The Happy Isles of Oceania

What a slacker I am. No, it’s true. But then again, the pressures of work are particularly intense right now, so maybe I can be forgiven for not getting up any writing for a long time. But here’s the thing: you have to keep the best part of yourself for yourself. Being a slacker is not as bad as allowing work to dominate your life. If it were just a matter of wasting time in a pleasurable but not unhealthy way, that would be ok. But that’s not what I have been doing. I’ve been allowing work to suck up all my time and energy, leaving me unfit for anything but watching baseball on tv at the end of the day. Work will take all you give it and never be satisfied that you are giving it enough. It’s like dealing with a particularly demanding and unappreciative child, really. No matter how much you give it, it only asks for more. Time to cut that child loose and let it fend for itself.

So I’ve picked up The Happy Isles of Oceania again, by Paul Theroux. It’s a book I started almost four years ago, at a time when I myself was getting ready to visit Micronesia. I never quite finished it, but now I am making time, and loving it. It’s well researched and intimate, and it takes me back in spirit to some of the places I have been.

What Theroux captures so well is the marginal nature of the islanders, their sometimes pointless existence, and their inability to rise above their circumstances. He is particularly hard on the French colonial influence, especially in his chapters on Tahiti and the Marquesas. The Marquesas is where Melville based his novel Typee, and is also where Gaugin is buried (what a bastard he was!).

The islands are very difficult to reach, having steep cliffs down to the sea and no good harbors. At one time the Marquesas supported an estimated population of 80,000 people but it is now down to about 7,000. As with Easter Island, and as with the Mayan empire, The Marquesas is rich in archeological remains which testify to a complex but largely forgotten culture. Ecological disaster seems to be at the root of the de-population. Stone temples covered in thick vines can be found in inpenetrable jungle hills and valleys. Many of these sites have never been excavated, but most have been defaced by overzealous 19th century missionaries intent on whacking off offending penises and such. Most of the native islanders have never visited any of the sites, even the ones in their own backyards, and they have no particular interest in their history - such is the dissapating effect of missionaries and colonialization.

Here is what Theroux has to say at the end of his stay on the Marquesas:
“There is no cannibalism in the Marquesas anymore - none of the traditional kind. But there is the brutality of French colonialism…. The French praise and romanticize the Marquesas, but in the 1960s they had planned to test nuclear devices on the northern Marquesan island of Eiao, until there was such an outcry they changed their plans and decided to destroy Moruroa instead. It is said that the French are holding Polynesia together, but really it is so expensive to maintain that they do everything as cheaply as possible - and it is self-serving, too. Better to boost domestic French industries by exporting bottled water from France than investing in a fresh water supply for each island [there is an abundance of fresh water in the Marquesas]. That is what colonialism is all about… The French have left nothing enduring in the islands except a tradition of hypocrisy and their various fantasies off history and high levels of radioactivity..

“When France has succeeded in destroying a few more atolls, when they have managed to make the islands glow with so much radioactivity that night is turned into day, when they have sold the rest of the fishing rights and depleted it of fish.., when it has all been thoroughly plundered, the French will plan a great ceremony and grandly offer these unemployed and deracinated citizens in T-shirts and flip-flops their independence. In the destruction of the islands, the French imperial intention, its mission civilisatrice - civilizing mission - will be complete.”

So there you have it. “Grrrr…. the French,” as Michael Moore would say. But of course the parallels to our so-called civilizing mission in Iraq are readily apparent - and so is our attitude to the way we treat the scarce resources in this Island Earth. Use it up while you can, because tomorrow only matters for our grandkids - and since they are not us, they don’t really count.

The Burden of Memory

The burden of memory is what prevents us from living in the present. Every event, every perception in our lives is new, and yet we cannot perceive the newness, due to the framing devices which memory imposes on us. There is a context to our experience. That context is called our life.

When we wake up on a beautiful morning and look outside the window to see the snow gently swirling around the corners of our house, and the sun shining on the near and distant hills, we cannot help but notice what we already know inside: we have seen all this before, one way or another. And so we catalog it alongside other mornings, with good or bad memories, either way consigning the experience to the file drawer of memory. Memory is not immediate. Memory is a learned response consisting of a cluster of of sensory impressions. These sensory impressions have accumulated over time, and they cause us to filter all new experience through them. As a framing device, memory is useful, but has the ultimate effect of taking us out of the moment and reducing the immediacy of experience.

Travel lets us get away from ourselves. To wake up on a beautiful morning and look outside the window to see a different landscape is liberating. Still, we compare. This place reminds me of that place. This place smells different from that other place. I have known many people for whom travel is a wasted experience, because they are forever expending vast amounts of energy looking at everything they see and not really seeing anything but what they have already seen elsewhere. Travel is different from daily routine but it’s still a memory-mediated event. We approach immediacy for a time, but manage to back away from it through the framing device of memory. Still, one of the great pleasures of travel is its tendency to penetrate through the shell of ego-induced memory, just for a time, allowing us to catch a glimpse of alternative and fresh sensory impressions. We can catch ourselves unawares by waking up and seeing the unmediated world. There it is, and we are in it. How did that happen, and how can it continue … such are the concerns of memory, as it reasserts its primacy over the course of the day.

Travel is akin to amnesia, and as a trope for writers interested in exploring the themes of memory, freshness, and identity, amnesia has no equal. Despite its appropriation by generations of hack writers, amnesia remains the vehicle of choice for describing the encounter with unmediated reality. Imagine waking up on a beautiful morning and looking outside the window to see a scene which is not only fresh, but a scene which has absolutely no relationship to you. Not only did you not choose to place yourself in a scene involving the beautiful snow gently swirling around the corners of your house, through dull routine or intentional travel, but you also have no way of placing yourself in the new landscape in any meaningful way. Amnesia is generally regarded as both liberating and frightening. In any case it is exciting. It is the staple of spy thrillers, where everyone is out to get you, and you would simply like to know why, in order to save your skin. A tunk on the head is generally what caused it, and sometimes it is also the cure. In your new unmediated life there might be a woman who loves you, a fresh woman, but there is usually another woman who has always loved you. The playing out of this melodrama is interesting on a soap opera level, but is far more interesting on a metaphysical level. Who are we when stop being ourselves? The reason this situation is exciting (in a purely narrative sense) is that the character with amnesia is still firing on all cylinders: there are no deficits, only a lack of personality framework to process the sensory input. The reason that Alzheimers Disease is not generally useful for writers is that it involves a degeneration of personality, a loss of individual story without much hope of recovery of that story. While amnesia may be both frightening and liberating (exciting), Alzheimers is merely sad.

Avalon So Long, part 2

Friday, continued…

Safely landed and back home. As I was saying, I have started reading “The Wind up Bird Chronicle” - about 100 pages in so far. Murakami is either a genius or a bore, I can’t decide which. Perhaps neither. I have come to the conclusion that if I were to be forced to read this book for a class, I would find it tedious. But having come to the book at the end of vacation, it seems (as Murakami would have it) quite profound.. possibly. Every thing I have read by Murakami is infused with coincidences and pseudo meaning. The plots are not tight. They evolve slowly and hint at deep meaning. It’s all very Japanese. What’s strange is the fact that I am still in the mindspace of tight alleyways and hidden domiciles, and, … what the! As if by chance we have a narrator who has recently quit his job (time on his hands) and is exploring strange little corridors and backspaces behind his house which connect to abandoned houses down the street from him, where he hopes to find his wife’s lost cat. Cats! Again! Just like in “Kafka on the Shore”. Then there’s people who “know stuff”, capped up wells, and other subterranean features (as in “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World”), not to mention a lost polka-dot tie retrieved from the dry cleaner’s after six months, and clairvoyants. Vintage Murakami stuff, which is either maddening (if you have to read it) or refreshing, if you read it in the right spirit.

I would like to propose here and now that the Postmodernists have completely missed the boat if they have not put reading conditions on the table. A significant part of a book’s meaning arises out of the circumstances in which it is read. Reading on a balcony is different than reading on a plane. Reading because you have to is different than reading because you choose to. Reading when your life is stable and sound is different than reading when you are in turmoil. Really… the reader’s situation is probably the most important aspect of all.

Lastly, and already I am running out of steam, the movie which I passively watched on the plane was called “Elizabethtown” and looked good. I plugged into it now and then, but mostly just watched when I happened to look up from reading “The Wind up Bird Chronicle”. The guy, Orlando Bloom, seemed to be at some sort of family reunion where he didn’t really fit in. The adorable Kirstin Dunst, who is just so damn competent, was his leading lady. Bloom was drifting, cut loose from his moorings, in a dangerous yet fruitful space, between jobs perhaps, just like… damn! just like the narrator in the book I’m reading. Just like a guy between vacation and work. Woah! This stuff is getting scary. What does it all mean?

Driving home last night I opened the sunroof and let the night air in. The countryside is do dark, and the houses so far apart! It seemed different, yet, somehow … the same….

Avalon, So Long

Thursday. We are departing Chicago O’Hare at dusk and I am reminded of Oedipa Mass looking down at San Narcisco in The Crying of Lot 49. The grid below seems to have meaning, like a huge semi-conductor with pulsating rhythms of traffic, all packets of energy with purpose - but the purpose remains obscure.

I am sitting in row 12, which means that I am obliged to help in the event of an emergency. Fine by me. Leg room. In front of me sits a 12 year old girl who is constantly hounded by her obese parents, who sit opposite her, across the aisle. I am reminded of Harry Potter’s step parents. “You don’t know what straddle means?” says the mom. “For cryin’ out loud, it’s only an hour! And don’t squash my muffin!” It occurs to me that this is the first time in a week or more that I have heard anybody use the word “smart alec”. “I didn’t think my muffin was gonna look like a paint can!” Crimony!

Our connections have been “knapp”, as the Germans say. We had to run to make our T.C. flight in Chicago, having been slightly delayed during our flight from L.A. and having a tight schedule in the first place. It seems the entire Midwest is beset by thunderstorms, necessitating our rerouting over Wisconson. But we made it, the last ones to be seated on the plane, all spread out like marbles come to rest. The gangway doors were opened for us, and people had a good look as we made our way down the aisle. Somebody important? Perhaps.

I am in the nether world between vacation and real life world, hoping to prolong the vacation mind set for as long as possible. Travel is good for the soul, and maybe something sticks in the long run, if we’re lucky and smart enough to let it. The physical constraints of Catalina Island impose their own reality after a while. Part of the beauty of the place is entailed in the prospects across a crowded valley which is peopled with a strange array of houses and balconies, jutting out in facets which catch the sun. The canyon view consists of other people’s private spaces. Climbing through the mazes between the houses, up stairs and down, leaves you feeling like you have stumbled into a less nefarious version of the Casbah. Each cubicle is a protected world unto itself. You could throw a stone over the spaces of ten houses, yet it’s all very private and mysterious.

Outside the town the wide open landscape is controlled by the Catalina Conservancy. In order to do any hiking you need to apply for a permit on the day of the hike, and you are likely to be discouraged or prevented for the slimmest of reasons. Yesterday, for example, the trails were officially closed because there had been rain the night before, and the trails might be “unsafe”. Nonsense. I went anyway and had a glorious 8 mile hike through the hills and made it to the other side of the island, where I saw turquoise shallows and white foam breaking amongst the rocks far below. I had the whole place to myself, and the brilliant sun made for great pictures. Oh, and the trails were fine. The conservancy …. grrrr. The mafia, more like.

So… I am not a slow writer, but already we are descending for Traverse City, with some roller coaster blips on the way, so must finish. I have started …

Jap Invasion

A rainy day in paradise. Catalina Island has been invaded by a cruise ship. Dozens of landing craft can be seen ferrying passengers from the mother ship to shore, like ants around a watermelon. The streets are clogged with day visitors, ready to spend money: suburban moms and dads with disaffected teen boys, dressed gangsta-surf style, their hoods up and their shoes untied; little Japanese people moving deftly amongst sale racks. It’s a scene.

I took an early walk out past the docks this morning to clear my head. The tide is in and the water is clear. The rain comes and goes - mostly a drizzle. I stopped outside one of the stores to browse and ended up trying on and buying some cargo pants that were on sale. It’s funny, you try something on, look at yourself in the mirror and make a quick judgment. “That looks odd,” you think to yourself. Then you put your own clothes back on and think, “That looks even worse,” so you end up buying the pants.

Pictures I took five days ago as we arrived on the ferry look fine, but snap-happy, without understanding. I look at them now and know what it was I was looking at. Now there is a context, but that’s not always such a great thing. First impressions are often cleaner. When we first arrived here our room was fresh to our eyes. The windows were open and a light breeze wafted the curtains. We have stopped looking at our room so much, but it deserves close study. Every surface has a story. The ceiling and walls are done up in classic fir-bead wood, three inches wide.

There are probably ten layers of high gloss paint on every surface, and the nicks and scratches of time are highlighted when the light hits them right.
An old light (or gas) fixture has been removed from the ceiling and the circular ridge of old paint remains, now painted over. There are lots of unanswered questions which the paint can’t hide.

The room is like a coral reef, and has grown by accretion, with impossible angles and twists which must have driven some old handyman mad with coving challenges. From the entrance diagonally back to the “kitchen” the room runs downhill probably more than a one foot drop. The first morning I was here I stepped out of bed, bent down to pick up a sock, and stumbled forward toward the closet until I found my balance and turned uphill again. And beware when you come out of the bathroom and open the door, lest it gain speed speed on its downhill arc and slam noisly into the wall. The electrics are another story. At night there are two lights that work in the bathroom, but only one works during the day. The double socket which sits next to the bed only gives juice in one outlet, so I am constantly switching plugs from lamp to laptop.

I love it.

Avalon

I am sitting on a balcony in Avalon. That sounds good. Indeed it is good. Avalon is the picturesque little seaport of Catalina Island, California. It is currently 5:15 pm and the temperature is currently 63 degrees, according to my OSX weather widget, which I have just switched to local weather, having duly noted that the weather back home is just above freezing. Yes, that’s better.

Location is everything. We are perched on a little balcony overlooking a hidden courtyard at the end of a dead end street called “Sunny Lane”. Sounds contrived, or (worse yet) quaint, but feels like the whole array of little houses have sort of just grown, organically, out of the hillside. A little hummingbird is eying my Tsingtao beer as I write this, and twenty five feet below me a fountain burbles and some younger types sit in around it and make plans for the evening. There are more rooflines here than could reasonably be accommodated by the most cubist of cubist painters. In the distance, two blocks downhill, is the sea, and between me and it are more balconies, telephone wires, and absurdly spindly palm trees. Birds are staking their claims to territories as the sun begins its descent, and smells of steaks in passageways mix with damp fragrances from flowers I cannot identify.

Sure, I could be on Catalina Island in any number of ways, but this seems best. None of the more secluded resorts would afford the intimacy of this spot, central but hidden from view. The evening settles down, and the birds begin to sing.