A time for bonding in the rain forest.
The first week down from the mountains and into the rainforest has proven a time for bonding, or more properly a time for experiments in bonding, some of which have worked, despite the frequent rain delays making heart connection perilous. The bonding with a baby sloth got off to a promising start. We were both all gooey eyed at each other from the off, but, truth to tell, sloth bonds are slow in developing and with limited time, I needed to break eye-contact and head for more easily acquired intimacy. And she was a little clingy. Iguana bonds of course are always colourful affairs but my are those creatures elusive in their love.
They seem to shift affection at the drop of a leaf, throwing an invisibility cloak around them, without need for recourse to an un-friend button. Iguana bonds I concluded are momentarily rewarding but honestly the patience required and the potential for betrayal is altogether too high, even by Central American standards. By comparison my forays into parrot bonding proved immediate and so reassuring; though after a while having you every passing thought repeated ad naueum begins to have the obverse effect to narcissistic reassurance, causing you to wonder if any thing you ever say makes any sense at all. I decided in the end that parrot bonds need to be limited to moments of personal doubt alone lest blindness to new personal failings creeps in
Human bondage is a quite different matter.
The owner of our current eco-lodge carries some promise of sustainable bondage. On the other hand he does erect barriers to trust building, perhaps by way of testing the sustainability and resilience of me as well as other guests. For example while outlining the dangers in living in such a poor area with high crime and homelessness, he apologised for the temporary absence of his night guard, explaining that the said night guard had pushed his fingers into the fish tank on which we leaning, only to be bitten by the scorpion fish, and was now still detained in the emergency room.
Despite the exposure to more drug induced violence I am moved to forgiveness on the grounds that this animated young man is more naturalist than hotelier. His main passion is the preservation of poisoned frogs, against whom for some reason hard to discern the local population have developed an aversion. He proudly points out his tadpole breeding pond, parked right outside the room. He explains that while the green and black ones are deadly, the red and black ones are deadlier still. Apparently the red and black ones, should they pass near your lips, would cause instant heart attack. So there in one moment go all fantasies of princely manifestations, in face of such perilous outcomes. It may well be that in time i will bond with the owner, but never with his creatures.