Looking for a secluded oceanside retreat...

...in case you should happen to have one available for next to nothing in which I might enjoy the recuperative salt air and warm breezes of the Carribean for a while or two (prior to my Netherlands campaign I should take respite in a hammock for a fortnight perhaps, pina colada at the ready, reggae music coming at me on all sides) or even I might stoop to a visit in yon Florida Keys midst mangoes and pelicans, why not?

Wherever is warmth is my heart and soul. I've had 66 winters in New England more or less and the novelty has worn off. I don't care if I ever see snow or ice again, which I may regret saying someday as I languish in the tropics with nothing to do but paint and read and write and eat and drink and smoke and...

But meanwhile...

We're in the midst of what is known as a silver thaw where all the
branches and roadways and everything is encased in gleaming shimmering ice
- o yes it's very beautiful - beneath an ice-blue sky peppered with huge white clouds driven by an occluded front which translates down here to a bone-chilling ten degrees as I tramp across the tundra arms loaded with ice-caked wood...wood so green it needs a blowtorch to get it going.

Who needs it!?

The hell with this mountain man/cabin in the woods bullshit, I want a hammock in the jungle about 50 easy yards from the azure sea, breeze wafting my sarong to and fro...buds of resin-soaked ganje at my beck and call, buckets of fruit, bottles of Red Stripe, the sun bursting forth in a shower of glorious color in the morning and folding at night into ink-blue darkness - all the while I've barely stirred save to turn the page, light a splif, take a swallow, maybe even kiss your pretty plum-colored lips if you should show up. (Please be a girl...)

Don't stay though; I do my fantasizing alone.

Not to worry I tell myself; nobody stays very long. `You're better on paper than you are in real life' is a regular refrain in my memory, and still true for which I offer no apology.