Friday, 7 April 2023, morning // Paris. Where the wild things are
5:49 AM
Paris
Sitting here looking at the lights of London, as the full moon is about an hour from dropping beyond the western horizon. There’s a glow to the east, a faint peach color, highlighting the silhouette of pale, gray-purple clouds.
It’s the brightness of the moon that still creates my shadow that reaches toward the coming dawn.
I look across the three mile channel from ocean to lagoon, toLondon, see the lights, three of them at the cargo pier cluster of lights in the middle, two lights at the eastern point near the old port. I know what London already sounds like at this time of day, morning starting to break. Roosters are calling. Motorcycle engines are starting, someone, somewhere still has music playing. Day begins.
The tones here in Paris offer stark, utter contrast. The only sound is the ever-present easterly winds rustling through coconut palm fronds, nothing more.
The tide is full, and only when one moves towards the water, thirty yards away, can one hear the gentle lapping of steel-blue water against sand. Looking westward, if you know where, you can see the breakers, but cannot hear them.
Rosy-fingered dawn is beginning to touch the high cumulus clouds, and looking up the dark silhouette of a frigate bird hovers in spirals. Four terns wend their way north toward Cook Island, their nesting grounds and sanctuary, halfway between Paris and London.
Originally, I had planned to spend three nights on the southern peninsula: a night in Poland, a night here in Paris, a final night in Poland, and then ride back to London on Friday. But after one night in Poland, and then a first night here in Paris, I knew I had to stay in Paris.
It’s the peace, the tranquility, the absolute silence, but for nature. Tonight’s full moon magnifies the beauty a thousandfold. Two nights ago the scene reminded me so much of the artwork from Maurice Sendak’s wonderful book, Where the Wild Things Are, the white of the moon, a bright hole cut in the dark sky, silhouetting banks of palm trees, ethereal color, muted and strange. The scene still reminds me of the book now, on the cusp of dawn, but for the fact that there is no wild rumpus. Not that I don’t enjoy a wild rumpus now and then, but right now I know this serenity will be carried with me for a long time. We carry a lot of things with us, at least some of us do. It’s better when we can carry moments like this and lay down the heavy burdens.
Iou and Tierrebwebwe are still asleep, though it would not be uncommon for them to be awake long before now. They will want to fuss a little and make me breakfast, and I will gently object. They always look forward to sharing meals, and most recently, very pointedly purchased canned corn beef, knowing that I’m not a fan of hermit crab, octopus, sea worm.
I would wager most people reading these words would see this couple as having nothing, living in poverty. The clothes on their back, a few more clothes, pots that look as if they’re from the 18th century, a makeshift workstation table under a worn old awning of coconut frond thatch, a collection of re-purposed plastic containers, a much worn Chinese motorcycle, a small solar panel attached to a battery that attaches to their mobile phone, foam bedding, pillows, this is what they own.
But to ask them (and I did), they want for nothing. “Is there anything you need?” “Nothing!”
They understand where they live — in semi-seclusion at the spit-end of a peninsula of a “desert island,” is special. The love they have for each other is easy to see and appreciate. Their laughter and eagerness to share and teach and talk about anything is as good as it gets.
They are connected. Technology makes it so. When I arrived back to Paris from Poland yesterday, before I even mentioned it, they asked about my using my drone camera, as they had received a call from Tebure the copra trader in Poland, asking if they knew anything about it.
Of course they did, and laughed, and later after our dinner of rice and corned beef and huge cubes of pumpkin cooked in coconut water, I showed them the video, as the drone circled Tabure and his copra yard.
After taking photographs of the rising moon last night, trying to find iconic photographs of palm trees and silhouette, I spy the couple sitting on roughhewn, coconut tree timbers, a faint glow between them.
I chided them for sitting on the stacked lumber, and not on the ground as they usually do. A few years older than Iou, I pointed out it was easier for men of our age to rise from a seated position, as compared to rising from the ground or floor. Of course they both laughed, as laughter seems to be an innate part of their vocabulary. I asked what they were doing, sitting on the trimmed palm trunks, an uncanny glow between them, and I found they were watching a 15 minute news clip of the Russian war against Ukraine. They were unhappy with Russia’s aggression. Spoke of drones carrying bombs. A few times I have heard people here making comments wondering if the United States is going to war with China. While I know that won’t happen, there must be something on the airwaves that makes the locals believe that a possibility. I dissuade them of the idea.
The tranquility was broken my first night here, just around midnight. I heard someone calling to Iou. Raising my head from my makeshift pillow, I could see a man’s moonlit silhouette, leaning toward his hut, calling.
Earlier, while asleep under a new coconut palm thatch roof, I could’ve sworn I’d heard music coming from where I now sit on the huge concrete blocks above the beach, that face London. The blocks once held enormous fuel tanks back in London. In my groggy daze, I imagined people had driven up to the point here from Poland, to appreciate the beauty of the moonlit night. But I was surprised the music was so faint. Based on my experience of London, Tabwakea, Poland, the music would be cranked up. I went back to sleep.
Discussing the surprise guest with Iou and Tierrebwebwe, I learned he is a young man whom I photographed in Poland a couple weeks back, along with his brother and other men. In his early 20s, handsome, slim, tattooed, he didn’t say anything to me at all, but instead very much hovered next to me no matter what I was doing.
Then I saw him when next in Poland, my first night back over on this side of the island, Tuesday night, near the manweaba, as I spoke with Keiti [Kasey]. Keiti and I sat on a raised wooden platform, and watched as he dug in the sand at the foundation with his hands, where he had squirreled something away beneath the concrete slab of the manweaba. Keiti told me he was crazy, that he would steal things from people, breaking into their homes and property.
The night he woke me, calling to Iou, he had walked here from Poland. Under that full moon is just so easy to walk, so easy to see, even though it’s about 6 miles away. It must have been a wonderful stroll, but for what was going through his head. It seems he wanted to go to London and thought Iou could bring him there. But Iou has no boat. Iou stayed with up him for an hour or so before watching him leave, singing to himself. I heard none of this, having fallen back to sleep.
I spoke to Iou about the music I heard, could’ve sworn I had heard earlier, before the midnight interloper arrived. Tierrabwebwe laughed, said it was their music, on their phone. They had it on very low. So as to not bother me.
“What were you listening to,” I asked? “Bob Marley!” said Iou.
I laughed, and told them I appreciate Marley, even got to see him play back at Harvard stadium a year or so before he died.
Bob Marley, a pair of lovers, and seclusion in a tropical paradise called Paris.
It’s almost 6:30am. The dark water has not yet turned the bright and magnificent turquoise of day, but you can tell it’s coming. The whitecaps cannot be seen at the southern tip of Wood Island, where Iou and I snorkeled for an hour and a half yesterday.
High cumulus clouds, still violet. Their crowns, touched with chiffon pinks and traces of magenta, ring the island, ring the lagoon, from the northern peninsula and London, around the almost circular lagoon to the south east and Poland.
But here in Paris, there are no clouds overhead. The moon is a finger and a half over the horizon, full and glorious. The finger and a half means it will set in in about 22 minutes, the width of each finger between sun and horizon equaling about 15 minutes.
The sun is still obscured by high clouds.
The sky above now pale blue, and now that I look out over the expanse of water towards Cook Island, I can see that turquoise water beginning to lighten. The terns are active now, with their chirping squawk.
Everything’s gonna be all right. Everything‘s gonna be all right.
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