Journal, March 3, 1977 AM

Here I sit, waiting on a beer truck and a pop truck in El Centro de Recreo del Ande {Ande Recreation Center} in San Antonio {de Belén}. It looks like things are fairly well under control as far as wedding preparations are concerned. I need something to put the ice & beer in yet, and something to chip ice with, but the beer company should be able to help me out with one thing, & I have a screwdriver and a heavy wrench for the other!

It is cool and breezy this morning, and El Ande has some beautiful flowering bushes. Pigeons are breakfasting in their house attached to the tree next to the one my table is under. “A peaceful, easy feeling,” I’ll accept that phrase.

<Staying over at Sofia’s last night was a good lesson in human relations.> Living alone, even for a short time, one tends to forget that others hustle & work as much or more than he does. <Sofia’s older sister was still at the sewing machine cranking out wedding clothes when I went to bed at 10 PM. This morning another sister and a brother were off to work by 6:15. Sofia was up at 5:30, as were her mother and an older sister.> She gave me a delicious ‘good morning’ kiss! <Her father was hopping around in his cast by 6:30, getting ready to paint the stairway leading to the house, and his wife was reciting the list of errands he had to do today.> I don’t know how he does it all with a cast on one leg! Yesterday he killed a pig, and last Saturday he went to Heredia to buy 20 liters of guaro {Costarican rum-like liquor}.

They have painted that house inside and out, put in light fixtures, fixed up the bathroom and put in shower curtains. It’s been a lot of work & expense for them, this wedding. For me that is part of the beauty of it. It’s such an anti-economic undertaking, all to create meaning in the lives of two people and two families. Perhaps meaning creation is the great mission of human beings. If so, then the religious scholars, the scientists, the poets, the painters and sculptors, the architects and songwriters are all on the frontier. Making wholes from bits of knowledge & materials. Creating reality from facts and objects.