MARIPOSA: Passion's Fruit

"Wherever you go, there you are..."

---Faber, FAHRENHEIT 451

         Night fell, taking over the powder blue horizon in a veil of indigo.  With the sun at last gone on its way, the moon rose to bloated preeminence, its white face dappled with splashes of gray.  At this latitude, perched low in the sky and seemingly close enough to touch, the moon's radiance was incredible.  The natural crash and tumble of the sea mingled with man-made rhythms as villas further down the shore came alive.  Calypso, Reggae, Jazz, Hip-Hop and Rock blurred together in  an unlikely fusion, the echoes of different parties overlapping one another with no particular rhyme or reason.  Tourists in rented houses doing what tourists did; they were in the midst of paradise but could never quite leave home---or who they really were--- far behind. 

         I was a tourist, sort of, so I understood.  Like them I had gotten away but at the same time I was still...me.  I couldn't watch the sunset without visualizing it as a canvas I was filling with choice strokes of paint.  My preoccupation with the details and composition of the setting I was in was just my nature.  On good days I produced things that appreciative people called "art" and who then said my "eye for nuance" was my strength.  It was always nice when people with money were enthusiastic about something that you did reflexively.  More accurately, something I could do reflexively but hadn't been able to lately.  The past few months had been nothing but dead air creatively and my rep, worried that this could become worse than a rut, suggested I come here to find some inspiration and shrug off the "artist's block" I was suffering from.  Oddly for me, I agreed.  Two days and seven hours ago I arrived on this 82-square mile patch of perfection happy that I hadn't argued.  Like that woman in Terry McMillan's book, I was here for reinvention and renewal trying hard as hell to get my groove back.

         Get my groove back, rediscover whatever had been absent lately that had once made me successful.  Sounded simple, easy, even but I still felt lost.  Relaxed, but lost.  Leaning against the rail I stared out into the distance, the seascape this overlook commanded was---day or night---awesome.  Whenever I tried framing it in my head one undeniable fact filled my perceptions: Damn, God did beautiful work.  The island, the people on it, the waters surrounding it, the skies above it...beautiful.  I pitched my rum punch over the side and left my empty, sweating glass on the table by the pool while I collected my iPod and headphones.  Tonight was calling for a little more than introspection and I was past due  for a different type of unwinding.