Clam Monster Thanksgiving

One of the first meanings attached to the Chinese character shen (蜃) might be translated to “clam monster,” a giant bivalve at the bottom of the sea, whose monumental belches rise to the surface as mirage. I learn this because my student has written about it in the opening of her essay, as she gives historical and global context to notions of illusion and translation. The clam monster is a shapeshifter that turns into a sea dragon and flies away…

This Thanksgiving I did not stay home in New York, or go home to Virginia, but (because fate and generosity and planning and consent) flew here to this nine-square-mile dove-shaped volcanic-rock island named by Columbus for his brother—Bart. Before then it is surmised that Taino and Orowak people frequented the island though did not settle there. For a long time only a few European settlers were able to make a go of it here, though they were ravaged by Caribs, by pirates. Eventually they brought slaves, raised flags. First France held dominion, then ceded to Norway in exchange for trade privileges elsewhere, then, France got it back. Slavery was outlawed in the 1850’s—freed slaves struggled due to poverty and a lack of fresh water, and their former masters struggled to build lives, but they did, between the white sand and the rocky cliffs, overlooking the emerald sea. From the mid-1900’s a tourism industry was slowly built around super-stardom and luxury. Now, 9,000 people live here year round and some 200,000 visit each year. New Year’s Eve is the peak of high season. Thanksgiving is the beginning of it, just at the end of hurricane season.

At night it rains, and during the day, we lounge, we swim, we eat, we wander, my companions read news from home and novels, and I read the pile of essays written by my students. Everyone in this "International" group recently came to New York from mainland China. We have been working together 12 weeks now and as I read what they wrote in their dorm here in paradise, the things they are trying come slowly alive, stretch across pages crinkled with humidity—the close-reading, the stating of significance, the possibility of a new idea appearing after you work for it. These writers have told me these are their first attempts using English to differentiate between and connect ideas across contexts, across forms, and I am amazed by the ways they have found to relate what is home to what is here, all of it so far away from where I am.

Grading is easier in a bathing suit and under a neon sky looking out at a sea shimmering with the reflections of impossible-looking clouds, I think, as I read the hard work of making sense of and using key terms full of abstract shades and shadows: Artificiality and Nature, Reproduction and Art and Politics, the Existent and the Apparent, Innovation and Technology, Uniqueness, Authenticity. They profess despair over where our Progress has taken us, but also an alternative sense of hope in a new conception of history’s cacophony, the collective responsibility for protecting creativity, the unexpected powers of alternate realities. 

This land is made of grey rocks that look soft, wise, ancient. Vegetation is bright, succulent, and punted with bursts of blossoms an island berries, an occasional heady rush of thyme. Small buildings rise up out of it, cluster here and there, roads follow the shapes of the land. Everyone talks about what was rebuilt when, and it’s hard to imagine the violence of the storms that sweep across the sea, like a monster.

The day after our Thanksgiving feast, we peel of just the two of us, find a parking lot, a hidden sandy path that takes us across cacti, larger blossoms, delicate white and yellow butterflies batting around like dust motes. We meet two fine turtles, so many striped lizards. We walk down and down a wooden stairway that some hidden hand has tended faithfully. Dripping with sweat, we look up again, and see the new beach we have come to: turquoise, steal, silver, mirror. The water are too much and everything. 

Over and over we have said, it looks beautiful. So gorgeous. Tastes delicious, smells so clean. And again: It is so beautiful, gorgeous, stunning, this paradise. We have smiled, sighed, not known what else to say, or do. And now I say, I just don’t know if it’s real. You nod. We shrug. I’m real, you say. You too. And we swim in a sea that will disappear into imagination, into memory. I write this there but post it now, where faraway at home it's cold and dark--and yet there sand in the corners of our suitcases, and sunburn clings to our faces.