I was awoken early and twice the first morning. First, harshly, by the heavens launching themselves at us. A tremendous rain doin’ its full thing, a stampede of sky. then gently by three little girls from next door toting an armful of flowers for me. “Denali’s Seestah! for Denali’s Seestah!” Oooooooouch!! i think i have stretch marks on my heart.
*
It’s hard to write about this place. There is so much to say and it’s all so worthy of being told. beauty is hyperbolized in everything. it’s like God saying, “Dudes, you’re dense but i love you, so i made this island where i have spelled myself onto everything, really, really, obviously, and it is BRIGHT! Behold, life is good! life is Great! life is Amazing! Celebrate already, damnit!” I’ve been such a happy dope for most of this trip. This experience has been rare sunset spectacular—like being so sloshingly full of awe that you don’t realize you look O.D.’d on Novocain and that there’s a large drool strand dripping onto your shoulder. and even if you were aware of your slobbering stupor you wouldn’t give a damn because who cares about looking really, really delayed when there’s such extravagance to focus on!? This island makes me receptive to the world.
*
(what is it that makes an experience a memory? is it noticing subtleties, smiles, textures? details? nose crinkles, lantern glows, firefly composition? when the sunset is a gut wrenching red? sanguine as a scalped fairy? when the sky is so deep you don’t know whether to regard it as bruised or beautiful…)
*
Quick descriptions-~~~~
My sister’s house is the size of my grandparent’s bathroom–generously. I love it because it’s so unimposing. She has five adopted dogs–Darling, Chaloop, Accompany, Foofy, Boofy and Great Grandmother–the wise old dog with the really saggy tits! There’s not a lot of money rollin’ around here, but wealth is edible, and food is abundant. The road (there’s only one) is skinny as a Scandinavian super model and pocked as a penitentiary lunch lady. There is no lane division. The is, however, much precipice. These drivers must have some intuitive capacity for sensing when other crazy vans that move wildly and cumbersomely like bison with firecrackers in their asses are approaching the same blind, break neck curve. Well whatever the trick, my bones are still beneath my skin, so I’m grateful.
*
(…when each morning the sun, with its pursed, omnipresent lips bends its kiss to color the world awake? and it when wakens and arises, green, red, orange, purple, yellow, and with such stature? and goes about catering its magic to your eyes? is it alignment of new sensations so peculiar and sensational that the folds and lines and layers of world become poetry? is it when poetry is visceral and sends rivers through you that pool in your finger tips and make everything you touch giddy and electric?…)
*
The locals call my sister, very endearingly, DooDoo, which means Sweet Thing in Creole. It’s funny to hear someone be called DooDoo with such tenderness…like being called “Shit Head” in a singsongy little coo. They call me Papa Doll. A title that could definitely plant a weird complex…but Papa is used as an exclamatory word, so i’m hoping they think me really dolly, rather than….er…like a plastic Papa.
*
The day is expansive and undivided as the sea with no tight schedules cutting the full fruit of the day into bight sized pieces. Though Dominican life is definitely hard work, it is addressed fluidly, without expectation of comfort and ease. Life isn’t treated as a thing to be protected, fixed or prettied. Things are as they are. Things are patient. Things are natural.
*
(is it when things are simple? or spectacular? or both? or when you’re able to see both in the other? when beauty is so big it makes your eyes and heart supple enough to notice the god in tiny things? is it when moonlight slips into you and over it all like a resin making your relationship with the world probeable, pliable enough for understanding? Is it when conversation is made of mooonlight and winds you effortlessly into new patterns with its luminous threads…)
*
Beauty here is selfless. Even the most beautiful beauties don’t hold themselves like trophies to be pedestaled and distantly admired. They seem to understand the truth of Mary Oliver’s words, that each person is both “common as a field daisy, and as singular.” And so kindness is general, competition scarce, and in many, many ways, things feel much less complicated.
*
(Is it the temperature of cool ocean breeze and warm stars? or when the grime and sweat of your day leads you to a new found appreciation for the river? is it hugs when you know how big they are? or when your eyes are freshened with the ablution of newness and look upon everything as a prayer?)
*
Nighttime has been the richest. the sun looks over us from 6-6, so nighttime happens early. Gentle music is on my sister makes cupcakes for the youth she’ll be working with the following day and i make hummus and then we both make tea and sit on the warm porch with the ocean to our left and our words easy, conversation taking the scenic route to get to a point, bestrewn by stars, fireflies and cricket song. this is gratitude.
I’ve been on this computer for too long! Quick Miscellany Incoherenced—old women with machetes, learning to make baskets, passion fruit, bananas, mangos, papayas, sugar cane, growing right outside the house! Trucks and vans all have really goofy names plastered on the front —Positive Times, Python #2, Mickey Blessed, Wayne. Coconuts like fallen heads. We walk on their deterioration, the crushcrunching of softening skulls. Big, black, winged cockroaches, millipedes, centipedes. such huge and unabashedly wild leaves strewn like chaotic freedom. i am looking from the window, equally apart and a part wondering my role in this masterpiece and when beauty is too big for adjectives, I start to wonder beyond words into a gentle crumbling of knowing where beauty breaks your knees and bends the mountains and is too big to maintain structure! Poetry is everything! Growing, flapping, chirping, being spectacular, being eccentric as hell! And I, we, am, are a part of the metaphor.
*
My sister described this island beautifully. She said, “it’s like a garden with little colorful houses poking up like flowers between the beds.”
A Garden it is. Adam and Eve don’t got sheeit on this place. This experience is a memory.
ahem….chani…it’s “doux-doux,”which originates from the French word meaning “sweet”; a term of endearment. i first heard this word when i was addressed as such by a toothless yet very dapper gentleman on the PATH train who asked me what i thought of his fur coat. for years i puzzled over why he’d called me doo-doo, then one day i read a book named Crick-Crack that explained it all.
if only all of life’s mysteries were so easily solved.
love,
your other sister….
(guess who??)
Delightful and VERY humerus! Thanks Chani for giving me the opportunity to incorporate laughter into my day:)
Best post ever to grace this blog. Sorry Doo Doo.
I just found this totally beautiful and inspiring presentation of Baha’i activity in our wonderful Dominica. Thanks a lot for posting. I hope to visit you all soon. I’m a Baha’i living near Portsmouth in Glanvillia. keenej_at_cwdom.dm, Baha’i greetings, Jim