Mold, Mosquitoes, and Swarming Fruit Flies
By Shea McCandless
Brazil. Just the word conjures sensuous images, an abandonment to hedonism; lush
forests, sprawling beaches, and mold. Yes. Mold.
We planned for a year to move to this tropical paradise so I could take a shot
at my dream of writing. We got our house ready to sell, thought long and hard of
all the things we would need to ship, overcame tears of disbelief, shaken heads
at our idiocy, and direct questions about mental competence.
How could anyone contemplate leaving a secure job and a decent house in a large,
beautiful city to move to Brazil to write? It didn't help that my wife is
Brazilian, that we went down every year for a month to visit her family, that my
Portuguese was good enough to get around by myself. But you have two young
children, they would say. The youngest isn't even one yet! The rising, strident
voices, eyes open wide in shock, dumbfounded gestures of helpless impotence at
being unable to change our minds continued until the very day we boarded the
airplane.
But what was most intriguing and challenging, really, was this: But you've never
written anything in your life! Not entirely true, despite the scrawled 150 pages
of adolescent science fiction written in the back of a Dodge van during the
early eighties, but close enough to hit home. How do you tell your father, your
uncles, great dreamers all of someday writing that novel, that hey, I don't want
to wake up someday when I'm sixty still wishing I had at least tried.
So the grand adventure began. My slippers were carefully packed along with the
dream of getting up in the morning, shuffling around the house with a cup of
morning coffee before heading off to my very own, cozy little office to hammer
away at the keyboard. Hundreds of pages of notes and careful research were
diligently entered into my computer, saved on disc, all ready to be seamlessly
used in my grand scheme.
The arrival was perfect. It was August. The Brazilian winter was in full flow
with comfortable temperatures and ominous clouds. Welcoming arms embraced us and
we immediately set about the task of finding that perfect little seaside town
where we would settle, certain that within a year offers would be flowing in
from agents and publishers clamoring for my book. No one ever mentioned to me
that August, with those threatening clouds, presaged the rainy season.
Days passed; squishy, mud-puddle-the-size-of-Minnesota-lakes days. We couldn't
afford those quaint little beach towns so we finally settled on a run of the
mill, but still beach-town, called Berti-agua by the locals for its unique
ability to invite every rain cloud within a hundred miles. Even though I had
grown up in Oregon, my adult years were spent in the Southwest. Rain had become
charming to me. That charm quickly dissipated the way the rain dissipates into
the air, making breathing moist and clothes moister. We found a house and it
even had a little house of it's own in the back. It was The Perfect Place to
Write.
Brazil doesn't work according to the rules most Americans and Europeans identify
with. I still had a few things I needed to research online. We contacted the
phone company to get a line and they guaranteed it would be set up within seven
days. They were really working fast. On the seventh day, my slippers remaining
packed away, there was still no dial tone. Another week went by and they
absolutely guaranteed the phone would be on in a week or so. Agonizing time,
spent moping around, dodging fat raindrops and trying to figure out how to wring
all the moisture out of my shirt, crawled by until the long awaited day arrived.
We eagerly set up our Internet service. I had a work table ready to go. That
night, lying in bed, I couldn't wait to begin to live my dream.
Dawn broke-- gray and drizzly. I fumbled through our bags searching for those
slippers, found them, and then quickly removed my hands in distaste. What was
this, I wondered, peering through the gloom. I thought they were purple
slippers. A hesitant hand reached out and picked up something resembling a
glutinous, mucous covered beast from a thirties sci-fi film. I sat abruptly
down, unfazed. The romantic slipper notion had been enveloped in mold. A long
tendril of what was once a loose thread appeared to crawl toward me, or maybe I
imagined that part.
Part of the dream was gone, but I would not be deterred from writing dream.
Going into the kitchen, I bumped the bowl holding the bananas. A black cloud
swarmed into the air, revealing the yellow fruit beneath. Swinging my arms, I
fought my way through to prepare my morning coffee, flip-flops instead of
slippers smacking the tile floor in my whirling dance against the fruit flies.
Nothing could stop me, though the dream had taken on a peculiar nightmarish
aspect.
Fortified by stiff Brazilian coffee, I opened the door for the walk to my
retreat, the wondrous place where my brilliant words would soon reveal
themselves. Fifteen steps, but long enough, since the drizzle had become a
downpour, to make me wish I had brought an umbrella or at least armed myself
with a towel. But I was inside. The screen glowed and as I dipped my fingers
toward the keyboard to immortalize my first words of creative writing, something
stung me. I slapped the back of my neck, hearing the telltale whirring of a
mosquito. I swung again and missed. Something else stung me on my leg, and then
my arm. In moments three cherry red welts appeared. But I had one in my sights.
Driving it mercilessly toward the wall I got it and yelped in triumph, then
dismay. Bright red blood intersected by the remains of a fragile corpse stained
the wall.
It's still there. I had to leave it as a marker of my first victory. And I'm
still here. My first task every day after turning the computer on is my hunt and
destroy mission. It's a little more than a year later. I finished my book and am
the proud recipient of 18 and counting rejection letters to some guy named Dear
Author. But I'm hard at work on a second novel.
There's no mold, nor mosquito, nor swarm of fruit flies that can hold me back
from writing.
Wait! There's another one!
Shea McCandless lives in Brazil with his wife and two
young boys. The move from San Diego to Brazil was the next step in a life where
learning takes place everyday; now mostly because his boys love to battle
whatever bug-of-the-month turns up. He has completed one fantasy novel-- still
going the rounds-- and is at work on a second novel. He can be reached at
SheaMcCandless@hotmail.com.
