For a couple of years, I went to Costa Rica to go to the beach. It was pretty and warm and tropical, and above all, cheap. I mean, not Florida-cheap, you know, the getting there cost a bit more, but the being there was easy.
      So, one afternoon, I'm laying in the sun, sweating, and – there’s lots of animals there, frogs and lizards mostly – big big lizards. But I look over and there’s this monkey with this camera. And not a disposable one either. One of those cameras with a lens that says “I’m not fucking around.” And this monkey, it isn’t just, like, inspecting it for lice. It’s sitting up in the tree there, taking pictures. It’s watched the people who’d had it and, I guess, figured it out – how to take pictures. It would look through the viewer thing and push the button, look and push, look and push. And shifting each time, too. Like, not only like it knew what to do with the camera, but, like it knew what the camera was doing, clicking away, and, crazy as it sounds, mixing it up, choosing what it wanted to take a picture of. Like his monkey friends might laugh if he took fifteen pictures of a branch.
      And I remembered that story about the white honeymooners and the photos and their toothbrush in the big, black … well, I won’t give it away if you don’t know it, but, I wondered if the tourists might find their camera next week and get the film developed. And what would they make of it? Two pictures of a banana, five of a branch, three of a puddle. I doubt that the tourists’ first guess would be that their camera was stolen and used by a monkey. So, what would they make of it? They wouldn’t see what the monkey saw. I mean, they wouldn’t see something to eat, a place to sleep, to take a bath. Would they? Maybe they’d think it was stolen by a native – too dumb to know how to use it?
      But the crazy part is, the monkey did know how to use it. I mean, as much as the tourists anyway. Was he taking pictures of things that were important? To him. To his friends? To the tourists? Who knows. Maybe he returned the camera, trying to show them something. Teach them something. Maybe if they’d known it was a monkey, they’d’ve understood right away. The things in the pictures would have looked different to them. The ocean, the trees, the sand, the rain.
      In any case, I should get back to Costa Rica more often. I mean, the simple fact that there are monkeys in the wild is endlessly impressive to me.