Thursday, November 15, 2012

HOW TO LIVE IN PARADISE ... AND FAIL.








                       


                                                PART TWO




                      The Hubble Space Telescope has identified
                       a galaxy 13.2 billion light years from Earth.
                                                                                   NASA
                                                                                 July 2012


                      They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
                           Between stars -  on stars where no human race is.
                       I have it in me so much nearer home
                           To scare myself with my own desert places.
                                                                                 Robert Frost



     Twice upon a time that seems like yesterday, I lived on a pair of mythic islands.
     The first, Mallorca, taught me a lot about people. The second, Virgin Gorda -- decades later -- taught me about myself.

        Virgin Gorda -- in the British Virgin Islands -- stands like a sun-tanned sentinel at the mouth of a channel that leads from the open Atlantic to the capricious waters of the Caribbean. It is a narrow island dominated at one end by a modest mountain and at the other by an extraordinary geologic formation -- house-sized boulders dropped on top of each other as if by a giant hand,  forming grottoes at the water’s edge -- called The Baths. The island also boasts brilliant white beaches, coral reefs teeming with marine life, and seas the color of cerulean crystal.  The sun shines 350 days a year.
        It is -- by almost any definition -- a paradise.

        When I first lived there, the island was populated by a few thousand natives descended from African slaves, called ‘belongers‘; and perhaps sixty or seventy ex-patriots. The ex-pats owned nice homes with glass windows, telephones that often didn‘t work, and TV sets that delivered snow from Puerto Rico.
     The belongers owned next to nothing.
     There were a handful of cars and trucks (and one taxi), but the primitive roads were used mostly as walking paths and for herding goats from one arid pasture to another. No-one was ever in a rush to get anywhere .. and where was there to go anyway?
       The most efficient means of  communication was ‘the message tree’ that shaded the island’s only freshwater well. Bits and pieces of paper -- fluttering like Lilliputian laundry -- were tacked, glued, stapled, taped or nailed to the tree trunk; eventually reaching whoever they were addressed to, whether directly or by word-of-mouth, whether trivial or essential. And if one became unstuck, well … it became unstuck. But rarely did the message -- ‘Janet got boy’ or ‘Alfred go fish’ -- get lost. All in all, life on the island was languid and leisurely; and remained far distant from the daily thunderstorm of strife eagerly reported by the world’s press.
     
      But it did have its memorable moments.
      On one occasion, I had dinner with a newly-arrived, New York couple in the open courtyard of the island’s only pub, called The Bath and Turtle. A group of five or six black men -- each carrying a machete -- was lounging against a nearby wall and talking quietly in the local patois, a truncated and nearly unrecognizable form of English. But what began as a quiet exchange soon evolved into a loud discussion which quickly became a high-pitched, arm-waving argument.
     My companions, unable to keep their eyes off the machetes or their imaginations away from racial incidents in the United States, were looking panicky; and the wife finally asked in a frightened whisper whether we should leave.
      You can if you’d like, I said, but they’re only debating who’s going to pitch in the cricket match on Sunday.
     Early the next afternoon, I ran into the same couple at Teacher O’Neal’s Restaurant and Good Gifts. The husband, like many New Yorkers, was a news addict and was suffering early withdrawal symptoms.
     Do you carry The New York Times? he asked.
     Teacher O’Neal herself was behind the counter: a large, formidable woman who struck me as an amalgam of Aretha Franklin and The Statue of Liberty, with a twist of lemon.
     Yassuh, we do. she answered.    
      Well I’d like a copy, please.
     Teacher sized him up and, with a straight face, said:
      Do you want today’s Times .. or yesterday’s?
     Confused and wondering whether she might be a bit backward, he said:
      I want today’s Times, of course.
      Teacher’s face was expressionless, but the Cheshire Cat was lurking in her eyes.
     Well in dot case, mon, she told him, you got to come back tomorrow.
      And only then, after having set and sprung the trap, did she smile.
   
       Now and then there were also more dramatic moments.
      A middle-aged British couple (I’ll call them David and Dolores Dragon) was famous on the island for having tectonic arguments which -- fueled by alcohol and mutual loathing -- could last for days. Since their house was on a ridge in a well-populated area, their screaming insults provided better entertainment for the natives (and many ex-pats) than anything offered elsewhere. But one night, after a particularly vicious exchange, Dolores drove David from the house with a butcher knife and threatened to kill him if he came back.
     For the next week, an ominous silence descended on the Dragons’ lair. Although  Dolores was seen moving about the garden, she made no visits to the local market; and there was neither sight nor sound of David, not even the sound of his elephantine snoring. Their neighbors eventually became concerned; and one ’friend of the family’ even had the temerity to knock on their door and ask about him. Dolores dismissed the inquiry with two words: He’s gone.
      That’s when rumors began to spread like fleas in a dog park: Rather odd, isn’t it? Do you think he’s all right? You don’t suppose she .. no, silly of me. I’m sure everything‘s just fine. Don’t you agree?  Hmmm.
       The implication was as clear as the cobalt sea.
       A few mornings later, early, The Voice of God began shouting at me from above, and saying things -- foul, repellent things -- that I couldn’t understand. So I forced myself awake and peeked at the morning light, but The Voice refused to stop. It thundered through the shutters and careened back and forth off the walls, driving me out of bed and into the yard, stumbling and squinting at the sky. Vaguely, I noticed the sun had just risen and was waking the hibiscus blossoms in my garden.
       Then my eyes focused on a tiny Piper Cub flying in a tight circle over the near ridge -- no more than a hundred feet over the rooftops -- and moving so slowly I thought it might stall. Leaning perilously out the passenger door was a figure holding a huge loud-hailer --a bullhorn -- and blasting it toward the earth.
   
      GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, YOU GODDAM WITCH!
      YOU HEAR ME?
      GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE, YOU FILTHY PIECE OF DUNG … YOU                          
      FUCKING PILE OF GOAT SHIT .. GET OUT!
      YOU HEAR ME, YOU DRIED UP COW?
     
      David Dragon’s voice shattered the morning, and rained invective down like Agent Orange on an innocent village. People awoke everywhere and rushed from their houses, their huts, their shacks, their hovels. Tourists came out of their rooms frightened and  dressed in next to nothing. And the voice thundered on and on for what seemed like forever.
     
      YOU DESPICABLE PIG FUCKER .. THAT HOUSE IS MINE.
       DO YOU HEAR ME?
       GET OUT, YOU STUPID, MOTHERFUCKING WHORE.
       YOU’RE UGLIER THAN DOG VOMIT.
       GET OUT OF MY HOUSE, UGLY BITCH. LEAVE .. GO .. JUST FUCKING
       GO!!!
       
     
     Dolores Dragon, it was true, was not an attractive woman. But in her own way, she had presence. According to several neighbors, she stood rigidly in the middle of her garden throughout the assault, absorbing her husband‘s sonic bombs, bare-footed and wearing only a nightie; with her right arm raised high in a fist and her middle finger extended toward the sky … until the little plane peeled off and headed toward the rising sun.
   
     And finally, for contrast, there was the day I met the most beautiful woman in the world: a day I will never forget.
     My house -- one of the nicest tropical homes I’d ever seen -- overlooked a pristine beach near The Baths that could only be reached by anchoring a boat offshore or by finding a hidden, boulder-strewn  path from an adjacent area. People rarely did either. So the beach -- about three hundred yards long and lined with coconut palms -- was for all practical purposes, mine.
     It was usually my habit after lunch to take a swim with my chocolate Labrador, Quincy; and then to read under the palms for two or three hours. Quincy would lie next to me guarding two tennis balls (he always carried a spare) and watching sea birds, probably wishing he could fly.
     On that fateful afternoon, I’d been reading for an hour when I sensed him going on alert; ears at attention, tail beginning to wag. When I looked up, a woman -- a breathtakingly beautiful woman -- was jogging along the waterline, perhaps twenty yards away. Since we were in deep shade, and she in brilliant sun, she appeared not to notice us. It was as if she’d come out of nowhere. Magically.
     Yes, magically. And for me. From the gods.
      Go get her, I said to Quincy who instantly was up and running.
      They played happily in the wavelets at the shoreline; she throwing his ball, he retrieving it and chasing her, until finally they turned and romped back toward me. She was wearing a string bikini that said this is what bikinis are made for: a slim, perfectly proportioned body, an exquisite tan, and a luminous day when anything and everything is possible.
      I stayed in my low beach chair, pretending to read and trying to rein in my pulse, until she was standing directly in front of  me. As I lifted my eyes to her, she flashed the most stunning smile in the most beautiful face I’d ever seen, and said:
      Izz dis yu-wah dawg?
      Never has a fantasy so quickly -- so irreversibly -- plunged to its death on the rocks of reality. This was hideous. Hideous!  How could this creature of dreams ask if Quincy were my dog with the worst, the coarsest, Brooklyn accent I’d ever heard? IS DIS YU-WAH DAWG.? It was as if Gwyneth Paltrow or Nicole Kidman had the voice of Bugs Bunny!
      What’s up, dawg?
      I was, of course, crushed. But you never really see people objectively after the first instant. From that moment on, whatever they say, however they dress, whatever mannerisms they have, changes their appearance and, in turn, what you think of them. The fates proved it to me that day; sending me a verbal joke disguised as an angel.

     In all, I liked Virgin Gorda; although it often seemed too slow and too small, and certainly didn’t offer much culture. But the laid-back pace was helped by an ever-changing cast of tourists, gullible and otherwise; and spiced up by the foibles and eccentricities of its ex-pats. So, on balance, its beauty and its quirky appeal kept me diverted for a time from a sense of emptiness -- a feeling of unknowing -- that still asserted itself in the midnight of my thoughts.
     I’d had a great career in the business world; I’d successfully raised two sets of kids; and I’d earned enough to live a life of leisure. Yet that lovely island yielded no real knowledge for me except to underline that many of us spend our lives searching for something we can’t define and settling -- often with relief -- for something we can. Call it contentment, happiness, security, whatever. But for me there was then -- and still is -- something missing:  a reconciliation of some kind, possibly to ’aloneness’ or to  some other feeling as difficult to articulate as it is to admit to.
     I’ve known many people who consider themselves to be the center of the universe despite whatever exists billions of light years away. Sometimes I envy their egocentrism, more often I pity it. But I’ve learned finally not to worry much about such issues. Not even a paradise (or an ego) can trump the universe.
     So instead I try to sit in the world -- in its immediacy -- just where it touches me and hope that my desert places become less alien, less scary, in the mysterious and expanding universe that I call Self.
       And so far, thank you, with a sense of cosmic humor, that seems to be working.


                                         
                                            AFTER DINNER MINTS


Virgin Gorda is today dotted with multi-million dollar homes with infinity pools overlooking the sea and tennis courts hidden in palm groves. There are several five-star hotels, good restaurants, internet access and cable television. Almost everyone --belongers included -- has a cellphone. The message tree is empty..

The war of the Dragons lingered on for several years, in the tradition of a medieval siege. It ended finally with Dolores’s death from cancer. David, for reasons that seem almost funny, committed suicide a few months later.

My home -- which I’d named Sol y Sombra -- was eventually sold to an American lawyer who tore it down and built a glitzy house worthy of the Intracoastal Waterway in Fort Lauderdale. I’m told he left the beach untouched and the boulders unmoved.
     We must be thankful for small favors.

       



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                                       Happy Holidays to all.