Leaving the island includes saying good-bye to old friends, and odd friends. The following are self-portraits of Tom and myself posing with a tear in our eye.

Tom the grouper is Jerry’s sidekick, the new kid on the block, the trainee, the apprentice, the junior. He’s been following Jerry in his (her) interactions with us, day after day, keeping a safe and respectful distance.

But right now Jerry has left Bloody Bay to go take part in the spawning festivities off the West End, and this morning a very affectionate Tom showed us that he is ready to take on the leading role...

I think he was posing with much more class than most of the puppets at the Academy Awards last night...

Hippocampus reidi, but we call him Longsnout. His black and white mate was nearby but I missed the picture. Sigh.

(But Rod didn’t.)

_{(Click on image to enlarge)}

For two mornings in a row now, dolphins have accompanied the boat on our way to the dive site, playfully surfing the waves. And already I can hear a legion of readers immediately exclaiming « Why is this fool leaving such an amazing place? »

Well, for one thing, my world is limited to a 2 by 11 miles playground. If I need to escape, I have a choice of 22 square miles. The dolphins are free, I’m not. Period.

For another, they had no butter at the store the other day, and the bag of sugar I bought had bugs in it.

So. Between the real world’s lack of dolphins and the absence of bugs in the sugar, I’ll choose the lesser of two weevils.

I love quoting song lyrics. In fact I’m getting so good at it that I’m going to challenge the (very limited) world of Portal visitors: I hereby challenge you to give me a first name (in English of course, for example Mike or Michael, but not Michel) and I will come up with a song’s title or lyrics that contain that name! Warning: I’ve never lost at this game! You may post the first name of your choice as a comment to this blog entry. Make it difficult, it’s not fun for me to win too easily Good luck!

)arrowA couple of weeks ago, Flyingfish wished me Godspeed! with my coming journey. It stayed with me. I love the expression. It smells of travels and adventure. As says Jack Sparrow, pardon me, CAPTAIN Jack Sparrow in the last scene,

Now, give me that horizon.

So I’m seriously considering renaming the blog Godspeed. But since this can’t always be about me, myself and I, I’ll ask for opinions on the matter. Anybody out there?

... But why is the rum gone?

It was the 3rd of September, 1994. I was standing on a dock in Guam. In the darkness of a cool dawn, a suitcase at my feet, I was watching the largest sailing vessel in the world, which I had called home for a year, depart slowly for Saipan. Without me. A piece of my heart was sailing away, too, and I was so worried that I might have made the wrong decision.

Leaving is easy. Leaving for the right reasons seems a little harder. And now, over ten years later, I’m leaving again. There is no doubt in my mind, this time. I have made the right choice. A choice that will be heavy with consequences, but unavoidably logical. My time has come. I have exhausted the rewards of being here, and I need those of being there instead. Except I still don’t know where there will be. I only know that whatever I’m looking for, it is unlikely to present itself in Little Cayman.

As Harrison Ford says it so well in « Six Days, Seven Nights »,

It’s an island, babe. If you didn’t bring it here, you won’t find it here.

So let’s embark on a new adventure, carefully yet carelessly...

It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door,«  he used to say.  »You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.

And

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with eager feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

J R R Tolkien

I get up early on my day off and jump in the shower. My A/C was broken and I’ve sweated all night under the miserable whisper of my ceiling fan. But the shower faucet coughs, spits out a few droplets, burps some air and then goes dead. The water has ran out. Again.

Yes, we do have a reverse osmosis unit to turn seawater into a very good quality fresh water. But it’s been broken for months. We also have six cisterns collecting rainwater. But the gutters are... yes, broken. And the cistern walls have been cracked by the fury of many hurricanes’ waves crushing against the house, so they wouldn’t hold the water very long any way. And any way, it hasn’t rained seriously in months.

So I swear silently in French, skip the shower and get dressed to go to the bank. Today is Thursday. The bank opens for five long hours. If I miss it today, it’ll go to next Monday. Twice a week is all we get, and that’s if the weather is good enough for Island Air to fly the two clerks in from the Brac...

Continue reading "Farewell to the Rock - Part 2"

Sometimes I feel like Gollum, forever fleeing the burning brightness of the Sun. We endlessly seek its heat only to find our skin aging, our eyes blinded and shadows flattened.

There’s no worse light for photography then a bright noon sunlight. Over it I’ll always choose a late afternoon’s warm nuances and lazy shadows.
I wish there was a way to record a moonlight’s rendition of the world. When all the cats are grey, when men are equal, when corruption sleeps and music prevails.

I’ve borrowed a few words from the Finnish band Nightwish:

Two hundred and twenty-two days of light
Will be desired by a night
A moment for the poet’s play
Until there’s nothing left to say...
I wish for this nighttime
To last for a lifetime
The darkness around me
Shores of a solar sea...