Blog
A Promise of Relief
On Wednesday nights we play basketball as if we were still twenty. We arrive with our enthusiasm intact, we play a first warm-up game in slow motion, and for two hours we try to convince our bodies...
Milkweeds, Caterpillars, and Monarchs
Then came the warning, delivered with One Sunday, like so many others, we arrived for breakfast at my in-laws’ house. As usual, I stepped out into the garden to admire the plants growing as if all...
In praise of insomnia
One of my earliest childhood memories is marked by the battle with insomnia. On those long nights, my mother, patient and resigned, would prepare me a cup of hot milk that she would baptize with a...
Caring has a cost
The Bible relates that, before and during the crucifixion, Jesus was accompanied by three women: Mary, his mother, Mary Magdalene, and Mary of Clopas. It is not surprising that, two millennia later,...
In Praise of the Fly
Once, for four or five weeks, I was a fly nest. This happened when I was ten years old, during a vacation with my maternal grandparents, on a farm in San Carlos de Alajuela. Those were days of...
Our giants
Sometimes, by accident, someone notices a shape, takes a photo, and raises the question: is it a bone or a piece of wood? A fossil or just another fragment of the landscape? The answer becomes a...
The neighbors
The neighbors began to arrive at six o'clock. First a couple arrived with flowers; then another with a bottle of wine; then one more with sandwiches. They came two by two, smiling, generous,...
Learning to Care
My father kept an orchid greenhouse for many years. It wasn’t very large, but to me it had the density of a world of its own. I remember the filtered light, the humidity in the air, the flowered...
The rhythm of the machine
In Charles Chaplin's film Modern Times, the protagonist appears trapped in a factory production line that never stops. His task seemed simple: tightening nuts over and over to the rhythm of a...
Luminous Silence
Some time ago, a friend made a remark — or rather, a provocation: “What do you mean you haven’t been to Tajo Zulay? It’s like going to Mars!” His words lingered. I added the site to my top ten...
The value of education
A few days ago, the Ombudsman’s Office warned that the permanent reduction in educational funding is putting the right to education in Costa Rica at risk. Public spending in this sector fell from...
In Praise of Serenity
Annaeus Serenus was a young man with many doubts, like almost all young people. He was neither consul nor general; he left behind no speeches or poems. And yet he stands out as an eloquent presence...