I Love Luna (47)

UNITED STATES—The “master” has his ever-changing Ten Commandments carved in Styrofoam. The order changes depending on day and mood. One is: Thou shalt not cook when engaged in transmitting Luna’s dictation to the written page. I, Luna, the unpredictable pit-bull lab who  have brought much drama and frenzy to the master’s staid life.

“Oops!” he gasps now. “I left it on the stove.”

Off he scurries like a fumigated cockroach. All that cultivated Zen serenity thrown under the bus.

Thank the coffee gods, the espresso grounds are still seething in the stainless-steel mixing bowl which belies its stainless label, after a few too many times being left on the stove. It now resembled marbled steel.

The master, as he gratefully sips a cup of cowboy coffee, is still mulling over a week that handed him lessons that’ve left him a bit riled up. One was running into a neighbor who was disappointed that he gladly gave his say so when her gardener asked if it would be OK to trim off the bougainvillea that had grown over the fence line.

After the deed was done, Yolanda shared her sadness that the trespassing bougainvillea provided a canopy of shade as well as a cascade of bright magenta petals.

The neighbor, who is a painter, cherishes the color. And the master, who can be a little dense at times, felt the scales fall from his eyes.

So, there’s now a fresh eleventh addition to the commandments: Thou shalt not ignore the aesthetic dimension when pursuing a tidy garden, located next to a neighbor. In the privacy of his own abode, the master ameliorated the pang of regret that accompanies this insight by pounding his fists against his chest and uttering, Oy vey, woe is me. This too shall pass.

Not for nothing, the master’s dwelling is named, Casa de las Bugambilias. For him the perennial trimming began well-nigh two decades ago. His nose was buried in writing a book, and when he took his nose out of the book six months later, the bougainvillea beast first discovered in 1768 by Europeans snooping around the Portuguese colony of Brazil, threatened to swallow the house.

Masochist that he is, the master prefers not to wear gloves when taming the bougainvillea with hand clippers and shears. For him, it has been a cleansing ritual to trim it gloveless. The thorny bougainvillea invariably exacts its drop of blood. On that it survives. A biblical drought, a piece of cake for this botanical desert rat. Hence, the master’s hastiness in OK’ing the trim on the neighbor’s side. From now on he’ll be more circumspect when drawing the line between pain and beauty.

To be continued…