4 posts tagged “bora bora”
I still don't have the wherewithal (best word ever, btw) to compose the masterpiece "Bora Bora: A Retrospective". I'm using the return to tummy normalcy as an indicator of when enough time has passed for that undertaking.
Meanwhile, The Pigeon has some storage concerns that are preventing us from processing and posting an album of all 300 some-odd photos. In the interim, I've posted some highlight photos on Flickr. Note that if you view as a slide show, you will miss all of my startlingly helpful explanatory text.
Also still to come: some little videos of turtle-feeding, "sand" doves, and hip-shaking that would even make the mighty Shakira (Shakira!) take notice...
I've just managed to force myself to sit down after twenty solid minutes of pacing around my apartment like an insane person. This wasn't aimless pacing per se -- I very much wanted to do one of the eight thousand things there are to do around here -- but picking a task and sticking to it proved impossible. My mind was like an agitated fly, settling on something for just a moment before taking off to haphazardly land on something else. I fear that nothing will be accomplished tonight.
My apartment looks like a wedding bomb exploded in it, followed shortly thereafter by a smaller travel bomb. The debris is substantial, to say the least: a backlog of mail, unused Hefty ziplock baggies, a heating pad, leftover wedding favors, a guest book, a mostly-empty shopping bag from Edward's Luggage, a half-unpacked suitcase, a crumpled dress shirt, a damp case of assorted booze, a stack of partially-opened gift boxes, a still-pristine (because Richard, not I, read it) copy of Shadow of the Hegemon, bits of ribbon, a souvenir DVD that our DVD player won't play, a list of owed thank-yous, a shell lei snaked around the handle of a 2007 Semantic Technology Conference bag ... and this is just what I can see from where I'm sitting at the kitchen table.
I feel softer than I have in a great long while (not using softer as a euphemism for fatter, though while we're on the topic I did eat like pig right up until the moment I couldn't keep any food in me). After leaving it behind for only a week, my life seems daunting and unnecessarily hard. I'm not sure how I go about doing the things I normally do, how I handle them all, or if I'm cut out for any of it. Granted, now is not the best time for such weighty considerations. It's my first hour apart from my new husband in over a week, and my first full day back from my honeymoon in the South Pacific. I've been away from the office for two weeks. The events I just spent the past four months planning are over, and everything I put off during that time is waiting at my front door. I suppose I should give myself the space to feel a bit spacey.
So I decided to sit down, eat a bowl of Simple Chicken soup from Zao Noodle Bar, and think about things. First, I thought about how the Simple Chicken dish seems to have gotten a bit more complicated. And by "a bit more complicated" I mean "with fatty and gristly weird chicken bits in it". Perhaps I'm hypersensitive given my tender tummy, but the eating was replaced with idle poking nonetheless.
In the past, I've spent a lot of time marveling at how resilient people are. We can take so much -- much more than we imagine we can take -- and we often emerge stronger and better for it. It's an easy observation lacking in any profundity, but I've always been stricken by it nonetheless. Today I noticed the somewhat the murkier counterpart instead: just how vulnerable we are, and how little it takes to shake us out of our comfortable, complacent spots in the world. All it took was a beautiful wedding, an idyllic vacation, a messy house, and a messier stomach bug to utterly incapacitate this once capable woman, and send her, cowering, to her little blog.
This time in a week, I won't even be able to imagine why it was so... and had I not decided to write about it, eventually I would have forgotten completely. I still might, in fact. I'm trying really hard not to put it all under a lens, because by the time I've looked at it closely enough, whatever I see won't matter... even to me.
Alas, it is our last day in Bora Bora. True to form and infected to my toes with "the human condition", I've been staring wistfully at the crystal blue water and the fantastically awesome Mount Otemanu thinking that I just might miss this place. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: at our hearts, we are in love with wanting.
The blustery day has turned into a blustery fortnight. While the wind is tropical and lovely, it's also bossy and relentless. As we were making our way to the front desk to check out, a strong gust whipped Richard's straw hat right off his head and into the lagoon.
"Oh no! My hat!" he bellowed as he stood clutching his now naked head. It was a lovely San Francisco hat from Fino Fino, and it served him very well throughout this trip. As we watched it float away and gradually begin to sink, we decided it was better this way. For years to come, we will write lovely stories about the fate of the hat (home to a grouper? collected by a poor sunburned fisherman?)
In the meantime, have a 40 ounce Hinano, and pour some out for our fallen homie...
Day 5 in paradise. I persevere.
Call us ungrateful sods if you like, but the fact of the matter is that my hubby and I are ready to come home. We miss ugly roads riddled with traffic, impolite people with a mysterious sense of entitlement, tandem laptopping, Mexican food, Mexican people (or more accurately, a modicum of diversity), constant connection to the Internets, squirrels, being dry, barely dodging the pointy insults of our friends... you get the idea.
Being in a microcosm of tourism in the middle of the Pacific Ocean does things to you. I want it to be like the original Return to Paradise or Blue Lagoon or whatever, but it's currently feeling more like Lord of the Flies or The Beach. I'm covered in bug bites, I haven't been completely dry in 4 days, I'm constantly dehydrated, and if I have to eat one more piece of fruit, I think I might kill someone. I've gone from feeling mildly abashed in my Americanism to wanting to thwart all the subtle elegance and refinement of the French and Japanese tourists (still formulating a good plan for that, but I suspect hogging this communal computer to write a whiny blog post is a fine start). Our poorly-insulated bungalow is loudly windswept all day and all night, making it difficult to sleep and impossible to feel tranquil. Were it not for the lovely company, I'd be completely miserable.
I've found myself thinking about The Tao of Steve, where Steve points out that "doing stuff is overrated". I would point out that not doing stuff is also overrated. I long for stuff, and stuff that needs doing.
To add insult to injury, I ate an entire cheesy pizza for lunch yesterday. I have no idea where my sanity had gone (though recall that this isolation does things to you). I suffered so cruelly and absolutely last night. As Richard begrudgingly headed off for a solo dinner, I was doubled over in pain on our bed with the worst stomach cramps I've ever had. Shortly thereafter, I purged the entire contents of my stomach. This was a slow, drawn-out process that lasted several hours. I'm sure it was the romantic culmination of Richard's life as he watched his wife sprint back and forth between the bathroom and the deck, ridding herself of the evil pizza poison in every foul manner imaginable. I couldn't even keep water down.
I'm just thankful I didn't need to get flown to the hospital. That's right. Flown... in a helicopter. Because there are no hospitals on this island. Return to Paradise indeed. Take me home!
