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Go To Come Back: Journal of a Caribbean Eaveswatcher

by Janet Berliner

This month, writing through a period of dreadful pain, I wrote my first children’s novel. Despite the obvious adversity, I thoroughly enjoyed the work. Apparently my editor did, too, given that She “couldn’t put it down,” called it a book for kids from eight to eighty, and sent a check at once.

I have four novels-in-progress. I pulled up the one I had thought I would finish next, but my thoughts went elsewhere. What I really needed was to take a trip. Knowing that could not be, I started to feel sorry for myself.

Fortunately that state of being bores me very quickly, so I turned my thoughts to traveling days and started to write. Since I can’t find words without a title, I called what I was writing GO TO COME BACK: Journal of a Caribbean Eaveswatcher.

See what you think–

A writer who is traveling should study guidebooks and take voluminous notes.
The operative word there is should. The postscript is: Do what works for you.
In 1945, I flew on a plane for the first time. I was six years old, alone, and had a mastoid in each ear. I did not take notes.

Ten years later, I cruised the Indian Ocean from Cape Town to Durban and back. I brought home a beautiful, hand embroidered evening bag–which is now haute couture–and a pristine, empty notebook.

In-between, there were trains and cars and buses. At twenty-one, I left South Africa on a ship bound for Southampton, the first of countless trips to countless towns, cities, and countries.

Almost every time I took with me a clean notebook, but good intentions notwithstanding, I was always too busy eaveswatching on the world to make notes. I added a tape recorder, but didn’t use it.

Finally, I decided to make a simple camera my notepad. The first photo I took was of my foot in black sand. South Africa’s beaches are pure white; I didn’t know there were black sand beaches, and pink ones, and ones like Nice, covered in pebbles and half-naked ladies.
My mother was angry at my extravagance when she saw the photo. “Can’t you be more careful? All you got was a foot.”

She didn’t understand that my only stupidity was not writing date and location on the back of the photo. That foolish omission led me to collect local newspapers, travel brochures, and postcards along the way.

I continued to take pictures and added the device of writing letters to a carefully chosen friend, one who would keep them for me as a journal to be used on my return.

The letters were greatly appreciated, but somehow didn’t come back to me.

For me, travel meant renewal. It meant filling the void left after finishing a book or a relationship; it was also fodder for my stories. Yet hard as I tried, writing it all down the first time I went to a new place diminished the experience. There it was, sealed in ink, rather than a memory that lingered and grew in my head and heart and soul.

But here’s the rub.

While, for the most part, I didn’t make notes in foreign parts, almost all of my work is primarily set outside of where I live. Not only does travel inspire me after the fact, but I find it difficult to write a story set in a place I haven’t visited, even for as little as a few hours. In a very short time, I can get to know the smells and the colors and the texture of the air. I can see how people walk, the way they talk to one another, and the way they view strangers. One of my favorite people, a writer who is talented, rich, and famous, got that way by writing multiple books set in a country he’d never seen. For that, he has my admiration. Heaven only knows I’ve tried, but I just can’t do it.

It wasn’t until 1992, forty-seven years after that first plane ride, that I realized my travel affliction was not unique to me. I was discussing his book, Travels, with Michael Crichton and learned that he reacted exactly the same way I did. Even when he knew he was going somewhere to do research, it was only after the second or third visit that he buckled down to note-taking.

Nothing, he said, could change the fact that we had seen everything through the eyes of a writer, because that’s who we were. In retrospect, that was exactly what I had done. My conscience felt clear.

I do my best thinking either pacing or in a bathtub. That night, sitting in a tub after a full day spent interviewing Michael, I tore a sheet of paper out of the notebook next to the tub and fashioned a little boat, which I floated in the water. Watching it, my mind drifted to my travels and to the area of the world that always calls me to come back, the Caribbean.

In Israel I had found brotherhood neutralized by contention and a profusion of dried figs; in Greece I had found white sands and black olives; in America, I found Fig Newtons blooming on Supermarket shelves, along with warnings of calorie and fat content. In Spain…

…”You’re doing Europe at the wrong time,” someone said. If this is Tuesday it must be Belgium, echoed from times past, the Dark Ages, pre-computer, when I worked as a travel agent in South Africa. That was when travel agents had to be multilingual and plan the routes, book every hotel directly, individual tours, each flight and ship and bus for every traveler who came into the office wanting to “do” Europe, as if all of the countries of Europe blended into a pudding which they could swallow and regurgitate later with the help of Fodor’s.

More recently, I’d attended one of those “everybody mingle” events. I wandered into a group discussion about vacations and where, ideally, each person would prefer to live.

“What about you?” someone asked.

“The West Indies,” I said. “Grenada.” I used the correct pronunciation, Gre-NAY-da.

“Where’s that?” one man wanted to know.

“In the Caribbean, close to Trinidad.”

“Trinidad?” He thought for a moment. “Oh, you mean Grenada.” He pronounced it Gren-ah-da. “The place we invaded.”

I started to correct him, but stopped. They wouldn’t want him in Grena(y)da anyway.

“We’ve done the Caribbean.” His perky wife looked at me as if she expected applause.

Showing enormous restraint, I walked away without uttering another word. I wanted to yell, “You can’t¬ do Europe or the Caribbean or Africa or the United States.

Is every state in America the same? Have you seen the country once you’ve been up the Empire State Building? Do you understand the people?

Of course not, I thought, blowing gently on my paper boat to move it around. The Caribbean was a perfect example. I had traveled there countless times. No two islands were exactly alike in their history and politics, or in the daily behaviors of their people. The flora and fauna were different, as were the foods and the smells, the music and the breezes, the sand that caressed your feet, the sea that enfolded you like embryonic fluid or tossed you around like a mother-to-be with indigestion.

I got out of the tub with a vision.

While completing my present writing commitments, I would write a short retrospective of some of my first island experiences. Then I would return to the islands, this time to research and write. I would “do” the Caribbean at least one more time, this time with a sense of purpose: to show the singularity of each island.

The thought of visiting the islands yet again was enticing. Exhilarating. Doing so as a writer setting out to share the experience was daunting, but not overwhelming.

Wrapping myself in my robe, I went to my computer. Which memory, I wondered, would demand to be written first?

Now, the question is, do I go back to one of my thrillers or continue with this? And if I do, will anyone buy it?

That’s the question we all face, isn’t it, as we contemplate the rising cost of everything.
Like Scarlett, I’ll think about it tomorrow.

–Janet Berliner

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