Ramona Stewart

Night Shrimp Watcher Ramona Stewart

"These little essays owe their random character and brevity to The Pillow Book by Sei Shonagon, a Japanese court lady who wrote in about the year 1000 A. D. and to Essays in Idleness written about 1330 by Kenko, a Buddhist priest in Kyoto. Both works belong to the zuihitsu or formless mode and are classics in Japan...."It has been fourteen years since I left the busy, smoggy city and came to the little house in Sugarloaf. From the screened porch I can see past the great sea hibiscus tree to the seawall, dock and water. I watch sunrise from my bedroom and the morning stars shine in my window. The full moon rises above the casuarina trees to the East. We are also on a flyway. In autumn, the warblers stop at the sea hibiscus beside the water on their way to Central America. Monarch butterflies stop on their way to the Yucatan. In spring, the hawks that have spent the winter leave for the North again, and white-crested pigeons arrive from the Bahamas. We run our little boat out to the reef and float over small bright fish that dart through the coral heads. We swim off deserted beaches in the Gulf of Mexico. Life has a different rhythm here. It is slow and quiet and something else - but I can only feel its process. I cannot pin it down in static words." So begins our rich and varied journey of "A Year and a Day in Key West" - Ramona Stewart's love notes to the tropical island and its eccentric cast of characters she came to call her home. As her good friend John Mahoney would say: "Just another day in Paradise."