No Surprises Here

It shouldn’t have been a surprise. I’ve known about it for years. I once told my friend Sonia about it.

“I’m a person of lakes, not oceans. Hills, not mountains. It was too much for me….” Referring to Puerto Rico, of course.

And I thought I’d gotten used to it. The clouds still bother me, occasionally—they drift by in the wrong direction. (‘trade winds,' I think, and dismiss it….). The trees drop their leaves in the spring (Raf explained it once—it made no sense, but it was an explanation…). Oh, and the air? Anybody getting off the plane in San Juan knows it’s different.

OK—so what about the two fucking iguanas I nearly stepped on just into my morning walk? And yes, that’s literal—the iguanas were copulating. Nor did they move—though I was 18 inches away from them. And why were they on the sidewalk in front of the Athenaeum?  

OK—move on, Marc. Now we’re at the capitol, and I notice a couple of statues with purple veils over them. Well, better than yesterday—one of them had a noose around its neck (though, come to think of it, can a noose be anywhere else but…oh, forget it.) Well, it doesn’t take Raf to explain that. It turns out that today is Presidents Day, ignored in the States, ardently celebrated here by some. (And I’m NOT going there….) The current government is busy putting up statues of presidents who have had anything to do with Puerto Rico—such a sneeze in a southerly direction. They were installing the statue yesterday. The noose was attached to a crane.  

Things are OK until I meet a homeless lady, edentulous (couldn’t help it—ya know the word, ya gotta use it…), selling a quite lovely collage of sea shells, coral, and vegetation. We speak, I give her some money, and she says “we’ll sit and chat one day.” This seems likely—an unemployed man, a homeless woman, well, why shouldn’t we?

And all is well at the beach, where—I’m happy to report—at least the waves were drifting in the right direction. I sit and look about, and notice for the first time a bunch of crabs moving on the rocks. “Do I have to write about them?” I say out loud. Are they my new iguanas? And what will the title be? Love, Sex and Crabs? Sorry—getting cute here.

Absolutely everything is fine on my return home, barring the fact that I am thirsty. Luckily, I have my water bottle with me, which I have refilled at the beach. So what a surprise to see a shower head with water streaming out of it! Perfect—I refill my bottle.

(To be fair, this is completely understandable—the shower head is attached to a granite block which stands in front of steps leading to a beach. Well, it isn’t a beach, but people swim there. Oh, and we build stuff but never maintain it. See?)

“My my,” I say, “I seem to be walking with Anna Russell.”  Remember her? The lady who said “I’m not making this up, you know….”

I get home and all is perfectly fine until I click onto my email, and discover an eruption of vitriol caused by…well, I’ll not say his name. Pat is seething. Susan is burning the granola. It seems, I reflect, that only I have been moderate about this gentleman. I think the strongest word I used was “annoyed.”

‘It’s really better than Iguanas,’ I think, imagining a new book filled with yesterdays’ post and the responses to it. Though there would be certain sameness to it….

But here I must stop—I feel the need for a Klonopin.