A new hat

Watching the grandma with her fanny pack hacking the bones from the meat with a machete like a scimitar, it seems clear that she is one of those who have accepted the role of attending death. She goes about it matter of factly. She cuts a chicken in half, its legs splayed. A man comes in, dressed in pale camouflage—gray and white, that would blend in with a pebbled beach—he sits on a stool behind her and drinks white rum out of the bottle. Like spirits accepting their due—the drops of white rum, the money accepted with bloodstained hands. I wonder why I never noticed before that the world of spirits was so immediate—so material. They are made of flesh and blood themselves. 

Los Haitises national park

Old-growth mangroves

Impersonating the lady baboon who had a pet kitten

In the current--leaving the Cueva de la Linea, covered with Taíno petroglyphs. The Taíno were maybe not ready for us to leave this island. Seemed like they called us back, untenderly, seemed like they stopped us with a slap, like a fierce Zen teacher, stalking enlightened behind us. 

The park was spooky in the dusk, dark caves and oddly friendly officials who asked us if we had any rum or rice, cooked--cocinao--to give them, and when Adam said, "No, estamos muertos," they said, "Well, do you want some?" Back across the bay in the dark, climbing the steep waves.

Luperón to Samaná

Hand steering, exhausted with rainbow. Twenty-four hours after leaving Luperón with no autopilot. Goodbyes said via facebook, last pesos given to the motorcycle driver who brought me to the dock with the groceries, thinking, next stop Puerto Rico. Thinking, America by any other name--yeah. Which is so wrongly nostalgic but it somehow can't, in the blooming seasickness, be helped. Maybe we'll hang the big flag off the dinghy davits.

Engine not getting enough fuel, a haze of missed sleep over the bright morning entering Samaná Bay. American ex-slaves came here after the Civil War, and maybe they came by this route, rough rounding the corner and seeing the palm trees and green slopes of their new home, uncharted freedom, not even a road leading from the capital.

The lagartijo that T carried through three grocery stores and an ice cream place.

A performance space on the cay.

El mar

Taking leave

The scorn that erupts suddenly for the details of a particular life. Where the day before, the second before, compassion lay. The upwelling of a sorrow that feels thick, undigested. Exhilarating beauty that softens the edges, the beauty and melancholy of what is. The unplumbed depths of the ordinary. The new—half forgotten—sense of freedom. Simply walking away—leave behind the rules of one place and they cease to exist. Looking out at the horizon, a fine, infinite emptiness of human rules and logic. But that place left behind, all the places left behind, do live on inside us. Once we have partaken of them. And yet. The horizon whipped with wind, deep blue. A sprung trap line.'

Father-daughter day at the beauty salon

Homeschooling

A work in progress. Or rather, a coalition of the willing.

Bienvenido, el maestro de español.

Snail experiments

Parent, incredulous: "Can you understand that?"
Child, disdainful: "It's just Spanish."

A gift from our friend Virginie, who has been teaching Tallulah about reading, writing, arithmetic, and French style.