Or perhaps, if you truly believe suffering is a moral value, it is not that you are made of finer but rather of flimsier stuff. I owe calls, cards and letters but I cannot speak to anyone due to my state of fatigue and grief, yet I still have interesting adventures, as you will see.
I left the office at 1:30 PM yesterday afternoon to go eat lunch and do housework and errands, but I was back by 8:00 PM and I stayed until 1:30 AM. When I got home I was so tired I feared for my future, but by the morning I had improved somewhat. I do not have time to go to Houston or New Orleans so I went to cut my hair in Maringouin.
The hair cutter also cuts garment patterns for hunting clothes; he has created a special kind of camouflage patterned on ducks’ wings and it is considered very beautiful. Now his friend has invented a paint pattern for guns, so that they can be dipped in matching camouflage; six such rifles were delivered while my hair was being cut. Everyone there took me for Native American, and all of this is already quite eccentric.
Then I walked out onto the plaza where there was a merengue band, and ate a Honduran tamal. A woman from Sololá was selling her wares and I bought a tablecloth the color of my walls. While I was negotiating one of the band members walked up and asked where in Mexico I was from. I said “Santa Barbara, California;” he said he was Dominican and Santa Barbara women were very beautiful; I laughed and walked off.
And the heat has broken after five blazing months and it is 75 degrees today, and I have a red dress. And on the way home I ate blackberry ice, and here there are garbanzos and mango juice, and now I am going to the office. And I will stay there for many hours and when I fill out my cover page, which asks for an ethnicity, I believe I shall check “Hispanic.”
And I have more interesting adventures than you professional sufferers because I am amused by them, and perhaps if I don’t struggle as much or suffer as much it is not because you are more delicate and deserving or because you have finer thoughts.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 