A sweet Potato Peel Pie Adventure.

Dear little one,

It is a dreary February Saturday, the kind of day when you have to nap and do some task that is delegated for such a day as this. I must clean up a drawer. It contains my random notes and notebooks from times long past.

I write to remember my thoughts. These notes were scribbled with a pen that skips, yet they help me capture glimpses of what drives me on my quest through life, that become especially notable when I go on an adventure. I notice a lot, as flashes of rapid eye movements, like a dream. Mankind must dream to survive. Learning to understand dreams and reality can be useful.

I describe the coastline jag. Nature often creates a reality with a fractured fractal surface. Nature’s repetitive powers offer a promise of stability.

I find comfort in recognizing cycles. History has cycles. A hertz measures the number of cycles per second, of vibrations of sound, electricity, or other signals. Hours of light and dark have daily cycles. Various features of the environment of the Earth and Universe cycle in a year or multiples of years. Various cycles interact and cause unexpected trajectories. We are as blind to expansive game of pinball in the Universe, as was Tommy in the rock opera by the Who. Sadly, we are not all pinball wizards.

I like learning about circles, and cycles. They promulgate my chosen myth: that life cycles and things will be alright and regain a shape that was once known. Circles are formed by tangential line. Smaller circles within a circle, follow a line.

A circle and sine and cosine wave are related.

I do not know where on the wave I am at this moment.

Newtonian physics reinforced the concept of a material world. However, quantum physics, that show waves through a double slit collapse when observed, makes a case for how an observer witnesses fact is not always how things are.

Notes help me transform my observations of the holographic matrix that I witnessed, into an image that helps me recall this special time and place, the different air, and the feeling in the heart, the ball of fire that burns from within, through the chimney of the tree of life, to the outside world, as the sea of chi from the outside flows in.

Here are my observations. The year is 2019. This is birthday sweet Potato Peel Pie Adventure. We wonder if we had picked the worst weekend. We must wear winter coats, boots and gloves in June.

Upon landing, there was a flight delay because of a storm. Emergency lights turned on inside of the plane, allowing us to stumble out onto a pitch-black runway, where we boarded a full bus. Someone passed gas. We happily got off the bus, then waited for a taxi in the dark cold, rainy outbuilding for ten minutes. We jumped in and drove in the howling wind and rain. A tree had fallen. The roads were reduced to one lane. We were looking for a spa, advertised on the Google, but there was no spa.

This was another time, before Covid. Trump had just met with the Queen of England, British Prime Minister Theresa May, Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron and then returned to Shannon, to stay at the hotel in his golf club and probably charge expenses to the country.

We arrived at Auberge du Val. Judging from the size of doors we are in the land of little people. We sleep in a room with antique furnishings from around the 1800’s. What stories have gone on within these walls?

In the morning church bells are ringing every 15 minutes. I remember hearing bells in Greece and Morocco and am surprised to hear them here.

The breakfast is incredible, locally sourced, well prepared by a woman who came from the small (47 square miles) remote island of St. Helena that is accessible only after an 8-day sail from Cape Town. She had to go to England for her Grade 12, 13 equivalent saying “the fledgling either flies or not.“ She genuinely seems to care about us having a good time and explains that she prioritizes her time between gardening, cooking, and organizing.

I see a boar head on the wall, stuffed by a taxidermist, not imagined by my pareidolia. It might have been the ghost boar that wandered Guernsey around 2013 or perhaps escaped from a local farm who wanted to breed boar.

Outside, the ivy has been trained onto a mesh. There are driftwood horses. There are cottages, each with their own name.

This day’s excursion takes us to an underground German hospital that was excavated by captured POW for 3.5 years then used for 3 months by six nurses who treated 500 wounded. It was cold, dark and musty.

We find our way to Castle Cornet. Entry is free because it is the Queen’s birthday. In 1210, William the conqueror of Normandy built the circular tower at the heart of the Castle. There is a WWII exhibit that honors the Guernsey Boys.

The sun is beautiful over the blue water. Everyone is wearing winter coats with fur hoods and hats. Guernsey smells of roses. We walk through an herbal garden where Artemisia and wormwood are ready to fight intestinal worms, Salvia sage is ready to help the aged become wise, and Wolfsbane holds the power of providing supernatural healing powers.

We go to Fishy Tales and have egg salad on a cress bun. It is very Earthy and yummy.

We take Bus 91, then go past the Wicked Wolf Pub.

We find our way to the Tomb of the Fairies, part of the Neolithic community that resided here from 4000-2500 BC.

It later became part of the pilgrim march to Lihou Island. We are lucky. It is low tide. We find the causeway where a road was laid allowing access to the Benedictine Priory founded in the 12th century.

It is a bird watchers paradise.

All the clocks are wrong. We miss the bus. but is okay we are in Fairyland. We have a Sunday promenade. We find out way to Jarboug Cliffs to witness the sun and clouds over the waters facing France. We walk to a lighthouse.

We go past the Little Chapel, a miniature replica mosaic made with seashells. Guernsey, the Gem of the Sea, has many gems.

We are now ready to walk the Occupation Trail between Gypsy and Calais Road that was the inspiration of the cinematographer of the Potato Peel Literary Society. It is marked, but not at all touristic. We feel the change in the atmosphere. It feels like we are part of the book. Young German men briskly walk past. They appear to still own this island invaded by their bunkers. Young Brits pass. We need to listen to the horrid music they are playing as they walk. The walk feels like we thought it would.

The next day, we take a bus and arrive at the steep hill to Victor Hugo’s Hauteville house. He was exiled to Guernsey in 1812. He moved with his mistress and wife. His life was complicated. Hugo said, “Legendary truth is invention whose result is reality.” He knew the observer effect.

His house was his story board. Views were distorted by mirrors. There were secret doors. Characters like Quasimodo and Esmeralda emerged from his communing with the spirits of haunted houses, listening to superstitions, and considering the essence of fairies and the riddles of myth and folklore.

We walk through the old town and go to the Nautica Restaurant for a spectacular meal of squid stuffed with crab, brill and seafood ragu.

We make it back to the airport on a bright sunny day. A bank of ominous clouds release thunder and lightning. There was snow on the plane but we made it off after a gentleman shared these words. “Some of em what's got a lille bit longer. It looks like it’s so nice and it rains, and it looks like it’s raining and it’s a sodden day and at lunch time the sun comes roight out. Roight you are. Some when it rains, comfortable and warm, it clears up brilliant.”

Dear love, Perhaps one day you will visit Guernsey and compare what you see with what I saw. I will write another letter soon. Bissous.