Retreat to the Dominican Republic

The weather in Toronto hadn’t even settled below zero yet, but already weeks of sitting alone in my apartment and pacing restlessly from coffee shop to coffee shop in my neighborhood, trying to write, were giving me cabin fever. All work and no play makes Pipes a dull girl.

I had to get away; away from my too-familiar city, away from the barking dog in the apartment downstairs, away from my darling partner whose comings and goings to the daily grind of his office reminded me of the routine, society and paycheck I’d abandoned. I needed to know: would writing be easier if I changed settings? If I removed the temptations of cooking, cleaning and reliable Internet?
Just like that, I bought a cheap flight to the Dominican.

The salt air blowing off the sea is soft and moist, impregnating the paper of the books I brought along, bending the pages into curvy waves. By noon, everything looks like it has been dropped in a bathtub, including me.

My body, unprepared for a sudden thirty degree change in weather, is sweating like a bucket that has sprung multiple leaks. My hat, shirt and shorts are soaked in a potent stew of sunscreen, bug spray and intermittent rain.

Hours of grinding my teeth over downtown noise pollution seem hilarious now. I should know better; planet earth is noisy by nature. You can’t travel expecting silence, just a change of audio scenery.

Leaving behind the week-long fire alarm testing in my condo, I now have the operatic yawps of tree frogs in the bamboo outside my mesh-screened bedroom window. Instead of wailing sirens I have the roar and bellow of tropical storms, rain pounding on the metal roof, winds howling through the palms. In place of the high-pitched yapping of a toy canine, there are the mournful caterwauls and angry hissing of feral felines, and the distant boom of Latin beats from trucks parked on the beach.

On my first night, I lay awake, not so much from the new sounds I could hear, but straining for one that was missing. Staring up at the gauzy curtain of the mosquito net I’d brought from home, I waited for the tell-tale bzzz alerting me to the fact that I was about to donate blood without consent. I heard nothing.

My bug fear approaches the levels of paranoia that some people have about zombies, nuns, or republicans. I can’t help myself, the little bastards terrify me. But the beach is not the jungle, and armed with an extremely liberal coating of DEET (I spray my legs and feet so vigorously that they look shellacked – my toenail polish has melted off in several places from the chemicals) I have so far managed less than 10 itchy bites, all on my legs. We’ll see how I fare over the next 10 days.

There are, of course, other bugs. This is the tropics; living things of all shapes and sizes thrive in a hot, damp climate. Unseen but distantly present are the creatures of nightmare: tarantulas, cockroaches, millipedes. Ever present but equally invisible are minute sand fleas, midges and ants so incredibly wee that you could easily mistake one for an eyelash or a speck of dirt until you see them moving.

While not as small as the head of a pin, Dominican ants are smaller than the head of a pen, and move easily under and over my laptop keys looking for who knows what. Miniscule vultures of the bug world, they collect trash and keep things tidy. In a real-life Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I’d killed the one mosquito I found and left its tiny carcass on my desk, as a warning to other winged marauders. Within twenty minutes it had vanished, carried away like Gulliver by the Lilliputians.

Beauty is extravagant here. Lizards and geckos repose on shady branches and sun themselves on red tiles. Hummingbirds sip from hibiscus blooms. Carved wooden parrots look out at trees rustling with yellow-bellied Bananaquits and the abundant brown-and-cream streaked Palm Chats, beaks chattering, feathers fluttering.

Gardening in the Dominican is not the delicate activity of care and preservation that it is in Canada. Back home the tools of the trade are greenhouses, watering cans, fertilizers, shovels and hand-held pruning shears. In the tropics it boils down to two essentials: the machete and the rake. First you chop back, then you clear the debris.

Plants I know only as indoor exotics grow in the open air here, and seem to have been fed magic growth serum. Avocados are massive, the size of a child’s head, falling with a heavy thud from roadside trees. Coconuts abound, and I’ve been warned not to fall asleep under any shady fronds in case a ripe husk succumbs to gravity and plummets to earth, delivering a fatal conk to my head. At the market, fat plantains and jumbo papayas sit on the shelf next to massive jugs of vanilla extract, green and brown bottles of cerveza and fragrant bags of rich, cheap coffee.

Eating has been entertaining. I’ve tried the traditional meal known as La Bandera (“The Flag”), which is a simple, inexpensive and tasty dish of rice, beans and meat. Yesterday I had a bony but delicious goat stew with arroz (rice). My first night, on a gourmet splurge, I had coconut shrimp with Cuban appetizers full of taro and plantain at a patio on the beach. I’ve enjoyed the local beers, Presidente and Bohemia.

Tonight I hope to taste the local wine. There is only one; grapes aren’t a big crop on this island. Made in Puerta Plata, it’s a light red – just 8% alcohol, but the packaging is pure genius.

Here is my description of the label: A smiling bodybuilder with a physique like the Incredible Hulk and a face like David Hasslehoff flexes his muscles in front of a violently yellow background. Below, a slender purple band insists that this is not actually liquid steroids, but in fact, red wine or “vino tinto”. At the bottom, a bright red band tells us the macho brand of this honest brew: La Fuerza! This translates to “The Force”, suggesting that drinking enough of this stuff will help you perform Jedi mind tricks.

Despite the compelling name, I strongly suspect that this will not be the wine I am looking for, and that I will move along, shortly after my first sip.

Hasta luego, Pipes.

NaNoWriMo: Day One

It seems absurd to want to join in a month-long frenzy of novel writing when I have already subjected myself to the pain and anguish of a year-long frenzy of novel writing, but we writers are crazy folk. Frankly, I will take whatever motivation is readily available to help put words to screen.

In case you haven’t heard of it, NaNoWriMo is an annual (November) novel writing project that brings together professional and amateur writers from all over the world. “Thirty days and nights of literary abandon!” they proclaim on their site, as folks who feel they have a book in them try to squeeze, wrench, pry and jackhammer it out over the course of 720 grueling hours. That guy who cut his arm off after a mere 127 hours knows nothing of our suffering. No time for editing. No time to reach for a thesaurus. Just write, write, write.

My modus operandi does not often result in linear storytelling, so I shudder at the idea of trying to patch together dozens of disjointed scraps of scenery and dialogue into a publishable piece in just 30 brief days. However, I do like the immediacy and panic of the thing, and the sort of wartime “we’re all in the trenches” mood brought on by thousands of disenfranchised literary souls striving together to carve their letters into the shining firmament, etc. etc.

So, in honour of this month of extreme creative force, I will try to post some writing tidbits for the enjoyment of the public, in a serial fashion, just like early Charles Dickens only with fewer coal scuttles and absolutely no monetary compensation for my pains. Here is today’s short piece (about 600 words), brought forth by my excruciating afternoon encounter with a car alarm. Enjoy!

~~~
THE FOLLOWING IS MOSTLY FICTION, EXCEPT THE BIT WHERE I IMAGINE HITTING THE CAR, WHICH WAS BASED ON ACTUAL RAGE. I DID NOT COOK A TURKEY TODAY. ALSO, MY NAME IS NOT DREW.
~~~

The car alarm had been going off for two solid hours now, blaring away, a demonic metronome. Drew stood, teeth clenched, eyelids narrowed, and glared out the window at the street below. The offending Audi was flashing its hazards on and off, on and off. It reminded her of the annoying light show at a downtempo rave she’d attended during her unfortunate teen years. No menacing thief skulking nearby, no apologetic owner fiddling with the lock; no silence in sight.

She wanted to run outside and wreak havoc on the car with a blunt instrument. In her mind, she envisioned the baseball bat or broom handle or rolling pin smashing down on the hood, breaking through the windshield with a satisfying crunch, peppering the dashboard with shattered glass and all the while, hitting, hitting, the flailing rhythm of her devastating blows keeping perfect time with the incessant honking like a mad animal percussionist.

The pounding would continue until her makeshift weapon ploughed deep enough into the car’s circuitry to find and destroy the Central Honk Apparatus or whatever that damned evil source of noise was called. Then, bliss, as the honks hushed to a hoarse flatulent whisper, falling out of tune, and at length the three-thousand pound steel music box from Hell would wheeze its last foul breath.

It was probably for the best that she had a turkey slow-roasting at 325º, and water boiling on the stove, as overseeing the kitchen meant Drew could not follow through on her dark fantasies of vehicular annihilation. Snap! On went the oven light, a quick bend at the waist, and she peered upside-down into the greasy darkness. The bird was browning nicely, oozing clear juices into the pan where they bathed waiting carrots and parsnips, releasing a pungent smell of sage and pepper into the air.

Striving for holiday cheer, Drew took a calming breath as she straightened up, and exhaled into sudden, peaceful silence. The racket had finally stopped! She peered out the window, but the driver was nowhere in sight. Either the coward had used a remote-control keychain to deactivate the alarm, or else the kind manufacturing engineers at Audi had built a pity-timer into their anti-theft system.

Drew gathered a dishtowel into her hand, reached over the front burner, and lifted the heavy lid to check on the potatoes. Hot clouds of steam billowed forth, revealing dancing vegetables bouncing up and down in their salty, starchy tub. Done. Boiling water was sluiced off into the sink, and the resulting roar seemed to resolve itself into the resurrected rhythm of the car alarm.

“Lord, no!” Drew thought, “Please not again.”

She held herself rigidly still and listened, muscles tense with expectation, but the alarm was no more: it was only the ghost of the dreaded sound, haunting her. Sailors often feel waves under their legs long after leaving the sea for the steady shore; so did Drew’s ears now play ventriloquist’s tricks on her, projecting phantom sounds into her brain. Time to quit cooking and take a walk, perhaps.

Checking the turkey with a fork, she covered it with tin foil and let it rest. Nothing else needed urgent attention; broccoli could be steamed later, cheesecake was chilling in the freezer. Pulling off the apron her brother had given her last Christmas that read, “I like cats, too! Let’s exchange recipes,” she washed her hands, pulled on her black pea coat and purple mittens, and decided to treat herself to a seasonal latte. Something spiced or maple-flavoured, full of syrup and joy.