(Sunday, March 22, 2009).
Bottles of sunscreen lie strewn like shrapnel around us, but there's always a spot you missed, and I cover the reddening balls of Roberta's feet with a towel while she sleeps.
The tide has covered the cricket pitch, but the game goes on, father bowling full tosses to his son, aimed at the small wooden stumps sticking out of the latest wave. After missing four times in a row the batsman runs off in a tiff, to be replaced by his uncle, and return again in two minutes, smiling again and eager to keep wicket.
Down the beach, near the cafe resounding with a jazz combo playing Miles Davis, birds gather around a towel protruding from the sand. A man is lying on his back, buried except for his head, and has food lying on his stomach. The birds creep closer, but he raises a hand out of the sand and they fall back, opening their wings and flying backwards in the stiff onshore wind. The crowd grows and grows until there is a flapping cloud, billowing in the air, making no progress, but never stopping.
I occasionally have wondered how the scene in American Beauty was shot. The one with the plastic bag, playing in the wind. They must have done this and then computer edited one of the birds to look like a plastic bag.
I wander past, leaving Footsteps behind in the wet sand. There is something down at the end of the beach. There's always something at the end of the beach. Children playing in kayaks watch me crouch down in the sand, washing the dirt off a gorgeous seashell. An earlobe sized swirl of maroon, silver, and white. Worthless but beautiful without a second, I hold it against the sand and admire it until its twin washes up to my feet, floating in a gentle wave, and I hold a pair of earrings in my hands.
Friday, April 3, 2009
How it Started
(Friday, Jan. 23, 2009).
There are eight of us to two bedrooms. I sleep in a double bed with my mother, who cuddles with me but complains that I make a bony substitute for my father. My brothers toss in their sleep on single beds in the corners of the room. Liz and Donald sleep on a haphazard nest constructed from parts of the unsatisfactory fold-out couches in the living room/kitchen, leaving the light on to keep mosquitoes off. Joan and Barry have a room to themselves, an entire wall windows looking out at the sea. You should see the assortment of toiletries in our one bathroom.
I am wielding my camera today, taking photos. I stand knee-deep in the surf and watch my brothers ride in on a wave, their mouths giant smiles through my flickering lens. My mother insisted that I do it, said she wanted to be able to remember it all. She thinks when we die we live on in the memories of others. I think she's right. But secretly I hate doing this. I love photography, but it's not enough to remember today. Flowers look great in photographs, but you can't fit people in frames.
It is Liz's second time in the sea - her first was yesterday. She is my new aunt, from Taiwan. I met her yesterday. She doesn't know much English yet, and speaks rarely unless she has something important to say. "You have a kind heart", for example. I watch her lie back in Donald's arms and sing a new squeal of love as each wave breaks over her plump belly. Inside it my unborn 7-month-old cousin learns, along with her, to love the waves. They disappear for 1/200th of a second and a happy and wet couple is written to my memory card.
Looking back to the shore I find Joan and Barry quickly. Joan stands under the umbrella she bought in Taiwan when she went to meet Liz's family. She cannot go in the water with us, and needs to keep the sun off her sensitive skin. Barry stands close at her side. Joan married him when she was 18, and they have been married for 47 years and 362 days. Together they watch the others play in the sea, while I halfheartedly document the occasion and my mother swims out, far out, beyond the waves, and looks back at us, leaving me sandwiched between the gaze of the two women who held my egg in their womb. With my camera around my neck I cannot reach my mother, and with the surf around my knees Joan cannot reach me.
Back at the beach house Donald and my brothers are ready for the next dose of fun, and Liz will look on with a smile between the chores she does without being asked, expected, or wanted to. My family is full of amazing women. My mother tried three times for a daughter, but hasn't got one yet. My brothers and I will do our best. I have just put my camera away when I look up and see Joan's face erupting into tears. She lurches from Barry's side and throws her arms around my mother, tells a room full of three generations of silence: "Before we leave here, we all have to hold hands, and ask the sea to take the cancer away".
There are eight of us to two bedrooms. I sleep in a double bed with my mother, who cuddles with me but complains that I make a bony substitute for my father. My brothers toss in their sleep on single beds in the corners of the room. Liz and Donald sleep on a haphazard nest constructed from parts of the unsatisfactory fold-out couches in the living room/kitchen, leaving the light on to keep mosquitoes off. Joan and Barry have a room to themselves, an entire wall windows looking out at the sea. You should see the assortment of toiletries in our one bathroom.
I am wielding my camera today, taking photos. I stand knee-deep in the surf and watch my brothers ride in on a wave, their mouths giant smiles through my flickering lens. My mother insisted that I do it, said she wanted to be able to remember it all. She thinks when we die we live on in the memories of others. I think she's right. But secretly I hate doing this. I love photography, but it's not enough to remember today. Flowers look great in photographs, but you can't fit people in frames.
It is Liz's second time in the sea - her first was yesterday. She is my new aunt, from Taiwan. I met her yesterday. She doesn't know much English yet, and speaks rarely unless she has something important to say. "You have a kind heart", for example. I watch her lie back in Donald's arms and sing a new squeal of love as each wave breaks over her plump belly. Inside it my unborn 7-month-old cousin learns, along with her, to love the waves. They disappear for 1/200th of a second and a happy and wet couple is written to my memory card.
Looking back to the shore I find Joan and Barry quickly. Joan stands under the umbrella she bought in Taiwan when she went to meet Liz's family. She cannot go in the water with us, and needs to keep the sun off her sensitive skin. Barry stands close at her side. Joan married him when she was 18, and they have been married for 47 years and 362 days. Together they watch the others play in the sea, while I halfheartedly document the occasion and my mother swims out, far out, beyond the waves, and looks back at us, leaving me sandwiched between the gaze of the two women who held my egg in their womb. With my camera around my neck I cannot reach my mother, and with the surf around my knees Joan cannot reach me.
Back at the beach house Donald and my brothers are ready for the next dose of fun, and Liz will look on with a smile between the chores she does without being asked, expected, or wanted to. My family is full of amazing women. My mother tried three times for a daughter, but hasn't got one yet. My brothers and I will do our best. I have just put my camera away when I look up and see Joan's face erupting into tears. She lurches from Barry's side and throws her arms around my mother, tells a room full of three generations of silence: "Before we leave here, we all have to hold hands, and ask the sea to take the cancer away".
How to Drink Kava
(Monday, March 30, 2009).
It was a dark and stormy night somewhere else in the world (Sydney, it turned out), and I was having trouble checking in for my flight. A maternal figure was scowling at me from across the counter, demanding that I explain why in Oprah's name I would show up to the airport without my flight itinerary when I was going to be flying through Fiji. Didn't I realize that Fijian customs required that I could show proof that I had a ticket out of the country? Her undertones were clear: if I in fact arrived in Fiji without an itinerary I would spark a military coup, the Communists would win, India would bat out the fifth day of the second test to save a draw, and, worst of all, a customs official might have to check in a computer system to make sure I was actually on a flight. She was having a lot of trouble with her own son right now with the school term just beginning and she really didn't want to have to deal with this right now, so if I could just explain to her what gave me the nerve to get myself stuck in Fiji on her watch that would be just great. And she loved what I'd done with my hair. Oh, definitely. Yes, that makes you look quite dashing, you can barely see the gray ones or the dandruff. Oh did I say that out loud? No. No, I'm monologuing your thoughts. I play poker for a living.
I struggled with the range of responses that flooded into my head. My eyes requested permission to roll. Harold, the wizened hippie who keeps my memory banks, garrulously pointed out that I had not flown with an itinerary since my parents had forced me to on a trip to Wellington when I was eleven, (sir, if I may, I have checked the records of prior flights which I keep alphabetized in the caverns where your social skills were meant to be, and you haven't flown with an itinerary since before you learned Helen Clark was a woman), (seriously though, he keeps a record of flights ALPHABETIZED?). My penis pompously suggested: "I like to live dangerously". The greater part of me was just surprised to hear I was flying through Fiji.
I had changed my flight just a couple of weeks ago because Roberta, whom both of my readers know or are, was coming to visit over her spring break, so I needed to stay a little longer. She got the cheapest flight over and back - Seattle -> San Francisco -> Auckland and vice-versa - and so did I - Auckland -> Fiji -> Los Angeles -> Seattle. Airlines love me. It's a blossoming relationship.
I had not bothered to do things like look at what my flight was. That is not quite how I travel. How I generally travel is I get on a plane and wake up and if I need to I get on another plane and then wake up and am at my destination. I perfected the technique in High School using different nouns.
In the end I was handed an itinerary by a slightly overweight man who the distressed mother across the counter would prefer her son not grow up to resemble. I put it in the front pocket of my carry-on, took it out in Seattle, and threw it somewhere in my room. The other pieces of paper make fun of it while I'm out because its life was comparable in meaning to that of a supermarket receipt for one packet of Milk Duds and a temporary tattoo of John Kerry. I then got onto my flight, woke up when the guy next to me fell asleep on my shoulder, woke up when the guy next to me rudely removed his head from my shoulder, and woke up in Fiji.
It was hot in Fiji, and I was wearing dress pants, a dress shirt, a cashmere sports coat, a hat, long socks and dress shoes, briefs, and a tie. Ostensibly because I didn't want to wrinkle my best clothing by packing it, but really on the off chance that I sat next to an attractive girl who was into guys who dressed like they were incapable of rational thought. I quickly dispensed of the coat, tie, and hat, dampened the rest of my clothing profusely with sweat, and headed towards the desk I'd been told to go to to transfer to our next flight. Here one of the most breathtaking and intelligent women I have ever met kindly informed me I would have to clear customs because I was staying in Fiji for six hours before my flight and would I like any help filling out my form no? that's great good luck! Her name was Kawao'ola and fifteen years later we crossed paths in Peru, where she came to profusely regret her hasty treatment of me while watching my three year old son solve a 16-sided Rubik's cube with the muscle that wrinkles your left nostril.
I have spent the last five minutes looking at myself in a mirror trying to work out if there is an independent muscle that wrinkles your left nostril. There are faster and more accurate ways to find this out, but I can't imagine them being better.
In the interest of full-disclosure the part about us meeting again in Peru fifteen years from now might not be true. The part about looking at myself in a mirror wrinkling my face in different ways for five minutes was.
I cleared customs (I was allowed to stay in Fiji for four months!) and found an internet terminal. Fijian internet terminal keyboard technology is lagging slightly behind what I am used to, and I ended upp havvvin conveersatttions likee thhis. It was around 5pm, overcast and humid. It began to rain. I asked dad what to do in Fiji for five hours and he said drink kava. Actually he typed: drink kava (sp?). His spelling was correct.
It was a dark and stormy night somewhere else in the world (Sydney, it turned out), and I was having trouble checking in for my flight. A maternal figure was scowling at me from across the counter, demanding that I explain why in Oprah's name I would show up to the airport without my flight itinerary when I was going to be flying through Fiji. Didn't I realize that Fijian customs required that I could show proof that I had a ticket out of the country? Her undertones were clear: if I in fact arrived in Fiji without an itinerary I would spark a military coup, the Communists would win, India would bat out the fifth day of the second test to save a draw, and, worst of all, a customs official might have to check in a computer system to make sure I was actually on a flight. She was having a lot of trouble with her own son right now with the school term just beginning and she really didn't want to have to deal with this right now, so if I could just explain to her what gave me the nerve to get myself stuck in Fiji on her watch that would be just great. And she loved what I'd done with my hair. Oh, definitely. Yes, that makes you look quite dashing, you can barely see the gray ones or the dandruff. Oh did I say that out loud? No. No, I'm monologuing your thoughts. I play poker for a living.
I struggled with the range of responses that flooded into my head. My eyes requested permission to roll. Harold, the wizened hippie who keeps my memory banks, garrulously pointed out that I had not flown with an itinerary since my parents had forced me to on a trip to Wellington when I was eleven, (sir, if I may, I have checked the records of prior flights which I keep alphabetized in the caverns where your social skills were meant to be, and you haven't flown with an itinerary since before you learned Helen Clark was a woman), (seriously though, he keeps a record of flights ALPHABETIZED?). My penis pompously suggested: "I like to live dangerously". The greater part of me was just surprised to hear I was flying through Fiji.
I had changed my flight just a couple of weeks ago because Roberta, whom both of my readers know or are, was coming to visit over her spring break, so I needed to stay a little longer. She got the cheapest flight over and back - Seattle -> San Francisco -> Auckland and vice-versa - and so did I - Auckland -> Fiji -> Los Angeles -> Seattle. Airlines love me. It's a blossoming relationship.
I had not bothered to do things like look at what my flight was. That is not quite how I travel. How I generally travel is I get on a plane and wake up and if I need to I get on another plane and then wake up and am at my destination. I perfected the technique in High School using different nouns.
In the end I was handed an itinerary by a slightly overweight man who the distressed mother across the counter would prefer her son not grow up to resemble. I put it in the front pocket of my carry-on, took it out in Seattle, and threw it somewhere in my room. The other pieces of paper make fun of it while I'm out because its life was comparable in meaning to that of a supermarket receipt for one packet of Milk Duds and a temporary tattoo of John Kerry. I then got onto my flight, woke up when the guy next to me fell asleep on my shoulder, woke up when the guy next to me rudely removed his head from my shoulder, and woke up in Fiji.
It was hot in Fiji, and I was wearing dress pants, a dress shirt, a cashmere sports coat, a hat, long socks and dress shoes, briefs, and a tie. Ostensibly because I didn't want to wrinkle my best clothing by packing it, but really on the off chance that I sat next to an attractive girl who was into guys who dressed like they were incapable of rational thought. I quickly dispensed of the coat, tie, and hat, dampened the rest of my clothing profusely with sweat, and headed towards the desk I'd been told to go to to transfer to our next flight. Here one of the most breathtaking and intelligent women I have ever met kindly informed me I would have to clear customs because I was staying in Fiji for six hours before my flight and would I like any help filling out my form no? that's great good luck! Her name was Kawao'ola and fifteen years later we crossed paths in Peru, where she came to profusely regret her hasty treatment of me while watching my three year old son solve a 16-sided Rubik's cube with the muscle that wrinkles your left nostril.
I have spent the last five minutes looking at myself in a mirror trying to work out if there is an independent muscle that wrinkles your left nostril. There are faster and more accurate ways to find this out, but I can't imagine them being better.
In the interest of full-disclosure the part about us meeting again in Peru fifteen years from now might not be true. The part about looking at myself in a mirror wrinkling my face in different ways for five minutes was.
I cleared customs (I was allowed to stay in Fiji for four months!) and found an internet terminal. Fijian internet terminal keyboard technology is lagging slightly behind what I am used to, and I ended upp havvvin conveersatttions likee thhis. It was around 5pm, overcast and humid. It began to rain. I asked dad what to do in Fiji for five hours and he said drink kava. Actually he typed: drink kava (sp?). His spelling was correct.
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