The Spaces In Between

            Round about 1100 A.D., one of Pohnpei’s chiefs decided to erect himself a compound, a series of buildings that would act as the proverbial county seat and leave a legacy of his power and status after he was gone.  Not an uncommon urge among ruler types with a god complex and a handy supply of slave labor.  Think Egypt.  Think terra cotta warriors of the Q’uin dynasty.   Think lots of heavy rocks and a bunch of tired guys encouraged in not so subtle ways to carry them around.  Think wonders of the ancient world that to this day boggle the minds of modern man in their complexity, innovation, and the sheer amount of work required to turn a megalomaniacal dream into reality.  The place I visited on Pohnpei deserves recognition alongside Stonehenge, the pyramids of Egypt, the heads on Easter Island, and other of man’s mammoth undertakings the mystery of which’s origins, purpose, and construction methods last as long as the edifices themselves.  If you ever go to Micronesia, put the ruins of Nan Madol on your list.

            Pohnpei is, along with Chuuk, one of the four island states in Micronesia.  It is the country’s capitol, with friendly people, a clean and beautiful environment, and solid infrastructure as far as Pacific Islands go.  A welcome departure from Chuuk.  Though settled around 200 A.D., not much is known of Pohnpei’s history before the 1100’s, at which time a tyrannical dynasty called the Saudeleurs took control of the population. Determining the need for a power base from which to rule, one of the Saudeleur kings selected a building site on the island’s eastern side, hired some architects, and gently suggested that his subjects limber up for some exercise in the form of several consecutive lifetimes of heavy lifting.

            Nan Madol is located at the edge of a small island, Temwen, just off Pohnpei.  Temwen is in a shallow tidal zone shielded from the open ocean by a fringing reef, beyond which perfect barrels tirelessly hammer the protecting coral, Inside, however, the water is shallow and calm right up to the mangrove growth on the edge of the island.  When I say that Nan Madol is on the edge of Temwen, what I really mean is that it is off the edge of Temwen.  Imagine the faces of the royal dynastic engineering corps when the boss explained to them that the plan was to construct a city in the shallow waters of the tidal flat next to the island.  It must have been like telling your contractor today that you want your four bedroom family home to levitate a few inches off the ground.

            So.  Build a city.  In the water.  Step one is to figure out how to get the buildings above the water.  Going to need to make some islands.  Sounds so easy from a modern day perspective once you see pictures of Dubai, but we’re talking 1100 A.D. here.  Luckily, Pohnpei is volcanic.  It is made of basalt, a hard, dense, black stone formed by the partial melting of the earth’s mantle.  Through the forces of geothermal heat, pressure, and subsequent cooling, basalt naturally forms large crystals with a hexagonal cross-section.  Large is such a nebulous word.  I say crystals and maybe you are thinking rock candy, or eighth-grade science projects with a string dangling in a supersaturated salt solution mixed with some food coloring, or a head shop in the Haight with some really pretty geodes.   Readjust your thinking to include a six sided log of ferrous rock as big as a telephone pole weighing up to 50 tons.  Technically it’s a crystal.  Nothing you want to lay on your chest to tune up your chakras, but still a crystal.

            Unfortunately these crystals, good island building material that they are, had to be quarried and transported from Pohnpei island proper.  Unfortunate for the guys who had to do the dragging and the grunt work, but fortunate for the designers and engineers as, though they will never be individually recognized or exalted or studied the way Khufu (forgive the spelling) might, their ingenuity and methods are still a stumper.  How do you move a 50 ton log over land and, better yet, water?  Get enough guys with ropes and something you can use for wheels and you can move heavy rocks.  Ask the Egyptians.  But how do you float them, circa 1100?  Nobody’s figured it out, and that includes some folks on one of those cable channels who recently did a special on the place and put modern engineers and eggheads with fancy computer modeling software on the case, and still left scratching their heads.  Check it out on your net TV viewing station of choice by searching Nan Madol and you too will scratch.

            Okay, gloss over the genius and the labor required to move these logs of stone.  Levitate them from the quarry to the shore into the water and to the site.  Stack them horizontally in square and rectangular matrices to create retaining walls that stick up out of the water along the tidal flats and the reef area.  Fill the walls with coral rubble and rock, and you have an artificial islet.  Repeat.  92 times.  In a grid every bit as thought out as a city zoning plan, better than most, in fact.  Over a 220 acre area stretching half a mile by a mile.  Leaving a navigable series of waterways and canals between the islets.  Can you tell how desperately I am trying to convey the enormity of this achievement?

            It gets better, of course, because now you have all these islets sticking out of the water.  Level them properly and build a city on them.  Temples, burial complexes, ritual sites, meeting areas, housing, bathing pools, holding pens for food fish and turtles, food preparation sites, ceremony sites, all separate islets.  They built an islet for coconut processing.  Unreal.

            What did they use for building material?  Was it coconut logs and thatch?  Some of the structures surely were, but remember those big chunks of basalt?  Many of the edifices were constructed with them, are still standing, and are wildly impressive.  The least ruinlike island of the ruins is Nan Douwas.  The outer walls of the compound are twenty-five feet tall, made of basalt crystals stacked like lincoln logs.  They tower above the crushed coral walkway that surrounds the outer edge of the island, dripping history and lichens.  Pass between the soaring walls, down the main walk, and into the inner compound, another series of walls and sanctums that served as burial chambers and crypts for members of the Saudeleur dynasty.  Big buildings of stacked stone with stairs and crawlways leading inside, cool dark interiors with slits of bright equatorial sun winking in from between the rocks and somewhere underfoot the millennium old remnants of the family who built and ruled this place.  When I say crypt, and ancient ruin, are you getting an Indiana Jones vibe?  It was definitely there.  I kept recalling one of the scenes in the latest of those films, one of the scenes I didn’t sleep through, where they are looking for whatever the macguffin is in the ruins where the midget savages jump them.  If midget savages were ever going to jump me outside a Hollywood set, this would be the spot.

            I make light, but the whole experience was awe-inspiring.  After exploring Nan Douwas, we got into kayaks and paddled all over the compound, through the thoroughly thought out and planned canals between the islets, outside to the lagoon between the fringing wall that protected the city and the reef, past the ocean entrance to the city, navigating a grid as neat and orderly as a planned community.  Everything was bursting with life, from mangrove swamps and lush vegetation to water birds hunting in the shallows to marbled rays spooking underneath the boats as we paddled above them.  The jungle and the ocean were slowly reclaiming this place, creating a harmony between the man-made and the natural usually only experienced in ancient places. Somehow it became impossible to tell if the ruins were slowly fading away or if they were somehow maturing and revealing themselves after centuries of incubation.

            In traveling along the canals we were moving in the spaces between the islets, just as while exploring the walkways, crypts, meditation chambers, and walled compounds, we were moving in the spaces between the structures.  I don’t want to get too spiritual or insinuate that I profoundly understand anything about this ancient culture, but I was certainly moved by the experience, more so after finding out that the name of the place, Nan Madol, is loosely translated as ‘the spaces in between.’

            Technologically staggering edifices of near incomprehensible magnificence don’t just pop up, or every culture would have created them.  When you think of all the people who have gone before us, there is scant little evidence to mark their passing, and precious few monuments of them survive.  In a modern world where indoor ski slopes, impossibly tall skyscrapers, massive bridges, and channel stretching tunnels seem commonplace, it is a treat to get to witness an ancient and still inexplicable marvel built in a time when everything was done with hand tools, elbow grease, and lots and lots of vine ropes.  I’m just glad we didn’t live in Pohnpei around 1100 A.D. to see it happen, because they probably would have insisted that we pitch in and help.  

Dawning Truth

            Sunsets and sunrises here are ridiculous. At seven degrees north latitude, when the sun makes its move, there’s no fooling around.  Bang.  It’s up or it’s down.  But that brief period in between is, barring overcast weather, outrageous.  The reds, oranges, pinks, and purples are indescribable as they light up layer upon perfect layer of clouds stretching so far into infinity the earth’s curve is almost perceptible, creating a cineramadome panorama of such heart crushing beauty that I sometimes find myself transfixed, paralyzed until darkness falls. 

            I don’t thrill to the feel of power as I throw a German sedan through winding curves.   There isn’t a theatre showing the new Tarantino flick for a thousand miles.  No one is going to stop by my table to decant an effusively boisterous yet darkly mysterious petite syrah that will nicely compliment a foie gras stuffed rosemary encrusted quail with roasted fingerling potatoes and heirloom tomato roux. I don’t own a phone.  Or keys.  It’s been forever since I danced to live music.  The few minutes of free time I get a day are spent passing out as I read three paragraphs in the same book I’ve been trying to finish for two months.  Internet is a joke here.  I wouldn’t even know how to act on a date.  I’d kill for a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.  But if each of us is allotted a given number of perfect sunsets, I am well into or even over my quota, and I may be cutting into yours.

Corrugation Congregation

Just goes to show you that if you look hard enough, you can find a piece of corrugated sheet metal just about anywhere in a third world country.

Betelnut

            A friend of mine reading a book about Micronesia recently asked me by email, “What is beetle nut?”  A reasonable question from someone who lives in the States, away from the areca palms that grow throughout the Pacific and SE Asia.  Betel nut is the seed of this tree.  Harvested, processed, and consumed in a wide variety of forms, it is a drug, traditional, cultural, recreational, and, historically, medicinal.  The seed is a shade larger than the last joint on your thumb, smooth, oval, and light green, with a cap on one end from which it was once suspended from the tree.  The pod is a fibrous husk containing a soft white seed half the size of an almond.  Different cultures use the seed different ways.  Some remove and dry the seed, then slice, powder, or roast it.  Place a pinch between the cheek and gum, sometimes mixed with spices like clove, cardamom, or tobacco.  Other cultures chew it in some preparation of its fresh form. 

            Here in Micronesia, we like our betelnut au natural, and its use is recreational and ubiquitous.  Au natural, what’s that entail?  Just that Micronesians don’t prefer to process the seed, but chew it fresh and still in the husk.  The preparation goes like this.  Take a betelnut.  Bite off and discard the cap.  Bite the pod in half and split it, exposing the nut.  Dust the inside with a pinch of powdered coral lime, which helps to lacerate the gums and speeds uptake of the chemicals in the seed, with the added bonus of being tasty, because, really, who doesn’t like the way coral tastes, right?  Huh?  Yeah, everyone here carries around a vial, medicine bottle, or sandwich baggie full of white powder, which, after having lived in L.A. for a while, was a real head twister at first.  Okay, we got betelnut, we got powdered lime.  What can we add to make this bundle extra delicious and boost the carcinogen level too?  Wait, betelnut is carcinogenic?  Oh yeah!  Proven to increase risk of carcinoma in the mouth, gums, and everything downstream, right through to the prostate and cervix.  But if you’re a Micronesian user, that isn’t quite exciting enough, so you take half a cigarette, still wrapped in the paper, stick it in the middle of the wad, and pinch the husk back together. I have seen folks in the Solomons wrap the whole assembly in a betel leaf, which keeps everything together and provides a peppery taste, but that’s not the fashion in Chuuk; just pop the whole seed preparation in your mouth, let your saliva start washing the mix and gently masticate occasionally to keep things moving.  You, my friend, are now chewing betelnut.  Don’t forget to spit.

            It’s the South Pacific version of chewing tobacco and is as popular as smoking in, say, Asian cultures.  Everyone from high school kids to grandmothers does it, and the sidewalks, few though they may be, reflect this, as, once you get a betelnut chew going, the saliva you produce mixes with the seed to form a bright red expectorant that people spit, well, everywhere.  I thought that the sidewalks in Honiara, capitol of the Solomons were painted red at first, before I realized I was walking on a multilayered patchwork of human expectorant.  Casual and even formal conversations occur with both parties mumbling like surly teens through a huge wad of betelnut, with frequent chat breaks to lean over a spit.  Drivers and passengers in Chuuk don’t bother with a spit cup and they can’t spit out the window without dribbling a stain of juice on the paint, so they open the car door and lean down to spit on the street, reminiscent of the freshman moving car drunken vomit hijinks we’re all trying to forget.             

            There’s nothing pretty about betelnut.  Habitual chewing over a period of time causes permanent tooth discoloration.  Though some cultures once considered the red stained lips of a chewer to enhance beauty, it is now just part of the fun.  There’s nothing like having a young, nubile Micronesian girl catch my eye only to ruin it for me by smiling back with betelnut stained lips and teeth just before she emits a bright red stream of juice onto the ground the volume of which would put Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider to shame.  I appreciate a woman who can spit in a dainty yet effective fashion, but betelnut spit…deal breaker.

            As with the satisfaction of most oral fixations, the formalized ritual of preparing and consuming betelnut is amusing, engaging, gives folks something to do, and becomes mentally linked with the satisfaction of the addiction, which means it is comforting.  Think of the lengths to which people go to get that perfect cup of coffee or build a decent joint.  It breaks up the monotony of the day.  Making up a chew is fun.  It is also a social affair: sharing betelnut is like sharing a smoke or having a cocktail, an excuse to hang out and chat, and in many betelnut cultures, it is considered social nicety to offer a chew to guests when they enter your home. 

            So what’s it like to chew betelnut?  No more repugnant for a first timer than a glass of scotch, a cup of black coffee, a cigarette, or a wad of Levi Garrett, I suppose.  Many drugs are described as acquired tastes.  Remember your first sip of beer?  Sure you love the stuff now, but when your dad gave you your first sip so you’d leave him alone?  Nasty.  Betelnut’s the same way, with the added bonus of making you look ridiculous because now you have a chipmunk cheek and speak like you have a mouthful of marbles.  The taste is bitter at first, followed by an astringent bitter taste, with a hint of tree bark and…bitter.  Maybe that’s the lime causing that.  I skipped the cigarette in my preparation, so there was no familiar nasty taste in there to work from, just an all new frontier of nasty taste, earthy, wood smoky, and bitter.  Did I mention it’s bitter? 

            The effect was, I thought at first, non-existent, like the first time people smoke pot and swear they don’t feel anything.  I was sitting and chatting with two other guys when I first tried betelnut, and we’d been having a lively if linguistically stilted conversation while preparing our chews.  We continued to chat as we began masticating, and then I began to concentrate on the taste and on not swallowing or drooling my expectorant,  We all drool on ourselves sometimes; don’t lie, you do it, but it usually dries clear and goes unnoticed.  Not so with the tell-tale rusty red of betelnut, so I was absorbed with not getting any of the stuff on me.  By the time I started feeling a warm, tingling sensation in my cheek and gum area, I realized that we’d all kicked back in our seats, and that conversation had ceased.  I looked around and everyone seemed a little glazed.  Not slack jawed or stupefied.  Mellow.  Betelnut is supposed to be a mild stimulant, but in the way of many stimulants, Ritalin, say, chewing this stuff seemed to round of the edges and make everyone relax, though it is often difficult to distinguish when a Micronesian man is relaxed or in high gear. 

            I left the wad in as long as I could stand, making a half hearted effort to chew every once in a while, but I never got one of those really rusty red spits going that a practiced user can stream like ol’ Clint zapping a mangy cur.  When I started feeling queasy, I got up to get rid of the wad and discovered a slightly woozy sensation to accompany my nausea, but then I’m a sissy when it comes to stimulants like caffeine, so no surprise there.  After picking all the husk out of my mouth and running my tongue over the patch of cheek and gum where the lime and the husk had made them raw and sore, I was able to place another drug on the pass list.  Looks like I’ll have to stick with nitrogen for the time being.  Anybody know anything about that stuff called khat they chew in Somalia?

Ride Share

            In the world of transportation for hire, you got your cabs and your buses.  Get on a bus, bus has a set destination and a bunch of people headed that direction.  Exit at the point closest to your destination.  Not always the neatest solution, but cheap.  Then you got your cabs, a step up from buses.  Cab comes to you, it’s private, the driver takes you wherever you want to go by the most efficient route.  Right?  Not necessarily so in Micronesia, friends. 

            So I’m on vacation in Pohnpei, one of the other states in the Federated States of Micronesia.  The country’s capitol, in fact.  Nice place, greatly different from Chuuk.  Infrastructure.  Hot and cold running water in public bathrooms.  With soap.  Roads.  With pavement.  Friendly people.  Sans machetes.  Even a movie theater.  Generally a step up.

            Part of that step up ambiance is the ready availability of cabs, accompanied by the existence of locations to which one would actually wish to reach by cab.  Around the main town, ask any store, restaurant, or hotel to call for one and a car with a cab company logo on it will be there in five minutes was the longest I’ve had to wait.  Painless.

            This is my first time off in about five months.  Coming into this vacation I made detailed plans to do a whole lot of nothing, and everything has progressed according to plan.  I’m ahead of schedule, in fact.  I made one appointment for the week.  Remember the theater I mentioned?  While riding in the hotel shuttle one day, the shuttle driver and hotel employee, same guy who picked me up at the airport on the way here, a cute, Pancho Villa mustachioed little guy named Lover (“Spell like lover but say like Looover,” [long ‘o’ instead of ‘u’ sound] classic, really hard to keep a straight face when he said it) stared wistfully at the movie theater as we went past.  I asked him if he liked to go to the movies.  He said yes, though he’d never been to the theater here and he wanted to see the new release for the week.  Inglorious Basterds, if you were wondering.  See it if you like revisionist WWII history (not to spoil it, but a certain diminutive dictator gets it in the end), Tarantino dialogue in four different languages, or graphic depictions of people getting scalped.  Last time I was in a movie theater was the Philippines, and I had to take an eight-day boat ride to get there, so I was all about seeing a flick, and I offered to treat Lover to a night at the movies.  You have no idea how odd it was to type that just now. 

            Movie date.  Make plans to meet Lover at the theater a few minutes before the movie.  What?  I’ll sport his ticket, but I’m not picking him up at his house, as that gets into the whole meet the parents, explain our plans for the evening thing, and I’m just not ready for that level of commitment.  Besides, I don’t know where his village is.  Anyways, leave plenty of time to get to the theater.  Don’t want to be late and make him think I’m standing him up.  Have my hotel call a cab.  One arrives promptly.  Slight catch.  There’s someone else already in the cab, a lady sitting in the back seat.  I’m going to the movie theater.  You going that direction?  Yeah, yeah, no problem, get in.  Off we go. 

            We make it about five hundred yards before he pulls into the gas station.  Gas detour, no problem.  About half my cab rides here have involved a gas stop, primarily because the drivers buy in half gallon increments, despite the fact that they always seem flush with filthy wads of tattered ones.  Guess they don’t want to part with too many of them at once, or maybe they are saving weight to increase gas mileage.  Who knows, but five dollar gas stop, no big deal.

            Nor a big deal when we pull over to pick up two more people, making the back seat nice and cozy and me glad that I sat up front.  What’s another couple passengers headed into town?  I’m all about saving gas and ride share and all that and pile in we’re in it together now.

            Then things take a turn not necessarily for the worse but definitely in the wrong direction.  We zig at a Y intersection when we should have zagged to get to town.  What’s up?  We go drop off dese guys first.  Okay, how long will that take?  I left early, but not that early, and I have visions of my Lover pacing around worried or, worse, thinking I ditched him.  Maybe ten minute.  Yeah, okay, cutting it close but out of my hands now.  Sit back and enjoy the ride. 

            The road starts to get rougher as we get further out of town.  Nothing too serious, but noticeable.  No more street lights, either, so just the lights from passing houses, and folks walking the roadside materializing into the headlights as we approach.  A few minutes of this and we get to our dropoff point.  Our first dropoff point.  One lady gets out.  Sweet, back to town now, right?  I’ll be right on time.

            Wrong.  Further down the road we go.  Umm, I’m trying to catch a movie here.  We say it all the time in America to squeeze a little extra speed out of wait staff and cabbies, but it sounds a little odd in the middle of a third world tropical isle.  What the hell, though, I’m on vacation, and I get to be the ugly American for once.  Yeah, yeah, very close.  Okay.  Another five minutes further, we drop off the other person in the cab, pulling up in front of a store made out of a metal cargo box with panels cut out to make a sort of shipping container chic boutique.  Sweet.  I’ll only be a couple minutes late.

            As a bonus, the cabbie knows a shortcut.  Must be a shortcut, as, after the dropoff he continues heading in the same direction we were going, away from town. Whoa, serious shortcut: the cabbie swings out wide right then cuts it left without ever touching the brakes, Indy style, shooting us onto an even narrower, darker road.  Must connect to the main road on the far side of town.  A little heavier on the gas now, jetting down what is, for all intents and purposes, a single lane of blacktop, which is a pity, as there’s two way traffic on the street.  Yikes.  A few minutes on this road and then we’re…pulling over?  A voice from the back seat of the car makes me jump as the sneaky unseen third passenger disembarks.  Didn’t even know there was still someone back there.  Blame it on the dark or the fact that the car is a compact and I’m jammed into the dash in the front seat, requiring an owl’s flexibility and a flashlight to see back there.

            Turns out this wasn’t a shortcut at all, and now, after our final drop, we’re backtracking our original route almost to my point of origin, a route I would have seen none of if he’d told me he wasn’t headed into town, get a different cab without a hidden agenda.  I could even have put a decent dent in the trip on foot. The cabbie knows this, and drops the hammer, apparently determined to save face and ensure I don’t miss the opening credits.  In Chuuk, when you drop the hammer, it means you break into double digits on the speedometer and pray you don’t scrape the transmission off the bottom of the car.  Here, though, you can build up a pretty good head of steam.  We do.  We’re hurtling down the road, dodging peds and fornicating dogs and cars coming head on and Jesus man slow down this isn’t a Kerouac novel and what the hell are those kids doing trying to play catch in the dark in the middle of the road none of which I say because at first it’s kind of fun and we are making good time.

            Slew onto the main road ignoring the potential for merging cars and now we really do have some traffic.  The cabbie bears down on it, tailgates until he sees the slimmest of openings in oncoming and a sliver of straight road visibility, and then passes, causing the little four banger to hunt gears, backfire, and rev like the two stroke lawnmower I ‘accidentally’ set on fire back in eighth grade.  I find myself white knuckling and try to shake out the half moon fingernail indentations in my palms.  I close my eyes for a minute, trying to get to my happy place, but when my body and the chassis lurch around a corner and then brake down hard to avoid plowing into a slow moving mini-flatbed, my eyes fly open and just for a moment I’m back in Philadelphia on the scariest cab ride of my life, weaving through four lanes of traffic plus the parking lane any time there’s half a block without cars parallel parked and this is just silly because we’re not in Philly we’re in freaking Micronesia so slow the hell down.

            I’m trying to convey this sentiment to the speed crazed Pohnpeian man next to me who feels bad for making me late and is now on a mission to Do not worry we come soon to movie, but I’m having trouble making him understand that I can’t give Tarrantino and Wallace Theaters my money if we are dead, through the windshield and heads instantly decelerated into a coconut palm. 

            Finally we get to the outskirts of town and the traffic forces us to slow, and though I am relieved and now capable of drawing a complete breath, there’s an odd, speed stupid teen part of me that wishes we were still hurtling down the dark streets (w)recklessly passing people.  But wait, our man still has a few tricks.  He darts down a side street, picking up speed as we make a downhill run, engine again revving to a whine.  Foiled after a curve by a slow sedan, the guy starts hovering, tailgating, putting pressure on the car in front of him, does that impatient move your dad pulls, trying to pass by getting even with the lead car at a stop sign and then get the jump off the line, but he’s foiled by oncoming, forced back into trailing position.  This obviously irritates him because he’s got that jittery NASCAR nervous energy, hounding the sedan in pole position so hard he freaks out the lead car’s driver to the point it actually stops in the middle of the road.  The driver, a white lady, gets out and starts laying into the cabbie but in a non-confrontational way by asking him Is everything okay which is just her way of saying what the hell is the matter with you.  Our hero throws the cab in reverse and fires off Pohnpeian for, I’m sure, Just trying to get this honky to the movies and we’re late, making me look like the jerk for the way he’s driving.  The lady stares at us, me, incredulously and starts with in with That’s why you’re driving like an ass but we’re barking tires in reverse by now and squeezing past her. 

            Sweet salvation there’s the parking lot.  We made it, fifteen minutes late, whacky considering the ride should have taken maybe ten minutes total and I started early. What, I hear you asking, is the fee for this white-knuckle detour dash down the darkened byways of tropical paradise? A dollar.  One U.S. dollar for the same amount of thrills and chills people stand in line and pay big bucks for on any midway in the States, minus the candied apple and a funnel cake.  I pay the guy, unfold myself out of the front seat, resist the urge to kiss the pavement, and go behind the cab instead of in front in case the driver’s still riding an adrenaline high and gets punchy on the gas before I’m clear.

            Lover’s waiting patiently by the ticket counter.  I hustle over and apologize for being late, hoping aloud that we haven’t missed too much of the movie.  As I get tickets he merrily assures me that we haven’t, but he was outside when I showed up, so how could he know?  Because I ask them to wait movie, he explains, a twinkle in his eye, and somehow this makes perfect sense, because we’re in Micronesia.  

Arterial

            Everyone should, at some point in life, be confronted with the sight of his own arterial blood.  I’m not advocating a life threatening experience or even a grievous injury, but viewing one’s oxygen bright life force leaving the body in eager, arcing spurts is a defining moment, a predicament the reaction to and resolution of which illuminates much about the bleeder, not to mention the way the vivid, ruby memory lingers ever after as a cautionary reminder.

            The only hole an artery should have is the one that runs down the middle, lengthwise, making it, by definition, an artery.  Forget about this secondary hole leading somewhere else, specifically out of the body in a direction perpendicular to the normal flow, thank you very much.  At least that was what I was thinking as I watched a thin, velvety red stream pulsing eighteen inches into the air from my foot with the heartbeat regularity of a Bellagio fountain show every hour on the hour twice an hour on Sundays.

            I don’t mean to play up the trauma drama, as we’re talking about the faintest of nicks, the mildest of pinprick holes in the top of my foot, close to the surface of the skin and right on the big artery there in just the right place to make things look intensely graphic and messy without actually being much of a big deal.  Having seen the results of this superficial wound, I am now intensely aware of the seriousness of major damage to the circulatory system, because if my little mistake can make that much mess that quickly, I don’t want to be around when something big lets go. 

            Bottom line, like most little bumps in the road that we walk away from without serious repercussions beyond a small scar, be it emotional, mental, physical, said bumps teach us a lesson, make us stronger, wiser, more prepared in the future to face similar situations.  At least that’s what I kept telling myself as I pulled my foot from under a 300 pound aluminum dive deck ladder that I had just set on top of it and applied firm, direct pressure to the pulsing wound, willing myself not to pass out at the sight of my own arterial blood.  

Even Handed

            I carry a light when I dive. More than one, actually; it’s dark inside wrecks.  The primary light, though, is a big honking eight C cell (rechargeable, naturally) thing with a pistol grip.  When it isn’t clipped off on my harness, it is in my hand.  My right hand.  Always my right hand.  No matter how hard I try, how many times I switch it to my left for variety’s sake, the moment I stop actively willing it stay in my left hand, it jumps, unbidden, to my right. 

            Some activities require the dominant hand: writing, three point shots, cutting a steak are good examples.  Try any of these with your off hand and you will make such a hash of things they’re not worth doing.  Other activities you can practice with your left hand and become proficient---frisbee, shooting guns, dicing food, pleasuring yourself, etc.  But the vast majority of us don’t practice such things with our off hand.  It’s easier to do it with the dominant hand, so we do. 

            That’s how things happen with my light.  It stays clipped on my right side, and when I want it I reach for it with my right hand, where it stays until I clip it off again.  Sometimes I switch over and actually concentrate on keeping it in the left.  Then I start thinking about something else, or move to manipulate or steady myself on something, or illuminate something in a crack or crevice.  The next time I think about it or start paying attention again, there it is in my right hand.  It’s not like the light is brighter or more effective when held in the right.  What’s the deal?

            So, a little social experiment for you.  Something you use every day, as important to you as my light is to me.  How about your PDA/cell phone?  Try using that thing exclusively with your off hand all day tomorrow, and see how long it takes for your dominant hand to take over.  Strange, huh?

Moving

Imagine for a moment that the next time you pack up your household belongings to change residence, something drastic happens to the moving van or vehicle in which you are transporting them.  That this hypothetical exercise does not become too macabre, we will assume that ‘drastic’ doesn’t mean that your shipping transport was strafed, fired, torpedoed, and sunk with you in it, just that the vehicle disappeared but your belongings survived undisturbed for years in their packed state. 

 

            Now imagine that someone from a different culture, era, and language background happens upon the lost vehicle sixty-five years later and rummages around in your box of belongings, pulling your things out of their packing for curiosity and novelty’s sake.   How they would marvel at them, attaching weighty significance to the soup tureen your aunt gave you as a wedding gift, the hors d’oeuvre platter you never liked but your husband made you keep, and the set of cheap drinking glasses you picked up at your neighbor’s yard sale.  Think of the fascination the rummager would feel when examining not only the china, but the packing material.  The editorial section and Dear Abbey column from yesterday’s newspaper that you used to protect your glassware would seem an important historical find.  The rummager and would-be archaeologist might even consider the whole situation exciting enough to take some pictures and post them to his friends.

Bugle Boy

Little boy blew.  And who wouldn't, having just unearthed this gem from the silt in the forecastle of a wreck?

Stature

A snap of me exiting a hotel room in Indonesia. Frodo, Pippin, and Sam Gamgee will be over for tea presently.

Tempted?

I took this photo on the Lombok coast, north of a town called Sengigi.  Call me if you are tempted...

Cucumber Love

            Sea cucumbers are strange enough when they sit on the ocean floor, doing normal sea cucumber things.  The sea cucumber family is a diverse one, with wide variation in color, pattern, texture, size, degree of firmness, and what I think of as slime factor, a personal numerical rating system that frequently proves useful when dealing with underwater creatures.  Some sea cucumber traits are universal, though: long, sluggish, poop-shaped bodies slowly undulate along the sand, slurping up algae covered detritus and reforming the detritus into long strands of pearl necklace-like poo that winds along the bottom.  Weird. 

            There is a species of sea cucumber here that is one I have not seen elsewhere.  This guy has a mottled cream and brown body with large dark leopard spots.  He also has pointy white spikes that stick up at regular intervals.  They look dangerous, but are actually just as soft as the rest of his body.  A member of the cucumber genus commonly called the lion’s paw, he sports a series of short, dark, feelers that protrude slightly from the underside of his ‘head’ when he locomotes and feeds.  Looks like a whole row of little feather dusters waving around underneath the front part of his body.  Big guy, maybe two feet long, fully extended.  He’s a common sight on the wrecks.

            Here’s the decidedly uncommon part.  I was ending a dive today on a wreck that is settled on its side, just cruising along the high side of the hull on my way back to the Odyssey.  Next thing I know I’m the Muad Dib surrounded by spice worms, except they are only two feet long, and I’ve never even been to Arakis.  (Frank Herbert is rolling over in his grave right now, and not just because of how thoroughly disappointing all the sequels to Dune were.)  But seriously, that’s what it looked like.  Materializing in front of me in the murky water are seven or eight of these sea cucumbers, all but the last six inches of their cylindrical bodies held erect, vertical from the wreck, swaying slowly to some unheard echinoderm tune.  It looks like they all just decided to skip several rungs on the evolutionary chain and walk upright.  Or at least dance around a bit. 

            When I carefully moved amongst them, I noticed that they were all giving off a milky white fluid from a pore on the backs of their heads, and it was then that I realized with a combination of horror, amusement, and maybe just a little bit of titillation (hey, I live on a boat in the middle of nowhere), that I had stumbled into the middle of a full blown group groping gamete gooing echinoderm orgy.  I try not to think about the embryonic larval spawn fry hatchling krill spore supersaturated sexually active stew in which I work, yet here I was in the middle of it all, front row seat to the love fiesta taking place amongst these striving, earnest creatures.  Even as I watched, two more cucumbers quite literally reared their ugly heads and joined the party, broadcast spawning for all they were worth.  How much more simple would life be for humans if the entire act of courtship, relationship, and mating consisted of walking into a bar, spewing gametes all over the place, and leaving?  How much more complex?  Something to ponder as I bumped air into my buoyancy compensator and slowly ascended away from the undulating cucumbers and their fertile love cloud.  They were still going strong when I lost sight of them, and good for them, I say.  

Squeaky Wheel

On my flight from Jakarta to Singapore, I was unwilling witness to an act so heinous and misconceived that it boggled my mind. I shake with rage as I write this, flashing back to the incident. As soon as the seat belt light was off, the stewardesses (flight attendants? air hostesses? sadistic villains?) began moving purposefully around the cabin. Their first act, before the normal drinks, meals, pillows, or reading material, routine was to pass out plastic bags of squeezable squeaky toys to every child on the plane old enough to grasp the proffered parcel with a chubby fist. I am going to give you a minute to digest that one. No, really, take another second. Squeaky toys. Children. Airplane. It was like watching someone pass out copies of The Bell Curve to a plane-load of right wing talk radio hosts.
So wrong, on so many levels, that I don’t even know where to begin, so I’ll just wade in and start flailing. First, the packaging. You can’t find a plastic bag anymore that doesn’t have a choking hazard, this bag is not a toy warning printed on it, and here they are passing them out to children. Each bag is sealed by a folded piece of cardboard secured to the plastic with ummm…two metal staples? Here ya go, kiddies. Hey, if you are having trouble getting it open, just use your teeth, okay? Not that some of the toddlers receiving the bags were old enough to even have teeth, mind you.
As to the toys themselves, and I say toys because there were more than one in each bag; yeah, two squeaky toys per bag, one for each under-aged fist to ensure stereo irritation from every child. Anyways, what’s the first place these toys are going to go, assuming the kids aren’t already choking on the plastic bag or the staples? Into their pieholes, of course. I’m all about exposing kids to germs to encourage a healthy immune system, but I guarantee that whatever filthy sweatshop these toys, made of snacklicious low grade petrochemical ingredients, came out of did not have children’s health in mind during production, packaging, and shipping.
Okay, I’ll admit it, I’m no crusader for child safety and probably wouldn’t flinch if the stews were passing out sleeping pills, bourbon bottles with rubber nipples affixed, or rolls of duct tape for the kids. I must know, though, what criminally shortsighted corporate buffoon seeking in-flight entertainment solutions for the younger crowd hit the send key on the shipping order for SQEAKY TOYS? Please note a characteristic lack of capitalization, underlining, and italics in past entries and understand that if I were relating this story in person, I would be screaming the above words. Whoever made the decision to take the annoyance public at the ‘approve the distribution of noisemakers to children at the beginning of a two hour flight’ policy meeting must be willfully malicious, deaf, a direct descendant of Torquemada, or, at the very least, terminally myopic.
Somehow these toys made their way down the pipeline, though, the orders passing across the desks and the toys passing through the shipping channels of a whole army of people who didn’t give a second thought to the end result. Eventually boxes of squeaky toys made their way aboard planes and into the hands of stewardesses, the people responsible for not only your comfort during the flight, but your safety and, in the case of emergency, even your life. Bad omen if they lack the judgment to realize that handing out irritants to kids is the wrong call. Who’s to know if the sky hostesses make the conscious, sane choice not distribute the noisemakers? They have plenty enough autonomy to simply not pass them out, right? I doubt there is some sort of sophisticated distribution monitoring system. Warehouse guy: “Hey, you need another case of squeaky toys?” Head stewardess: “No thanks, all good here. Not many kids aboard lately.” Simple. But no, smiles all around and here you go, junior, something to annoy us all with for the duration of the flight. You can’t tell me that even the most jaded, inured, stoic flight attendant can tune out a ruckus that sounds like ten litters of puppies set loose in the toy section of the pet store. What’s next, handfuls of Flinstones shapes amphetamines to ensure that the brat behind you will be kicking the back of your seat for the duration of the flight?
As a last resort, we can surely depend on those directly responsible for the children’s safety and public behavior, right? Thank goodness for the good judgment of parents, gatekeepers and guardians of not only their offspring but those who their offspring’s behavior may impact. Right? If my flight is any indicator of the present state of parenting, our future generations are doomed. I always considered parents who bought their children toys with loud sirens, speakers, cymbals, and bells to be masochistic, but it’s their choice to turn their own homes into aural chaos and call it cute. Keep it at home. If someone was cruising the aisles passing out whiskey and fireworks, you wouldn’t let your kid have them, would you? So why noisemakers? Why? Parents of the world unite under a flag of decency, common sense, or, at the very least, respect for the sanity of those exposed to your children’s antics. Squeaky toys for my toddler on a trans-oceanic flight crowded with innocent strangers? No thank you, stewardess. So easy, so logical, so obvious.
Ever get into a situation where a lifetime of moral habituation and pack behavior tendencies prevents you from committing an act that, stripped of its sociopathic underpinnings, makes a lot of sense? If so, then you will understand the vivid technicolor detail of my whole flight-worth of fancy visualizing a hunt for everyone responsible for the manufacture, sales, purchase, distribution, storage, and dispersal of cheap squeaky toys on airplanes .

Scooter

            There’s something inherently terrifying to me about motorized two-wheeled vehicles.  Owners and enthusiasts cite the freedom of the open road and the wind through the hair, but every time I think about riding one I imagine the freedom to get clobbered by an SUV or have my tenuous grip on the machine broken by a fall, leaving me to decelerate slowly on the skin of my face or quickly against a curb or parked car.  The lightweight cousin of the motorcycle, the motor scooter, is especially frightening to me: underpowered, insubstantial, tiny.  Travel to any European capital or paved third world country with tourists and it is obvious that my temerity is not widely shared. 

            Though American motorcyclists split lanes and edge their way to the front of the line at stoplights, there is nothing to compare their behavior with what goes on in the above mentioned foreign tourist areas and European cities (Rome, anyone?).  In such places it seems like there are as many scooters as people and that at least two thirds of them are on the roads at any given time of the day or night.  They race along streets and alleys, merge indiscriminately, and, in the case of Indonesia, drive on the wrong side of the road (Look right! Look right!).  Maybe not the wrong side, but certainly not the right side.  The right side here being the left side.  Left being right and right being wrong.  Right?

            I’ve always thought that the folks who rent scooters on vacation are asking for trouble.  Everyone’s met the ubiquitous drunk guy in the foreign bar, scooter victim drowning his road rash sorrows in beer, great devastated tracts of raw weeping flesh glistening wetly in the light as they struggle to scab despite alcohol induced blood thinning.  Such sights are enough to keep me away, far away, from the temptation of riding.  Give me a metal cage with four wheels that, despite retarding my ability to commune with the freedom of the road, will not tip over when I lean to the side.  Something substantial, something that won’t leave the other party in the accident wondering if he did in fact collide with someone, or if that brief sensational oddity was just a bump in the road.  When I wreck, I want people to know I’ve been there by some other means than a trail of gore on the pavement and a scuff-mark on a plastic bumper that can be mostly buffed out with judicious application of spit and light scraping with the edge of a fingernail.

            Fear of physical injury is accompanied by a loathing of the hustle involved with third world rental processes, damage claims, and the potential for wreckage resulting in protracted out of country legal and remuneration battles, possibly while strung up in a sketchy medical clinic.  Rental paperwork is a joke.  The ways to get into financial, legal, and bodily straits are myriad, and that has always slammed the lid on any romantic notions of foreign scooter rental.  Plus men just look so effeminate astride them.  (See photo.)

            So I’m zipping up and down the winding roads of coastal Lombok, taking the hilly curves as fast as I dare, pushing hard and leaning into the turns, barely thinking about the fact that the slightest miscalculation on my part, or something as uncontrollable as a patch of sand, gravel, or oil could put me down into oncoming traffic, and you know what?  It’s fun.  Really fun.  This is what I have been missing.  A way to throw caution to the wind and let a combination of factors outside my control, along with reflexes, judgment, and skill, mine and my fellow motorists’, decide my fate.  At speed. 

            It started innocently enough.  I just needed to get down the street in the town of Sengigi on the west coast of Lombok.  I had several errands to run and was looking to arrange a ride with the hotel.  The fellow suggested I rent a scooter.  Sengigi is a small town, spread out, with only one major road and no major traffic.  How dangerous could it possibly be?  I decided to wear a long shirt, pants, and sneakers to give me all the extra protection a layer of cotton can offer to someone decelerating on the pavement from cruising speed to a dead stop on his ass.  They had only automatic bikes, so no clutching or shifting involved.  I pulled up my skirt, strapped on a helmet, tucked away my better judgment, and roared away.  Maybe I didn’t roar.  These contraptions mostly putter unless you are climbing a steep hill; then they whine.  As I pulled onto the street I was thinking about the ill translated rental agreement I had signed.  Was I accountable for the first $250 worth of damages or everything over $250 dollars? 

            I almost gave myself the opportunity to find out as I merged into traffic.  (Look right!  Look right!)  Escaping unharmed, I focused all my attention from that point on staying upright and alive.  The bike was forgiving and peppy, and it is interesting to note how quickly one graduates from being a nervous amateur to a foolishly overconfident amateur.  Testosterone is a powerful drug, and nothing encourages its production and distribution, from personal experience, like motorized vehicles and firearms.  Thankfully no firearms in Lombok, or other motorists might have been tempted to use them on the goofy white boy cruising as far into the slow lane as he could. 

            Other than the challenge of merging in intersections (Look right!  Look straight!  Look left!  Look out!) and passing slow moving vehicles, there was nothing to it.  Well, there was the road construction.  And blind curves.  And livestock.  And Muslim mosque-goers leaving worship   And playing children.  And horse drawn carts.  And dogs.  And vendors.  Okay, there were a lot of nerve jittering obstacles and impediments, but they were all secondary to the feeling of freedom I felt while taking in the view.  I spent the next few days cruising around the countryside, pausing at all sorts of scenic spots to do tourist stuff like take photos, play with monkeys, eat grilled corn and fresh fruit shakes, wander around on deserted beaches, overlook bluffs, and explore empty hotels on scenic property with eager staff killing time until tourist season.  Each activity was enriched by the fact that there was a little red scooter waiting by the side of the road to putter me away on the next leg of the adventure.  Or roar.  Yeah, roar.

Darwin Vindicated

Proof that humans did evolve from apes; some of us never even got beyond the fauxhawk hairstyle.  Pity, that.

Hardly Sell

Someone could make a bundle translating Fisher and Ury (apologies for mangled spelling) into Indonesian. The people selling goods and services in the tourist areas I’ve visited over the last few months could use a little Getting To Yes. The towns are full of myriad salesmen, hawkers, vendors, massage peddlers, taxi drivers, moped renters, and tour guides. Everybody’s here except the kid with and a grubby handful of chicle! and ten sombreros on his head.
They all have an admirably aggressive approach, often more respectable for enthusiasm than effectiveness. Standard opener is to announce the good or service on offer in a sing-song voice with rising interrogative inflection at the end: “Massage?” “Transport?” and “Sarong?” are three pretty common ones. There’s a friendly approach designed to establish rapport before the sale: “Where you from, what you name, where you stay, how long you stay in Lombok?” are all pretty common, so common in fact that I vacillate between wanting to hang a sign printed with the answers around my neck and pretending I am deaf and mute. From here the openers get a little more esoteric. A bizarre one: “What can I do for you?” to which my bitten off reply would be, “I’ll let you know when I want something,” if I weren’t a constant model of politeness. The deaf mute angle counts as polite, right? Once on a street in Sengigi I got hit with a metaphysical opening line, not what I was expecting from a watch salesman: “What are you looking for?” My all time favorite come on though is when a vendor approaches me and just gives me an enthusiastic “Yes!” No clue how that’s supposed to loosen my wallet, but I like a positive sales attitude.
Another motivated aspect is how the salespeople will take any opportunity to sell. They stride the beaches and the streets shilling their wares, hitting up pool and beach-goers, those lounging or eating at a restaurant, strollers, bicyclists, you name it. They will wait on the beach until you come out of your room for breakfast and then shill. Again, marks for enthusiasm.
After the opener, though, things go downhill. If you don’t show immediate interest in offered wares or interest in conversation, salespeople may repeat an offer a few times or stand there and idly look at you while you try to eat or walk or take in sun or swim, but they soon lose interest and let you off the hook. If you don’t respond, they may move on, or they may open up a massive avenue of defeatism that would make any used car salesman cringe: “Maybe later? Maybe tomorrow?” Now come on. What kind of entrepreneurial spirit and go-getter attitude is that? How can you let someone off that easy? Only slightly less hard nosed is when they start reducing their opening price before you show any interest in what they are offering, much less muster the energy to haggle. You haven’t even made like you were cared and they are already diving for rock bottom prices. Special prices. Morning prices. Evening prices. Friend prices. All prices swooping towards cost just to get you to react.
Clearly Tony Robbins or some other self-improvement sales technique specialist would make a killing here teaching folks to be closers. Maybe a little hard sell Glengary Glenross attitude is in order, though I am afraid I would be tempted to use the set of second place steak knives on vendors more pushy than the ones here already.

Lazyland

There are three islands called the Gilis that are a thirty-minute slow boat ride off the coast of Lombok. They are tiny, featureless blobs of jungle with a ring of beach and a sand path around them. You can walk around any one of them in a couple of hours, and they are close enough to one another to be an easy swim if it weren’t for a steady current that runs between them. Boats make regular runs from one to another, but there is no motorized traffic on any of the islands. All transit is done by foot, bicycle, or cidomo or clip-clop, two wheeled pony-drawn carts. In other words, the loudest noise you hear besides the engine of a passing boat or the roar of a diesel generator when the island power goes out, a frequent occurrence, is the crowing of the ubiquitous and accursed roosters. Idyllic.
Enriching this peaceful atmosphere is the pace of the islands, which is really no pace at all, a veritable standstill of relaxation that leaves one stuporously groping for the day of the week, the date, even the month. Accommodations are situated off of the beach path on each island, and range from huts to luxurious bungalows with all sorts of options in between. I stayed in everything from a shack with a mosquito net covered bed and a stand fan to a two story thatched bungalow with air-conditioned bed and balcony area upstairs and open air living area with hammock and day bed downstairs. Most of the places also have outdoor bathrooms, a constant joy in this climate, as you can walk outside at night and shower, in privacy, under the stars, surrounded by whatever landscaping and artwork is arranged in the bathroom. Pretty cool.
Accommodations are on the landward side of the island-encircling path, which leaves room for restaurant and lounge areas on the beach side. The hotels, if you can call them that, all have restaurants, and there are many independent restaurants and bars as well, each one with its own space on the beach for serving meals. You know those thatch roofed, open walled wooden stands with the raised flooring, the low table, and the cushions that you see on the cover of all those island living type magazines? That’s where you lounge here. You find a restaurant that looks good, you walk out onto the beach, ditch your shoes, climb onto the raised dais, burrow into some cushions like a pet settling down, start ordering mounds of food, cheap beer, fresh fruit shakes, and beach drink cocktails, then sit around and consume it while staring out into the water. Make a day of it: bring a book and some snorkel gear, periodically flop onto the sand for some sun or a swim, then loll back when you are finished for a read or a nap or another drink. The path is littered with beach huts full of folks doing just this. All day.
About the flopping in the water part, the tourist areas are concentrated on the leeward sides of the islands, perfect spots for snorkeling. El Nino and the dynamite fishing that, though curtailed in the last few years has still left its obvious mark, have decimated a lot of the coral in the area, but the snorkeling off the beach is still grand, largely for its easy accessibility to colorful, clear, clean, warm, shallow water that gives way between each island to an interesting drop-off; all boat traffic that moves through here does so at a slow pace, keeping an eye out for said snorkelers. Those inclined can book dives from the many SCUBA concessions on the islands. Some of the shops have pools and offer classes, and all have big wooden motorized outriggers that do daily dives to the intact reefs around the islands. Easy diving with crews that bust their butts to make the dives painless for the guests.
Each of the three islands has its own flavor. One is the party island, punching way above its weight in the party scene, with different bars holding parties on different nights of the week. Bottle flipping flair bartenders whip bottles of arak, the local palm distilled spirit around. Live bands play reggae and blues, and Djs spin dance favorites to take up the slack. Some devious bastard in the corner keeps throwing psilocybin into the fruit shakes. International crowds of rowdies howl at the moon. You get the picture and can probably understand why this is the island of choice among the tourist crowd. But there are two other islands, one very laid back and the other downright comatose in pace. And that’s on the leeward side where all the action is. Walk around to the windward side where the waves and the surf make the beaches somewhat less accessible and you will find empty stretches of beach and jungle interspersed with expensive looking private properties and accommodations that take advantage of the low traffic to offer those interested a place that affords perfect isolation and privacy. All with the ever-present thatch huts and hammocks for lounging and napping. No wonder they call this place Lazyland.

Sweeping Success

They’re serious about their sweeping in Indonesia. They do a lot of it. Seems it’s the first task on the day’s to-do list, and many’s the morning I’ve been awakened in Bali and Lombok to the whisking sound of some industrious soul hard at work moving dirt from one place to another. Most days I am awakened by the scraping noise of a broom or the maddening crow of a rooster. Not ideal, but superior to and later in the day than my alarm at work. They broom everything here. Tile, wood, concrete, stone, and bamboo floors. Even dirt. Yep, they sweep the dirt paths, yards, and roads in front of establishments for no other reason I can discern than to leave neat little broom tracks as evidence of a well-kept area.
They’re not using some sort of fancy store bought brooms, either. We’re talking about a bundle of sticks or reeds lashed together at the top. Think witches’ broom, minus the stick in the middle. Why minus the stick in the middle? You got me. The half stooped posture one must adopt to drag a bundle of foot long reeds around on the floor makes absolutely no sense. Unless there is some facet of broom technology I am missing that would not allow a handle to be incorporated into the middle of a bundle, it seems like you’d want to be able to stand up to broom, right? As long as you are taking the time to make a broom, for posture’s sake, tie a handle in there. Even hunch-backed, broom riding hags have a handle on their broom; not only easier to ride from a magical point of view, but, on a more practical level, it gives the hunch a break being able to stand up straight while tidying the front porch in preparation for the next set of children lost deep in the woods. Plus it gives a little leverage when taking a swing at a pesky rooster.

Caution: Contents In Packet May Be Hotter Than They Appear

Had an interesting meal on Air Garuda Indonesia on the way over here. Well, the meal itself was not overly interesting, just an eastern hemisphere take on a hard to screw up easy to heat microwaveable all the stuff in cellophane and little plastic covered cups on a tray meal. The condiment packet, however, was something else. Foil squeeze packets in the U.S. are what, mayo, mustard, ketchup, right? Foil packets here are soy and something called sambal, with which many of you are doubtlessly familiar in context of the Vietnamese sauce that comes in the clear plastic squeeze bottle with the green top and the rooster on the front next to a bunch of indecipherable script. That is the general form that came in this packet. Another type of sambal is the relish made of fresh chopped chilies and garlic, a heavenly combination akin to molten catnip for me, but let’s focus on the packet. You just can’t get dangerous condiments in the U.S. unless you are actively searching. Stuff labeled hot, for the most part, isn’t. I guess someone’s worried about a taste bud damage lawsuit from an unwitting plaintiff. You can go on line and find hot condiments at places like www.burntheskinofftheroofofyourmouth.com (don’t bother trying this link). You can order extra spicy at most ethnic restaurants and you still won’t get hurt, unless you are at a Thai, Indian, or Vietnamese restaurant, in which case you could be in trouble. Point being, you have to go out of your way to immolate your taste buds in public in the U.S.
Thus imagine my surprise when I bit open the foil packet, identical to the one distributed freely to every man, woman, and child on the plane, squirted it on my rice, and went to take a bite, only sensing as I was closing my mouth around said bite that I might be in trouble when I detected a flaming tingle on my lips in the exact spot where I’d bitten into the packet. Too late, and curious now in a masochistic, I can handle hot way, I went through with it. It took me the rest of the plane flight to stop feeling sorry for my mistake. Yikes. After stripping off my fleece and sweating through the shirt underneath, taking the whole water bottle away from the startled attendant when she passed, mouth breathing like I was in my fifth hour of labor, and, I’m not afraid to say, shedding a tear or two, I finally managed to lapse into a semblance of sleep/unconsciousness that may have been my brain knocking me out from the pain or the endorphins clobbering me into a stupor, my dreams visions of pitchforks and eternal flame.
Last scene of the G.I. Joe cartoon moral of the story wrap up here, folks: Things are different outside the U.S. Not better or worse, just different, and it is these differences that make sitting on a planes and in airports for days at a time worthwhile.

Call to Prayer

I’m all about religious tolerance. People should be able to worship whatever form of the invisible man makes the big black yawning unknown more palatable to them. If it makes you sleep better at night, I say go for it. There are very real limitations to my tolerance, though. I feel about religion as I do about sexuality. Whatever you want to do behind closed doors or in the congregation of like-minded others, as long as you aren’t hurting anyone, go for it. It’s the part where folks shake their beliefs or practices in my face that I get indignant.
The varied and ancient religions of the South Pacific islands have, for the most part, been eliminated by generations of Christian missionaries. Now that the damage is done, I feel that many far-flung missions do good by providing medical care, food, and support to impoverished populations, even if it is in the name of a god the populations never wanted. The predecessors to these modern missionaries bug me. They traveled the world to foist their own beliefs on people with traditions and mythologies every bit as old and oftentimes older than the ones the missionaries were pushing. It isn’t cool to bedazzle and frighten people with technological superiority, then use that fascination or fear to tell the islanders their ancient religions were wrong and had to be abandoned in the name of Jesus, Sunday worship, and, the biggest insult in an equatorial climate, clothing. Not just any clothing these days, but polyester. We’re talking button downs and ties here, hideously patterned full rayon dresses with slips. Slips! When was the last time you felt the need to don a slip in 85 degree 85 percent humidity? Shipping in bundles of sweets and salty snacks, the modern day equivalent of glass beads or iron nails, is another popular tactic. Turns out Pacific Islanders love salty snacks and will bust up a whole altarful of idolatrous images to get at a bag of Doritos.
Nice thing about that virulently aggressive strain of rabid Christianity rampant in the U.S. is that you can ignore most of it. You never have to pick up a Coulter book. Mega church, mega money T.V. and radio stations can be bypassed with a finger twitch so quick as to be compared with the CNS bypassing reflex of touching a hot stove, an impulse so fast it never even reaches the brain. Doors can be politely shut in the faces of earnest youngsters fervently darkening the porch with fliers on a weekend morning. One can, with a bit of creative sequestering, pretend that half our country is not rabidly, blindly Christian to the point of refusing to even entertain the idea that anything but a literal, world is mere thousands something years old dinosaur fossils were put on Earth by God to give humans something to ponder on interpretation of the good book is fatally wrong to a degree that justifies holier than though persecution.
I’m in a Muslim country right now. Haven’t been here long, but the people have so far been beautiful, kind, outgoing, friendly, open, and accepting in the same way that many Christians who practice the best parts of religions preaching tolerance and gentleness can be. Sure it’s tough getting a decent plate of pork. Yes it is boring that many of the women are swathed from head to foot, even when they swim. It was indeed odd getting used to prayer rooms instead of smoking lounges in the airport. All that stuff is fine by me, except maybe the dearth of pig products.
Even heartland churches which erect massive crosses and billboards threatening the unclean with eternal purgatory don’t hold a candle, though, to a town full of mosques sporting loudspeakers mounted to the minarets. Timex needs to come out with a Muslim timepiece that chimes for prayer five times a day and has a Mecca seeking bezel, because this cat in agony wailing piped through roof mounted speakers is incredibly grating. First round starts before sunrise and last session isn’t until after dark. It’s worse because my hotel is in the crossfire of multiple mosques playing different versions of Mohamed’s “Torturing the Family Pet Concerto in the key of C”, the wailing strains vilely dissonating off one another like a children’s hands-on science museum harmonics demonstration where the kiddies can vary the tonal modulation on two speakers to create jarring, discordant patterns of sound. If I have to listen to this stuff five times a day, I’ll soon be ready to wield a Kalashnikov myself. Okay, it isn’t fair to participate in the current irrational American hysteria implying every Muslim is part of a violent cell just waiting for the phone to ring so he can grab a dead man switch and a vest of C4 and ball bearings. But listening to Muslim call to prayer five times a day will soon have me hankering for a bullhorn and a collection of Billy Graham sermons so I can cruise the streets at dawn. Keep your religions to yourself, people, and let a fellow sleep.

Floating

I had a rootbeer float yesterday at an A&W stand. Not an unusual occurrence, right, save for the fact that A) I was in an airport halfway around the world from where A&W was founded and B) it’s the first time I have had ice cream in 2009. Both remarkable, the first from a globalization perspective and the second not because I’m abstaining so much as deprived. You know I like my ice cream, but we don’t get much of it in Truk, at least nothing that hasn’t been un-and refrozen repeatedly on container ships. So, here I sit, blissfully spooning soft serve and pondering an Indonesian chili dog-tater tot combo meal.

Lombok

If I’d learnt one thing from travelling (sic), it was that the way to get things done was to go ahead and do them. Don’t talk about going to Borneo. Book a ticket, get a visa, pack a bag, and it just happens. From The Beach by Alex Garland

I am in the unique position of being halfway around the world from home. I work nine months of the year and have three months off, to be taken as I see fit. Staying around Truk for vacation is really not an option. Onshore accommodations are shockingly expensive and sub-par, as is everything else around here. Besides, change of scenery is a priority after three months of solid work in one area. So, get on a plane and go somewhere. When spending that kind of money on a plane ticket, I want to be gone for a while, so I have settled on month long chunks of vacation time. Where to go? Home? I’ve been home all my life. Part of the reason I came out here was to have access to the Pacific and the Far East. There are over ten thousand islands out here, and I only have so much time, so I figure I need to get started seeing as many of them as possible.
By what criteria does one choose a destination for a month long stay? Internet, word of mouth, magazine and book research would be the most intelligent and prudent methods. Never having the good sense to count prudence as a virtue, I have developed my own vacation planning method. I choose a place whose name is bewitchingly exotic, check to make sure airfares and living expenses aren’t disproportionately outrageous, and take Alex Garland’s advice: book a ticket, pack a bag, and it just happens. So far this method has found me in Bali. I liked Bali, as you can tell from past entries. So I’m going next door to Lombok, the next major island over. Lombok. Sounds equally exotic, no? They have a group of small islands called the Gilis off the coast, supposed to have good diving. I’m going there. Hopefully with better communication results than my last trip, which marked an unfortunate dip off the blog radar.
This whole choice of travel destination according to how exotic the name sounds could be a good thing. Mozambique, Tunisia, Madagascar, Stalingrad, Tanzania, Umbria, New Caledonia, Knossos, Gstaad, (I can’t even spell it, it must be exotic), Munich, Bolivia, Tasmania; they all have a certain ring to them. If anyone has advice on any of these locales or maybe wants to check them out, or has a bizarrely spelled, funky sounding travel proposal, by all means, let’s hear it. Beyond that, thanks for tuning in and Happy Easter.

Ulu Watu Steps

Every journey begins with a single step. Actually, if you want to get to the beach between Padang Padang and Ulu Watu from my room, it’s one hundred thirty-seven steps. Steep, uneven, moss-covered concrete ones that snake back and forth down a cliff face to a beautiful deserted stretch of beach hemmed in on both sides at high tide by house sized ironshore boulders. There’s a nice right that starts at the edge of the cove and peels about half way down the thousand yard stretch of sand before it breaks up in a shallow patch that extends to the other side of the cove. Good bouldering at the junction of land and ocean, the danger tickle of clinging to a higher than head high perch only partially mitigated by the fact that there is water underneath, as that water may or may not be deep enough to cushion a fall. Save for the lonely, orphaned shoes and plastic detritus washed up on shore, this beach could have looked just the same ten thousand years ago and had about as many people on it: zero.
How did I find such a place? Skill, research, extensive quizzing of the locals in their native tongue, careful examination of topographical maps and satellite imagery? Rather, like many of the best travel finds, blind luck. I knew the general area I wanted to go, had the name of some accommodations from a guide book, hired a driver, and headed out. My first choice of places was no longer there. Well, it was there, but the sign and several of the bungalows had been leveled, the pool was half full of liquid that looked like it had been siphoned from a high school science project, and there was one guy hanging out at the deserted, cleaned out bar/restaurant. He assured me that though the place was closed for renovations, he could put me up for more money than some of the fully functional resorts in the area were asking. The view was nice, but, figuring I could find a place that was actually in business, I pointed out that the term renovation is usually reserved for a site at which work is actually occurring, a place where workers are present and doing something with the piles of bricks that used to be buildings. Moved on with my intrepid and harrowingly patient driver.
A few more missteps. A wander down a dirt road to find that the encouraging signs at the main road junction led to what was basically someone’s living room for rent, including access to the side yard combination chicken run/ laundry drying facility. A stop at a nice looking place with a great pool whose only, and, in my opinion, glaring shortcoming was the lack of access to food. Everywhere I stayed in Bali, from nice hotels to tiny apartments, included breakfast. This place not only did not include breakfast but had no facility for making it. Guests suffering the unexpected and inconvenient affliction hunger could feed themselves by hoofing to the nearest restaurant, by no means near on this sparsely populated peninsula I was exploring. As this army runs on its stomach, I moved on. A drive past a shuttered building owned by a fraternity brother. Seriously. Half way around the world and there is my buddy’s surf retreat. What are the odds? A brief stop at a four room spot that was nice enough save for its next door to a rooster pen deal breaking location, reminding me of my adventures apartment hunting in Kona: “Hi, I’m here about the apartment. Do you hear roosters here? Yes? Okay, nevermind.” Call me a city slicker, but being awakened by roosters sends me into a poultricidal rage. Who came up with the quaint idiocy that roosters crow…squawk? doodle? at dawn? Sure they doodle at dawn, but not because it is dawn, not because they are greeting the day, but because they doodle incessantly throughout their stupid chicken lifetimes and every three thousandth time in a twenty four hour period that they announce their presence the sun happens to be coming up. I did not stay at the place next to the roosters.
Then I saw a sign. Nothing fancy or biblical, just a faded old sign. “Thomas Homestay.” My driver, as opposed to showing his exasperation at each stuttered misstep on the adventure to house me, appeared to grow more enthusiastic at each stop. By the time we bumped our way down the dirt road towards the coast, he was desperately ecstatic. “Maybe you like this one, yes?” he bubbled. “Maybe,” I said doubtfully as I tried to keep from bashing my head against the ceiling of the cab as we bounced down the rutted track, feeling guilty for dragging him all over the Bukit Peninsula.
Thomas Homestay was unimpressive from the back. A collection of three buildings joined by a continuous roof. Chicken coops. Laundry hanging out on lines. An elderly crone sweeping at the dirt gestured deeper into the compound when I inquired about a room. I walked through a breezeway and onto a porch cantilevered over the above described view, and when the owner approached me and asked if I wanted to stay, I just said, “Yes.”
Only briefly did I reconsider my decision after being shown the living space I would be renting: small, tired room, hard, lumpy mattress with questionable linen and a pillow I wrapped in one of my own t-shirts for sanitary purposes, a shared bathroom complete with non-flush squat toilet, a noisy, beat-up fan mounted to the wall, and not much else besides two windows. Fourteen bucks a night, and the room not even worth that despite the fact that they included breakfast.
Ah, but take two steps outside the room to the balcony railing and no amount of money could pay for the view of the ocean and a deserted beach only one hundred thirty seven steps away.