Magic Times and Magic Places

FEATURED POSTS

August 13, 2017

SEA DREAMS – Artist Catherine Lee

Thirty-two years ago, Carmela and I spent six weeks in Brazil – four of them in Rio de Janeiro and the other two traveling around that lovely land, visiting jungles and waterfalls, swamps and rivers, cities and countryside. It was more than beautiful. It was magical.

We never went back, I don’t know why exactly. Maybe we feared the second time around it would be a lovely place, but not the magic place it had once been. Magic is elusive. It’s not where you are, it’s what is inside you at the time. You can go to the same place, see the same things, listen to the same lovely music, but the magic has slipped away.

But the magic of that adventure remains in our memories and in our hearts.

There was that time we almost died in the ocean just a few hundred feet from the shops and high-rise apartments along Avenida Atlantica. We had been warned about the rip tides and currents that stalked the beach that time of year, but we were relying on the magic of the moment to protect us. And it did.

When the first huge breaker drove us under, then the second one swirled us upside down, I reached out, found Carmela’s hand and pushed off from the sandy bottom. We survived, clambered back ashore, went to our rented apartment, took a shower, and then went out to dinner. Another good day in Rio.

The ocean wasn’t the only danger in Rio. We were warned again and again. Watch your back, don’t wear any jewelry that can be snatched from your ears or jerked off your fingers, and don’t think of resisting, especially if there is more than one robber. And yet, we wandered where we chose, and the magic remained. Some of the most beautiful and exciting places on the planet are also the most dangerous. Such concerns can’t defeat the magic of time or place.

Then there were the beggar kids, homeless boys who hustled money shining shoes. When they were young and still cute, they survived on handouts from tourists and even some sympathetic Cariocans, as the residents or Rio are known. But when they grew older, not so cute, and resentful of their lot in life, they often turned to crime.

There was one young boy we became attached to. He would greet us on the street and we would talk in a hodge-podge of broken English and fractured Portuguese. When we left, a few weeks later, he gave us one more shoeshine – refusing to take any money for it. A token of our friendship. A little more magic.

If the world had been fair, we would have taken that kid home and made him part of our family. As it was, we thanked him, gave him a hug, and walked away.

After Rio, we traveled around that big, beautiful, wild country – to the Amazon and the Pantanal swamp wilderness, and to Iguazu Falls on the border of Brazil and Argentina. We flew in and out of single runway airports that had been carved out of the jungle – loading and unloading passengers at every stop as though the plane were a city bus.

There were snakes and exotic birds. There were capybara, the world’s largest rodent. Scores of caiman, the Brazilian version of alligators, lined the river banks. Indian kids fished from the same bank. And of course, there were the legendary and deadly piranha that lurked beneath the surface.

We still think about going back sometimes, but would Rio and Brazil hold the same enchantment as it did on the trip so long ago. Probably not.

But what if it did?

– George Lee Cunningham

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News

April 17, 2024

Minor Character

Sometimes I feel like a minor character in one of those really long James Michener historic novels. I’m one of the guys they check in on a couple of times during the course of the book and one more time when he finally kicks the bucket. In truth, that suits me just fine. I don’t want to be one of the major players – those guys who lie, cheat, sleep around, make a lot of money, kill a lot of people, and then then suffer a tragic death on Christmas Eve. I just want to be me – plugging along, having some fun, loving the same woman for years, and then quietly passing away.

March 25, 2024

Cereal Killer

I have almost given up on cereal. As a younger man, I loved a sugary treat. As an old man, who has to watch his diet, I find myself checking labels on everything. Sugar is the enemy. For instance, Cap’n Crunch – a former favorite of my wife – contains: Corn Flour, Sugar, Oat Flour, Brown Sugar, Palm and/or Coconut Oil, Salt, Reduced Iron, Yellow 5, Niacinamide, Yellow 6, BHT, Thiamin, Mononitrate, Pridoxined Hydrochloride, Rioflavin, and Folic Acid. My choice: plain old Shredded Wheat. Ingredients: wheat and BHT (a harmless preservative). Not a taste treat, but at least I’ll live to tell about it

Highway Memorials

Driving across country nowadays, we notice a growing number of roadside displays – flowers, crosses, and ribbons – marking the sites where people apparently died in traffic accidents. I do understand mourning the passing of somebody you love, but I’m not sure I see the point of putting a display at the place along the road where they died. Even sadder is the fact that flowers wilt and highway trash piles up around the displays, making them just another sad reminder of life cut short.

December 5, 2023

Love Motives

I often tell my wife I love and adore her, mainly because I do and also because women like to hear the man in their life actually say the words. But during one conversation I had to confess that some times when I say it – especially when she is irked and giving me the deadly silent treatment – I am also reminding myself of that fact so I don’t start yelling and slamming doors. Is that so wrong?

Being Mortal

I am officially an old man. Sometimes I forget, then I look in the mirror and there it is. The truth is that life has its limits, and that is how it should be. There are new generations coming up, ready to step up and take our place. They are welcome to it. If you have reached old age, you have made some blunders in you life. If you think otherwise, then you are indeed a fool. You can warn the new generations about the mistakes you made, but they are oblivious. This too is as it should be. It’s their world, and it’s on them to screw it up for the generations to follow, just as we did for them.

Good Deeds

There is a saying that no good deed goes unpunished. It’s mostly – but not always – true. The problem with good deeds is that most people who do them expect to be appreciated. In actuality, good-deed recipients are more often resentful about it, rather than grateful. Nobody likes being the person who has to rely on the good will of others. So do good deeds for your own sake – because it makes you feel better, not because you want to be feel appreciated.

Recreational Bitching

Did you ever notice that some people – maybe more people than not – like to complain about everything? In the summertime, it’s too hot. In the wintertime it’s too cold. Health care is too expensive. Young people are too rude. Old people move too slowly. There ought to be a law against anything and everything that might make one unhappy. It’s recreational bitching, and we all do it to greater or lesser extent. Maybe once in a while, it might make sense to listen to how we talk and how we think. Most of us are just doing the best that we can.