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2001.04.15 : 2001.04.21
Saturday, April 21, 2001
 Storms
without; storms within. It rained last night, starting first
as a few random drops that we didn't believe, then roaring down the beach,
turning the air gray, and raining hard for hours. Waves tumbled raggedly
onto our little beach all night, driven by twenty knot winds that slapped
the palm fronds together noisily. Our roof developed a leak, directly above
Helen's pillow, so we pulled the bed out, positioned a pot beneath the
drip, and got what sleep we could.
And in that sleep, I dreamed stormily of Cthulhu. No kidding! It was
a particularly vivid and visually detailed dream.
Helen and I were walking over the top of a very low, grass covered hill
from whose summit we could see the ocean and a pebbly beach. Cthulhu waited
below, though we couldn't see him, of course, and we were beckoned - no
- compelled to join him. Afraid of what would happen if we continue,
we turned and ran, with all of our might, back up the hillock, hoping to
escape. Instead, we flew up off the hill, as if blown by a great wind (though
the air is still), flying backwards towards the sea, twenty, thirty, forty
feet of the ground.
Then I was in a dimly lit chamber which contains a large mechanical
device. Its base is a thick round plate of a shiny metal - brass perhaps
- maybe thirty feet in diameter and two feet thick (though it is impossible
to tell). Its surface consists of intricate designs, hard and geometrical,
rising shallowly in that same metal. Also made of this metal is the large
disc that sits atop the base, its edge resting on the circumference of
the base, and a central post made of a metal the color of worn copper,
attached to the center of the disc, and whose other end rests upon the
center of the base. The disc, if moved, would roll around the outer edge
of the base, the intricate teeth on its outside meshing gear-like with
the designs of the base.
A voice, clearly referring to the device, intoned The Clock,
and the dream ends.
I spend the better part of a day trying to figure out if such a device
could be constructed that would allow the disc to roll around the base
a large number of times until, finally, the cogs do not mesh with the design
below them and the disc stops, signaling the end of time.
It turns out to be a good problem.
Friday, April 20, 2001
A kite the color of the fishes and flowers,
having no rigid structural members (which I thought, at first, to be impossible)
and being one of Helen's favorite pastimes when the wind comes up
in the afternoons, which it did not, to any great extent, today.
Thursday, April 19, 2001
My left eye, swollen and red, this
morning's aftermath of last night's frightening incident.
It started in the late afternoon as I sat on the porch, the sunscreen
sweating, stinging, into my eyes. Helen noticed my ritual, wiping the tears
every few minutes with a corner of the towel I had draped over my chair.
Go
wash your face, she suggests. You'll feel much better. She's
right; the sun is low and my UV armor is no longer as critical, so I do.
But it continued, over the following few hours, through sunset, through
dinner. I nursed my weeping eyes, figuring the tears would clear whatever
trace of sunscreen remained. Before bed, I decided to rinse my eyes thoroughly,
splashing tap water onto my face again and again.
Then, a few minutes later, my eyes were burning. Not just uncomfortable
- burning. And what was then a steady stream of tears had no effect.
I could scarcely keep my eyes open from the pain, and I was getting scared.
For all of its delights, this is not the place you want to get
sick. Not ever. There is no doctor here. The nearest one is on an island
at least an hour away under the best conditions. Under normal conditions,
the nearest doctor is a day or more away. And even so, medical care here
is not the finest in the world.
I knew a guy, some years ago now, who broke his wrist while hiking on
a nearby island. The bone, set badly by a local doctor, never healed properly.
He used to be a dentist. Not any more.
A couple of years ago, Helen had abdominal problems while we were here
- problems that, in New York, would have had her hospitalized instantly.
But New York was twelve hours away, and then only if we pulled out all
the stops. I was in utter panic. Fortunately, her problem subsided on its
own. That time.
While my eyes continued to worsen, I had no idea what was going on.
I could just imagine some awful reaction causing blindness, and then what
would I do?
Helen, seeing my rising hysteria, fished around for, and found, a couple
of pseudofed, which she insisted that I take immediately. A half hour later
my eyes still burned, but not as badly as they had, and I was dropping
off to sleep.
This morning, the left side of my face was swollen and my left eye clearly
inflamed. But my eyes no longer burned - a hopeful sign.
Now, towards sunset, even the swelling has subsided and the muck in
my morning eyes, which I worried might signal conjunctivitis, is also gone.
My best theory is that it was an allergic reaction to either the sunscreen
(which is new) or to something in the cistern water. I do have a mild hay
fever allergy, which manifests itself as gritty eyes when I drive to work
on New York spring mornings, and it is conceivable that some evil spring
pollen found its way into the cistern in damaging concentrations. I have
avoided both today, not wanting to repeat last night, and my eyes seem
much better.
That was not fun.
Wednesday, April 18, 2001
The overwhelming feeling that we have never
left. We sit on the porch in the early afternoon, reading, talking
quietly, or watching boats come in and anchor. The air is absolutely delicious
- warm, just moist enough to be gentle, a low gusty breeze from the south
in which there is a barely perceptible, dusty sweetness. The ocean is an
impossible shade of blue, and tiny waves roll raggedly onto the beach below.
A banana quit chatters in a palm tree.
It is as if it had been too cold to come out here on the porch all winter
but, now that the weather has finally turned warm again, we have resumed
our habit of spending time out here, drinking iced tea behind the oleander.
Tuesday, April 17, 2001
 A
davidchess.com
T-shirt, airing out on the clothes line, upon my return from
a hike to the beach club to get the paper towels and toilet paper that
they forgot to replenish in the cottage before we arrived.
We are clothing-minimal here - a swim suit or pareo at most unless we
go out in the sun. The sun, especially in midday, is strong enough to burn
you badly in less than an hour. This is particularly true, as I found out
on previous, less careful trips, if you haven't been in the sun for a long
time. As a California kid, I worked on my tan each year as a matter of
cultural pride. Now, as a New Yorker, blue skin is in, and davidchess
is my protector.
Monday, April 16, 2001
A one room cottage on the edge of the ocean,
which we reach by boat and then by scrambling over rocks, with a week's
supply of groceries bought at a market on the larger island.
 Electricity
comes from solar cells charging car batteries, enough to power one fluorescent
light and a fan for a few hours after the sun sets. Water is from the cistern
below the porch, collected from what rain falls on the roof, though it
hasn't rained in months and the cistern is very low, so we'll have to be
even more frugal than usual. Warm water comes from large plastic bags of
cold water that we hang in the sun. There is a small propane stove. The
propane also powers a refrigerator (figure that out!) enough to
cool guava juice and freeze a couple of trays of ice after several hours.
 There
is no TV, no phone, no computer ... and no Internet connection. The only
neighbors are the sailboats that anchor each morning off our porch. The
only sounds, other than an occasional dinghy hauling boaters, are from
palm fronds in the wind and the rhythmic splash of water on the shore.
The first thing I do, even before putting the food away, is to remove
the single battery powered clock from the wall, hiding it at the bottom
of a drawer, where it will remain as long as we are here.
This is home. At least for a few weeks.
Sunday, April 15, 2001
Plurp. Those of you who follow such things may have
noticed that updates to Plurp were absent for three weeks starting
on April 15. There was a reason for this. We were gone.
We're back now. Each day in those intervening three weeks, I wrote down
something I experienced that day, reminiscent of Come
To My Senses, or a recent device in Bovine
Inversus. Maybe these few strokes will sketch our experience. Who knows?
The gleaming steel skeleton of an ancient
beast, its ribcage embedded in the ground, a beast that should be long
since extinct, hundreds of feet long and stories high, slowly being brought
back to life in a local ritual.
It is the new airport terminal on the island to which we've come, via
two planes and two taxis, a way station to our actual destination. Some
time in the next year or so it will replace the current terminal, a charming,
brightly painted concrete block structure whose roof leaks.
And when it does, it will bring with it a flood of tourists, like us
but not, who will land on the newly extended runway, be driven across the
new bridge (probably without the man in the small wooden shack who takes
your toll in a coconut half attached to a wooden pole), down the new divided
highway and into town.
Some of the locals think it will be good for the economy. And it will.
But it will also bring change: crowds, traffic jams, higher prices, crime.
We've seen all of these increase since we first came here eleven years
ago, as the first cruise ships anchored in the newly dredged harbor and
the local hangouts started becoming commercial.
We wish they would stop the ritual reanimation of the beast. Like so
many immigrants to paradise before us, we want to lock the doors behind
us so it will always be as we first experienced it. But, inevitably, the
ritual will be completed and the beast will live, disgorging hordes of
new, enchanted visitors.
Perhaps it is time, at long last, to find a new paradise.
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