Reaching for the stars through the blades of a ceiling fan

This is one of your stupider, more pointless injuries. Maybe many injuries are pointless. This one just seems especially so. On a philosophical note, I've found that pain is the eternal present. Maybe that's the point of this injury--I'm one step closer to enlightenment. I have been fully in the now for almost a week. And I'll never forget Luperón!

My adversary in hand-to-fan combat. Note the bent blade. Spin that, sucker!

New fruit

Adolfo has been making it his business to share secrets of Dominican life with us--among them unusual fruits, like the one above that you have to fight the birds for--that tastes slightly vegetal, like wet grass, and somehow the consciousness of all the ferment going on below the wet grass, a kind of life essence. And another one--this, like--this moldering, slimy, spiky, dirty fruit that you break open and peel everything away from the seeds. And then you boil the seeds, and break off their thin shells, and they taste like tiny potatoes.

Last day of school

Norma and Gregorio and the staff of Comunidad de Ninos Montessori, who have created an exceptional place for kids in Puerto Plata--thank you for teaching Tallulah a new language and a new culture with so much love.

Work in progress

Luis sanding the mast

Adolfo

Callisto on the way to being awesome

There's a long story behind this photo, but suffice it to say, friend Nathalie, if you're reading this, thank you.

We're composting again, thanks to Adolfo's pigs, who will eat anything people eat, including coffee--no matter how old. 

We're living next to a big green beer sign (turned off now, to save power)--having moved, sprung, launched ourselves from Puerto Plata back to Luperón, so we can live in the same town for the first time since February, while Tallulah and I will take the guagua to her school in Puerto Plata for two more weeks. It's the one-year anniversary of our arrival in the Dominican Republic. A year ago I would have been hard-pressed to get to Puerto Plata at all. It has been a year of many changes. I feel, and I think I look, older. Maybe this is reversible. But the weight of knowing things is good ballast. Good for momentum, staying upright.  

The Zumba class across the street is ending with an exalted power anthem that gets me out of bed in time to enjoy lots of bandwidth--our internet access shared with several teenagers in this slightly sprawling household/warren of apartments. Dominican ladies who have risen early and donned their lycra shorts are filtering down the street now with bottles of water and a sense of having done the right thing. Out and about yesterday, we encountered a man selling bushels of a fruit that was new to us--I've seen them growing high on the trees, and tumbled to the sidewalk, or tossed, mostly eaten. They taste like cinnamon, sweet and sour cinnamon apples that crunch, leaving little fibrous hollows.

When Columbus Freed the Slaves...

I know I don't usually write about actually sailing...but I finally FELT like I wrote about sailing! This piece was just published in a totally cool new online magazine, Avidly.

http://www.avidly.org/2013/04/04/when-columbus-freed-the-slaves-and-other-tales-of-caribbean-colonialism/