A great value in slowing down....

There is great value in quiet and going within. We often forget the peace that just a few moments of...slowing....down...and....listening...to rain or crackle of a fire or hiss of a warming tea pot can bring. Those moments are precious reminders that we can step off of the treadmill - or hamster wheel - and regain some connection to the vastness of our true self.

"Massed peaks pierce

The cold-colored sky;

A view the

Monastery faces.

Shooting stars pass

Into sparse-branched trees;

The moon travels one way

Clouds the other

Few people come

To this mountaintop

Cranes do not flock

In the tall pines.

One Buddhist monk,

Eighty years old,

Has never heard

Of the world's affairs." -Chia Tao (779-843)

Source: Jia, Dao. When I Find You Again, It Will Be in Mountains: Selected Poems of Chia Tao. Trans. Mike O'Connor. Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000. 51. Print.

...those matters that make wild the hearts of men.

I still succumb to Facebook as I have family and friends online and it is nice to share memories and photos. However, I find it interesting that even on the 'social networks' there is still the anger-model of current event discussions and position-taking that tends to create divisive thinking. Sometimes it is overt and sometimes quite subtle.

The birth of a distant cousin, nostalgic reminders of a hometown, or the photos of loved ones are still enjoyable to encounter and reminds one of the benefits of social networking. On the other hand, the political or social rants where one stakes out an opinion and challenges another creates the false dichotomy of challenge and response. A posting this morning, from a dear relative, was an image that said, "It is Merry Christmas, not Happy Holidays" along with a "share if you agree."

In many faith traditions - and, come to think of it, at countless community events - there is the 'call-and-response' where a leader or speaker will present issues in a manner designed to generate a response from the audience: applause, shouts of agreement, or simple 'yes' or 'amen' utterances. The call can be, "Are you with me?" Or, "We won't stop fighting for your rights!" Or any number of stem-winding and us-versus-them comments that try to form agreement of the audience with the speaker's agenda.

It seems we are so programmed to look for competition and controversy and to desire (or be encouraged) to choose a side where we can join a cause and then seek to diminish those who hold a different view. Perhaps it is because we like the 'juice' and charge that comes from a sense of battle or competition; we seem to be wired that way. However, that 'shenpa' (marvelous Tibetan Buddhist concept) tends to lead to hardness of heart, anger, self-righteous behavior, and at its nearly inevitable progression to argument, to hatred, and, in the case of true us-versus-them action: violence and war.

The solution - simple sounding but so difficult to practice - is to not take the bait and 'bite the hook' (as Pema Chodron speaks of) so that we take that small millisecond between the 'call' and the 'response' to realize - in that moment of delightful clarity - that we don't need to escalate the separateness but rather can look on the 'call' as merely one persons opinion that we can choose to acknowledge but not to escalate or join with the anger.

In today's hyper-connected world, to seek solitude or ignore current events is considered technological apostasy and the inevitable accusations of Luddite thinking creates its own us-versus-them binary. The desire to 'turn off and tune out' the 24/7 cycle of information or seek seclusion in meditation is considered anti-social or given a 'tsk-tsk-tsk' by others. That is fine. Curiously, there was a posting on Facebook that I found appropriate: 'You don't have to attend every argument you're invited to."

Namaste'....

Transitions.....

It has been over a year since my last posting. A lot has happened: some wonderful experiences and some sobering reminders of life's lessons. Regardless, life is an accretion model and, as I have learned, it is truly a matter of "three-steps-forward, two-steps-back" experiences.

For the last year or so, I dabbled deeply into political discussions and current-event debates; a frequent presence on online sites and in the comment sections of newspapers...until I realized that such folderol was toxic and, really, of no value. Would anything I posit, argue, rant, rail, or expound upon change anyone else's firmly held views? Of course not. Likewise, their arguments and positions only hardened my own. I had devolved into a true "you/me" and "us/them" binary.

I found that I was falling into the usual dichotomy of competition and the idea that for me to be right the other must be logically and irrefutably proven wrong. I had rationalized this approach by citing two my heroes: Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi. Their 'radicalism' changed the world and involved getting out into the streets and strongly - though peacefully - expressing their views. What I neglected was the peaceful and non-attachment perspectives that informed their actions.

To be sure, both debated passionately and articulately their views. Yet, there wasn't the "hook" or shenpa (wonderful Tibetan Buddhist concept) that I had infused into - and polluted - my thinking. I had forgotten that I could have my views on guns, war, and the sometimes horrific actions of others without it hardening my own heart.

It took a while, but I finally remembered Pema Chodron's comment in her wonderful book Practicing Peace in Times of War where she said the solution to such us/them thinking (among other ills) was: "Softening what is rigid in your heart." Once, I remembered that - and actually incorporated that into my thinking - the false binary of conflict fell away.

So I returned to my Zen roots, the peaceful non-attachment practices, and the writings of Zen monks, hermits, and others who lived fully and yet found a path to peace in thought and action. It is not easy...not by a long shot. But the balance I have found (albeit three-steps-forward, two-steps back!) has been wonderful.

To that end, I am slowing down and will still write on my love of the tropics and other pleasures. But I will not engage in the us/them, you/me binaries that have proven so calamitous to my spirit.

Namaste'....

'O Kona along the unruffled sea

Each of the Hawaiian islands has their own uniqueness and sense of place. The Big Island of Hawai'i, where I lived for too short a time (and my heart is still there), has desert-like barrens, languid lagoons with stately palms swaying in the kona winds, rain-forests where non-rain periods are celebrated in their rarity, and snow-capped peaks of bitter cold.

One of the finest, and most lyrical, translators to English of the spoken Hawaiian language was Mary Kawena Pukui (1895-1986). She could take the meles (chants) and give them evocative and meaningful translations to English. She could translate the complex and multi-leveled Hawaiian spoken word and yet retain much of its charm and meaning; a complex task to be sure.

There is a mele, long recited from pre-contact days, that describes the six ancient districts of the Big Island (which is its modern appellation as in Hawaii Nei times each island was unique and the only "Hawai'i" was the what we call the Big Island today). This mele describes each of the six districts of Hawai'i (the singular island).

For brevity (it is a fairly long chant), here are the opening lines and the first district in both Hawaiian and English:

"He Huaka'i Ka'apuni ma Hawai'i

Ku e ho'opi'o ka la

Ka la i ke kula o Ahu- 'ena

Komo i ka la'i o Kai-lua e-

'O Kona:

'O Kona ia i ke kai malino

Ke hele la i waho o Kapu-lau

Kani ka 'a'o Wai- 'ula'ula

A he alani ewaiho nei

A ke kanaka e hele ai la"

//

"The rising sun travels in an arc

reaches the flatlands of Ahu- 'ena

enters Kai-lua's gentle landscape

This is Kona:

coastal Kona along the unruffled sea

Where the sun rides ahead to Kapu-lau

where cry of the puffin-bird at Wai- 'ula'ula

breaks the silence of the traveler's trail."

There is much more in the mele and in reading it one can leisurely travel around the island and breathe the tropical air...regardless of where they currently are.

Jack London and I.....

Just over one-hundred years ago, Jack London sailed his ship - the Snark - on a Pacific voyage and visited many of the South Sea islands. He landed in Tahiti and Raiatea (two of my favorites) and wrote of it in his non-fiction book "The Cruise of the Snark". Like all good writers, he was observant and could translate the physical experience into words that allow others to catch a glimpse of, and vicariously live, that experience.

Having been to the sun-kissed lagoons of Tahiti and Raiatea (and many others) I found this partial paragraph in one of his books - "The Star Rover" - to deeply resonate with me:

"Aloft, at giddy mast-heads oscillating above the decks of ships, I have gazed on sun-flashed water where coral-growths iridesced from profounds of turquoise deeps, and conned ships in to the safety of mirrored lagoons where the anchors rumbled down close to palm-fronded beaches of sea-pounded coral rock."

-
London, Jack. The Star Rover. White Plains, NY: Aeon Pub., 1999. Print.

What can drive someone to piracy?

One of the definitive works on real-life pirates was written by Daniel Defoe (he of Robinson Crusoe and Moll Flanders fame) and is entitled: A General History of the Pyrates. It was written under the pen-name of 'Captain Charles Johnson' in 1724. With a journalist's eye, Defoe took existing published accounts (pamphlets, broadsheets, trial records, shipping letters, and a host of contemporary accounts including interviews) to create the most accurate picture of the pirates - or pyrates - of that time.

If you can get past the spelling and Capitalization conventions of that Era, you will find a well-crafted book that, although non-fiction, is entertaining and filled with adventure. Here are the opening lines to his discussion of one famed pirate, Major Stede Bonnet, and how he began his life of piracy:

"The Major was a Gentleman of good Reputation in the Island of Barbadoes, was Master of a plentiful Fortune, and had the Advantage of a liberal Education. He had the least Temptation of any Man to follow such a Course of Life, from the Condition of his Circumstances. It was very surprizing to every one, to hear of the Major's Enterprize, in the Island where he liv'd; and as he was generally esteem'd and honoured, before he broke out into open Acts of Pyracy, so was afterward rather pity'd than condemned, by those that were acquainted with him, believing that this Humour of going a Pyrating, proceeded from a Disorder in his Mind, which had been but too visible in him, some Time before this wicked Undertaking; and which is said to have been occasioned by some Discomforts he found in a married State..."

Each of the pirates - or pyrates - Defoe reported upon all had equally interesting beginnings and Defoe's skills at creative word-play helps to sharpen - and humanize, even - the lives of these piratical seafarers.

-
Defoe, Daniel, and Manuel Schonhorn. A General History of the Pyrates. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1999. Print.

Ya' should've been here last year....

Perhaps it is because I've grown older (not necessarily wiser, but that's another story) that my perspective of travel and changes has mellowed somewhat. With the Internet and Facebook and other instant communication channels it seems that anyone with a keyboard or smartphone can opine on anything and the battle of egos ensues with great energy. With Twitter (don't use it myself) it seems that even television news programs will show Tweets(?) in near-real-time about current events.

As an example, in the recent State of the Union Address, more than one alleged 'news' channel would have a rolling log of 'tweets' on the screen...all from anonymous tweeters who gave their personal opinion on the President's speech. Not only were they depressingly familiar - "He lies", "Greatest. President. Ever." - and on and on and on, but they were completely devoid of thought or analysis; they were merely screaming opinions where the only value was pissing off the other side.

On Facebook, I "liked" a page dealing with Bora Bora. Now then, Bora Bora, Moorea, Huahine, etc., are places I've been to many times and love each of them thoroughly. This morning there was a photo of a scene from the "Amazing Race" television show currently filming in Bora Bora (quite stunning; the photo not the show). However, it was the comments that caught my eye. Usually, the comments are oooh's and ahhhh's but this time one poster complained that it diminished the ambiance and feel of Bora Bora (like the hoopla when Kim Kardashian went there) by turning the tropical paradise into a mere backdrop for mindless reality shows. What followed was quite a thread of angry responses, name calling, demands the poster leave, and other instant knee-jerk responses. So much anger and so much vitriol it looked more like a political discussion thread.

In the classic 1966 surf film "The Endless Summer" the surfers are in Australia and when they went to a beach with no surf that day the locals would repeatedly say, "Ya' should've been here yesterday." Of course, that doesn't help the current situation, but the refrain helps frame the forward movement of time.  The feeling is that what was is usually gone and it was somehow better than the current situation. Perhaps it is a merely a blend of nostalgia and the fact that what you once enjoyed has changed. I imagine all of us can point to places in our lives that we once enjoyed and now have changed. Amusement parks, camping areas, beaches, the quaint B&B we discovered that is now over-priced, and all the images and impressions of our past that have moved on.

Back to Bora Bora. I was there recently and it had changed dramatically from my first time there in 1975. Back then (in 1975), the Hotel Bora Bora was the only real hotel on the island (no air conditioning, no TV) but it was bliss. The motus and the reef were places to visit but no hotels were there. Now, the Hotel Bora Bora is undergoing an upgrade (but it has been closed for a very, very long time) and the resorts are mostly built on the motus or off of the reef. Vaitape, the main village, was once a coral road harbor town with a few restaurants and businesses. Now, it has banks and shops and paved roads and is quite crowded when the cruise ships hit port.

The same changes - paved roads, more hotels, more crowds, etc. - are on most of the islands and are decidedly different than the past. The Moorea resort where my wife and I had our honeymoon in 1981 changed significantly in 30+ years...it is still beautiful and the amenities were certainly upgraded (TV's, air-conditioning; no mosquito coils to burn). It was different, but wonderful nonetheless.

Looking at the issue from a longer view can, perhaps, help those angst-ridden folks who bemoan the past and the changes over time. The Bora Bora of 2013 is certainly different than my Bora Bora of 1975. The Bora Bora of 1975 was different than when James Michener went there during World War II. It was different when Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall went there in the 1910's and 1920's. It was unrecognizably different when Bougainville (1768) and Cook (1769) went there. When the Maoris and other Polynesian explorers landed there in ancient times, yes, it was of course different.

Different does not mean worse...just different. I will still go to and completely enjoy Bora Bora (although ya' should have here 40 years ago!) and the other major islands for what they are today and you can too. Or, perhaps even better for you adventurous types, rather than complain (and tweet, comment, whatever) try someplace less travelled like Fakarava (a low island northeast of Tahiti of exquisite beauty and no crowds), the Cook Islands, and other less-traveled places. Have you been to - or even heard of - Maupiti (west of Bora Bora) or Maiao (southwest of Moorea)?

Try those places today and then you can say to future travelers (politely of course): ya' should've been here last year.

Noa Noa

Paul Gauguin's opening paragraph from his Tahitian journal: Noa Noa.

"On the eighth of June, during the night, after a sixty-three days' voyage, sixty-three days of feverish expectancy, we perceived strange fires, moving in zigzags on the sea. From the somber sky a black cone with jagged indentions became disengaged. We turned Morea and had Tahiti before us."

Although this translation (French to English by an unattributed translator) doesn't appear to contain the lyrical nature of en français, Gauguin's observations (it is unlikely he meant to literally say 'indentions became disengaged') does describe his introduction to Tahiti in 1891.

In Papeete, the French colonial capital, Gauguin noted the same bureaucratic excesses that helped induce him to flee from France.   Thirty years later, Nordhoff and Hall noted the same bureaucratic regulations and lethargy (not with the same depth of angst). Gauguin could be forgiven if he expressed the traveler's dilemma of finding some of the same annoyances one left behind, whether commercial or governmental.

Nevertheless, Noa Noa is a fine look at rural Tahiti in the 1890's. Over the next year (or so), I will translate the journal myself and why not? J'aime la langue française et en Polynésie française.

-
Quoted source: Gauguin, Paul. Noa Noa: The Tahitian Journal. New York: Classic Books America, 2009. Print.

An older post...but worth revisiting.

"There is a saying that a man who has once lived in the South Seas can never be happy elsewhere; that sooner or later he is bound to return and end his days in the islands. There may be some truth in this idea; on that day, at least, I found it impossible to dismiss the South Pacific from my thoughts ... I could close my eyes and see the long rollers tumbling and smoking on the reefs of Iriatai; see the bright blue ocean, swept by the trade wind, stretching far off to the horizon without land in sight; hear the hum of the same wind in the tops of the palms that line the beach, and smell the odor of pandanus blossoms."

-Charles Nordhoff (1887-1947)

A Tahitian Tale...

Of the two writers who lived, loved, and explored French Polynesia and collaborated on The Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy - James Norman Hall and Charles Nordhoff - I seem to resonate more with Nordhoff. Now, both were exceptionally lyrical and evocative writers of the South Seas during the 1910's and 1920's, but for me Nordhoff's writing is slightly more romantic and Hall's a bit more prosaic.

This is not a criticism as I devour Hall's writings with great love and enjoyment. His autobiography, My Island Home, is a wonderful exploration of a writer's path. Perhaps this (very subtle) bias is due to my favorite book of all time (yes, I rediscovered it decades later) which was Nordhoff's The Pearl Lagoon. This was the seminal book of a life-long love of the South Seas for me. I read it when I was nine-years old and now, as I approach 60, it still is my favorite.

In the non-fictional account of Hall's and Nordhoff's travels in the South Seas - Faery Lands of the South Seas - where they explore and write about both the high islands and atolls alike, they paint exquisitely beautiful views of life in this tropical paradise. It is far more than a travelogue as the stories draw the reader in and we can feel the warm nights and hear the trade winds rustling the palm fronds while the moon shimmers across the lagoon.

As an example, here is the opening paragraph to Nordhoff's short-story "Tahitian Tales" from the Faery Lands of the South Seas book:

"The evening was very warm and still. The sea rumbled faintly on the reef, half a mile offshore, and behind us - above the vague heights of the interior - a full moon was rising. The palms were asleep after their daily tussle with the trade winds - fronds drooping and motionless in silhouette against the sky. We had spread mats on the grass close to the beach; Tehinatu lay beside me, chin propped in her hands - she had been bathing, and her dark hair, still damp, hung in a cloud about her face. Her grandmother, Airima - the woman from Maupiti - sat facings us, cross-legged in the position of her people. Now and then a fish leaped in the lagoon; once, far down the beach, a ripe nut thudded to the earth.

"'If you two like,' said old Airima, 'I will tell you the story of my ancestor....'" 

From there, it is a magical story of Polynesian legend and history and it is completely and thoroughly engaging. Ahhhh.......

Allergies can help your creativity.....

Up at 3:00 a.m. and sneezing mightily. Got the coffee going and began writing. Now, at 5:00 a.m. (PDT), I've got quite a bit of fiction work done, responded to to emails, surfed the social media (my bad), but have ignored the news media as it tends to be repetitive and a downer.

For some people, early mornings (real early) are not do-able: they are night-owls and not early-birds. Curious the avian analogy. It must have something to do with the sound of birds at night and the chorus of birds singing up the dawn. But I digress...

My epiphany this morning has to do with the fact that after a series of thoroughly lung-cleaning sneezes, I was awake and began puttering around the house. Too early to go anywhere - even Starbucks is closed - and too dark to do anything outdoors, just yet. So, I sat down at the computer and figured...why not?

I began writing and taking 'morning notes' to myself. Yes, it began to look like the old and now discredited 'to-do' list but as I wrote it began to expand - creatively - to projects and ideas. So between grabbing Kleenex and the occasional sneeze, I found my list to be far more a brainstorming activity than a plodding 'gotta-do-this-stuff-today' list.

Perhaps that was the crux of the epiphany. I couldn't really do anything yet (at 3:00 my noise-making options were limited by the proximity of my sleeping family!) and so there wasn't the pre-set sense of obligatory chores and duties. Rather, ideas and concepts began expanding quickly and the pages (yes, multiple) of previously unimagined ideas (a Tahitian sailing outrigger could be built in my garage and then sailed on Whiskeytown Lake!) became quite within the realm or reality.

Now, to be sure, some of the ideas might look, later, like those notes some write after waking from a dream that sounds good at the time but is gibberish and impractical. But...there may be those that can be massaged or manipulated into a new direction.

The great Sufi poet Rumi had a poem that (as it is starting to get light outside) where the sentiment is valuable regardless of allergies or one's one enjoyment of early mornings:

"The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep."

Yes...listen to the secrets on the breeze and write down those early morning creative thoughts!

Anonymous Curse on Book Thieves....

The following quote was supposedly found in the Monastery of San Pedro in Barcelona Spain. Its provenance is suspect, but it so reflects the feelings of those who foolishly loan out books only to never see them again that it is worth sharing:

"For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not this book from its owner, let it change into serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails...and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of hell consume him forever."

The moral is...don't loan out your books and don't be a book thief.

I think they were writing about me....

"In the days when a line of schooners ran from San Francisco to Tahiti, touching at the Marquesas on the way, he felt a call to the South Seas, and shipped for a round trip before the mast. When he returned to San Francisco a change seemed to have come over him; the old wandering life had lost its charm - had gone flat and stale.

"Like many another, he had eaten of the wild plantain unaware. The evenings of carousal ashore no longer tempted him; even the long afternoons of reading (for reading has always been this curious fellow's chief delight), stretched on his bed in a sailor's boarding house, had lost their flavor - the print blurred before his eyes, and in its place he saw lands of savage loveliness rising from a warm blue sea; shadowy and mysterious valleys, strewn with the relics of a forgotten race; the dark eyes of a girl in Tai-o-Hae."

 - A Memory of Mauke, short story by James Norman Hall and Charles Bernard Nordhoff (c. 1920)

Free eBook on May 10th! Thanks, Amazon.com!

Just in time for summer reading! FREE eBook on Thursday, May 10th!

Amazon.com and I are offering my crime analysis 'murder mystery' eBook - "Lawyercide: A Crime Analysis Novel" - for *FREE* on *Thursday*, May 10th!

If you have a Kindle (or Kindle enabled device) you can download the book for free. Good price, 'eh? If you have any questions, please contact me.

As near to the edge...

“My life is like a stroll on the beach...as near to the edge as I can go.”

-Thoreau (1817-1862)

Teavaro, Moorea (c) Dennis Kessinger 2011

No fixed plans...

"A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving." -Lao Tzu

Beach at Teavaro, Moorea (c) 2011 Dennis Kessinger

I am a nesomaniac....and proud of it.

At last! My lifelong and quite delicious affliction has been defined: nesomania.

As a toddler and child, I would go to the beaches of southern California with my parents and play in the sand and the shore-break. When I was nine-years old, or so, I read The Pearl Lagoon by Charles Nordhoff and fell in love with the lyrical descriptions of Polynesia. The sequel to that tale, The Derelict was also devoured. As I grew older, I remember looking offshore to Catalina Island ('26 miles across the sea...') and wanting to travel there.

Listening to my Dad talk of his travels in the Navy throughout the Pacific just prior to World War II and his living in Hawaii just before Pearl Harbor, further inflamed by wanderlust for the tropics. I went to Catalina Island with the Sea Scouts every weekend in my teenage summer-years and later sailed there on my own sloop. I was often teased that I had salt-water instead of blood in my veins.

My first tropical adventure was when I flew to Hawaii (too young to rent a car, I had to take a bus or walk everywhere, I didn't mind at all!). Later, it was off to French Polynesia and the islands of Tahiti, Moorea, and Bora Bora. Then, living on the Big Island of Hawaii and multiple trips to French Polynesia followed.

Now, all these years later...my obsession has been defined:

Nesomania: an obsession with islands.

It is a most pleasant addiction.

Quite islands....

"Quiet islands on the tossing seas of life." -S.W. Duffield

Wise words...

Very wise words discovered while looking up something else:

You don't have to attend every argument you're invited to.

My novel is now an eBook!

My first book – Lawyercide: A Crime Analysis Novel - is NOW an eBook and it is available for only $3.99 on Amazon.com!!

It is in the Kindle format (and it can be read by other e-readers if you have the Kindle app loaded).

The book description is:

“A judge dies in a sailing accident. A deputy district attorney drowns while scuba diving. Another judge is lost at sea and a public defender dies while surfing. These 'accidents' attract the attention of crime analyst Lynn Summers and detective sergeant Ian Weatherstone of the Torrey Pines Police Department. Are they accidents...or is a serial killer working in the upscale beach community of Torrey Pines?

“The civilian crime analyst and the battle-worn cop combine their skills and discover a web of intrigue that includes the local law school, a released sex offender, and even a member of their own department.”

If you’re interested, just go to Amazon.com and in the search box, type: lawyercide

And more good news: if you would rather read a printed book version, there will be a NEW print edition coming out in just a few weeks.

If you would like more information, just let me know.

Tropical Trivia of Tahiti - September 1914

Tropical trivia for the day:

From the 'La Depeche Tahiti' (the Tahiti daily newspaper): "Depuis plus de deux ans, le service des archives de la mairie de Papeete a entrepris un travail de mémoire sur le bombardement de Papeete, en septembre 1914, par deux navires de guerre allemands,..."

Basically, the Germans in WWI shelled Papeete to steal the coal piles (a rare and valued commodity in the South Pacific) needed to operate their warships. The French destroyed the coal first but the Germans sank a freighter and a small French warship. It actually had an impact on the German fleet in the Pacific for a) not getting the coal, and b) using up a lot of ordnance that was needed later.

The things one learns while looking up something else...

A most delightful net....

“The Sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.”  

-Jacques Cousteau (1910-1997)

Bora Bora Rainbow (c) Dennis Kessinger, 2012

Bound to return....

"There is a saying that a man who has once lived in the South Seas can never be happy elsewhere; that sooner or later he is bound to return and end his days in the islands. There may be some truth in this idea; on that day, at least, I found it impossible to dismiss the South Pacific from my thoughts ... I could close my eyes and see the long rollers tumbling and smoking on the reefs of Iriatai; see the bright blue ocean, swept by the trade wind, stretching far off to the horizon without land in sight; hear the hum of the same wind in the tops of the palms that line the beach, and smell the odor of pandanus blossoms."

-Charles Nordhoff (1887-1947)

Nordhoff, Charles. The Derelict. Boston: Little Brown &, 1928. 5-6. Print.

Green leaves and checkered shadows....

"The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind, And make a checkered shadow on the ground."

 -William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus

Bora Bora (c) Dennis Kessinger 2011

Every morning is glorious....

"Full many a glorious morning have I seen."

-William Shakespeare, Sonnet 33

Bora Bora sunrise (c) Dennis Kessinger 2012

Champagne shore....

"This champagne shore washing over me
It's a sweet sweet life living by the salty sea
One day you could be as lost as me
Change you're geography
Maybe you might be." -Zac Brown Band, "Knee Deep"

Kessinger's Beach (north of Eureka CA) (c) Dennis Kessinger 2012

Seeing her riches....

"In those vernal seasons of the year, when the air is calm and pleasant, it were an injury and sullenness against Nature not to go out and see her riches, and partake in her rejoicing with heaven and earth."

-John Milton (1608-1674) "Tractate on Education"

Bora Bora (c) 2011 Dennis Kessinger

"Tahiti, Moorea, Bora Bora, or the lagoon islands of the Tuamotu Group...'The Dangerous Archipelago' these latter are often called, and so they are, high and low islands alike: dangerous indeed to the man who enters the invisible circle of the enchantment, hoping to escape again."

-James Norman Hall (1887-1951)

Bora Bora (c) Dennis Kessinger 2011

Rainbow on Bora Bora.....

"The atmosphere breathes rest and comfort."

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), 'Masque of Pandora'

Bora Bora, Society Islands. (c) Dennis Kessinger, 2012

Beautiful Isle of the Sea!

"Beautiful Isle of the sea!
Smile on the brow of the waters!
Dear are your mem'ries to me;
Sweet as the songs of your daughters,
Over your mountains and vales,
Down by each murmuring river,
Cheer'd by the flow'r-loving gales.
O could I wander for ever!"

-George Cooper  (1837-1927)

Bora Bora, Society Islands (c) Dennis Kessinger

Fortunate isle.....

"Fortunate isle, the abode of the blest."

-Virgil (70 - 19 BCE), Aeneid

Or...as they say in Tahitian: "Te nehenehe e!" (How beautiful it is!)

Tahiti, as seen from Moorea

Liquid light....

"Sparkling and bright in liquid light."

-Charles Fenno Hoffman (1806-1884) "Sparkling and Bright"

A Fall morning in Bora Bora

A wonderful day ahead....

I've found that if you go outside at sunrise and say to yourself, "Something wonderful will happen today," you'll be right.

A Moorea morning, Teavaro, French Polynesia

The daylight that awakens him....

"He sings aloud to the clear blue sky, and the daylight that awakens him."

Hartley Coleridge (1796-1849), "Song"

Watching the Sunrise at Teavaro, Moorea, French Polynesia

Like jewels in a jaspar cup...

"Imagination gathers up the undiscovered universe, like jewels in a jasper cup."

-John Davidson, (1857-1909) "There Is a Dish to Hold the Sea"

Standing on a bed of crushed coral, in a foot of warm lagoon water, at Teavaro.

Being Diffident....

Years ago, in grade school, I had a teacher tell me I was "diffident" when it came to oral presentations, such as book reports. Diffident means "modest or shy because of lack of self-confidence." (For those of you who know me, I have certainly overcome my diffidence!)

Recently, I looked it up on my online dictionary and found this use-it-in-a-phrase description, which I find compellingly accurate for me then, as well as now: "Underneath his diffident exterior was a passionate temperament."

It is better to speak of palm trees....

Today I'm in Redding, California, and the temperature right now (7:00 a.m. PST) is a balmy 18-degrees F. Yes, 18-degrees F, that's the truth. Also right now, at 5:00 a.m. Tahiti time, in Papeete it is 77-degrees F...at 5:00 in the morning. 77-degrees F!!! And that, too, is the truth.

It is times like these, that I recall the old proverb:

"It is good to know the truth, but it is better to speak of palm trees."

All pleasant fruits do grow....

"A heavenly paradise is that place, wherein all pleasant fruits do grow."

-Thomas Campion (1567-1620) "Cherry-Ripe"

...and breadfruit and coconuts.

Asleep in the afternoon sunshine....

"Time has fallen asleep in the afternoon sunshine."

-Alexander Smith (1830-1867), "Dreamthorp"

Music to the lonely ear....

"And gentle winds, and waters near, make music to the lonely ear."

-Lord Byron (1788-1824), "Parisina"

Teavaro, Moorea

Of course I love the beach!

“Play in the sand; splash in the water; get dirty; get wet. The beach is the only place my mom doesn’t get mad about me doing that stuff. Of course I love the beach!”

-Anonymous child to interviewer.

Brothers at Teavaro, Moorea. April 2011.

Messing about in boats....

"There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

-Water Rat (Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows)

It is very close....

"For those who can dream, there is no such place as faraway."

-Anonymous

The Great Cloud Continents of the Sunset Seas

"Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows in yonder West: the fair, frail palaces, the fading Alps and archipelagoes, and the great cloud-continents of the sunset-seas."

-Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907), "Miracles"

If You Can't Go on Adventure Now...You CAN prepare for it!

From the preface of Charles Nordhoff's The Pearl Lagoon:

"I know the islands fairly well - white man and native; skipper, trader, and pearl diver; the sea, the lagoons, the small and lonely bits of land; and I can vouch for the genuineness of the story's atmosphere. As for the story itself, there is nothing in it which as not happened, or might not happen today - for Romance, like the sea itself, is ever old and ever new." C.N., Tahiti, 1924

(I'm temporarily laid up after an adventurous event, but am using the 'down' time for armchair adventures...most delightful!)

New Adventures Await!

"Oh, yesterday's over my shoulder
So I can't look back for too long
There's just too much to see waiting in front of me
And I know that I just can't go wrong." 

-Jimmy Buffett, "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes"

 2012 will be a great year!

 

A Brother to Ulysses

"There is nothing like lying flat on your back on the deck, alone except for the helmsman aft at the wheel, silence except for the lapping of the sea against the side of the ship. At that time you can be equal to Ulysses and brother to him." - Errol Flynn (1909-1959)

Once seen...forever in your heart.

“Each day at dawn the air cooled and freshened; presently the sky to the east began to pale, the little clouds on the horizon grew luminous with rosy light, and the sun appeared above the rim of the sea, a disk of dazzling brightness, glaring like burnished brass. The sunsets, on evenings when masses of cloud were piled along the western sky, were still more beautiful. Long after the sun had sunk beyond the slope of the world the clouds were tinted with opal and rose, and pierced by lofty shafts of golden light.”

-'The Pearl Lagoon' by Charles Nordhoff (1887-1947).

Going, going, gone.....troppo.

I've renamed my blog from "Of Stones and Starlings" to the more heart-felt and wild-eyed quote from Paul Gauguin: "I am going to Tahiti and hope to finish my life there." 

"Going troppo" is the South Sea specific of the broader "Going native" and both reflect how the exotic can find its way into one's spirit and take hold.

When I was in grade school, I would sail, surf and hang out on the beaches of southern California. I was also a voracious reader and I read a book (I was around 11 or 12 years old, I think) called The Pearl Lagoon by Charles Nordhoff (of the Nordhoff/Hall Mutiny on the Bounty fame).

"A cruise on the Tara in the South Seas—a quest for pearls in a tropical lagoon—indeed, the prospect was enough to intoxicate any boy of fifteen. Iriatai! There was magic in the word alone, and I repeated it under my breath while the older people about me spoke of commonplace things." -'The Pearl Lagoon' by Charles Nordhoff (1887-1947)

This book set in motion a life-long love of the South Seas. I've owned two sailboats, surfed, scuba'd, and lived in Hawai'i for a time. But Tahiti and her islands have always been so special. I've been to French Polynesia many times over the years and now go back often.

I am following in the sea-wake of many artists, dreamers, poets, and writers who found the languid lagoons to be the respite long sought and finally found. As Paul Gauguin wrote:"I am going to Tahiti, and hope to finish my life there."

For me, it is the island of Moorea (about 10 miles west of Tahiti) in the Society Islands...I am going to Moorea, and hope to finish my life there.

Teavaro, Island of Moorea, Society Islands

'Twas almost the night before Christmas...

♫♪ I'm dreaming of a white sand Christmas. ♫♪