Preámbulo a un Cortejo: On How to Unsuccesfully Avoid a Temptress

Rarely do I express my english thoughts for my Español vocabulary flows in a more natural way, allowing the stream of consciousness to dispense of such trivialities as translation. Yet the language I speak now is but a testimony to the multicultural presence within. So it is that my worldly experience cannot do justice to what the body carries, to what the tongue might profess. After the experience of a stimulus nothing more is left but the desire to somehow shape into words the testimony of the world’s presence in me.

I have been to Madrid, Barcelona, Roma... spend my hours in London's Harrods and strolled down Firenze, Venezia and Paris. I was rocked in the Amsterdam canals and walked Frankfurt as if seen from a distant window to the past, one tainted by the modern aesthetic. I was fortunate to see a different Habana from what is sold in the media, and proved its presence in Miami. I was charmed by the southern warmth in Atlanta and am thankful of being able to have called Savannah home. I learned to appreciate Panamá city with all its contradictions and rivalries. Furthermore, I adore my San José as undoubtedly not many Costaricans do, unwilling to give in to the third world claims its streets attest to and instead appreciating the cultural richness found in them.

Yet somehow She, the restless city, always creeps in, finding shelter within my body just as it itself inhabits her, the tempting mistress and her lures. It must have been an affair that began in the first decade of my life and has consumed and driven me ever since, my strength unable to fight her charm even with the knowledge that such relationship can only be doomed. Longing for a more original land to call home, one not coveted by so many before me, the conflict grows as I walk her streets, from Madison to Broadway, Columbus to 5th, feeling entitled to call them my own I do not even heed the distances. The sound of my firm steps confirms my presence, owning the concrete as much as it owns me.

I cannot, however, help feel betrayed. Forced to share her with many other suitors, past present and future, I am reluctant and completely unwilling to call her mine. The courtesan in our palace, this love/hate relationship is bound to eventually break us all, reason why I am wary of giving in to such temptation.

Sensorially overloaded and sensibly shocked to awareness, my mental state recognizes the raw material her sounds and sights provide. It is not this physical embodiment that entices me nonetheless. It is its challenges and oddities, as if a secret kept for years is waiting to test my capacities. Thus, by subduing her I am essentially overcoming my weakness, my ignorance. So it is that I come to her ever so often on a pilgrimage to visit the bride to be.

The teaser that is New York, that innocent troublemaker, keeps me away, unsuccessfully I will add, for as much as I have tried to leave this love behind fourteen years in waiting cannot simply be ignored. It is the eternal duel between reason and emotion that fuels this affair. My mind resists, due to it's pragmatic nature and sensibility; but my entire self, nevertheless, still longs for what I might discover along its streets, for what I have already tasted but would like to have more of.

And so it is that leaving her is always painful, and the hopes of seeing her again feel like an obscure pessimism relying on what she may hold in the future. One never knows with a naughty girl... she has you wrapped around her fingers, but there's only so much love can take.