else. The song of the grillos. It’s unlike
any cicada I’ve ever heard before, loud as a fire alarm, and
I fear I’ve acquired tinnitus.
II. Slippery Spaces // Agua
Thick droplets pitter patter on tin roofs.
The daily afternoon rains lull me into a cozy
homeostasis. The calm, gentle rhythms and
ripples of sound remind me of my own fluidity
and grace. Soft, but persistent. One foot in
front of the other until I’ve stepped outside.
Dance in the rain–Beltane! She pours unto
me, relentless, soaking through my clothes
to my skin, naturally softening me through to
the core. Hold me close, my soft cool spring,
and don’t you let go. Nothing matters when
we’re dancing. Step by step. Toe to toe. One
day we’ll see blossom from these seeds that
we sow. For now we splash in puddles, connecting
child to divine, jumping into portals, traveling
through space and time. Expressions distorted,
atoms rearranging themselves on the surface
into versions we may not recognize. We resist,
we push and we pull, until we return to the
understanding of infinity. And so then we relax,
lay back. Smooth sheets wash over and we drift
off. It’s never as simple as the changing of the
seasons. The unpredictability of the currents
strengthens us for sure. To be a master of change
is a strong aspiration. The adaptability of
vulnerability. The in-betweens. The gray matter.
It’s getting darker; dimmed light from inside a
soft glow. The moon hangs low, a sliver of sun,
a crescent made of diamonds, like the iris of
God’s eye.
I bet the frequency of this island could be heard
submerged in any body of water here. San Se
was once a beach; we live immersed in an ocean
of sound. From volcanic eruptions came under water
la isla del encanto. How her rivers run suave, her
cascadas spilling into them, gushing spongey sea coral
that look like beehives and hidden treasures, fossils of
sea crocodile. Caiman and river roaches traverse these
waters. So do little fish that nibble at your toes, like
you’re at the spa. We scoop clay off the rocks, rub
into our legs, making mud masks for our face and
chest. The cleansing water reflects in fractals
along the verde foliage.
Our bare toes kissing the leaves beneath our feet, the
green matter softly crinkles as the mud soaks into our skin.
Splish. Bird song surrounds us in the air, the chirps of chatter,
cucaws of signal, the shrieks of play up in the canopy of trees.
Conversation flows until we arrive at the swim spot. That’s when the
laughter and our own bird calls take over as we strip from our clothes
and take turns jumping into the cold water, always refreshing, always
relieving some woes of life. Splash. We move the large rocks blocking
the current; someone must have built a dam so the pond would fill up
higher. They don’t know any better. “The river must flow!” Once the
path is cleared and the water’s movement takes with it all the stagnant
gunk and algae, I join my friends. Kaplunk. It starts to drizzle, droplets
tapping the water’s surface. I lean back submerged besides my face,
and float. In this moment my mind is silent. All I can hear is the
whoooosh passing through my eardrums. The water’s song.
Vrraaammmn.
There’s magic in these waters. I’ve heard story
of an elder riddled with the chronic pains of
aging. Where should she find healing refuge
besides the rivers of San Se. While she hobbled
and struggled her way down to the pool,
once submerged and risen, the shakes in her
legs straightened out, and she walked home
in strong stride, never needing again to return.
The molecules are supercharged by the
thunderous cracks of God. As above, so
below, as the saying goes. Though often
happening in quick spurts, the rains in this
mountain range can lead to powerful floods in
under thirty minutes, mercilessly washing away
anything foolishly in the oversaturated paths
branching out from the rivers. Their source being
un rio, one of three, Guatemala, Culmadas or
Culebrinas, interweaving into a web of blue
veins, pumping like blood rich with minerals, as
intricate as the roots of all the trees–all the
radicals are free–sin alchemizing, antioxidizing,
toxins purging. But alas, we need the rain just
as much as we need the drought. We cannot be
always saturated; we must learn to go without. The
Sun teaches us to struggle in order to survive. Too
much water and surely we’ll wilt and die.
III. Song of the Sol // Fuego
We live our days like poetry, in the
passion of polarities. We are the fire of the
Earth; the sun gives us life, vitality. We play and dance
in its warmth, enjoying the paradise we are in; paradiso del diablo.
Skin glows, but mi mente still splits as the Solstice draws near.
You can take the girl out of the tundra, but it
might take a while for her bones to thaw
out. Heart on fire, mind on ice.
Diving deep into the shadows, dancing with
flames under moonlight. It’s a ritual, not a death sentence.
The tap has opened at my throat, pipes unfrozen, gushing like lava.
My words do not fall on deaf ears; I enjoy the orchestra just as
much as I am a part of it. Gratitude is amplified. Dialogue
evolves between songs. I add my own sense of joy
and pleasure into the mix in the form of
tambourine jingles and doumbek rhythms. Or
else I’m singing along to a punk rendition of Bad
Bunny’s “Yo No Soy Celoso” as the boys inside switch around
on instruments back at the studio in Lechuza, the barrio where we
gather to bang on drums. Someone’s wailing on guitar, whining about mic
displacements, and I’m interpreting the sighs in-between words
unspoken. I yawn as the low afternoon sun lingers.
I’m breaking a sweat even though I’m sitting in the shade of
the chandelier tree, book in my lap. As someone who’s been too cold
for so long, it feels good to be hot. The humidity here brings my skin to life.
The ad-lib of laughter and familial mutterings from inside mingle
with the gusty breeze swirling through the leaves and the
birds chatting about up in the branches.
I’ve got my socks off, and I keep spilling
my beer–the last one, a good IPA. Fucking hell. I don’t
like IPA’s anyway; I walk to get a soda from the bakery up the street,
a ginger ale and something sweet with guava.
I return to the stu; vibes are high and moist–quenching, truly.
Gritty vocals are being laid down in spurts of exhaustion for a song
about moving the sun, fitting for one of the record hottest summers in Puerto Rico.
They’re fixing to be the next big things, but this hand-me-down equipment
serves no justice, the sheer rawness of the live feed never fully captured quite right.
A load of grunting indicates that rehearsal is over, so we all pile into the car
and head down to a bar that will sell us a single cigarette for a
celebratory spliff. We pool together our change. All the coins clank
together in my palm as we approach the register to exchange our pleasantries.
“Todo bien?” “Claro, que si.” “Gracias.” “Ciao!” I shlump back into the passenger seat
and crumble the tobacco between my fingertips, spilling it over what’s already laid out on
the dashboard. My tongue glides along the wrap like sandpaper to close it up, and
the snap of my lighter means it’s time to enjoy. The soft glow from the
flame illuminates my face as I take the first drag. We fill the car with smoke and
laughter in layers like phunky parrots creating echo
chambers, mirroring the Pájaro Bobo hiding and mocking us from
within the trees. Like the cuckoo birds, we are mad, alive, and brutally honest.
The snap, crackle, pop of the Boricua tongue, it misses nothing. Everyone
is writing their own stories here, and it’s a beautiful thing.
Each their own character, re-envisioned
several times over by different minds, different hands.
The characters tell their own stories within the story, and so on.
Overlapping narratives evolving the details over time, like inside jokes that never die.
The evening concludes in the bleachers across the street from mi casa,
bouncing between jazz bebops, salsa tracks, and bass and beats.
The crew entertains themselves all night, and I just walk home when it’s time
to lay down, the ricochet of their voices trailing off behind me.
I hope to get back into my own work grind in the morning,
but as I sleep a storm ensues, and I awake to a
power outage–just my luck! I can’t even enjoy my breakfast because
ants have swarmed in; I’ve surrendered to the fact that these
insects have basically become a part of my diet at this point. Unsure when
the power will return, I sigh and lay down in the pillowy grass, relaxing into the
stability of the earth and the realization that there is nothing else to do now besides
continue resting. I begin drifting off…until–OUCH. I bolt upright to see my arm
covered in fire ants. I peel my shirt off,
scraping the army with it, but it’s too late: blistering
red bites have disfigured me from shoulder to fingertip. These ants
will be the death of me! Disgruntled, I head to the
supermarket for medicine and a new loaf of bread. It’s here,
of all places, an old man finds me. His English is bad; my Spanish is worse,
but we understand each other. He recruits me to feed the people in town warm soup, a
classic recipe of chicken and rice. “Sopa caliente. Tengo almuerzo!” Yeah, we
feed the people en la calle. I like when they ask for “mas sopa” and
take two. No tienen hambre. Comida por todas gentes.
Inhale. Slirp, slirp. Exhale. Ahh. Contenta. Once the bellies are full, we
bring fruit to the tip-top of the mountain and snack and nap, relaxing like kings.
The only reprieve from the heat is the breeze.
IV. Summer Swish // Aire
Up top the mountain we rest below a Thespesia grandiflora tree, its bushy coverage of heart-shaped leaves helping us fend off the heat. Light rain trickles through to tickle our skin, but the great rainfall subsides until we pack up the bus and return to the gravel road. For now, we are serenaded by birds, toads and breath. We are encompassed by an umbrella of bright pink hibiscus-like flowers, la flora de Maga. The blossoms, a national symbol of Puerto Rico, are like tea cups with overlapping petals that emanate an intoxicating scent which romances our siesta. I look over to see gleeful children playing on the giant wooden swing sets which overlook the mountain range of San Sebastián. The sound of planes overhead reminds me of my childhood. I’m not sure why, but being here makes me so incredibly nostalgic. I often say time moves slowly here. Sometimes it’s as if I’ve gone back in time. Perhaps, in a way, I have. Perhaps, in this space, I’m saving and healing my younger self, fulfilling the life I was promised I could have. Is this my version of the so-called American Dream? I suppose it is. What does that mean? What can I do? We are scavengers who specialize in waste diversion and community care. Nobody gets left behind and nothing goes unused. Our tactics are the same as those who have nothing to their name. We disenfranchise the illusion of separateness. Keen eyes scan the environment for goodies and do-gooders. Our hands are grimey from sifting. They say you can trust a person with dirt beneath their fingernails, a testament to hard, honest work. We’re conventional by looks, but not by the books. This is an allusion to those birds up above–the majestic peregrines and vultures that maintain the ecosystems of this island–the ones who rule the skies in chaotic order making sense only to their own flock. The sounds of the mountain melt away my thoughts, my heart rate slows, and my breath follows. I slip away until all that’s left in my awareness is the swish of the wind in my ears like whispers. My eyes are closed. When they open again, I feel like Alice waking up from her dream. I’ve been listening to the birds lately, particularly early mornings when they are just starting their day, tending to the business of birds, communicating and delegating tasks, collecting food to bring home to the babes nesting. I’ve taken a liking to the vibrant orange Troupials which always catch my eye and captivate me with their song. It’s all I need to feel calm and focused. In my old life I constantly had loud music playing to drown out the sounds of the city. Now, here in the mountains, the outside sounds don’t disturb me. I’ve traded gun shots in the middle of the night for bouncing basketballs and late night laughter; loud persistent traffic for the lull of cricket chirps. Now when I close my eyes, all I hear is the white noise of my fans and a whistling breeze. Don’t get me wrong: here your needs are met and taken away on a day-to-day by how the wind blows. It can build up catastrophically, God only knows. There’s no life on my terms; it comes and it goes. The only answer is succumbing to its ebbs and its flows. Orange and purple hues in the sky. You either live here or you die. With just enough of the need for survival to kick my ass just the way I need it. I’m not afraid of anything; I let the universe speak for itself. We cruise up the mountain, windows down. I’m making waves with my hand in the wind. I am alive. Your clothes are mixed with mine. We make it to our spot–with cold fresh Medallas–a swing below the Puerto Rican flag, toes floating over the mountains, soaking in the purple and green, hazy clouds and trees at sunset. The sound of your voice pushes words into the threshold of my awareness, just as the hum of your throat on my neck expresses what’s written in between the lines. Do not speak your fears to the wind. It’s a lot of pressure to be impeccable with your word. Where does one draw the line? To avoid the thought loops and stay focused, I split the clouds in my head that are fogging my brain and meditate.
V. Sleep Sanctuary // Éter
We always honor the silence.
After the physical sound of the voice has ceased,
the audible sound has ceased,
but we can never actually escape sound, eh?
In this period of silence,
when there’s nothing left to be said,
it’s time to listen.
It’s time to turn it over to the birds, the crickets, cicadas.
They have another story to tell.
Their sounds put my soul at ease;
their singing and calling out to each other,
with the breeze rustling in the lush leaves.
I can almost always hear water movement off in the distance,
lulling me to sleep when I crave the embrace and weight of a close friend.
Sleepy mornings in the mountains,
whispering sweet nothings,
skin to skin,
eyes locked in.
Our toes are curled and the windows wide open.
The soft hush of my fan and light bird song tempt us back to sleep.
The sun peaks in.
This life is so sweet.
Prrr.
It’s goosebumps we’re out here chasing–frisson.
This is the music of our soul,
harmonized with the overtones of sirens so deep.
We become enamored and lured in by this elated sense of fullness and yearning for more,
though it’s always perfectly enough.
I have no idea what I’m doing,
but here I feel safe.
There’s an art to being upside down.
I am strong enough to explore in this space.
The wind stops for no one;
it just keeps circulating.
Just as the platanos defy gravity and grow towards the sky,
so will I.
I’ve always felt I have no home,
but this place I melt into.
The mountains feel like forever,
like the glue of it all;
the intersection of soil, creek and the heavens.
Infinite lessons in grounding and releasing,
protecting and expressing.
Her hum roars from beneath the foundation of this home,
buzzing with life and refuge.
I want to know her,
inside and out.
She will open up to me more each season,
song by song.
She holds steady as we cradle gently.
One moment I'm here with you under the moon,
the meteors of Geminid giving us a gleaming show bright across an indigo sky.
Didn’t think we’d have to leave so soon.
Besitos on the cheek,
just like the beginning days.
I’ll have to return home again,
into your cozy embrace.
For now we dance in the stars,
floating off into space.