↑ Vantage pt for Jay Levine at tippity top of crow's nest before he jumped.
Das Boot: the first and perhaps most profound of the Dreamscape categories in that it describes not only the day-to-day adventures of a Caribbean escape, but also a moment that was much of a fulcrum or a rubicon for everyone involved, both a gathering and a dispersal. They were all twenty-four or twenty-five years old, an age where everything in the past seems like prologue and the next turned page is where the story really begins. There was a lot of debate about what comes next: plans hatched, destinies reconsidered. And soon after: Sebastian heading for Brazil, Christoph to Argentina, Helene to New Zealand, our pal Jayson and Natalie both to New York City. And the more we studied these pages, the stronger the urge became to apply allegory and deeper significance to everything that was written. And although 'reality' strongly resists such neat and tidy structuring, nonetheless here it is.
-- Eds
x
Das Boot (27/33)
December 23, 1990
Choose a different dreamscape
A chess/art sculpture? Chris’s idea, but he knows, considering his lack of chess enthusiasm and knowhow the likelihood of abandonment and therefore suggests passing the idea on to me. I balk, saying something about the enormity of the responsibility. If I accept, I would be chained and required, sometime, to do it. I don’t necessarily want that.
Nattie gone. No more. Finitó… sniff. I shed a tear, for I am, of course, the next in line. Two more full days. One is X-mas. Tomorrow I venture to Castries, to the market where I bought my hat 19 days ago, in order to purchase food for xmas feast and toilet paper.
A long lazy sail from a northern campground bay to Marigo, another sardine-like lagoon repleat w/distant music (street party at JJs; we know better…) and monster cruise yachts w/tinted windows and satellite navigation equipment, and plush carpets and drunken, stoned kids w/nothing better to do. And the Aliasés (especially Helene and Christoph) comment on the disgusting tendencies of the working class to vacation from 9-5 moneymaking hell in large boats w/music, drugs, alcohol. They say that people’s lives and vacations should be somehow linked so they don’t feel the need to prove through excess that they have escaped. I agree, but with reservation. Most people don’t quite have the luxury of arranging it that way. Seems perhaps a perspective of privilege, I suggest. But there’s a truth to be glimpsed in there somewhere.
A long lazy sail with the spinnaker all colorful and ballooning before us. Lazy + slow. Sun hot against our faces and chests. Water languidly lapping our hull.
The lantern by whose light I write is rapidly running out of kerosine. I can barely see the page. The light dies. How will I set up my bed? Probably badly… I can’t see at all, I am now writing in complete darkness.