I always used to think taxes when I thought of April 15th. I still think about taxes when I think about the day, because I had just loyally paid my taxes for 2010 on April 15th of 2011 when the federal government shut down my primary source of income. Before the ink was even dry on my check, they were like, “Oh, thanks for the money. You don’t need to make any more of this, do you?”

So now the words Black Friday come to mind when I think of April 15th. But in thinking about the bad shit that’s happened on this day, I like to temper that with some of the good. It was 65 years ago today that Jackie Robinson played in his first big league game. That was a big deal, and it was a good thing.

While racial tensions still exist in the US and throughout the world, humans have made solid progress as a social species. Compared to biological evolution, social evolution works remarkably fast. People still do a lot of hateful and ignorant things, but looking back half a century gives me hope for half a century from now.

A little over a month ago, while sitting in a room in Hamburg, I contemplated re-relocating to Costa Rica.  I did a little research and re-recontacted Poker Refugees. After learning that there was a good yoga studio down the street from my potential new address, I checked out the website. It was in Spanish.

My first instinct was to accept Google Translate’s offer to convert the page into English. It’s a pretty awesome feature of Chrome which I used on several occasions while in Germany. But I allowed my gaze to linger on the original words and to my slight surprise, I could read them.

This didn’t come as a total shock. After all, I had taken six or seven years of Spanish in school. But I assumed that fifteen years of disuse would leave me more than a little rusty. When I say that I could read the original Spanish version of the website, I don’t mean to suggest that I understood every word of it. I didn’t. But I understood enough words to figure out other words through their context and piece together the meaning of each sentence.

Using context to determine meaning is something we do all the time even in our native languages. When we come across an unfamiliar word, the words around it usually provide enough information for us to slog through the sentence. It doesn’t happen as often when we get older and stop reading material that challenges our vocabularies, but it still happens. It happens even more in spoken language, when an interrupting noise obscures part of a sentence, or when something gets censored on television. We still know exactly what the bleep they’re saying.

Speaking of spoken language, it turned out that my ability to read Spanish did not extend to my ability to understand everything I heard. While I did make my way through customs and immigration without speaking a word of English, handing someone a US passport before they ask if you speak Spanish ensures that you will be spoken to slowly and with small words. Less is more, anyway, when going through immigration and customs.

Back to the written word. I’ve hatched a plot for achieving fluency. I purchased an outrageously overpriced copy of El Hobbit, J.R.R.Tolkien’s prelude to The Lord of the Rings, as translated by Manuel Figueroa. The plan is to make my way through the book chapter by chapter, deducing the meaning of most words from my knowledge of their neighbors. I reread the English original a couple years ago, so I have a decent idea of what’s going on even when whole paragraphs remain fuzzy. El Hobbit is a bit of a children’s book, and it reads like a series of short stories. Each chapter is a little adventure on the path of a larger adventure.

Once I’ve muddled through the book the first time, I’ll go back through it a second time and look words up. The words whose meaning I’ve divined should be solidified by then, and the other words will come more readily since I’ve previously devoted thought to their meaning. This second time through the book will be quite tedious. The third time through the book will be just reading it as is without giving too much thought to anything, allowing me to absorb and internalize whatever I’ve learned along the way. It’s a journey, there and back again.

It wouldn’t be unfair to call me a city boy, with the implication that I’m not all that comfortable with nature. Insects, mice, and other creepy crawlies give me the heebie-jeebies. But I’ve left the city and I’m in the tropics now. There’s a lot of sun and rain down here, and where there’s a lot of sun and rain, there’s a lot of life. And that means insects and other critters.

Somehow the swarm of dozens of winged ants the other day didn’t bother me as much as a single roach in a Manhattan apartment would have. And when I saw this little gecko sitting behind my dish rack, my first thought was to take a picture, not to scare it away. So it would seem that exposure has bred acceptance.

In addition to the insects and reptiles, there’s just a ton of outdoor debris that blows in through the windows. Escazú is windy and not altogether paved, so leaves, twigs, and other fragments of nature blow in through the windows and doors, which are often open. The temperature barely changes, so there is no need for heating or air conditioning. It’s a bit like living outside, albeit in a very comfortable grotto.

Now, it’s easier dealing with insects, outdoor debris and whatnot when you have a maid cleaning your house every week. I’ve been living on a bit of a shoestring budget this year, spending very little on anything besides rent and intercontinental flights. Actually, I’ve been fortunate to pay very little in rent, so my overall expenses are ridiculously low, at least for your average hombre from New York City. That said, the maids here make about 1200 colones per hour, which works out to $20 per day.

Getting back to the kitchen, the maids not only clean the house, do the laundry, and make the beds, but they also cook. I’ve been cooking plantains every day, making guacamole, and preparing delicious black beans from their dried counterparts. One day I was making some arroz con frijoles negros*, when I realized I’d spent six hours in the kitchen without playing a hand of poker. This struck me as inefficient.

Plantains, beans, and avocado by Pablo

So, I got an extra maid/cook to come and prepare food a couple times a week. So far it’s been excellent and allows me to put in more hours on the e-felt. Given that I’m here to play poker and not to pursue the culinary arts, I’m happy with my decision. The maid gets an extra two hours of work at double her regular rate, and I get an extra five or more hours per week to work, not to mention some authentic Costa Rican cuisine, and a little extra practice for my Español.

* The Spanish rather offensively call black beans and rice Moros y Cristianos. As an atheist and a vegan, I object to eating Moors and Christians. When my dad was a vegetarian, he said he wouldn’t eat anything with a face. I guess I don’t exactly follow that school of thought. (Maybe he wouldn’t eat anything he could talk to. Whichever. You can talk to beans. They might even talk back.)

Beans, rice, salad, and mustard veggies by Rafaela

So I’ve performed one of my not-so-infrequent disappearing acts again. As far back as I can remember, I’ve gone through these fiercely antisocial phases. Despite what you might think, it has nothing to do with hating people. While I have a substantial detestation for people arranged in groups, I have a rather naive fondness for persons, perhaps leading to (or stemming from?) an overabundance of patience, forgiveness, and trust.

My antisocial spells are not the result of having nothing to say, either, despite what my dumbness may imply. Quite the contrary! More often than not, my reticence comes from having so much to say, but having missed the most opportune time to say it. The result is a buildup of thoughts floating about in the brain, a desire to express these thoughts just so, and a dude sitting in a room watching chess videos and waiting for heads-up action.

The fun thing about my more modern disappearing act is that you never know where I’ll end up. Hell, I don’t even know where I’ll end up. What I do know is that after eight weeks in Hamburg, now I’m sitting just above the equator, enjoying life in Escazú, and there’s a horse in my backyard.