{"id":417,"date":"2006-05-16T15:05:10","date_gmt":"2006-05-16T23:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/05\/16\/tahiti\/"},"modified":"2006-05-16T15:05:10","modified_gmt":"2006-05-16T23:05:10","slug":"tahiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2006\/05\/16\/tahiti\/","title":{"rendered":"Tahiti"},"content":{"rendered":"

CARRY ME<\/strong><\/p>\n

Carry me, carry me, carry me above the world<\/em><\/p>\n

About ninety minutes out of L.A., we hit turbulence.\u00c2\u00a0 Never-ending turbulence.\u00c2\u00a0 Just shy of scary turbulence.\u00c2\u00a0 The steward told us the captain said it would last all the way to Tahiti.\u00c2\u00a0 So we girded ourselves.\u00c2\u00a0 We talked, we read, we tried to relax.\u00c2\u00a0 But we didn’t sleep.\u00c2\u00a0 And then, not quite an hour from the islands, not long after our cabinmates agreed it was all right to raise our window blinds, the sun started to set through the clouds.\u00c2\u00a0 But this was no Pacific sunset.\u00c2\u00a0 No Vermont sunset.\u00c2\u00a0 Not even a Key West sunset.\u00c2\u00a0 The sun had a warm red\/orange glow, but it was the clouds that provided the show.\u00c2\u00a0 Some were horizontal.\u00c2\u00a0 At different distances from the plane.\u00c2\u00a0 But what was truly astounding was the gray vertical puffs.\u00c2\u00a0 Like those snakes you used to buy as a kid, that you lit a match to.\u00c2\u00a0 You remember, they started out as little tablets, but when they caught fire they expanded, into long wisps of barely heavier than air ash.\u00c2\u00a0 Imagine bunches of these scattered throughout the sky.\u00c2\u00a0 Plumes.\u00c2\u00a0 With that same ashen color.<\/p>\n

We figured it was momentary.\u00c2\u00a0 An anomaly over the ocean.\u00c2\u00a0 But this is the kind of sunset you get EVERY NIGHT in Tahiti.\u00c2\u00a0 These shows are enough reason to make the trip.<\/p>\n

\n

SALT OF THE EARTH<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let’s drink to the hard working people
Let’s think of the lowly of birth
Spare a thought for the rag-taggy people
Let’s drink to the salt of the earth<\/em><\/p>\n

Cruise ships are populated by Filipinos and Indonesians.\u00c2\u00a0 They put on a smile and do the shit work.<\/p>\n

Seven days a week.\u00c2\u00a0 Living in the bowels of this floating hotel.\u00c2\u00a0 Cleaning up after and servicing tourists.\u00c2\u00a0 I could only ask myself…how fucking BAD must life be where they came from that they chose to work on a boat like slaves for little remuneration.<\/p>\n

The fact that we have a President who never left the country before ascending to the throne astounds me.<\/p>\n

You see we Americans think we know everything.\u00c2\u00a0 That we rule.\u00c2\u00a0 We watch television and figure we don’t have to leave the couch, it’s all there in living color.<\/p>\n

But until you leave your comfort zone, until you’re on THEIR turf, not your own, you just don’t get it.<\/p>\n

My grandfather struggled.\u00c2\u00a0 My father struggled less.\u00c2\u00a0 So I can live a life of choice.\u00c2\u00a0 The choices of those in so many parts of the world are extremely limited.<\/p>\n

I never asked anybody to do anything for me.\u00c2\u00a0 I just didn’t want to add an IOTA of labor to these people trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.<\/p>\n

\n

EVERYDAY PEOPLE<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then it’s the new man
That doesn’t like the short man
For being such a rich one
That will not help the poor one
Different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and scooby dooby dooby<\/em><\/p>\n

Ooh sha sha
We got to live together<\/em><\/p>\n

The first stop was Raiatea.\u00c2\u00a0 Where they warned us there was nothing to do.\u00c2\u00a0 Since it was SUNDAY and the shops were locked tight.<\/p>\n

This turned out to be true.\u00c2\u00a0 But we took a stroll in the ninety degree humidity anyway.<\/p>\n

And at the far end of the island, on an outcropping near the water, we heard something.\u00c2\u00a0 DRUMS!\u00c2\u00a0 We approached slowly.\u00c2\u00a0 Eager to get a closer look at Tahitian life.\u00c2\u00a0 And then, when we were ten feet away, the music stopped.\u00c2\u00a0 There we were, Felice and myself, with thirty islanders.<\/p>\n

We were frozen.\u00c2\u00a0 I won’t say everybody was staring, but I wondered if we’d interrupted a religious rite.<\/p>\n

Then I realized there wasn’t an Anglo in sight.\u00c2\u00a0 We hadn’t seen ONE on our journey.\u00c2\u00a0 They could kill us and toss the carcasses in the ocean and nobody would ever know what really happened.<\/p>\n

Our Verizon cell phones, CDMA-based, didn’t work.\u00c2\u00a0 We were on their turf.\u00c2\u00a0 I suddenly understood the plight of the explorers.\u00c2\u00a0 Who knew if the islanders were friendly or belligerent?<\/p>\n

But then the music restarted.\u00c2\u00a0 We were safe.<\/p>\n

But it was a head-turner.\u00c2\u00a0 We feel we’re ENTITLED to our well-being in the States.\u00c2\u00a0 But in the rest of the world, we’re dependent on the kindness of strangers.<\/p>\n

\n

THUNDER ISLAND<\/strong><\/p>\n

Can you hear me now calling your name
From across the bay
A summer’s day laughing and a-hidin’
Chasing love out on Thunder Island<\/em><\/p>\n

The captain took us on a zodiac from the Gauguin to the private island.\u00c2\u00a0 He was from Croatia.\u00c2\u00a0 Younger than me, he had two kids already out of the house.\u00c2\u00a0 And a wife halfway around the world.\u00c2\u00a0 Funny how you admire these macho guys.\u00c2\u00a0 As they face the challenges without blinking.<\/p>\n

We spent the day snorkeling.\u00c2\u00a0 And lying in the bathtub-temperature water.<\/p>\n

But I’ve got to warn you.\u00c2\u00a0 There are SEA CUCUMBERS!<\/p>\n

Oh, you wear reef shoes.\u00c2\u00a0 But littered on the bottom of the ocean are these…well, CUCUMBERS!\u00c2\u00a0 But they’re alive.\u00c2\u00a0 And squishy.\u00c2\u00a0 And they urinate.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s almost so gross you don’t want to go in.\u00c2\u00a0 You CERTAINLY don’t want to step on one.<\/p>\n

They served us drinks in coconuts.\u00c2\u00a0 And I must say I felt like a tourist from a Jimmy Buffett song, but it was so FUNNY, like being on "Survivor’ or something, that I forgave myself.<\/p>\n

\n

BLACK MOUNTAIN SIDE<\/strong><\/p>\n

There can be no lyrics.\u00c2\u00a0 No words to express the view of Bora Bora off in the distance as the sun set.\u00c2\u00a0 THIS is Tahiti.\u00c2\u00a0 THIS is what you’ve come for.\u00c2\u00a0 An island in the middle of nowhere with a rock slab towering out of its middle resembling nothing so much as the icon in "2001".\u00c2\u00a0 You just can’t believe God built this.\u00c2\u00a0 What was he THINKING?<\/p>\n

You can’t stop looking at it.\u00c2\u00a0 Knowing that no matter how you describe the never-climbed peak, only those who’ve been there, who’ve SEEN IT, will get it.<\/p>\n

We took a car around the island.\u00c2\u00a0 They insisted on giving us an interpreter.\u00c2\u00a0 Like in "The Treasure Of Sierra Madre", we kept saying WE DON’T NEED NO STINKING INTERPRETER.\u00c2\u00a0 But the woman we rented the taxi from kept feigning a lack of understanding and Pascal jumped in the van, never to exit.<\/p>\n

Pascal was French.\u00c2\u00a0 He traveled the world and settled here.<\/p>\n

And it’s BEAUTIFUL!\u00c2\u00a0 But what the fuck you do day in and day out I have no idea.<\/p>\n

Thank god we got Pascal.\u00c2\u00a0 He showed us where the human sacrifices took place in the 1800s.\u00c2\u00a0 He got the crabs to come out of their holes in the ground.\u00c2\u00a0 He showed us the kind of shit you can’t find in a guidebook.<\/p>\n

We had lunch at the legendary Bloody Mary’s.<\/p>\n

I don’t want to disappoint you, but it’s not much more than a hut.\u00c2\u00a0 Serving burgers and fries.\u00c2\u00a0 Cool, but THIS is the place all the stars come to?\u00c2\u00a0 I guess I should have known better, what with them listing every famous person who’d visited right out front.\u00c2\u00a0 I didn’t have time to read them all, but the minor rockers, people like Fee Waybill and John McFee, made me smile.\u00c2\u00a0 There was one highlight though.\u00c2\u00a0 Chris told me I had to visit the lavatory.\u00c2\u00a0 Where I found a bubbling brook sink and a flush handle over the urinal consisting of a long dangling dick.\u00c2\u00a0 Feeling inhibited, I almost couldn’t reach up and pull it.\u00c2\u00a0 When I was finished, I had to call in Felice for a look-see.<\/p>\n

At night we went back to the island for dinner at…\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, I can’t remember the name of the restaurant.<\/p>\n

The edifice was towering.\u00c2\u00a0 The interior resembled nothing so much as the inside of Old Faithful Inn, next to the geyser in Yellowstone.\u00c2\u00a0 There was enough headroom for Gulliver.\u00c2\u00a0 And French music that Chris immediately identified and the others pooh-poohed but I loved, finding it akin to Deep Forest.<\/p>\n

But what was truly shocking was the "waitress".<\/p>\n

It was clear from first encounter, it was a MAN!<\/p>\n

Was he\/she a transvestite?\u00c2\u00a0 Or a transsexual?\u00c2\u00a0 I couldn’t stop thinking about it.\u00c2\u00a0 But he\/she never broke character.<\/p>\n

\n

MAN SMART, WOMAN SMARTER<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let us put man and woman together
And see which one is smarter<\/em><\/p>\n

Turns out she WAS a he.\u00c2\u00a0 But this wasn’t unique.\u00c2\u00a0 This was a longstanding Tahitian tradition.\u00c2\u00a0 To raise young boys as women.\u00c2\u00a0 Which they remained their ENTIRE LIVES!<\/p>\n

We learned this during the ENRICHMENT LECTURE!\u00c2\u00a0 Led by some archaeologist with a ponytail who seemed to be the all time rambler until you figured out that his digressions were in service to packing in important details and he always found his way back to the original point.\u00c2\u00a0 He was SO good that we even woke up for an 8:30 lecture the following day on the REAL story of the Bounty.<\/p>\n

Oh, they’d showed the 1984 remake, with Mel Gibson, who was so fucking YOUNG, in the Grand Salon the night before.\u00c2\u00a0 I only caught about fifteen minutes.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s solely about the original, RIGHT?\u00c2\u00a0 But, I was too stupid to know until Felice informed me that Fletcher Christian was REAL!\u00c2\u00a0 The whole story was REAL!<\/p>\n

So, parked the next morning in Moorea, in the same bay that they filmed the Mel Gibson flick, we heard what REALLY happened.<\/p>\n

It had nothing to do with love.\u00c2\u00a0 You see, back then nobody in Europe BATHED!\u00c2\u00a0 Like a beautiful Tahitian woman was going to want to leave paradise with some sweaty, unkempt seaman for rainy England?\u00c2\u00a0 Right!\u00c2\u00a0 Shit, following the islanders, some of the crewmen did dip into the water to cleanse themselves.\u00c2\u00a0 But they didn’t bother to take off their long underwear.\u00c2\u00a0 Hell, they often BURIED people in their hair-suits, since they couldn’t separate the garments from their skin!<\/p>\n

Oh, it took Roger two hours to tell the entire story.\u00c2\u00a0 Involving the personality of Bly, who turned out to be manic-depressive.\u00c2\u00a0 And the playboy\/entitled antics of Christian.\u00c2\u00a0 Who, after returning to the island and picking up hostages threw the ugly women over the side.<\/p>\n

Oh, there’s gonna be a book.\u00c2\u00a0 A best seller if this oral rendition is any indication.<\/p>\n

And, riveted by Roger, whose lecture was better than ninety percent of those I endured in college, Chris and I signed up for his "Trails Of The Ancient" trek.\u00c2\u00a0 Wherein we got in a rickety bus and drove up to the Belvedere, under the vertical peaks, the caves of which contained the bones of island ancestors, and surveyed the whole landscape of Moorea.\u00c2\u00a0 It was like Switzerland without snow.\u00c2\u00a0 And the homemade banana ice cream I purchased at the concession trailer was better than any I’ve had previously.<\/p>\n

Then we descended into the rain forest.\u00c2\u00a0 To visit religious sites.<\/p>\n

Roger’s waxing rhapsodic.\u00c2\u00a0 And then he says it’s going to rain.\u00c2\u00a0 Just that calmly.\u00c2\u00a0 And then there’s a THUNDEROUS noise.\u00c2\u00a0 But it’s not what comes after lightning.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the mega-droplets hitting the canopy.\u00c2\u00a0 The foliage of the trees a hundred feet above us.\u00c2\u00a0 Down below…we were barely getting wet.\u00c2\u00a0 It was ASTOUNDING!<\/p>\n

\n

FULL MOON FEVER<\/strong><\/p>\n

It truly felt like we were free fallin’.\u00c2\u00a0 When suddenly, over the towering peak right behind the ship, the moon began to appear.\u00c2\u00a0 If it had been a movie, you wouldn’t have believed it.\u00c2\u00a0 You’d have thought it was a painting.<\/p>\n

We’re sitting on deck.\u00c2\u00a0 With a zillion stars in the sky.\u00c2\u00a0 Two thousand foot peaks surrounding us.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a religious experience.<\/p>\n

\n

WHERE TO NOW ST. PETER?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I took myself a blue canoe
And I floated like a leaf<\/em><\/p>\n

The Paul Gauguin has a marina in the rear.\u00c2\u00a0 A hatch opens and you can windsurf, water ski and kayak.\u00c2\u00a0 They’d told Felice in e-mail that it would be closed, in light of the recent pirate activity on the high seas, but when we arrived, they announced it would be open.<\/p>\n

No way I’d leave the platform the first few days.\u00c2\u00a0 God, the ship ITSELF was drifting in the current.<\/p>\n

But anchored in the bay in Moorea…the water was calm.<\/p>\n

We wanted to go water skiing.\u00c2\u00a0 But it turns out we didn’t register early enough.\u00c2\u00a0 So, we went kayaking.<\/p>\n

I won’t say I felt like an early explorer.\u00c2\u00a0 But alone on the water, enveloped by a landscape mortals could not even DREAM up, I felt fully alive.\u00c2\u00a0 No iPod was necessary.\u00c2\u00a0 No Internet connection.\u00c2\u00a0 Actually, I intentionally left my laptop at home.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted to unplug.\u00c2\u00a0 I wanted to get the full experience.\u00c2\u00a0 And, after exploring the nooks and crannies of the bay, when we stopped paddling, and just drifted, in the quiet, I told myself this must be just like paradise.<\/p>\n

So where to now St. Peter
Show me which road I’m on
Which road I’m on<\/em><\/p>\n

I owe a debt of gratitude to Ginny, Felice’s mom, who took me along on this family trip.\u00c2\u00a0 Which was not only a phenomenal time, but enlightening.<\/p>\n

Not only did I not want to go home, I was already contemplating where I wanted to go next.\u00c2\u00a0 You can travel all over the world in front of a computer screen, but you SEE things and don’t FEEL them.\u00c2\u00a0 And life is about the sensations.\u00c2\u00a0 The world is full of stimuli.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ve just got to leave home and be open to being touched.<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CARRY ME Carry me, carry me, carry me above the world About ninety minutes out of L.A., we hit turbulence.\u00c2\u00a0 Never-ending turbulence.\u00c2\u00a0 Just shy of scary turbulence.\u00c2\u00a0 The steward told us the captain said it would last all the way to Tahiti.\u00c2\u00a0 So we girded ourselves.\u00c2\u00a0 We talked, we read, we tried to relax.\u00c2\u00a0 But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s96vPs-tahiti","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}