moment of weakness

i.
My mother posts photos from home: yesterday, the day after Christmas, the cherry blossom trees were in bashful bloom.  I love cherry trees, but even I can't approve: That's horrifying, I write.

A week ago, while walking down Court, they'd beckoned from a grocery and I'd treated myself to a few branches.  I said to the girl behind the counter, "I can't believe you already have them!  Usually I have to wait until at least March!"  She smiled wanly as I paid.  They bloomed in my living room, cream flowers tinged with pink, on spiky black stems.   They are the brave shock troops of spring, and I considered their appearance a harbinger of good fortune.

Of course, so much of what we think of as good or bad luck has, taking the broad view, nothing at all to do with our individual fates: the perfectly sunny picnic or the rained-out wedding ceremony may both occur mid-drought.  An endless autumn spares us from the northeastern winter, even as the climate slides into erratic misbehavior.

ii.
I squished mosquitos against my arms and neck as Michael led me along the path: here was the portion of the trail that Geoffrey had laid out; over here they were re-introducing a herd of deer (the oldest of which Michael had raised by hand); here the local men worked with machetes and, occasionally, chainsaws to exorcise a yellow-flowering South African tree that has smothered most of the old rubber plantation.

Despite being in the wet zone, this part of Sri Lanka has no malaria - maybe just a touch of dengue, if we're being blasé about it - and I'd adapted Geoffrey's own insouciance and stopped bringing repellant, let alone malarone.  (He didn't even use mosquito nets.)  I tell everyone: if you're going to come here, you're just going to have to get over bugs.  Spiders the size of crabs clamber up bedroom curtains and leave their molted exoskeletons in corners like dirty laundry.  The ants investigate -always.  A wasp lays its eggs while I sit reading on the terrace.  One learns to appreciate the insect-eating geckos clucking their tongues overhead.  ...And anyway, these mosquitoes, unlike the ones lurking at the beach, leave only itchy red welts that vanish within the hour.

iii.
Mosquitoes were not always such a problem at the beach.  The endless rains have upended conventional wisdom.  One reads about Paris in the papers, but change seems a done deal here.  The garden disappears under jungle more quickly than leaves and vines can be hacked away.  Mold riots across the walls.  My tuk-tuk driver tells me of rising food prices and of army interventions to stop the fighting in the Muslim quarter; it's impossible to tell whether the latter has anything to do with the former.  (I remember how fast the built environment changed in India, whole highways built between plane tickets, but here it is nature changing.)  When I arrived, Asha said to me: Since you left, in April, it has not stopped raining.  The two monsoons seem to be colliding like waves, like a rip current dragging everything out to sea.