This morning I take coffee black, alone, in the main house. The residents are off to work and the guests are sleeping, or swimming at Orange Beach. Something moves in the bouganvilla. A cat?
Banana leaves clatter like a hard rain against the veranda. I keep thinking I'm in the middle of a mystery novel about a writer who uncovers a crime while researching the latest book. James Bond, and all that.
This place strips us bare. I can't tell the dreaming from the waking. The clock rattles at 7 a.m. The maid asks how I want my eggs. My watch reads 4 a.m., Pacific time. Maid?
Dave Evans, founder of the
Napa Valley Poetry Conference, is the brainchild and midwife of this exotic adventure into poetry. The cast of poets is pretty extraordinary too. With the underwriting of a famous novelist's wife, we've managed to relocate the entire conference from the Napa wine country to the Bahamas. We are all poets in residence here.
I arrived in the archipelago of some 700 atolls and islands spread across 550 miles, a week early to help with the conference. But I spend most of my free time in the sea. I can't get enough of it. Dave is as red as a lobster. Kristine Lauretsen is a golden goddess. We drive to the tiny airport to welcome the poets.
Nearly all the poets come from California, and a few from New York, to attend this first international Bahamas writers' conference: a movable feast devours us.
But the sea is my siren call. Every dawn I hitch up my red pareau, precariously clinging to moist flesh, and head for the beach. My feet leave blue tracks in the pink sand. I take in humid mouthfuls of air. When I rise out of the ocean wearing my mask and snorkel, someone—
Gary Sange—tells me I'm a monster rising from the deep.
Fish dream while awake. I dreamed my mother called out to me and a conch shell sounded nine times to call the fish back home to the burial ground.
Carolyn Forché tells me to pull up my hidden memory. I take in a mouthful and choke on this confusion of sea and air.
Tongue of Ocean. Saline rivers 10,000 feet deep. Islands in the stream. I think of Hemmingway with his six-toed cats. But I'm not a fisherman. I take a quarter-mile swim. The shore is almost hidden by rolling swells. I am so far from home.
Lucayan
Arawak Indians once lined conch shells along the eastern shore of these islands to remind the sun of its feathered cloak. We eat sweet, white meat of the conch. What's no longer needed is thrown back into the jungle. The barracuda sleeps and the shark is hungry.
Columbus named the island San Salvador, within 25 years all 50,000 of the Lycayans were dead. Words from the Lucayan:
canoe, cannibal, hammock, hurricane and
tobacco.
Shells and sea grass line the small turquoise dory. Gary Sange and I row out to the staghorn coral forests and talk of Crane's "Open Boat." We're near-twins both born in San Francisco, but he teaches in Virginia, and talks constantly about his wife, a ballet dancer. We watch iridescent turquoise triggerfish with flanged cobalt brows turn from lime-green to yellow. He talks about her so much, I almost know her name. Our anchor knocks off a piece of staghorn coral. It sounds like glass breaking. We're killing the reef with our carelessness.
Bob Hass tells us, "Try and avoid the verb, "to be" in your writing. He and Carolyn Forché take scuba tanks down with an unlicensed guide. Bob's respirator fails. Last week, at 30 feet, someone drowned. He is abruptly reminded that the word
conspiracy is
to breathe together.
When Bob's childhood sweetheart and wife learned the lump was benign, they wildly celebrate, the rejoice, but we notice the mantle of her being is separating from Bob's. I like her tall blonde ranginess. There is a lovely unpretentiousness about her. We are both natives of Marin. It is an unexpected bond this far from home.
Sharon Doubiago says, "One of the names for death is Blondie." Dave will meet Blondie soon enough when he returns home to Napa. Bob's wife has escaped death this time, but her marriage doesn't.
The pufferfish rolls his peacock-blue eyes at me, takes grave insult, and indignantly puffs up the size of a grapefruit when I yank his tail with my toes. No sign of the parrot fish's sleeping mantle.
Dead sea grass sticks to my body like confetti. I'm a
Junkanoo festival in
goombay time. I dive into sea grass to look for a shadow, the rippled edge of a shell. Gary is my unofficial dive partner, but I ditch him because the sea calls me like a secret lover to school me in the ways of Aprhodite.
Sharon argues with Gary Sange over the merits of formal education. The Bible and the L.A. Times were her writing teachers. She said, "I began writing prose to fill in the gaps in my personal history." Gary's a formalist. They come to an impasse of near blows. I hold my tongue. Sharon is my friend. Gary is my friend.
From above, the queen conch blends in with the white sandy bottom. The edible conch has spires that cast shadows, making it easier to spot. The waves also cast rippling shadows on the sea bed.
Midnight swim. Something followed me in the water. Nothing I could see—just a presence as if it were watching my back. The night holds more terror for me than the sea.
Marcella Taylor asks us to write about our recurring dreams and landscapes. And to address the goddess within ourselves. The goddess is undressing me until I am bone-naked.
At Nassau Harbor, mountains of conch shells line the shore—some are the size of a man's head. From shells of these large sea snails, artificial reefs line the shore like thousands of discarded pink dentures. We voraciously eat a spicy aphrodisiac of conch fritters, and marinated conch salad pickled with peppers and lime.
Aphrodite's arms. So many of us slipping off for secret assignations. My first night here, a Bahamian fed me fritters but I knew what was up. I spend my free time alone as my man, John Oliver Simon, is at home waiting for me.
A fisherman complains how the conch is getting scarcer on New Providence Island. He has to dive deeper and farther from shore on the outer islands. One of the most promising of the young Bahamian writers, Garth is from Catt Island. He tells us stories Andros Island is where the freshwater wells rise and fall with the tides.
Fresh water floats above the saline river. The water is brackish and my thirst deepens. With red hibiscus behind our ears, we dance to the steel drum and rasping saw. I prefer the left ear, and come to find that means I'm free. Owned by no man.
Scattered coins: hundreds of sand dollars in the sand bank. Casinos with no clocks. "Those of us who live here can't gamble, even us Americans," E.Lane Moore tells me.
From this harvest of the Deep, huge bleached urchins nestle like pale loaves of the fishermen. When the moon is on the water, the barracuda comes collecting.
As we bathe in the sea,
bone white lilies of our arms
blossom under the full moon.
Translucent fish slide between my thighs.
Distant thunder wraps itself in sheets
of ghost lightning.
This morning, the reef breaks through blue silk and is wreathed in whitecaps. A lace gown on the sea.
Storm at sea.
One begins to understand the yielding shape of a palm tree during a storm.
"When the hurricanes come, the wind howls like a banshee. Then it's calm. Don't go outside. That's the middle of the eye of the storm," one of the Bahamian poets tells us. "Then it begins again. We fill the bathtubs with water. Everybody drinks and parties until it goes away."
Beyond the reef, a boy diving behind the boat is attacked by sharks and doesn't survive. I am chastised for sneaking out and diving alone. Again.
A barge of brackish water from Florida arrives to ease the tourist drought in the Cable Beach condominiums. The tourists and the unslakable thirst of casuarina trees and cotton suck the land dry. This is a desert jungle.
"We're beginning to see beyond the postcard vision," said Carolyn.
A crimson beach fig leaf stains the stone cannon and cart in front of the decayed colonial mansion facing the sea. Discarded blood. They say Bluebeard slept here.
Bob tells us the story of Jean Rhys' "Wide Sargasso Sea." Jane Eyre's story from the other perspective. "Calabanisms, he said. "How the colonial mentality separates you from yourself."
The Bahamas was a colony of Great Britain until 1973, and though 85% Black, the real power rested in the hands of a few Anglo Bay Street Boys. "But,"
Nathanial Mackey comments, "The structure doesn't change. Only the color of the skin does."
Marcella Taylor says, "I have non-exclusive feelings of race and nationality. I have problems with national boundaries."
In "The Gulf," Jamaican poet
Derek Walcott writes,"The process by which the poet writes is the vehicle to establish a national identity."
One Bahamian writer tells us," I don't know who I am. I'm not West Indies. I don't fit in with the Blacks, and in England I'm looked upon as a colonist. What am I supposed to be?"
The question of identity in the Bahamas is also a question of race. Many Bahamians refer to a constructed history which doesn't predate the end of slavery.
Nate Mackey observes, "This alienation is not theoretical."
Another Bahamian writer complains,"I have no stories to write about. My life is not interesting, not like yours." She recounts how her great-grandfather was thrown overboard in a wooden box and he landed on an uninhabited outer island. We sit, transfixed.
Carolyn and Bob tell them, "We came here to learn from you. We don't know your literature. You tell us."
We are not neo-colonialists come to re-enforce 300 years of dominant culture. We want to learn about the emerging genre of Bahamian writing by becoming students with them.
Until 1974, the Bahamas did not have educational institutions beyond high school which most of the Black population did not attend. The only place to get published is at College of the Bahamas, with its preoccupation for proper 19th c. British forms. It's all about mimicking Keats and Shelley.
There are two dialects: Queen's English and nation-speak, which is closer to our New Orleans dialect. Or Creole. Bahamians are careful to speak only Queen's English to us.
Someone asks, "Did you go over the hill yet?" A rite of passage. Blue Hill. Fox Hill. Hills here are relative. Yes, there are picturesque buckled houses with layers of blistered paint in brilliant hues. No windows or water.
A red leaf among the green like a snake in the garden. Fodder for our poetic appetites.
The land snails I collect in the jungle crawl away during the night. I follow glistening trails.
Bob Hass asks us, "What is opposite in your childhood that you poetically crave?"
Like cumbersome crabs, we swimmers crawl out of the ocean. A Black man walking along the shore sings out, "Hey coconut! Buy some." A woman selling shell necklaces croons, "Be good to me, Honey!" Gary indulges her.
Flame trees and tequila sunsets grate against an opalescent sea. The image of the full golden moon against silhouetted palms trees still won't leave me.
Sharon tells us, "Coming to another country, your consciousness changes."
All right, I'll admit I came here because I thought it sounded exotic. By day, ragged children sell shells by the docks and by night they steal water from the hotels.
He g'wan roun,
catch de drops o' wahter in da night.
Over da hill, he g'wan
roun.
The insidiousness of poverty settles into the psyche like a fine dust. Jungle flowers carry the pervasive odor of decay. Transplanted European ruins and casinos inhabit Paradise Island. We read poetry in a 14th century cloister transported from France.
I wait for the statue of Persephone to emerge into sunlight with one hand shadowing her face, and walk down these long corridors roofed by clouds to listen to the man reading poetry in her garden.
She stood in rapt attention for so long,
her marble features have softened.
Hoarded iron from slave ships
stained these white columns
and rust shavings blossomed in the sea.
"Down at da bridge. Get some snow, here. Only a dollah!"
I go over the hill and begin to see past the postcard. Sweet frangipani, almost foetid. Foliage entwines with rusted cans, bottles and conch shells glowing pink—a salmon sunset nestled in the leathery green leaves.
Rotting conch flesh claws my nostrils leading me deeper into the jungle. A feeling of trespass overcomes me as if we were peering up the skirts of our dead grandmothers—expecting to find a lover.
Marcella asks us to write what kind of animal we are.
At the governor's palace we're invited to tea and we stuff ourselves on delicate sandwiches as scantily clad models stalk down the ramp. Lady Cash officially welcomes us to the Bahamas.
This hand uncovers ghosts from the past. I photograph a jacket slung over a marble rail, sleeves luffing in the wind, like a boat without oars.
The van lurches down dirt roads, past shacks on stilts where kerosene lanterns illumine old men sitting in doorstoops. Barefoot kids run in front of us, shrieking with laughter. Only their teeth and the whites of their eyes shine in this darkness.
A small boy carries water in plastic gallon jugs. A slumbering pig on a tether grunts and returns to dreaming. A revival church with brilliant electric light jars me into the 20th century.
The sea breathes outside my window. The ceiling fan whispers to itself something I can't understand. A stranded cockroach buzzes in circles on his back. Mindful of them, we learn to shuffle our feet in the darkness.
A maid straightens up the day's clutter. I'm growing used to the maid. It's becoming easier to make invisible slaves, but our poetry is becoming rawboned.
What can one say that hasn't been said before about the tropics that hasn't been depicted on every postcard from here to Tahiti? Nathanial says it's possible to enter the consciousness of another.
Hot noon on an outer island.
The hermit crab,
afraid to leave his shell, died.
A small lesson of survival is illustrated for us. We have 128 circadian rhythms that control us during the course of a day making it difficult to adjust time.
Liquid silver eyes of translucent surf minnows—miniature eclipses swimming between my fingers. At home it will be hours before dawn breaks. At home, I will remember what Sharon said about us being aliens here. But I will also be an alien at home too.
When the sea grass dies,
it is whiter than this beach.
From here, my tracks look like those of a sea turtle. I ate the forbidden meat of the conch and dreamed of a thin man who came in darkness to kill me. My monsters become more tangible in this place. I waken to the thin reed sound of my own screaming.
Caught in a rip tide, I swim toward my dive partner, Gary, but I am trapped in a wall of water and I swim until I am exhausted. I hold his life in my hands. I am responsible for him. He swims farther out in the sea garden, oblivious of the danger. I have no choice but to follow him. Terror reigns. I break through the rip tide and it eventually carries us both safely to shore. I do not tell him of the danger we faced. He is new to the sea, swimming with confidence. My almost twin.
Marcella tells us the unconscious and poetry are alike. "Fiction focuses on a period of time. Try for a border between the conscious and unconscious."
She sends us out into the jungle alone. It begins to rain. I write, "There are trees here that have no names." But then, because they have no names, I can't continue. Nouns define and separate species.
Bob says,"What I like about poetry is that it's like lightning. The heart starts rushing toward some answers. Try and contradict yourself early on in the poem." But it's really about verbs after all.
A small nurse shark swims beneath my thighs. Cat eyes curious, she follows us in a slow game of tag a half a mile from shore. I hold out the queen conch in offering. Sensing danger, its mantle begins to coil around the lip of the shell, and my fingers like a large tongue.
The shark ignores the offering knowing it's inedible. Attracted by the minute traces of blood from my period, the shark follows us expectantly, waiting. Its ventral slits rhythmically opening and closing with the rise and falling of water.
Barbels, whiskers brush us as it circles. Through our snorkels we nervously laugh and look for the mother lurking on the edge of this murky celadon bowl.
As Gary and I head in, the shore slips beneath the distant thin green punctuation between sea and sky. We can only return to the sea as visitors.
An air bubble suspends a green bottle above the sand so that the neck scribbles unintelligible marks on the rippled bottom. We dive down and free the bottle from its tedious task. A guitarfish sweeps his mantle over hundreds of bottles filled with saline brew.
In the scrub brush along the cliffs, I find a bag of women's clothing. I look for bodies in the undergrowth.
My soul sleeps in the tropics
and I am separated from myself
for long periods of time.
Clouds cover the moon like a map of Africa.
Beneath the odor of frangipani,
blue-tailed lizards mate,
thrust out ochre bibs of ruffed lace.
Carolyn reminds us to keep our appointments with the muse, to pull up our hidden memory, and clarify our private emotions. Follow our inner rhythms.
Nathanial says, "Remember this small family of words, this endangered species. Think about your own boundaries as writers."
Bob adds, "Art is dialectical; it speaks in opposites. One way to tell the truth is to break all the rules."
Weightless, we drift in aquamarine and come up for air like seals. Sharon crests a mountainous wave as I slide into a trough. We dive for shells and collect fragments of poetry.
The wind catches her words and flings them over her shoulder like sea spray. I watch her lips move. I taste salt at the corners of my mouth. I taste the bitterness of this place. Bleached limestone cliffs push against a skin of jungle like bones jutting from the carcass of a dead animal.
The old sea bottom of coral and shell blinds me, reflecting the light back into my eyes.
Recipe: Begin each morning by returning to the cradle. Tread water. Feel salt sting on the lips. Breathe in humid air where the slow speech of words foams over the reef.
Begin.
Summer of 1985
© 1985 Maureen Hurley, at Orange Hill, Nassau Island, Bahamas. Portions of this essay have appeared in
Caribbean Writer and the Nassau Guardian. Glenna Luschei was supposed to make an anthology of our Bahama writing, and asked me to revise this, then never made the book. Story of my life. I remember being stuck on it, under deadline, and John Oliver Simon helped me revise it, banging away on his upright typewriter, circa September, 1985, when it reached its present form, but I'm posting it here for proximity purposes.
rev. 2007, and 2014
