I used to go to the sea in the mornings.

I used to go to the sea in the mornings. The early mornings, when the breakfast cooks were rubbing their tired eyes on the 50 foot journey into their open-air kitchen. When it was still tender and almost dark. I would try to walk quietly past Chateau Maho, The Fish Bowl, The Roach Motel, The Barefoot Mansion. Through the red tile kitchen and down the main boardwalk, barely able to see Whistling Cay under a struggling moon. It would nearly be sunrise by the time I got to the goat trail, so I could see the roots of soft-shade tamarind trees and those rocks I had met with knees and toes (and one time, a shoulder) in less graceful moments. It was late fall, and I had to wave my hands in front of my face to fend off the hurricane mosquitoes, fatter and somehow quicker than those creatures we knew in the spring. I could feel the night air, heavy and falling on my shoulders, as I stripped away my morning clothes from my bathing suit and stepped toe at a time into the clear water.

Aqua jogging, we called it. A totally ridiculous name for a totally therapeutic act. I preferred to run on the hill valley roads, but my knees had become pavement-sore and I needed the drunken sand to soften the impact of a quickening foot and elevating heartbeat. With the water to my chest, I would run. From one end of the still beach to the other, back and forth. There was a stingray I had named Big Bird, the biggest I have ever seen, who would shadow me more than I necessarily wanted. He came most mornings, maybe hoping for whatever sea feast I was kicking up with my rough heels as I ran. Back and forth, back and forth. Happy to wake up with the island. To get some time together and feel that St. John, Big Bird, Whistling Cay and I were closer than anyone had been to anything ever.

You are who you are.

Every time I come to the mountains, I find something I wrote the last time I was in the mountains. I have a few notebooks that travel with me to quiet places, but I can never remember which has the most empty pages. So I end up searching through old thoughts for blank lines to write new ones.

Anyway, I am in the mountains. This notebook is red and spiral-bound. It is mostly full of half-written letters to beached friends, but this is one I wrote to myself. It most interesting because I had started to lose myself and now, probably around a year later, I feel.....not that. It's hard to say that I have lost shooting stars when the reason I am in the mountains is to watch a meteor shower. You are who you are, even if you lose it for a little while.

I am happy now. In love and happy.


Every notebook leads to buried treasure.





So you sit down at your desk, and you're wearing your glasses. You didn't know that you needed those, and you wonder how many shooting stars you've missed.

And then you realize that you haven't looked at the sky since you moved to the city.

Erin's voice sounded good tonight with tree frogs in the background. It's the first familiar thing in months. You should be there, dressed in tan lines and mosquito bites with bleach stains on your best dress.

You're in your room. On a townhouse near a corner you know to be a trading post for certain unmentionable merchandise. You have walls with white panel curtains. They are not made out of sheets. And a space heater.

You stay busy. You don't have time to miss anything, and you don't have the energy to feel much. You say that you love boots, but you love bare feet more and you wonder why moving on seemed so much like the right thing.

It was the right thing. You weren't happy there anymore until the very end, when it was too late. And that might be why you felt happier. Panic happy.

This city excites you, but don't get trapped. Don't stay forever. Do not get wrapped up in the lights and the life and forget the girl with wild eyes who looked at the sky and swam in the sea at night.