The Island

You are never alone on the island. You think you have found the perfect solitary spot by the edge of the ocean. You stand under a palm tree peering into the crashing waves and getting lost in meditation. Suddenly a mange infested, homeless dog ruffles up the bushes next to you and jumps out on the sand to follow the shore line with its nose hanging low to the ground.

You decide to take a break on your patio to enjoy the ocean breeze of the early morning. Just as you lean back in your chair, a tiny lizard jumps out from behind chased by a second one right behind. Later on you find one of them in your bathroom desperately clutching the top of your shampoo bottle. He refuses to find his own way out through the open window until you capture and release him outside.

Another quiet moment will be interrupted by the neighbor’s dog that has snuck into your property through a hole in the fence. Fences are only for humans. Later that day the same asshole will unceremoniously lift his leg against your car tire and do his bidding.

In the heat of the day a beautiful homeless cat will let herself into your house from the front door. Is there any food here? She will seek with her eyes, then leave disappointed. It won’t be for long. The next house over will feed her.

At least once a day another neighbor’s hen and her little chicks will run across your yard clucking. A few days later two roosters will have a fight over her in the middle of the road right when you are trying to enter your house after work. One of them is the bastard that crows every morning exactly ten minutes before your alarm, robbing you of the last moments of a precious dream. Some days you are able to fall back asleep and dream of buying a slingshot.

On any given night you can be visited by a prickly iguana, a cockroach scurrying with the speed of a ballistic missile, a spider, dozens of moths and ten thousand mosquitoes.

On the island man is engaged in constant arm wrestling with nature. For every house or apartment complex that gets erected, another one gets abandoned and left to be devoured by the jungle. After only a couple of years, the lianas creep their way into the deserted structure and the animals that were once partially kept out are left free to invade. But the match doesn’t end there. One day man will come in and paint a beautiful colorful design on the walls of the dilapidated building, trying to reestablish his territory once again. The paint will last a couple of years but will eventually fade and the mosses and lianas will regain their ground, this time for good.

It’s not easy living on the island. The jungle is strong and unforgiving. When everything works properly, you are in paradise. But one day the lights go out and you find yourself standing in the dark with a back drenched in sweat in the hot and humid night pondering how long you could survive if the power doesn’t come back on again. You decide to get a solar panel but then the water is out. Your little reservoir pump makes the lights flicker with every stroke and you wonder just how long it will last. What will happen when you run out of diesel or when the next big hurricane peels your solar installation away like it stripped all the leaves from the trees three years ago.

On the island you become acutely aware of your vulnerability. What will you do when technology breaks down? You don’t have the skills of your ancestors. They were tough. Knowledge-wise, they were infants compared to you but when it comes to survival against nature in its raw form, you have nothing compared to them. You will be humiliated and destroyed. It’s hard to imagine it now. One beautiful sunny day when the rays of the sun reach all the way to the bottom of the sea and illuminate the fine yellow sand, technology breaks down. Deep down inside you feel that when that moment comes perhaps it would be best to walk straight into the water and let the ocean swallow you.