Pretend it's September 01

The students I'm working with have arrived and not a minute too soon. Grey and I can now attest that the maximum amount of time one can spend on a tropical island without a sense of purpose before going mad is 30 days (hence you're pretending to read this on 9/1). After the initial Woohoo, we're here! No more Brooklyn for a long, long, time. Yay! And, so long subway, you suck and smell like pee in the summer anyway! And we're off to the beach on a Tuesday morning, and we're in the pool and it's mid-day Wednesday - I'm here to report that after all of that will come, huh, so what do you want to do today? Dunno, what do you want to do? It's amazing, at least it amazes me, how quickly that time came. I thought for sure we'd be here months before any kind of malaise set in, and that by then my students would be here and I'd be too busy with them to notice. But it (boredom, ennui, heat paralysis) arrived and as soon as the students started to come in I felt a huge relief that now I could stir myself and begin to work.

This happened once before. In winter 2006 I was in Carriacou researching my mother's side of the family. We were supposed to be there for just under a month and had been anticipating the trip for about two years. Massive mental hype. The actual work consisted of finding surviving relatives from my maternal side and chit-chatting with these octa- and nonagenarians, not especially taxing work and there was plenty of time left over for swimming and exploring the rest of the island. But it turned out that the rest of the island was about the size of Prospect Park with a hill rising in the middle that gave you a scarily water-bound 360 of the rock you were resting on. That's not reassuring to a New Yorker (and guess what, I am a New Yorker, you can't live for eighteen years in a place and not be of it. I've made my peace with that fact in the last few weeks, too).

I'll tell you what happened in Carriacou and what started happening here as well: I decided, quite irrationally, that I wanted to give up writing and academia and become a Producer. I have not a clue what being a producer entails, I can't specify what the heck it is I want to produce, but it always just seems like such a vital, energetic profession, like you're a mover and shaker and you get things done and you have to be at your job by 5:30 a.m., dressed sharp with a blue tooth-thingy and a big cup of Starbucks and multiple people to fetch and carry out your orders. So by the beginning of last week, I was back to wanting to be a producer.

It hasn't been just me, either. About two weeks ago, we're all sprawled in the gallery and Helen Dekker gets up with an incredible sense of purpose, puts on her sandals and asks me to do the buckles, puts on her hat and begins to walk down the front steps. When I ask, 'Hel, where're you going, babe?' She says, 'to a restaurant, to meet some friends.' This is followed the next day by her taking to her bed, blanket drawn up to her chin and announcing, 'Poor Helen Dekker. I have no friends.' Her daycare has righted that situation, and now she's with the big kids, about to get a uniform and having a great time.

And so the students have all arrived. They've started their classes this week and are eager to explore Trinidad and I have so many activities planned for their spare time that hopefully they'll not have the time to be bored. They are quite a bright bunch, probably future doctors and engineers and lawyer and I'd hate to have to be on the telephone with one of their parents explaining why their child came back from Trinidad wanting to be a producer.

Love from all of we.