Arrival at the Papeete airport is after ten, closer to eleven — way past ferry service, and a man shuffling into a hotel cold off the street with all his worldly possessions in a dive duffel, a soft cooler and a shock-proof case faces a rack rate of a hundred and fifty dollars for the few hours remaining of the night for a crummy little room with no screens and a funky toilet.
Or he can shuffle back out to the sidewalk and down three blocks to a grassy area to achieve a more frugal security with faith in the firmament. They feel different on this watch, the security more plausible and the firmament more stable. He can sleep on a bench in the park at more popular prices, grateful for the bench’s smooth ride and no pitching waves or murky phantoms. Arranging his nest for optimal comfort, he walks off discreetly to squat and dump. Here again he laughs, comparing this dump to his most recent outdoor dump — till the waves mount again, making him list and topple into the tree alongside. At least he maintains buoyancy and balance, never mind the uncouth, illegal and punishable character of the thing.
But, Your Honor, a dog did that.
Big dog. Woof.
Thanking his lucky stars or street lights for tidy delivery with no messy aftermath, he sacrifices a handkerchief to the greater cause and in a short time is uplifted, a homeless man in a small park in a foreign country farther from friends than any man would care to be at any time in life. He has achieved life’s functions efficiently as a young man can, with his wits about him and feeling better than minutes ago. He feels irrationally happy, like Skinny, who daintily pushes sand or dirt over her business and then chases a few circles or jumps for a quivering leaf. He picks a star and wishes Skinny to see it, so they may beam up and down upon each other, making the miles meaningless between them. Yes, she’s good for that.
In fact, he is neither homeless nor friendless because of Skinny and years of aloha and old friends and a few other reasons that can be sorted and developed tomorrow. So he nestles in, laughing one last time on a long, productive day, this time at the customs agent who wanted to know the reason for this visit to French Polynesia. As Ravid had shrugged at the open camera case, so he shrugs again on the park bench. “I’m a professional photographer. You can see that. What you must also see is that you have some beauty here in need of immortality.” The French sense of humor may be questionable, but esprit de corps is immutable. Et voilà, Monsieur; he’s in.
Then he sleeps with no dreams.
In the morning, he freely spends a fraction of the evening’s savings on exquisite French pastries and an equally inspirational double latte, leaving him caffeinated, sugared up and still a hundred and forty-four dollars ahead of the game. From there, it’s an easy promenade to the ferry bound for the next island over, say, nine or twelve miles away. The distance echoes with a cringe as the inveterate swimmer/survivor adds five miles or eight to his pesky nightmare. And why shouldn’t I imagine such a swim?
Because, you would have sunk is why not. And the sooner you can set that scene aside...
Never mind, this ferry should not go huli or take much longer than the daily run to the scuba adventure grounds, which, come to think of it, is underway this very minute. French Polynesia is due south with a dash of east from Hawaii and in the same time zone, which odd parallel in time and distance from the equator seem like a discrepancy. Time stays the same, even as space so thoroughly differs. Ravid Rockulz realizes that he feels great, beyond sugar and caffeine to a brand-new day and a new life adventure. Well, maybe he’s immersed in sugar and caffeine rather than beyond, but still, recent ills have a strong chance of displacement by charm and soulful communion in these new and unspoiled tropics.
For starters, the southern hemisphere has a fraction the landmass of the northern, and most of that land is Africa and Antarctica. That makes Oceania true to its name and spirit. Then comes human population density, or lack thereof. The southern hemisphere has ninety percent fewer humans than above the line — ninety percent! That stat alone shrinks the cockles of a misanthropic waterman’s heart and leaves him giddy at prospects for meeting new citizens of differing fins and feathers, so to beak — I mean speak. Ha!
The watery realm is everywhere, with perfect parity among persons of the human and other species. With so much ocean and so little land, a human might again be optimistic over meeting others of his ilk, instead of avoiding eye contact. He wonders if the garish innocents of the gill-breathing species will be equally free of civilization’s harsh conditioning. Why should they fear what they’ve never suffered?
So the theory shapes up, at any rate, with the theorist resolved to apply it on the island of Moorea a short while down the line. The approach is lushly green and rural, unlike Papeete, an urban center thick with traffic, lights, signs, buildings, cars, exhaust, crowds and commerce, an urban core with palm trees on a suburban rock called Tahiti. Ah, well; at least it’s only the twenty-first century and not the twenty-second or the twenty-fourth.
Never mind. Nine miles will suffice. It’s too far to swim and will be the moat to the castle of tropical eternity for my practical purposes, if the place has a smidgeon of what it appears to have.
So it is that Ravid Rockulz feels the springtide of hope rise in his heart, pushed higher by a storm surge of emotion — before ebbing to dramatic emptiness.
What if? What if not?
So the ferry nears Moorea, casually plying the breakers, with Ravid yawing between hope and dread but feeling different than two nights ago in the ink-dark sea. That was living death, while the dread here is merely fear of failure, which is a nice cup of tea compared to sea monsters, instant shredding, engorgement and...
“Fuck.” He shudders unavoidably, forgetting too easily the lessons learned about fear and faith.
With proper perspective, homecoming is at hand. The perils ahead are no different than negative potential for any new life in a new place. So? The worse potential may be that of mind-numbing ignorance metastasizing to the major organs. Any place can cause that, if a man pursues drudgery and security in denial of the inevitable. Most people surrender life to the humdrum days. That’s why happiness in life requires the living to stay lively with an eye to weather.
This place could be rife with cross current and undertow, like Hawaii years ago, though that was different, because a young man views the world as his adventure grounds and a man in waning youth has a view of something else. The road was home back then, a path to fortune, such as it was. At nearly twice that age, he needs traction to make his mark and grow some moss. He needs a more judicious approach. Okay, so the hot blood is down to room temperature. This feels way better than treading water in the dark, adrift. Pushing forty is not pushing fifty or sixty. And any nincompoop can fake the hot blood from time to time as necessary — which isn’t to say grow up but to remind an aging free spirit to grow wise.
So he tingles as the mountainside looms nearer, its million fronds waving in the breeze. Who knows? Maybe a little moss won’t hurt.
Several busses wait at the ferry terminal. At the first one, he asks for a nice, cheap hotel. The driver scoffs, “Monsieur, it is only cheap if you are rich. Are you rich?”
“No. I’m not rich. But I...”
“Taverua.”
“Okay, take me there, si’l vous plaît.”
The ride is good, hot and ponderous, penetrating a place that makes sense. Tired and sweaty by mid-morning, he feels the day as yet another milestone of productivity. In a slog and a burden, a dream comes true in a postcard picture of what happened to Ravid Rockulz. It’s Paradise revisited, like back in the day, when once upon a time on a tropical island there arrived a man who...
So regrets and hopes reach a delicate balance. Grief is fended off on the one hand, while on the other is a new world to embrace. Oceania comes on in waves. A dewy, green tint clearly casts the heat-rippled haze in the past and the future. Converged at last are regret and hope, longing and fulfillment. All are now in a balance that is both cause and antidote for doubt. No sooner does a forlorn man hark back than he’s thrust ahead, to a dream of what might be. And here it is, moist and dilated, receptive as a tropical maiden unhindered by missionary tabu ever could be.
Strolling forward, innocent and blissful, into a happily ever after, the wide-eyed child of misfortune and the seasoned man of the world become one. Tropical beauty with very few human people is only vaguely recalled in Hawaii. Opening his arms in acceptance, he feels the vibration — still a man off kilter, listing to port, unhinged and not quite connected, he makes the turn to the home stretch, very near to feeding the hunger and quenching the thirst. The monkish might call this an illusion, a deception of the life process, whereby desire seeks fulfillment, yet the monks obsess on itchy garments, celibacy, silence, saltines and water in what may comprise a lust of a different nature, a perversion unique to their strange appetite and quest. But let no appetite or quest be dismissed, if the pilgrim harms no other in seeking sustenance and meaning.
I, waterman, am here.
A man who makes his living underwater, who packs his worldly belongings in a few bags and flies on short notice to an exotic island below the equator on a vague idea of right stimuli is not your average commuter. For years he thought different was good, that a blessed life was better than a stifled one. Maybe it is. Unless it isn’t — but damn, this looks right.
And a mid-life migration must indicate liberation from the attachments binding most men. What’s lacking here may be a sense of risk, a notion of what could go wrong, but if a man has nothing more to lose, then he’s a victor already. Or is that the rationale of losers? Or the sophistry of the spirited failure?
Ravid Rockulz may be similar to his friends and colleagues working the charter boats in their regard for fun as the meaning of life, but he is by no means statistically average. This jaunt puts him farther afield than most, taking far more risk, verging on peril. He has given up a tropical paradise gone commercial to seek something better with no guarantee, no connection, no nothing but the sea bag in hand and some odd camera and dive gear. He stands out as a risk taker — that unique breed most rewarded by most systems. Most men choose comfort and the grind for security with a woman of acceptable mental, sexual and cooking skills, or they take that path by default, by failing to resist it, rationalizing with a weak laugh over the shit we must put up with — as men.
Yet a few keep the horizon in view — with longing to know what’s over it that might be better than this socially contrived compromise. Most settle for something less than true happiness or total misery. Not that non-stop happiness is available anywhere, and Ravid Rockulz may be presumptuous to imagine long-term potential in the last nineteen years of the razzle-dazzle parade of thrill-seeking, appreciative women. Rather, they saw the fire in his eyes and wanted to camp beside it, to roast a few weenies and tell stories, to drink and dance and make memorable love on the vacation of a lifetime. Some of them stayed for five days, and nearly all said they loved their time with him...
Then he defaulted like the rest, no better than the commonest drone seeking cover. So he fell into the pit with the sharpened bamboo stakes at the bottom...
Stop that —
In the last nineteen years, Ravid Rockulz has had neither the ability nor the inclination to pledge rent, groceries, clothing, medical and a nest egg for the children and their futures, beginning with four hundred thousand dollars each to pay for college — at least the tuition, lodging and meals part. He forgot about that practical money stuff when he fell into the love hole — lost himself in the snatch distraction, which is the trick nature plays on young, happy men, luring them into the trap.
Once through the flimsy cover and falling to the bamboo stakes, they face more woe than impracticality. Figurative death is quick, but on the way to impalement is time aplenty to sense happiness, freedom and mobility ending. The stakes pierce. No more will the young heart sing; gone is the spiritual affluence of the unencumbered — even with love and all it represents.
Hey. A guy can make a mistake; it’s what life and learning are all about. It’s not only okay, it’s also a necessary, constructive process, providing that the guy comes out a little bit smarter than he went in. Hey, are we up and out of the hole, or what?
The important lesson to take from the ashes of a fizzled campfire called youth in a misbegotten wilderness riddled with traps is the lesson on life. This is not sophistry seeking to make mud pies out of mud but poignant insight for the persons involved. That is, most lives defer to something or other, usually requiring money, which comes from parents or requires sacrifice. Sacrifice means less mobility and spontaneity, or, in more immediate language, the adventure and glory are traded in for something else.
The picture fogs here on the payout, or the something else; vague images elude focus, like grown children looking unready for the real world with big grins under their caps and gowns on a day of days to make the parents proud of what they obtained. Then the kids move back in or ask for more money to, you know, get started. Or maybe they get menial jobs or knocked up or otherwise bound by practicality and begin their own process of compromise and sacrifice, with heart-warming visits on the coldest days of the year.
It’s something like that, with a new batch of lovely little grands in there before you know it, puking and shitting about, which is actually a cute thing to photograph, but there’s no rush, since they won’t be litter trained for a few years yet, just prior to the advent of decrepitude.
But come off it. That talk is cynical and depressed and ignorant of the rich nuance so available to a soul and its parent, like, for example, between Ravid Rockulz and his mother of all mothers, Basha Rivka, herself an icon — a warrior woman who did it all, conquering practicality, hormonal weakness, needs fulfilled, survival and motherhood, resulting in success, with a waterman known in the region for vigor and spirit as her son. If she’s a little neurotic and pushy, then these are small faults in the context of greater glory. Which fairly proves that you can’t sum up the outcome of any prospect with glib generalities.
It’s like they say in Vegas: If you don’t play, you can’t win. Not that life is a casino, or that playing won’t set you up for losing — maybe losing everything. But a betting man knows to enjoy his winnings while he can, because you might crap out on the very next roll — which is more or less what happened, when you think about it... And any chronically betting bachelor with no social matrix, no professional connections, no home and an objective so vague it could be called wishful might just be done with risk taking — that is, ready to set it aside. Because he’s taken his fair share of risks, and like every man who ever breathed clean air he has proven himself a loser. A bum...
Unless...
Never mind. Nobody plays forever and keeps on beating the house. It’s statistically impossible.
So maybe he didn’t fall onto the bamboo stakes. Maybe he only took a break from the razzle-dazzle cavalcade of women to open his heart to a single woman. Well, she went sour on him, but that was as much a shock to him as were the events that came in her wake. Not only that, the correct path feels close at hand, with yesterday’s tropical props in Hawaii wholly displaced by today’s teeming essence in French Polynesia.
In Hawaii, many palm trees are part of a commercial landscaping plan, and many reefs have no fish because of aquarium collectors plucking gems from the crown as easily as the missionaries plucked land from the Hawaiians. What remains is a pressure cooker of suburban fantasy merchandizing in a context of human livelihood rendered sacred — by humans. Modern Hawaii is regretted by much of the general population for what happened there, with the cars, hotels, cultural claims and demands competing with the money motive. Poverty, decimation and growth prevail, ending a balance of centuries, so a more perfect Hawaii as seen in magazines can fetch a better price. Or maybe it’s a lower price with more people arriving to pay it. So much scenic vista and terrific cleavage proves the value from either perspective, so you still get your money.
But this can’t go on, even as the pressure cooker steams with demand for jobs, affordability, growth and more, more, more.
The culture at hand, however, is merely hot. Polynesia rejuvenates, because less is indeed more and weighs in profoundly with silence, till that too is offset by growth of a more original source — by the teeming vines and all who live among them. Bird chatter and insect hum gain volume on the breeze as the bus shuts its door on the passenger just delivered to the country road of his dreams. He watches the bus blow smoke on its way up that road and around the bend till it fades, and so begins authentication of the now here. He listens — a meditation that could go on for minutes or years, and so it will, beginning with a turn and first step up the drive. Around the curve the bus shifts to fourth and subsides to the bugs, birds and breeze.
Ravid heard this place described as Hawaii fifty years ago, or a hundred. He thought that comparison casual, convenient and unlikely. Now he feels it, though the first mile from the ferry dock was foul with excavation, heavy equipment and no concern for reef destruction. The elderly woman one seat up pointed out the window at the eventual clubhouse, restaurant and golf course, the first in French Polynesia after years of struggle for and against, till the yen prevailed; beside the road, Japanese engineers consulted clipboards, double-checking and re-measuring for perfection, preserving their honor and nothing but, to avoid personal failure and its incumbent self-destruction.
Ah, well, fifty years or a hundred might still be time enough to get a sane man through this life of madness.
The house halfway up the drive appears to be asleep, though a child ambles out with a sleepy greeting and a key. She points to the bungalow at the top. She smiles shyly and says in French that he can come back down later to sign and pay. “Après midi,” she giggles, and runs back inside, making him wonder if she thinks he’s laughable or part of the madcap world arriving daily.
The bungalow at the top is existentially tropical — hot, humid, lush, buzzing, crawling in the green tint of tropical foliage outside, enclosed by four walls of wood sheathing nailed to painted studs that frame huge screened windows. The studs are exposed on the inside, and in perfect stillness the scene seeps into senses, constantly moving. Thick and steamy, the air collects in droplets and rolls from the forehead down the nose and chin. It drips. Or it diverts to the neck and on down the arms or the chest and the ribs, till the shirt sticks to the skin and wicks on down to the pants. Small consolation arises in the undiluted sounds — fronds rub fondly, big insects and their eight-legged cousins or their hundred-legged in-laws pop knuckles and do the natural thing to smaller insects, birds chirp, and waves break just across the road. Greater consolation derives from the ceiling fan that groans to life at one speed: painfully slow. Soon the atmosphere slides hither and yon, oozing marginally elsewhere in a dazed state of subconscious merging; call it sleep, a known remedy for the anxiously depressed and mortally fatigued. Hardly a napper, Ravid drifts through an hour and a half of it and sits up, all wet, not exactly refreshed but not as bone tired either.
He shuffles down to the front house to sign in and pay, and discovers additional comfort in the rate of sixty dollars per night, economical by any standard, especially the one by which cash expenditure must be measured in this new life. Efficiency and necessity must be foremost for now. The old rent on the beach came in at three bucks less than this, at fifty-seven a day, but that was back in the day, already the day before yesterday, or was it the day before that, with income. So caution is a watchword, because this new life may drift indefinitely, figuratively speaking, of course.
Across the road is a hotel one star up, constructed mostly of tropical-grain Formica and staples with a thatched polymer roof to capture essential charm and match its de rigueur status as waterfront, at a hundred and sixty per night. What is a room but a place to lie down in the dark and sleep? So a brief victory celebration is in order, because a man tuned in to the elements shouldn’t need an air conditioner or decent fan, and may better begin a new life with a walk down the drive, under the trees and across the road to the dining room built on pylons over the water, where coffee and something to eat are more easily justified with such savings on the rent.
Revelations continue. A newcomer sees what long-termers become inured to, and in this case the more so. Ravid has seen the future and come back from it like a time traveler with harrowing news and warnings of what must be avoided — back to this place that feels like a long-gone place in the heart, like a homecoming at last. Aloha and ia orana intertwine with the spirit of the place and settle on his shoulders like a lei. The people here have surely heard the news; surely they must know, most of them, that convenience to church, schools and shopping can kill a place off as quick as supply fails to meet demand — kill the magic one cell at a time so that you won’t see it dying till it’s too late. Well, they don’t seem to know, and it’s not my place to tell them. Circumspection would best advise a man to be happy and let happiness be in all things around him, sharing what he knows only as those around him are ready to receive it.
Still, the news feels urgent, oppressive and in need of sharing. This just in:
Humanity will overrun here too with terminal overpopulation. The airwaves will fill with promotions of growth and God for the common good, even as cells divide and tumors form with laugh-a-day symptoms so easily shrugged off, like gridlock, stress and rage. Personal isolation will vary directly with population growth for all but the booster-minded. Eye contact will indicate perverse potential. Squeezed together, we will experience nature in smaller doses. Security will trump freedom, but we must secure the future for the children and their children and so on and so forth, as other species and their progeny are dismissed with brief regret, because, after all, we’re talking security here, as if the future should count for nothing but humanity in a vacuum...
“But they’re not my children,” mumbles the single man at the table by the railing overlooking the water and the narrow pier that runs fifty yards out to where the channel drops off. This obtuse mumbling causes the young couple one table over to turn and smile with sympathy, if not understanding. Then they look away to avoid eye contact, avoiding intrusion on this apparently disturbed individual, toying with his swim goggles.
“I mean the children they’re always saying to do things for. You know? They’re not mine.”
The young couple smiles and focuses downward, front and center, to better eat their omelets.
So Ravid Rockulz sits as isolated as a man with no office, no commuter train, no borough to rush home to, and no home once he gets there. This comparison of urban stability to tropical serenity is a stretch, but it’s accurate and helps secure the moment, in which Cook’s Bay is simply, overwhelmingly, beautiful. Reef denizens welling upward and downward are in their own rendition of lush hour. Now squinting to focus on and penetrate the surface, a reef man reveals a denser population than he’s seen in years — here is some company to warm up to.
Life beckons from the tree-lined pitons and rolling clouds down to the clear, flat water and gently cooling breeze. The little dock runs out from the Taverua dining room and its thatch roof supported by posts with no walls, out across the reef to where the bottom falls away. Here too are human people, though blessedly few, so the place feels like a café — make that a perfect café beside a teeming reef. Hospitality prevails with more French dark roast and pastries in a resurgence of caffeine and sugar, restorative as a fountain of youth.
These whimsical stimuli facilitate another small, blessed death of self and sorting out of a past removed from serenity, and a very rough passage through days and nights. With a bit of sweetness the days ahead loom larger than those preceding, as unfortunate images drift farther away to the long ago.
So the gimp-legged caretaker at Taverua rouses no rancor but instead recalls the good old days and the world long gone — the world here, as yet to be cashed in for material gain. Ravid, spent of emotion, watches the fellow gimp out the long pier, tossing chunks of yesterday’s baguettes over the shallow reef on either side. In Hawaii he, Ravid, would struggle to retain civility and likely fail, rising to this challenge, asking this person to stop interrupting the natural food chain — in a nice way, of course, that would be taken as a threat.
But Hawaii fifty years ago or a hundred was thick with fish, and a caretaker could toss yesterday’s Portagee sweetbread over the reef with nary a blink of concern, because the reefs were so alive, pervasive and plentiful that many species schooled thick as that singular species of today, the human commuter. Which makes a man wonder: Why are the other species so refreshing to see, yet thickly migrating humans feel like oncoming dread? Is he part of the dreadful migration? No, which may seem arbitrary and subjective, but if all humans practiced his care for nature and had as many children, the world might have a chance to recover — not to mention his freedom from the washer and dryer, shag carpet, sheet rock, drop ceiling, cars and color-coordinated accessories, to say the least.
So there, for now.
But never mind here too; for now this reef is like reefs used to be, forever lush with no threat in sight.
Except for climate change and coral bleaching...
Stop! I said never mind...
The Taverua caretaker ambles down the dilapidated dock in this deep bay tucked into this island remnant of the old world still thriving under its original sky and sea, its people and fish happily balanced. Maybe the balance is the thing between the human and other species. The other species spawn profusely as humans do, but then their needs are so simple, so removed from industry, consumer goods, advanced education and the American dream. Maybe a few hundred thousand fish are balanced in every way to a single human.
Except maybe for this gimp-footed, lopsided yet even-keeled man, whose left leg toe-steps to compensate for its five-inch shortfall. Who could be angry with a man so apparently efficient in the natural scheme of things, so equally intimate with his scaly friends? Who would not smile at this happy contact between man and fish? Because equilibrium in nature is also social and tempered by understanding. Happiness and balance are evident here under foreboding yet sunny skies. This shallow cove inside the atoll is lively with hungry children, or so the fish seem, roiling the surface in playful anticipation. A thick, gold-plated — that is to say, cheap — watch, mostly worn to pot metal by friction and salt air, sparkles sparsely, as does the man.
The darkest clouds converge in a squall that rushes in when he’s halfway out. He tosses bread hanks to excited schools who boil the surface. Oblivious to the downpour or encouraged by it, they recognize the familiar face, and they frenzy in simple pleasure. Without looking up, the caretaker pulls and tosses, hobbling to the end, where two more baguettes under his arm let him continue. Grinning intermittently he hurries to finish before the bread is too soggy. His pets churn the water where he has yet to throw, telling him where to throw next, proving that fish can learn and teach, can know and see beyond the surface.
Just as quickly the squall passes. The gill breathers’ spectrum of yellows and reds, blues and silvers, stripes, bars, arcs, spots and squiggles of dazzling incandescence and aquamarine flash in the morning sun. The hotel guests flash an equally garish and gooier spectrum at a more civilized pace, accessorized, relaxing, having their Danish and coffee.
So the world is born again, a younger, more nubile hostess than it has seemed in years. The exact number of years doesn’t matter, except for the feeling that it’s been too many years. The realization of time wasted — or not optimally spent — also makes for a laugh against the grain. So the man at the table by the rail laughs heartily, and a smile lingers with a homespun feeling that nothing is wasted or lost but prepares the medium for the seed. He is a seed settling on dark humus, bursting with life, nearing germination at last.
Is this place destined like all others to flesh out with people and cars? Will houses be built six hundred or eighteen hundred at a time, with people calling them either “affordable” or fat-cat mansions? Will three hundred thousand residents and two hundred thousand tourists annually in French Polynesia go to two million residents and seven million tourists? Will the human leech field bubble with the most frequently asked question: How long have you been here? Will wholesale crowds of Barnacle Bills and wannabe tropical honeys get off the last flight from Jersey, via LAX, go directly to the tattoo parlor and then emerge as originals, ready with insight on the where-from and how-to for an ever grateful surge of more recently arrived tourists?
Will humanity crush this place too in its quest for comfort and identity?
You can’t exactly be an expatriate from America if you weren’t born there. But you can extirpate the consumption-as-proof-of-godliness, the material/spiritual continuum that America has come to represent, that America insists on defending from invasion and dilution by the godless fellahin. Fleeing the material monster makes more sense in Hawaii, where so much more was lost and continues wasting away, where the dregs are still spectacular compared to the wasteland of suburban convenience — where wilderness got paved, where lava, kiawe and wiliwili got leveled for “units” with breathtaking views to sigh over with melancholy, in appreciation of the good life.
Then the remnants got leveled for the low end, because every dynamic economy needs staff.
Wait a minute: extirpate. Do I know that word? [verb trans.] root out and destroy completely. So yes, I must, and yes, a non-American can expatriate from America — especially if he once loved it, and then watched it fail.
“Like a wife, kind of, but not really, but then... Do I still love her? America?” Ravid mumbles, to the continuing consternation of the newlyweds nearby, who tighten their common focus and grasp their Danish. So he eases their anxiety by explaining, “I loved what she stood for. What she stands for, really, if you’re willing to overlook the destructive, self-centered behaviors. She changed, you know.”
Well, what these timorous people know or may be willing to comprehend is grist for another mill. A man immersed in personal cognizance is hardly appropriate counsel on the ambiguities of America to these others, these ferners, no less. Ha!
And so he laughs, motivating the honeymooners to expedite their morning sweets and take their leave. Au revoir, mes amis; it’s all the better, really, freeing you up for another round of getting to know each other and allowing me some privacy in which to think and feel.
To sort, adjust and adapt, because a refugee from rampant growth and mad packaging may revalidate life with a fresh new place in which to live it. He may sense redemption from stupidity, putting the dumb-down into remission. Here the development steamroller has pulled to the side of the road — or maybe it’s shut down in the middle of no roads, no lavish resorts or infrastructure and no happy motorists raging to get in line for some killer deals at Crapco or Costlo or the Warehouse of Stuff. Maybe the end here is not so nigh. Maybe the steamroller is a World War II remnant, a rusty hulk in the weeds.
You see resorts, but they’re only nice, not over the top extravaganzas of wanton disregard for lavish expenditure. Because this is not the United States or any part of America. Japan is a constant threat, with its insane appetite for anything forkable and its craze for golf. But an ear to the breeze picks up no chatter, no belching buses, no flashing cameras, no crowds vapidly watching the android tour guide recite hidden truths like a robot with an overlay of canned cheer. The numbers on population and tourism here may be constrained by great distances from Asia and Europe. Things seem good, actually, possibly great, suggesting arrival at last to that place in the heart called home.
Well, a case could be made for too late already, what with the massive excavation near the ferry dock, where blasted spoil got pushed to the shoreline near the reef, because a few wealthy Japanese would rather play golf than allow nature to survive there. Still, it’s only one golf course, and the construction process can drag on with unforeseen challenges, like survey pins moved, hydraulic hoses severed, bulldozers, backhoes and graders running sluggish, drain sumps clogged, floodgates opened. Harmless fun can make a place playful and productive, while keeping it serene for a few more weeks or years. Surely a few dramatic budget overruns would arch an eyebrow over the staggering cost of another round of golf.
So the question emerges like an exposed reef at ebb. Can Ravid Rockulz live a long and happy life here, knowing at the end of his days that he chose the right place for purpose and love and a happy heart? Well, the proof of the pudding is in the eating, but a strict measure of happiness based on achievement will not do. It’s not a question of possible failure but rather a question of process — you can’t bottleneck the rest of life into a single question, because the only accurate answer is yes, one day you will pass. Who can possibly know what will happen in the meantime?
But broken down to the fundamentals of success in the near term, the question can emerge: Will Ravid Rockulz find success here as a marine photographer? That’s not exactly the right question, but it’s close, allowing for the error of expectation. The correct question is perhaps a series of questions: Will he pass in peace, a happy man? Will he find the azure serenity that has eluded him to date? Or will he merely wallow for an hour or two in daydreams of tropical fulfillment, and then slog on among the seekers with his itch chronically unscratched?
Well, that leaves another ninety minutes for him to wonder if this place will be his destiny, as it was for Paul Gauguin and Marlon Brando. No place with its wilderness reasonably intact can offer modern conveniences. So there will be no ambulance careening through traffic that pulls over for quicker access to the hospital, where a pulse can show for a few more days than it could ever beat on its own, at home, quietly, immersed in natural beauty. And look what happened: Gauguin and Brando both died.
Maybe material progress won’t happen here. Maybe this place will remain insulated from the aberrant clearing and construction that obstructs life in its natural flow. Maybe apologies, like sustainable growth or best management practices, will form on the horizon like a squall line scuttling ominously yonder to dump somewhere else. Maybe this place will be spared. Maybe this place will retain its serenity with no rush hour packed with commuters keen on saving a few minutes to better spend them elsewhere. Perhaps a lifetime can still pass here in peace, so a man might join the ether with nobody knowing for a month or a year or two, which seems reasonable. Factoring the climate and general chemistry in getting things down to nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous, a man might well decompose in the comfort of his own home — that’s it: phosphorous, the basis of bioluminescence, giving a wondrous prospect for dissolution in the sand like the ancient Hawaiians did, till the bones roll into the sea with that other worldly glimmer of lost souls.
At night —
Could I gasp my last with no sirens, lights, questions on insurance coverage or regrets? Well, I nearly did, didn’t I? But you know what I mean; in the passing of a relatively normal life — or a reasonably serene life at any rate — could this place see me swept into a dustpan for sprinkling on the garden where I might bear fruit again? Or into the sea, where I might sparkle? Well, I think it could — and maybe more important, taking the question back to the specifics of so-called success and its pursuit on a daily basis, maybe I would best ask, Will I get the pictures?
Well, I humbly submit, Your Honor, that I will — that the images recorded through my lens will open eyes, hearts and minds to the wonders of the deep and shallow, showing any human person who cares to look, that the fish see, feel and know, not just as we do but in their own inimitable way that is neither better nor inferior but so precisely, amazingly suited to their world, which, left to their own devices, would not be ending as ours is, and theirs is too, because of human folly.
But wait. One set of questions leads to another, testing whether these hopes or any hopes can remain viable. Will the shallow reef on either side of the pier prove to be healthy? Is this reef as densely populated with fish of garish color and profound innocence as it appeared to be at feeding time? Does the ledge just past the pier drop to forty feet or eighty or four hundred? Why don’t I see snorkelers? Why do I see dive boats running to the outer reef, if this reef is any good? Are the coral heads healthy and intact? Or are they broken, kicked and trampled by the common crowd of philistines who see nature as a challenge or a threat, or an amusement to better fill their vacation days, rather than a shrine of beauty? Are these coral heads entangled in monofilament or fouled by murky effluent choking the life from them? Will the shallows reveal net remnants, proving that money is more valuable than life, that death is merely collateral damage in the quest to secure livelihood for people who must feed their children? Is this reef choked with algae because the herbivores — the surgeonfish, collector urchins and parrotfish — are gone to brief lives in aquariums, or netted or speared because they’re good to eat, and people have to eat, and those people catching hundreds and thousands of each species are shoring up our economic base, which is the foundation of our stability and the backbone of our political will, which guarantees our freedom after all?
These colors don’t run. Support our troops. My country right or wrong.
Freedom isn’t free. Except that it is, just as chastity is chaste, virtuosity is virtuous, necessity is necessary, neurosis neurotic, paranoia paranoid, schizophrenia schizophrenic, psychosis psychotic and on and on. Freedom is free. Free is the root derivative of freedom. If it’s not free, then it isn’t freedom — it becomes a wickedly twisted connotation designed to serve a purpose — make that an agenda — which is wrong, not right. So love it or leave it. Okay?
Or silt, the greatest test, measuring the human compromise on this island, whereby reef health defers to convenience in drainage, allowing particulate aggregation in the corals and invertebrates, burying what is not yet dead, rendering it half dead and dying.
But what can you do against needs, convenience, churches and malls sprouting like spore growth — monstrosities that pencil out with plenty of free parking? A shrill woman who lived two doors down wanted the chaos stopped but only added to it, insisting, “We’ve got to get organized!”
Who are you kidding? Her sincerity shouldn’t count for nothing. But then it did.
Then Henry Hollings hit the mother lode with his electrical contracting company, making more money in a year than in any ten years before the boom. Henry came out on the boat to dive on a regular basis before the boom. In the boom he had no time — and he was too tired and said he couldn’t sleep well at night. He came out again, once he’d shut his company down because he was about to win a bid on three hundred new homes — a job he’d overbid by three times value, but nobody else was available. But the new homes were being built on the sacred wandering grounds of his youth, and that’s what kept him up at night. Everyone called Henry crazy for walking away from so much moola, and he knew they were right, and that quitting wouldn’t change anything, except for shrinking the little monster gnawing inside.
But those troubled souls and disturbing illustrations of man’s inhumanity to himself stop on immersion in clear, bracing waters. Questions quickly resolve, and the prognosis appears benign. Coral, rocks and greenery are free of siltation or brown algae; fish numbers appear proportionate to carrying capacity for shelter and sustenance. The biggest population segment here are juveniles, ohua — which thinned to “sustainable” levels in Hawaii long ago, nearly three decades, or five decades if you go back to the start of the aquarium madness, in which sustainability defines the acceptable level of destruction.
Humuhumu, milletseed butterflyfish, threadfin and citron butterflies, damsels and angels, mostly one-inchers and curious as pups, approach to see who in God’s blue ocean this new being can be. Given a minute or two for their tiny hearts to warm, for familiarity to settle in so the gates can open, the curious fish relax, till skittish reaction is gone.
Then they seem to peer incredulously and ask, Ravid? Is that you? We heard you were coming. Oh, we have ways. News carries quickly under water, you know.
So the recent émigré/emigrant from twenty degrees above the equator to seventeen degrees below, more or less, gets chicken skin, recalling the open ocean in the dark, which, after all, is not too far from here. Yet setting painful memory aside, he lets the healing begin. With his hands out front, his fingers form a rectangle through which he frames the fishes and therein frames his love. Clicking imaginary masterpieces for the art gallery and the heart, he captures essential character and meaning.
The oceans are my shepherd, I shall not want...
So the man submerges once more with a spreading smile that can’t help but leak seawater and the taste of home — sure it was the scene of domestic strife in recent days and nights, but that doesn’t mean the family will remain dysfunctional.
Hardly.
Free diving beyond the reef edge to twenty feet, he rises slowly, blowing his biggest bubble with his head in the center. Into the thickening mix with emperor and regal angels, blue damsels, turquoise chromis, all the little fins and his heart aflutter till — wait!
Flame angels!
Just there — a mated pair, peeking out and darting to other cover, demure as a deb, brazen as a beau, and far more virtuous than either. But despite their red-orange bodies and vertical black bars in a riotous fire burst stumbled onto like lost treasure, an unfortunate segment of humanity wants to capture and contain them, wants to watch them under control, in captivity, as they fade away.
Flame angels, at one time the heartthrob of Hawaii’s reefs, are now gone for export to small tanks in America’s offices and homes of people seeking contact with nature’s last vestige. Or to massive wall tanks in Asia.
Gone.
No more — but not here. I don’t think here. Could it be here too, that another crime in our collective death is allowed, validated as vital to the aquarium collectors, who also have needs and children to feed? And what else can the home hobbyist in the heartland of America or the insular affluence of Asia do, imagine life on the reef? Don’t they need their little slice of Paradise too, to calm them down after a hard day of capitalism or communism or whateverthefuckism, after all?
Or is that Paradiseville?
Well, the scourge of scoop nets, barrier nets, trashcans, coolers and devastating mortality en route can’t be here with this many baby fish on hand.
And the commercial development popping up like brown coral necrosis on every recollection of Hawaii is already a night and two days and a million small deaths ago, and it drifts farther away with each heartbeat here, for here is a place of throbbing imminence. Hello, my friends, Ravid fills a bubble with greetings, which these fish can read beyond mere rationale — oh, some things are known, or sensed among friends in shallow water and extraordinary coral heads, no trash or damage or monofilament. This place — our place — goes deeper than any place sensed in long time. And maybe a man who’s a mite smarter than only a few days ago will guard against the gates of his heart opening too far, lest they be flooded again with effluent of an undesirable nature.
And yes, of equal importance is to keep them open just a crack, so whatever goodness is available might seep in, and yes, it does feel like our place — ours in a possessive sense, not in terms of ownership but of belonging in a natural home with no deed of ownership, as nature must have intended before the missionaries came to Hawaii and ended up “owning” the place. This will be different than that because the world has filled with humans since then. But our place will be protected by the exigencies of human travel; people won’t come if it’s not convenient. Here we can live the life, naturally connected, far from suburban centers no longer fit for nature. We’ll be safe; the freight expense and local government being prohibitively difficult on all the stuff required for trashing our lovely place. Oh, it will happen, given a century or two for progress to catch up, but by then something superior to material rationale and spurious “growth” may be enjoyed.
Arrival is secure on confirming reef hospitality and health. The coral heads as yet untrammeled are not yet browned by leech field seepage, runoff and warming, except for some bleaching on the margins where inertia is broken and may be gaining momentum, because the end of the world begins on the reef. And oh, the end is nigh, unless humanity goes away first, ceasing and desisting by means of its own unwitting invention. These shores are lined with human habitat — simple and pure, to be sure — with cesspits long past their useful lives. How can humans survive in a system designed for failure? They can’t. The numbers here are still low enough to sustain the delusion, and the rate of growth is far slower than most other places, but additional pressure and inevitable failure sooner or later spell doom. Human population growth will kill nature here too over days that begin the same, innocent and charming, with more of one thing and less of another than the day before. It’s a pattern of growth, all too familiar, ignored at the common peril. No other species so thoroughly destroys its natural cover for money and then adapts to something wholly less lovable. Oblivion is the first step in the destructive process, which is neither nice nor sane. So what? Should all humans be rounded up for incarceration, guilty of befouling nature beyond the rights of any species?
Well, no. Not really. Not all of them. But the alarm should be sounded. But then the sounder is an alarmist.
Besides, a man should feel good about what’s become of him without factoring the worries of the world, especially here. Otherwise, he might as well find some rafters and a necktie — I’d like something in a daring diagonal stripe in two colors, or maybe...maybe three!
Ha!
And looking up to the scudding clouds, Ravid allows: “Lovely. A simply beautiful, lovely day. The first of many. Many, many in a lifetime starting now.” The chimerical moment balances the interminable other. Whimsy should be a reference point, no matter what comes. This moment and these impressions are a milestone with a wish for more on the road ahead, the road taken, unpaved and lined with forest. A man of tourism knows what will likely happen. He has seen nature’s indifference turn malignant when human people get involved. Maybe he can help slow the process here. That would be a contribution, and it could happen.
The missionaries failed to export resources from French Polynesia anywhere near the magnitude of their haul in Hawaii, because this tropic is different — so far from the money ports and the labor sources. And massive extraction/exploitation seemed less frequent under French influence and etiquette and exotic appetite without shame. This place was liberated for Godly pursuits and the spiritual plane as it relates to food and fine wine, art and sex.
That’s different from the Superbowl, We’re number 1, March madness, NASCAR, Halliburton, neoconservatism, the religious right, mad cow burgers, Coke, fifty-two-million-dollar box offices, epidemic obesity and, of course, world domination for more oil. This place is still an outpost in the limitless sea and may stay that way, as far from the USA as the seventh moon of Uranus, culturally speaking.
So a happy man walks home with equilibrium in mind, with happy thoughts and faith restored on caffeine, sugar and a visit with old friends. Hope for stability and fulfillment is no longer a pipe dream but a reality forming up. Crossing the road to his cheap digs, he slows to a shuffle on reentry — in from orbital altitude and down to earth.
What can he do to make ends meet? How can he keep a roof over his head and buy groceries? Well, a man visibly beyond the endearing naiveté of youth understands that at a certain point in life, making ends meet is no less difficult than earning well. That is, the universal value system generally grants credibility and wisdom directly with aging; in time, a person can earn by what is known with equal dispatch as by what is done. The converse is an aging person who remains in manual labor, which makes him pure, or undeveloped, or maybe both.
Near the front steps, he finds six feet of hose connected to a hose bib. As the bracing water flows over his head, under the trees with birdsong abounding, he’s fairly certain that a man never had a shower so luxurious. Can this be another pattern, in which balance teeters between anxiety and fulfillment? Does anxiety come from doubts about a future happiness based on money, recognition and artistic success? Will contentment instead derive from the inner light and peace of mind unmatched in the material world? Well, maybe nobody can ever know these things in the short run, which underscores the critical need for fulfillment at this juncture, so that karmic resolution will factor the free will of a waterman with gifts worthy of development.
Back inside he sits. The place sinks in and seeps out in sweat. He breathes along with the rustling fronds, grateful to be here rather than anyplace else, grateful to be alive. What can he do to make a living? Alone, far from friends or family and bearing up to the vicissitudes of hope, he laughs. Maybe he’s doing it, letting his batteries recharge on fresh voltage.
Still, the questions persist: How long will this charging process take? Well, he isn’t the first wayward Jew at a loss for direction. But he could be setting a new standard of disappointment for a poor old gray-haired mother, who must know by now that her only begotten son will not be a lawyer or a doctor — or an accountant or movie star or professional this or executive that or anything she could wear on her sleeve with pride. Not that appearing on her sleeve is his life’s ambition, but filial duty counts for something, and she doesn’t even know where on earth her son can be found. She may be thinking of him this very minute, worrying, no doubt, and in fact she is. Why wouldn’t she?
True, it’s only eight inches south by southeast from where he was, which would be the same as a new phone prefix, which isn’t much different, if she knows the number. So he decides to call, even as he wishes he’d called before migrating, before his new French world could sting him for forty bucks on a short phone call home. Coffee and a Danish for nine dollars? This exotic French tropics business will require attention and diligence. Still, it’ll be forty bucks well spent, on a call wisely reserved for post-arrival, because now he can report a safe flight and landing and rich prospects. Things are already working out for the best. If he’d called sooner, he’d only have to call again later anyway.
Near sundown, in the same time zone as Hawaii, Ravid is back at Taverua, buying a call.
“Hello? Who could be calling at this hour?”
“It’s me.”
“Me? Me who?
“Hello, Mother.”
“So tell me what is wrong?”
Why must something be wrong? Why must she energize the negative? Why can’t she assume good news? Why does she believe that nothing can happen for the best? But this exchange wore itself out long ago. He is done with belaboring and accepts the badinage as the lesser of two burdens because she is Mother, whatever that means and requires, including her faith in calamity.
“Nothing is wrong. Things are going right. I’ve been thinking about moving for a long time now...”
“Oy. Where are you?”
“I’m in Tahiti.”
“Oy, Gott. Tahiti.”
“I love it.”
“You love it. You love Hawaii!”
“Yes, I do. Can I have only one love?”
“How did you get in? They won’t let you in, because you wouldn’t get the visa like I begged you to do. I begged you, but you wouldn’t...”
“Acch! Don’t ask.”
“You won’t listen. You’re a rolling stone...”
“Yes. No moss. But I still don’t want some. This place is so beautiful; it’s unbelievable. The corals and fishes — I saw flame angels right in front of the...the hotel.”
“Oh, you’re staying at a fancy hotel, making friends with little fishes. Tell me why I should worry.”
“You should worry because that’s what you do best. But try to think of something new to worry about. I’ve never felt better about a decision.”
“And what did you decide to do in Tahiti of all places? Make more with the bubbles business?”
The question of the bubbles business and making more or less has loomed heavily on the intrapersonal plane for hours. The correct answer will take a while longer to develop, but a formative response is required right now, to appease anxieties and enhance practicality, and so it spurts forth: “Take pictures. You know it’s my calling.”
“It’s your calling. Who’s listening? You’re going to take pictures of little fish and then what? Trade them for your dinner?”
“Yes. You do understand. And to think that all this time I thought you were predisposed to see me as a failure who couldn’t grasp an honest dollar. I was wrong.”
“Never! I never saw you as a failure. A waste, maybe, but not a failure. Never a failure. I want you to come home and be a mensch.”
“Mommy, dearest. In case you haven’t noticed, I am a mensch. My pictures of little fish are highly regarded. I’ll sell them in New York, just like I did last time. Maybe even to the same people...”
“Maybe, schmaybe. I remember what they said, those same people. Maybe parakeets will fly out my tuchas too.”
“Are you getting feathers down there?”
She laughs.
Finally.
Tzim lachen; it should be to laugh, because that and love will survive us. So the long distance shortens with the best they have to share, rendering all well on the immortal plane that will survive them. Things get better yet when he gives her the Taverua phone number, but please, she shouldn’t call unless it’s a dire emergency, since getting the call will cost him about a hundred dollars, besides the terrible expense at her end.
“A hundred dollars?”
“It’s a hotel on the water in Tahiti. They got overhead.”
“So what do you need with such a fancy hotel?”
“I don’t. I stay much cheaper across the street. They know me here and will come get me for emergency calls. That’s emergency. Okay?”
“Everything should be good. Are you making friends?”
“I just got here, but already if I have any more social demands I won’t be able to get to my work.”
“Oh, pardon me. Your work.”
He allows the silence to congeal, so the disrespect can be recognized for what it is, so it can leave its damage at both ends of the line, since she too factors money per minute. And for what, so Ma Bell can get rich on their hard-earned dollars?
“When will you call me?”
“I’m calling you right now, as we speak. This is a call that we’re on. We’re in the moment, which is a great achievement, you know. I’ll call you again when I have more news. Okay? Now I have to go.”
“You have to go. What, Mr. Little-Fish-Picture-Executive already? Okay, go. Have your next important moment. Be well.”
“Yes. And you.”
Ravid no longer wonders when he’ll feel good about the obligatory call; he simply feels relieved at having completed the task — at fulfilling the duty of hearing her voice and letting his voice be heard. He feels more relieved that God in heaven, or whatever force allows events to unfold, spared her from hearing his plea for help in the inky deeps. Not that he actually thought she could hear his plea; he only wished that she’d call the Coast Guard on general principle and chronic, low-grade fear for her son’s safety, that she would provide his coordinates for pickup as easy as hailing a taxi at the airport. Such delusions are common among dying people. What he honestly knows is that she would have heard of what became of her son and spent the rest of her days alongside him in those hours prior to sinking.
Still, he’d called her by name, and she’d had no clue, unless she’d saved his ass on the supernatural plane. Could she be a psychokinetic force to reckon with? She has the psycho part down pat, with the power to drive strong men to irrational behavior. She can be a world-class pill, an Olympian neurotic of notable perseverance. Add those characteristics to equally strident instincts for motherhood, and the probability becomes greater than zero that she could control a situation from a distance. God knows, she’s tried for years.
Then again, on realistic analysis, many mothers lose their cubs to natural hazards, a sad and disturbing image, though such losses may underscore wide-ranging motherhood skills, from that with no chutzpa as a lesser force of nature to that which rules the cosmos by sheer galling willpower. Maybe some individuals are better equipped for survival because of what their mothers can conjure against the odds, against reality...
But when you think about the context, the depth and darkness, the troughs and crests, the visions of imminent...
So the sweat rolls down his ribs and into the sheets. The drops form rivulets that converge to streams and rivers flowing to a shallow estuary that rises with a springtide just as night squalls drive the breakers inland on a storm flood from the implacable sea. Waves are soon breaking over the rustling fronds, as the southern moon rises indifferently. A man hangs on, clinging to hope in the face of hopelessness, sinking into middle age, dreaming in violent resolution.
Which is not to say the game is over; it’s only the foolishness of youth being pushed aside by the inconsolable forces of nature.
Who knows? Maybe the next part will be easy.