I have been alive for a very long time. I have seen and lived in many places in the world. If I were the proper cynic, I would say: “seen it…been it…done it”. I would truly scoff at this tiny island in the Caribbean sea- truly think it a barren and ugly rock.

I would think that every person or place on earth was all the same- nothing special. And all of that would be true. But not totally.  There’s always something about a place or its people, which, redeems it or them from the vacuum of sameness. This something ensures that no hour or second is the same as the next.

It is this something which would provide refuge to a man, if he was, for argument’s sake…immortal. Living forever – as all the movies would have us believe- could, quite possibly, be the worst curse someone or something could cast on a person. But, when the places or people around you have that something- as they always do- it never, as far as I can tell, is that bad.

Indeed, it is this something, tangible or intangible, which saves man- mortal or not- from death by cynicism whenever he surveys that creature called woman. If it were not for that something, men could get away more easily with objectifying women and vice versa.  I have long discovered that people are more afraid of sameness than they are of difference. For without this something marking them as different, they’d be nothing. In the case of women, each would just be another two-legged, breasted, skirt wearing thing…just all the same.

More to the point, if it were not for this something, I would not have stayed in Antigua for as long as I have and as long as I intend.  She would have been to me like all the other rocks jutting out of the Caribbean Sea or any other sea like droppings from some huge bird.

I would have flown out of this place when certain processes to get my businesses up and running on this fine island seemed to take forever- thanks to a very efficient civil service (now, that is something which is the same everywhere). And after the processes were done, I still had time to flee (if I were built to flee) when other businessmen and once grinning natives scowled in my direction and ranted on the radio stations about foreign businessmen extracting all the honey from their rock.

Indeed, before all of that, I would have flown out on the very first day as quickly as I had flown in- rising sun or no rising sun. Certainly, I would have faltered- more from resignation than intimidation- when calm seas showed signs of horrible swells or the smiling coconut vendor sold me a bottle of coconut water half-filled with rainwater.  But this island and these people…they have it…this something.

 (V).Damien