Brookline, Mass., March 2000

(Continued.)

This nightmare was by no means my only Costa Rica memory, but as it recurred frequently in my childhood, it became one of the most enduring. I knew this was unfair, but how do you rewrite history? How do you retrace the neural pathways?
I was perhaps wrong to refer only to visions. Smells, sounds, and taste must have been powerful components of those early-formed memories, and the whole web of sensory experience must have created a resilient - if unrecognized - foundation for many later responses and inclinations. Furthermore, they must help account for the effectiveness of this recent trip at "rewriting the history" of my bad dreams.
Who can account the heavy scent of guava, piña, roadside rot, scorched earth, livestock, high hot sun, afternoon downpours, the taste of dust, the buzz of cicadas, the whiplike rustle of lizards, the grumble of filthy diesels and rattle of motorbikes, and through and around it all, the embracing alien murmur of the Latin tongue, with its arpeggios and cadences?
Who can say which of these ingredients - or countless others - in which combinations, provided both my predisposition for tropical travel, and the tissue culture for my recurring dream?
My approach to our planned return to Costa Rica did not anticipate the role of all that wealth of experience. I imagined that we might drive such high mountain roads as were in my dream, with perhaps some of the same hazards, and that as an adult I would have to "face my fears." But what in fact occurred is both less specific and more profound.
(To be continued.)