new dawn

So many images, so little time. And sometimes, words are superfluous.

I arrived in Santa Domingo in the middle of the night: 3:44.




This is a quite an extraordinary young man, named Tab (nickname: I can't properly pronounce his name, which is like Tabias). Annie and her husband Tim had met his father first, and become friends. He's lived and gone to school in Michigan, and is back home here, getting his MBA. He had driven two and a half hours from Cabrera in the middle of the night, where he lives and where the house is, to the airport in Santa Domingo. He was waiting, with a sign with my name, got me a perfecto cafe con leche, then took me through.. again, can't find the right words. Paradise. (Perhaps it's because I'm surrounded by Spanish, which is not a language I know well, but I'm starting to think a bit in Spanish, and to zone out, and to use less words... so I start inventing Spanish sounding words out of English, and start channelling my limited French or Italian.)

Paradiso.

Anyway, we emerged from this primordial splendour - Tab said they shot Jurassic Park in the Dominican Republic - and he drove onto the sands of a beach. I got out - by this time, it was dawn, and simply walked into the sea.







The house is magnificent, perfect in a wabi sabi way that I feel I am one with the owner, who is also the architect. He took an old house - a big box, as Annie described it - high above the most beautiful sea (the land is on its own peninsula) and carved from it something old, something new, something blue in infinite shades of sand and sky and sea.

The floors throughout the house look like old polished stone, but are actually beautifully painted plaster. And the night watchman, an incredibly kind, dignified man named Ignesio, found a tiny kitten, abandoned way too young and starving, who they've named Nina. She's like a little ET creature, and sleeps on my shirt: the tiniest little spirit, who is inspiring me by her sheer will to survive, her joy in being alive, being rescued.












My mind is slowing down here, and I'm feeling so at one with the world, at peace. I have so many images to share with you, my dear blog friends. I'm finding the colours here inspiring and informing my choice of dress, and expect it will carry me into the autumn and winter. At least, I hope so.

Today's theme is dawn, which is the colours I'm wearing now: mostly white, pastels in shades of palest blue, faded sea foam and mint. The house is beyond perfectly everything I love in a home: I want to live here. The colours of the Dominican Republic change with the moods of the sky and the sea, and everything is beautiful.

My mint tee by American Apparel. Everything else: Mother Nature's Own.