Last night I immagined San Pietro

Mental jukebox this morning was “La Isla Bonita” by Madonna.

I first discovered that song when I was reading Dandelion Wine in a cafe in 2016. I was reading the scene where the dying Colonel Freeleigh phones Mexico City, where a friend holds the receiver out an open window so that the colonel can listen to the sounds of life in the city one last time. “La Isla Bonita” was playing in the cafe as I read, harmonizing wonderfully with the story.

Today I was struck by the title of the song. The island where I live was formerly known as Formosa. When the Portuguese sailed through the Taiwan Strait in 1517, they dubbed the big island to their east Ilha Formosa, which like Isla Bonita means “beautiful island.” A group of smaller islands nearby, now known by the Chinese name Penghu, also received a Portuguese name at that time: Ilhas dos Pescadores, meaning “Fishermen Islands.”

In the Madonna song, the name of the island — or perhaps, as some of the lyrics suggest, of a man who lives there — is San Pedro, “Saint Peter.” Bill has recently revealed that, before deciding for sure that I’m a baddie, he had entertained the idea that I was St. Peter reincarnated. I think that’s just as bonkers as the idea that I’m Pharazon, but it does make that saint synchronistically relevant. Thus, when I saw his name in a link on Synlogos this morning, I clicked: “Peter.. keys.. net… coat of arms… regnal name.  Yeah.”

It’s some brief commentary by a Catholic priest on the new pope’s ring. Although the post is in English, it centers on an embedded tweet in Italian, which includes cognates of both San Pedro and Pescadores.

It’s a “Fisherman’s Ring” bearing an all-gold image of Peter. The priest in his “review” of the ring comments:

I would enjoy larger or if it had an emerald this size of a Roman strawberry (in season) or a Gerrett Popcorn kernel, but I’ll take it.

That’s a pretty random popcorn kernel reference. Popcorn has often appeared on this blog in connection with the papacy and (especially) its Mormon counterpart. The kernel/colonel homophony has also been a theme here, which is a link back to that Dandelion Wine scene with the colonel.

Looking for my copy of Dandelion Wine just now, I found that it was shelved behind (and blocked from view by) a book called Apocalypse and/or Metamorphosis by Norman O. Brown.