Given the waning west wind would only increase, the way it always does in August out here, I feel no pressure but to sit and write more while listening to the waves churning into gargatuan frosted tipped whitecaps mulling the shoreline down the stairs that lead there. If you didn't know any better, you might be so inclined to think that magic is real when you see one of the sailboats traveling was into the wind, all the while its sails somehow (magically) going against the grain of the winds' momentum.

And maybe it is. Not one to speculate beyond the confines of the laptop sitting right in front of me, the written words leading me...somewhere, 'spose. Yet look at them go, cruising quickly into the protected waters of Sandy Cove off in the distance where, at night, all you can see are the lights atop all those masts jutting the horizon. An inclination that life is also there. A miniscule suggestion of an aquatic city sparkling and shimmering in the night, different from all those cottage lights dotting the shore.

It's not at all relatable to those floating marvels down off North Eluethra. Not one bit. Sitting on the balcony on the upper story of the rented pink house, I'd been drinking all evening by myself, thinking thoughts of how in the hell I could manage to live here and not back in Canada. Second trip was just like the first, except more lonely, more isolated, more of the same old running and hiding from what was waitin' for me back home, a meer 3 hour flight north.

Still, I'd been full of piss, ate spaghetti, watched the entire Carribean descend under a blanket of stars, and there...right there off the beach on the horizon was a city that hadn't been there before, as if goddamn Atlantis itself had risen again from myth into reality. Yes, my jaw dropped. Save for the fact that for a few brief moments what I was seeing, the image my eyes tried desperately to relay back to my brain, drunk, wasn't commuting, I thought maybe, just maybe, I'd witnessed magic.

Then, to the surprise of every single soul that I'd imagined to be standing in awe around me, pointing, exclaiming, staring in various states of incomprehensible marvelling at the great lost city risen once more, it starts to sink. The horizon swallows Atlantis once more, and she is gone forever again. I plant my ass in the sand, a land crap ducks into an overturned row boat on the shore, while I stare and think "you drunk son of a bitch."

Moments later It dawns on me that it was a cruiseliner on it's way west, maybe to the Florida coast, maybe not. But also dawning on me is that I'm too drunk, too unstable, too much of a wreck to be out this late on an island where I'm a guest, so I stumble back home up at the top of Tenth, and turn in.

Those mast lights stay put all night though. I watch them, the lowest stars in the sky never moving but always posing, poised for departure right before the sun rises and greets another day here in come-here-to-retire country.