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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
We are all susceptible to the charms of the luminous creature that captures our imagination.
Jun 2, 2000 | "For the sake of your own eyes and heart, shoot not the Iguana."-- Isak Dinesen, "Out of Africa"
Isak Dinesen learned many difficult lessons in the years she lived in Kenya, one of which is recorded as a hunting incident in her memoir, "Out of Africa": "Once I shot an Iguana. I thought that I should be able to make some pretty things from his skin. A strange thing happened then, that I have never afterwards forgotten. As I went up to him, where he was lying dead upon his stone, and actually while I was walking the few steps, he faded and grew pale, all colour died out of him as in one long sigh, and by the time that I touched him, was grey and dull like a lump of concrete."
A romantic, an aesthete, a traveler, a materialist, a writer and a hunter, Dinesen had an eye for beauty -- and the impulse to capture it. Her heart was broken more than once when the things and people she tried to possess slipped from her grasp. So while her advice, "shoot not the Iguana," may be better cataloged in a hunting guide to East Africa, anyone who has experienced the trauma of trying to hold on to something beautiful, only to have it die and turn gray before her eyes, can appreciate the metaphorical possibilities of such a maxim.
I, like Dinesen, learned this lesson experientially. In my case, however, the iguana came in the form of a tall Irishman, whom I met in a little village on the coast of Baja on the last day of 1999.
I'd traveled enough to know that a travel romance can usually only survive in its natural habitat -- that exotic place in which it was conceived. You meet in flux and that person, like you, is wide open -- like a dilated pupil. There are no strings, no talk of commitment. There is no past and no future -- only the present. The travel romance is based on the moment, on the spark, the shared wonder of being in a strange new place together. You are both free to reinvent yourselves. And because there is such a sense of the finite, intimacy -- emotional and physical -- ignites and burns hot and bright.
Transitory love -- love in transit -- can be a wonderful thing. Meeting and sharing a small segment of your life with an interesting, attractive person can turn a good trip into an unforgettable one. I once spent 24 hours with Alex in Mombasa; 48 hours with Max in Brazil; and 8 hours with Marin on a plane to Milan. There was always a pang of heartbreak afterward, knowing I would never see them again, knowing that the dazzling experience could not be prolonged, but I knew instinctively not to try to make the experience into something more than it was: wonderful men, beautiful memories and thus they have remained.
But we are all susceptible to the charms of the luminous iguana -- to that stunning creature who steps across your path and so captures your imagination you are not content to move on.
I saw Patrick for the first time at a New Year's Eve potluck in a Mexican house with hot pink couches and velvet paintings on the wall. He was standing next to the buffet table, holding a margarita in a clear plastic cup. In a room crowded with local families and gringo travelers, amidst shouts in English and Spanish, my eyes settled on his long, lean form and rested there. There was something pleasing and familiar about him. I liked the curly dark hair sticking out from under his baseball hat, the Birkenstocks and socks. I passed by him as I got a plate and loaded it up with mashed potatoes and roasted turkey.
I knew only a few people in the room -- my friends I'd driven down from San Diego with and the Mexican couple who owned the house. We'd been to the village once before and I'd fallen in love with the sand-colored mountains and the cobalt-blue sea, the cactuses and pelicans, the glow of bonfires on the beach and the ink-black night sky. It seemed like the only place we all wanted to be on the last day of 1999.
I took my plate and went to stand on the periphery of the room, to observe the social interactions of strangers. The people I was standing next to left and suddenly the tall, Birkenstocked man was at my side. After a few moments of eating our food in silence, we made eye contact and smiled. "Hullo, I'm Patrick," he said in a mellifluous European accent. English, I suspected. I introduced myself. "So, Amy, what's your favorite item on the buffet table this evening?" A line of such dorky proportions had never been delivered with more eloquence.
I found myself telling him about the grilled vegetables I had helped prepare. He listened attentively as I described the elaborate process of barbecuing broccoli. When he looked directly into my eyes, I could feel the blood circulating toward my fac
