“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.
