The Jungle

After dinner last night I walked down to the beach to watch the sunset and saw something pretty incredible. To the west, the sun was dropping below the horizon and the sky was painted with various gentle shades of orange, pink, and red. To the east, a dark thunderstorm was brewing, and a spectacular show of rumbling thunder and fingers of lightning lit up the black sky.

On my left I had beauty and serenity, and on my right I had a spectacular hell. What a balance of opposing forces it was! As my head turned on a swivel to catch both spectacles, only one thing came to mind: The Jungle.

The Jungle is what we called the house that I spent the past three years in. And just like the scene that I saw on the beach last evening, The Jungle was the epitome of ying and yang. It was both heaven and hell, blended together in a smoothie and served to you in a hollowed out coconut. If you took the spectrum of good and evil, folded it together, and then broke it into many different pieces to assemble a pretty yet architecturally questionable house, you would have The Jungle. The Jungle was the greatest sunset you've ever seen, running straight into a giant thunderstorm. It was just as good as it was bad, but it was also just as bad as it was good.

The first night we moved into The Jungle, we stayed up late eagerly planning all the things we could do in a house that had a huge yard and was so close to the beach. We reveled in the fresh tropical air and wildnerness. But that night, I tossed around sleeplessly in my new bed as small bed bugs crawled all over me.

We loved the silence. You couldn't hear anything at night except the sound of the ocean. But at 5:20 every morning, the roosters crowed ruthlessly just feet from our beds.

We were in awe of the tropical surroundings. Beautiful birds and other creatures made their homes just outside our windows. But when we saw our first cane spider on our bathroom ceiling, maggots made a home in our kitchen corner, and chickens started roosting in our shoes, nature had gotten just a little too close to us.

Looking at it from the outside, The Jungle conveyed a Hawaiian warmth, with gentle swaying palm trees and a beautiful cedar frame. But on the inside, it also gave off the same Hawaiian warmth, and you couldn't comfortably function in the house from about 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., even with blaring fans and open windows.

The Jungle was beautiful and exciting, with endless potential. It was also dirty and deceptive, with countless flaws. By the end of my stint in The Jungle, I was ready to move out. It was messier than ever, bugs were everywhere, and the temperature was at times unbearable. In order to get out, we had to conquer it first, and that meant cleaning up. Of course she put up a fight. I swept through the front lanai, throwing away numerous old shoes and other rubbish, only to encounter an angry chicken who was protecting her eggs under our shoe shelf. As I turned to avoid her, I ran into the largest cane spider I had ever seen, coiled up in a ball about the size of my hand, ready to jump at any minute. Inside wasn't much better, as we scrubbed the floors and walls for days and days, scooping up piles upon piles gecko droppings and bug wings.

But when we finished, The Jungle was shining just as it had when we first met. All the incredible things about The Jungle were coming to light brighter than ever before. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I still loved The Jungle after all. Then I watched in my bathroom as a cockroach crawled across the floor and disappeared into the wall. It was time to move on, I decided.

I guess it wasn't just about the peacefulness, solitude, and tropical beauty, or about the bugs, the heat, or the chickens. The Jungle served as the home arena for all the highs and lows of my own life too. All the heavens and hells that I went through on a daily basis started at The Jungle when I woke up and ended as I fell asleep in my bed there. The Jungle was the picture frame surrounding the roller coaster of ups and downs that was the past three years of my life.

As I write this now, I'm in my new room in my new home. It's quite comfortable and a nice breeze flows through my windows. It doesn't have the flashy tropical draw of The Jungle, but it's sturdy and very reliable.

I hope that this house, as well as my life, turns out to be a sunset and not a storm. But if it happens to be a little bit of both, I think I'll be okay with that. The truth is, I loved The Jungle just as much as I loathed it.