Book progress journal

Day three, "Here on the Island"

Day three of final edits on the book. Life is very different here on the island than it is back home. You wake up without regard to a clock, make a slow breakfast of fruit and bread and mate' then you eat on a veranda with a view of soft blue, glossy sea and beyond that the green mountains and small tan and white buildings of the mainland. You work but you come about it without desperation. Work, read a little, work. Drink mate' or have a plate of olives. Work and take breaks you don't intend to take as you stare out across the harbor to the mountains which are now gathering dark clouds around them. Then a flash of lightning. A hot gold streak against the gray then the breeze picks up and brings with it the smell of rich soil and jungle plants.

Maybe you stare off into the sea and sky or into the jungle that surrounds the house or below us to the shore which is a half hour walk down the mountain. Maybe this lasts an hour. Maybe less.

Then work then you read to get your mind running again and at some point you swim in the sea. It's the same schedule for Elizabeth except the book work and it's the same for Marina who lives here and writes books too and runs an arts residency from the house.

You come back from the sea with salt on your skin and a bit of a burn and work some more. When it's dark you have a dinner of papaya and pineapple and crackers or bread. You sit and talk in the half-darkness of the house though "in" doesn't quite work because the many doors and walls of windows are left open to let in the tropical breeze. The house is vast and set right onto the mountainside. In some rooms a wall will be raw mountain rock. You touch the stone cliff-face in a shower room and you feel the warmth of the mountain itself.

So you eat then you work or you talk then you work while geckos with big black eyes like seeds watch you from the ceiling and snails the size of your fist with great seashells on their back move slow in the deep, hot darkness among the aloe plants.

At some point you sleep or you stay up very late reading then working then reading again and sleep without remembering when that began. Dreams are lush like the jungle--dark, earthy, tangled, growing at a prodigious rate.

Tomorrow is Easter. The next day Nate Perkins and Sara and a touring Brazilian musician called Alex arrive to fill out the house. For now, quiet, work, the sea, fresh fruit, trips down the mountain to the market. The island is called Ihlabela. It's a very good place.