S. Jacques Stratton's Blog, page 3
December 5, 2019
A Plug for My Children's Book!
Inspector Clyde, Chief of Detectives, had just begun his daily stroll. . .when the shadow trap caught him!
So begins my children's book, The Popsicle Moon (Waxing Editions, 2019).
I have read the story to classrooms of second and third graders and found them attentive listeners.
"Wholly absurd and mesmerizing at the same time"-- The Children's Book Review
Apart from the entertaining quality of the story's imaginative and whimsical plot, The Popsicle Moon also thrills as a picture book, with 26 color illustrations from acclaimed artist Kathryn Jacobi.
If you have children ages 5-9--or if you just like imaginative adventure--consider adding The Popsicle Moon to your bookshelf!
So begins my children's book, The Popsicle Moon (Waxing Editions, 2019).
I have read the story to classrooms of second and third graders and found them attentive listeners.
"Wholly absurd and mesmerizing at the same time"-- The Children's Book Review
Apart from the entertaining quality of the story's imaginative and whimsical plot, The Popsicle Moon also thrills as a picture book, with 26 color illustrations from acclaimed artist Kathryn Jacobi.
If you have children ages 5-9--or if you just like imaginative adventure--consider adding The Popsicle Moon to your bookshelf!
December 4, 2019
Reader Q&A: Memoir and Writing Process
Q: Can you elaborate on your writing process? In what way was it influenced by writing a travel memoir?
A: Well, let me preface my reply by stating that, as a writer, I tend to exhibit "perfectionist" tendencies, with all the trouble perfectionism entails. I have great difficulty silencing the voice of my internal critic, who more often than not mocks my efforts at sentence craft with great disparagement. Imagine the most unsympathetic teacher from your school years staring over your shoulder as you struggle with a homework problem. This dynamic describes my relationship with my internal critic. The act of completing a page of handwritten scrawl represents for me the end stage of a great mental struggle, in which I question everything from diction and syntax to thematic purpose. The exercises that creative writers often employ to unshackle the creative process--free association, brainstorming, writing without pause--typically don't work for me. The ability to throw words on a page like paint on a canvas, out of a playful curiosity to see what finally sticks or what patterns emerge, seems to me a great enigma. I envy the playfulness, the faith in the subconscious, yet doubt the effectiveness of the approach. Of course writers who employ such methods would point to James Joyce's Ulysses, with its long sections of stream-of-consciousness narrative, as an example of the great literature that can arise from unshackled creativity. As a counterpoint, I would simply mention that Joyce had already achieved success via traditional narrative before attempting experimental forms. I don't wish to portray my entire process as labor intensive. The stereotype of the writer surrounded by a roomful of wadded-up paper, the detritus of failed drafts thrown out in frustration, doesn't apply to me. About 50%-75% of what I write as a first draft survives in second and third draft form. Moreover, I find the revision process an enjoyable undertaking. The antagonism that prevails between me and my internal critic transforms, during revision, into a symbiotic and uplifting team effort. It's as if the critic, finally invited to the party, wants to pour a drink and join the conversation, rather than reject the idea of conversations with nihilistic contempt. Interestingly, until I undertook a book length work, I lacked full appreciation for the dominant role that revision plays in what emerges as a finished product. Prior to Islands on the Fringe , my longest completed work was my graduate thesis, which weighs in at about 120 double-spaced pages. Though carefully edited, the document didn't undergo significant revision. The unyielding deadlines of the academic calendar meant I had about five months to complete the project, a time frame too limited for the creative re-seeing that true revision entails. Moreover, the need to adhere to academic conventions of tone, style, and format meant I had to restrain my creativity within narrow parameters. No such constraints limited the writing of Islands on the Fringe, and over the years the project developed, I experienced a shift in perception that influenced not only my narrative aesthetic but also my understanding of the experience I sought to recollect. Specifically, I began to see the story not as the recollection of a traveler who made a journey, but rather vignettes in the life of a traveler to whom a journey happened. The distinction my seem subtle, but over the course of eleven chapters it had a significant thematic influence. In his intriguing memoir of the writer's life, The Summing Up, W. Somerset Maugham contends that "every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul. . .he does well only to work to liberate his spirit of a subject that he has so long meditated that it burdens him." Though I hesitate to apply the word "art" to my work, Islands on the Fringe brought some closure to a chapter in my life that long haunted me. The notes, letters, diary entries, and photographs on which I scaffolded the book had for years sounded a nostalgic echo in my mind. Writing the book helped me place that nostalgia in context and channel it to productive purpose. Every time I sat down to write, that channeling guided my pen. I knew that until I finished the project, the nostalgic echo of my scrapbook would continue to distract me. Happily, the process of writing Islands on the Fringe brought me some measure of peace and gave me the inspiration to pursue travel writing as an active literary endeavor.
A: Well, let me preface my reply by stating that, as a writer, I tend to exhibit "perfectionist" tendencies, with all the trouble perfectionism entails. I have great difficulty silencing the voice of my internal critic, who more often than not mocks my efforts at sentence craft with great disparagement. Imagine the most unsympathetic teacher from your school years staring over your shoulder as you struggle with a homework problem. This dynamic describes my relationship with my internal critic. The act of completing a page of handwritten scrawl represents for me the end stage of a great mental struggle, in which I question everything from diction and syntax to thematic purpose. The exercises that creative writers often employ to unshackle the creative process--free association, brainstorming, writing without pause--typically don't work for me. The ability to throw words on a page like paint on a canvas, out of a playful curiosity to see what finally sticks or what patterns emerge, seems to me a great enigma. I envy the playfulness, the faith in the subconscious, yet doubt the effectiveness of the approach. Of course writers who employ such methods would point to James Joyce's Ulysses, with its long sections of stream-of-consciousness narrative, as an example of the great literature that can arise from unshackled creativity. As a counterpoint, I would simply mention that Joyce had already achieved success via traditional narrative before attempting experimental forms. I don't wish to portray my entire process as labor intensive. The stereotype of the writer surrounded by a roomful of wadded-up paper, the detritus of failed drafts thrown out in frustration, doesn't apply to me. About 50%-75% of what I write as a first draft survives in second and third draft form. Moreover, I find the revision process an enjoyable undertaking. The antagonism that prevails between me and my internal critic transforms, during revision, into a symbiotic and uplifting team effort. It's as if the critic, finally invited to the party, wants to pour a drink and join the conversation, rather than reject the idea of conversations with nihilistic contempt. Interestingly, until I undertook a book length work, I lacked full appreciation for the dominant role that revision plays in what emerges as a finished product. Prior to Islands on the Fringe , my longest completed work was my graduate thesis, which weighs in at about 120 double-spaced pages. Though carefully edited, the document didn't undergo significant revision. The unyielding deadlines of the academic calendar meant I had about five months to complete the project, a time frame too limited for the creative re-seeing that true revision entails. Moreover, the need to adhere to academic conventions of tone, style, and format meant I had to restrain my creativity within narrow parameters. No such constraints limited the writing of Islands on the Fringe, and over the years the project developed, I experienced a shift in perception that influenced not only my narrative aesthetic but also my understanding of the experience I sought to recollect. Specifically, I began to see the story not as the recollection of a traveler who made a journey, but rather vignettes in the life of a traveler to whom a journey happened. The distinction my seem subtle, but over the course of eleven chapters it had a significant thematic influence. In his intriguing memoir of the writer's life, The Summing Up, W. Somerset Maugham contends that "every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul. . .he does well only to work to liberate his spirit of a subject that he has so long meditated that it burdens him." Though I hesitate to apply the word "art" to my work, Islands on the Fringe brought some closure to a chapter in my life that long haunted me. The notes, letters, diary entries, and photographs on which I scaffolded the book had for years sounded a nostalgic echo in my mind. Writing the book helped me place that nostalgia in context and channel it to productive purpose. Every time I sat down to write, that channeling guided my pen. I knew that until I finished the project, the nostalgic echo of my scrapbook would continue to distract me. Happily, the process of writing Islands on the Fringe brought me some measure of peace and gave me the inspiration to pursue travel writing as an active literary endeavor.
Imagism and Ambiguity: Exploring Form in American Haiku
Note: The following paper, written for a course in Rhetorical Theory, first appeared as a presentation in the Graduate Seminar of the Southern California Writing Program Administrators' Conference. Copyright 1996, 2005 by S. Jacques Stratton.
Poetry, as written communication, offers potentially either the most rigid or loose of forms for conveying a message to an audience. Rigid poetic forms, such as sonnets, limericks, and epics, impose on the reader an expectation of convention. Alternatively, poetry known as "free verse" shows little concern for formal matters. It may lack a rhyme scheme, dance to a haphazard rhythm, and, visually, demonstrate an ignorance of margins or consistently delineated white space. The poetry known as "Western" or "American" haiku straddles the border between forms. Though writers of Western haiku need not adhere to conventions of meter and rhyme, the philosophy of the form severely constrains the expression of thought. In general, haiku conforms to an ideological premise: simple, precise imagery provides a communion between man and nature. This premise, which provides haiku a focus, also creates ambiguity. We do not know the intent of the poet, but only the suggestions of meaning that the poet's imagery brings to our minds. Because of its ambiguity and concise nature, haiku presents an interesting situation to the critic. Kenneth Burke's assertion, that "form in literature is an arousing and fulfillment of desires," offers little guidance for exploring haiku. In the space of a few short lines, a haiku arouses much but seemingly fulfills little. Since Burke also asserts in "The Nature of Form" that correct form provides fulfillment, the question arises about the "correctness" of haiku form, at least as it pertains to a Western audience generally unfamiliar with haiku philosophy.
One of the most widely anthologized haiku-type poems in American literature is Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro." Although some claim that the imagist poets, a group which included Pound, did not fully understand the haiku, the poem deserves consideration as such because, like haiku, its central concern involves the presentation of an image which ambiguates rather than clarifies meaning. The immediacy of the image confronts the reader no matter how we categorize the poem:
The Apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough
The image, like the poem itself, exemplifies simplicity, at least upon cursory examination. On a surface level, then, Pound achieve successful form, both as an imagist interested in presenting an abstract idea as a simple object and as a writer of haiku who seeks to relate man to the natural world through simple imagery. Yet questions arise, as the poem encourages further thought. What significance do we grant to the word "apparition?" Does Pound mean how the faces appeared, or that they projected a ghostlike quality? Do we attribute the wetness of the bough to a gentle summer rain or a sudden winter storm? The poem provides no clarification, resulting in divergent possible meanings. The poem provides no "summary statement," and the Western mind, used to a heritage of prose and poetry whose forms require the implied or explicit inclusion of such statements, remains unfulfilled. Literature courses, particularly those which examine the modernist aesthetic, laud the poem as an example of effective imagery, not only for the wording itself but because the image asserts a powerful, negative symbol about the results of industrialism. The word "apparition" suggests the ghostlike, transitory nature of modern life, for which the metro station provides a representative setting. The petals, to which the faces in the first line relate, symbolize humanity, cast away from its moorings by the storm of industrial technology. Arranged against this view rise critics who, bolstered by a published interview of Pound, argue that the poem actually conveys a positive sentiment, despite the negative Modernist themes underlying much of Pound's work. These critics argue that the word "apparition" simply denotes an appearance, suddenly and unexpectedly, of beauty, indicated by the image of petals in an otherwise tempestuous, frantic crowd. The idea: beauty still exists in spite of the forces that might suppress it. These views and their variations represent a sizeable portion of criticism on the subject. The reader need not choose between them, but rather consider how the poem leads to ambiguity and divergent interpretations. Haiku provides a form that allows us to experience the image, but not to confidently assess its implications. In a sense, the form of the haiku teases us, arousing our curiosity, but leaving it without a definitive answer.
The idea that a poem could tease in such a manner offers an interesting path for exploration. Encountering a sonnet, we expect and find gratification in completing fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. Encountering an epic, we expect and find gratification in the listing and description of forces, as in "Paradise Lost," and the narration of saga, as in the "Iliad." But the form of an American haiku seems strange by comparison. No meter or rhyme scheme drives the diction, no listing or narration sets the scene; we find only the need to relate man and nature through a simple image. Specifically, Pound teases us by meeting this need while simultaneously implying something more. He creates a rhyme scheme by ending each line of the poem with the same dipthong, and incorporates into the poem's underlying structure an element of prose. These features imply a type of form that Kenneth Burke calls "progressive," yet Pound uses them in a way that breaks the progressive form. The rhyming establishes progressive form by making the reader expect an alteration later on. The underlying structure of the poem follows that of a prose sentence, with main and subordinate clauses ("in a station of the Metro, there was an apparition of faces in the crowd, which seemed like petals on a wet, black bough"), and yet Pound, through the omission of verbs (none exist in the entire poem) offers the entire piece as a noun phrase, leaving us without the progression that a corresponding verb phrase would provide. Finally, the lack of summary statement proves defamiliarizing to our expectations of prose, which we expect to assert a topic and then substantiate it. While the defamiliarization provided by these features allows the poems image to have greater impact, it leaves us ungratified. The poem thwarts the very form it seeks to project.
The assertion that Pound establishes a progressive form while simultaneously breaking it has implications for our understanding of the poem's rhetorical quality. If the poem simply provides a sentence reduced to a noun phrase, then we must conclude that no doing takes place. As Burke says, "if one, for instance, enters a room and says simply, 'The man. . .' unless the auditor knows enough about the man to finish the sentence in his own thoughts, his spontaneous rejoinder will be, 'The man what?' A naming must be completed by a doing, either explicit or implicit." Through "In a Station of the Metro," Pound the poet acts like the man in Burke's statement, naming without completing. We naturally respond by asking "what about the apparition of those faces? Why are they like petals on a wet, black bough?" The more such questions reverberate, the more we wonder if the poem's form serves its intent.
And yet the success of the poem as an imagistic expression, the power of its defamiliarizing technique, and the aura that surrounds it as a widely anthologized piece of literature, combine to shield "In a Station of the Metro" from serious questions about the correctness of form. After all, we must concede the possibility that Pound intended ambiguity. If so, the form succeeds admirably. The debate then shifts to questions about the ability of the Western mind to process rhetorical acts that limit themselves to naming but not completing.
Poetry, as written communication, offers potentially either the most rigid or loose of forms for conveying a message to an audience. Rigid poetic forms, such as sonnets, limericks, and epics, impose on the reader an expectation of convention. Alternatively, poetry known as "free verse" shows little concern for formal matters. It may lack a rhyme scheme, dance to a haphazard rhythm, and, visually, demonstrate an ignorance of margins or consistently delineated white space. The poetry known as "Western" or "American" haiku straddles the border between forms. Though writers of Western haiku need not adhere to conventions of meter and rhyme, the philosophy of the form severely constrains the expression of thought. In general, haiku conforms to an ideological premise: simple, precise imagery provides a communion between man and nature. This premise, which provides haiku a focus, also creates ambiguity. We do not know the intent of the poet, but only the suggestions of meaning that the poet's imagery brings to our minds. Because of its ambiguity and concise nature, haiku presents an interesting situation to the critic. Kenneth Burke's assertion, that "form in literature is an arousing and fulfillment of desires," offers little guidance for exploring haiku. In the space of a few short lines, a haiku arouses much but seemingly fulfills little. Since Burke also asserts in "The Nature of Form" that correct form provides fulfillment, the question arises about the "correctness" of haiku form, at least as it pertains to a Western audience generally unfamiliar with haiku philosophy.
One of the most widely anthologized haiku-type poems in American literature is Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro." Although some claim that the imagist poets, a group which included Pound, did not fully understand the haiku, the poem deserves consideration as such because, like haiku, its central concern involves the presentation of an image which ambiguates rather than clarifies meaning. The immediacy of the image confronts the reader no matter how we categorize the poem:
The Apparition of these faces in the crowd;Petals on a wet, black bough
The image, like the poem itself, exemplifies simplicity, at least upon cursory examination. On a surface level, then, Pound achieve successful form, both as an imagist interested in presenting an abstract idea as a simple object and as a writer of haiku who seeks to relate man to the natural world through simple imagery. Yet questions arise, as the poem encourages further thought. What significance do we grant to the word "apparition?" Does Pound mean how the faces appeared, or that they projected a ghostlike quality? Do we attribute the wetness of the bough to a gentle summer rain or a sudden winter storm? The poem provides no clarification, resulting in divergent possible meanings. The poem provides no "summary statement," and the Western mind, used to a heritage of prose and poetry whose forms require the implied or explicit inclusion of such statements, remains unfulfilled. Literature courses, particularly those which examine the modernist aesthetic, laud the poem as an example of effective imagery, not only for the wording itself but because the image asserts a powerful, negative symbol about the results of industrialism. The word "apparition" suggests the ghostlike, transitory nature of modern life, for which the metro station provides a representative setting. The petals, to which the faces in the first line relate, symbolize humanity, cast away from its moorings by the storm of industrial technology. Arranged against this view rise critics who, bolstered by a published interview of Pound, argue that the poem actually conveys a positive sentiment, despite the negative Modernist themes underlying much of Pound's work. These critics argue that the word "apparition" simply denotes an appearance, suddenly and unexpectedly, of beauty, indicated by the image of petals in an otherwise tempestuous, frantic crowd. The idea: beauty still exists in spite of the forces that might suppress it. These views and their variations represent a sizeable portion of criticism on the subject. The reader need not choose between them, but rather consider how the poem leads to ambiguity and divergent interpretations. Haiku provides a form that allows us to experience the image, but not to confidently assess its implications. In a sense, the form of the haiku teases us, arousing our curiosity, but leaving it without a definitive answer.
The idea that a poem could tease in such a manner offers an interesting path for exploration. Encountering a sonnet, we expect and find gratification in completing fourteen lines of iambic pentameter. Encountering an epic, we expect and find gratification in the listing and description of forces, as in "Paradise Lost," and the narration of saga, as in the "Iliad." But the form of an American haiku seems strange by comparison. No meter or rhyme scheme drives the diction, no listing or narration sets the scene; we find only the need to relate man and nature through a simple image. Specifically, Pound teases us by meeting this need while simultaneously implying something more. He creates a rhyme scheme by ending each line of the poem with the same dipthong, and incorporates into the poem's underlying structure an element of prose. These features imply a type of form that Kenneth Burke calls "progressive," yet Pound uses them in a way that breaks the progressive form. The rhyming establishes progressive form by making the reader expect an alteration later on. The underlying structure of the poem follows that of a prose sentence, with main and subordinate clauses ("in a station of the Metro, there was an apparition of faces in the crowd, which seemed like petals on a wet, black bough"), and yet Pound, through the omission of verbs (none exist in the entire poem) offers the entire piece as a noun phrase, leaving us without the progression that a corresponding verb phrase would provide. Finally, the lack of summary statement proves defamiliarizing to our expectations of prose, which we expect to assert a topic and then substantiate it. While the defamiliarization provided by these features allows the poems image to have greater impact, it leaves us ungratified. The poem thwarts the very form it seeks to project.
The assertion that Pound establishes a progressive form while simultaneously breaking it has implications for our understanding of the poem's rhetorical quality. If the poem simply provides a sentence reduced to a noun phrase, then we must conclude that no doing takes place. As Burke says, "if one, for instance, enters a room and says simply, 'The man. . .' unless the auditor knows enough about the man to finish the sentence in his own thoughts, his spontaneous rejoinder will be, 'The man what?' A naming must be completed by a doing, either explicit or implicit." Through "In a Station of the Metro," Pound the poet acts like the man in Burke's statement, naming without completing. We naturally respond by asking "what about the apparition of those faces? Why are they like petals on a wet, black bough?" The more such questions reverberate, the more we wonder if the poem's form serves its intent.
And yet the success of the poem as an imagistic expression, the power of its defamiliarizing technique, and the aura that surrounds it as a widely anthologized piece of literature, combine to shield "In a Station of the Metro" from serious questions about the correctness of form. After all, we must concede the possibility that Pound intended ambiguity. If so, the form succeeds admirably. The debate then shifts to questions about the ability of the Western mind to process rhetorical acts that limit themselves to naming but not completing.
Adventures in the Pacific's Backwater Bars: Colette
At the intersection of pastel panorama and expat entertainment, Club Cupid occupied a special place among Pohnpei's evening entertainment options.
Club Cupid, August 1999. Photo: S.Jacques StrattonThough travelers seeking a true immersion in Micronesian culture considered "touristy" any drinking establishment other than a sakau bar, Club Cupid had a special allure, and often played host to lively gatherings of ex-pats and locals alike. Here, on the first weekend of my life as an ex-pat English teacher, I met Colette, whose unconventional pool tactics provided memorable source material for Chapter 3 of my travel memoir,
Islands on the Fringe
, a section of which I excerpt below:I edge close to the pool table, where the party atmosphere carries overtones of spectator sport, as onlookers watch a slinky brunette in her fifties sink one difficult shot after another. Wearing a low-cut blouse that opens to overly-tanned cleavage, she confidently leans into her final shot and knocks the 8-ball home with a double carom. In a raspy smoker’s voice, she asks “who’s the queen?” “Colette’s the queen!” her onlookers reply, while her defeated opponent rests his cue on the table and returns to the gallery previously-chastened challengers. “Anybody else?” the brunette inquires, casually rubbing chalk on the end of her cue.Seeing nobody immediately respond, I step forward. As I rack the balls, the woman looks me over. “Where you been hiding, Honey?” she asks. “I thought I knew all the guys around here.” I introduce myself and I explain I’d flown in just a few days before.“Nice to meet you, Jacques,” she says. As the standing winner, Colette elects to break, and spears the cue ball in a freewheeling style that shows little regard for shot sequencing. The break comes up dry; balls scatter but none drop, and based on the carom action, I recognize the pool table as one known in pool parlance as “wet,” its cloth and cushions rendered sluggish by humidity. “So, Jacques,” Colette says as I survey the table, “I guess you got tired of drinking with Barton and his gang?” “I guess so,” I say, surprised to find my prior whereabouts in the bar a matter of scrutiny. With a soft shot, I sink a striped ball into a corner pocket, get a lucky roll from the cue ball, and go on a two-ball run before a bad leave places me in a blockade of Colette’s solids. “So, does that mean you aren’t interested in ruining your reputation?” she asks. With a crisp smack she sends a solid into a corner pocket. The question carries overtones of innuendo, and I seek a suitably coy response. “Maybe not just yet,” I say. Colette knocks down another solid, and then unaccountably dogs an easy 1/4 ball hit that results in a scratch to the middle pocket. “I see,” she says. Retrieving the cue ball, she comes close, places it in my palm, and lets her fingers linger on my hand. A smell of cigarettes permeates her breath and helps dispel a façade that had influenced my earlier perception. While glossed with a sultry allure in the dimly lighted bar, up close Collette’s face reflects the haggard sadness of a woman hopelessly clinging to the vestiges of lost youth. “Well, you look like a guy who knows how to treat a lady right,” she whispers, bringing her lips close to my ear. “Now, take your shot.” The sultry intimations act like pixie dust, and I proceed to run the table, sinking the remaining four stripes in succession. As I ponder how to best knock down the 8-ball, the on-lookers—including Sally, who, still fuming over the unwelcome lesson in pronunciation, flashes a particularly uncomplimentary glance--crowd close, curious if Colette’s defeat might finally be at hand. Colette, showing little apprehension, casually chalks her cue, and sidles to the end rail opposite me, placing her cleavage in my line of sight. She gives me a wink. “8-ball, far corner,” I announce, calling the shot per standard billiard protocol. Feeling the eyes of the spectators, I address the ball and draw back my cue. Recognizing the shot as one with high scratch potential, I decide to slightly cheat the pocket as I set my aiming line. Just as I take the shot, Colette leans low against the table, her blouse dangled so I see both the profile of her breasts and the fact that she doesn’t wear a bra. My distracted shot sends the cue ball off-course, to carom off the side and into the sewer of the opposite corner pocket. The scratch costs me the game. Accompanied by gasps and laughs from the spectators, I lay the cue on the table and join the ranks of the defeated. “Who’s the queen?” Colette asks. “Colette’s the queen,” I reluctantly voice. My triumphant adversary blows me a kiss and rests her cue against the wall. Instead of awaiting the challenge of the next contestant, she pats my shoulder and leads me away from the table. “Care to join me for a smoke?” she asks. “I don’t smoke,” I say, in a once-bitten, twice-shy tone that indicates my displeasure with Colette’s Machiavellian tactics “Well, maybe you need some fresh air then.” The mention of fresh air makes me perceive just how stifling the bar had grown, and I notice the dampness of perspiration on my shirt. “Fresh air sounds good,” I agree. We amble out of the bar and across the grassy plateau to the parking area. From the glove box of a beat-up sedan, Colette obtains a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Meanwhile, as my eyes adjust to the night, I gasp in sudden wonder. A thousand fireflies appear congregated among the grass and upon the metal surfaces of the parked cars. Then, my perception shifts, and I recognize the fireflies as dew drops that gleam diamond with reflected starlight—diamond, but also emerald and sapphire, as beads of yellow and green sparkle among the white. When I turn my gaze upward, the source of the lightshow spreads across the night: the Milky Way like a burst of spray paint, Sirius outshining its neighbors, and a hint of the Southern Cross low on the horizon. The stars of Micronesia dance as though plugged in to a celestial current. Disregarding the dew and an occasional buzzing mosquito, I lean my back against Colette’s car and try to remember if I’ve ever seen a night as stunning as the one that now envelopes my gaze. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Colette says. Her cigarette brightens and dims as she drags and exhales. “Beautiful and beyond,” I say. “I’ve never seen anything like it.” For a while, in silence, we watch the stars. Colette sits with her leg against mine, and the soft warmth almost, but not quite, draws me to her. Her coquettish smile suggests a spirited lass eager for a kiss, but her eyes pool with the sadness of a haggard woman tormented by time. Feeling awkward, I move away slightly, and fill the gap with conversation. “So, what’s with all the Colette’s-the-queen stuff?” I ask. “Does anybody else get similar accolades?” Colette sighs but indulges my interrogation. “In my younger days I competed in beauty contests,” she says. “I actually made runner-up for Miss Texas.” Sucking her cigarette, she assesses the impact of this information. “You don’t believe me?” she asks accusingly. Opening the car door, she rummages through the glove box and produces a postcard-size photo for scrutiny. “That’s me on Galveston Beach,” she says. Illumined by the car’s interior light, a bikini-clad brunette stares back from the picture. “Miss Texas, huh?” I ponder. “Runner up,” she clarifies. “But the girl who beat me cheated. She was having an affair with one of the judges. Really, I should have won.” “Colette the beauty queen,” I muse. “So, how did you end up here? “How does anybody end up anywhere?” she sighs, after a long pause in which she returns her attention to the stars. The question dangles, rhetorically ripe, a doorway to philosophical inquiry where simple questions invoke complex answers. Collette laughs the half-amused, half-bitter laugh of the jaded. “We don’t control the circumstances of our lives. One day I woke up and found I was nothing special. So, I cling to that little place where confidence still resides—sometimes that’s a pool table at Club Cupid.”
Reflections in a Rice Paddy (Philippines 2019)
Seasoned surf travelers know the motif: the jungle road to the coast; the isolated village mired in poverty; the headland girdled by peeling surf. Eager to wash away the grime of travel and put our surfcraft to its intended use, we forget, in our adrenaline ambition, the way our arrival provokes uncomfortable dichotomies. The pursuit of frivolous pleasure, on a piece of foam and fiberglass worth perhaps half the yearly income of a 3rd world villager, stands in stark contrast to the locals' daily subsistence lifestyle. In the somber, disparaging expression of a woman tending to a rice paddy, I perceived exactly this dynamic. It haunted me as I approached the headland for a closer look at the waves.
I knew the feeling from my prior travels. In 2004, on a trip to Siargao, while surfing a reef not far from Cloud 9 (which we derisively labelled "Crowd 99"), my friend Q and I watched a pump boat approach us at full power and then swerve at the last moment, its crew of fishermen shouting obscenities and contorting their bodies in mock imitation of a surfer's stance. Five years earlier, conducting a dockside errand on Pohnpei (my home for a year), I received a similar rebuke from a crew of Chinese sailors, an incident I included as a diary excerpt in Islands on the Fringe: a maritime montage rolls past my driver's side window. Aboard a Chinese fishing junk, which smells of bilge water and diesel, a crew clad in stained khakis dangle cigarettes from their mouths and regard me with a curious mixture of envy and hate, as though the sight of me and my rattletrap sedan represents a fantasy life they envision with jealousy.
As a remedy to the feelings of guilt that arise from such incidents, surf travelers typically bequeath gifts of T-shirts, sandals, hats, or other token trinkets (modern versions of the European explorers' glass beads perhaps?) intended to help the locals, or at least bring a smile to the face of a kid. Somehow, though, I doubted the rice paddy woman would let a token trinket smooth our disparity in life circumstance. I had no pretensions she would ever see me as anything other than a rich American (and perhaps an ugly one at that).
And so to the surf. Off the tip of the headland, a smooth, clean, perfectly tapered righthander rose repeatedly and took a bow, appreciated by no one but me. I noted only one flaw in the performance: the waves, chest high at best, seemed a bit sluggish. . .
Off the headland, a perfectly tapered righthander. . .
But then the tide started to drop, and the waves, rewarding my interest, spun with added enthusiasm. The sets I initially judged as chest high proved overhead, and for an afternoon of solitary perfection, I found myself momentarily detached from the sorrows of the world, immersed in the blissful state that occurs when instinct and adrenaline channel perception. Later, back on the beach, I made a halting effort at the local Ilocano dialect to exchange greetings with a kid who had ventured out to the headland to watch me ride a final wave to the shore. He smiled at me and I gave him a t-shirt from my pack.
Somewhere in Northern Luzon, 2019
I knew the feeling from my prior travels. In 2004, on a trip to Siargao, while surfing a reef not far from Cloud 9 (which we derisively labelled "Crowd 99"), my friend Q and I watched a pump boat approach us at full power and then swerve at the last moment, its crew of fishermen shouting obscenities and contorting their bodies in mock imitation of a surfer's stance. Five years earlier, conducting a dockside errand on Pohnpei (my home for a year), I received a similar rebuke from a crew of Chinese sailors, an incident I included as a diary excerpt in Islands on the Fringe: a maritime montage rolls past my driver's side window. Aboard a Chinese fishing junk, which smells of bilge water and diesel, a crew clad in stained khakis dangle cigarettes from their mouths and regard me with a curious mixture of envy and hate, as though the sight of me and my rattletrap sedan represents a fantasy life they envision with jealousy.
As a remedy to the feelings of guilt that arise from such incidents, surf travelers typically bequeath gifts of T-shirts, sandals, hats, or other token trinkets (modern versions of the European explorers' glass beads perhaps?) intended to help the locals, or at least bring a smile to the face of a kid. Somehow, though, I doubted the rice paddy woman would let a token trinket smooth our disparity in life circumstance. I had no pretensions she would ever see me as anything other than a rich American (and perhaps an ugly one at that).
And so to the surf. Off the tip of the headland, a smooth, clean, perfectly tapered righthander rose repeatedly and took a bow, appreciated by no one but me. I noted only one flaw in the performance: the waves, chest high at best, seemed a bit sluggish. . .
Off the headland, a perfectly tapered righthander. . .But then the tide started to drop, and the waves, rewarding my interest, spun with added enthusiasm. The sets I initially judged as chest high proved overhead, and for an afternoon of solitary perfection, I found myself momentarily detached from the sorrows of the world, immersed in the blissful state that occurs when instinct and adrenaline channel perception. Later, back on the beach, I made a halting effort at the local Ilocano dialect to exchange greetings with a kid who had ventured out to the headland to watch me ride a final wave to the shore. He smiled at me and I gave him a t-shirt from my pack.
Somewhere in Northern Luzon, 2019California Style vs. Aussie Antics (Sumatra 2014)
Attempting to conform to the California Style Manual,. Sumatra 2014. . .Photo: "Moppy."This break was strictly fun-zone, a peeling wedge into a palm-lined bay, and unlike the nearby reefs, it concealed no critical sections where the difference between anguish and ecstasy depends on one's ability to dodge coral crags shallow enough to grind fins into powder. . . in other words, a break designed specifically for that brand of surfer whose predominant aesthetic perceives waves as skateboard ramps.
The island that plays home to this break (and its more frequently photographed sibling further up the headland) has an imagistic legacy well represented in surf mags. Yet while the tentacles of surf tourism have long groped toward it, the island retains the atmosphere of a frontier outpost, and still harbors a few secrets.
I well remember this particular session. A handful of us--two Australians, a dilettante Swiss couple (skiers really, dabbling for a summer in the romance of surf travel) and myself--arrived via skiff from the beach camp. A light overcast hung in the air, with enough density to spread a reflection of gray hues on the surface of the sea. I watched the play of these hues in the wake that spun off the bow of the skiff. The wake had a hypnotic effect, inducing in me the listless stupor that travelers to the tropics often experience. Accordingly, the sight of a surf charter yacht anchored near the line up elicited, on my part, no more that a lackadaisical shrug. I thought the tropical stupor which afflicted me would at some point descend on the charter yacht and similarly afflict its entourage of pampered surf rats.
As it turned out, the charter yacht posed little competition. Its passengers, like a pack of lions sated from an earlier feast, watched our arrival with disinterest, and when they later ventured surfward, exhibited a preference for the aforementioned frequently-photographed break further up the headland. Accordingly, the five of us from the beach camp had the skatepark arena of the inside wedge to ourselves.
The dilettante Swiss exhibited a lack of surf sense that meant they spent more time paddling than riding waves, but nevertheless exuded an enthusiasm that made me reflect fondly on my own days as a grommet, when the small details of the surfing experience--the fruity scent of fresh board wax, the silky feel of a glassy sea, the sudden acceleration of paddling into a wave--provided a delight to the senses. The two Australians, happy for a respite from Perth's winter chill, surfed with a happy-go-lucky silliness that made me wonder if they too might be in the throes of a tropical stupor. Arnie, riding a longboard, tried a fin-first takeoff on a prime set wave, and as the board spun into a 180-degree turn, casually attempted a switch-stance the opposite direction. The move proved too ambitious, and as I watched Arnie succumb to an inevitable wipeout, I doubted the move's functionality. Long a devotee of the California Style Manual, which dictates that making the wave counts for more than making the move, I directed some lighthearted criticism toward Arnie as he emerged from the froth: "What are you? A whirling dervish?" In reply, Arnie flashed me a grin that told me he didn't give a damn about California surfing aesthetics and that his allegiance lay with a different dictum, one which posits that the best approach to wave riding is the one that provides the most fun. "Ah, no worries, mate! I reckon there's plenty more where that came from," he said.
In the end, it didn't really matter what particular surfing aesthetic we sought to uphold. We all had fun, so much so that when afternoon brought the arrival of another charter yacht, we looked on with disinterest and returned to the skiff, like lions sated from feast.
