String of Lights

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String of Lights

At some point, electricity had been brought to the jungle. Until now, somnolent and meditative in the dark of night, with the lead tree and tigers burning bright, the forest mused. Periodic, quick scurries across the layered floor of fallen leaves, along with birds flapping and dropping seeds in the night spaces between the trees and other chattering in the branches, untold stories were carried out. The forest presided.

And, one night, a light appeared, with all the halo of a sylvan gleam, at first with the loud sound of a generator, but soon burning quietly from a more removed source.

Other lights were added, according to plan, followed by more in rows and patterns, the whole gaining mass and complexity almost like a collection of ganglia, with tendrils sent out to varying distances. Then, taking the form of a grid, brighter spots and arrays appeared according to function. The delineation of centers and purposes developed – the market, the seat of government, the park…

Original trees intermingled, here and there, in parks or lawns, along with hedgerows and new plants. Strings of lights extended even to these, across branches and trunks. Nearby lighted signs advertised a cantina, a small, dormant banking building, an ice cream shop, patiently waiting for the next day. Street lights lit the walls and window frames of the city hall, the windows dark, the hall now in recess but still cautiously presiding.

Meanwhile, in absence of the building’s primary representatives, court was held outside in the idle hours of a warm night, either featuring planned events or hosting an impromptu showing of the public, out and about.

Apart from that and a four-wheeler returning from somewhere, under a row of street lamps along a dusty outskirt, lately, the only new addition was a new marina at the water’s edge and boats with strings of lights reflecting.



Door hinges to a weathered door made squeaking in the wind. Out on a space of open grass, before a rocky drop to the ocean, someone had built a small house. There was no glass in the windows nor paint on the wood. Some of the roof had fallen in.

And now someone stood here, a frequent visitor. Though the place was not really too remote, he usually had it to himself. It was useful to experience land and sea and solitude, but in particular, a sense of history.

The house was a curious place, in that it seemed to defy time and distance a bit. There had been little chance for any historical evidence to be left around. People were a new thing here. At the same time, no one knew who had built the house.

It was almost as if it were a sort of premonition on the part of an early arrival, a small window of time for artifacts to occur, a calling to ways of life experienced first-hand by the builder, before recorded development began.

Now, the visitor’s imagination could play out the logic of events. Collected over time, the visitor had been exposed to plenty of references to previous coastal and seafaring life: pictures, stories, movies, places he’d been. And now, something in the surroundings – the wind, the remains of structures, the open coast, the sound of the door hinge telling tales, the mirage set off by hazy sunlight glinting from silvery wood – something was evocative.

Suddenly everything the visitor had seen and heard about the ocean in times past came to mind. In effect, the premonition of the early house builder was realized, translated over time and distance for the visitor. Things the visitor had never personally been witness to could be inferred and the life of centuries of sea travel played out.

At the moment, ships and boats were mostly still limited to interisland travel. But a greater scope of travel could be foreseen, vessels from longer distances eventually going by the rocky shore. And even though more modern practical means of navigation were now available, the visitor had a premonition, a legacy for ships to come.

He would build a lighthouse.

The Tour

The Tour

























Most everyone was preparing to go to sleep.



The Bread was an Odd Color

The Bread was an Odd Color



It made the difference at the table.








It was worth taking home.


The Mosaic

The Mosaic

A girl of twelve went to the opposite side of the island to visit her grandparents. It was always a fun visit. One could often do as one pleased. They fed her. Sometimes, she would help with a boat cleaning or breakfast.

The place was also in a less developed area and had quiet ranges of beach to walk. She would have done so with a dog, but they had a cat.

However, conveniently, they were on an arm of civilization and so had a small store about a quarter mile away. So, she would bicycle. And there was time to read, to play board games, to talk.

On a subsequent morning, toward the latter part of her two weeks, she stepped out for another venture on the beach.

Having collected various small items over time, from shells to rocks to glass, and while sitting in the early sun, she began idly to arrange whatever items were at hand: a reed, a tree leaf, a wood chip. Then she ventured further afield recovering whatever material the sea washed up and arranging it in the image of a beach scene. She used whatever blue she could find, shells and wood, for the ocean, and gray and green for sky and sand. Seaweed did for trees.

Then it was time for breakfast.

The items had drawn down the sand incline by the next day, with troughs from water washed by the tide.

By the time she had gathered her things to go back to the other side of the island, the arrangement had separated, or dispersed, with some items partly buried in the sand.

And it was time to resume studies at school.




Offshore, a wild blue yonder holds divers, pawing depths for shellfish on a rope. It’s a bit bizarre, but it renders lines of mollusks in broad daylight. From there it’s a measure of culinary concern.

Languages are spoken on different boats, at different times. But, most of it has nothing to do with fishing and all to do with the practicalities of retrieval. The thing is that commerce, in some circles (and in these settings, a number of social circles can occur), is possibly moot. Here, there’s enough.

On the north island, the water is dark blue, for depth, and the sky would look pale in contrast but for its particularly dark natural hue.

And here, there are no ruins, not of ancient times. Only boats that come and go and small towns, or settlements, that sleep in the sun.

Languages are only, or mostly, a form of expression. In general, everyone uses the lingua franca.

But food harvested from the sea is a fact of life.

House in the Shade

House in the Shade

The trees hide the shore, or rather, the shore sits in the glare of sunlight, and the trees sit behind that, and they provide respite.

A man stands on a ladder, half-way up the side of a house that is half-buried in trees. He is observed by a cat sitting on the hard-baked, sandy ground.

The cat regards him as he strings wires along the eaves, along the wall.

Off the shore, surf rushes and tosses, its coming and going observed from the roof point of the house by a bright and curved dish mounted on a stand, fast against imminent wind and weather.

The man brings wires along to an open window, which is typically kept open and normally only covered with a reed shade, unless the wind blows up. In such an event, more sturdy protection is put up.

The man descends and pets the cat between the ears and the two characters separate paths.

Before long, in the shade of the house, a screen glows.

Living Under a Star

living under a star post.jpg

Living under a Star



The swimmer took another breath and made more distance.