The following is something completely different: fiction. It’s an essay I wrote in 2019 about my experience living in the Dominican Republic—but with a twist.

It’s written from the perspective of a confused time-traveling Londoner from a vague pre-1900s-ish time period who’s reporting to her sister about what she’s been seeing. She’s been dropped in the middle of the current-day Punta Cana neighborhood I lived in, in all its beautiful chaos.

Enjoy!

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My dearest Margaret,

The year of our Lord has been one of tempestuous squalls, those of which I’m not unaccustomed. To the uninitiated onlooker, this may appear to be a mere compendium of cultural observations only a learnèd man may appreciate, but you, Margaret, understand the need to travel, ship to the wind, to any of the fantastical paradises outlined in Dr. Brown’s book Atlass for Adventursome Sailors.

London had its pleasures, the absence of which hurts my breast to recall in even the slightest of forms. Even my prayers have not been spared this shake-up; I have abandoned the daily practice of wishing Mary a rich husband and Benjamin a fruitful career in the uniform in return for living a simpler life closer to God Himself.

Canines gambol street-side, an engrossing and ever-quickening game of king of the orphans. It displeases me greatly to spy cream-colored beauties conversing with the cotton coattails of the uninterested everyman. Oh, the cruelty of it all! Neither do I much care for the dirty growl of the two-wheelèd automotive bicycles that dash past my open curtain at all hours of moonlight.

The world is even stranger than I thought! Dear friend, I must admit the most heightened of astonishment the first time I heard a gramophone emitting sound from the passing automobiles. My, how this country has advanced technologically! Not even London has such advanced systems of sound, and yet the people give not even a passing glance in its direction. I marvel equally at the sheer noise of such music they play. In London, the learnèd spent their time immersed in the sweet harmonies of Beethoven and Shostakovich. Here, the music rattles with something called “reggaetonne” and men say the most dastardly things about our kind. Margaret, I’m obliged to tell you your God-given weak constitution and dislike of change would make for a most unpleasant experience here.

The local fashion, I fear, is not to my taste. The gentlemen here have opted for some sort of long-billed cap, emblazoned with complex constellations and wild creatures of which I have no knowledge: The Phoenix Suns, Chicago Bulls. When I inquired at the local library of pamphlets using which I could learn more about God’s Phoenix Suns, I got a dreadful look of apathy, as if I were too unlearned to even understand astronomy! If I ever get up the courage to ask these new-fashioned chaps for more information on these unfamiliar topics, oh, how they shall wow me with their learnings of astronomy and animalia! The cool librarian put quite a dent in my confidence to persevere through this time, but less intrepid people have succeeded in this arena and I’ll be damned if I don’t find a way to make a home here!

I mustn’t forget, however, that England as well brought its tribulations–I would be a fool to miss London Lung or the haranguing costermongers selling rotten rabbit and stale almonds for a petty farthing. Their broken mouths and haunting eyes still come to me in the vulnerable early morning hours, inducing me to nausea.

But I would be but a forgetful and most ungracious traveler were I not to additionally dine on the rich memories of fireside dinners with John, Charles, and Thomas! The Persian china, the debates on Darwin, the studying of Emerson–it was all as invigorating as morning air of an autumn chill. How I long for those days!

As you can deduce, a stroll on my local cobblestones seizes me with a wave of familiarity for the The Big Smoke, a sentiment that rushes forth before I have a chance to even exhale its intoxicating fragrance. But how it induces in me a terrible quickening of my adventuresome heart! My, sometimes I feel as if I may never come down from such a high! Oh, how London treated me fair!

I have found other women in the city with whom I may exchange pleasantries. The world is a grand place filled with all sorts of interesting characters! One woman had taken to the skies in a peculiar, new invention called an aireship. She swears on the Holy Book itself that she could see Heaven as she rose above the clouds. Her husband, she recounted, is a sort of German baron who fills his time with the serious study of atmospheric currents and winds. Someday, I too wish to have a dashing husband to take me on trips to look at Heaven, if only for a blinding second.

Cordially,

Emma Elizabeth Johnson

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