2010-05-23 - 12:02 a.m.
I don't usually drink wine but I am tonight and so everything's warm and tart. Back last night from Dominica. A week of driving on the left-hand side of the road. I waved to just about everybody and just about everybody waved back. A white face zooming past lots of black faces. A week of saying "hi" to guys and guys saying "OK, man" back, or "all right, now." Waterfalls so high they make little bowls of angry wind. So many kinds of green, so many ways to get wet. If I were to write a travel essay about this place, it would be about the hundred ways in which you can get wet. I snorkeled. I never thought of myself as a snorkeler. Hiked across a ridge so high the clouds touched it. Stood for a while on the ridge and let the cloud rush by me. Felt like flying and I'll be thinking about it until I die.
Upon leaving, got my backpack searched good. The guy removed a piece of dead, white coral I'd forgotten I'd thrown in there. I thought: oh shit, I'm one of the bad guys now. I tried to get him to forgive me, using just my eyes, but he wasn't buying. On the runway, at that magical moment when the engines really kick in, really knock you against the back of your seat, I looked up the aisle and a young guy in a Yankees cap and wearing a Bob Marley bracelet did the sign of the cross. I'd heard about faith, heard it was still out there, but now I've got proof.
I'm rereading Stop-Time. It's my third go-round. Takes my breath away it's so good. A life crystallized, a life tightly examined. It's like drinking instant coffee for a whole life and then waking up one morning to a hot cup of the real stuff.
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