- Posts tagged Alice in Wonderland
- Explore Alice in Wonderland on posterous
Unblinking Candor
During my second respite in Siquirres, I was scavenging for a snack in the kitchen when I spotted a gecko clinging to the pitted screen wrapped around the kitchen. I was startled at first, feeling my safe world had been invaded by the unknown. Over time, as I grew accustomed to his presence, I came to see his company as a happy circumstance. After a few encounters, he didn’t immediately skitter away so I experimented with proximity. I’d lean slowly forward until it twitched, then retreat just before it scampered away. I’d never realized that lizards’ faces are marked with perpetual smiles. I spent a few minutes adjusting my grin from slight to extreme to see if he noticed but he did nothing but stare me down with the unblinking candor for which he had no lexicon.
I realized that having a gecko as a kitchen companion was reflective of the rawness of life on the verdant plain that slopes into the Caribbean Sea. At dusk, when animal sounds clashed with the noises of humans maintaining their lives, the rawness was amplified. It was during this time—at around 8 p.m. each evening when the crickets chirped and the frogs whooped in their loudest crescendos—that the woman next door would make her way into the backyard to wash dishes in a concrete sink. The water would join the jungle concerto, smattering into the thick, crude basin as she thumped the wooden bowls against its boxy sides—adding percussion to the music. I hadn’t actually seen her until one afternoon three weeks into our stay while I was studying the lizard, which I’d named Fred because he looked a bit like my balding, aged great uncle who had somewhat buggy eyes and a wide smile. The woman was hanging laundry that day, her plump figure squashed into ill-fitting clothes that strained each time she raised her arms to flip a sheet over the clothesline. Wisps of black hair fell into her dark eyes as she fished for pins to secure the sheets. I couldn’t tell whether her eyes held tired resignation or dreamy fantasy. Had she given up on a better life or had she transported herself to a place that would make her tedious existence bearable? I was projecting, of course. What did she know of either? She most likely was simply living what she knew, never thinking to question whether there was a “better” way to “spend” her time—an American concept that has little to no value in countries like this one. And who was I to judge anyway? It wasn’t as if I was living my “evolved” life to the fullest, I thought as I pulled back from the screened expanse, worried she’d see me watching her.While my attention had strayed, my gecko friend had retreated to wherever he went when he wasn’t licking bugs from the screen. Every time I entered the kitchen from that day forward, I eased my way into the room so as not to scare him away. I’d look carefully at every screen before stepping onto the peeling linoleum floor, wondering if my silent partner was there. Sometimes he would be—blinking at me and bouncing on his bulbous toes when I asked whether he’d awakened in a fair or a foul mood. I felt rather like I’d landed in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass during the moment when the Rose said, “…I really was wondering when you’d speak!”If you are new to my blog and you'll like to start at the beginning, here's the link to the earliest post. Reading the "Start Here" sidebar gives you the very first information. Thanks for stopping in![The illustration is from Grosset & Dunlap's Alice in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, and was drawn by John Tenniel.]
