Some very strange things happen in the course of one’s life, but this is one of the strangest that I have ever experienced. My partner Kay and I were in the small city of Cuidad Rodrigo, a fortified city 15 miles from the Portuguese border that is surrounded by walls that once had around it a moat, part of which still exists (without water). I always wear a Salvador Dalí Persistence of Memory Melting Watch pin and I have many of the same pin, since I have lost a dozen or more over the years, because the clasps were flimsy and they often came off during the course of my road warrior travels. I finally ordered a new batch of pins and bought a box of sturdy pin clasps to keep from losing them.
In the small bathroom of the Hotel Arcos Catedral, where we were staying in Cuidad Real, I heard the proverbial pin drop and realized that my Dalí pin had dropped to the floor. I suspected that it had bounced behind the toilet and I began to look for it. I checked every nook and cranny of the bathroom and Kay helped me look. We came up with nothing. Thinking that it could not have gone far, I gave up figuring I would find it later, got another of the pins I carry out and put it on my Road Warrior photographer-fishermen’s vest and we went out. We had lunch at a restaurant in the Plaza Mayor owned by the owner of Hotel Arcos Cathedral who also raises Ibérico pigs, then we walked around for a couple of hours exploring Cuidad Rodrigo.
We returned to the Plaza Mayor and saw an artisanal ice cream offering at a restaurant across the square from Restaurante Arcos. I eyed a table further in from the sidewalk, then decided on one near the ice cream stand at the restaurant. We sat down, Kay looked to the ground and spotted my Dali pin, which no showed signs of having been stuck to someone’s shoe and was rubbed rough from walking, then dropped off on the paving stones.
I figured it out, I think. The pin dropped on the floor of the bathroom and bounced into the trouser cuff of my Docker’s khakis. I then walked several blocks with Kay to the first restaurant for lunch where it must have fallen out. Someone stepped on the pin and walked it across the square or I stepped on it and took it on a walking tour of Cuidad Rodrigo. Either it fell from a stranger’s shoe or from mine precisely at the spot, where we sat to have some ice cream.
I wear the Salvador Dalí Persistence of Memory Melting Watch pin on all my jackets. With star chef Albert Adriá in New York.
The feeling was spooky, but then I realized that Salvador Dalí was probably just playing one of his tricks on me, at least that is what will persist in my memory.
* * * * *
More true than Don Quixote's vapouring?
Hath winged Pegasus more nobly trod
Than Rocinante stumbling up to God?
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