I lost my court battle brought on by my e-w last week. In all honesty her team was spot on while mine looked like a couple of twitching Capuchins alternately raping a basketball. After it was all over my e-w’s boyfriend had a victorious smirk that I wanted to knock off his wiggling cheeks, but decided that one lawsuit per year is enough for me. On her part, as I conceded her victory, my e-w was gracious.

So now I listen to an old Kenny Chesney CD, one I used to listen to  while working out daily at the old gym as we first broke up. There are a couple of songs that intensify my current feelings. I listen to “I’m alive” as I did back then….wondering what life would be bringing my way in the coming year or two, and out of a sense of controlled fear, had/have to cling to the idea that some days all you can do is be thankful for breathing. Now while I have more to be thankful for, I’m still holding onto the thought that I’m alive and well, not because of external circumstances, but because tonight there are going to be stars dancing on the water, somewhere that I have witnessed them from a crooked little dock in the Caribbean, and solid in the knowledge that I will soon be there again.

There are times in life where the most solid thing that you have to believe in to keep from just saying fuck it all, is a simple dream. One same one I wish she had shared with me.

Our yard's Red Legged Tortoise "Kid Rock"

Here, with some significant exceptions such as hurricanes, reverse discrimination, jelly fish and cockroaches, life is emotionally easier, slower and invites you into it rather than pushing you away. This last five weeks has saved my life….literally. I had no idea how stressed out and crazy I was from sleep deprivation, and months of an internal diet of adrenaline and cortisol. I am able to look back at my thought processes then versus now, and am beyond amused, almost to frightened. My current brush with sanity will hopefully continue to persist even after our return to the Colorado in a couple of weeks. It appears that I may actually be going there in a few days for a trial, provide my testimony then flying straight back the following day. I hope the damn thing gets settled.

Our accommodations here are basic, very simple and near-spartan. Our standard meals are on par with the average college freshman’s, but not quite down to rodeo cowboy level. Our  500 Sq Ft studio has no central a/c, not even a window unit. The view from one of the two windows is of the top of some hill in St. Thomas, there is no water view, only bushes. Our “full kitchen” as advertised on the internet consists of a hot plate, a microwave and a toaster oven that is so disgusting that even the resident roaches refuse to play in it. The water out of the cistern is so foul-smelling and tasting that I ordered a back packing water filter in order to even attempt to drink from it. Yet, at night I sleep to the sound of frogs (four different types, I counted their songs) and often rain on the broad leaves of the banana plants that grow outside this little room. What we don’t have to contend with are nightly screaming sirens, the loud thumping of an incessant parade of Harleys (a sound I love when I am riding, but all day and night on the busy street outside the little house in CSC got old), cars, trucks, Rap blaring from car stereos, idiot barking dogs and coughing neighbors. Now, most nights I sleep so deeply as to awaken myself a time or two with my own snoring.

Back in the city, I constantly had to close off my senses in order to mentally survive. The stench of my neighbors’ cigarettes and cheap onion laden food being fried wafted in the bedroom window, awakening me at night. Car exhaust, contemptuous perfumes and poorly washed people conspired and gave rise to an olfactory mutiny eliciting a de-tuning my sense of smell. Visual overstimulation caused by everything around me in constant frenetic motion, rushing people, hyperactive kids, cars, lights, reflections off of windows,  flashing TVs were all jammed daily into my aching retinas, forcing me into the mentally tiring action of filtering it all out of my consciousness so as not to “see” them, avoiding sensory overload and migraines. Here, the soft sway of trees, the visual rhythm of ocean currents and waves while at the beach are pleasant, welcoming and bring a sense of peace by their predictable drowsy pace and steadiness in their motion.

In this environment over the last 5 weeks, my slowly emerging senses have become my friends, not distasteful enemies. They present my mind with tranquil pleasures that I was denying myself when I first arrived. But as the sensory pleasantries persisted , my faculties have become more acute, and the little seemingly unimportant expressions of nature all around me are drunk in like the caramel colored Cruzan rum that is sipped most nights from a bright and comical shot glass.

This week we took a day trip to a neighbor island. Travel is cheap if public transportation (ferries, and the small bus system of “Safaris”) is used. Safaris are part of a haphazard conglomeration of old pickups with rows of open air, crowded bench seats bolted into the beds  and covered by a top that would make “Tattoo” happy.Seat belts and head rests are nonexistent.We had a problem at first determining the Safari bus from the private buses/taxis that are of the same construction, but cost four to five times as much to ride. They both use the same pick up/drop off  spots, and have absolutely no distinguishing markings or signage. One day a local West Indian answered our question while standing at a bus stop. He pointed with his mahogany hand at two passing busses, ” The Safari are full of locals, and the taxis are full of white people.” He was right. All the whites off the cruise ships are packed into the expensive taxis, whereas the Safaris contain only a rare blonde head or two. Often we are the only whites to be found on any given Safari. It is interesting to note too that when most of the older locals get on the Safari they greet everybody with a salutation such as “good morning”, but the younger generation locals jump in unsmiling with headphones on, and often get off the Safari stiffing the driver out of his one dollar fare.

View from the back of a typical St Thomas Safari bus

We had just arrived at our destination island and headed straight to the beach. I needed my time in the water. Once there, we passed a beach bar as a strong storm rolled in. Down here the storms (squalls) move rapidly and can surprise you with the speed with which they can pounce, turning from warm sun into a torrential impromptu shower within seconds. We instinctively headed to the bar for shelter from the serious pounding rain. Once inside I could make out the dissimilar sounds the rain was making on all the different surfaces it was hitting…..the tin roof had a loud hammering quality, the plants outside the open unscreened windows provided a splattering sound, the sand was silent, but what caught my attention was a hissing,  rapid plopping cadence from the ocean water that lay only a few feet away.

The almost motionless  bay water that two minutes before was so clear that from the shore I could make out small rocks and a baby shark from  about 30 feet away and at a depth of probably 10 feet. With the addition of the heavy downpour, the water’s surface suddenly appeared like spastic frosted glass which lazily undulated in its attempt to produce a three inch shore break. I  was overcome with an urge to be in it all and walked out thigh deep into the show. Within seconds I was as wet as if I had been swimming….and at that moment I nearly was. The rain was so thick that it was like swimming while standing upright. I was entranced by the experience of standing in cooly boiling ocean water, and the sensations of thuggish rain on my shoulders and head, contrasted with the warmer sea which calmly held my legs. I stood motionless, humbled and imbibed the smells of clean rain mixing with the whipped up scent of beaten sea water, and visually entertained with its constantly shifting frazzled surface.  I recalled a visitation-dream of my deceased father a few years earlier. While in the water off of Tulum, his voice telling me to put my hand in the water and feel the movement, not of the water itself but of the energy that ran through it. Now, everything outside of the squall was obscured, and the only thing that existed in my world  was captured within a veil of  falling water a few hundred feet in diameter. Nothing else existed in the world as my senses were pleasantly overloaded with an ecstatic connection with nature….just me,  the sea, rain and the phlegmatic entertainment they brought to my body and mind. And I know this sounds fluffy as hell, but in that moment, I ceased to exist. I became a part of a seemingly sentient storm that was pouring into my eyes, ears, nose and brain. My physical and emotional pain evaporated and for a few short minutes I was temporarily healed into nonexistence. Strangely, what broke that profound moment and brought me back into me was the sound of my own spontaneous laughter and tears welling up into my already flooded eyes.

As quickly as it had descended upon us, the squall shut off like a faucet and the wet grey curtain wandered off back out to sea. In the time it took my eyes and head to clear, the water’s surface was once again glassy, transparent and silent. The photo below is a 10 inch in diameter piece of Sargasso weed floating in about three feet of water shortly after my experience. I am a blessed man.

I first went to Jost back in the mid 1990s with my e-w and F, my ex-bro-in-law on his boat the “Bounder”. It really used to piss him off when I referred to her as the “Flounder”. While her seaworthiness could be potentially called into question,  with a constant threat of gas fumes emanating from the cabin, rust, wood rot, storage spaces with moldy life vests tangled in old fishing gear, hooks and a lot of black stuff that smelled funny, she never failed us. We took her fishing, diving…a lot of diving, and multiple rum and sun drenched trips to islands and lobster hunting spots over many years. She proved to be  a solid yet smelly old girl, not unlike some of her passengers.

On our first trip to JVD (Jost Van Dyke), we made visits to what were then, a few sleepy little beach bars known only to locals, and the few adventurous sailors who traveled the BVI waters. I had never been to a real beach bar like any of these. Oh sure, I had drunk the obligatory Mai Tai at the overcrowded hotel bars near the beach in Hawaii, but back then the BVI,  and Jost in particular, beach bars were in a (some would say “lower” I say more honest) class of their own. They still are. Today while a bit more civilized and touristy, their placid charm still makes the rum smoother, and the seas softer….especially when drinking the former while chest deep in the latter.

Foxy’s  then was a tiny funky little bar with a few palm thatched ceilinged open air huts. Business cards were stapled to the ceiling from around the world.  There were a few hammocks strung limply in the coconut trees that separated the view of the brilliant blue and vacant harbor from his bar. We sat at picnic tables and I ate my first Chicken Roti, at first with some reluctance. I wondered how good could food be from such a dive, and worried, of course as a doc, about the sanitation issues that may be lurking in an unseen kitchen behind the dark, funky wood bar. They were incredible, I became, like so many crack whores with their first tug off a glass pipe, addicted the minute the fork slid away from my lips after depositing in my mouth that strange concoction of what looked like a huge corn tortilla, juicy slow cooked chicken, chick peas and west indian spices. This was accompanied by rum, and Foxy himself ad-libbing songs about our home towns. As I look back now this was to be the day that started the downfall of my marriage. But this weeks trip found me securing my ex-truck’s license plate to Foxy’s bar.

Once well fed and rummed, we piled into the “Flounder” and weaved our way just one bay over to White Bay, and the Soggy Dollar bar. While not as visually languid as Foxy’s bar, tucked into a waving grove of palm trees, the Soggy dollar held it’s own charms. One of them was it’s well-earned name. Back then, you had to drop anchor about a hundred feet from shore and swim into the beach, drag yourself up the sand to the bar and recuperate by drinking, Pain Killers of course, and playing the ring game. All monies, wet from the swim to the bar were clothes-pinned to a little wire that stretched behind the bar to dry.  The place was mostly deserted and had it not been for the ring game, I would have wanted to go back to Foxy’s and that feeling of being embraced by the quiet little bar, in a quiet coconut grove, on a tiny island far far from the reality of the practice of medicine. The ring game then was played on one of the beach coconut trees out in front of the bar, rather than in front of the restaurant as it now is. (As it would happen on this week’s trip I noticed a worker, much younger than I, placing a new ring game on one of the coconut trees near where we once played. I spoke with him as he finished securing the ring to a small rope and told him about the old days, playing on a coconut tree near this one. He smiled and pointed to the tree on which he worked, and there was the ORIGINAL ring game board and hook,  rusted, warped and unused for years now being resurrected. I played a quick first grand reopening game with him and E).

F, my ex bro in law, wanted to show me yet another beach bar. This one we had to hike to. Back then the trail was difficult, unmarked and hell in flip flops. It started at the East end of the beach, went up and over a rocky cliff with menacing cactus everywhere, down to another beach and back behind the foliage that led to a little and unoccupied appearing old house . It was dirty green and had no glass or screens on the windows. There were no doors or any way to secure it when closed. The name “Ivan’s” was hand painted on a board that hung canted on an exterior wall. Inside it was cool, out of the sun and there was nobody to greet us or take our order, just another hand painted sign that read “honor bar” and had a few drink prices posted. “Honor bar?’, I was dumbfounded , “you mean we pour ourselves a drink and leave the money in a jar on the bar?” I asked F. He just grinned, grabbed a bottle of Pusser’s rum and made us a couple of rum and Cokes, put the money in the jar and led me outside, with my mouth still agape, to sit in the sand and look out over the water to St John. After having attended Medical school in Miami, where  such an honor bar would have lasted only as long as it took the denizens of the sewer that Miami is to steal everything in the bar, I couldn’t believe that something like Ivan’s could actually exist in the modern world then (and it still does!)…..another silent nail in my marital coffin.

Fast forward a couple of decades and I was once again on Jost. The place had not changed much since my last trip there with AFK a couple years prior. This visit, I had E as my travel companion. Here having to deal with a case of Caribbean crabs… Maybe a couple of new houses built, but otherwise exactly the same. rum and Rotis claiming the eating and drinking entertainment as usual. We rated the island’s Rotis (with Ali Baba’s, Soggy dollar and Gertrude’s in the running, Foxy’s was closed for another week due to low season). Gertrude’s next door to the Soggy Dollar gets the prize for the best Roti of the trip, but also the worst Pain Killer. Gertrude is a sweetheart. Like most islanders can appear stand offish at first, but later to open up as a genuine good human.

The next day E, and another couple we met took a trip to the Bubblie pool in hopes of  enjoying the world’s best near-washing machine experience, but the waves were flat and the tide was out, so that aspect of the adventure didn’t work out well. Even the singing rocks were nearly silent, more of a mournful moan at best. But what the hell, that day the rest of the world was either working and miserable, or unemployed and wishing they were working. We got to be in the sun, and water. There is a God.

"Who turned the bubbles off?"

One cool thing, I found growing at the end of a beach, a little coconut tree, well shaded between some large immature trees. I, along with AFK planted it there on our last trip, and honestly I never expected it to make it, but it did. Cool stuff. We found the coconut rolling in the surf on the last day we were there, dug a hole at the base of a little cliff and couldn’t decide which end should point down, so we laid it sideways in its little sand pit. I look forward to going back, and visiting the tree for many years. Who knows, if things go right in a few weeks, I might just be able to visit it daily? Stranger things have happened.

Thanks to finding a screaming deal on the internet that allowed us to stay at the White bay villas, we didn’t have to camp in the sand at Ivan’s as planned. The place was fantastic and the morning views of White bay made me long for being there. I know that sounds strange, but I do that sometimes when a place or experience is so perfect that as I an experiencing it, I literally long for it as if the present moment were a beautiful memory. I don’t understand it, but have been doing it down here for years. I am a lucky dog.

As I think about that little coconut tree, I realize that on my first trip there to Jost, I planted something then too. My dreams of having a little beach bar took root that first day in Foxy’s. I know that sounds corny, but it is true. It was at that moment in time that I got to actually feel with my hands,  see with my eyes, and enjoy the quiet with my ears and heart that such a peaceful little life could really exist. From that day forward, I knew I would work as  doc, save money and before we got even close to fifty, that K and I would make a small life of our own with a part time-medical practice and a little beach bar somewhere on an island in our future. So I worked hard, long nights and weekends in ERs and miserable clinics from Hawaii to Eads Colorado. I worked my own practice for nearly twenty years all the time envisioning our little bar and life.

And while now it would be so easy to bitch, blame and complain about lost years and millions of dollars, I just can’t go there, cuz ya see, if that little coconut tree, planted sideways in dry hot sand can make it, then maybe, just maybe so can that dream. Some things just refuse to die, I guess.

Clouds, big puffy tropical clouds, moved in and out of view between the edge of the roof and the darkened Caribbean sea , intermittently exposing stars but no moon as it cast a blue sheen to the tops of the marching clouds. At one point, rain moved in, wind-blown and sneaking around the edge of the house, getting us wet. There were five people total and nobody moved, but just sat, talked, enjoyed the now soggy peanuts and slightly watered down drinks, thanks to the rain, but nobody moved! Unless it is a beating downpour, people here don’t move for rain. It is just another layer of warm liquid to be added to sweat…a good sweat.  Both of which cool but never take you to cold. Things here are moist and pleasant…tee shirts, books, hats, everything is warm and slightly damp, like we are supposed to live. No dry red and cracked hands like back in the real world of Colorado, where I know it is early fall.

The leaves there are now turning, aspen trees are in their full peacock-like brilliance for a few weeks before falling asleep for the winter. I can visualize Constellation Drive leading uphill, where from now until around Halloween, the trees and bushes change from the predictable green of an all too short summer into an explosion of  colors that line the road on both sides. This was always such a beautiful drive on my way home from work each evening, yet it reminded me that winter in its bleak bitterness was soon to lock me out of nature, and indoors for a half a year.  The sun’s declination spoke  of a pending dive into winter also, but in both spring and fall, would set long shadows and had a unique way of lighting the air, perhaps filtered through the kaleidoscope of  leaves that took on a special significance only after visiting Provence, France on a bike trip a few weeks after 911. It was there that the fall sunlight inspired the Impressionists to do some of their greatest works. Van Gogh’s painting “The Wheat Field”, 1888 comes to mind, the color yellow extrapolated into its fullest expression as only someone with a loose grip on reality could possibly coax it into. I have nothing but good memories of Colorado falls (with the exception of 2008), trout changing their appetite to Tricos, cool mountain bike rides without the summer worry of lightning, back packing, consciously embracing each warm day, listening nightly to the last few remaining crickets, thanking them silently for a summer of song. Fall also meant that as I BBQed my dinner on my back deck, week by week, layers of clothing had to be added. My dogs would be spending less time with me, preferring to go inside and wait in warmth for our food (notice  that I wrote “our food”….they knew that what was theirs was theirs, and what was mine was theirs).

I remember  buying a large bottle of vitamins last fall. While standing alone in the store  I looked at the pill count on the side of the bottle, and divided it by thirty, giving me the number of months between then and when the bottle would run out. “OOH, by the time I finish this bottle of Centrum, it will be mid- February and the crocus will be pushing up through the snow, signaling the inevitable slide into spring and then summer….hope is only a bottle of vitamins away.”

Here, fall in the tropics is much less dramatic. The only real changes I see so far are in the attitudes of the islanders. We arrived in late summer, the slowest time of year for tourism. Beaches could be had alone, many restaurants were closed, and potential hurricanes were discussed daily as everybody would follow the tracks of developing storms. But now that we are in early fall, a few more people arrive to the islands weekly, and while the islanders bemoan the looming loss of quiet, there is also a vibe of excitement.  With the knowledge that business will soon be picking up,  the entrepreneurs are a little jumpy like kids in early December, knowing that Christmas would soon be upon them. To business people here and the ski areas of Colorado,, winter pays for the rest of the year.

I will be leaving in a few weeks, not knowing if it will be a short trip to see friends, a judge and my girls, or if the hearing goes badly to spend another winter in Colorado Springs. I try not to think of that, and in fact, plan as best I can to be on a return flight to this place before November…but I’m just not brave enough to buy the tickets just yet. This last year or two has shown me that despite my best planning and hoping, that factors outside of my control can boot my little world out of its orbit. So for now, it’s time to cut up some carrots and go feed the tortoise who lives on the property, go for one last swim of the day and watch another gift of a sunset. Tonight, as most nights, I will dream of ridgebacks running in the surf, I can’t let go of hope.

I took the near frozen brick and sat it on the bright yellow bench that was to be our picnic table for the day. Above us, protecting us from the beating heat was a collection of palm fronds laid out on chicken wire in a palapa de Virgin Islands. I slowly drank my water and watched the blue water massaging the shoreline that lay 30 feet from us. When I felt the time was right I unpeeled the Snickers, and it was perfect. Warm and gooey, but very little  had melted to the inside of the wrapper. It spoke to me,  to my heart and took me to a place that no other food can do. In that moment I recognized the eroticism of chocolate. Like an old lover appearing in a dream, it is at once familiar, but having been a stranger to my lips for far too long, felt like a first time. Each bite drawing me deeper into her core. Consumption meets consummation in a mouth’s salivating lubrication. It attended to my senses of smell, taste, feel, and love of something so perfect that it can not be taken in slowly, but  passionately, fast and in a crescendoed frenzy with a total disregard for time and any onlookers, disgusted by my sensual gluttony. In the end, a searching lick of the wrapper, my tongue penetrating its hidden places for any last taste.

In the sugar-high after glow I sat sweating with flies circling my chocolate scented mustache, eyebrows arched like Ronald Reagan’s after making a well read speech. I glanced back at the concession hut and pondered a ‘daily double’….shameless

noun

“an apparition of a dead person that is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous image”

St John. I have written about her, probably more than any single subject other than my e-w, and there is a reason why. I find that I tend to write about the things that have affected my life the most….Duh.  St John is no different. I figured out the last time that I was here with K, we had spent a total of over three months on island over the years, and while that doesn’t sound like that much time….it was all on life saving vacation. Mental salvation lived out ten days to two weeks at a time.

Now as I return to her, so much has changed, yet many things and places, mostly the water and beaches remain unchanged. I relate old and I’m sure stale stories to E .She tries to show interest, but I am sure they either bore or irritate her….yet she smiles and feigns interest. As I continue, day by day to re-explore these islands, I am greeted by ghosts and memories of  times and people from my past, and there is no place where they are so thick as here on St John. Some of them are friendly, others are poltergeists. Their moods change with indistinct lines and definitions that send me from pondering to pleasure or pain. I am not sure if it is the  specific place or my momentary mood that determines their unpredictable expression. Some days these places which I pass, eat in or play on have ghosts who live singly, or can be piled upon one another like the leaves of fall, the wind blowing them to follow me home and invade my head as I try to sleep. These are the bad nights when the ceiling fan acts less like a cooling device, and makes the room feel like a big convection oven. On other days they lie idly, patiently awaiting their turn, knowing that on such a small island I will pass their way soon again. Some of the memories so pleasant as to be savored like the good rum that accompanied their initial emergence, the very next day they attack and aim for my heart. Their expression can day-to-day,  and night to night shift like the shadows cast by these places as the sun and moon chase each other across the  soft tropical sky.

I smilingly point out buildings, restaurants and spots in the ocean or on the map to poor E hoping to impart a flavor of this place and help her to understand why I love it so, but later realize that I have just selfishly dragged her down my boring “memory lane.” She indulges me with a smile for each. Of all the places that I walk to see, nothing is as haunted as Tamarind, a grand old villa we rented year after year with friends and family. She was at the center of the pleasure system about which all other places circulated.

As I see her now, better kept than she has been in years, I realize that the thing that can run my memories up the emotional flag pole from pondering, beyond pleasurable and all the way up to pain is my internal shift from just thinking of past times and people, to an unwitting attempt to relive them, and not just in my head. The  ghosts mock me as I attempt a version of emotional CPR to which they are of course immune. I find that it isn’t so much the place itself which can make these apparitions so powerful, but the memories of the people with whom I created these memories. Those people with whom I experienced these past times; ex-friends, ex-family and ex-wife, who now are all gone to me. It is so strange, as only one of them is actually on the other side, the rest, hating me for what I did in my marriage three years ago. They hate me , not for anything I ever did to them, in fact it is in spite of what I did. For each of them, all I ever did was provide friendship, love, financial support and medical care, yet they each have chosen to take sides in a long past battle that was none of their own. It is strange in that the one who actually passed causes me less pain than the ones who live and hate me despite my love for them. I do my best to let them own that , but here, here in this place that was a “second home” a water fringed sanitarium and place of dream salvation, it is difficult at times. I do my best. In their unwarranted hate, they really do hurt me less each month….unless just the right combination of place, rum and moonlight  can unveil a healing if not hidden vulnerability, and I long for what was and can never be again. Fortunately these moments are few, and the sunny days of the present allow me to build new memories.

So, on bad days and nights I find myself pushing the ghosts down, some like vomit on a turbulent air flight, and remind myself to move from wistful to thankful for good times, both now and then. I consciously move to grateful and living in the moment with the person who holds my hand. I do my best not to show her the memories ridden by ghosts, spurred into feelings that are out of proportion to the profundity of the moment, but I am also aware that my face and silence tell her a story she doesn’t want to hear.

St John has her roots in me as I do in her. The relationship vacillates from symbiotic to parasitic and these ghosts with whom I dance today can tonight my shred my sleep. In the daylight of the following morning, I look at Yost, Tortola and beyond, wondering what  ghosts in their machinery lie in wait for  me on future visits, but the Painkillers, tarpon and Bomba all have a call I have never been able quiet, and never will. And just like St John they aren’t in my blood, my blood is of them.

The waiting process has provided us with one saving grace, and I never would have ever thought I d be writing this: The Bonnet Channel. All day today and tonight we have been treated to a John Wayne-athon. A day of the Duke. So in between old movies like Hondo, Rooster Cogburn and McClintock  we have ventured out a number of times, sometimes to walk and get rained on, once to the beach for a swim, and to the local little beach eatery for lunch. It was there we did have occasion to learn one thing: Sailors and locals are about as good at predicting the weather as cowboys are at judging LLamas.

While at lunch, sitting outside watching bands of clouds moving from the East  low and fast, clash with high towering seemingly stationary local clouds, I had the opportunity to hear the locals discussing politics and of course, as one of them put it “the big blow”….I assumed he was discussing the storm.

“The damn weather channel is wrong” said the man in the greasy baseball cap ” they said it was gonna hit us yesterday”

“How can they be wrong? They have computers and stuff…I was just watching all the models and we’re gonna get hit, hard” replied the man with the big belly.

“No you both is wrong” Pointing with his burning cigarette “See how there is two different directions of cloud movement? Interrupted a younger guy in a blue bandanna wrapped over his head, giving him the look like an old and burned out version of Axel Rose, “I’d sail today if my boat hadn’t sunk in Ivan. She’s going to spin East of us completely….did you know donald Rumsfeld  was really a CIA”..

Laughing, greasy cap interrupted Axel “Now there’s an opinion I’d value at sea….The storm is gonna hit us any minute, haven’t any of you noticed how all the chickens are getting more aggressive and even stealing food right off of people’s tables over the last two days, they  know she’s gonna hit us.” It was true, the jungle foul who normally hang around the picnic area and scrounge had seemed more assertive lately. In fact one had taken the hot dog right out of the bun as Maggie the cook laid it in front of a tourist day before yesterday.

Just then, a couple of intensely blonde local kids, obviously siblings, were having an argument as the boy about eight years old and pushing his bike with a skateboard attached to by a short dirty rope said “The radio said it is going to come at sundown.”

His Swedish looking younger sister said ” I don’t listen to  the radio cuz you can’t see the maps, and they are wrong they aren’t as good as the TV and computer.” With a firm conviction she said “it isn’t coming until tomorrow”

The boy sadly replied ” I know its coming today….cuz Dad’s already drunk”

I figured the kids reasoning was about as logical as the grown ups. For me, I’m watching the island tortoises, I’ve noticed that they have all been going uphill today….AWAY from the water’s edge, ha! I know what that means.

Flying Leech

It’s an exciting time down here. There is a tropical storm (“Maria”, soon to be a hurricane) building and headed straight for us. All around the island, people are battening down the hatches, caulking windows, nailing cats to the deck, you know all the pre-storm things. The harbor that usually houses ten or so boats is empty save  two victims of the last storm (Irene),

A boat without a sail, and a sail (see left of boat,sticking out of water) without a boat

everybody else has tied up in one of a couple of “hurricane holes” nearby. A hurricane hole for the non-nautical, is a naturally, if not man-enhanced deep and small bay protected  from the ravages of hurricanes. Sailors tie their boats up here as some protection from the storm. The plan works well in theory unless just one person screws up and then his boat becomes a water-borne battering ram taking down the whole neighborhood.

There is a buzz around the place as preparations are carried out. I have no idea what’s in store as the potential hurricane is bearing down upon us. As for the weather today, it is the proverbial “calm before the storm” and the beaches were almost entirely deserted.  The beach dogs were playful and the water was so calm that it looked like a huge coffee table stretching to Cuelebra. We  had a beach all to ourselves for  hours, and like a couple of newbies, managed to spend so much time in the green placid waters that we both got sunburned. I hate to get sunburned, it is like a hangover to me. You feel more stupid than pain, and both can hurt a lot. Every time I inflict either on me, I ask myself , “How at this age can you do something so stupid?”, and my inner voice responds, “Considering the fact that you have promised yourself to never let it happen again, the answer is simple… lobster-boy,” you gotta love those internal recriminations that make us feel so warm and fuzzy inside, as your crimson glow can be seen in the reflection of the computer screen.

So now we get to endure a couple of days indoors with gale-force winds buffeting the house and being unable to find a comfortable position to either sit or lie. I guess I’ll just stand and sweat. Great. While an approaching storm is exciting, if you aren’t a homeowner I guess, there is one thing I am really not looking forward to…more mosquitoes.

Our  first night  on island was “Movie Night.” And despite having been awake for more than 24 hours, I had to go see it. So I jumped in the golf cart (on the Island almost everybody uses golf carts instead of cars for transportation…an no, thank God there are no golf courses) and went to the movie “theater”. It was cool as hell.

8/29/11

A king sized sheet strung between two coconut trees and a bunch of people sitting in their carts…..swearing, swatting and generally squirming like it was a kid’s seizure camp and  someone had stolen all the Dilantin. My idyllic tropical movie experience lasted about 10 minutes before I could feel anemia creeping in as the swarms of mosquitoes were having their way with me like a cheap date. It reminded me of the old joke about pricks and Porsches.

Anyway, the mosquitoes have been horrible. I have been coming to the islands for nearly twenty years and have never been eaten alive as I have over the last ten days. They are aggressive. No matter how much OFF you apply, they find the few square inches that you miss and have a winged blood orgy. If you sweat (OK, the coldest it has gotten is 80 degrees with a corresponding 80% humidity), the OFF drips down to your dependant body parts and leaves all those places uncovered by clothing vulnerable to attack. The bastards will even bite through thin shirts and pants. So now when I dress, I really do have an excuse for the sock in the underwear.

I hate mosquitoes. About a year and a half ago while on a trip down here I contracted one of the milder forms of malaria which isn’t supposed to occur here. But the tell-tale signs of cyclic mind erasing rigors and sweats every couple of days for about 8 weeks told a different story. I ordered a Malaria test kit as none of the labs in Colorado know how to test for it, and sure enough, it was positive. I must have looked like hell as K even looked concerned a couple of times when I had to quit work for the day due to shakes that were so bad I couldn’t function. My Dad contracted the bad kind of Malaria back in WW-II called Falciparum. He would complain of feeling like the flu was about to hit him and within 8 hours would be on his bed, as he put it, “shaking like a dog shitting a peach seed.” Down here the major concern from mosquito bites is Dengue fever. Like Malaria there are a few varieties that range from a miserable few weeks of fever and chills all the way to the hemorrhagic version that is deadly. E is allergic to their bites and now with her sunburn AND  lumpy blotches of mosquito attacks has started to look as if she had a raging West African skin disease.

So the anticipated problems that lie ahead are not just wind, rain and flying objects, but the aftermath of more frigging mosquitoes. They are predicting multiple inches of rain, and rain makes puddles and puddles make a breeding ground for  the little bastards. When we first arrived on island, I recognized a few places that on a prior visit had been dry wooded areas, and were now post-Irene swamps full of breeding mosquitoes. I fear now that if the little flying leeches get any more numerous that breathing will become a dining opportunity.

As power outages are anticipated, it is time to recharge this computer and my cell phone as patients are still calling and asking for just one more refill of their meds, medical records and some even asking for office visits, despite my answering machine explicitly warning them that I have been out of business since July 1. Time to pack everything in garbage bags and duct tape my thighs to the wall. Don’t worry though, I do have my hurricane preparedness kit made: Mount Gay rum, chocolate, my favorite multi-tool, hot sauce, Fibercon and a clean pair of undies (sock not included), life is good in the islands.

This all must start with setting goals. I have for many years known that it ALL starts with setting goals. By setting goals I  have accomplished a lot for the son of a couple of alcoholics. But, the one thing I have only tasted in small bites, is happiness. I have loved and been loved by a few wonderful friends and women. I know the pride and sense of fulfillment in dog parenthood ( I know that sounds hokie, but it is true. I never had any human children and now know that we as humans need parenthood in order to be fully initiated into this life. I wonder often at my decision not to be a human parent, but also know that I still dislike children, so never should have taken the chance with screwing up a human life as a parental experiment). I have accomplished a lot financially and enjoyed the multitude of joys that success offered, those conveniences and security of “the good life”.  But consistent periods of real happiness have eluded me in spite of material success. Now as those things have been taken away from me, it is easy to see my world in terms of what I have lost. OK, It’s damn hard a lot of the time NOT to see my current life in such terms, but that process is changing, and new direction set. My internal compass needs to be recalibrated. Not to something new really, but finding a new path to get where I have always wanted to be. I now have the opportunity and time now to sit back and take stock of what’s left, what’s been taken away and what really matters to me as a man. Often we romantisize about the lost stuff and don’t appreciate what is still remaining to be built upon. And the goal now, beyond all other “things” is peace and happiness, not stuff, not status (though it never was, but became a burden in the end to be supported). Peace and happiness as I, and I alone define it for me. This may sound egocentric, but”I” was defined as a “we” for so many years with a partner who had different ideas of what happiness meant. I am not K bashing, but stating a fact. We defined happiness in the same terms early on, and enjoyed the hell out of it, out of us, but somewhere along the way split in our ideas of success. It doesn’t make me right and her wrong, it simply means that we lived the cliché by growing apart in our definition of happiness.

I am a sculptor, not an accomplished one by any means, but have a few pieces of alleged art with my name on them. Some are in alabaster, some in bronze. And it is the latter that come to mind now.

The process of making a bronze is complicated. You start with a metal framework, wrap wire around it until it has a basic shape of what it is that you are building. This is called the armature. It’s proportions must be right on, while the expression of the future art is added a little at a time as clay. The final touches are carved into the clay and this eventually goes through an elaborate process at a foundry to become the finished bronze art piece. The latter process, the foundry work is tedious and performed by technicians. It is the building of the armature, clay application, molding and carving that are done by the artist. As humans in this life, we never get to the foundry. The farthest we progress is the clay figure stage. Life, the real artist, with the help of our own vision, good fortune and hard work are constantly tweaking the clay model through our entire life. Perhaps the finished piece is bronzed  by the foundry in the sky in the next life, I don’t know.

With the events of the last few years, I have been stripped of my clay as it were. The outward expressions of my life’s hard work and success have been removed by legal piranhas. The clay is gone, my clay is gone. My home, business, profession, financial security, Beagle and horse, all gone. But the basic armature that I had built over 54 years remains. The core me, my values, spiritual and philosophical ideals, my beliefs and inner accomplishments are still here, unchanged. These 54 years have beat me up at times and there are chinks in the armature too. I’m not sure if that imparts character or structural weakness but all I can do is move forward with what I have, what I am.

This stripping bare at first leaves one feeling vulnerable and naked in this world. Not unlike a hermit crab in search of a new shell it is also a time of freedom from the confines of the old life, old relationships, old constraints built upon a vision of myself that had become me as a result of trying to be a good husband, respected physician, etc. Sometimes that life , that clay shell becomes self-directed in its outward appearance in spite of the initail goal picture. The process of  life can take on a momentum of its own, moving us away from what was originally intended. Think about the original Constitution of the United States, and what our government has become today. My life had become a burdensome yet very comfortable and familiar shell that was too heavy for me to support. Now that I am free of it  (not necessarily choosing the process of extrication), the first feeling is that of  massive loss and failure. But when the whole world DOESN’T come crashing down upon you and peek around to see  what originally felt like a huge loss, is actually a freedom. There is a freedom to start over, recreate, redesign a new life with none of the old limitations imposed by the old definitions of whom we are supposed to be, (and despite all the philosophical musings, it is damned frightening).

It is the great jump into the creative abyss with an ex wife’s foot up your ass. But, you do have a choice as to how you see it:  a hateful push, or the proverbial “Grab your balls and Jump” of life. The cliff is there, you ARE going over, and you have the choice as to whether you scream in fear, laugh out loud, or in reality a lot of both as you take the first step.

The good news is that the basic armature is there. The evidence of 54 years of life hasn’t been taken away from me, and I have a whole pile of clay to play with……see it as loss or see it as an artistic challenge, this new life. The choice is there to be made, and more importantly, acted upon.

So here I sit, in a small rental studio on a Caribbean island. I am in the place that I have always wanted to live. I have E with me on this journey. I am making new friends …and I have time. Time is now my friend, my ally to sit with  as I read, write, start my new tee-shirt company and  just a little bit at a time start reapplying new clay to my armature, redefining myself, just for me this time. We are living a small, very small life without the extravagances of my former travels here with K. Money is extremely tight, but like Willie sang, ” I’m not cold, I’m not wet and I’m not hungry”. We don’t eat at the Lime Inn, or drink daily Bushwhackers at the Beach Bar. Food is cooked on a hot plate, or some nights if the mosquitoes aren’t too voracious, BBQ outside with my new (it adopted me) cat. Rum is drunk (sparingly) from the bottle, and there is no SCUBA, only free time each day in the warm, loving, caressing and spiritually enhancing Caribbean. Each moment, each breath appreciated and feeling connected with what really matters. Recovery is a process here with no money, a challenge and a blessing, but at least there is no nipple freezing wind blowing through my shirt or up my ass. I have a warm freedom to be with my spirituality.

Each new day begins with the sound of a fan over my head (never A/C), then later oatmeal, a book and writing. The afternoons are occupied with a small beach, feeling a heartbeat in the waves and a chicken sandwich. For the first time in decades, chocolate is not a daily indulgence, and I’m afraid this will be changing as there is only so much that a man can endure in the name of frugality. Evenings find us being sung to sleep by Coquis. And the nights are filled with visions of the house on the cove, ridgebacks in the sand and a small simple life in the sun…. each night a new layer being added.

I have time to reconnect with what is important, be in the environment that nurtures my soul and slowly try one little application of the clay that will be the newest me, at a time. It will be a long process, at times painful, but it is MINE. And FTW takes on new meaning as I rebuild. It is the grand experiment that takes me out of my comfort zone, to no longer be K’s AFK’s, or even E’s version of me…(OK Makena ,Rosie and Little Flottie do get small votes), but at 54 this is my last shot to redesign a life for just me. While that sounds selfish to a degree…it is. It is about escaping a self denied existence that for years was lived for the sake of trying to be a good husband, a responsible physician, a whatever for whomever for all the wrong reasons. Not to say that if given the chance by the judge I wouldn’t be a physician again, but for now I can’t entertain that thought.

Now it is my turn, and in the kindest, most genuine and loving way possible, I thank K for this opportunity. Because without her forcing my world to change as she did, I wouldn’t be right here, right now with gentle, moist sea scented air on my skin,  a warmth that invites me to be in nature, swat a few mosquitoes, pack a lunch of leftovers, head to a beach, read, think, ponder and visualize my new world in to existence.