GREETINGS FROM CALABASH 2006:

A LITTLE PIECE OF LITERARY HEAVEN

Ah, bliss.

Had I known this is what the literary life could be like, I would have written a book 15 years ago.

Walking into Jake’s resort here at the wonderfully pristine Treasure Beach on Jamaica’s quiet southern coast was like dropping through a rabbit hole and winding up in a tropical Wonderland.

Color. Everywhere.
Waves crashing on the coral shoals a few feet from the veranda . . . a few feet from our canopied bed.

A pelican diving for his breakfast as we sip strong coffee and listen to the hush of the surf and the song of a hundred birds singing us awake.

Two friendly lizards the color of khaki pants greet me in the oudoor shower, the walls of which are covered in a mosaic of conch shells, colored glass and shards of china. A huge coral boulder (with a shell-shaped piece of black, flowered ceramic (circa 1920, seemingly) serves as my soap dish. I nudge a skittish and translucent gecko as I reach for my bar of Neutrogena.

As I write this now, a tiny mocha-brown lizard less than an inch long is running up and down the bubble-gum pink wall behind the writing desk and below the framed poster from the 1972 film “The Harder They Come.” (Its director, Perry Henzell, is the proprietor of Jake’s with his wife, Sally, who was the art director for the seminal Jamaican film starring Jimmy Cliff.) Sally’s designed most of Jake’s herself and her boundless whimsy and creativity show. Everywhere. It’s a marvel.

This morning Maury and I joined a dozen other writers for an excursion in a long boat (named Natural Mystic)

(here our fearless leader, the novelist Colin Channer — who has the best, most infectious laugh I’ve EVER heard — herds us onto Natural Mystic)

to the Black River to see crocodiles (we saw three — up close and a little personal for this writer) and scores of egrets and other avian life.

Along the way we were accompanied by dolphins. Amazing creatures. I think they were even more intrigued with us than we were with them. A magic moment.

Next stop was the Pelican Bar — aptly named. It’s on stilts in the middle of a sand bar. Another wonder of this wondrous place.

Here are a few photos from our morning adventure on Day 1 of Calabash (the Woodstock of the Caribbean)…

God Girl and her main congregant at the Pelican Bar:


Chris Farley, the journalist and author of the new book Before the Legend, about the early days of Bob Marley’s life, and his lovely wife Sharon relax at the Pelican Bar:

Ishle Park (the poet laureate of Queens, NY) chills in the Pelican Bar’s hammock:

Tonite we’ll hear the actor Delroy Lindo read from Iron Balloons, Calabash’s new anthology. And tomorrow the festival begins in earnest with thousands in the audience and hours of poetry, fiction and non-fiction (including yours truly) readings, followed by music long into the seductive Jamaican night.

I could get used to this …