You Always Have a Choice

(Note--I know, I know, I promised you Wisconsin, part 2. But as you'll see below, neither the spirit nor the flesh is able….)

Now then, today’s problem is what to do about Diego.

It shouldn’t be, nor should I be here worrying about it, but rather in bed, since I’m still having cold sweats, my wrists have swollen, and—worse—those little bumps old people get on the sides of the hands next to the knuckles, those sort-of-hand-bunions have developed.  So I can move my fingers to type, but any movement of the wrists? Forget it—the guys at the café are now automatically unscrewing the bottles of water for me. Feeding me may come next.

So I presented my swollen wrists to Lady at the café, and she had—she often does—the solution: she air-kissed her hand, and then waved it over both wrists, intoning all the while, “sana, sana, culito de rana! Si no se sana hoy, se samará mañana!”

I had forgotten it, but it’s one of those wonderful, salty Puerto Rican sayings: “Heal, heal, the frog’s little back hole” (this is a respectable blog….) “if you don’t heal today, you’ll heal tomorrow.”

You gotta wonder—where does this stuff come from?

Anyway, I can tell you that the frog’s little back hole is definitely holding out for the—possibly—eternal tomorrow, so why am I here? Why aren’t I in bed, where I should be? I did, after all, spend most of the morning in bed, when it occurred to me that we have to do something about the human body.

I know, I know—I shouldn’t think this way, but I do: I am Eurocentric, clasicalmusicocentric, and cerebrocentric. So what does that mean? Well, I’m definitely in the camp of “they made my body to carry around my brain.”

Which it did, until the village whore tumbled me into her unclean lair. Oh, sure, the body occasionally grumbled a bit—there were the flus and the colds—but nothing serious. But now, with almost everything aching, I have to wonder: does it take a six-foot structure to carry around a three-pound organ?  Can’t we do some serious streamlining?

In the first place, the entire digestive system could be eliminated, since we could simply receive complete parenteral nutrition through a subclavian port every night, as we sleep. How else do they keep those guys in deep comas alive? And couldn’t we do essentially the same with the respiratory system? Surely oxygen could be supplied from external tanks—no need for lungs.

So I had had the body completely redesigned, essentially creating a creature looking like the one in the M&M ads: you know, the ones with the M&M (brain) with two little feet and two little hands. Ridiculous, you say? OK—so what would you think about if every joint in your body was being trampled by a stampede of elephants, and your brain was sizzling at 105 degrees? String theory?

At any rate, I was moderately content—in bed, wondering whether Tylenol was an urban legend (have to check Snopes.com), but at least in bed. And then, the boys came.

They’ve planned it out so that the torture will never end—and very clever they’ve been about it, I’ll say that. First, they spent a couple years with roaring generators, shouting workers, hollering bosses destructing and then reconstructing the street with dull blue bricks that resemble our famous adoquines, or iridescent blue bricks. Lovely idea, except that the bricks tend to crack if any weight heavier than a glance is put on them. Oh, and the block up the street—done before my block? Well, the bricks have separated in the middle of the street, creating a half-inch crater running down the street. As well, every time the water main breaks, the water company comes out, blasts through the bricks, fixes the problem, covers it up with the dirt/ broken-tile mixture they have piled on the sidewalk, and goes away. So now we’ll have dirt streets in twenty years, which, in fact is historically correct. Should we add horse-droppings as well?

Anyway, here’s how they do it: they do one block except for the two corners. Doing that block will take a year, and will (for writers) drive you to a nearby café or (for businesses) spell a slow and lingering death. After they’ve decimated the economy and the nerves, they go away for a few months, until you’ve recovered! Hey, it wasn’t that bad, was it? And what does a generator sound like, again?

Whooom! They’re back, doing one of the corners, and that, perhaps due to the unusual geometry of a corner (you know—all those angles…) will take them at least 6 to 9 months. You are, in short, experiencing the big bang—riding it like a surfer from the moment of explosion through all time and place: there is nothing but noise.

You kiss your husband goodbye; he leaves for work; all is tranquil. He turns the corner and BAM! The men, the generators, the shouting are there! They disappear one second before he returns—the street is shimmering with silence!

“It’s indescribable,” you tell him.

Lifted eyebrows!   

So here I am, in the café, with my wrists the size of Schwarzenegger’s thighs, and Lady comes by, and decides to do an immediate craziectomy, since my eyebrow are sprouting those awful, long, and very protruderant (all right, protruding? Sticking out?) single hairs that the ancients get. So she does that, and drops the news that Diego—remember him?—hasn’t been in school since school started, or didn’t start, three weeks ago.

Diego is the son of the sister of the manager of the sister shop next t the café, which means that he is entitled to hang out with his two cousins—the manager’s children—in the back of the store. So they’re there, along with the manager’s sister—who was rushed to the ER this morning to get emergency IV fluids for a condition-which-will-not-be-described. So mother is collapsed in exhaustion on one of the sofas of the sala poética, the three children are collapsed on sofas or chairs, the pregnant-with-twins (to be named Marc and Lady, of course) girlfriend of one of the workers is there (also conked out), and the homeless lady is snoozing in the corner. Did it look like an infirmary, or had the sala poética become a gas chamber?

“So he goes to school every day, and they tell him, ‘sorry, there’s still no teacher today!’ So then he comes here, and plays video games all day. Can you believe that! Well, I put a stop to that! I gave him the complete short stories of García Márquez to read by the end of the week!”

I tell Lady—the child is nine or ten. And García Márquez is sort of like dope: you should have a bit of a grasp on reality before you start messing with it. Is this wise?

“Well, you always have a choice,” says Lady.

“Well, you always have a choice,” says Marc.

“Well, you always have a choice,” says the complete stranger passing us.

“Isn’t it wonderful that that man knew: you always have a choice?” I ask Lady.

“Of course, that why he put it on his tee shirt….”

I get that—if the universe wants to bring us the message, via a tourist’s tee shirt, that we always have a choice, well, we should listen.

But shouldn’t Diego have a teacher?