Life is a series of illusions.
They say a photo is worth a thousand words. But often we are only guessing at the truth presented by the image …
A few months ago I was telling a friend how sick I had been on a recent trip. “You certainly couldn’t tell that from your blog posts,” she said.
Well yes, sometimes, maybe even oftentimes, that’s true. Not everything makes a good story. One has to pick and choose what to tell. Does that mean I’m lying? Or simply being selective? How do we choose to represent ourselves? (If one knew their friends only via their Facebook postings, we could safely assume that everyone’s life is a non-stop party).
Yesterday, Michele and I were traveling by lancha on Patzcuaro Lake to visit the tiny island of Janitzio. (BC Ferries, please take note; aboard our 20 or 30-minute ferry crossing was a four-piece tip-collecting loudly-playing mariachi band).
As we neared the sharp rise of the island of Janitzio, we saw fishermen wielding their butterfly nets. We couldn’t grab our cameras fast enough, until it dawned on us, they weren’t fishing, they were doing a touristic display. No fish landed from the polluted lake (the lake loses 170 acres annually due to soil erosion) and when our lancha slowed enough to allow one of the fisherman to come alongside to collect tips, the illusion was totally shattered.
But still. I love that photo…
Late in the afternoon we loaded our gear into a taxi for the hour or so trip to Morelia. This was the nicest vehicle yet. It shone with bright newness. Unlike so many previous taxi interiors, this car had no skeletal door handles stripped of all vinyl cushioning to reveal metal-bony workings. Instead, the seats were smooth, free from the usual stuffing poufing out from cracked seats. In short, this taxi gleamed with polish and care.
Our driver spoke excellent heavily-accented English; learned stateside, while cooking in restaurants in Oregon for over twenty years. It was clear that he took great pride in his nice vehicle.
Which made it all the more embarrassing for him when Michele squealed as an earwig-like weevilly bug shimmied down the seatbelt toward her neck.
While we continued to hurtle down the rain-soaked highway, he magically produced a rag from under his seat. I gripped the bug in its folds and flung it from the window. Then I did it again, and again, and again as the little bugs appeared from their hiding places in the car’s crevices. There was always enough time between each buggy event to heighten the anticipation for the next appearance. Michele used her little flashlight to great effect, doing a vigilante sweep, to reveal, squash and fling the highlighted intruders.
“It is from the all the flowers,” our driver said, “I am so sorry. I am so embarrassed.”
We could barely hear his apologies as we laughed and screamed and swatted. We estimated maybe a dozen exquisitely spaced sightings and captures.
He apologised again when he delivered us to the beautiful Villa Montana Hotel & Spa. “No apology required,” I promised. “That was highly entertaining.”
The poor man had simply been guilty of delivering his fares and their flowers. We had seen so many people carrying flowers by the armloads. But now I was seeing all those bouquets in a different light. Those bunches of golds, reds and magenta flowers, being carried home to be laid upon Day of the Dead altars, were laden with the potential of weevilly bugs.
Not unlike the tables and tables of sugar skulls and coffins being offered for sale. Each table buzzing, and sometimes blanketed, with wasps.
Some say ignorance is bliss, others declare that all life is an illusion. Perhaps there’s truth in all of it.
Maybe not everything needs to be revealed. Perhaps not knowing the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is actually a delicious reprieve from the harsh facts of reality.
Bring on the illusion. Keep the mystery.
It’s not always good to know what goes bump in the night.
Related articles
Being trapped for an hour in a car full of slithering red earwigs is a reality I NEVER want to repeat. I thank you for your swift action swatting them into oblivion. Your hysterical laughter was the only thing that kept me from jumping out of a moving car and onto the highway.
Michele, I would respectfully submit that it was better than doing our own version of Snakes on the Plane. Bugs in the Taxi was worth the hysteria 🙂