How to Live On an Island Paradise

As the ferry slows its speed, aisles of seasick tourists slacked against their seats with faces of disheveled relief, feel a certain superiority. Feel everything. Be sure of everything. The boat docks with a thud like the last train pulling into Grand Central Station, like a vessel to your own deliverance. You know nothing about this place but you can put your finger on its pulse already, steady as the surge. And honey, you’re home.

Go overboard at first. Glassy-eyed and barely lucid, let days glaze by cathartically, gluttonously, hair growing long, saturated by sweat and salt, tangled in the fingers of flings, tossed and twisted by the salty wind, hanging limp as your eyelids in the early morning heat. Maintain, sustain, endure; sipping on unending drinks as decorative and insubstantial as everyone here. Like a religion, the island encourages your capacity for illusion, then has you believe it’s a fucking virtue.

Bend your definitions of “fresh” or “hot” water. Also “internet.” Build your island family.

Get hurt. Again and again until you don’t, or you leave, whichever comes first. Then behave recklessly with the hearts and compassions of others, unbridled by consequences, absorbing the increasing costs with your own narrative. Realize most of the people you’re around have processed this evolution already. Trip on the instability…