OPENING SCENE
OPEN:  Flash across several scenes, underwater, island, grey clouds, winter, La’Amoria Island, Planet Galatia.  Camera lands on WHEAT FIELD. 

Little girl running through a sea of amber wheat with grain heads far above her little on.  She can no longer see Lookout Mountain, so she keeps her tiny feet on the black dirt path between the golden wheat lines as best as she can.  Finally, she breaks through to the other side.  There’s Auntie’s Farm.  She keeps running.  Even with the shortcut, she runs over a mile.  By road, it would have been three.
Telephone.  Remember the Numbers.  Prentice, this must be why I remember numbers, especially birthdays so remarkably.  It’s etched into my brain this very day.  I’m 3. 
Five rows of Raspberry Bushes strung out like a 400 yard golf course run.  The bright green leaves beautifully speckled by brilliant red berries.  Three generations of women pick and stand.  Two are over 70, almost as round as they are tall.  Four are 30-something, 2 miniatures of the Matriarchs, the other and 2 are model perfect.  These two beautiful women look like they stepped out of the pages of Women’s Day.  Cosmopolitan had not yet hit rural West Cydton.  Also picking raspberries early this morning are 3 teenage girls who looked like models from Seventeen Magazine, decked out in Daisy Dukes and hot pink midriff tops picking red berries on a bright sunshiny day. 
A little girl with almost black hair never brushed awakes.  As always, she gets herself up and dressed.  She, even at three, knows how to match her outfits.  Same color.  No such thing as mixing plaids and polka dots because they are the same colors.  That’s been harshly corrected.  Frequently.
She runs downstairs, pours herself a bowl of cereal, turns on the TV and eats in front of it as she does every day.  While the TV warms up, she quietly opens the door to Mommy & Daddy’s Room.  Daddy’s already out in the fields, for sure.  But is Mommy awake yet?  WHAT?  There’s no Mommy.  She panics.  Where’s Sissy?  She’s nowhere to be found either. 
Little Girl runs out to the garden.  No one.  There is no one.  She runs back inside and pulls a chair to the phone.  The big plastic green rectangle attached to the wall is at adult eye height.  She still can’t reach.  She pulls the cord, grabs the receiver, and talks into it.  No one responds.  What to do?  “I’m all alone”, she shrieks.  Initial sobs turn to full screams.  She runs out of tears.
“I know.  I’ll run over to Aunt MaryAnne’s.  I know the way.”  I think to myself.
Somehow even at this young age I knew to take the most direct line, across the north pasture.  I run until I get to a field of amber grain.  Standing not sure which way to go, I quickly opt for the route through the field.  I can see Lookout Mountain.  Not so much once I step into the field, I can no longer see Auntie’s farm, or the hill that stands far above the otherwise flat plains, a patchwork of almost black churned dirt and amber wheat mixed with brilliant blocks of green grass pastures.  It looks like quilts Grandma and her sewing ladies make.  I break through the last of the field, into the open.  Finally the dry sobs stop.  I’d run out of water for tears an hour earlier.  Running as fast as my little legs’ll take me, I see the raspberry bushes.  There’s Grandma, Mommy, and Sissy.  And Aunt MaryAnne, Naomi, Auntie, Ruth and Ginger.  Straight to Grandma, I run.
“Grandma.  I was so scared.  I woke up and no one was home.  I tried to call you on the phone but it didn’t work.  It just buzzed at me so loud it made my head hurt.  I was so scared.”
“Oh my little Schnickelfritz” Grandma says.  WHATEVER that means.  “Honey, you never have to be afraid.  Just remember the Father up Above is always looking down with Love, watching out for you.”
“But Grandma, I was all alone in the big house.  It was ver-ry scar-ry.” I cry.  Literally.
“Oh Honey, You are never alone.  God always sends Angels to look after his Favorite Little Girls, and you are one of his Favorites.”
“How do you know I’m one of His Favorites?”  How can that be?  I’m not even Mommy’s favorite.”
Grandma always heads these fears off, “Oh Honey.  Because you are my favorite little girl who’s 3 years old”.  She’s always fair to the other grandkids, even when she wipes away my tears. 
“But Grandma, I was dreaming Lions were ready to eat me”.
“Sweetheart, let me tell you a Story.” 
Grandma’s got a story for everything. I snuggle tightly into her round body as she puts her arms around me.  Leaning into her pink and white checkered dress that is my Favorite, and hers, my tiny fingers turn her Bright Hot Pink Broach.  How she loved her broaches.  She doesn’t mind sticky little fingers getting them all mussy.
“There was a boy about your age.  His name was Daniel. He was his Daddy’s favorite, just like you, so his Big Brother Bullies sold him to be a slave.  But he was so smart, just like you, that when he grew up, he got the best slave job of all.  He served the King, giving him all kinds of advice.  But that only made the other advisors jealous.  They weren’t as smart as Daniel, so now the King didn’t listen to them anymore.  They decided to get the King’s attention back by making made up lies about Daniel so the King would throw him into the Den of Lions.”  Grandma tells stories so vividly.
“Grandma, What’s a Den of Lions?”
Grandma says, “It’s a big cave where they put lions and roll a big boulder across the opening, like putting all the cows in the barn and closing the door.  They barely feed the lions.  When people are really bad, the guards throw them into the cave.  The lions are so hungry, they gobble the bad people right up.”
My eyes grow big.  “That’s so mean.  They need to feed those poor lions more.” 
Grandma has the patience of a saint.  While they used to say I could “P*$s off the Pope, Grandma never got cross with me.  Not missing a beat, she continues. “So, the King didn’t want to, but he had to keep his promise.  We always have to keep our promises, right?” “Yes Grandma.  We always have to keep our promises.”  Buy-in is so important.
So the King threw Daniel into the Den of Lions.  But the Father up above was watching.  It wasn’t Daniel’s Time Yet.  So God sent an Angel who made the lions tame, just like you tame the wild baby kittens in the barn.  Daniel curled up with the lions.  They kept him warm all night long, like Snowflake does with you.”
I can’t believe this.  “Really?  Lions like to cuddle like kitties do?”
“Yes.” Grandma proclaims.  “While the Angel watched, the lions were just big kitties.  Like Snowflake.”
“Oh.  That is so cool Grandma.  I wish I had a Lion like Snowflake!”  I always wanted everything cool.
“So if God can send an Angel to keep Daniel safe, He can always make sure nothing bad happens to you, now can’t He?”  Grandma says reassuringly to get my buy-in.
“Oh Yes Grandma.”  I happily give it. 
“So you never need to be afraid to be alone again now do you?”  Grandma doubles down on that.
“No Grandma.  I will never be afraid to be alone again.  Or afraid of Lions.”
“And if it’s your time, then God will take you to Heaven where there is no pain, no troubles and no more mean people.  Where everybody has enough food, even the Lions.”
“Lions go to Heaven too?”  I ask, willing to accept any answer she gave me.  Why would Grandma fib? 
Grandma always validating, “Yes.  Heaven has everything you love.  Now go see what your Grandpa is doing.  He’s probably a little lonesome for you.” 
Grandpa retired from farming, but he had a bad knee.  So he’d drive Grandma wherever she wanted to go, but always waited in the car where he could sit with his right leg all propped up.  I ran to Grandpa sitting in the car until he calms me down a little more.  Together, we get out of the car, he with our bucket.  We pick raspberries together.  I love picking stuff from the garden with Grandpa best.  He always lets me eat as many as I want.  We say, “Two for me, One for the Basket.  Two for me, One for the Basket” Until we can’t eat any more.  Then we fill our pail.  We always share a pail.  That way I can bend down and pick up any dropped raspberries.  For Grandpa can’t bend down so well anymore.  He’d say, “Come here little Schnickelfritz.  I need to borrow your knees”.  Sometimes they’d have me crawl up into the high overhead cupboards to get things that had been pushed all the way to the back. Grandpa always got the stuff in the middle so I wouldn’t have to pull over the little stepping stool, the one they bought for me after this ordeal.  Its place was directly under the phone.  That’s so I always knew I could reach the phone in a hurry if I needed to.  They had me memorize all the phone numbers.  One for MaryAnne, one for Naomi, Grandma and Auntie.  I even learned Brianna and Nora’s number, just in case no family was home. Brianna is my best friend.  Our birthdays are 2 weeks apart.  Pictures show us at 8 months old standing together holding the couch for support and each other for love.  We’re inseparable and play together as much as we can.
CHAPTER 1
PASSION FOUND
It’s a beautiful Caribbean Sunset on the water.  I’m out on my little boat with a new family, waiting for the sun to set so we can do a night dive.  It’s a glorious night.  We’re in a turquoise blue bay surrounded by a red rock shoreline densely packed with emerald green trees against a brilliantly clear blue sky.  The boat is barely nodding in time to the easy waves rolling through.  Tonight we have a bonus.  It’s shaping up to be a Green Flash kinda night.  For the non-believers, yes, the Green Flash exists.  For a split second, in a small pinpoint, the last ray of light bends for a short time.  If you are lucky enough to catch a glimpse, it’s the last split seconds as the sun drops from half disc completely into the water.  An hour for the sun to get to half disc, only a second for it to disappear.  Look away when the bottom of the disc touches the water at the horizon for a second, you miss it.  Blink.  You miss it.  Keep Your Eyes Focused?  Presto, there it is.  Everyone ooh’s and ah’s.  It’s a perfect start to a perfect night dive.
I give the pre-dive brief.  This adorable, angelic looking little blond 12-year old girl asks.  “Will we see a shark?”  “Well,” I buy some time figuring out how to answer that.  “Not usually.  But every once in a while, if we get lucky we might see a Nurse Shark sleeping under a coral ledge.  Nurse Sharks are the ultimate ‘fraidy cats.  They are as afraid of you as you are of them.  They hide their eyes under ledges with their tail sticking out thinking if they can’t see you, you can’t see them.  It’s really cool”.
“Oh”.  This little blond diver says.  After a moment adding, “What do I do if a shark comes straight at me?”
Well, that’s a new one.  It isn’t very often someone comes up with a question I haven’t already fielded, but she has one.  In the same time it takes to miss the Green Flash, I come back with a, “Just swoosh your arm away across your body, and the nurse shark will follow your swoosh.  Always keep me between you and shark.  They won’t bother me.  We’ve signed a Written Agreement.  I don’t bother them; they don’t bother me.”
Now I answer the first part on the fly.  The second is part of my repertoire of soundbites designed to instill confidence in intrepid divers.  Honestly, I don’t even know where I pulled that answer out of, although I spent many minutes pretending to be an underwater conductor orchestrating silverside baitballs into an underwater ballet.  Baitballs are swarms of tiny little silver fish that attract a steady stream of predators who feed on them like a veritable Sushi Bar.  Often a row of 6 foot tarpon move slowly through the silversides like ducks on a carnival shooting game.  Huge lines of fish are suspended mid-air like the bodies in the movie “2001 Space Odyssey”.  If you can’t imagine it, the internet is full of pics.  At some point I start playing a game, to see if I could join em.  It took a while, but I figured it out.  For the most part they let me in every time.  I join a ton of silvery fish hanging in the clear blue water against a backdrop of an underwater mountain or canyon.  So beautiful.  One day I was inspired and moved my hands like a conductor, they move in sync with the waves your hands create. 
The little girl smiles.  We start our dive with smiles instead of fear.  It’s an incredible dive.  We find 3 turtles tucked safely in for the night under the ledges.  One is pressed up against the wall with his head and front legs tucked inside his shell while he balances on his hind legs.  He looks like an army helmet.  8 lobster, 2 octopus.  One octopus cartwheels along the sea floor, flashing through shades of green, maroon, pink, orange, white, trying everything he can think of to blend into the background so we stop looking at him.  Poor little guy.  The more he flashes through his colors, the more we look as he runs to escape the flashlight beams.  The moon is full, backlighting the canyon as though a Hollywood Cameraman is orchestrating an academy award winning scene.  Sea baskets bounce in full laciness keeping time with the surge.  Peaceful Beauty.  We don’t see a shark. 
The next day I do a tank run to St Meg’s.  Turns out to be a new friend’s day off, so she rides along to give me a helping hand.  We dive en route where we come FACE TO FACE WITH THAT LITTLE GIRL’S SHARK.  OMG.  No kidding.  You can’t make this up.  In Tight Quarters.  It’s NOT where you want to be. I dove this particular underwater canyon literally 400 times, taking about 5 divers each time.  My concern is what we call the 2-Humped Camel.  You swim up and over each hump crossing a crevice about a body length wide.  Strong waves and surge jostle you round like a maple leaf in the wind.  You gotta be very careful swimming over each hump.  If you float up here, breaking surface waves would literally pummel you into the sharp peaked rocks that jut thru the water’s surface.  Each repeating wave would body slam you into these rocks, the next wave holding you there.  So before we dive, I brief it, over-brief it, and over-exaggerate underwater signals I’ll use.  This warns and reminds everyone to be careful, watch yourself as you swim up and over.  Once underwater we have a 50-50 chance of anyone remembering what we told them to do.  If they remember, their ability to execute?  Well that depends on the diver. 
How do I mitigate this risk besides over-prepping them with a potential horror story of floating up?  And no I don’t mention the potential pummeling, that I keep to myself.  I swim over the first hump, hover below them on my back watching each one as they swim over.  I take the most nervous or weakest diver first, usually the same person.  If they have a real issue, I can reach up and swim them back to the full group and reroute the dive.  Say on average 5 divers with me.  400 times, 2000 divers.  But today, on a day off dive with just the 2 of us, my buddy floats up.  First Time Ever.
Why risk it?  It’s beautiful.  A pristine Back Canyon lies on the other side.  Once you make it up and over the two humps safely, you’re in some unbelievably bright healthy coral encrusted canyons.  The beautiful walls teem with a vibrant array of colors, purples, hot pinks, oranges the likes of which aren’t even found in the most beautiful flower garden.  Textures are reminiscent of a Monet Painting.  Rocks literally come to life.  Soft corals and sea fans sway in the most amazing oceanic rhythm.  Schools of fish hang loosely above, swaying to and fro with the ebb of the ocean like you and I sway in a hammock on a lazy Saturday afternoon.  We all sway in unison with the beautiful clear blue Caribbean Sea. 
In every good dive site, there’s that Special Effect Feature, but it comes at a price.  It’s a place where someone may likely have an unforced error, or maybe it’s a forced error.  It’s that place where as the Divemaster responsible for people’s safety, your heart winds up a bit tighter, your brain and instinct ramp to overdrive.  Every sense is ready to jump to prevent catastrophe, and even more urgently, to correct any small oops before it snowballs.  A small oops uncorrected inevitably leads to a downward spiral, like a bad call shifts momentum in a beach volleyball match to the other side.  It comes with an inexplicable knowing “It” just hit the fan.  You feel it when “It” happens.  Something just went south and you gotta get it back before it leads to disaster.  Never can you tell what might trigger the avalanche.  Make the quicksand quiver.  One thing is sure, if it goes uncorrected, it’ll bury you. 
I just certified my friend, so I know her weaknesses.  She is solid, but has a tendency to inhale too deeply.  And she’s wearing new 7mm booties.  These things, man, are little balloons at the end of your legs.  If you have floaty legs anyway, they put you in a constant battle with the water, and that is a battle you need to avoid.  Buoyancy takes your legs up, while your body strives to keep them down.  Everything underwater once on its way up, gets exponentially bigger faster, bigger faster, and can lead to one of the only 2 things underwater that scare me.  Uncontrolled ascents to the surface are the most terrifying.  Runaway ascents lead to the bends, or decompression sickness.  The other thing that scares me is life.  Not marine life, but people who don’t listen to me.  It doesn’t really matter whether this is driven by inability to comprehend and execute, or by ego-fed belief that they know better (matching their 20, 40, or even 400 dives against my 7000 dives, 6000 on these same sites).  Even if they are better divers or know more about diving than I, or learned from someone who knows more about diving than I do, these divers would NOT know more about these sites than I do their first time out. 
You can tell a true expert.  A true expert knows when to yield to more direct, applicable experience.  It’s just Hacks, the arrogant know-it-alls, who don’t get it.  Who cannot yield?  Who chaff at correction, refusing to surrender their supposed superior status and hard-won knowledge.  The worst are those who in their professional life, in their capacity as CEO or Doctor, Business Owner, Mega people manager or such, are at the top of their field.  Unfortunately their skill and prowess in another forum often works against them on the water.  Especially underwater.  Disadvantage directly relates to how long it’s been since they’ve tried something new.  How long it’s been since they were Student instead of Teacher.  Worker rather than Supervisor.  How long since the last time you surrendered control.
Surrendering control is the real issue underwater.  Even with my 7000 dives, which falls at the high end of the experience spectrum, I consider myself a newcomer to the effects of the ocean at the sites I usually dive, or at any dive site.  Hazards at each dive site are predictable.  A diver’s reaction when caught in an unexpected error, on the other hand?  NOT SO MUCH.  While I learned to ask enough questions above water so I get a feel for the person, to help me assess and anticipate likely reactions, who might listen, who would monkey see monkey do me, who would freeze when uncertain, who would help, who others would copy, who would role model.  And the worst, who was going to be THAT GUY.  Diver’s reactions are even more variable than what the ocean might do at any dive site on any given day.  If that isn’t enough to put the Fear of God in you, then I’m not sure what is. 
The worst possible combination happens this day.  I signal my diver “up and over”.  She deflates.  I see she’s mentally prepared.  I remind her again how to keep her feet down.  Yet, despite all my precautions, I barely drop between the humps and get turned before I see her give too much leeway clearing the first hump.  She gives it a couple of feet– and we only have a few feet to spare.  Her booties and wetsuit expand, lifting her up where they expand yet again.  That bigger, faster thing.  As she realizes she’s floating up, her inhale instinctively increases.  This is a good reaction on land, but underwater NOT SO MUCH.  For she has not yet mastered my little trick of exhaling your way out of issues underwater.  This mutates into her bullet rise towards the surface.  2 kicks in a split second, that’s what I give.  It’s enough to propel me to her with my hand outstretched.  Always palms up.  People, along with animals and marine life, are much more likely to accept a helping hand with palms up.  If you have the sincerity and humbleness to match what that portrays. 
At first, she refuses my hand, submitting to an innate desire to “do it myself”.  There’s no time for that.  I grab her hand, pull her down rapidly with a painless yet powerful snap.  Swiveling her 180 degrees, like a do-si-do dance move, I grab her tank valve to guide her down the valley and up the next hump like we are spinning on the dance floor.  It’s much easier underwater where effects of gravity and friction practically disappear.
As I shake off that close call, the mouth of a 14-foot shark appears a few feet from my face as I swim up and over the second hump.  He’s coming through the narrow crevice from the other direction.  If you’ve never seen a shark that big, as I hadn’t, I’m face to face with a shark’s head about 3-4 feet wide.  His pearly white teeth run the width of his really big mouth.  We’re so close no one has time to think, certainly not me.  Not even the shark.  I barely have time to react.  We all are floating up in a bit of an upwelling current.  Even the Shark.  Up where there isn’t enough space overhead.  If he keeps his same course his tail would hit us if he passed us.  That puts directly over our head, a 6 by 3 foot tail of solid muscle that ripples back and forth while he swims, capable of a powerful pop in a sudden burst after he stops for a moment.  That would be a Bad Thing.  That tail could either knock our masks off OR worse, knock one or both of us out, even if he didn’t mean to.  You Gotta Keep Your Mask On.  Or put it back on quickly if it comes off accidently.  Your life may depend on it. 
With only a spilt second to react, ‘Go Away’ I think as I instinctively swoosh my left arm at him across my body to the left, “Thank You Little Girl”, still holding Cherenne’s tank valve with my right hand.  Mr. Shark abruptly matches the motion of my arm just like the silversides do, and swims off in the direction of my swoosh.  Even under fire, I’m logging this thought — All these fish must have some kind of built in motion detector, because he follows the swoosh of my hand exactly. 
Mr. Shark swims up the rocks, over a plateau with barely 2 foot clearance between the undersea mount and where waves break on its pinnacle above water.  Hoping Mr. Shark made it through the shallow clearance, I swim Cherenne over the next hump.  Finally, I get to where we can hover and make eye contact.  She’s cool as a sea cucumber.  Simply fine.  Not fazed at all.  Me on the other hand?  Adrenaline pumping like never before in my life.  A Shark Pic burned indelibly into my brain.  That last pic where only the camera, not the photographer, makes it.  That “Jaws” close-up shot of the shark’s mouth.
I’d never seen rows of shark’s teeth in full frontal view, 2 feet from my face, except in nightmares.  The teeth are ever so razor like.  Long exhale 2-3-4-5.  I still couldn’t believe he followed my arm swoosh and swam away.  All this in a split second.  Thank You God!  Thank You God!  Thank You God! 
CHAPTER 2
Music at Sunset
Stir It Up, Gimme One Good Reason
The Waterfront.  Someone told me about their to-die-for appetizers.  Their Music at Sunset.  First time out, I get stuck in traffic.  I miss Happy Hour, barely managing to walk in as the sun sets.  I look at the sun’s angle.  The sky’s clarity.  Absence of low clouds.  I walk straight to the back rail.  Camera ready.  It’s the perfect set up for the Green Flash.  It’s a rare phenomenon.  Scientists say the rays of the sun bend below the horizon, refracting the lingering light across the water separating rays into different colors as a prism creates a rainbow.  To those with spiritual imagination, it’s the masterpiece of Raphael, the Angel of Light, Healing and Music, who with his paint brush and a swoosh of his wing picks and chooses where and when to reward the faithful’s attention.  Sometimes he rewards with a spectacular sunset, sometimes with a Green Flash, sometimes the notes of beautiful Music.  Sometimes all three.
Sunset.  My way to give thanks and receive my reward for a well-spent day.  It’s made better with a Margarita, Bushwacka, Blue La’Amoria or some other liquid libation.  It is My Meditation.  My Medication.  My way to release the day’s tension. To lighten up the inevitable worry about whether my boat will ride out the night.  Whether a storm is forming.  Where my next gig will come from.  Or How I’m going to get that part in for the motor.  All that jazz.  Then when Rip Van Sparkles returned from Diving in the Caribbean, to release the pressures of office work and treachery. 
They say where your attention goes, your life and love follows.  For sailors and those who spend infinity on the water doing their sailing, surfing, boating, swimming, diving, it’s all about the Sea.  All about being in sync with the Sea.  Riding the Waves.  Matching Your Motion to the Ocean.  Swimming with turtles and dolphins.  Watching whales blast water through their blowholes.
I found a couple ways to let things go at the end of the day.  It starts with changing my boat Crocs when I get back to my island jeep.  Amazing how that little ritual changes my whole being.  It creates a shift from work to play, much like receiving a message or heart from afar can send a sliver of love across many miles and years, boosting your energy.  Another favorite ritual is swimming. I just imagine the water washing away the day’s nonsense, leaving only that which has value.  There’s Yoga.  Similar to the water, for with every stretch, tension trapped in muscles and ligaments is released.  Common to all three, after you let go, you decide what you want to keep from the day, what you want to leave in the discard pile, as you would in a game of rummy, or 5 Card Draw.
Music at Sunset is the best.  The epitome of the end to a hard day and the beginning of the perfection of evening play.  Pure Enjoyment.  No day is more important than Friday, when you can drop the whole week.  Only to pick up on Monday Morning what is necessary.  That which still has value, so you can begin the week anew.  In this incarnation of my life I have both Saturday and Sunday free.  In my last, I was lucky to have Saturday free.  Sunday was always a diving day.  While diving isn’t as much like work as pushing paper, its still work.  Paperwork on Sunday?  Off limits unless an urgent deadline is imminent. 
Music.  A Gift from Angels.  Of all the Musicians I worked with, Buddy B taught me the most about how to watch Music.  He’d always come round when off-island bands play.  I applied his valuable lessons to everyone.  He also taught to NEVER, EVER, Let Dead Air Space echo through the little Bar & Grill I bought fulfilling the second part of living my dream.  The first was creating my own little dive operation.  Part 2 was adding my own place to enjoy a Burger and a Beer at the diving day’s end. 
Dead Air on the boat is equally bad.  Maybe worse.  It gives people time to get nervous.  Out of Control Nerves are the way people get hurt.  Usually not the one who lost it.  Instead, who gets hurt is either an innocent bystander or more likely, the one who goes to save them.  Trying to fix someone’s blunder underwater can be fatal.  In a bar, Dead Air only financially devastates.  It gives the crowd time to think about leaving.  On a band night, you need everybody to stay a long time and drink a lot, for not only do you have to pay upkeep and booze cost, you gotta cover that band.  And that band ain’t cheap.  So, we all drop everything to run for the soundboard when the band stops.  Get House Music On Now.  Keep the same genre going to hold the mood. 
If you’re blessed, Music can carry you beyond this World.  Watching “The Boys” taught me the difference between a band who is tight, even plays perfectly together, but doesn’t have that elusive “IT”.  That magical moment when Musicians tap into the beauty of another dimension and their Music takes on a quality that can only be described as ethereal.  Heavenly.  Watching “The Boys” leave this world together is how I first saw two mystically connect through Music as they play.  It always takes two.  Just another one of those elusive treasure troves where two have a chance to make something special.  If missed, or under wrong circumstances, your shot fades back into the nothingness from whence it came.  But when you connect, together two can soar to a place where you don’t feel any pain. 
Interesting, the Bible says where two or more gather and ask for the same thing aligned with God’s Will in belief, it will be granted.  Maybe that’s what happens, two listen together and catch the harmonic wave upward back to source.  “The Boys” created many of those amazing Musical Moments when the Music quality clearly exceeds the talent and ability of the Musicians.  It seems they leave this world, passing into another dimension and bring back its Music.  That connection.  A spark so real, so visible, that I begin to see it emerge.  Some Musicians only find it sometimes, for some it slips in and out depending on surroundings.  Some can find it almost on demand.  Perhaps that’s what Jim Morrison was trying to describe with his “Break On Through to the Other Side”.  I always imagine the Musicians go to a room in the sky that holds Janis Joplin, Buddy Holly, Jim Morrison, and others who left this world far too soon.  Souls who spend eternity playing their beautiful Music, now with even more Perfection.  I imagine this is where the Musicians reach, bringing heavenly sounds back to earth with them.  Though to make the magical jump, they need to join another soul. 
I went from spotting Musicians leave, to sending my energy to Musicians from the audience in the hope one’d catch it and soar, mirroring what I saw happen when “The Boys” jammed together onstage.  Matching my energy with theirs, hoping to capture be the rocket fuel to propel them onward and upward.  The Music sends out a whole new Feel.  Maybe attention sparks someone with a strong need to be heard.  It gets them to engage.  I’m not sure how or why, but I know it’s real.  Not every Musician can tap into it.  If they do, not every Musician can we reach “The Room”.  But every once in a while, one catches the Harmonic Wave and I’d flourish in the trail they leave behind.
Palm Trees rustle their little cluckety-cluck like they do in the sea breeze, as I focus my attention on the sun.  In the back of my mind, I hear the intro to my favorite song.  Now?  During the Green Flash?  I can’t watch both at the same time.  Which way do I look?  I heard this Musician before.  It’s a bonus he’s playing tonight.  This kid’s got IT.  Amazing sound.  Amazing Talent.  Amazing Voice.  Fabulous Selection.  But I’m not about to look away from the sun as it touches the horizon, not tonight.  Tonight is setting up for the Green Flash.  That doesn’t stop him.  He plays right through his signature intro.  Just as he hits the first note of Angel, I see that elusive Green Flash.  Did he see it too and time it, or is it just the synchronicity of the moment?  Raphael in action?
I don’t stay for nature’s encore, to see the colors deepen in the sky before deep blue takes over.  Instead, camera still in hand, I zoom in on him as he plays my favorite song.  He looks up with softness and awareness, as though he can see through the camera and my dark glasses right into my soul.  Kindred spirits mingle without touching in a way few ever know.  He can’t hold the gaze, looks away.  The Perfection of the Moment is captured entirely in his Music.  It stirs up my every nerve.  Never felt more alive.  Not even in the midst of White Flash Love-Making had I felt this sensation.  His Music moves me.  As it flows through me, I feel it washing away my pain, reinvigorating me as it erases hurts held for too long.
Despite all his soul, the next song he struggles with his sound.  He’s fussing with the soundboard trying to get his Reps into the Box.  I know the drill.  A Musician usually sits behind the speakers so he can’t hear what the room hears, especially in an open air venue.  So, I do what I always do.  I walk back to the rail, tapping my throat (sometimes its air guitar) along with a thumbs up or down, with a finger thumb combo to say little or lots.  Pretty simple when you think about it, but unbelievable how many Musicians look at you and shake their head trying to tell you they don’t understand. Just like leading divers.  At some point I’d even begun adding that into my pre-dive briefing.
“If you don’t know what I’m saying, don’t waste time getting frustrated telling me you don’t understand.  I see you don’t understand, I get that you don’t understand.  Or you’d already be doing it.  Just do what I’m doing.  Monkey See, Me Monkey Do Me.  I’m showing you how to solve your problem, not showing you how I’m solving mine.”  A former student once chimed in.  “Just do what she’s showing you whether you know why or not, if you do, you’ll probably figure out why about halfway through.”  Amen to that.  Thank you!  For usually when someone jumps in, they take you off tangent leaving others with the wrong message.  Then it takes 3 minutes unwinding what they just planted and you still have to share what you wanted the divers to remember in the first place.  Oh man.  I’ve not given a dive brief in 2 years, 6 now, but I still feel the nails-on-chalkboard shiver down my spine remnants, my head still shakes at that statement’s truth.  When they get that, this Truth Does Set Them Free.
About 30% of the people just do what I do.  No scratch that.  It’s more like 10%, maybe 20% after I’ve briefed it.  Half the rest just sit there dumbfounded trying to figure it out themselves.  Dude everything underwater works opposite from the surface.  You aren’t going to figure it out on your own underwater under duress, unless you get very lucky or someone somewhere is looking out for you.  As they try, their breathing changes.  They hold in more air.  Then they float up.  Or worse.  They get frustrated.  Switch to nose-breathing.  That breaks the seal and floods their masks, so they float up.  Still gesturing to tell me they don’t understand.  The other half makes it worse by pausing mid-water while shaking their heads, trying to tell me they don’t understand.  As frustration grows, they start breathing heavier and suck down a fifth of their tank with big fast exhales.  Drop down onto the coral, hurting it and themselves.  So that is all now part of my pre-dive briefing. The memory makers happen every time I dive with one of the 10%.  We share a bond that survives time and distance.  Even 10 years and 5000 miles. 
This Particular Musician gives me that same feeling right off the bat.  He immediately responds to my “voice up” signal by adjusting voice volume up.  He goes 10 better, signaling back a question, while he’s playing and singing.  “What about the Reverb”.  I signal, it is perfect.  (Ok sign) and instinctively know, “Gonna love this guy”.
It is obvious from his first notes how special his Music is.  Perhaps because he is fussing.  I recognize the signs of seeking perfection.  Blessing and curse that is.  How Seeking Perfection complicates life, and love, and yet how it brings extraordinary results.  This Man has It.  He is amazing.  Especially compared with other local talent.  No one compares to him.  Then one day I play back old video clips of my favorite Pirate’s Blight Musicians.  No one there holds a candle to him, either.  Not even those who I thought were the best.  Funny, then I couldn’t imagine anyone’s songs reaching me more than Reed’s.  After I walked away from that little bar I owned for a while in Pirate’s Blight where Satan landed when St. Michael kicked him out of Heaven, I arranged a booking for Reed at the remaining Best Music Venue.  Most of his gigs drifted to St Meg’s during the off-season and I was missing his Music.
We’re gearing up for season.  I’m out of the bar back to diving full time, but really missing regular live music.  I want Reed front and center here on our island so I arrange with the man who answered my ad to buy my little bar.  Instead of rescuing me, he bought a different bar.  We kept in touch and he happily set a date for my then Favorite Musician.  7 September 2017.  Instead of a Season Opener of my then favorite musician, that day we awoke to see the devastation of a Cat 5 shoulda-been-a-Cat 10 Hurricane.  I never again heard Reed play, except in the few clips in my video files.
A week earlier, he joined me at table where I was sitting with an old dive student.  One who helped me set up my first website all those years ago when my diving dream was just beginning.  This is my friend Brooke, he say to my former student.  Turns out he knew her much better than I did.  That intro meant a lot to me.  I didn’t realize he considered me a friend, I thought he just considered me a fan.  A follower.  A week later, the Hurricane hit.  I was blown thousands of miles away, still haven’t returned.  Instead, I spent a couple months at the home of a dear friend from college days trying to pull what’s left of my life together.  Something about losing your home, business, friends, favorite places, favorite pastimes, community, and your lifelong dream all at the same time that just levels you. 
Peoples’ tongues wag, “Do you think she’s depressed?  Why isn’t she getting over this already?  It’s been  a month.  As if.  Dude, you can’t even imagine the impact, much less try to swim in my dive fins, much less define the time I should “Get Over My Loss.”  Not all were nasty.  My friend’s loving question stands.  “I just want you to heal.  How does this help you heal?  How can you heal?”  Michael with no choice but to look on, to watch, to observe a difficult phone call with my mother.  A conversation out of control.  Much as I watch helplessly as he manages, defends, and ensures his projects happen on time and budget.  He’s expert at resolving issues before they arise by anticipating likely outcome based upon experience.  We each are helpless, unable to jump in, only knowing that later we can offer support and maybe some suggestions. He’s only able to love me and share understanding of what transpires.  And though miraculously and thankfully Michael never experienced anything like I went through.  Despite the many years since we last played and studied together as Best Friends, he chooses not to judge, admonish, or offer unsolicited advice.  Instead, all he asks is simply “How are you after that?”  He had a sister like mine, but somehow, he knows that the altercation between me and Mom is a twisted interplay, and replay, of old wounds.  He sees the difference in me.  Much as I watch someone take their first breath underwater visibly change. 
Demeanors, auras, energy, change.  You watch them instantaneously morph into someone else.  Someone struggling with the more base response that follows once the very fine line between rational and irrational behavior is crossed.  Once fight or flight is engaged, rational thought is hard to retrieve.  More terrifying there are those who thrive and prosper on intentionally generating this response in others.  More on that later.  And now they’ve added a third natural inclination.  Freeze.  This sometimes is hard to distinguish between Passive Panic, or maybe it’s just a variation of it.  Where the possibility of nuance change in a verbal contest is naught, especially one steeped in years of practice and rut, the outcome is predictable.  Much like a new diver trying to figure out how to move effortlessly underwater without guidance, I was trapped in repeated expression of dissatisfaction with status quo to mom, a script where new responses to the same old pokes, prods, nags and salt rubbed in an open wound is nil. One is “When I Get Time.” Another is, “I’ll be home soon.”  If I had a dam nickel for every time Mom and Dad said that when they were still at their bar, I’d have more money than Bezos. The possibility of coming up with a new approach, or a way to diffuse a guaranteed fighting word is virtually impossible, implausibly beyond expectation. 
This is especially true when the attacker has been spoon-fed a malicious script by someone wanting to inflict pain upon her perceived competition.  Malice delivered from a third party who by role should be loving, by relation should be a safe place.  By someone whose words should provide comfort, loving guidance, and reassurance.  Instead, her words now warped by a lifetime of hostile influence that surficially appears helpful.  Years of seemingly loving well-intentioned input, but in reality is mean, cold, nasty personal attacks.  That the third party is a sister who does not wish to share a mother’s love and attention, only makes it worse.  A sister who for some reason feels, or believes, there is not enough love to go around.  Still. Now.  As a Grandmother.
Michael’s sweet, concerned question hangs in memory like snow remains on evergreen branches on one of those days when the sun appears warm and beckons, yet is not even warm enough to melt wet snow.  Even after 6 hours of shining and doing its thing, two inches of wet damp snow still cling to the branches like you cling to the hope that “This Too Shall Pass Today.” Like you cling to the hope that you can find something of equal or greater value than the life and community and friends, and work and business and hangouts that you lost, in 13 hours as the winds went from Nuttin to 50 mph, 100, 130,150, 185, gusts to 225 multiple times.  Two tornadoes spinning in the volcanic valley below you, all inside a hurricane.  Somewhere that life must be replaced.  If not here, then in another domain. Lord I hope I don’t have to wait that long.
The consummate challenge?  What will ever replace Nirvana Lost?  Where can I ever live that will match a tropical paradise island, working for myself, doing what I love, at the pinnacle of physical fitness, youth and beauty.  What will ever be as rewarding?  What singer will ever be able to reach me the way Reed’s songs did, in a way that soothes my soul infinitely better than the original artist?  His voice more beautiful than the glorious sunset over the tropical paradise that is his backdrop.  Moments of bliss that transcend earthly pain and suffering.  So soothing and strong is his performance that now hearing songs that once brought me joy, bring only sadness for a life suddenly torn from me like a teacher grabs the test paper from a surprised student caught cheating.  My life, my friends, my home, my play, my work.  All Torn Away.  Right before my eyes in a few hours as 225 mph winds pummel my island home. 
SHOCK BEYOND BELIEF.  MUST KEEP WALKING.  Raise my foot.  Take one step.  Try to lift the corners of my mouth into a smile even though each corner weighs 10,000 pounds.  Not knowing where, only knowing that the place to find happiness lies ahead, whether it will be found with people who meant the world to me when we shared life together long ago or whether my hope for happiness lies ahead in the unknown with new souls who will become my future.  I know not which.  All I know is that the only way to replace what is lost is to fill the void that’s missing from my life, a life lived in paradise, is to put one foot in front of the other each day. 
But it wasn’t Heaven.  It was just paradise, and every paradise lacks certain things.  The biggest was men my own age, and trite though it may sound, fresh vegetables and enough water for showers, cleaning and rinsing dive gear.  $400 for 40000 gallons doesn’t go very far.  A distant third is a place that offers variety and long straight highways perfect for an easy weekend road-trip visit or exploration.  I’m not complaining, I had my own boat to quickly run to neighboring islands for a day or two.  That was great.  But when you get there, it’s still just another island, beach and bar, wonderful though they be. Certainly, if that squirrel frolicking in the Maple Tree can climb to the uppermost branches to do his morning loops n somersaults, swinging from branches as though a trapeze, branches that are a fraction of his body weight and yet somehow still support him, then there is hope for me too.  There he is, showing off for his lady squirrel trying to get as high as she flies, to join her.  If this squirrel can find his way back down safely, after a few more flips, jumps, and tosses, then certainly, I can find something that makes me smile again.
This Musician does that.  He makes me smile.  His Music.  The way he enjoys playing.  The way he enjoys me enjoying him play.  Quite simply that is it.  I enjoy his Music, and He enjoys my enjoyment.  Just like I shared my love of diving with my divers.  His range is incredible.  One day Bruno Mars pops onto my Music Feed.  Wow.  Raf has even more “It” than Bruno Mars.  As time progresses and somehow Bruno appears more and more.  I can better explain this.  Bruno is the Superstar Performer.  Now.  With full benefit of everything the Music Industry throws behind him:  Production, lyrics, the best backup, and the best supporting players.  Let’s just say, now add that to Raf.  They’d be the same.  Except for this.  Raf is that Rare Musician.  With Heart.  With Voice beyond this world.  If you separate just his voice, it’s hard to find better.  As good?  Maybe.  Different?  Yes.  Then its Crap Shoot based on Preference.  But from a pure quality perspective.  Better Than Bruno Mars.  In My Humble Opinion.  Thankfully I later learned that Bruno has a big heart full of forgiveness.  Who thought that my statement would ever reach his ears?  Certainly not me when I said it. 
Anyway, you can’t buy Heart.  Any more than you can instill in someone the desire to take care of another more than they take care of themselves.  It’s the same reason why my divers trust me to the full limits of human capability, and perhaps even believe that at the right moment, that I will pull out some extraordinary rescue from Up Above.  That touch of the Heavenly.  Raf is so strong, I was finally able to hitch onto Music, together riding to that “Room in the Sky.”  Our energy combined, together propelling us into that ethereal world.  Where all things are beautiful and only good is felt.  Its pure energy infusion.  Much as when a Sea Turtle or dolphin in the wild swims to you and decides to stay and play. 
This is what Raf radiates.  That Musician who can and will take you with him to that Room in the Sky.  Of What Sinatra sings about in “Fly Me To The Moon?   Funny that.  The whole idea of space scares me.  Must be all those old Sci-Fi drama traumas.  So, Frank’s words Jupiter and Mars are lost on me, until one day many months later I heard Raf sing it.  For the first time in my life, I knew the feeling of Love Received.  I’m convinced this kid is a Superstar yet to be discovered.  I knew it the first minute.  Just like Shred.  Man that kid could shred. 
Red Converse Tennies and a shot of Fireball.  In walks BuddyB.  He listens as only another expert musician can to the “The Boys” As I watch him, I recognize something akin to what I’m feeling lately.  For BuddyH is a Superstar, perhaps just locally, but he played with THAT TEXAN we all know and love, Stevie Ray Vaughn.  BuddyH can shred.  A Local Legend.  So am I, Brooke the Diver. “ The best?”  They name me when asked. “You are worried?  Dive with Brooke.  She’s the Best.  She’ll never let anything happen to you.”  Do I believe that?  No Matter.  They Do.  Does BuddyH believe he’s the best?  No Matter.  We do.
Part of my dive briefing is that the dive ain’t over til your Butt is back on the Boat.  There’s always someone younger, faster, hungrier, someone who wants it more than you do.  Go for the Gold, we don’t want no Stinkin’ Silver.  Don’t stop until you are back on the boat.  For that is where most accidents happen.  When they are ever so close to having made it back to the boat safely, they let up.  Then something bad happens.  It always does. That 90% accidents within a mile of home thing. 
So I recognize the signs in BuddyH that night.  Longing for the days when no one is faster, or better, or even has a chance to touch you where you are, when you were at the pinnacle of your Perfection.  Yes.  I recognize the longing in BuddyH’s eyes. “Johnny!”  I swoosh him over.  All we do is look at each other.  No words exchanged.  He simply says, “I remember when I was a 22 year old kid in red converse tennies with long blond hair shredding my guitar.”  Now he normally doesn’t do shots.  Nor do I.  But there are times one is called for. “Can I buy you a shot?    I’ll do a baby one with you.”  I offer.  He looks at me in appreciation as only a friend who knows what road you’ve walked, what road you’ve both walked, you and he can.  A look that says, ”I see your pain.  I feel your pain.  I share your Pain.”  And he mine. No words.  He simply nods. I pour the shots.  We drop em back. Smile.  I say, “Go Up.”  “What?”  He asks.  “They’re in the middle of a set”.  “Nah.  I know these guys.  They’d love it.  They’d love you playing.”     
What happens next is beyond magic.  Now there are 4. The Shredder, Rhythm,BuddyH, Me.  They huddle up as Buddy keys up his guitar.  The Boys are Pure Classic Rock and Buddy is Pure Southern Rock. Buddy leads them into “FreeBird”.  Our Cathedral Ceiling made of wood, lined with Wood Beams has all the Stateside Musicians saying it’s their favorite place to play.  The acoustics are astounding.  Our view onto the water impeccable, the perfect setting as Buddy and Shred play those guitars like they’re made for them.  Dueling Leads like Charlie Daniels in “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”, instead playing for the Devil Ray Diamonds.  They shred for 20 minutes.  No one in the bar speaks.  Everyone’s mesmerized, caught in Magical Music from another world.  “An Exploding Orgasm”BuddyH Says later.  Another place and time, yet somehow they are still right here with us.  Each plays a few bars and then pauses for the other.  They never before played together.  Yet together they are Perfection.
I catch familiar headlights out front.  Blue Lights up top.  Damn.  Now?  Landlord’s Brother called the Cops? Again?  Never mind we are within the Noise Ordinance and our Music License Hours.  No matter. They open their car doors.  I can’t believe my eyes.  They don’t get out.  The cops sit there taking in the whole show.  I wonder ifBuddyH and Shred notice them too, for they play and play that song.  When they stop, the cops strut in.  Thankfully it’s the nicer one.  I know them all by now.  For they make the 25 minute drive out from town every night we have music.  One or 2 of ‘em.  Their harassment just doesn’t stop.  Never before did the words, “I hate cops” cross my mind.  Well maybe speeding trap cops. 
I dutifully meet him at the door.  “Good Evening Officer.  How are you tonight?  What can I do for you?”  He looks at me, shaking his head.  “Kenneth called again about the noise.  But that’s the most beautiful Music I’ve ever heard.  Still, you gotta close this place down.”   I’m like, “Officer its 10:25.  We’re below 90 decibels at the door.  License says Music til 11.  12 on Fridays. 100 decibels at the Street.  It’s Friday.  Bar is Full.”  “Sorry.  Gotta Shut You Down.  We got a complaint”. “Yea, but it’s not a legit complaint.” I don’t dare say out loud.  Not tonight. Fifty people watch as “The Boys” pack their equipment.  I put House Music on.  Cops sit across the street with their headlights shining on the door step.  Locals get it, but tourists ask if they’ll get a DUI if they leave now.  I pay “The Boys” their gig fee, which is a special rate just for me.  Sales cut early aren’t going to cover costs.  Again. Katy Perry “ROAR” comes onto my Music Feed as I write this. 
Police Officers are regularly called by the Landlord’s brother. Some of them play the game.  Knowing they were sent on a jackal’s mission that is rigged and against the rules.  They duly scold, we apologize, turn the Music down to 50 decibels, which by the way, you can’t even hear.  A few minutes after we see the lights fade, we take music back up to legal limit. 
“We don’t care what the law and your license allows.” Was my favorite cop comment, the night they sent the two Lady Cops out.  And I say, “But Officer, we are within the law and our license.”   Nothing like racial tensions between minority women with power over a white woman.  Flexing their muscle.  Sometimes I wonder if they aren’t making up for past horrors inflicted by others before this generation.  Me?  Which team you play for matters to me more than the color of your skin, or who you want to sleep with, or what religion you practice.  For me it’s about whether you play for the Angels or the Devil Ray Diamonds.  Truthfully, I don’t care which way the prejudice goes.  It’s still prejudice.  I don’t like it. There are so many real problems to solve.  All solved better together.
So I’m like, “But Ma’am.  We’ve not 95 decibels at the door, much less at the middle of street.”   Lady Cop2 says, “We don’t have sound meters.”  Her statement is especially brash because the law requires them to use meters when enforcing the noise ordinance.  So I offer, “Here, use ours, see its showing.”  I’m not allowed to finish my sentence.  First lady cop says, “We’re not trained to look at your meter.  Even if we were, we don’t know if it’s calibrated.  Shut Down.  Shut your Music Down Now, or we’re taking you back with us.” 
Guess the authorities heard how the girls hanging out at the bar would schmooze the male officers into letting us slide by.  They started sending female officers to violate our rights.  Somehow, these Cornerback Lady Cops enjoyed messing with a single white woman who happened to have been stupid enough to buy a bar that’s the equivalent of a Wall Street Ponzi Scheme with authorities getting their cut.  Add in Unfair Competition, the landowner’s nephew, also Cornerback, sells drugs in an offsale locale made onsale too on inventory stolen from me.  Its directly across the street not only do they undercut our drink prices, RENTFREE, they put up these Carnivale Concert Sized speakers on full volume and blast us out during dinner hour.  Cops look the other way on that, but jump all over our Music Nights.  And the Music License for this place was the first issued this side of the island.  Landlord’s brother calls the cops on legally allowable Music volumes.  There’s no viable way out of the rent agreement.  I’m stuck like a fly in a spider’s web watching my life savings shrink.
I’m not good at playing dead.  Not even on New Year’s Eve.  Another memory floods in. It’s New Year’s.  I’m sitting in the most beautiful dive bar looking out through an arch at a full moon rising over emerald mountains onto the clear Caribbean Sea.  The surface glimmers like a mirror reflecting the white sand beneath it.  It’s the kind of night where the moon brings my favorite kind of diamonds.  Diamonds that dance on the water.  I’m in agony because literally Shaggy is on St. Dyke’s playing New Year’s Eve, and I’m trapped here.  By this most fateful decision of my life that didn’t go according to Hoyle.  NOT.  EVEN.  A.  LITTLE.  BIT.  Shaggy’s song “Angel” is my battle hymn.  It got me through more trauma, drama and wonder that anyone should ever see in a lifetime.
“Girl you’re my Angel. 
Closer than my peeps you are to me, baby.  Shorty you’re my angel you’re my darling angel.  Girl you’re my friend when I’m in need, Lady.  Life is one big party when you’re still young but who’s gonna have your back when it’s all done. 
Don’t’ be a fool son, what about the long run?”
Literally, I play it every morning to get my head right before the dive.  It is a song that I first hear at my favorite local watering hole.  A double decker pirate ship literally set in Pirate’s Blight, Treasure Island. The isle that inspired that Literature Classic.  Oh, the number of times I told my own version of how Robert Louis Stevenson came to write that amazing compilation of local history.  Truly, not such a tall tale. Not when 200 years later modern day pirates literally thrive 2 miles across the beautiful Blue Caribbean Sea.  The brilliant clear aqua water is set against lush green trees where libations are served by a world-class bartender who makes everyone smile, laugh, and gives them the time of their life.  Even better, I’m paid to bring people here after I take them diving on a world class wreck, and a fab reef in front of Spyglass Hill made legendary in this pirate’s tale where a teen-age boy is helped by James Hawkins to right the Schooner “Hispaniola”.  Together they sail out from under Long John Silver’s evil grasp much like Daniel escaped the Lion’s Den, although Stevenson didn’t mention Angels.  His focus is Pirates.  But really?  How besides angels do two right a Pirate Ship without lift bags and pumps?
I’d barely been able to bring myself to listen to my favorite song in the 21 months since those back-to-back Cat 5 hurricanes wiped me out.  Almost 2 years since 225 mph winds wreaked havoc as the eyewall sat atop our island for over 5 hours.  The aftermath?  Only concrete buildings and bare trees remain after she finally passes.  Anything made of wood is decimated, just like the wood houses in the Story of the “3 Little Pigs.”  That there is nothing left, nor would there be for an unknown time, led to my not-so-self-imposed exile from my island paradise dream life.
Surprisingly, that doesn’t mean it was perfect.  “It ain’t Heaven, It’s just Paradise” is my mantra along with “Same Right Way Every Day”.  Funny that.  Even my saying is pirated by someone who turned it into the byline for their restaurant and a mints’ worth of T-Shirts and coozie’s.  I always chased it with, “Even Paradise has Mosquitos.”  Be careful what you say, for mosquitos also brought me 2 debilitating diseases that changed how my joints felt and my ligaments worked forever.  Suddenly I’m feeling, and looking, much closer to my age.  Yet that is not even close to the worst part of this story.  For 5 months I learned what it would feel like to be 80 or 90 riddled with arthritis, barely able to walk or move.  Yet I dove and drove my little boat through much of it.  After 5 months it went away.  The first three weeks I could barely leave my bed to forage for something to eat.  One night I couldn’t lift my arm to open the cupboard.  It took 20 minutes to get the cupboard door open.  And when I finally did, I couldn’t open the Advil bottle.  And when I finally did, the bottle fell from my hand spilling the tablets all over the cupboard and floor.  I took 2. It took 10 more minutes to get back to my bed.  Maybe 20 feet away.  And no, it wasn’t the Bends from diving.  I hadn’t been in the water for weeks when that hit, and everyone was suffering from some form of this malady. 
As I recovered, I lifted tanks, swam out to the boat.  The first time I tried to swim back from checking the battery and bilges, the bane of a boater’s life, I wasn’t sure I was going to make the 50 yard swim.  Me.  I swam for an hour or three a couple times every day.  Easy.  I made that swim couple times a day for many years.  Yet here I am pushing my swim box (to keep the dry stuff dry).  Suddenly my legs are too tired to kick any longer.  I’m only in about 7 feet of water, but at 5’6” tall.  Does Not Compute. Swim FINS! Even with all my focus to take a deeper breath, I couldn’t float up.  My eyes were slipping under.  Somehow, I kept the box, which held my keys, purse and phone, from tipping over.  Somehow as my fin touched bottom I was able to eke out a push.  I fin tip-jump getting water and air each time, spitting water back out like one of those fish fountains. Until I somehow reached the mound where the water’s only 5 feet deep.  I stand there mentally shaking until I get a second wind.  Not sure what happened. Yet I’m not afraid.  Just confused.  It never happens again, but it scared the Bee-Jeesus out of me.  “Hang on I will as long as I can.  Turns out to be Chickun Gunya, A mosquito borne illness that swept the islands the year before Zitka hit.  Everyone heard about Zitka.  No one heard of Chickun Gunya, but it was worse.
Yes, it’s a heart rendering decision to stay away from my dream and return Stateside to engineering.  The heart and stomach ache that accompanied all the drama trauma of 60+ hours a week closing a business from 3000 miles away and then writing resumes is nauseating. Yet I believed, and still do, that it was necessary, perhaps even destiny.  Who can argue with a mother’s sickness, 2 back-to-back Cat 5-shoulda-been a Cat 10 Hurricanes, 2 debilitating mosquito borne diseases, 2 Solar Eclipses and 2 Full Moons of the Century?  Even the stars aligned.  Miraculously, I survived.  Not only the Hurricanes, but even the Bar.  Something made me buy that bar too, in spite of too many red flags.  Sometimes you just listen to the Universe, even if it’s NOT the message you want to hear. Though it feels a travesty and shatters your soul.
Through all of the drama trauma of owning that little bar, the song “Angel” is my respite.  But after the Hurricanes, listening to it Stateside made me so homesick I couldn’t bare it. Facebook made me homesick too.  I ran my business from the Internet using Facebook before anyone else did.  Before that I sent pictures to my divers daily via email.  Before Instagram.  Check the timeline.  If I had chosen promoting the process I used, instead of diving, I’d be a billionaire.  Instead, I chased my Passion and lost everything. 
How?  Not understanding the reality of a situation.  Sometimes you just can’t turn a locals’ bar into a tourist stop.  How?  By underestimating the adverse effects of Graft, Corruption and Thug Drug Dealing.  Months later, I still can’t listen to Reggae or any other Music that reminds me of Always Neverland. To counter homesickness for a lost life I loved, I pretty much switched to listening to of all things, Country Music.  My friends are astonished.  I’m not sure how it happened.  Maybe driving 15000 miles across 15 States visiting friends while job hunting in search of a new life where Country Music is all that plays on the radio.  Maybe it’s that it held few reminders of a good life lost.
CHAPTER 3
MUSIC MY MEDITATION
The beauty of La’Amoria Island is that it is everything Pirate’s Blight isn’t.  City Life.  Glamor.  Plenty of Water, Fresh Fish and Farm-Grown Veggies.  People of every age.  Although it is hard to meet people here for everyone is coupled up.  Beyond being coupled up, the power structure here is very traditional.  It’s like living in some 1950’s movie where people can’t get a promotion without having a wife at home to do the entertaining, social interaction, and fundraising.  This raises questions about cash distribution beneath these charitable affairs.  Lord how Pollyanna’s views change.  The race here is for power and control.  Along with stifling any hint of Free Spirit or indication of anything less than pure tradition, it’s a society of subterfuge, manitpulation and intrigue, the bad kind of intrigue.  Although this takes a while to discern.  From the surface one cannot tell whether a canyon, a sand flat or turtle grass lies below, much less find a mermaid’s shell palace or treasure. 
On Pirate’s Blight nearly everyone is single.  The goal?  Play enjoy life, relax, work a job you enjoy to make enough to survive and enjoy life more.  Our motto?  Used to be anyway, “We don’t care what you do as long as you tell us about it.”  Our minds wanted to know not to judge, rather to commessurate and share the joy and diminish the pain.  For the most part everuyone under 30 or over 60, and I’m in the middle, which complicates life.  I wasn’t even willing to consider dating someone a few years younger back then. 
Please Understand, The Sunnyside had everything other than that to complete my life in ways I never even imagined.  I‘d have stayed forever.  People were friendly, nonjudgmental, loving and kind.  Gossip was more to entertain and help people to understand what everyone was going though, so we could help them along and through, not to judge and maneuver and tear down.  Dude, I’m at peak fitness, youth doing what I love and getting paid enough to cover life expenses.  I’m  diving every day, out on the water, with amazing watering holes to grab a burger n beer, or tacos n margarita with amazing Music at Sunset afterwards. Demographics had me stuck single or needing to break free of society constrained thinking, which I hadn’t.  It was Paradise but it still lacked all I wanted.  La’Amoria Island has professional work in my field, giving me the Trifecta.  Island Life plus a Secure World with Guaranteed Salary.  Or so I thought.  So when mom was well enough, really didn’t need me, I jumped at the chance to return to real work in the Tropics. 
All was not what it seemed from afar.  From the first moment, work didn’t go according to Spec.  Sadly.  They didn’t prep a desk for me.  I completely underestimated the meaning of that.  It went far beyond symbolism.  That’s the first dart they threw at me.  Fine.  Let’s get one set up.  Nope.  That takes 3 days.  Later I see them pull together and prep for a new arrival in 45 min.  I only thought it weird at the time, ignoring the extent it was a harbinger of things to come.  Reality bites when I’m assigned to one of those old former military guys.  One who never liked women in the workplace. He wasn’t about to start now.
The Chain of Command made it clear I’m to be in a subservient role.  Fine.  Pay’s the same.  I do my best to comply.  A. H. Bossman apparently perceives me as competition, for he never let me in even a nanometer.  How can you not let a capable woman ready to get all your papers and recordkeeping in order?  The possibility that isarrary was the desired outcome did NOT even enter my mind at that point.  Its too far outside my problem solving frame of mind.  2 months later, A.H. Bossman’s Boss, A. H. Squaredman asks me to prep a Program Management Plan for this Program.  I go to pull the file.  Its doesn’t exist .  Anyway theres not anything in the past 3 years.  What?  Where are the records?  So I start where I always do, prolly a lesson from Value Engineering, Problem, Solution, refine your problem statement and objectives to a gnat’s eyebrow.  Poll everyone, above, below, beside, contractors and the ones asking us to do the work.  Sort into likes, opposites, disconnects and begin to see where the problems which are opportunities lie.  Read up on everything written.  That took about 10 minutes until I found the last report someone did on this program that was a precursor to the current problems.  Then an hour to read that.  In a quasi-bureacratic world where progress is measured in reams of paper,  this program has less paper than your average bathroom. 
I do my best to break into their office gatherings.  Right up my alley.  I built a business on burger and beer after the dives.  These guys often lunch together.  I take it to a whole new level.  Every day.  I make sure we try all the new and fun foods.  I’m in Heaven.  We order and one makes the food run.  After a decade of the same limited food choice from the same 2 purveyors made the same 10 ways, I’m loving the veritable cuisine smorgasbord.  I go round getting the orders chatting.  Just like I did with the after diving get-togethers, I turn off any attempt to make these lunches into an office meeting.  NOPE.  Even when the new Boss’s Boss’s Boss shows up.  Same ting even when his Boss shows up but that’s a lot of brass to control.  And other offices start crashing our lunches.  Of Course.  We sit and laugh and share tall tales.  We Rarely Discuss Work.  But man, our staff meetings flowed smooth as butter, and we all are helping each other out.  I always stay the amount of time I spend handling food runner turn.  I’m higher ranked than several, but I take my turn.  At first, they are like, “No.  We Go.”  I’m like, “I’ll take my turn.” 
Then A.H. Bossman returns from his regular travels to other islands.   Any success I made merging into the new office camaraderie in his absence, he’d smash upon his return.  I engage each person in every conversation.even when I  go around to make sure they’re specifically invited.  He excludes all he can with his nasty slider attacks.  People skip lunch when he’s in, or eat and run as he destroys cmaaraeried.  He got where he got by weaponiszing work.  I barely scratched the surface, but it wasn’t pretty.  Neither were his thinly veiled threats around the lunch table.  The stronger the steeper, the longer, the fewer the people round the table although when polled “He’s a great guy.” Thankfully he travels 40 weeka in a year. He never misses an opportunity to dig, diss, dismiss and diminish anything I try to add.   And I can hold the floor.  I’m a Project Manager, Instructor, and Boat Captain.  That’s alotta years of crowd and meeting control.  All those years of working according to Hoyle  gileaves me taking great pleasure breaking all those rules in front of the TV in the privacy of my own home.  When I turn on the news.  Good Lord, try to find a ray of hope there?  Could just as well be 200 miles out on the water on the night of a new moon.    And man, he doesn’t like to keep the conversation off-topic.   
 Our Business?  Disaster Relief.  Moving Medication and supplies from Private Treasure Trove Disaster Relief Donations to where it’s most needed.  Setting up international conferences to prepare response plans, so when SH*T hits the fan, people know what to do.   I handle some of the logistics.  The second big conference in, See 1 Do 1 Teach 1, coworkers all are shocked when I’d taken care of everything by noon the day before the meeting.  I’m like, “Piece of Cake” I handled logistics for the boat charters and shore dive classes, did the bookings, social media, email inquiries, phone calls and ran the trips and taught the classes.  When I had another instructor, then I handled those logistics plus all the rest, and briefed and debriefed.  In my spare time I did the books and biz docs.  Sometimes I had Office Help.  Sometimes I had Boat Help.  Sometimes I had Captain Help.  Sometimes I had Divemaster Help.  Sometimes I had Tank and Equipment Help.  Some seasons I had it all. 
Its a very transient island, and I don’t have a Bricks & Sticks location, so no one’s full-time.  Thats problematic.  More problematic is bringing on a Dive Instructor or Divemaster and needing them to do “other work” when there’s not enough diving.  They hate the paperwork.  I was always behind in my paperwork too.  But now the buck stops with me, so I do it.  That’s why I understand A. H. Bossman and his 1,000,000 excuses why he doesn’t have time for his paperwork.  I’m used to going 10 Y’s in.  He’s used to shouting down anyone at the second why.  That’s a lot of fur to rub the wrong way, especially when I’m female, no matter how softly and gently I tip tap around him in my high heels.  Who knew guys in steel –toed boots IN THE OFFICE bristle so much at high heels?  Guys in the field come around pretty quick, once you show them what you can do.  Riddle:  If a tree falls in the woods, and no one hears it, does it make a Sound?  If a meeting happens and no one else in the office or organization knows what was discussed or what the follow-up and product is, was there a meeting? 
Trouble is, A.H. Bossman’s not particularly good at keeping records.  Not of meeting proceedings.  Not of Finances.  My job?   Square things away and write Standard Operating Business Procedures.  Right up my alley.  I’ve been prepping management and Business plans for years, plans that are implemented and updated real-time as things evolve.  Man, I’m back to being “Boss Lady” across the street from the thieves at Blackbeard’s trying to reconcile the days tally from bartenders who run the place while I dive, except here I’m in a subservient role on La’Amoria, I’m “Token White Girl” No Longer “Boss Lady.” 
At my Dive Bar  I try to reconcile the books.  Bartenders and servers are handling the cash and product, I try to make it match, balance and reconcile, but I’m spending hours on each account and none ever match.  Funny, I’d worked for a couple years at a couple different restaurants, no one had that big of problem.  Another “Fun Task”?  I get to watch the guys at Blackbeard’s build out and expand their place from off-sale to onsite sales.  Turns out my suspicions are right.  Their expansion is partially funded selling liquor that comes up missing on delivery invoices to my place.  Yep. I paid for booze delivered across the street.  Still have a pic of the day I first checked in the liquor myself and the driver brought in only 2 cases of “Amber Waves” a local ale akin to Presidente.  I say, “The Invoice says 4 cases.”  Dude looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, but dutifully goes back out to the truck and brings in 2 cases, marked “Blackbeard’s” in Big Black Sharpie.  Aha. Sudden Expansion across the street explained.  That was the last order to that liquor distributor. 
The very real disconnect between foot traffic and the high cost of materials on our little remote island is best explained by alternate revenue streams.  I’m sure off-the-books revenue from adult candy and treat sales contributes mightily.  Good Rule of Thumb:  If the business model doesn’t make sense when you look around a place, whether, restaurant, bar, store, whatever your observation, your gut is probably right.  There’s probably an alternate revenue stream somewhere.  But be careful making your assessment.  Time of day matters.  Learned that on a vaca to Cabo.  We used to go often.  One bar sat completely dead most of the day.  Just a few people going in n out.  But at 2200 it comes to life. From 10pm til 2am, the place is Standing Room Only. Their till goes Ching Ching. Ching Ching.  So many other factors affect whether the owner is making it work.  In the end though, if at the gut level it doesn’t add up.  It probably doesn’t.
Speaking of Amber Wave Presidente.  Drake and I are sitting together chatting on that Saturday evening waiting for the rush. Quite the little Te’Te’Te.  He’s still coaching me through my naiveté, pointing out all the signs and symptoms that go straight over my head.  Yep, back then I strongly subscripbed to the enabling behavior that allows thugs to flourish, blue collar or white.  That oft fatal tendency toward giving benefit of the doubt to those who haven’t earned it, and to blindly ascribe an ethics principle to an unknown is  and to ethics long-pastnot useful in a cash  business known to host thieves of many flavors usefulness.  Requiring “Proof Bve eyond a Reasonable Doubt” before taking corrective action? That is a very expensive mistake.  All combined to wreak incredible damage to me personally, professionally and financially.  Proof Beyond a Reasonable Doubt is not the correct standard or suitable match for the current lack of ethics States Quo, either in a Cash Business or amidst white collar temptations.  I wish I knew then that it would be Drakes and my last our lastsession of eye-opening camaraderie.
How many times will “God send you someone to get you through Epic Tribulation?”  Preacher Man, turns out the answer is, “ aAs many as it takes.”  If there are no willing humans around, Gods sends His Angels who in extraordinary circumstances are believed to take other forms.  (She Talks to Angels, comes on ourmy Music Feed as I type this). Sometimes God’s Helpers y close the jaws of a wild beast or swoosh a shark away.  Sometimes they whisper unique solutions to difficult problems at just the right moment.  It has to be Divine Intervention for the action you take is unlike anything you’ve ever seen, done or thought before.  Maybe you read or catch the flash of just the right idea.  Maybe you hit a perfectly timed communication delay.  Maybe an electrical or mechanical breakdown runs you a little late, puts you at the wrong place at the wrong time, or brings an eagle ray amidst your dive..  Maybe it’s a sudden gust of wind that blows away a Draft Settlement Agreementmeeting summary, creating confusion that forces certain  way-too-confident-used-to- buying-their-way-outta-trouble Greedy Landlords into cancelling their “No Escape” Contract. Coincidentally while you do get out from that bad lease deal, off the hookgettyour white lawyerguy lands a distinguished post in an otherwise West Indian Held “Justice” system Bureaucracy.  Racism does cut both ways.  Yet it does not lessen effects of Our Nation’s 400 years One-Way Power Structure.  Nor does it justify simultaneously turning over all Reigns of Power at once, untested, to those previously subjugated.  Neither approach works. It must be a slow systematic put in place, Step Step Double Check. 
Gust of Wind?  Outta nowhere?  50mph or 30.  What controls the wind?  Mother Nature who may be upset by someone bullying her baby?  Angel?  Sleight of Hand?  Head Fake Double Reverse?  Is any lawyer that good an actor or are they all? One day I’ll tell that tale, but right now best held in my back pocket.  Is it all really just a series of Random Coincidences?  Like stumbling onto someone’s not so random illicit or dangerous activities?  Riddle for you.  What’s the difference between a Plan and Conspiracy?  Answer:  A Plan is a combination of actions, schedule, budget, and objectives.  Conspiracy is simply Agreement among 2 or more people to commit an Illegal Act.  When you need to move large amounts of product across a long distance, one thing is sure.  Tings gotta be timed poifectly.  Lotta players in motion.  No room for even a single small mistake.  It takes so little to set off the downward spiral into an avalanche.  Once in motion, the downward spiral is almost impossible to stop.  It’ll almost certainly bury you.  Or someone.  Update:  Ironic this morning there was an avalanche at a Tahoe Ski Resort, actually on a Black Diamond Run I used to ski. 
So Drake and I sit at the bar after a long day, looking out across the water on a dark night.  Open air arches let us overlook the emerald-lined hills across the beautiful Caribbean Bay. Always stunning, the view is even more magnificent when the moon is rising over the hills with melodious stanzas of local talent wafting Music through the air as it is tonight.  Live Music is part of the package we deliver to our Stateside Visitors and to the locals who give Our Visitors the outstanding service that keeps them coming back to our friendly little island year after year.  No matter whether hospitality workers are cooks, servers and baristas; Captains, First Mates and Dive Instructors; or traders who barter gold, gems, and trinkets for the almighty dollar, all come to listen to our Music. So too does the other end of the spectrum. Those that furnish adult candy and treats to peeps with Big “Sweet Toof’s”.  Let’s not forget where there is demand, someone always rises to the challenge of delivering product.  That I never noticed the signs before is startling, even humbling.  Yet it confirms once and forever that Book Smarts ain’t no match for Street Smarts, EVER. 
“See dose Red lights o’vr dehr, right back o de ol fort?”  Says Drake.  “Yep, probably some satellite.”  I say.  Drake gently corrects my Pollyanna POV.  “Na.  Dat a spy plane.”  As I crinkle my forehead in disbelief, he finishes with “Dey checkin out de guys across the street.”  “What?”  I verify.  “Dey’s watchin ‘em.  I hear dey wanna get dat Boat Dept Head, but someun tol’ him an he no come in dat way.”  I can hardly believe what Drake’s saying.  “U sure? Really?”  “Yah.  Den he tinks he safe.  Come in next day n 7 Gov’t Reps dere waitin for him.  He in his uniform. Wit his guns, in State Boat, w 7 Kilo’s.” 
“Seven?”  I say in disbelief. “ So what’s the plane doing here now?  If they already caught him?”  Drake finishes, “Watchin.  Dey’s watchin who’s moving what where now dat every lil Ting be in chaos.” Hmmm”.  I say as I go quiet for a minute.  Taking in the enormity of what he said.  Then, I just have to ask.  “How big is a kilo?”  ”Well lemme see.  See dat Purple Box you got dere on your barback?”“The Crown Box?” I ask hardly thinking a kilo could be that small.  I thought it was the size of a haybail for some reason.  Some bar tall tale I overheard somewhere I’m sure.
“Ya.  Bout dat size.” Drake confirms.  “Wow.  How many ounces is a dime bag?  And how many lines do you get from one?”I ask “Depends on what dey cut it wit.  ‘n how many times dey cut it?”  I ask.  Drake is all-in on this one, can’t believe my cluelessness.  “Oh.  Like how many.  Twice?”  “Prolly each time someone handles it.”  I’m stil trying to wrap my head around it.  “How many is that? 2? 5? 7?”Drake just shakes his head and walks away, “Boss Lady got no clue.”  I’m just boggled by that math of that.  Still.
I thought the rule was “Watch the Cash”.  That is true.  But as I’m trying to double and triple check the bartender and server’s math to find their “errors” I‘m not looking closely enough at product.  Thus the delivery man incident is a shock.  I delegated inventory control check.  Clearly I didn’t check the check close enough.  Reagan was right.  Trust But Verify.  Step, Step, Double Check.
The further you are from source, whatever discipline and no all doctors and medicos are not saints, whatever setting you operate, there are takeaway lessons.  If you have a reporting schedule and someone is not reporting, or the report doesn’t make sense, or there’s a gap between what should have happened and what happened, there’s a problem.  Maybe it’s someone new.  Maybe experienced people suddenly encounter a novel problem.  Maybe the key person was missing that day.  Or maybe it’s part of a plan below the surface by design, with or without tricks, treachery and subterfuge.  Does that make it Conspiracy?  Depends on whether the underlying act is illegal or not is the distinguishing characteristic according to definition, right?  Depends on who’s making the assessment.  Remember in the US, if not internationally, the standard to be measure against is ”WHAT WOULD A REASONABLY PRUDENT PERSON or ENTITY Of SIMILAR EXPEREINCE DO IN SIMILAR CIRCUMSTANCES.”  This obviously is a corollary of how to handle a novel or unique big issue, “What would Jimmy Buffet or Ronald Reagan do?”  Depending of course on the topic at hand.  Dude really?  A Power Pol Candidate jacked my “What Would Ronald Reagan Do Question?” for a book title?  Wonder how much else he’ll plagiarize.  Lord knows 2 are up in the polls as I’m editing this, and Trump is doubling down on what he said in 2020 as I wrote it the first time.  Biden apparently had a cow today, trying to figure out where his campaign is  going wrong.  I could tell ya, but you screwed me over 10 too many times.  The short answer, your peeps only extracted pieces of my solution without understanding how they fit together; then during implementation, like messing up a parade, you pulled the trigger too soon or omitted a critical element. 
What is a critical attribute you ask?  That is something without which your objective will fail, it is that essential to the solution.  We use the term in SCUBA Diving to define each step of a skill, like removing and replacing your mask or your SCUBA jacket underwater.  Underwater you ask?  Yep.  Like the time a certain famous star’s son somehow ends up on my boat with the wrong mask.  We don’t realize it until we’re at 30 feet.  There is this constant drip drip drip of water down this little 12 year old boys mask.  I got a string this day, 12, 13, 13, 14, all doing their final certification dive.  This little guy had been such a trooper, but I could see he’s beginning to lose his cool.  What choice do I have?  We can’t go up to exchange masks on the surface.  I can’t risk bringing the 4 up and getting them back down.  We gotta finish the dive and get all their skills done, or they’ll need a makeup trip and this wasn’t my boat.  Owner was not the type.  So I do the drastic signals.  “You.   Kneel.  Here.”  1 finger pointing at each child, my knees, for I’m rolemodeling what I want them to do.  1 finger pointing where they are to kneel.  “STAY.  DO NOT MOVE.”  That one they always understand.  I motion to the 12 year old, “You Mask Off.  Me Mask Off.  Switch Masks. You Put Your Mask On. I’ll Put Mine Back On.”  Kid’s brand new and 12.  The others gotta stay still.  NO one can swim off chasing a fish.  They all understand the gravity, I gotta believe.  I’m keeping one hand on his arm and holding my mask in the other hand.  Prolly the time to say, “Saltwater and your tears have the same salinity.  What makes your eyes burn in the ocean is either sunscreen or remnants of your mascara, moisturizer or makeup.”  I’m praying.  Never really get further than, “Please God.  Please God.  Please God.”  Kid nails it.  3 teens are sitting there tiny bubbles coming up from them.  “HAPPY DANCE!  GROUP HIGH FIVE!  YAY!  CHAMPION CLASPED HANDS OVER EACH SHOULDER.  SIGH OF RELIEF!   Let’s Go.”  Yes, the Universe rewards us with a lil Turtle Buddy and a Spotted Eagle Ray.  South was busy this day.  We were at the least used site, having got there last.  So all the good marine life left the more oft dove spots and headed to this lil reef.  One of the best dives ever.
Another was the day my wetsuit, BACKZIP, came undone.  I can’t reach it with the tank and jacket.  I again have 4 young teens.  They’ve been great.  One in particular was one of the 10%.  He and I gelled from the onset.  He hit all my meatball questions out of the part like a comic’s sidekick straight man.  Then he’s a natural in the water.  Can’t take 4 up where we are.  No way to get them back down.  Can’t let go my SCUBA jacket underwater.  Best way to keep control is to lay on top of it, keeping your body weight down.  But nothing can go wrong, and I need a spotter with the zipper.  Water’s too cold for me, I’d have to cut the dive short.  Can’t do that to these kids having the time of their life.  So “You. Kneel.  Here.”  To the first 3, “STAY.  DO NOT MOVE.”  Now it’s interesting.  I have to explain to this kid at 40 feet, “I’m going to take my jacket off, put it back on, and you need to zip my zipper for me.”  Thank God he’s one of the 10%.  He’s nodding like he knows exactly what I’m saying.  But his eyes get big when he sees my Zipper open all the way to my waist.  This little Knight in Shining Armor pivots on his fins like a pro though he’s a rank novice, zips me up, practically motioning to me to “Suck It Up”, cuz wetsuits they are tight like a Southern Belle’s corsett.  They all watch me slowly and deliberately showing every move as I get back into my scuba jacket, turn over.  “Please God.  Please God.  Please God.”  3 teens are sitting there tiny bubbles coming up from them.  “HAPPY DANCE!  GROUP HI FIVE!  YAY!  CHAMPION CLASPED HANDS OVER EACH SHOULDER.  SIGH OF RELIEF!   Let’s Go.”  We dive on.  And yes the Universe rewards us with a lil Turtle Buddy.
I’ve mentioned my newly acquired turtle karma since the bar, haven’t I?  Kinda like Raphael, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.  The number of times a lil turtle has escorted me into the harbor, or limping over to St. Meg’s on one engine for boat maintenance.  Or another day, escorting me back to shore when a shark got really close to my head.  I’ll tell you about that later.  And about the day 2 grandpa turtles prolly saved my neck.  There’s not enough time to tell you all the times turtles came and saved the day.  One last one.  This woman who was only learning to dive for her boyfriend struggled with everything above water and in the shallows.  Now we’re a few minutes into our dive, 4 of us doing a Discover SCUBA Intro Dive.  She wants to go back, of course thinking she can just swim back on her own.  That’s a death waiting to happen.  SO NO.  I’m trying for the 5th time to keep her motivated so the others can have a great dive.  No Avail.  Out of the blue swims my lil Turtle Buddy.  Not only did she stay, she didn’t want to end the dive.  She came back every year right up until the Hurricanes wiped me out.  Love, Love, Loved her.  Big Sigh. 
Hurricane brought such traumatic loss.  Sometimes it just hits me hard.  That’s why I try not to think about it much.  OR look at my 1000s of dive pictures.  The last time I did that?  Well shortly thereafter Disney announced their “Little Mermaid” Re-Release.  When I watched the clips of the second Avatar movie, the expressions on faces, the way divers lined up in scenes, even many of the underwater backdrops, hauntingly out of my pics.  So many in a few minutes, I haven’ been able to watch it yet.  Even though it was playing at a Theatre when I was getting my knee replaced.  Treachery Ruins Everything. 
The issue with “Checking the Check” and “Trusting but Verifying” comes down to both having and monitoring a systems of checks and balances and that requires a separation of powers.  The Founding Fathers were Brilliant, or at least experienced enough in the tobacco trade by forced hands to learn similar lessons.  None of this is new.  It’s simply the Bell Curve Applied to Human Behavior.  Even a trusted manager, given the right or wrong circumstances, can step across or dance all over the line.  No one is all good or all bad.  Everyone has inside themselves, bigger for some than others, an inclination that can be induced to tiptoe on that line, whether outta need, or revenge, in anger or love, for protection or gain.  No matter whether in business, in relationships, in government, or in projects or partnerships between contractors and requisitionors, extreme discipline is needed to remain ethical, especially if too many opportunities to digress abound.  Extreme resolve is needed to withstand temptation.  That or Dummy Locks.  That concept is “Keep the Honest Person Honest.”  Street Smarts without ethics are no match for Book Smarts, especially when Book Smarts obeys the 10 Commandments and Street Smarts doesn’t. 
Consistent lagging deviations among reports indicate something is amiss.  Gaps between what is and what should be indicate the existence of a problem.  So too, might consistent, regular reports that say nothing.  So yes.  Inventory sheets and liquor measurements were made daily at my little bar, even entered into spreadsheets.  Tallied.  All Purchase Orders were marked “Received” and all items checked.  Pieces appear to match but don’t equate in a mass balance equation.  Discrepancies run amok. Hits are by those who intend to take what is not theirs, or otherwise wreak havoc and terror.  They keep the theft to a barely discernable scale.  Little by Little Thieves can easily stay one step ahead of those who monitor and control.  Now Add Distraction.  Add Flattery, Kissing Up. Add  Sleight of Hand.  Add Delay.  Intent matters.  Watch. If asked for information or facts, do the goods’ handlers lash out with mean personal attacks?  That then is likely distraction designed to delay satisfying your valid request for info.  Simply start a fight.  One cannot fight and investigate at the same time, unless one is well-staffed with trustworthy help.  Is there an Owner on Site?  But one owner cannot be there all the time.  Systems.  Teamwork.  Access to honest people.  All contributes.  One person is not enough to fight and win against a system or group operating with a different goal.  For there to be substantial loss, or gain, it takes more than one. 
Trouble with that, as I ponder both the outcome and how I could have seen it sooner, the basic honest person who lives within the realm of normal ethics for most of their life, has a very narrow frame of reference and can only conjure up small discrepancies and schemes.  On the other hand, there is almost no limit to what can be conjured up by one, or a group, who doesn’t adhere to basic ethical rule, and hasn’t for an entire lifetime.  Opportunities are endless for those willing to break any, some, most, or all rules, especially when deployed in an orchestrated, cohesive manner from vantage points all around.  Imbalanced mismatch and lack of imagination is the understatement of the century.
Much like the synergy of collaborating experts who generate good that far exceeds the sum of the parts, collaboration among thieves and conmen takes plans exponentially lower than the difference among the parts.  Putting enough Ba