(drafted at the bundu cafe)
trouble, so much trouble in paradise. we’ve had a bout of rain the past 2 nights – grey, dense clouds hanging low over the islands, dropping rain in the peculiar tropical way of either a bare sprinkle or a clear vertical downpour. water in the bay now a sandy opaque jade and a chill wind rippling over the waves. the ferries haven’t run to or from the mainland for two days (buying me some extra time last night with a lovely couple from maine). my bed is still at a slant, the two footward legs having slid, simultaneously and in slow motion, out from under it while i was sitting (quite sedately) upon it, reading, one day last week. the property manager seemed suspiciously unsurprised when informed of the bed’s condition. i have subsequently spotted two large ants marching over the bed. though i smashed them both promptly, if ants are as disporportionately strong as i vaguely remember them being, i am set to lose quite a chunk of flesh to their kind. worst of all, when i went past my old standby, the ceviche shack, the proprietor informed me rather unapologetically from the hammock he’d slung himself into that no food is available until 5pm. i strongly suspect this is a regulation created soley for my benefit and possibly in effect for one day only. denied my obsession! my other standby, a nice baleada lady, is also absent. i see her stroll down the street a little later and wonder if work becomes optional when it rains.
but on the up side, i couldn’t care less. not in a hurry, not too particular about what i eat or where, or if my bed’s aslant. it all melts rather seamlessly into the slow resonant pleasance of the day. (yes, that is not a word, but it seems to fit. i have been making up spanish words left and right, as often as i am missing vocabulary. it works more often than one might expect, definitely passing the 50% threshold, though it occasionally gets me in a bit of trouble if a handy cognate has some unexpected variation in definition or connotation.)
in short, the monotony is sufficiently textured to avoid boredom, instead inducing a lazy state of relaxation. lunch fare at the bundu cafe: “smokin’ ham panini.” Metropolitan panini tend to be flat and stingy, at best a large snack, at worst reminiscent of those little plastiform boxes of crackers-and-coldcuts they called lunchables. this, in contrast, while filled somewhat incongruously with processed ham and quite a lot of mayo, is encased in inch-thick bread which is, shall we say, focaccia-inspired. focaccia-esque. saying it is a focaccia-product would be unduly pejorative. it’s soft and substantial, a bit crusty on the outside. hearty.
there is church music coming from someplace. strangely enough is no more, nor less, incongruous than the dance music pounding out of club-sized speakers under a private house, set some way back from the main road, earlier this morning. people passing on the street. foreigners barefoot, a bit ginger and wincing. kids doubled up on bicycles. mothers driving by on 4-wheelers or the backs of motorbikes, holding infants or toddlers on their laps. tourists somehow embraced by the place as part of its own zany character. a pair of church men out in their ties and pants. a tall big-boned androgynous kid, channeling the 80’s and the 2000’s simultaneously with his angled blond bowlcut and filthy jeans that taper to pantshems 3 inches in diameter. late/middle-aged ladies driving golfcarts, sporting the kind of haircut that involves unnatural coloration, weekly trips to the salon for wash and set, plus some midweek rollers to touch-up, a plastic flowered showercap and one of those silk pillowcases in the evening to keep it all going until next friday.
the sun has arrived. looks like the next boat might go.
a thin black dog comes by my table in the open-air cafe, one who follows me from time to time. she also seems to follow most anybody else who happens along. apparently not anybody’s dog, mournful and persistent as a polite Metropolitan panhandler. she surely has fleas, if not other, more noxious, afflictions. i resist feeding her the remains of my panini though i can’t resist a little pat on the head, attempting instead to dispatch her to discover the whereabouts of a cute dive instructor who was wont to flirt madly but then disappeared rather precipitously a couple of days ago. my canine friend seems disinterested. just looks up pathetically, then avidly scratches her hindquarters, dislodging, i am sure, a few of those fleas, along with a host of bacteria and other lower life forms. i try to avoid inhaling for a minute.
the waitress comes past and tells me i can stay even though they’re closing for an early afternoon regrouping and even brings me a coffee. “the next people will come in one and a half hours,” she tells me blithely in an indecipherable euro-accent as she hikes her bag onto her shoulder and departs. i feel i have received ample passive inverse positive karmic recompense for the loss of ceviche.
i invoke karma here as concept, not dogma. when one is on vacation, one can lazily follow such logical rabbit trails (apologies to any actual buddhist theologians who might be reading):
karma: do good = good done to you
negative karma: do bad = bad done to you
inverse negative karma: do good = bad done to you
inverse positive karma: do bad = good done to you
passive inverse negative karma: good done to you = bad done to you
passive inverse positive karma: bad done to you = good done to you
well, i must have done something right. or maybe not, depending on which karmic variant takes effect on the island on an intermittently rainy day. mr. diveguy is approaching. next time i see that dog, there will definitely be some freewill good karma coming her way.
