Thursday, February 18, 2016

The Mind's Mission




Sometimes comparisons between cities don’t make any sense.  You’re in a place that resonates with a memory.  An idea is ignited and begins to metastasize.  Walking around in the capital of Costa Rica, San Jose, I was struck by the feeling that I was on some corner, not far from 16th and Mission in San Francisco.  There is an encyclopedia's worth of differences between the two places, and yet as this block turned into that block, so much of what I saw, kept reminding me of the Mission St. of my memory. 

Grand buildings like the National Theatre were cast across from cheap stores with knock off clothes, and bargain toys, tired, familiar fast food.  The central plaza had a subterranean museum of pre-Columbian gold.  Walking down, past the pigeons and their poop, the fat mothers chasing their kids with their popsicles, it seemed for a flash that I was heading right down into the 16th & Mission BART stop. 



I excused the family from further museum hopping.  It wasn’t a hard call as the first two places I visited each set me back $10.00 per person with a family of four.  The family wanted to rest.  Deal.  I just wanted to walk around.  And so I set out to see this highly recommended gallery.  Unlike Managua, the Costa Rican capital streets had signs, which was helpful.  But despite this, I seemed to keep overshooting blocks on my map.  Two cops in an SUV were helpful, as I clarified where Calle 6 was.  And yes, I noted how effortless it was to have a polite exchange with the local gendarmes as a forty-something white guy. 

I cut my way through a park with a number of statues and a central bandstand structure that resembled the Palace of Fine Arts, once again evoking San Francisco.  Kids were in the center, break dancing to some U.S. hip-hop.  Every bench, seemed to have a young couple lying on it, idle, entwined.  My guide books suggested that this was Parque Morazan, dedicated to Francisco (again, that name) Morazan, the 19th century general who had tried, unsuccessfully to unify and hold Central America together.  

I looked about among the statuary trying to find this man, whose seemingly sensible effort had come to naught. I strolled about an found the statue of Bolivar, and other heroes but Senor Morazan, I could not locate.  The center structure though turned out to be the “Temple of Music” described in the “Lonely Planet” as the unofficial symbol of San Jose.  I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled for its unofficial representation in the years to come. 



Where the gallery was supposed to be, was an extreme sports fighting hall, and a restored but slightly forgotten old wooden building with green and white trim.  I made my way back past a two storied metallic building, appropriately titled: Edificio Metalico.  I learned that despite the sign saying Escuela on top, that it was built in Belgium one hundred years ago and shipped piece by piece as a prefabricated construction, across the Atlantic, to its present location.  

St. Joe and St. Frank may have a lot in common, but one place they part is that this is still a Catholic city.  And at 6:00PM on a Sunday, the only thing louder than the parrots in the park, was the sound of gates coming crashing down, doors closing and the end of the working day being enforced.  I searched around for a simple market in vain.  Would that I were looking for shoes as I passed dozens of zapaterias.  It dawned on me that today was Valentine’s day.  Every corner had people with bundles of roses wrapped in tinsel.  They wanted three bucks a rose, which seemed a bit dear for a flower in a third world capital. 


I ducked back in to the Gran Hotel Costa Rica, and took a seat in a deep red arm chair to consider some of my photos.  The sign in front of me explained that this was the same furniture that JFK has used, during his visit.  Well, if it was good enough for Jack . . . Earlier in the day we’d seen the room where President Xi and Madame Peng had signed some bilateral cooperation documents.  These reference points are fleeting, but like the mind’s clutching for familiarity back to the Mission, the mind is reaching for things to hold on to, as it sets about for the first time in a new city; a city that is demanding you make sense of it.

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