Getting There



Trinidad, July 9, 2011



I am a lover of puzzles. Not just puzzles, but mysteries. Maybe not as much a lover of them, as captivated and intrigued by them. When I was younger, before the Internet and Google, mysteries could percolate for long periods of time in my mind.Today we needn't wait to find anything out, a luxury for someone like me.
But getting answers quickly isn't always the most satisfying thing; brain teasers, and tactile puzzles such as metal rings and interlocking wooden blocks deliver their satisfaction in great part through the joy of discovery and the delicious feeling of getting close to 'rightness' - that salivary sensation that one is on to something good, that a solution is at hand.

Two weeks ago, after trying for years to eat more healthfully, I suddenly felt the urge to detox. Well, it wasn't that sudden: I had bought a book on the subject about 8 months before, and stuck it on my bookshelf. I wasn't a terribly unhealthy eater by any stretch, but I could have used more fruit and vegetables and a little less junk food in my life - and I was dogged by an inability to kick the Coca Cola habit. There was a will, but it wasn't strong enough to make the way stick. I'd quit for a while and start again, quit and start again.

A few weeks before the detox, I actually did quit Coca Cola to lessen my caffeine burden. I'd been having some palpitations, so I eliminated all stimulants. For me, that was Coca Cola, the occasional cup of coffee and my favorite pekoe cut black tea. It was effortless because I was exchanging them for something I valued much more highly - i.e. my health. As soon as it clearly and uncompromisingly became one or the other, it was an easy choice.

So, on detox day I took that book down from the shelf and set about making an eggplant and tomato soup from a recipe within its pages. Just a few simple ingredients (eggplant, tomato, red bell peppers, onion, garlic, bay leaf and rosemary and olive oil) yielded a delicious meal that I enjoyed with my entire body and mind. It's the kind of rightness that can move you to tears.

I've also found myself needing less salt and sugar. And less meat. I wasn't planning on reducing these things, but there it was. What happened? A mystery. So many years of effort, false starts, so much recrimination - and such ease at the end? It didn't add up.

What confluence of events or conditions suddenly made this goal achievable? Were all previous efforts poorly timed, in some way deficient, or were they simply accumulative? I don't know.

But, I do have a theory: some time ago I began to suspect that I'd been skipping steps in some areas of my life; that I was trying to achieve things before completing the (sometimes very ill-defined) prerequisites. Maybe this was something like that. Maybe I chanced upon a skipped step, completed it, and presto! everything fell effortlessly into place. But...I don't know exactly what that step was. Or, maybe I inadvertently addressed a root cause - and domino-like, all the inner opposition to my stated goal fell away.
So here I am - one mystery solved, and no idea how I did it.

 Trinidad, July 10, 2011



A bad beginning makes...

     I can be a bit superstitious. Let's get that out of the box. I have my CDP watching over my shoulder, delivering a Smackdown if I don't heed its nudges and make a course correction. In April 2009, I took an Easter trip to Trinidad during what was usually the Dry Season. We were going to be there for 11 glorious days, none more eagerly anticipated than the four we would spend in Tobago. Tobago is a twenty minute flight from Trinidad, but I like to take the ferry. I love gliding into the Scarborough harbor with the day still new, sun sparkling on the water, horns honking as we disembark. We left the house at 4.45 am to make the 6.30 sailing allowing more than ample time for the 15 minute drive. 

We were halfway there when we encountered traffic - highly unusual for that hour of the morning. We slowed down to see a young man in the middle of the street, obviously under the influence. What came next was a total shock. He walked towards our (brand new) car, and glassy-eyed, smashed his hand into the windscreen, cracking it. Just like that. In the confusion that followed, my two brothers jumped out of the car, one slamming the car door on the other's finger - causing him to swear loudly and in the process, startling the perp into flight.

To make a long story shorter, we went to the police station which was a few hundred yards away, and told the policeman what happened. There was no squad car and he was the only one at the station, so the most he could do was take a report. One member of our party who had a friend in the Tactical Unit (a kind of SWAT team), called him up and gave a description of the young man, who we took to be about 20 years old. Within 15 minutes we had two officers in riot gear with machine guns - a bit like bombing a fly, but we weren't about to complain. We pointed them in the general direction and literally within another 10 minutes, we had our man. They brought him in, the station officer recognizing him as a known troublemaker. He was booked and released into the custody of his cousin, as these things go on the island. They were from a well known moneyed family, so we got his parents' phone number and a promise from his sober cousin that the damage would be repaired. That worked for everyone.

By now it was late, and I was thinking this trip was doomed, but my brother - a man 'born on a Sunday', said "Of course we're still going!" At the port, my brother-in-law produced the ferry tickets he had bought in advance and gave them to me as we were getting ready to join the line. I glanced down and right away noticed that we were booked on the sailing for May 14th , not April 14th.  Er, problem... While we were still pondering our next move, a voice came over the PA system saying that the 6.30 sailing for this morning was cancelled because the  Tobago Express had mechanical difficulties. All passengers would have to try for the 8.30 am sailing on the Tobago Spirit. Not only did we not have tickets for the correct date, but we were now trying to get seats on an overbooked vessel.
My Man Sunday said, "No problem". He took the tickets to the counter and began massaging the agent with explanations and gentle pleas. "...all the way from New York",  "...mistake on the date", " ...vacation ruined". She softened, and before we knew it there were fresh tickets for the 8.30 am sailing. Incredible! We took the lovely 2 hour ride to the sister isle, docking at Scarborough without incident.

So there we were in Tobago, and I'm thinking - wow, was I wrong, you can push through from a bad beginning to a good place. The villa was beautiful, with a lovely private garden, pool, and a fully equipped kitchen.

But the bad luck wasn't quite through with us. It rained every day after we got there - at the height of the Dry Season. Someone accidentally locked a bedroom door with the car keys inside, incurring another round of swearing, and requiring Man Sunday to jimmy the lock with a credit card. And sadly, on our trip to the beach, a young man may have drowned - an event I tried my best not to take in. We hurried past the people crowded around as the lifeguards worked on him, the sun sinking into the horizon. He was unresponsive, but I figured if we left the beach right away we would never have to know for sure. At this point we were already chalking up a list of every unfortunate event that took place on the trip, knowing we'd be reciting it for some time to come.



Sunset, Storebay - Tobago

  
From that time on, we built extra caution into everything, wondering what else could go wrong, but not really wanting to know. All through it, Man Sunday was bright as a penny, or as we'd say - as a shilling, making plans for us to go to the Argyle Falls and cheering everyone along. The Argyle, a three tiered waterfall, was a torrent after all the rain we'd had. We hired one of the guides advertising his services along the road - a spry Rastafarian: there was a small river to cross, a bit of jungle to slash through, as well as a slippery hillside trail to navigate without using the slide feature. Just as we were about to cross the river ( more like a creek) with our Igloo cooler, we were stopped by the police who had pulled up in a Jeep. In a very rare case of police pro-activity, the guide was asked for his ID, which he didn't have - but luckily another well known guide was nearby to vouch for him. That worked for everyone.


The Guide - right

  

At the Falls, we opened the cooler and shared snacks and drinks around, perching on rocks, dangling our feet into little plunge pools. With all the rain, the rocks were extra slippery and I fell into the water after impulsively trying to reclaim my son's flip flop that was swept away by a gush of water. Someone in the group yelled out rather angrily (abandoning as I had, the prime directive driving the day):  "It's not worth it! Let it go!" I was sitting in two feet of water - but he was right, safety first.

 All through this, my Man Sunday maintained the most open, curious state of mind - never succumbing to negativity, while my second brother (Wednesday's child) and I (Friday's) marveled at him. Were we born from the same womb? Man Sunday, I've been convinced since we were children - is an angel. Everyone who knows him agrees. Patient, generous, slow to every negative emotion or opinion. He embodies that popular I Corinthians verse about love: Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. I got a fine lesson in taking things as they come, and pushing forward with common sense and optimism. After Argyle, it was smooth sailing and we breathed a collective sigh of relief, believing that this bit of karma or whatever it was had finally expended itself.

    That turned out to be a tad bit premature. As we drove the car off the boat after docking at Port-of Spain, we heard the most ghastly sound of metal scraping against metal, coupled with the shouts of someone yelling "Stop!"  The muffler was caught on a misaligned metal prong on the off-ramp, and was ripping a hole in the exhaust. A third round of expletives went around inside the car as the ferryman approached, gesturing accusingly, "I tried to warn you! You're the fifth one this morning!" Then, as if the rusty prong and the busted muffler were just routine parts of disembarkment, he offered the next step: "You can put in a claim to the Port Authority for the damages - get a claim form at the office." That worked for everyone.

Good Fences

What do we owe our neighbors - those with whom we share fences? What is the right mix of individuality and conformity? Is there even such a thing?
In my backyard there are 'weeds'. The 'weeds' are there because I love them. I have selected some of these plants, allowing them to group themselves in the landscape as cultivars. This act makes them 'not weeds', since a weed is a plant growing where it is not wanted. One such plant is the morning glory or moon flower. It bears a carpet of delicate pink trumpet flowers that for me is a source of pure joy. But it climbs. My neighbor on the left and I share a chain link fence on which these vines take support. But in this instance, this fence is not able to be shared - it either needs to be mine or hers. She wants a pristine clean fence with nothing growing on it -- and I would like the vines to take support and bloom there. I have made some provisions for the vine within my yard - with grids and shepherd's hooks, but ultimately these are limiting. The plant coils on itself and fails to travel the required distance in order to produce flowers. Vines must produce a certain number of nodes to stimulate budding - that's just how it is. Yesterday I went to clean up the tomato patch and noticed that the flowering vines I was training onto my birdhouse pole - my birdhouse pole in my yard - were dead. She must have tried to clean the fence and in the process, snipped the stems supporting the shoots that were winding their way up to the birdhouse. I felt the tears well up, then the anger - and then set about clearing off all the wilted shoots. By their appearance, they had been snipped less than a hour before because they were flaccid, but not yet shriveled. I finished the job, cutting down all the remaining vines and the Fence is now clean. I have been trying to transplant the vine to another area of the yard - and in a few weeks will see how successful I have been.


My neighbor on the right - the vegetable gardener, is afraid of weeds since they might harbor snakes. She is also afraid of big trees that might fall on her house and she is deathly afraid of thunder and lightening which I also love, and thankfully have no control over.
To pacify her - three large pines have been cut down in the area bordering her house and mine, and from time to time she wags her finger at the plants I am cultivating on my side of the chain link fence - talking about snakes. I have never seen a snake in my yard ever. I don't think earthworms qualify.

I am thankful for my back fence neighbor who shares my sensibility - gifting me with an unruly tangle of honeysuckle, clematis and rose vines which tumble over my fence and into my life. My vine-phobic neighbors look very sternly on that fence, but can do nothing about it.

I know that my anger and sadness over the morning glory vines have less to do with the vine and more to do with my own sense of being limited and confined in order to placate and soothe a variety of concerns in my life - some of them originating even in myself, and I am awakened to the outrage and despair of certain segments of the population whose self expression either offends or scares other people. I am still trying to figure out how far I should extend myself be neighborly, or more correctly, how much I should contain myself. What I know for sure is that my spirit soars in a thunderstorm - where not even the idea of fences makes sense.