Fly well

I reach out for a book and fall asleep, the book on top of my chest, such a tender sleep. I draw pelicans, the child I was, on the beach, where I am, the pelicans she points at, she sees them with wide open eyes, the dive, the floundering fish it swallows, she sings, she jumbs a dance, the fish is flying, the fish is dying now.

Donkeymen

They were two, a girl and a boy.
One of them caught my eyes just outside the grocery. They didn't wear school uniform or scout uniform. They were in their ordinary saturday afternoon clothes, shorts, t-shirt, flip-flops, but much less tanned than everybody else.
I made no attempt to escape as I often do when I'm addressed by adults with a pile of leaflets in the hand. They usually want to make me a better person, a discipline I prefer to practice under different circumstances.
I stopped.
The girl explained their purpose, a matter of lottery tickets for the benefit of mental ill on the island.
I could barely hear her voice. Donkeyman, so we call him now, had one of his noisy moments. She had to repeat herself.
- Of course, I said and looked for the purse in my bag.
- Will you be on the island at April the 9th, the boy asked.
- The 9th? I think so. Why do you want to know that?
He showed me what I could win. It was like a brunch for four at Admiral's Inn and something called a Mystery Grab Bag.
- You won't be able to benefit from the lottery if you are not in Antigua the 9th.
I gave him the 10 EC$.
- Oh, it's kind of you to mention.
They said Thank You and went on.
We looked after them.
They stopped by the donkey. It was hitched at the other side of the road. I like it better when we meet it up the hill or by the dry canal. Some places the grass is almost green, though you have to look for it.
- What was that about, my son asked.
- Aid for mental ills, I replied.
He looked at the donkey. Sometimes he steals carrots from the fridge to have something to give it.
- If only we could win the donkey, he said. - But it's a good idea to have children sell the lottery tickets. If two mental ill came over and asked, none of the tickets would be sold.

Elizabeth Taylor

It's sad when they close down the cinema where you watched Bambi slipped on the ice. And when they tear down buildings where you slided down the banisters. The walls you fired the football at. My grandmother, my mother, myself and my daughter know of Elizabeth Taylor.

My grandmother saw all her movies and constantly measured beauty with hers.
My mother saw most of her movies and knows how many times she divorced and probably still thinks she and Burton were meant for each other.

I saw some of her movies and stand up for her part as Cleopatra. I've also read she went in and out of rehabs, grew fat and lost weight again. Now it's business as usual, like the number of divorces, but at the time I held it up against the lovely face my grandmother used to talk about and I was confused. I honestly believed that beauty was synonymous with happiness.

Still: a Diva. And to me a Diva like Elizabeth Taylor ranks above iconic models, popstars and botoxpumped siliconistas because she didn't start out like that.

My daughter only knows the bloodshot eyes with too blue and too much eye shadow and a body forced into a glamourous silverdress designed for the red carpet no other place than Hollywood.

All four of us are from Denmark, far away from America. Internet, Google and YouTube globalized the world. But first did Marshall Aid, music, and movies. I can't imagine Coca Cola as anything but a random soft drink - without the movies. That's where it speeded up, the extensive american culture-migration.

That's why we can read obituaries in newspapers probably from Finland to Spain, from Kenya to South Africa, from India to Australia these days dedicated to an actress of all nationalities.
Elizabeth Taylor was American but she is global cultural heritage and it's sad she is gone, with and without two much blue eye shadow, with and without Richard Burton, too many pounds, and an enchanting face.

I recommend

I don't know Gina Frangello, or didn't, now I do a little. She wrote one of the best meditations, I've read for a long time. It's on rape and the way we deal with it as individuals, as culture, as society, as man and woman. Please don't hesitate. I bumped into it on Twitter. Here is the link. You will probably have to copypaste, I can't make it work from my iPad, don't understand why.

http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/gfrangello/2011/03/we-are-complicit-meditations-on-a-28-year-old-gang-rape-and-that-little-girl-from-texas/

No chart but confident

Chapter 15 and I just put out to sea. I know where we are going.

I forgot his face

I have a hat that makes me look like a scarecrow. I bought it in Guadeloupe the evening my son found his most precious shells, two ivory conches, inside they keep their rosa secret. I wore the hat. I felt free and beautiful. I didn't kiss the man but I knew I could. Would I recognize him if I wore the hat tonight.

Differences between glasses and shoes

My favourite lunch bistro, and the best and cheapest in town is called HotHotSpot. Might not sound particularly local nor charming but it is, the name is even very precise. Every decent place in English Harbour has got wifi, some of them even outlets for those who wear the most common suit, desktop under the arm, flip flops on the feet.
At HotHotSpot they play Air by J.S. Bach as well.
An elderly gentleman sat next to us with a newspaper and a soup, he just finished. He did wear shorts like everybody else, but only because of the heat, surely not because he liked shorts.
- Enjoy your lunch.
He was about to leave
- Thank you very much. Enjoy your afternoon, I said and hoped the chicken in my mouth was not too obvious.
A moment later he came back.
- Has anyone seen my shoes?
He bent down and looked under the tables.
- At home it's my glasses I look for. But you won't find any shoes on the table, won't you?
- Most of the time one doesn't need shoes here. I keep forgetting mine too, I said.
He smiled.
- I still prefer to look on your table, not under it.

Best sentence of today

"Birds believe I am a flower when I lie in the hammock".

I just wrote it on my Twitter. I want it here too. Silly attempt to paralyse the moment. But still.
I am thrilled and battle to play the birds' game, not unaware, never seen an unaware bird, the wings are wings and antennae, but careless, it's all about pretense. So I pretend that I'm deeply engrossed by my chapter 14. I'm good at it. They come so close.
Even a hummingbird accepts me as flower among birds.
I wouldn't dare to use it for my prose. Am I wrong? Doesn't it tempt the limit of sentimentality as paragraph on page 98 in a novel?

Young Japanese girl

I constantly think of the young Japanese girl who walked the streets in L.A. with my daughter this sunday. Monday she took the plane back to Tokyo. She needed to go home and see her parents. Today it's Wednesday , almost Thursday.

Bottom Line

This struck me today:
Most children would manage without their parents.

Far away from Japan

I remember the carrots I forgot to buy and how I kept those carrots in mind while I watched the plane on TV that went straight towards World Trade Center and never changed its direction. I remember it now from my little island in the great, great ocean with waves that children can ride on, with their inflatable dolphins and crocodiles. And I would think about it too if I was in the middle of a continent and the water only flowed from a river. I happen to be in the other end of the world. Japan, I write your pretty name on everything I remember these days.

The rat and the goat

Somebody had dragged the goat into the bushes, probably the one who had hit it with the car. We passed it on our way back from the beach. It lay on its side, it was a white goat, actually a kid. Two days later there was nothing but some of its fur left. Rats, ants, birds, mongooses had done a good job. We never noticed any stench though it was very warm.
The rat died in a trap. I put it up.
I sat at the terrace in the evening. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something with fur darted off. It was in the middle of a sentence, the direction was away from me, so I didn't do anything. I accepted the fact that either it was a rat or a tarantel.
A couple of days later it presented itself as a rat. It wanted to move in. It insisted. Five times that evening it ran towards me trying to reach the open door. I do not want to live with a rat. I'm afraid of rats. Like millions of other people I give in to an irrationel fear which is perhaps not a fear but more likely a deep detestation.
I put up the trap, it was caught the first night.
I woke up 3.30 am. It was raining heavily. The trap easily cuts off a childs toe so it was placed under a chair. Its eyes were open, its small feet relaxed. The whiskers were all intact. I sat in the rain for a while, kneeling beside the trap. I couldn't find my detestation and everything about it, me, the rat, the trap, the rain, the late hour, was awfully pathetic.

The first kiss

I'm about to open chapter 14 and have a certain hesitation, like waiting for the right moment.I don't know any right moments. But there is this little love for the moment just before the moment.

Buying a t-shirt

The dress rail was placed so that shoppers could look at the t-shirts from both sides. I was in the blue end, the woman at the other side was going through the white ones.
Most of them got prints. I don't want prints on my t-shirts.
- Are you Beverly?
The woman looked at me. She got beautiful eyes.
- Who?
- Beverly. Are you Beverly?
- No, I said.
She sized up two t-shirts, a red and a green.
- Do you know Raul?
- No, I don't think so. I'm not from here.
- She killed him. Beverly killed Raul, they say.
- Oh.
- I haven't seen her since I heard it. She used to come here.

Why Antigua?

I was asked why I of all places in the world have chosen a place the world takes no interest in.
That's why, I said. I just didn't know before you asked.

Driving with Edgar

I'm not sure I can manage to keep to the left as they do here in Antigua. So I've decided to drive with Edgar when the bus doesn't agree with where I'm going.
Edgar is a careful driver. It's very pleasant to sit at the backseat, sometimes in my own world, sometimes in his. In the frontwindow he has a little flag, green and yellow, for Dominca. What ever I see through the window, I see it together with the flag. I see mongooses, donkies, the bay, the hills, a child in a garden, perhaps its mother leaning against the balustrade.
- You won't regret it if you go there. Very lush. So green. Fruit trees everywhere. All kinds of fruit. Coconuts, bananas, mangos, lots of mangos.
We pass through the sunburned landscape, reach a village just outside English Harbour.
Cars are parked in both sides of the street, a crowd slowly enters the church, nicely dressed people, some have just arrived and kiss hello to the right and the left, others finish a cigarette just outside the entrance. The sun breaks through the cloudes.
- There will be a lot of drinking tonight, Edgar says.
- It's a wedding, right?
I lean to the side, hoping to get a glance of the bride. I once sneaked in at a wedding in Italy. It was one of the most touching weddings I've ever been to.
- No, it's a funeral. After the church they will meet somewhere and have a party. They will drink all night.