“It was a color I didn't realize the earth could make without the help of human beings. I knew the water would be blue, but I had in mind a tamer, more pastel blue: a light color through which all the sand and fish underneath would be clearly visible. This water was like super-wavy, lit up turquoise, and so beautiful I could hardly take my eyes off it. The moment I was spellbound by the color of the water was the moment I knew I had been in New York for to long and my decision to leave was a good one.”

“In just one moment I had emerged from a world of dark green, almost black, to a world of bright blue and light sunshine. It was what I imagined birth to be like.”

“What a strange place, I thought. If I look up everything is so clear and beautiful, and if I look down, everything is so dangerous and ugly. I wished I could keep my head in the sky, but the scorpions brought me back to reality. Or was the sky the reality?”

“I twirled it around in front of my eyes, going momentarily cross-eyed as I looked for any sign of roots. Of course it was much too soon, and I knew that there wouldn't be any, but I checked anyway, because I'm a checker by nature: lights, stoves, occasionally underneath beds, and, apparently, now plant stems. Life was getting complicated.”

“The model stripped down naked and stood with her arms out to her sides while genderless cohorts sprayed her body with large silver canisters of foundation. They wore masks over there faces and sprayed her from head to toe like they were putting out a fire. They airbrushed her into a mono-toned six-foot-two column of a human being with no visible veins, nipples, nails, lips, or eyelashes. When every single thing that was real about the model was gone, the make up artist fug through a suite case of brushes and plowed through hundreds of tubes of flesh colored colors and began to draw human features onto her face. At the same time, the hair stylist meticulously sewed with a needle and thread strand after strand of long blond hairs onto her thin light brown locks, creating a thick full mane of shimmering gold. The model had brought her own chef, who cooked her spinach soup from scratch. The soup was fed to her by one of her lackeys, who existed solely for this purpose. The blond boy stood in front of her, blowing on the soup and then feeding it to her from a small silver child's spoon, just big enough to fit between her lips. the model's mouth was barely open, maybe a quarter of an inch wide, so that she would not crack the flesh colored paint.”

“I went back to the ocean for a wash. The salt stung my face. I didn't know my skin was so raw. I slung my backpack over my shoulders, and with the white mosquito netting wrapped around me like a wedding dress, I went back into the jungle.”

“After the death of my marriage, I was hell-bent on keeping the bird-of-paradise alive. I would take it slowly. Plants first. And if everything went well, then I'd move on to people.”