WHAT’S SO FUNNY: Ingrate in paradise

Last Sunday it stopped raining for the afternoon, and Booker and I went downtown for a walk. We’d been unable to play outside for a few days because it was too wet. We’d been pouting over it; we get pouty when it rains.

Walking with a Welsh springer spaniel is like walking with a movie star. Women see him and go gaga. It’s mostly his hair; it’s curly/wavy and stands up on top of his head. It looks too good to be true, so they think it’s been teased — when they’re told it’s naturally like that, they swoon.

I swooned a little myself, looking out over the ocean. The clarity of the sunlit view was so spectacular after the rain that I was struck, as I am every year or two, by how good I’ve had it, living here — especially compared to the conditions many Americans are slogging through. And by how seldom I’ve noticed.

Steve McQueen once starred in “Papillon” as a criminal sentenced to penal servitude on Devil’s Island. His character endured years of brutal treatment and solitary confinement because he was forever trying to escape. At the end of the movie, McQueen and co-convict Dustin Hoffman are old and have earned a certain freedom of movement in their island home. In fact, the daylight scenes make it look like a paradise. Hoffman’s character has become acclimated, but McQueen, determined to be free, jumps off a cliff into the ocean to ride a coconut raft to the mainland.

The intention is to show man’s unquenchable thirst for freedom, but the beauty of the setting makes you think of man’s indomitable refusal to recognize when he’s well off. You look at that island, that sea, that sky, and you wonder where in the world Papillon thinks he’s going to have it better. It undercuts the inspirational ending.

When I walk downtown on a day like Sunday and see the horizon in Nature’s own high definition, I realize again what a horse’s ass I am to take my surroundings for granted as if I’ll be in this town forever.

As I walked, I said — with some ferocity — “APPRECIATE this, fool!”

Passers-by assumed I was talking to Booker. I got some dirty looks. It cost me a few awkward moments; the police are cracking down on animal abuse and I imagined myself over at the station, trying to explain that I was only abusing myself.

Because I should appreciate Laguna. We all should; we won’t be here forever, or even close. For instance, I may be working in Illinois next winter. Temporary job. New challenge. It was all my idea, I put it together. My own coconut raft. By next February I expect to appreciate Laguna more than ever.

SHERWOOD KIRALY is a Laguna Beach resident. He has written four novels, three of which were critically acclaimed. His novel, “Diminished Capacity,” is now available in bookstores, and the film version will soon be out on DVD.