A Pineapple Salamander

All my life I’ve had a peculiar habit of holding on to things of little or no value for a long time. I keep them in boxes, clusters in my sock drawer and piles on the floor of my closet. I hid them in the woods as a kid, or up in a tucked away corner of the attic or a wayward dresser in the basement. Some people call this being a packrat. I like to think of it as an unusually sentimental sensibility. For me, these baubles and kink-knacks represent pieces of time, places in history that are inimitable and unknown to other people. And often throughout the course of my life, these small but significant items have gone on long, curious journeys with me and ended up in places they would never have expected to find themselves. Take for instance a bottle cap from a beach parking lot in Massachusetts. It hung around for ten years and eventually found its way to the bottom of a stream in Northern California. Or a pebble from the side of a road in Florida that now sits on the side of a lake in Maine. For some odd reason, I revel in helping these objects travel great, unnecessary distances. I’ve taken a rock from a mountaintop in British Columbia and placed it unassumingly under a park bench in Costa Rica. No one who walks past and notices the rock can ever possibly know where it came from, but there it is. I had a phone number from a girl in California scribbled on a ripped pack of matches with a website address where she sells her artwork. For two years I never once looked at the art. Then one day, it occurred to me to look. The number now rests peacefully and half buried in the dirt of a potted plant in a Buenos Aires apartment stairwell. Why? Because it means something. It was a symbolic gesture that, until writing about it now, was a secret, a secret of absolutely no importance to anyone else but me. It represents a part of my life, a journey I’ve taken, and in a weird way it opens fresh perspective on the possibilities of the world. Somehow it’s like watching geological time-lapsed photography, comprehending firsthand the way boulders become sand or tectonic plates shift the continents. It’s understanding my small part in something so much greater than myself. Some people go to church, some meditate, some pray. I collect shit and leave it around the world.

My favorite story is how a dried up salamander from 20 years ago made its way down to Panama. During the hectic preflight hours on the day of my departure for CR, I stumbled upon an old shoebox while rummaging to find a bathing suit in my closet. The box contained Polaroid pictures, tacks, string, an owl pellet and some ancient elementary school love notes. In among the nest of debris lay a tiny, flattened salamander, his tail curled around, feet stuck out, and hardened into a reddish-brown fossil. He had no doubt been peeled from the sun-burnt asphalt on a late spring day in Massachusetts. Now he lived among digested shrew skeletons and misspelled poems with little hearts dotting the ‘i’s. He looked like he needed a vacation. I popped the salamander in the small front pocket of my backpack.

I was in Costa Rica for 2 ½ months before travelling to Panama. The bus ride was long, the air was hot and wet, and I was tired. We’d stopped only once, and by the time we reached our final destination, I was in desperate need a walk to stretch my legs and my thoughts. I wandered off to examine the sights and found a quiet path down to the ocean, sparsely lined with battered shacks of bright Crayola colors. Towards the end of the road was a yard, maintained in appearance but at the moment unattended. To the right, where the road ended, was a thick tuft of bushes. I snuck behind a bush and treated myself to some much needed relief. Standing there, breathing easy and looking out between the palms at gorgeous Caribbean, I felt a sharp pain on the side of my leg. Beside me was a lone pineapple plant with a single pineapple spiking up from the center. It sat there poised like a rocket ship preparing for launch. I couldn’t resist the temptation of having fresh fruit waiting for me in my hotel room the next morning, so I unzipped my backpack and carefully (cause they’re sharp buggers) plucked the fruit from its home. As I zipped the bag back up again, I noticed the blank stem were the pineapple had been rooted moments earlier. For no particular reason whatsoever, I fished out the tiny salamander from the front of my pack and placed him gently in the center of the barren plant. I smiled, picked up the pack and walked back to meet our group. I don’t know what became of the salamander, but I always like to think that he stayed there a while and became absorbed by the next fruit that grew, stuck inside a pineapple in Panama. An interesting afterlife and, at the risk of being corny, a rather sweet ending if you ask me.

On the process of becoming nocturnal

The other night I left work at 4:30 in the morning. Walking out the door, someone asked me, “What are you doing? You wanna get some food or play cards or something?” As strange as this may sound, I actually considered the question before settling on, “No thanks, I think I’m gonna try to get some sleep.” This is a Wednesday night in Buenos Aires. I headed down the street to catch the bus and saw two kids skipping along like it was Saturday afternoon. They were 10 or 11 years old, well dressed, and by themselves, although obviously they belonged to someone. I hopped onto the bus and found a seat open in the very back… all the rest were occupied. My eyes scanned the seated rows, searching for the collection of usual suspects. Where were all the junkies, prostitutes and frightened college students? Instead I found teenage couples kissing, middle-aged people in street clothes and mothers with small children still awake. Barreling down the avenues of BA, still dotted with traffic, we passed outdoor cafés alive with friendly chatter. City workers collected trash, delivered papers and swept out gutters. Street vendors set up shop and local business owners hosed down storefront sidewalks. The light began pushing against the nighttime backdrop, not yet visible but somehow making its presence known. It’s during those brackish hours of morning when two worlds collide and a special part of the city’s personality becomes noticeable. As I exited the bus and walked towards my apartment, I crossed paths with a nun who brushed swiftly past in a strong, determined stride. She was dressed head to toe in white and I in my black shirt and jeans. While I had been drinking beer after work she had no doubt been offering her morning prayers. The juxtaposition clicked in my head and I stopped and turned to notice her. I couldn’t wrap my mind around a life so very different from my own; yet there we were, walking across the same sidewalk, each moving in our own direction but together at the same time. With thoughts of the Twilight Zone ringing between my ears, I went home and went to bed. I think it was 5:15. They say New York is the city that never sleeps. I disagree with that. New York is ‘a’ city that never sleeps.