(The view from Calabash House terrace, February 2011.)
Except for my collaborator Tracy, everyone I know has been suffering from this summer's heat. Every night the weather map turns a deeper shade of red, and the humidity chokes the breath from our lungs. It has been an ugly month. So ugly, in fact, that it is difficult to comfortably conjure up the memory of our Around the Block Writers Workshop in Jamaica without wincing a bit. It was hot there. But as hot as here? (Here being everywhere in the United States except California where Tracy lives.) I can't remember.
What I do remember of our time in Calabash House on Treasure Beach comes back to me not from that week in February 2011, but from our recent week in Bemus Point, New York. The heat was just beginning to rise in those June-green hills of Chautauqua County, so it was not the temperature that triggered my memory. Rather it was the camaraderie of the writers who gathered there with us.
There is something about writers, some magical sense of wonder and joy in creating and sharing stories, that is positively infectious. We find ourselves longing to write more, to stretch out our necks out and try a different style, a new approach. We don't mind a challenge, because the act of stretching is a thrill in itself. We are, I believe, a special group, and we carry our enthusiasm for our writing wherever we go -- from bucolic New York to energized Dublin to tropical Jamaica. How could we not return to Calabash House again this winter?
Ah, yes, the heat. Let me think about this: the heat of a Jamaican beach in the dead, cold, middle of February. Once again I remind you that we are a special group, and we are happy to suffer for our art.
We hope you will join us.
