Very little grows on Sal Island. They import fresh fruit and vegetables from Portugal and some of the other more fertile islands in the archipelago of islands floating free in the sea.

Sal is a dry pancake of an island surrounded by an invisible wall of ferocious wind that whips up foamy-whiter-shade-of-pale waves that lure kite surfers to its shores from around the world.

A paradise made of sand and wind.

From January 28 to February 7, 2018, I stayed at a surf riad run by two wayward Italian surfers. It was packed with surfers from around the world. You could eat breakfast in the common area and look up at the blue sky while you ate a very brown, tiny banana.

You could hear the locals talking and children laughing outside the dusty, Caribbean-colored walls while you were holed up in safety from the sun, sand, and an unknown world.

That world, so foreign to my own, forced me to take stock of how our programming can restrict our minds.

On that wind-burnt island, I found a new love for myself, life and the idea of freedom. It was in this tiny crumbling riad the book Thrust - poems, essays and flash fiction from the other side was born.

Coming 2024