rejoice, in the beauty of small things

Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica (Southern Caribbean)

So, I´m lying down staring at this gecko on our window screen, absentmindedly watching him hunt for one of the houseflies that we let in, when he crosses a three-foot span of window, catches the fly in his mouth, holds it, and then tosses it a few times to make sure the head goes down first when he swallows (so the wings and legs don´t bend backward, clog his windpipe and asphyxiate him). He´s the crocodilian, in miniature, snatching his prey unawares, snaring life in his powerful little jaws, playing out the primordial lesson. Ambush. Eat or be eaten.

The strike was so nearly instantaneous that the fly saw it coming and still couldn´t get away. And, almost as fast, I´m up off the bed cheering, yelling at Kate to come watch the hunter savor his kill. (Who needs TV?) When her enthusiasm inevitably doesn´t match mine and she goes back to what she was doing, my bloodlust wanes and the emotional void is filled with a mixture of conflicting thoughts:

1.) something less than a half-hearted pity for the fly,
2.) deep respect for the gecko, and
3.) a line that might be from a hymn sung during some church service a long time ago that says something like, "rejoice, in the beauty of small things"

And, after four days of too little to do with too much time on my hands, my list-making, electronic-entertainment-craving mind calms down a little bit, and I take the first tentative, hesitant, self-conscious steps back toward equanimity - life lived outside the bubble of constant access, mass media, and to-do lists.

And, later, I fall asleep to the tapping of light rain on palm leaves and the pinging noises of tree frogs in the jungle.