I’m sailing on a beam reach towards Bora Bora in a bathing-suit. I’m dancing around to 90s music and I scream from the top of my lungs. My hair is blowing around like women’s hair often does in one of those shampoo commercials that you see on the TV. My life is one blessed tropidelica, …
FARAWAY HEAVEN
Once upon a time, a giant eel ate a disobedient girl and one island turned into two. The priests were building a temple in Raitea and nobody was to stir nor speak during the construction of something so sacred, but this girl went to swim in a river, because she wanted to. So she swam …
PARADISE IS A PARADOX
Buttercups, it happened, I twisted around the sun and am no longer melting down. To celebrate my birth, I ate chocolate cake for breakfast with nine of my anchorage friends. It had sprinkles on it. There were handmade cards that sparked tears. “Happy Birthday” banners strung up with depictions of Juniper, sharks, fish, and rainbows. …
MY LIFE IS A TRAGIC COMEDY
It’s 5 a.m. I am a breeze, upside down. At this moment I want to throw up, but the sun will be here soon enough and everything will feel different then. I hear the splash of waves, the static of the sky, the roosters cry. Why are roosters so confused about when the sun will …
MY GLOW IS VITAL
I find out what happened to Juniper after rowing to see some boat neighbors. I ask, “Did the bridle snap and the chain let itself out?” No, but what did happen, happened only ten minutes after I rowed to town. A big gust came. They think 30 knots. Everything was blowing into the water. Two …
A LOT CAN HAPPEN IN LESS THAN 24 HOURS
So much has happened since I last wrote to you, both glamorous and grim, that I don’t even know where to begin, but I will try. It will have to be broken into parts, because within 24 hours I went from a thick forest to a meadow to a hot lava volcano and right now …
I GET DOWN, THEN I GET UP
I told you about the man who got possessed by the female water deity. But I didn’t tell you everything. I didn’t tell you that I played an African song that unintentionally provoked it. That in the midst of the beats for Mami Wata, he ran into the ocean and came back dazed and bloody. …
WE SHOOK A BIRD OUT OF THE SKY
I will not leave today. Chitchatty did and I hope he is ok. Remember the swimming man? I found out that he swam from Chittchatty’s boat, but Chitchatty left the swimming man swimming somewhere in the Tuamotus. I have called no less than 15 people today looking for someone who can help me fix Juniper’s …
A DOSE OF NATURE
I hand crank the anchor up. The mud of Mo’orea is flying everywhere. Black mud. All over me. Like cake. And just when my anchor is up and I’m busy locking it in place and the mud is the muddiest, my neighbor starts chitchatting from across the water. “Where are you going Arkansas?” And I’m …
ACCIDENTS ARE NEVER BY ACCIDENT
Morning was about to break and the strawberry full moon was hanging above the jagged peaks of Mo’orea like a prayer. I have lost track of days, months, and moons, and this moon was not the flower moon, as I have been calling her, but she bled across the sky like a wildflower bleeds across …
