Iguana

There's a play I think you all should read. It is called The Night of the Iguana by Tennessee Williams. It's about this ex-minister named Shannon, who was defrocked for having an inappropriate relationship with a young Sunday school teacher, who becomes a tour guide. He is taking a women's choir from Texas on a tour when a seventeen-year-old girl begins to come on to him. Her latent lesbian chaperone becomes enraged and threatens to have him fired. In a panic, Shannon flees with the tour bus to an old hotel in Mexico run by his friend Fred and his wife Maxine. Upon arrival, he learns that Fred is dead and Maxine runs the hotel herself. In a panic, he succumbs to his desires for skin and alcohol. That is, until Hannah and her grandfather arrive. They are traveling artists, she a painter, he a poet. They have no money, but Shannon convinces Maxine to give them a room. All of these people use each other in the heat of one Mexico night to heal themselves and each other.

It's called the Night of the Iguana because Shannon feels like the pet iguana Maxine's pool boys have on a leash. The end of his rope.

The heat does that to people. Brings them to the end of their ropes. They are more rash, more volatile. Because, who can be comfortable in the heat? Good thing it isn't about comfort.

It's days like this that are wake up calls to who we really are. We may think we want to be nicer to people. Work out more. Eat less. Work harder. But turn up the global thermostat a bit, and we all succumb to our lesser (or sometimes greater) evils.

These days are wake up calls! Who you are today, for all the lofty schemes you've invented for yourself, is who you most likely will be tomorrow. Unless you intervene. But you've got to be aware.

The heat isn't so bad. Take off your shirt. Open your window. Turn on a fan.

It's gonna rain Saturday.