I Think I Might Be Done

I know. Too fast. But it's only about 1000 words. And a lot of them, most of them really, were told to me by other people who know much more than I do. I just wrote them down and rearranged them in what I hope is a pleasing manner. I'll get Jenny to read over them tonight when she gets home from work, give them one more good night's sleep, and then do the final rewrite tomorrow so I can send them off to the magazine guy on Tuesday. It was a challenge to downshift from fiction to fact, from story to article, from lies to truth, but I think I might have done an okay job. Oh man, I just realized, I need to send a photo and bio too. Well, that'll keep me occupied today. It's surprisingly difficult to write a bio and not sound like a complete and utter egotist. And a picture? Oy. Maybe I'll just go with my underwater self-portrait. Or the one of me writing on the Bonaire front porch. I'll consult with Durwood; he's a photographer and has a good eye for composition.

May 29--Moorea, Tahiti. You can see the white water of the waves breaking out on the barrier reef that protects the island. You can also see the bones of the wrecked sailboat that once belonged to Edouard and Kate and, when the waves are strongest, across half the island you can hear the gong as Louie's trawler bashes itself on the coral boulders it ran aground on. There isn't a soul on this beautiful tropical island that hasn't been victimized by that treacherous pair of sea and reef. It looks so innocent, so beautiful in photos in slick magazines. Documentary and travel filmmakers cleverly cut their footage so that viewers dream of the tranquil shores. They don't show the violence of waves pounding on razor-sharp rocks. They don't tell of the way human skin sticks to the coral, rips away from bone so easily. No one explains how the wind conspires with currents to drive your dreams to death on the rocks in a typhoon and only the turbulence saves you from being shark food.

Oh, I liked the energy, the vehemence I felt from that narrator as I wrote it last night and I feel it again. Oooh, nice and angry. Happy Sunday!
--Barbara