(IN PROGRESS)

PREFACE

As the wind sends grains of sand stinging against my cheeks, I smile with gratitude. What a thing it is, to be here now. To be alive for this moment of ephemeral beauty, this miracle of an island home.

— Geraldine Brooks

The stories in this slender volume were not written with the idea that they formed a continuous whole, much less a book. (A number of them originally appeared, in similar form, in The Vineyard Gazette and other local publications.) But of course they are of a piece, despite their diversity. They record my sundry observations of the Vineyard over the past fifteen years. During this period I’ve spent increasing amounts of time on the Island; and I fully intend to die here, which should make me an Islander “by brevet,” as Melville says.  What further unites these pieces is that they are written in a fugitive voice, albeit in more than one register, and some are more fanciful than others. They are an escape from the dismal stylistic constraints that afflict much of my other writing.  Some are presented as prose, and some as poems; but the difference is obscure and unimportant. They are not overburdened by facts, although nothing has been knowingly falsified. What the Vineyard has given me is the freedom to discover this alternate voice, which is nothing less than a new connection (or disconnection) to reality. I think of it as newfound land: a string of uncharted inner islets on which I’ve made landfall in late-midlife and found (as it were) abundant wild grapes – although, as the latter phrase suggests, the writing process is never wholly unself-conscious. But never mind that. All that matters is whether the results speak to you, ring true – or at least beguile. Enjoy the grapes if you can. Swallow the seeds.