I wish I could tell you about the South Pacific. The way it actually was. The endless ocean. The infinite specks of coral we called islands. Coconut palms nodding gracefully toward the ocean.
Reefs upon which waves broke into spray, and inner lagoons, lovely beyond description. I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes, and the waiting. The waiting. The timeless, repetitive waiting." [Continue to read here]
So begins "Tales of the South Pacific" by that masterful story-teller, James A. Michener, who followed it up with "Return to Paradise" and "Rascals in Paradise". They have been my friends and companions since my own days in the South Pacific, and I have re-read them at different stages of my life. The stories never change but my perspective does.
They were my years on sweaty and muddy Bougainville Island where, as Michener wrote, "... pretty soon you hated the man next to you, and you dreaded the look of a coconut tree." As he points out elsewhere, "The South Pacific is not a paradise, in the sense that Eden wasn't either. There are always apples and snakes. But it is a wonderful place to live. ... many white travelers [have been enchanted to] built happy lives. Often on a cool night when the beer was plentiful and the stories alluring, we have envied the men and women of the South Pacific."
Unlike James A. Michener who in the above video clip returned to the island of Espiritu Santo the late 1980s, I will probably never see the islands again but I can read about them and remember. I am a reader not because I don't have a life but because I choose to have many.
