The Sinking Islands

5. Flight

Eventually the day to take off had come around. I crammed the bare essentials into a single suit-case: four school notebooks, a disposable camera, one change of clothing, toiletries, the official compendium, the information pamphlet, and an old copy of James Joyce's Ulysses, which I'd tried and failed to read who knows how many times before. Then I scribbled on my refrigerator-door a note to say that I was away working and not killing myself. I caught a shuttle to the airport and when I got there I checked in and watched all the people coming and going.  I thought of times when I was younger and I used to ask friends and family to pick me and send me off too.

After a smooth transition, from 32437 feet in the air I waved goodbye to my country and tried to settle in for three and a half hours with my good friend James Joyce.  (His short story collection Dubliners is one of my favourite books; if you haven't read it yourself I won't spoil it, but please do read it, and read it front to back in a single sitting.  It's all related and it's all beautiful.) In Ulysses, I was watching James Joyce's character shaving himself, and then I realised that the brunette beside me was too pretty to ignore. She was already dressed for the islands, with sandals, a light floral dress, and big bug-eyed amber sunglasses. Her name was Taylor and she said was heading to the islands with her friends (who she then pointed out around the plane) for one of her friend's, Lauretta's, wedding.  She took off her glasses and I couldn't complain.  She herself was the second bridesmaid, she said, but that didn't bother her one bit.  I shared with her the beauty of William Faulkner and the 'sport' of Pearl Diving, pointing out my favourite competitors from the pamphlet. Taylor tried to put me onto some sort of modern indie rap-group called Deathgrips.  Listening to her iPod I tried to nod and smile, but I couldn't hear a rhythm or a melody; I felt old when I realised that that probably wasn't the point to the music.  Maybe it was a generational thing, even if she was only four years younger, but I still don't get the point. Yet, there she was a young girl with young friends and they were all getting married.  What a kick.

Anyway, time flies when you're talking to someone you know you'll never meet again, so before I knew it the pressure was dropping in my head as we careened down into the island of Rarotonga.  From the window-seat the island looked as idyllic as it did in the many pictures I had plastered on my wall back home.  In the centre, the mountain peaks rose covered in dense shrubbery where no person would ever bother to walk.  On the edge, resorts and road and houses gave way to a light blue ring of shallows that ran around the entire island.  I promised Taylor beside me that the first thing I'd do would be to wade out as far into those shallows as I could and she laughed. I held my seat tightly and we landed without all dying.  When we stepped off the plane it was humid.  I hadn't booked a guide so after Taylor introduced me to her friends, I checked my luggage and bid them all farewell.  I was headed to the eastern part of the island, to the town of Avarua, and they were headed to a resort on the western end where the marriage waited.  Seeing the girl standing there with her friends waving, with a dress that tapers to her body in the unmoved airport air, with eyes that long minutely, knowing that her weekend will be filled with as much interest as my own but in a different way, thinking that maybe she'll find new love with one of her old friends or an island boy or a foreigner who'd come to party too--all these thoughts flooded in as they always do, and in the past I might have mulled for days or years, but in my travels I had met a million different Taylors--just as beautiful--and I knew that there would be a million more.  I walked out of the air-conditioned airport and the humidity punched me again.  I walked passed the shuttles that take tourists to their destination.  I thought I'd get a better picture of the island on foot.  As I said I would, at the first sign of a beach (which on an Island, meant right away) I ran down to the ocean.  In the spirit of Hubert Faltone from old, without taking off my jeans, I left my single suit case on the sand and I walked as far into the sea as my legs would take me.  I didn't get very far. The plane ride had been deceiving, and the water wasn't as shallow as I'd thought.