Dear friends of Fraulein Tomma von Hofferdoodle, Healing Priestess to the Stars and all around nice gal.
When last we communed by electronic mail, dear Tomma was invaded by alien spoors, which had stealthily migrated to her ovaries, where they set up advanced headquarters for an invasion fleet from planet Bungo.
Beloved Tomma as you will recall was sent into the hospital where the invader alien outposts were discovered growing inside her reproductive system. A multi-pronged attack was mounted at the hospital by U.S. Army Corps of Engineer Surgeons. The operation was a resounding success, in spite of the best efforts of the hospital to send Miss Tomma into hyper-malnourishment.
The invaders were of course surgically removed, tried and convicted by a secret military tribunal, then sentenced to summary execution for high crimes and misdemeanors against the United States, and in particular against Miss Tomma, who became a great hero throughout the land. Or heroine if you're of the old school, when actresses also was a common term.
It was later discovered that the diet kitchen personnel at the hospital were also infiltrated by minions of the alien ovary invaders. They too were summarily tried, convicted and sentenced to cook for terrorist prisoners in secret CIA prisons worldwide. Many many confessions have since been wrought from being forced to eat their cooking. This interrogation technique, still secret to the general public, is known as Breadboarding.
The great war effort against planet Bungo and in support of Fraulein von Hofferdoodle was, as has been historically recorded, so thoroughly aided, abetted and lovingly supported, both before and after the removal and execution of the Bungolians, by her dear circle of friends from the Moon, Great Barrington and other secret New England outposts of the High Sisterhood of Amazon Women of ancient days.
(Historical footnote: a crack troop of former Hari Krishna accolytes was secretly trained and sent to Bungo to conquer the planet. They employed the same relentless Airport Sales Force tactics that had worked so well in disseminating religious literature for years worldwide. Planet Bungo surrendered unconditionally three days later. Normal relations have been established between the two world governments and billions of dollars in aid have already been sent to Bungo by government Black Ops Space Shuttles.)
(Look at that face...now you know why I moved from Santa Barbara 8.5 years ago!)
So many of you were so completely gracious and wonderful in bringing cooked meals over to Miss Tomma (and I, your faithful servant, Herr Doktor Jimmy von Krankenshortz) as she recuperated, clearly realizing that had you not been so gracious and supportive, both of us might have easily expired, as the good Doktor is one bad cook.
Again, we thank you all so much.
Now to the update: I am happy to report that the final phase of the Project Recovery:Tomma has progressed to the island of Antigua. Even as I write these words, she sits tapping away at lightning speed with her two forefingers, smoking on the text for the bestselling Moon Circle Expose' to come.
Last year you may recall that literally on the eve of her departure to this wondrous isle, she was stricken by the attack of the Bungolians and I was forced to take her to the hospital in an ambulance. By the way, your faithful Doktor himself also nearly succumbed to malnutrition at the hands of the nefarious diet kitchen invaders, as I ate many meals there.
Back to Antigua: Tomma was so deeply disappointed she couldn't go, that she approached this fabulous week with great anticipation.
Since we arrived, greeted at the airport in St. John's by Roger the Jester himself, we have languished like two nesting lovebirds in the hot, tropical breezes, partaking of island charm, culture, battling pesky mosquitoes with various strategies - some of them effective - and enjoyed many other joys and distractions.
To whit: We have swam nearly every morning and evening, and also snorkeled (or schnorkeled as Tomma might say auf Deutsch) through warm, clear, silky azure waters.
At night we have eaten like royalty:
- a jaba pot - the day-long, clay pot-cooked island veggie stew (with custom dessert) - prepared to perfection by culinary wizard Roger the J.
- barbecued chicken at a roadside stand, cooked by dear smiling Juanita, a rolly polly black Antiguan with the face of an angel,
- a fabulous dinner at Rite Ya!, one of the classy eateries in Falmouth Harbour (yes, it has a u in it because it was settled by the Brits...or at least run by it as a colony for many decades).
- a secluded tilapia and vegetable cookout, once again orchestrated by Mr. Roger, prepared by all of us, then cooked over a beach firepit of blazing wood coals...with roasted breadfruit, rum lime punch and scrumptious dark chocolate digestive biscuits to top it off, all on magical Windward Beach, once owned by the French actor Jean Paul Belmondo, where not another soul was in evidence...yet just a five minute walk from Pigeon Beach (see below) and a ten minute walk from the Nicholson home on the hilltop overlooking the harbor (more on that below too).
We have also swum many times at mahvelous Pigeon Beach, a short five minute, 200-foot-vertical drop from the house and the Hex, the six-sided hut from whence we have displaced lovely goddess Sarah and the aforementioned Sir Jester, who graciously consented to move into another bedroom so we could have the full benefit of Mr. Pinkie the Ancient Marmalade cat and Kiwi, the dog of indeterminate sex who barks in the middle of the
night in five-bark intervals.
I know this because I counted his/her/its protective outbursts one night after waking to them in the wee hours.
I have also attempted to sleep in the wee hours and failed, (Tomma could sleep through Armageddon) besieged by blasts of raucous music from the township of Falmouth Harbor below. This beautiful natural harbor has long been used as a stop by British and other naval forces. Admiral Lord Nelson, who established his famous Dockyard here in 1784 (just down the hill from Lisa, Sarah and Roger's compound where Lisa's husband/Sarah's father Desmond was a well-known figure for decades.)
Actually the music came from the numerous, obscenely expensive yachts and schooners anchored in the modern day harbor and from nightspots that pepper the town.
This monstrous homage to uber-opulence is described as a sloop-rigged super yacht launched in 2003 at an estimated cost of over US $50million, and is the largest single-masted yacht ever built. Until some other even more fatuous pinhead I suppose comes along and builds one 18.3 feet longer and 20 feet taller at the mast so he can claim the record.
News flash: Roger just told me that an even more fatuous pinhead has indeed bested the Mirabella, so it is now the 2nd largest super sloop in the known world. (Although there's always the chance there's a bigger one on planet Bungo)
By the way, Mirabella V can be rented out, in "high season" mind you, for a mere $375,000 per week.
This is getting way too long so more tomorrow!
your faithful servant
Herr Doktor Jimmy von Mangoshortz, mosquito pincushion at largeDear Moonies and WOTsies and any other feminine empowerment circle I've inadvertently left out:
We left off with my thinly disguised Super Envy of Super Yachts that live in Foulmouth Harbor below, so it's fitting perhaps to close on that particular subchapter by saying that several nights and one memorable morning, the music from the town and said numerous yachts below awoke us or prevented us (me mostly) from getting to sleep until late, often 1:30 or deeper into the morning.
These events only reduced my already (hyper-envious) regard for the Super Rich, reduced these "people" in fact to the status of Super Buttheads, since it is apparent that excess capital, rather than contributing to expanded grace, gentility and consideration for we lesser mortals who outnumber them 58 million to one, does in fact bestow even greater indifference to how they interact, or fail to do so, with the rest of the allegedly civilized world.
This was never more evident than at dawn one morning, when loud rock music from none other than our old friend Mirabella V, recently reduced to the 2nd largest floating phallic symbol on the planet as you may recall, blared up the hill and all over the island. We were suitably smug in our self-righteous sneers and deprecatory attitudes toward the owner of said yacht.
Until later, when Roger and Sarah told us it was most likely the crew of the megavessel, and not the owners, making all the racket as they performed their regular chores on the boat.
Which dashed utterly my rant against the super rich and redirected it at the super-employed who were in fact to blame.
Laying in bed as the warm sunlight enrichened the greens and blues of this paradise, eyes rheumy, brain still counting dog barks, I enjoyed several action movie fantasies in my imagination. Typical is one in which I discover a rusty WWII bazooka and promptly send a round into Mirabella V, silencing the not-very-good (in fact quite bad) rock music once and for all. Another is me firing, from protective cover in the brush on the hill side, round after round of corrosive-filled paintballs at the hull of the ship. But I abandoned that one after realizing it would only keep the crew working indefinitely on cleanup and the music would then last forever.
footnote: Roger later ran into the skipper of the Mirabella V and in his friendly way managed to get the point across that the crew was making quite a racket at 7 a.m. We haven't heard anything from the boat since, and my Ramboesque music-silencing fantasies have suitably faded away as well.
One last note on the yachts: after breakfast I did some googling and discovered the owner of Mirabella V is none other than the CEO who, in the 1980s, made Avis car rental number one by cleverly reveling in its number 2 status. "We're #2 - We try harder!" is the slogan you'll all recall, though they've long since been #1. I wonder how it feels to him to realize that his yacht is now number 2? People don't build the biggest anything unless they find some importance in being on top of the totem pole.
Ask Aaron Spelling and his 56,000 sq. ft. house atop Bel Air, CA. His wife Candy told him, "I want it to be bigger than the White House!" So Aaron, sweet man that he was by nature, decreed that enough rooms be added to the initial architectural design to ensure its hegemony in the land. True story. I wonder if Aaron, looking down from heaven, or from the attic which is certainly nearly as big, cares one whit that Candy has that hugest of the huge houses to rattle around in?
I once got lost in a 10,000 sq. ft. house in Denver, built by the man who started Mother Earth News and then nearly worked himself to death. It was a big, sad, empty house.
But I digress!
Getting back to sleeping challenges, in addition to Kiwi, the protective dog of indeterminate sex who barks in groups of five at night, I also became acquainted with a particularly loud cricket-like creature that had the curious habit of "cricking" in exact groups of 30. In other words, it would crick 30 times, pause, then crick exactly 30 times again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
It seemingly waited for responses from distant cricket creatures that came with similar exactitude, though they were far enough away that I couldn't hear them with the same precision as this one, which sounded like it was a foot from my tossing, turning head.
Sometimes the number of cricks was 28 or 29.
Once or twice it was 35.
But mostly it was 30, at least for the 45 minutes it kept me awake that particular night. Haven't heard it since.
Fraulein von Hofferdoodle, fully recovered Savior of the World, is, as chronicled earlier, quite capable of sleeping through the thunderbolts of Odin, and God bless her, but she is sadly unable to corroborate my scientific observations of Antiguan night creatures, other than the lowlifes down below in their nightly and dawn revels, which even disturbed her sleep from time to time.
Roger and Sarah took Tomma away from the good Doktor Saturday as he chose to stay in the Hex and write, being somewhat sleepy and wanting to work on a fiction story. The trio went all over the island, mon, visiting an open food market, listening to some Reggae music, traipsing through the island's rainforest, and generally having a high old time.
It was hot, as it has been our entire visit, perhaps 5 to 10 degrees higher than normal this time of year. Not surprising then that Miss Tomma returned from her outing with the ever-gracious Nicholson-Reeds looking like a 1930's ragdoll that had washed up on the beach. Herr Doktor etc. prescribed bed rest. "Oh, I'm just going to lay down for a few minutes," she said, promptly falling asleep to snore for the next hour as I worked on my future NY Times bestseller.
Today we got a break in the weather. After our wonderful, primally satisfying beach party at secluded Windward Beach, we settled in for the night, writing a bit, reading, then conking out, only to awake in mid-evening to brisk, turbulent winds and much cooler temps. Hallelujah, I thought, how refreshing. "I'm cold," said Tomma, pulling the blanket over her. BTW, her comfort zone ideal temperature is 8.73 degrees higher than mine.
This morning, the wind whipped through the Hex, flinging leaves, bird feathers, dust and small-to-medium insects through the open doors and on to their final resting places in the yard.
I could go on and on (but I won't), other than to close by saying that the legacy of your love, affection and concern for Tomma in her time of travail last year is something that will stay with us always, that lives within us even now as we prepare to leave lovely Antigua. And will endure whether she leaves me for a Super Yacht owner or I leave her for a green-legged Bungolian coochie dancer.
I must report to you that to see her so completely bright-faced, cheery, and radiant-smiley as we floated in the undulating sensuous waters of Pigeon bay, walked through some of the local shops hunting for sunglasses (she left hers back in Mudville), explored the history of Admiral Nelson's Dockyard nearby, or happily enjoyed the many little yellow banana quit birds with curving beaks and sharp, beady eyes who flocked to the bamboo-trough sugar feeder Roger and Sarah keep in front of the big, always-open panoramic kitchen window in the Hex, was reason enough for me to have shared this entire journey with her.
Many times here, I have marked how healthy, vibrant, alive and truly happy she seemed.
One morning in particular, the day the three of them drove off to the market, I stayed behind, a bit draggy from insufficient sleep the night before. My intent was to jack my nerves into parade rest if not full attention with a big cup of coffee and an omelette breakfast at the lovely Timo Sport restaurant down at the harbor.
As they drove off, I felt a twinge of remorse at being separated from her, even though it would only be for the few hours I had promised myself I would devote to my story, which had gone wanting of my attentions in the tropical milieu. I thought how frightening, unnerving, stressful and unhappy it had made me to see her so sick last year (especially in the hospital when the Bungolian kitchen minions tried to kill her with jello and similar foods). And I reveled in the contrast, as they rolled away in Sarah's mom's car, of how alive and contented and just plain all around good and lovable she is now.
I looked out over the harbour filled with yachts big, medium and small. I watched the frigates soar on the thermals from the parking lot by the dock, and felt the hot breeze tickle at me on the deck where I ate my omelette and super crispy bacon and lovely marmalade on toasted English bread.
And I thought again, as I have so many times since last year, but also since I first met her online, in Oct. of 2001, what a gift love is. How much it lifts your soul to the white clouds overhead, to join the soaring birds.
I felt, in those moments when the first electricity from the coffee began to course through my body and wake me fully, so grateful to love and be loved by my Tomma. Life is so good in those moments when you feel free to give all the good stuff you've got to give to your beloved and how good it feels to revel, smiling down to your toes, in the joy that comes back at you for it, though you are content to receive no response at all.
Love is its own seed, soil, water, sprout, flower. You would all be so happy to see how she has flourished in the year since her travails, and how fully and completely this visit to Antigua, although without the full complement of her circle of goddesses for company, has refreshed her soul.
And so, as we pack up to return Stateside from our Caribbean adventure, we send waves of gratitude to Sarah and Roger and mom Lisa for their wonderful, endless hospitality and good cheer, for making this stay so enjoyable, relaxed and just plain terrific.
And we look forward to future confabulations with you as I remain, your faithful chronicler,
Herr Doktor Jimmy von Happyshortz
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