The Southseas

"All my life the early sun has hurt my eyes, he thought. Yet they are still good. In the evening I can look straight into it without getting the blackness. It has more force in the evening too. But in the morning it is painful." Old Man and the Sea



They started with a casual paddle to the south shore of North Captiva Island.  This had always reminded him of Old Hemingway, Papa, who had finally found his home in Cuba where he would, for better or worse, write his life away as it had been inspired by the authentic aqua colors of the ocean there.  There was the lightness that came with it, the innocence, is what he had achieved there temporarily, as the washings of the most beautiful of beaches held the visage of long cane poles dunking and weaving against the surf.  There were city fisherman all over the world, no matter where you lived, the day fisherman, but nothing like that of Cuba, who you could see in the creases of the eyes the thousand days against the sun of the sea, the redding of the cornea and the clarity of the blue pigment which revealed the sea inside.  That was this island similarly because it was still raw and not entirely roaded.  Manatees ruled the waters, pumas and wild boars still roamed the strange mangrove woods and the raptors could see the struggling fry along the surface from five hundred feet.  This was the different world, that of Jose Gaspar, Captiva pirate, who hid the enslaved and the treasures around these very bays. Captiva, yes, the grandfather thought, what a place to be held captive! They rode a short wave into the surf and looked out at the straight where his once high masted schooner now sat under eight feet of water.  If he would have closed his eyes he did not know if he might show in Papa's old book or in the annals of the pirate's log.