Yesterday, flying over here to Jimenez, I was gorged with creative momentum. When I landed, it grew; you were right, this place is nothing I could have pictured. I never thought I'd ever live anywhere like this. Though I admit I was pretty pissed about you ditching me (especially after I told you I didn't want to buy the ticket until I was positive you'd be here when I arrived) the anger was replaced with awe and giddiness when I arrived. None of it mattered. I just couldn't wait to go see your friend Pablo at the internet cafe and put some of it down.

When I reached the cafe I said, with an overabundance of enthusiasm, "Yeah, Pablo, I'm Michael, Jon told you I was coming!"

Behind his thick glasses his face twisted into a question mark.

"Jon, I'm his friend, the guy who came here to write!"

"Uh...Jon?" He asked.

"Captain Jon!"

"Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, he kinda mentioned something." Then his face twisted into something different that I couldn't discern. Sort of negative maybe. But I chalked it up to paranoia. I've always had loads of that. So, I just sat down, ready to scribble out my first mad words as a man changed by new experiences. But first I checked my email, and read your letter.

I would say it broke my heart, but that doesn't seem like the right reaction to a letter accusing me of being a pussy. So I'll say it felt like a punch in the gut. Is that manly enough?

Anyway, I sat staring, the blank screen eating up colones, as all my whirring enthusiasm to express myself farted and sputtered to a stop. After that I felt silly trying to write.

My writing and I have been criticized plenty. I can take criticism. But whatever it was you gave me was just mean, man. It hurt my "whiney," "pussy" ass. But I've never been one to let other humans trip up my creativity so I forced myself to post an entry just to spite you and then I went down by the water and dwelled, thinking about the look Pablo gave me and wondering if you'd disliked me when you told him I was coming. I stared out at all those fucking mountains and all that water, and all the fears I had when I found out you were leaving before I arrived all solidified. I dug up a bunch of old fears I had when your dad died and I didn't call you.

At the time, Jack reminded me a few times, "Dude, call Jon and offer your condolences," but I put if off and put it off because it felt silly and false to call; when I've been through something hard, it never helped me to hear the voices of people I rarely talk to, it just feels like a Hallmark card in the mail that I wish I hadn't received cause eventually I'll feel guilty throwing it away.

But every time I saw you after that I felt like I betrayed you and didn't deserve your friendship and I always waited for some real reprecussions. So I wasn't surprised when you said you were leaving Jimenez. I was a little pissed, it was a very very shady move, but I felt like I deserved it.

By this point in the letter you're feeling nauseous and liking me even less; all this sensitive crap is not very Hemmingway, not very Bukowski, it's exactly what you railed aginst me for yesterday. But I've been reading Bukowksi's WOMEN all day and he really reiterates again and again that truth is the most important thing in writing. Not manliness. That's one of the few things I like about Bukowski. I don't like his macho drinking bullshit, or his misanthropy, but that's his 'real' and, whether I like how it makes me feel, or whether I agree with it, it is the best way to write. Falseness is cancer.

So, when I started writing (a year ago this month), I always kept in mind: BE HONEST. Unfortunately my 'real' isn't all that manly. That sucks. I hate it. I fight it. But I don't feel bad; I strongly believe in determinism, that all we have is what we've been given. And as I grew up with my discouraging, hot-head parents, I was given insecurity and oversensitivity and all I can do is try and neuter it by throwing it onto the internet and making jokes about it. It's like how, when I first moved to Florida, I would catch fish and cut them open, even though I didn't eat them. I just wanted to see inside. It wasn't the best way to go about things, I don't feel good about it, but the guilt of those vivesections gave me a respect for life that I wouldn't have gained otherwise and it reverberates now, making me better at living. So, when I wanted to try and write, I practiced writing about my ugly parts so that eventually my fiction would feel real and personal.

I do wish my 'real' was a bit more how you'd like it to be, because of the way I was made ruins a lot of things for me. Maybe our friendship? Though I'd hoped that knowing me as long as you have, you'd know or at least assume that I have more than what you've read on my website. I definitely do. And it'll come out in the fiction I'm wroking on now, in Puerto Jimenez.

But your letter wasn't designed to steer my writing in a good direction, it was designed to flatten me, to interfere with my momentum. And it did. For a few hours I couldn't write. For a few hours, your words took from me the only thing I care about, the thing I fucked up my life for. Reading your shitty words felt as if you'd talked bad about me to my girlfriend and she didn't like me as much as she did before. So I walked down by the water, unable to enjoy my first half-an-hour in Puerto Jimenez.

As I was walking and feeling sorry for myself and wishing that you liked me or understood me, a Tico surfer guy rode by me on his bike and nodded and said, "Pura vida." And I remembered you explaining this Costa Rican concept to me. And when he said that, all the shit in my head cleared out.

You claim to stand by that concept: Pura vida. Well, motherfucker, my writing is pura fucking vida and sometimes mi vida es mal. Sorry if that annoys you. But covering it up would make my writing shit. Writing is my life, and I can't do that to my life; sand off the edges so I don't look like a fool.

After the surfer guy saved my mind, I walked back and sat at that gringo cafe for hours drinking Imperial and writing fiction, and the rough draft of this letter. And I hope that writing this has purged the remaining self doubt that you planted. I also hope that my sensitivity, and my ability to say what I'm feeling in this letter, regardless of how "feminine" or "annoying" or ugly it is, makes your manly ass fucking puke.

Now I must go back to work.

Pura vida,
mpw