Business boys, lawyers and executives, gym-toned and well-to-do.
Their girlfriends are local, Huahine beauties, tawny and lithe with light-up-the-dark smiles,
and they make it clear in sizing me up that once the lawyers fly home they’ll be happy to be my local friends instead,
for a consideration.
At night geckos mate on my wall.
It all feels very lonely.
Mark Phillips, 2005.10.28 Huahine, French Polynesia
Scrawny little thing, she looks so skinny. Don't these rich people
feed her?
I got a whole plate of fish for her and she scarfed it ravenously, jumped up on her
hind legs to get to it before I could even put pieces on the ground for her. She took it
right out of my fingers, her little claws out
to steady herself on my outstretched hand. Desperate. Don't they feed her?
In the morning she'd forgotten me entirely. Wouldn't let me near.
Mark Phillips, 2005.10.22 Club Med, Bora Bora, French Polynesia
I closed my eyes and walked the length of the pier imagining what it would be like to
be blind. Using just my ears to guide me. The sound of lapping water on both sides.
It was perfect. When I arrived at the end I was exactly in the middle.
Mark Phillips, 2005.10.24 Bora Bora, French Polynesia
In a cottage on the grass behind the beach you sit at a table in gathering dusklight enjoying
your conversation.
She's small, thin, very bright, very kind. She's suffered, she has a painful physical ailment.
But, she's not bitter. She's joyous and warm, and when she learns of your interest in the
people and their lives before the missionaries came, she tells you this story.
Up the mountain through the jungle on dirt trails not usually mapped there's a marae with a ti'i
that yet lives. Visitors don't go there, even the archaeologists who've rebuilt other sites. Only
locals. And not very often.
One time the pain from her illness was so great that her family took her to the old
marae. She made an offering, praying to the ti'i for relief. She slept there that night,
and when she awoke she had no pain, none, the first time without suffering in many months. It lasted
three full days.
"Don't go there alone!" she says. "The trail is slippery, it's been raining.
And anyway. Don't go there alone."
Mark Phillips, 2005.10.17 Huahine, French Polynesia
Rose, lovely and helpful, stands friendly behind the reception desk.
Tiare behind the left ear; tiare behind the right ear. The left ear:
married. The right ear: available. With this simple semaphore she signals
the basic contour of her life, at this moment in her journey. That her
marriage was a mistake which has ended unhappily. That now she's ready to
move on.
Mark Phillips, 2005.10.11 Moorea, French Polynesia
Look through the pictures. Each hotel, each experience,
each city a different world, so filled with its own finite reality that to your
perception it begins and ends discretely.
Here: at this point in time: in this
place: a world opens and closes.
Mark Phillips, 2005.10.10 Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia
Le Docteur Francais who doesn't speak English avec le American gimp who
doesn't speak French were able to get their various points across by
combining signage with Latin medical terms and a selection of words which
in our respective languages descend from Latin cognates. The American gimp
with the numb leg and the highly owie lower back has
meralgia paresthetica.
While not life-threatening, it's not helpful, and he should see his
neurologiste en America. Meanwhile a diet of anti-inflammatories plus
capsules pour le dolor will get him through the day. It's alright to walk
and hike and climb, and swimming is positively good. Just watch your step,
since you can't feel anything with that leg.
Mark Phillips, 2005.10.10 Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia
All around the island, the people rake their yards, empty their trash, then burn
the results. On any horizon there are always one or two small fires visible.
Gray smoke. Orange tongues against explosions of green.
Mark Phillips, 2005.10.11 Moorea, French Polynesia
Gauguin's women are everywhere on the streets.
Same features, same pareus, same tiares.
No differences, merely a detail: the cell phone hanging from their
soft cloth belts.
Mark Phillips, 2005.10.25 Club Med, Bora Bora, French Polynesia