one island to another ------------------------------------->

With 4 months passing to encompass a late night flight from New York, a return to Florida, and a few weeks more before leaving again, I find myself needing yet another means for correspondence here on the island of Tortola. To be sure, I felt so clumsy in that last email... like swimming in a dark cavern, holding my breath and groping at small places of some unknown but desired mass until I find air. It often feels that way for me in connecting with someone who I occasionally catch such brief and potent glimpses of. That said and despite my own broader attempts towards some unbuttoned and unstrung movements, it's been far too long to really allow for all of my awkwardness and escape of metaphor... but thank you for naming it as something of beauty.

In fear of seeming unappreciative of my current setting, I hope I'm not letting on that my experiences here, what the environment impresses upon me, have been less than substantial. As new locations and vantage points are so capable of shedding light on long shadowed places or places that I've yet to see, these discoveries and rediscoveries have been as rewarding as much as they've been stripped of expectation. Prior to a couple of days ago (and so my first occasion of being out on the sea and looking back on the island for which I've unleashed the word home), I think I did feel too close and was trying too hard to avoid expectation to come up with some summary I felt necessary to deliver in so many of my other correspondences.... It's so often easier for me to say what something isn't than what it is... Still, at that point, these hasty (and not so hasty) but token tales were included:

"The 6 seater plane that provided the brief and bumpy ride from Puerto Rico to Tortola turned out to be a good indication to the scale of the islands we were soon to fly over. To be sure, a young girl (our only other companion on the plane aside of the pilot himself), tried to tell us over the loud buzz of the engine that it hardly takes 47 min. to drive the entire span of it's outermost road... That's including a potential wait at the island's only traffic light. So yes, it's small... and steep! My first day riding in our wonderfully corroded Chevy Tracker left small grooves in the overhead handlebar where my white-knuckled hand had clenched so hard; and the several occasions where my seat belt has suddenly become unbuckled gives no additional comfort. While my nerves are more adjusted to the flat roads of Florida, or even the march of a crowded subway, Tortola travels at different pace of fast driving cars whipping around unguarded cliffs and descents so sharp that it looks as if you're driving off the end of the road. This so far has been one of my most challenging adjustments, but I'm slowly getting used to it."

"Our very first stop was at a bakery/deli just outside of the airport where we were greeted by a dead chick laying at the doorstep and a woman inside, who after seeming so annoyed at us purchasing one of her guava pastries, soon resumed beating a little girl with a broom. Truly, she was so commonplace about it, I almost felt as if I was expected to start pushing around some poor and random child myself to engage in this as a sort of unknown social protocol. It was extremely awkward, beyond anything the Kellie-realm-of-awkwardness has ever imagined; I tried my best to not allow this to tint my future observations of the people here, but maybe it has... Without comparison to the Publix, PathMarks, or Whole Foods of the states, the grocery stores here are markedly tense with their crowded aisles, haphazard arrangement, and again that hurried pace. Perhaps that dynamic alone is enough to make the people working there miserable, or maybe they're just miserable to be working while the idea of a perfect day passes just outside. Speaking mostly with the owner of the pottery that I'm working for (partially because few others seem willing to engage in a conversation), I've learned that the locals call themselves "the belongers" and that the island is driven primarily by a cycle of tourism, of which we are now in a waning high season. Sometimes when Austin and I are riding around in our incognito vehicle, I feel that we stick out all the more as symbols of a dreaded industry that's now in those lagging months; and here we are continuing to invade the private islands of each and every person that "belongs". Still, I keep hope that these walls will come down with a natural passivity and unbroken politeness; and with that, a woman who works at the bakery we visit each morning has just this week started to ask us, smiling, how we're doing today, followed by a "see you tomorrow". Otherwise, I just try to convince myself that it's not so much my presence that they're bothered by, and that maybe it's more just the way of the collective demeanor, which is neither "wrong", nor "different", but just more pronounced."

"With fewer cruise ships coming into bay, leaving only the grandiose sailboats and catamarans to port, I've recently had the experience of being the solitary visitor to several of the Tortola beaches. Regardless though, I don't think that even the largest crowd could detract from the beauty, and I actually happen to enjoy swimming in those tropical waters when there are a few other people around. Austin, however, is fearless... or so he likes to come off as so. Having already disappeared once around some boulder-lined point, with waves so strong that I would be tossed around like a piece of seaweed, I'm reminded again of what a strong swimmer he is at his return; but even if I were able to compare, I wonder if l would feel the need to put myself in what appears to be such a dangerous situation. Maybe I've yet to come down from my experience of jumping out of a plane, or maybe again (like driving here) expectation manifested as fear is one that I have a difficult time dealing with on an everyday basis. Yet, I suppose as a forced means of facing it, I've gone out into those testing waters, both before and after an occasion that now surpasses skydiving...

Taking a ferry to a place called Marina Cay, Austin promised that I would experience some of the best snorkeling ever if I would just swim out with him a ways. Yet, "a ways" turned out to be about a mile and in an area where we were sandwiched between the dropping depths of blue ocean and a pretty spectacular wall of coral. Though my instincts were screaming danger and those National Geographic specials sent reminders through my mind of where it is that sharks like to hunt, Austin repeatedly assured me that "there's nothing out here to harm us". Using this as my mantra, I finally had begun to relax enough to leisurely be towed along via a strong grip on Austin's feet. We got about half way down the reef and to a point where the waves were getting a little more difficult to bear and the shoreline being very far off in the distance when the following happens:

Scene: Kellie's looking off towards the coral, with Austin swimming directly in front of her. He abruptly stops and his head shoots up out of the water.

Austin (looking panicked): "Shark"

Kellie (looking panicked also, but wondering if it's a joke): "What?!"

Austin (grabbing Kellie by the arm and quickly swimming in the opposite direction): "Nothing..."

Kellie (feeling her heart racing, though still wondering if it's a joke): "I heard you!"

Austin (still pulling Kellie along, but trying to talk to her calmly): "Kellie, don't panic. I need you to just keep swimming close beside me until we make it back around the reef."

Kellie now remembers how sharks are attracted to floundering creatures as a chance for an easy meal, and does her best to avoid a heart attack or hyperventilation; but mostly all she can think of is her feet as they are now the closest thing to the shark...

Needless to say, I'm still alive and fully attached as I write this letter, though probably facing a few gray hairs. Though we still haven't identified exactly what kind of shark it was, Austin described it as about 7 feet long, gray, and with a beefy build, and about 15 feet away from us. I have managed to get back into the water a couple of times since then, trying so hard to focus on a sense of very specific wonderment over the smaller sea life around me (bright and beautiful), but that lurking acknowledgment of the larger known is always tough to face."

True then, my happier times have been above water, feeling in a moment that I could exist forever in being both known and unknown to the spanning depths below. I look then to the land forms that emerge all around me; flat shapes in the distance whose depths I can only try to imagine, and whose dramatic details, both smooth and intolerable, are only revealed upon reaching their sea shaped/shaping shore. I want to explore these islands, but feel such little time!

Thank you for reaching out to mine.