iseastars

On February 15^th I had the privilege of  returning to the enchanted Isles of the  Galápagos after a loveless day of supervising high school romance in Spanish class.  Some travel the world shuffling from base to base as army “brats” – I grew up on marine labs bouncing around in pursuit of biodiversity rather than battle stations.  I’m a science brat.  My first trip to the Galápagos was in the winter of 2001, an 8^th grade wannabe skater en route to the Equator with a packet full of Algebra problems and 4 weeks of English journals to pen; “TODAY I SAW BLUE FOOTED BOOBIES, AND THE NAME MADE ME LAUGH” such were foundations of my eventual pursuits of travel writing.   As the years passed, I stopped growing horizontally, perked from with a vegetarian diet I shot up to 6”1 and thus my scientific responsibilities evolved from that of snorkeling and splashing on the surface to taking an active role in biodiversity quadrats and phytoplankton samples.  In 2003 and 2004 I made trips with my “mate” from back home, the two of us passed the scuba diving class at the Woonsocket YMCA with flying colors, patiently waiting as the honeymooned couples en route to the Bahamas tangled up in regulator hoses and fresh romance.

On the first trip to the Galápagos us neophyte divers sucked through tanks in twenty minutes and mixed up our salt water samples while senior divers (padre,  Franz,  Jean Carlo) embarked on drilling barnacle recruitment plates into underwater cliffs.  We enjoyed “über diving” and fascinated by the RPG like status of scientific research, but as fifteen year olds with a patch of stubble, were keener on lying about our age and diving into drink-fueled discotekas.   Hard to say if we were more mature the next trip, we had a harder living conditions—no showers, no a/c leaking roof,  monster cockroaches, but still copious quantities of Caña Manabita, a famed local aguardiente, a fire water which lead us down paths of late night discovery, sophomoric searches for weed uncovering crack addicts,  pool-house drunks and women with impure intentions.  Afternoons spent playing fútbol or lounging on the white sands of Tortuga bay, us lethargic whipper snappers on a less rigorous diving schedule— me recovering from a tropical toe nail extraction, spurred by said “mate” dropping a 30 kilo  scientific instrument on my foot. As a vegetarian turning my nose to all meat- even fish, I  deflected calls of “mujer” and “maricón”  while friends smoked imitation Marlboros to fan the flames of teenage angst.

Marine Iguanas sunning themselves in the surf.

Returning as a twenty-something in year two thousand ten, I’d amended my ways of years past, getting the ya-yas out of my system after an undergraduate degree in the   psychedelic capital of the Northeast. By then I was a stronger and more capable diver and understood the ecological and oceanographic concepts of studying the El Niño/ La Niña cycles.  Though there were a few wrenches; a suspected tiger shark sighting freaked me out, coming back to devour my dreams and chase me into late night perspiration, the green LCD flashed from 3:59 to four, another hour before trudging out to the dock, suiting up and facing the uncertainty of the dark depths. I didn’t quite get along with  my father’s student an extroverted Ivy where I was more of a sharpened evergreen. Yet my spirits were lifted by a chance encounter turned week-long romance with a salsa dancer with a wicked sense of humor who taught me a thing or two about South America which I won’t  soon forget. Continue reading →

From wreck diving in Malaysia, to street discos in Cambodia,  2012 has been an exciting year for me.  Thoughts of murder and marriage flickered through my mind while thumbing through Tibet. It pained me to wrap up my laowai lifestyle in China, but I turned over a new leaf in “maturity” ahem,  as a substitute teacher in my local district.  Though based on my days in “high” school, one would rarely think of me as a role model,  I’ve come full circle,  circumnavigating the globe  to plop myself back at Ponaganset.  Not gonna lie, it’s pretty weird, especially with  WBRU  90′s week on  the radio, kids in the hallways with their OSIRIS skate shoes, I expected to see Hardy, Ben or Chris A leap out from  hallway.

So I reached a goal I set for myself last year,  I finished a novel.  Although I started 2 last year,  ~25k words deep into my made up eco punk sub genre,  in November I started from scratch and wrote Laowhy?  summing up with 75,307 words ~ 280 ‘book’ pages.  Much editing is in line, but I’m hoping to push it onto publishers and self publish if need be.   Psyched about Germany,  I’m set on started a masters program sometime in 2013, and patiently awaiting  tech haus  at Tresor.  I have about 133 days of subbing between  now and my plane ticket.   There’s no techno send off like Panda last year,  hobbling around on my wounded knees,  happy to be  squatting like a champ now, bring it on 2k13 its gonna  be  we wee  weeeeee!

Over the past year I’ve been slugging out fragments of a novella-in-progress.  The working title is “Breathe Deep” but I’m actively brainstorming new ideas in term of something more hip and succinct.  I think this may go in the direction of illustrated novel (as reccomended by  Sascha ) perhaps even bordering elements of a comic book as  it is a pretty cut and run sadistic action story of  betrayal and revolution doused with ecological themes set in a  post globally-warmed world.  Now that I’m officially “working” (8 parts diablo  2 parts novella-writing) on the 5th installment I felt that it would be beneficial to compile it all in one chunk of .pdf file so that you lovely readers could hack away and tell me what’s resonating with you.  Of course I have my own vision for this piece of fiction but what I value is some feedback from you endeared  cyber stalkers  and internet trolls.

Again the link to the story is here

Let me know if you can’t download it and would like a copy sent via email

BTW Bonus points for IRL trolls. Heh heee