Singing My Girl in Viejo San Juan

One of the most in tune with life I’ve felt in the past few years was ad-libbing an interpolation of My Girl with a friend from college as we walked along the coastline of outer Viejo San Juan. We were almost precisely 6 years out of undergrad and on the cusp of financial security. Our peers were beginning to marry. We were in Viejo San Juan’s outer suburbs, interspersed with federal and industrial buildings like military, storage and electrical facilities, walking back to a rental car in order to return it and fly our separate ways back to the continental United States. It was about a twenty minute walk through the hot equatorial sun, though still relatively comfortable due to the Puerto Rican coastal winds’ gusting against the coast and our bodies.

As usual during our brief forays away from work, for the past few days, we had been discussing the trials and tribulations that should lay before us in the coming years. Though we don’t usually think that there is a reason we, including our close friends, struggle despite our outstanding academic and professional successes, we are twenty somethings in an economy that has been declining since the 70s and never really recovered from the 2008 crisis. Apparently, the slice of people whose careers and family lives progress smoothly has decreased in size to such paltry measures that not even us—doctors, a campaign manager, lawyers, PhDs, etc.—avoid economic stagnation (of course, I and a certain Nobel Prize from the 80s would argue that capitalism was never designed to be a meritocracy; I am OK with that to some degree but it ought to be at least a little more meritocratic). Sure, we were on a vacation in Puerto Rico but the feeling was one of “we don’t know how we’re going to recover these funds but we do need the break.” This is what I and an ex colleague have called “faith spending.” We have faith that one day we will have jobs that pay way better such that we will almost always be in a perpetual state of saving (or paying off a mortgage). There are certainly shades of financial comfort and socioeconomic privilege.

But that was the past few days. In this moment, we were enjoying the sun and views—officially founded in 1521, Viejo San Juan is one of the oldest European settlements in the Western Hemisphere and started as a Spanish colony, so the buildings’ architecture ranges an amalgam of Spanish tejadas, early sixteenth century stone and brick defensive structures, the antiquated keyhole shape of Arab door and window frames seen in southern Spain such as Cádiz and Toledo (also characteristic of sixteenth century Spanish architecture), next mostly skipping baroque straight to eighteenth century rococo. Spots of architecture from centuries and decades since dot the morro—the “snout” of the island, now the touristy historic area but which used to serve mostly defensive purposes. That historical process of architectural development whereby good buildings stay and bad ones are demolished or renovated in the new age’s style, which I’ve seen in various cities to different extents depending on their ages, in Puerto Rico, however, has been modulated by just as many hundreds of years of cyclical tropical storms and hurricanes as it has construction, which storms have speckled the development with destroyed or abandoned structures—often right next to beautiful and vibrant ones. Still, the abandoned structures boast their own unique beauty, as lizards pop out from cracks, paint fades leaving behind a new color or design, and tropical weeds add color and texture. One piece of graffiti even incorporated the cracks in a building’s facade as part of its subject.

The colorful architectural landscape, Picasso-like in geometry for its broken neighborhoods, spanned our right side. Also on our right, modern cars (about the same amount of them new somehow as in the supposedly rich DMV where I live) passed by on the road. Spanning our left, defensive walls and barracks from the sixteenth century, as well as palm trees and sea, which we were well above—Viejo San Juan is a good hundred or more feet above the water.

The sea from the Puerto Rican coast is particularly imposing because you know you are on an island dozens of miles from any other land (any other land nearby is also an island anyway) and drifting in the middle of the ocean—almost like being on a ship of civilization itself.

So, perhaps trying to keep our spirits high as we were about to return the rental car and take planes back to our responsibilities, one of us started signing. I think I did when we passed a modern juice bar whose chalk written on its outside wall bragged of papaya juice. It brought from my memory and to my attention a few nights prior, when I had ordered a mango margarita that was clearly mango flavored but without any of the actual fruit in it. The cynicism (or inefficiencies of late stage capitalism) involved in the decision to make the margarita that way on a tropical island where mango trees grow so easily that I had literally seen one plopping fresh mangoes right onto a public sidewalk not a mile from this restaurant inspired me to sing pop songs with a satiric timbre.

Rounding a colonial barracks, I started singing though I cannot recall which song. I interjected lyrics more related to our situation than that of the song, barely keeping the syllabic structure. My friend not long after started singing “My Girl,” I guess you say – what can make me feel this way? I interjected, “(friend’s girlfriend’s name) potentially;” he responded (name) potentially!” And I sang “Maybe!” (as the singers would “my girl.”) Which we finished with a well tuned and coordinated “Maybe!”

Pure, unadulterated fun. What left me in-tune with the world, I felt, was that, despite the difficulties that loomed in our near, middle, and long term futures, we were enjoying the moment by singing about those difficulties with positivity and hope. It didn’t hurt to be illuminated by an equatorial sun, cooled by the breeze, in a colorful, tropical city full of beautiful, friendly people. It didn’t hurt to be miles and miles away from more grandiose, bloated civilization whose problems’ (more like inequality’s) scale baffled scientists and bought politicians but paled in comparison to the simple beauties of Viejo San Juan. If only its population and way of life shouldn’t fade away.

As many Puerto Ricans follow the irresistible financial temptation to move to the continental States and climate change’s more frequent hurricanes displace others, locals still there cling to the archipielago for dear life. They make delicious food, produce novel discoveries, write and compose creative works (I was going to say “paint colorful paintings” but it was clear even at the time that to categorize Antonio Martotell’s art, or that of any of the artists on display at the Museum of the Americas, as “painting” would be woefully reductive), play baseball, sing a disproportionate number of club popping and genre bending songs, and dance the night away.