My Friend, the Lizard
Brian Cremins
Louisiana State University
Posted: August, 2004 Student Affairs
Online, vol. 5 no. 3 - Summer 2004
Regular readers of this column will notice a few changes in
this installment, most significant of which is my new address. In my last column, I discussed my troubles
locating a free e-mail terminal at the Modern Language Association Convention
in San Diego last December. Careful
readers will recall that I was in San Diego interviewing for tenure-track jobs
in English beginning in Fall of 2004. I
managed to secure one of those positions and now write to you from my new home
in Louisiana. Though everything about
my life has changed beyond recognition in the last few months, there are a few
constants, one of which is a dependence on e-mail which has become even more
profound now that I find myself in alien territory. There is nothing more alien, perhaps, than a life-long New
Englander living in the South for the first time. When a waitress at the local rib joint asked me if I wanted my
pulled pork sandwich “dressed,” I gave her a perplexed look and told her I had
no idea what she was talking about. In
the movies, don’t waitresses always ask if you want “fixin’s”? When I admitted that I’m an English
professor, she laughed even harder. So
as I adjust to the thick, heavy heat, and the bugs, and the small green lizards
with bright underbellies, I find myself checking my e-mail more frequently, and
waiting for the latest news from up North or out West, from old friends who
have no idea where I am and are surprised when they hear that I have
moved. I am living in two worlds: the
new territory which surrounds me, the swamps and the oak trees and the Mississippi
River, and the more familiar though no less strange terrain of cyberspace. E-mails from old friends are often more
valuable than phone calls, because they last longer, and, like a good book, you
can always return to them later.
This retreat into cyberspace has given me the chance to
catch up with old friends. Before
leaving the East Coast for Louisiana, I forgot to mail that most significant of
electronic letters: the mass e-mail with my new address and phone number. After cramming all of my comic books, files,
and miscellaneous junk into boxes for the movers (the resilience of old bills
is amazing—I may not be able to find this month’s phone bill, but I have
managed to save electric bills from 1996), I had a suspicion I had forgotten to
do something. Let’s see—sedative for
the cat, food for the car trip, hotel reservations, first month’s rent in the
new house. Everything’s covered. Even fresh t-shirts for the Louisiana heat
and a beat-up Stephen King novel to read on the road. When we at last arrived in the “Sportman’s Paradise,” and I
noticed that my inbox was filled with fresh mail asking where I’d disappeared
to, I realized my mistake—and then used it to my advantage.
Rather than sending postcards to all of my friends, I began
writing long e-mails in which I described, first, the lizards and their pink
throats. I decided to keep a running
journal of this flood of new experiences.
And with e-mail, those new experiences could be translated immediately
from the real world to the electronic one, without the delays of the postal
service or the ambiguity (and ease) of the phone. Besides, since I had forgotten to send everyone my new address
before making my way to Louisiana, I thought I could make it up to people by
sending electronic postcards filled with sights and sounds which I found
amusing, or surprising, or terrifying, or puzzling. So I began with the blonde squirrel, and made my way through the
rain, and the lightning, and the insects big as Volkswagons, and especially the
food. I’ll share a few of these with
you, and I would ask my Southern readers to be patient with me, since I will no
doubt sound like some alien dropped to earth from one of Ray Bradbury’s Martian
tales while struggling to describe the scenery.
I was not sure what to make of the blonde squirrel. It is not the squirrel which interests me,
but his/her blondeness. Even the other
squirrels appeared fascinated, and just a little intimidated, but their
playmate. When I was a ten-year old I
often threw peanuts to squirrels who waited expectantly on my front porch. So squirrels I know, but not blonde
ones. I would have expected to see
blonde squirrels in Hollywood, but I have asked a friend about this phenomenon,
and in his four years in Los Angeles, he’s not seen any. (He might not be making the effort, but now
he knows to look). A genetic
mutation? Exposure to the sun? A bleaching effect produced by the smog
which cloaks across the Gulf of Mexico from Houston and other points further
South? I don’t have an answer, but I
have to say it was prettier than the rust-colored nut eaters I had grown
accustomed to in New England.
My research into the squirrel was cut short by the rain—or
should I say, the Rain. With the
exception of the dry spell we are now experiencing, I can almost set my watch
by the dark storm clouds, lighting, and thunder which gather at 3 every
afternoon. I know how to drive in snow,
but not in the Rain. And unlike New
England, whose rolling hills make it difficult to see what is coming around the
next corner, this stretch of Louisiana is almost as flat as a prairie, which
means you can see the rain up ahead even while you are perfectly dry. You can see thick sheets of it waiting for
you just down the highway. The only
advice I’ve gotten on how to drive through flooded streets is to “keep going!”
so that no water crawls up the exhaust pipe.
I have with some confidence, however, donated all of my ice scrapers and
snow shovels to a friend in Connecticut who will no doubt need them far more
than I will, unless we experience the outbreak of an unexpected ice age in the
next couple of years (which, given the havoc we humans like to play with the
environment, is probably not out of the question).
I have already mentioned the pink-throated lizards, probably
because they are my favorite subjects for electronic postcards. When I first spotted one, crawling across a
fence and into a thicket of ferns, I thought I’d dropped into an episode of the
old Saturday morning TV show Land of the
Lost. He looked like a miniature
dinosaur, though given his size, this descendant of T. Rex had fallen on rough
times. You know you’ve tumbled down the
evolutionary scale when an orange tabby cat can terrorize you with one swat of
his paw. The first lizard I encountered
in my backyard stared at me as if to say, “Keep smiling and I don’t eat the
bugs. And there’s a lot of bugs out
here.” He puffed up his pink throat in
defiance and slinked away. I haven’t
bothered him since, and we’ve made a mutual agreement. I don’t make any cracks about his size
restrictions and he keeps snacking on the bugs which threaten our garden. I think we have developed a good
relationship, but he has a brother lizard who’s been trying to get into the
living room. We’ll need to talk.
These are just a few of the images I’ve been sending to
friends and family as my wife and I and our cat settle into our new home. The immediacy of the experience is best
captured in these short, quick e-mails.
Though living with the heat and the rain and the lizards (and the
fantastic food, which I do not have space to discuss here but will save for
next time) should be real enough, keeping an electronic record which can be
sent within seconds all over the world somehow makes the real seem even more
real. This may have something to do
with the fact that the electronic geography of cyberspace is portable and
instantly accessible. The dataports so
common now in even the cheapest hotels give testimony to the traveler’s urgent
desire to plug into a familiar space.
By writing a new territory into a more familiar one, the two begin to
merge, and the alien space ceases to look quite so distant or unnerving. And what better material for new e-mail
conversations than blonde squirrels, Biblical rain, and scaly green neighbors?