"how does it feel when you've got no food?"

“How does it feel when you’ve got no food?”

I’m becoming Jamaican.  That is to say, I am shedding my non-Jamaican self.

I woke up this morning with two leg injuries.  One is a knee scrape and one is a scrape on the top of my foot that looks more like a third degree burn.  It is more than a scrape.  It looks more like I pressed my foot up against a white hot metal pipe for several seconds.  As far as I know, that is exactly what occurred.

I remember ketchup.  Something about ketchup on my hand, or ketchup on my shoulder.  I remember the smell of ketchup on my shoulder, but as I was telling Jordan this morning, there are very few typical scenarios in which ketchup can end up on your shoulder, none of which are technically “typical”.

I remember some kind of mad dash.  While the deck smelled like bacon and barbecue and people were watching a Rick Springfield documentary on a big jumbotron, there was some type of mad dash somewhere.  I was the guy doing it, and Jordan was there too, and I’m almost certain that’s where the ketchup probably happened, but we did not eat, as far as I can remember.

There was a frozen drink called a “dirty banana” containing Kahlua and I think I had five of them.  There was a drink called a “fun ship” with assorted fruits and liquors and a little umbrella, and I think I had two of them.  We sat in the lobby at the bar and drank these and badgered the pianist.

We must have been there for several hours, but I only remember fragments of those hours.  Somehow the ketchup happened in the intervening time between the dirty bananas and this morning.  The scrapes had to have happened during that stretch of time.

I’m shaking today, kind of trembling.  The one thing I’m sure of is that I ralphed last night.  Woke up shitty yet strangely okay, considering a lot of the worry that goes along with drinking is irrelevant here, the cruise sets you up with everything you need to really hone your getting-shitfaced game.

I woke up relatively clean, in a comfortable twin bed, in a clean room, on the ocean, in close proximity to cold drinking water and a toilet.  Considering the potential to really fuck myself up here and make it count, I have nowhere near crossed the Rubicon.

Jordan and I have been listening to “Pass The Dutchie” on repeat, over and over and over again, which has already taken on a level of cosmic, hypnotic significance by this point.  I woke up wanting to hear that song.  Not because I like it anymore, or because I wanted to hear it, but because I needed to hear it. 

“Pass The Dutchie” is driving us maniacally insane.  The insanity cannot possibly be described.  It is beyond funny, or trippy, or surreal.  Hearing “Pass The Dutchie” over and over and over again makes you truly understand how extraordinary that recording is.  It has great powers. 

“Pass The Dutchie” is a fascinating and scary song.  It has the power to truly bring you over to the other shore.  Whether that shore be pleasant or perilous remains to be seen.  All we know is we have seen the other side, and we have 4 more days at sea.

“Pass The Dutchie” is not what we would have expected before we had chosen to become One with it.  It is beyond explanation, bordering on miraculous.