Lounge Lizards

Be Prepared
Girl Guide Motto

Dear Diary,

Thursday was an unusual day in the library.

There is a display stand just inside the door where I put books that borrowers have recommended as being good reads. Early on Thursday I was doing some shelving and was just about to place a book on the top section of this stand when I nearly jumped out of my skin as I saw a lizard laying across the top of a Victor Pemberton paperback just to the right of my hand as I was placing my book down beside it. Well I wasn’t alone in the library, there was a man on a computer so I didn’t yell!

I wondered in fact if the lizard was real as it resembled one of those plastic dinosaurs that children collect. My first thought was that a child had placed it there as a prank to frighten people. I weighed up the pros and cons of asking my borrower to remove it for me or to see if it was real anyway. I wasn’t 100% sure it was plastic but I’d gone into helpless female role far too easily. Me of all people, I’m not scared of spiders or snakes. I was terrified of spiders when I was a child but will happily pick them up now. Though a snake in the library might be a different matter.

So as M, the borrower who had been on the computer, was leaving I showed him the little visitor. (Luckily he is a member of the book group and a trusted friend). However even he was as startled as me to be honest and also wasn’t sure if it was real as it was so very still. He got my ruler and very, very gently touched it. It moved! So did we. We both jumped! But the lizard only moved a little, luckily it didn’t run and hide but just stayed happily glued to the book, obviously a Victor Pemberton fan,

I decided to pop into the school and tell the Headmistress in case any of the children wanted to come and have a look at it. So group by group they all came into the library, the little ones and the older children, the Welsh unit children too (and they didn’t know the Welsh word for lizard) to have a peek. All were surprised and most of them had never seen one before. One boy said they had a lot in their garden. (Oh God I thought I hope there’s not a plague of the things in the gardens here). But none of the little children were frightened and many wanted to hold it but Mrs L the head had banned that.

‘Germs’ pronounced one of the girls, wisely.

We all wondered how it had got into the library. I do have the door open in hot days so we guessed it must have come in and got trapped one day.

The lizard stayed dead still for ages, not dead but very still. But eventually it must have tired of being stared at by so many huge young faces and it turned its face to the wall but still didn’t move away. One of the teachers thought I should put it in a container but I said that when the sun came out (ever the optimist that’s me) I would ask a brave soul to put the lizard out in the flowerbeds outside the library.

I hate creatures in the home, wild birds for example, or bats or mice. I just freak out, but if they are outside I am OK. I had seen lizards on one or two occasions basking in the sunshine in the garden and had seen plenty in the south of France on the walls of the houses but inside a building this one just made me squirm. Anyone else like me?

As the library got busy with borrowers the lizard was the centre of attention and still it didn’t move. The children had looked lizards up on the net and were now quite knowledgeable about them. They informed me it was a Common Lizard.

Meanwhile I had been looking up the symbolism of this reptile, convinced as I was it must be a sign, a representation of something just for me.

The lizard is a sacred symbol in both the Native American and Aborigine cultures. Interestingly, in both cultures the lizard is seen as an icon of the dream world. Some tribes believed that to have the vision of the lizard meant that you were about to receive a profound dream teaching. To others it represented the power to control dreams. Because of its ability to detach and regrow its tail it also represents detachment. Meditation on the lizard symbol can help us to achieve detachment from the ego and the fulfilment of our dreams.

Well not all bad then. I felt happier about its meaning.

Just on lunchtime some teenage boys offered to put him outside for me and as they put him down, on cue, the sun came out!

On Saturday morning when I arrived at work I went round the library rather apprehensively, wary in case any lizards jumped out at me, but I didn’t see any. At the end of the morning I was telling some friends about him and as I accompanied them out of the library one of my friends did spot the lizard on a low wall. It quickly ran and hid though. So he is still around and no doubt will be seen again, I just hope he gives up his love of books though and stays away from the library!

Moral of this wee tale?

Always be prepared for the unexpected…………wherever you look.

And Blessings?

Brave souls who act as knights in shining armour. Yes I could have done anything if I had to but sometimes it’s just nice to let others do for you.

Wonder. A quality we often overlook, always found in children and so soon discarded in adulthood. ‘May you never lose your sense of wonder‘………..

Hand in hand with wonder goes

Imagination. More important than knowledge according to Einstein, don’t forget. Everything on Earth started off as imagination, think about it. That is why physicists believe that matter is made up of (energy) particles, including our thoughts. Interesting stuff eh? I am told that in the scientific world it is only the physicists who believe in a ‘God’ but what ‘form’ it takes who can say?


On another subject altogether.

THINGS I would find it hard to live without.
I was meditating on this subject, as you do. Would love to hear your ideas. So far I have my washing machine and my shower/bath. I did think about hair dye and hair straighteners but realised that they are not ABSOLUTELY essential.

Well I’ll sign off now but not without a poem. It seems ages since I read, yet alone posted one. I found this one by chance on the net and the words are quite appropriate. It made me feel more fondly about our lizard visitor in the library.


The Old Lizard

Translated by Lysander Kemp



In the parched path

I have seen the good lizard

(one drop of crocodile)

meditating.

With his green frock-coat

of an abbot of the devil,

his correct bearing

and his stiff collar,

he has the sad air

of an old professor.

Those faded eyes

of a broken artist,

how they watch the afternoon

in dismay!


Is this, my friend,

your twilight constitutional?

Please use your cane,

you are very old, Mr. Lizard,

and the children of the village

may startle you.

What are you seeking in the path,

my near-sighted philosopher,

if the wavering phantasm

of the parched afternoon

has broken the horizon?


Are you seeking the blue alms

of the moribund heaven?

A penny of a star?

Or perhaps

you've been reading a volume

of Lamartine, and you relish

the plateresque trills

of the birds?


(You watch the setting sun,

and your eyes shine,

oh, dragon of the frogs,

with a human radiance.

Ideas, gondolas without oars,

cross the shadowy

waters of your

burnt-out eyes.)


Have you come looking

for that lovely lady lizard,

green as the wheatfields

of May,

as the long locks

of sleeping pools,

who scorned you, and then

left you in your field?

Oh, sweet idyll, broken

among the sweet sedges!

But, live! What the devil!

I like you.

The motto "I oppose

the serpent" triumphs

in that grand double chin

of a Christian archbishop.


Now the sun has dissolved

in the cup of the mountains,

and the flocks

cloud the roadway.

It is the hour to depart:

leave the dry path

and your meditations.

You will have time

to look at the stars

when the worms are eating you

at their leisure.



Go home to your house

by the village, of the crickets!

Good night, my friend

Mr. Lizard!


Now the field is empty,

the mountains dim,

the roadway deserted.

Only, now and again,

a cuckoo sings in the darkness

of the poplar trees.



Copyright © 2005 by Federico García Lorca and Lysander Kemp


Federico García Lorca

Federico García Lorca is possibly the most important Spanish poet and dramatist of the twentieth century. García Lorca was born June 5, 1899, in Fuente Vaqueros.