Sunday, 9 April 2023 // Easter / 1st Flight / Frank
3:09 AM
83°
I can’t recall the last time I slept through the night. February?
The fucking dog next-door just won’t shut up. It’s a puppy and it barks incessantly. It’s essentially twenty feet from my bedroom window.
Even if I could ignore the barking, it’s the excruciating pain in my shoulders that won’t let me rest.
About three weeks before I was to fly to Honolulu and begin this little adventure I woke to find a distinct pain in my right shoulder. Like any number of guys, I imagined it would go away, due to some kind of overuse, as I have been doing a lot of tree maintenance on the property chainsaw at chest-level, higher.
By the time I left Texas, the pain had started to move to my left shoulder. I saw an orthopedic surgeon, and figured I could tough it out for a couple months. I left with meds a little stronger than Advil, but none of those have worked.
Sailing south from Honolulu, I was unaware that each passenger had to spend four hours on, and six hours off- — on watch — helming the vessel. The website, of course, in text, photos, and video, presents all the glories of being at sea in the Pacific: sunny days, smiling crew members, diving with tropical fish, aerial shots of glorious tropical landscapes. The only part, the pointedly mentions physical capabilities, is needing to be able to climb a 12 foot vertical ladder upon arrival to this island, at the cargo pier. I could do that.
It’s only after one has paid, committed to the venture, that one receives a PDF outlining a few details. It seems I missed the detail about “watches.”
After five days at sea I had to relinquish my responsibilities at the wheel. One’s four-hour shift at the helm is broken up with a “second,” who takes the wheel for some of that time, as shifts overlap. But one morning, having to rise at 4AM, don my rain gear, life-jacket, the bright yellow watch-camp Robin found at the MFA/Houston, and head up on deck, I just couldn’t do it. The pain was overwhelming. Between whatever was ailing my shoulders and the unanticipated exertion, it was too much.
The exertion: left foot on deck, right leg akimbo 50°, right foot planted and braced against the sloping cockpit wall, hands gripping the four-foot wheel, all while the boat rocks side to side, and back and forth, a giant wave and wind driven elliptical machine. Only exponentially more.
The skipper got on the radio and called their medical expert back in England to see if there were drugs on board that could help. There were, and they did, but only to a slight degree.
Whatever the causes the pain, it is exacerbated when lying flat. I’ve also come to realize that whatever it is, it is also related to the numbness in my left hand. While I’ve had a difficult time making a fist and using that hand, upon waking yesterday, none of my fingers could touch my palm.
Rising at 5AM, by nine, when we left on the boat, my fingers were still bending correctly. Only eight hours after waking was I able to touch a couple of my fingertips to my left palm.
Now, it’s even worse, and my fingertips can’t get within two inches of my palm. Not cool.
Only upon being ambulatory does the pain in the shoulders start to dissipate. On most days I can ignore the residual pain after about three hours. On some days I am bothered by it without respite.
It’s now 3:30 AM and the dog has finally stopped barking. My shoulders ache. Soon enough I’ll crawl back onto my bed, sort of propped up, hoping it helps. I’ll try to fall asleep again, and most likely will.
Then there are the minor maladies. I had put sunblock on my nose and cheeks for the ride from Paris to London that copper nonstop is less than 2 1/2 hours. Of course, I did it in four hours, having additional breaks off, to absorb as much of the environment as possible. Did not apply any more sunblock.
Yesterday on the boat, another five hours without sunblock, though I did try to cover my face with a makeshift bandanna. Now my nose is beginning to blister. Not cool, fool.
To add insult to injury, after dinner, last evening, I was writing on a point on the harbor that looks across to Cook Island, to Paris. As I stood, my bald head hit the tree limb above me, drawing blood. Even the slightest bit of hair, or the thin layer of a bandanna will protect your dome. But without, there are now a couple of cuts atop a sun-burnt head.
I’m not a complainer. Having lived alone for 28 years, you learn to take care of yourself. There’s no one to hear you complaining, your whining, so you do what you can, and move on.
Joe was half my age when he lived here. An athlete his entire life, he was one-time boxing champ of the Atlantic fleet. He reached a point while here, essentially alone, with no one with whom he could converse, where his troubles and concerns would instead be written into the manager’s journal, the daily log logging more than just work activities, adding editorial to fact.
Joe wore glasses, somehow managed to not break or lose some over the years, his eyesight sometimes failing him.
He had difficulties with neuralgia. I had never heard the term until I first read of it in the manager’s journal, about 20 years ago. Ever since, I have not heard the term once in any conversation, or bit of reading. Was he self diagnosed? Was that a blank a term for any number of elements 100 years ago?
At the moment I actually have a slow internet connection, and a quick on-line search reveals this:
Q: What are signs of neuralgia?
A: Nerve pain often feels like a shooting, stabbing or burning sensation. Sometimes it can feel as sharp and sudden as an electric shock. You may be very sensitive to touch or cold. You may also experience pain as a result of touch that would not normally be painful, such as something lightly brushing your skin
Hmmmm. That’s what my left hand feels like, not just the arthritis I thought it was. But the shoulder must await a complete diagnosis when I return to the States.
I haven’t eaten any pain meds in a few weeks, as they haven’t worked, I wolf down two, where only one is advised. Sitting here on the sofa in the dark, I can hear the guy next-door snoring on his kia-kia. He has to be at least 30 feet away, maybe more, as well as outside the house I am in. An hour earlier, he had his radio on.
It’s now 4 AM. The dog shut up about 20 minutes ago. In an hour, the roosters will start. an hour after that, the church bells will start. Today, the world over – but especially here – they honor a guy they say came back from the dead.
Easter on Christmas.
4:05 AM
I was wrong about when the roosters will start.
7:43 AM
People talking nearby in the distance, choirs singing.
______________////|__________________////|____
10:43 AM
At the house in London. Just came back to see who was here. Nobody. I just saw an jet fly overhead at the Catholic mwaneaba. Pretty sure it’s not the Easter bunny. Going to ride to Cassidy Airfield and see what’s up.
______________////|__________________////|____
11:25 AM
Cassidy Field, staring at N750 EC a private jet charted from Honolulu is picking up a couple who had a yacht on the way to Tahiti. The catamaran had to stop on Tabueran/Fanning for repairs. The jet passed directly over my head earlier at the Catholic Mwaneaba. I raced home. No one was there, grab some things and left. I stopped at John Bryden’s as I saw his vehicle was there. We both jumped in that and came here. To our chagrin, the other, I-Matang are already here. Christian Duratete, the Frenchman, who has lived here for 25 years, as well as Canadian Gary Petterson, who has been here for about 30 years, working for the Japanese version of NASA. It was Christian who told me what was happening, that he was able to speak with the “Yachties” for about five minutes before they boarded the plane. No one was aware they were already on this island, having been on Tabuerean for several weeks.
______________////|__________________////|____
Paris, France to London, Kiritimati
4:30 PM
91° in the shade
The phone rang at 3:45pm. I’m certain I can count on one hand how many times my phone has rang in the last month. Ironically, one of those times was just yesterday, when I was so far out in the middle of the lagoon, or the far side of it. When it rang, I was surprised. Of course I was hoping it was Robin, but in fact, it was someone who said “Hello, Mark, I’m with blah blah blah…” I hung up. Junk phone calls in the middle of the Pacific.
The phone rings at 3:45 and I take a quick look at the number and I see it is not Robin, whom I called earlier, leaving her a message. It’s Saturday in Texas and she is either with her family, or on her way to visit them in Austin for Easter. Here, it is Easter and the day is almost over.
The incoming phone number look European and I wonder if it is Frank Rynne, whom I swapped email with recently. Sure enough, it is.
It’s been so long since we last spoke, that his son is now 12 years old. I learn he split up with his son’s mother years ago, he’s now married to a woman whom he has known for 29 years. Good for him! I’m glad he’s content.
I have reached out to Frank, as I know he lives in Paris, and may be able to help me find any remaining members of Fr. Rougier’s family in France.
According to Rougier’s biographer, his great-nephew, the late Paul Boulagnon, Rougier was fond of saying that “he worked for his family.” Meaning, the millions of dollars he acquired which had belonged to a French convict sentenced to jail time in New Caledonia. Rougier then invested in coconut plantations on Washington and Fanning Islands, and then selling both to purchase Christmas island. Additionally he amassed properties on Tahiti. He had been doing for his family.
I don’t know what family remains. Rougier’s niece Berthé, who was remembered fondly in my grandfathers journal when she was maybe 18 and he was 32, and he is remembered in her writings of the Spanish flu in Tahiti. Berthé died in the 1980s. I’ve tasked Frank with tracking somebody down, if it all possible, using the one email address I have for Berthé’s now 80-year-old daughter.
He is game, suggesting he may take a little road trip or excursion to the town where she supposed to live.
I am thankful for that, but this note is really about so much more than that assignment.
Frank may be a decade younger than me. He was born in Ireland, played in his share of Post-punk bands, and later found himself joined at the hip with the Master Musicians of Joujouka, Morocco‘s preeminent ensemble. They have existed . . . Well, let’s just say they trace their roots back at least 800 years.
The first album released on the Rolling Stones’ record label, which came out in 1969, was “The Pipes of Pan,” by the Master Musicians.
A series of field recordings done in the foothills of the Rif mountains in Morocco, they were recorded by Rolling Stone founder and guitarist Brian Jones. I first became aware of that music in the early 1980s on the Boston College radio station, WZBC, which had a program of a wonderful mix of north African and Middle Eastern music.
In the spring of 2008, I found myself on the road somewhere between Genoa and Nice when my phone rang. It was Marlon Richards, son of Keith, and Anita Pallenberg. Long story of how we be friended each other, that is completely irrelevant here. Marlon was calling to invite me to join him and his mother for the 40th anniversary of that album’s release. His mom had been dating Jones at the time, and was to be a special guest.
There may only have been 20 of us, that were not from the village, so I guess we were all special guests. I was one of the two Americans. Marlon couldn’t make it, as he learned his wife had a newborn on the way.
I met organizer and manager Frank, after taking a train south from Tangier, in a town an hour west of the hamlet of Joujouka. This was the first time a group of Westerners has been invited specifically for such an event. Guests stayed in the homes of individual families, no hotels, no luxuries.
Frank and I hit it off, as we had both played in post-punk bands, both had an affinity for history, and an affinity for literature, especially of American author, Cormac McCarthy. I believe Frank was then writing his Masters thesis on McCarthy. I later sent him a poster featuring McCarthy, I’d designed for Texas Writers Month.
Then, as today, he was living in Paris. I reached out to Frank in 2020. Asked him did he know someone who could translate several pages in French for me? The result with meeting Dr. Sylvie Kleinman, currently of Dublin, with a PhD in French literature. It was Sylvie who translated the first dozen pages of the Pacific Cocoanut Plantation Company, LTD, manager’s journal, now in my possession.
While the first several pages are by Fr. Rougier himself, many of the following pages were written by Malinowski, the company’s first manager, and although Polish, he could write in French.
It was a revelation, reading that translation, as the first few sentences revealed actual numbers of which I had often wondered. I had no idea how many people worked on the island, were here before Rougier, had been hired as contract labor, or who else accompanied my grandfather. Sixty workers came ashore, half Chinese and half “Tahitian.”
I place the word Tahitian in quotes as the workers have always been referred to as Tahitian, in any literature I have seen, whether it was the journal, or newspaper accounts of my grandfathers marooning, all workers are referred to as Tahitians. Never once are Chinese mentioned in printed English.
But were they Tahitian? That’s why the word is in quotes. Within days of showing my grandfathers photo albums here I’m told those people in the photos could be from the Gilbert Islands – I Kiribati – and there is even a photograph caption, mentioning a family from the Gilberts. Peter Edwards, an I Kiribati native, suggests the haircuts seen on several men are very much I Kiribati, as are the costumes of what we have come to know as “hula dancers.” I’m told other cultures appropriated the dance.
I’m also told the workers could be from the Cook Islands or other islands, some of which were known for contract labor. That’s when I surmised though they were all hired on Tahiti, they may not have been Tahitian. It would be the equivalent of saying someone hired 30 Californians, when half were from anywhere else across the United States.
As one may expect, having more context now, being able to understand words, written in French for some future reading, adds a profound level of insight.
Now, Frank is again pulled into my orbit. First, finding an able translator, and now on the hunt for a living family member. Our conversation is effortless, and I feel invigorated, speaking to one intellectually and culturally curious. He tells me I sound young, but then tells me it may be that I also sound happy.
Yes, that is true, I am happy, but it’s also because we have been discussing the right wing politics of Vichy, France during WWII (and Rougier’s leanings), the Communist bent of French resistance fighters, who by definition, were of the left.
I bring up the Spanish Civil War, how the nationalist Republicans were fighting an international group who opposed Fascism, including both American and Irish Legions. Frank notes that Shane MacGowan, of the Irish band The Pogues, was always pleased to know he had a family affiliation with Frank and their mutual family member who was in the Irish Legion.
More important than all of that is Frank’s astute observation of exactly what I am doing here, starting first with a family connection, then tying into a connection that is not only about a culture, but its place in the world, with some aspects so much the same as 100 years ago and then so many radically different. How poverty and global warming and TikTok all tie in with the fabric of family and faith, of Globalism.
As an Irishman, Frank help can’t help but be steeped in what colonialism does to a country.
As an Irishman — a man of letters, and of stories — he appreciates I am tackling the subject with words and images. As a musician, he appreciates I am doing when I can to capture audio. He understands and he encourages.
And that my friends, is what I believe we are all seeking. Understanding and encouragement. And love. Before he hangs up, Frank, a man whom I’ve only hung out with for a week or so, whom I’ve only spoken to a few times, only swapped several emails, shares his love for me.
Understanding, encouragement, and above all, love.
Happy Easter, from your atheist friend.
5:58 PM
Church bells, ringing.
______________////|__________________////|____