vainglorious attempts to lionize the native Caribbean rum. Tennis and darts become ho-hum, more of a task than a pleasant diversion. The little yellowed board seemed to symbolize not convivial cordiality but crabbed provincialism. The tie & collar were intolerable against the saline tropic night and seemed rigid in a place and time the locals could not possibly share. In short, such things celebrated my apartness. Linen rarely, if ever, appeared and to resort to complaints resulted in only furthering the distance between one and his hosts. Even the coffee tasted bitter and seemed unsuited to the needs of an interloper. Neither was fruit juice the promised manna. And one can take only so much nostalgic flower warbling. The hummingbirds and oleander came to grow as commonplace and exhausting as the rain. I began ruminating thoughts back to my previous existence. Surprised at my illogical shift in allegiances, I began stealing thoughts more and more surreptitiously about the naturalness of working a full day, donning the apparel of a civilized man, dropping the white man's burden. Disgust filled me with my former Rousseauian yearnings. With trepidation, one's dreams can erect barriers more effective than the most ill-sponsored illusions.  [10] 

 

THE BAY OF CORTES

The sea is a requisitioned article in my possession. Above, in fat circles of conformity, glide turkey vultures, their combs a rich obscenely red. The guano rocks are isles and stepping stones of bird waste. They lie thick and bedeviled with fish fur, a dull lavender cached hard to the sun seems to shine a metallic harvest white as desert rocklets scattered to the breeze. A speck of a fisherman dots the horizon. His craft a barque in loneliness across the sea. Dolphins inveigh the richness of the depths, persuade latitudes to drift about their wake. Pelicans sour the parabola distances between light and sound, become chancy over this distant breath of song. Above the cliffs and the inner roads that follow the desert into geometric squares, stand abodes. The thin supremacy of shadows at dusk disparage the traveller here. Burros strayed lie dead by the highway's edge. The liquid depth of the mountains reinforces vulnerability. The night air is alive with the torment of insects, asplash with sound. Lights carry an eerie message dotted about the hills. Feeling alone is a delicacy to be savoured by the standards of the tropic sun.  [12] 

 

ORACABESSA

An iron wrought gate of turpentine force conveys little pigment, almost black parchment 

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