Poster

Poster: Photography and design by ©Taí Fernández

Book Cover

Cover: Photography and Design by ©Taí Fernández

It's happening, or not

 

 ("Out of Control, the Green Plague")

Damn, I made a lousy monk, and now I’m making a lousy failure.

It all started when I went to print the blook. 

“Do you study iguanas?” said the nice girl—sorry, I’m 55, she’s 25; this is not sexism, just ageism—and I had to say no, I just look at them.

A lot….

“I studied them for two summers, at the University in Humacao,” she reported.

Ah, the failure…or success…had started. Or not.

“We found an alarming explosion in the population,” she said.

I heard Franny snort from Wisconsin, or wherever she is.

“Well I could have told you that,” she said (although only to me, not to the girl.) It was rare that Franny omitted the comma is speech, but occasionally she did….

Second failure.

“So what’s the deal with this title?” she questioned.

She wasn’t supposed to ask. Nor, I suppose, was I supposed to tell her.

See?

It’s about my mother’s life and then her death and then somehow iguanas got mixed up in it all and I was confused and I wrote this thing.” I was a bit incoherent.

She found this unremarkable.  And went on to say that she’s off, soon, to do graduate work in limnology.

“Interesting,” I counter, “You know, my alma mater founded the first department of limnology in the states….”

“Oh yeah—I applied to Wisconsin,” she says.

And I instantly see here there. I leave the store and see the tabloid by the door.

“Plaga Verde” the headline reads. And goes on to completely out-do me in the iguana department. Here, dear Reader, is what THEY know about the iguana.

·      Iguanas can be eaten, mostly their tails, and may indeed provide a growth industry for Puerto Rico. (Well, we need something—our last big hit, Viagra, has its patent or whatever it is expiring soon….) 

·      Iguanas have not only invaded the airport, they’ve also caused several delays in flights, as they had to be swept from the runways (the iguanas, not the flights….). 

·      Not content with travel, the iguanas have also turned to shopping, in this case at the largest mall in the Caribbean, Plaza las Américas. Crossing the electric cables feeding the building as easily as they cross the branches in the trees, they have shorted out the electricity for the entire facility.  

I could go on, but it’s too embarrassing.

Although I will say that our good friend, that hunky Latin professor Rafael Joglar (whom of course they quoted) seems to have withheld some information from me.  (Maybe suspecting that I’m a failure….or, errr, success?)

I immediately go see my shrink (yeah, OK, I had scheduled the appointment a week ago….)

The next day was worse—or better.

This time, it was at the photo shop, as I needed to print the cover, a spectacular work by Taí.  She fails as easily as I succeed, dammit.

Two men are there, with pictures of Casals, and we speak of the great cellist, his mother Puerto Rican, his father Catalonian.  He ended his life in Puerto Rico—oh good, a second misplaced reference (although that’s not the term)—I may be failing after all!  

And there’s a museum of him in Old San Juan.

The gentlemen inquire about the cover, now printed. I explain.

“You know my aunt was terrified of death, and then had a stroke. She lingered on (seems like a redundancy—hmm, things may be looking up….) for two years, each day more fearful. Then she died,” the guy says.

The shopkeeper freezes.

“What?” we say.

“The door just opened,” she says.

OK.  I go to close it.  Turn, and say…

… “Oh, that was Franny—she never could miss a good conversation.”

They accept this as completely normal.

Never knew what a damn effort failure could be….