There is an island I know like the island on Lost, only instead of floating in an actual ocean this island is suspended in the water above the land that separates the waters above and below, tethered to the time space continuum by a tattered thread that causes the island to spin and twist as the thread unravels. When I think about this island, I hear the song from Peter Pan, "it's not on any chart, you must find it with your heart" but sung by Union Station; and indeed there are aspects of it that are just like the island of lost boys. You have to travel there under dark of night and think lovely thoughts and hold your breath as you pass through the waters. You are ushered in by rows and rows of tall evergreens that are carefully manicured in a strangely germanic fashion - undergrowth and brush all cyclically burned away, leaving only the majestically tallest and strongest rooted in the ground, stretching through the sky. The island itself is a small, quaint, quiet middle-class community of older homes made with natural materials hidden behind the contours of foliage that predates any human dwellers, and newer homes whose clean look and sparse landscaping speaks of an attempt at domestication of this feral terrain. The entire island is ensconced by immense guardian farms of storied landed gentry whose money is most certainly invested in keeping its secrets and protecting its inhabitants as much as they need protection or are willing to accept it.
When you get there you immediately feel the change. The air is a bit cooler, crisper, and cleaner, and much heavier. No the air is lighter and gravity is heavier, not so much heavier that it is crushing, but heavier enough to make you feel the earth beneath your feet a little more intimately. I'm sure that compasses don't work there, due to some kind of ever changing spinning magnetic vortex. Every time the tether to this earth makes a new pendulum swing, it changes the whole mood of the island and it takes some adjustment on your part as the visitor. As my sister would say, you have to get your sea legs. Sometimes down is up, sometimes sideways is soup, and always winter is the hap-happiest season of all. In real life, summer is the best season with its ocean and warmth and sun and tanned, fit, beach bodies and careless ease. But that's when here there seems to be too much free time causing seriousness and summertime sadness that Lana del Rey sings about and while to me she is referring to the end of summertime to the island I know it is the actual summer itself.
The bite in the air the winter wind flies in with it wakes the island natives and draws new members of the pack in an attempt to prove their alpha status. They become restless and wild, full of compliments and fire. Maybe no shave November plays a part turning the formerly clean shaven baby faces into refuges for a chorus of woodland creatures. Maybe the increased gravity makes their muscles grow instantaneously and the winter husky is translated into chiseled bodies in contrast to the winter coat of hibernation insulation of the real world. Maybe they're just on "that cycle" - finally. Traps and lats and delts, triceps and biceps and even glutes are on prominent display. The uniform of the day is most obviously the shirts from that mystery flannel vintage etsy shop everyone keeps pinning. The number and variety of shapes and sizes and softness and number of buttons that are undone (strangely it doesn't seem at all Miami vice of them to have 3 or even 4 unbuttoned buttons) invites a careful survey and cataloguing with margin notes that mimic the original intent of the facebook. This winter shift turns mere mortals who might not normally even turn your head into the Thor-like hottest hottie mchottertons that ever hotted.
When I am old, I want to live part of the year in the no man's land between the island and the estates. I want to buy a small shake shingle cottage with a wrap around porch in the woods. It seems like the perfect place to write a book. I can only take the island itself in short spurts. A day, maybe two at the most, at a time. I am not immune to believing that, like the Island on Lost, it is all real and it all matters and so I am susceptible to losing my bearing and an attachment to reality. My actual life demands that I stay firmly planted on the land where I know in which direction north lies at all times. But I can dip my toe in on a bi-monthly basis and drink from the fountain and let it keep me young for a little while longer.
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