Periplum...

"Deep greens and blues
are the colors I choose,
won't you let me go
down in my dreams..."

James Taylor, "Sweet Baby James"

Epi-graph, not Epitamy:



Long after the champagne bottles break upon the christened bow, a ship sails away. No navy waves the blue-green water on, under a big sun—that orange behemoth that goes down in the green flash I saw upon the horizon the other night, out in the middle of the Atlantic, where 50-foot megallon sharks once roamed the deepest waters।
Our wake is not history, just simulation—a periplum, or chart made while moving, that lets us evaporate the already faulty memory...



We began in Miami. I stood before the ship and just stared, letting the blue wave of paint lead the eye up to the white caps of the top decks। This is where the chart begins. This mouse's eye-view of the ship is distorted, full of lies, like every other map. I'm remembering Mark Monmonier's How Maps Lie, and the life of Mercator, who my own saint, Paul, knows so well.

On a late-night run for small supplies I watched sewer rats slink by by the shivering poodles elderly guests at the Intercontinental Hotel were walking in Bayfront Park.

Walked over the bridge that roars with trucks headed to the port by day, but remains silent at night, when the containers are still being loaded, each full of goods and darkness under the bright lights on the piers. Went up the gangway. Entered the room made for hobbits, the bed too small for a Viking Beer-Clan warrior ready to be an Ambassador of the Inner Ear, stepping through the pitch and roll of every culture beckoning. All the cabinets have locks magnetized against the swells, all anchored against the tip-off.





Deck 7 is the crow's nest and bridge, but also a big outside bar, pool and weight room. Deck 5 and 6 have the large dining rooms, and the hearth is the rotunda on Deck 5, where the Bursar's Office controls the staff, and another desk the students. My room runs against the port side, above the anchor, with no balcony. But the portal is a wee window shrine, where I'm collecting the flotsam and jetsam of this journey.

I take a last look up at the ship, and wave goodbye to the two Cubans who ran the cheap supply store downtown, so deeply bored with the cruise ship trade, and everything available for less than a buck. Then the night arrived. The skyline is a lie: there's no glitter past the kitsch of South Miami Beach, full of disco balls and the same black leather jackets. Van Dyck's wee jazz bar and blues at Tobacco Road is about it.

Memory is the bridge: suddenly, standing before this great ship, I am back in the wee wooden dory, trimmed against the rapids, last summer in the Grand Canyon:



When it isn't reflected, or is too lazy to be absorbed, light bends, is tugged along past the containers...





We've cleared the port, where space is time, and time is money. We have to vamoose to make room for the Carnival Cruise ships. Further out, we anchor, with the skyline as our backdrop...



After several days at anchor, we begin a fast-paced trip toward the Bahamas. Suddenly we're there, amidst the hordes of disembarking Twinkies from the cruise ships, ready to buy something to talk about at the midnight buffet. It's mostly t-shirts, but I buy a cheap watch that will continue to re-set itself to Bahamas' time.

And I add some bourbon and scotch, to get me across the wide Atlantic. The parents' reception is a chance to visit with those alumni who have been in this program, remembering not what their children will do, but what mattered to them, long ago. I do manage to take a long walk around Nassau, where I found the bar I should manage, closed: The Taj Mahal—all red clay and yellow sun, like India...



Palaces and offices are living, colonial memories.



It's about dinner time in the Grey Cliff Hotel in Nassau, where couples drift in from the ginormous cigar bar. Beautiful flowers bloom like scars, and the verandahs beckon parties:



Bay Street and the downtown are deserted when the big ships leave, but by late evening the pimps and streetwalkers head toward the loud music upstairs in mid-town, while the remaining tourists drink at Senor Frog's. A cement church might withstand the hurricanes, but is charmless next to the old, wooden frame houses:





I love the ropes, braided and spliced to anchors disappointed they will never reach the deepest trenches. Wilson Harris' story about anchors is always with me, reminding me to hold on and let go. Each port will give us an excuse to let go again...



The New World was a series of doors (we'll see the spawn in Spain and Africa). The slaves walked through these doors, but brought their remembered handiwork with them, including not only drums they would make, but blacksmithing—the dream of wrought iron:



Then the tugs I love appeared, nudging us out into the Atlantic: