favorite foods and gecko catching on christmas eve
The day before yesterday was my grampa harmon's birthday. He ate his favorite foods, which, it turns out, are macaroni & cheese and bread pudding. I imagine that in his younger years that food symbolized something to him, and that's mostly why it's now his favorite. Bread pudding is quite good, but there are so many foods in the world that are knock your socks off delicious, it doesn't seem likely that one's experiential associations have nothing to do with that perfect feeling of knowing one's favorite.
Come to think of it, my favorite food changes all the time - does that mean i don't really have a favorite? It changes with the seasons, how I’m feeling, how long since I’ve had a certain dish… I’m not as gung ho about the Hawaiian papaya this time round, maybe cause I’ve been here so many times before, and maybe also cause I feel more detached about my experience – fewer expectations, less highs and lows, more just being in the moment. I don’t know why that results in being less enthralled in the moment. Like yesterday's moment of tasting my first bite of papaya in over a year.
Like the moment of triumph today when the gecko I am stalking flings itself to seeming safety on my arm and I walk out the door, onto the grass where I can catch it again easily if it leaps onto the green and squirms as fast as it can toward cover. It does do this many times. I decide it might be more at home, (and look rather intriguing) perched atop a coconut. I find one that is just beginning to rot - it's tip dark brown with odd-shaped holes, but the rest bright green. I roll it over the lawn with my foot, holding my arm out beside me with the gecko watching everything. I sit down between the overhanging milo tree and the shrubbery. It takes a while to entice the neon creature to step its sticky toe pads onto the slick husk of the coconut, but it finally settles there, looking up at me. Its dominant skin color nearly matches the coconut's. Three licks of hot pink behind its head and tiny yellow spots lining its belly hold my gaze. It breaths deeply, quickly. It suddenly begins to lick its mouth systematically from nose at the center westward toward right eyeball. Yes, it licks its eyeball. No need for eye drops of the sea or rain, saliva does the trick, apparently. It’s a tickling sight to see a cute, brightly colored, cartoonish reptile lick its own black eye ball with a narrow pink tongue. Why are so many creatures’ tongues in the pink family, I wonder. The exception to my generalization leaps to mind - the giraffe that thought it might nibble a morsel from my hand at age 8 stretched its black-purple tongue nearly a foot from its smiling snout into the car, reaching in vain for food we did not give it. We shied away, in awe at the color as much as the fact that - my god, a giraffe has its head a foot from our faces and is trying to lick us!
Not for the first time today, I am thinking: there's still time to become a biologist. But I think that about so many things that excite me. What keeps me excited is writing and the kind of thinking I do when I write.
Here's to the wonders of the living world, and finding new favorites, and having old favorites on special occasions.
Come to think of it, my favorite food changes all the time - does that mean i don't really have a favorite? It changes with the seasons, how I’m feeling, how long since I’ve had a certain dish… I’m not as gung ho about the Hawaiian papaya this time round, maybe cause I’ve been here so many times before, and maybe also cause I feel more detached about my experience – fewer expectations, less highs and lows, more just being in the moment. I don’t know why that results in being less enthralled in the moment. Like yesterday's moment of tasting my first bite of papaya in over a year.
Like the moment of triumph today when the gecko I am stalking flings itself to seeming safety on my arm and I walk out the door, onto the grass where I can catch it again easily if it leaps onto the green and squirms as fast as it can toward cover. It does do this many times. I decide it might be more at home, (and look rather intriguing) perched atop a coconut. I find one that is just beginning to rot - it's tip dark brown with odd-shaped holes, but the rest bright green. I roll it over the lawn with my foot, holding my arm out beside me with the gecko watching everything. I sit down between the overhanging milo tree and the shrubbery. It takes a while to entice the neon creature to step its sticky toe pads onto the slick husk of the coconut, but it finally settles there, looking up at me. Its dominant skin color nearly matches the coconut's. Three licks of hot pink behind its head and tiny yellow spots lining its belly hold my gaze. It breaths deeply, quickly. It suddenly begins to lick its mouth systematically from nose at the center westward toward right eyeball. Yes, it licks its eyeball. No need for eye drops of the sea or rain, saliva does the trick, apparently. It’s a tickling sight to see a cute, brightly colored, cartoonish reptile lick its own black eye ball with a narrow pink tongue. Why are so many creatures’ tongues in the pink family, I wonder. The exception to my generalization leaps to mind - the giraffe that thought it might nibble a morsel from my hand at age 8 stretched its black-purple tongue nearly a foot from its smiling snout into the car, reaching in vain for food we did not give it. We shied away, in awe at the color as much as the fact that - my god, a giraffe has its head a foot from our faces and is trying to lick us!
Not for the first time today, I am thinking: there's still time to become a biologist. But I think that about so many things that excite me. What keeps me excited is writing and the kind of thinking I do when I write.
Here's to the wonders of the living world, and finding new favorites, and having old favorites on special occasions.
1 Comments:
I LOVED this! Your child like enthusiasm is infectious, and description of gecko really fun.
"...sticky toe pads...,"...flings itself to safety...," "....licks its own eyeball..."
Last sentence especially inspires me to embrace life as a human.
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