If my life were a TV show and we were midseason, it might be smart to consider some retooling.

A new theme song first of all. A little dark, perhaps, but also cheeky. Maybe I would hire the Rembrandts. I’m sure they could use the work.

I’d relocate. Some place more exotic. Perhaps in Havana, trying to channel the spirit of Ernest Hemmingway. No, better. Costa Rica with the monkeys. I like monkeys. Monkeys would spruce things up a bit. I could name them and have a gallery of Silas’ monkeys.

And I think this time I should have some kind of plot. Yes, any semblance of a plot would be good. Mistaken identity. That always plays well. Somebody wants me dead but it’s not me; he’s got the wrong guy. That would be a good reason for me to go hide in Costa Rica. And a better reason for hiding than just because I feel like it and want some attention. And, at the end of the season, when the bounty hunter comes find me: my monkey army could save me. One monkey would have to die. The favorite. It will be a religious sacrifice. I won’t photograph the dead monkey. That’s just ghoulish.

I saw a dead pigeon today. It was on its back, wings flayed, little fragile legs split akimbo. Its insides were pulled out a little and it looked like it had been stuffed with mangled cotton. It was very disturbing. Of course I kept Murph away. I couldn’t figure out how it died. It was as if it had been sitting on a window sill of a low-rise and had fallen down, dead already, onto its back. I hate seeing dead birds. There’s something so divine about a thing that can fly. And something so sad, so accursed, about a thing that can’t fly anymore.

The bounty hunter, back to my retooling, has sent ahead a secret agent. Her name would be George. She would be a cross between Kirsten Dunst and Madame Yes from the Flintstones. Tough, trained, and tantalizing. She’s sent to collect information and to give me up to the hunter. But, of course, for my misanthropy, for my commitment to my compulsions, and for my love of monkeys, she would fall in love with me.

I would have a new neighbor. A pint-sized spirited girl named Sky of late from an Ecuadorian holistic health retreat trying to make money to fund her retreat. At least that’s what she will say but really she has run away. It will be a secret given away bit by bit, climaxing during the sweeps, exactly what she’s running away from. I love photographing Sky. Whatever her secrets, she has an open and an expressive face. George, of course, pretends not to be jealous. In our tight little community everybody suspects everybody else of hiding something and of course we all are. And meanwhile the monkeys, a montage of honesty and brazen openness. Monkeys have nothing to hide.

SS