Sweet Dreams of Magic
Chapter One
Five years old, Isabella has sweet dreams.
She dreams of her loving mother and father: Ana Maria & Rafael and her grandfather, Carmelo.
Isabella dreams of her favorite animals on the family farm- lots of cows, she laughingly recalls years later.
Carmelo was known far and wide as making the sweetest, tastiest cheeses in the Provence of San Josè. People joked that it was because of his sweetness.
Isabella's brother, Rodolfo was born two years later. The third and fourth children were welcomed into the world further down the road.
Isabella at the age of five is an only child, not only adored by her parents-even more so by her grandfather, who the parents had given the honor of naming his first grandchild.
He was Italian. Having made a life for himself, his wife and fourteen children on the first small farm he bought after saving his colons.
Carmelo was such a good farmer, such a good businessman such a good, kind, generous, optimistic, helpful human being that everyone around him worked and grew to their fullest potential.
Carmelo loved Fiorella from the time their father's met in the market in Turrialba, 61 kilometers east from the capital of Costa Rica, San José.
Little Isabella, given to sweet day dreams was thrilled the first time her parents brought her to San José.
As their rugged, second hand Isuzu Amigo SUV entered the city, Isabella's eyes grew wide with delight. She was dazzled by the brilliance of the sun reflecting off a huge Ferris wheel.
Fearless little Isabella marched toward the fairgrounds, parents in tow. Isabella extended her little left hand to mom, her right to dad. She led the young family to what felt like the top of the world.
**
Chapter Two
Isabella is a voracious reader. Aesop's Fables, Cervantes' Don Quixote... everything in-between.
At 16, Isabella graduates high school traveling to London where she gets a full scholarship to the London School of Economics. At 24 she earns her Ph.D from Princeton. Five years on Wall Street, then a year at the FED... a spectacular resume with bank account to match.
Isabella misses Costa Rica:
geothermal hot springs.
The brilliant turquoise acidic lake at Poás Volcano:
The bubbling mud pots, fumaroles, hiking trails at
Rincón de la Vieja, Monteverde Cloud Forest. Rio Celeste: neon blue! coastal rainforests white-sand beaches coral reefs.
Most of all,
Isabella misses Rodolfo, the love of her life.
Her brother has made a name for himself as a poet, novelist who is currently working on his first feature-length film script. In Rodolfo's spare time, he sings, accompanying his fine tenor voice on guitar at coffee houses in Barrio Escalante.
Audiences love his humorous songs. They often request his satirical "Oh, si tan solo hubiera sido economista."
**
Chapter Three
Isabella teases Rodolfo singing,
If only I had been a poet!"
Fed up with the FED, Isabella moves back to Turrialba where she purchases a dairy farm. Almost immediately she has buyer's remorse, sells it at a small profit, moves into a townhouse in town. Still not right. She is angry with herself. "I have everything. Why am I so miserable?"
She reads up on psychology.
Dream analysis becomes her passion. Five years later Dr. Isabella- as her patients call her- has a thriving practice in San José. Still she feels like half a circle.
Isabella, the passionate reader, passionate dreamer recalls a bit from Plato's Symposium.
She writes in her daily journal:
In the beginning, people were spheres, perfectly round. Everyone had double what we have now: two faces, four retractable arms and legs. These proto-people had egos many more times bigger than double the biggest narcissist of today. Hard to imagine- I know."
She pauses to chuckle about some of the narcissists she has met at various jobs, at universities
Exhausted, Isabella falls into a hypnogogic state:
Proto people were really, really powerful-- and they could fly!!
One day, the king of the proto-people decided he wasn't rich and powerful enough. So he and his thugs flew up to Mt. Olympus. They stormed the Mytikas as the 12 Olympian gods were about to certify the name Pantheon for the highest spot in the mountain where they got together for debates about policy, budget, voting rights (no - just kidding).
While it was true that the king of the proto-people had amassed great wealth and power he and his proto-hench-people were no match for the gods.
Zeus laughs at their intrusion.
He plucks one hair from the proto-king's beard.
Using that tiny hair as a sword, Zeus splits every proto-person in half. Zeus continues sipping his iced-latte while defeating the entire race of proto-people
with one hand, not bothering to look up from surfing the internet.
As you can imagine most of the proto-people didn't realize how good they had it before king became mad with delusional greed.
Since that debacle instead of full spherical proto-people, we are each a half person.
For the rest of human history, we spend our lives looking for our other half.
Isabella writes:
"Plato knew exactly how I feel.
Too bad in that comic speech he gave to Aristophanes, he didn't have Zeus (after punishing all proto-people for the mad King's and his thug's crimes)- have Zeus change the course of history. Human history would have turned out so much better if Zeus had performed ego-ectomy.
**
Chapter Four
It is four in the morning when Isabella falls asleep at her desk after her Herculean journal entry.
An unfinished glass of wine, a delicious plate of appetizers: ham, cheeses from one of the farms still in her family, green, red, brown olives, multigrain sesame crackers, dried figs, slices of carrot, cucumbers, tomatoes adorned with capers, cashews, almonds, hazelnuts covered in dark chocolate, green and purple grapes... Isabella had enjoyed making this Friday night snack-dinner so much, she hated to mess up the beautiful presentation by eating it.
From that hyper-focus she immediately got into the next hyper-focus of writing in her journal pausing only here and there to research a random topic which flew into her mind.
She falls asleep at the desk.
**
Chapter Four
Isabella's first dream:
She is a colorful tropical fish who is captured, sent to live in an aquarium in New Zealand.
Second dream
Her brother, Rodolfo writes a song about a modern day Rapunzel who lets down her endlessly long exquisite golden hair (dyed with highlights, of course) from her ivory tower where she has locked herself away reading to amass all the world's knowledge.
A handsome fellow from Princeton arrives. He says "Hey princess... get your hair down here. Ya wanna get married?"
They ride off on his motorcycle then live happily ever after.