July 27, 2008
This photo I took at Xugana Island Lodge was supposed to commemorate Bruce, the raucous-sounding resident hippo, who made the rounds after the staff and guests went to bed every night. He sloshed out of the lagoon and wandered around chewing grass. I spent part of one full-moon night listening in awe as he chewed the grass on the other side of the wall from my bed, and then I listened some more as he trudged along the perimeter, his big feet making what can only be called a soft, spongy sound. I looked out my window and could see his shadowy figure in the moonlight.
Bruce often left a calling card. His tail whipped like the blades of a fan, spraying dung on plants, path lights and the markers for the path. It signaled to anyone interested that this was his territory, where he had completed his work for the evening. One day I spotted his calling card on what I thought was an orchid. My friend Julie Ardery, who founded www.humanflowerproject.com in Austin, took a look at my flower photo and sent it on to an expert. In a jiff the word came back from Julie that this was a shell ginger on the palm leaf. Shell gingers are found in Asia; Julie dubbed this a new example of globalization.
I thought the photo would be appropriate given the events of the past week. There is the beauty of the blossom. There is the coating of dung. The polarity of light and dark, the painterly fragility of a flower and the smelly spray of crap. Life hands us all of that. What do we do with it?
Acceptance. That's the only word that comes to mind for me today. Acceptance of it all.
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