Rainey Blogs on Some Days

On this year's vacation in Jamaica, I read a book by fellow Leonian John Zeaman called Dog Walks Man: A Six-Legged Odyssey . Much of it takes place in Leonia, but it gets interesting when he starts walking the dog in the Meadowlands. Reading the book almost  made me want to get a dog.

On our vacation to Jamaica in August at Beaches Boscobel, I tried to stay true to the craft of writing, taking the early morning just after the sun came up to journal on my steno pad. (Of course, most of the time, I just sat there and looked at the beautiful view while drinking my coffee.) Like the crippled man in the Bible who kept returning to the Pool of Bethesda each day in hopes that he would be able to get in the water when it stirred and be healed, I keep showing up with a pad hoping for something meaningful to end up on the page. Most of the time it doesn't. But when it does, it is wonderful.

I cannot believe my life has come to this: The thing I enjoy more than anything else in the world right now is my afternoon break. I did not dream of this while I was growing up, yet I get excited come time to get my $1.34 medium cup of coffee with two sugars and half-and-half. On Fridays, I splurge and let myself live large and have three sugars! I find a secluded table all by myself, take out my steno pad, and sit quietly and wait for words to come like the lame man in the Bible who went to the pool of Bethesda each day and waited for the healing waters to stir. Finally, thoughts of something I had seen a few days earlier appear: a Rastafarian driving a silver Chrysler PT Cruiser on Route 4 going toward New York City. This was the only thing I got: the image of a wild eyed, dreadlock drenched Jamaican driving a Chrysler PT Cruiser. This unlikely image—a ganja guy in a retro remake vehicle—languishes in my head, a heavy, illogical thought. I look out on the manicured lawn of t...

What can you write when the first thing you see out of your window on a Monday morning is an expanse of seas surrounded by an orange hue breaking through the dawn darkness? When your hear the water’s rhythmic waves wash up on the shore and slide back down into the ocean, drowning out all but the sound of birds flying nearby? My last memory before going to bed last night was seeing the Caribbean moon light up the night sky and ocean in the distance, and now I see the Caribbean sun peeking trough the clouds to announce the day. This is where we are for our 25th anniversary, an inclusio to this first quarter century that began on another little island halfway around the world called Okinawa and ends on another little island called Jamaica. I cannot help but think about our first year of marriage when I hear the sound of the ocean. After arriving in Jamaica and picking up our luggage, my first impression of Jamaica is that they are not a purpose-driven people. They have not read the Seve...

I realized yesterday that the only song I have ever heard with the word “porridge” in it was Bob Marley’s “ No Woman, No Cry .” Bob Marley, Rastafarian, ganja-smoking, Jamaican reggae singer Bob Marley used that word in a song. “Porridge.” P-o-r-r-i-d-g-e. I have the song on a Jonathan Butler CD from the library right now. I listen to it over and over. I like Butler’s more polished version a little better than Marley’s version. No matter who sings it, though, the lyrics have this beautiful innocence to them that I could never explain. I would play it sometimes for Marcia or one of the girls and say, “Isn’t that a beautiful song.” But they didn’t hear what I heard. I didn’t even know what I heard. I just loved it, but you can’t love something without knowing why you love it. Finally, I understood yesterday. It was the porridge. The porridge takes me back to the innocence of childhood. Back to “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” the children’s story that puts me back on my mother’s lap li...