Five years previous I had lived a summer on the island of Maui with Gas Daney and his girlfriend & that experience was my shell-cradle break into the Sea—having grown up in landlocked Colorady—but I was still on the surface there, swimming with good mountain boy fear of what lurked underneath in the deep stuff...but here, with my own mother as teacher, I had conquered the deeps, the lulling blue deeps of runaway fright and I could barely get enough...this is what passed for my time...this is what had replaced city 8-5 hurry...this was the way I needed it to be...this is how I kept Ramona alive...and then Dean Sharpe showed up.
Certain people carry the past and abide forever in it. They bring you back to your very state of mind, down to the cells whirling and continuity, of what possessed you so many years ago...Dean & I shared a circuit that had high school round-ball in common...from opposing sides of town his ego sought mine... And I could tell of the thousand ripe adventures I had since with this guy, most occurring over the three years we saw each other daily from September to June...and most involving a form of debauchery with the womankind...
But his folks, ahem, were quite well-off from mysterious father businesses in Vermont and they had built some sort of compound up-island from San Pedro where the buildings were few and the breeze lonely... my friends and I had been hearing about it for years, but most of us hadn’t made it down to visit despite Dean’s many generous offers laced with the element of bizarre futures... but here I was, just moments from their personal pier...This strange family always reminded me of a favorite passage of ecclesiastes:
I made me great works; I builded me houses;
I planted me vineyards;
I made me gardens and orchards; (here esp because the old man
loved to create lush landscapes
wherever he lived)
and I planted trees in them with all kinds of fruit.
I made me pools of water, to water therewith
the wood that bringeth forth trees.
...
I gathered me also silver and gold, and
the peculiar treasure of kings and of the provinces.
...
And whatsoever mind eyes desired
I kept not from them,
I withheld not my heart from any joy,
for my heart rejoiced in all my labour,
and this was my portion of all my labour.
Then I looked on all the works
that my hands had wrought,
and on the labour I had laboured to do,
and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit,
and there was no profit under then sun.
-Michael Price
