No Man is an Island

NO MAN IS AN ISLAND…

When the island is first seen from the window of the airplane, without any reasonable reason, I thought of the words “every man is an island”. Who said this? When? In what conditions can one say such a powerful –but still controversial- sentence? What men was s/he talking about? It might be a good “first sentence” for a novel or even for a short story. It can be said in parties while someone mentions his affiliation with loneliness and solitude. It can be used as a cliché on different occasions to block provoking thoughts… But now, seeing the island from top and thinking about the pain I have inflicted upon myself for the last two weeks, I am thinking the opposite of the statement. The island appears in the immense blue of the sea like a green monster in the darkness, a living creature at the middle of the ocean, breathing, eating and of course defecating.

The more the airplane gets close to the island, the more I kept saying to myself “No man is an island”. We are all connected and this connectedness makes us social animals in the chaos of the modern world. Isn’t the six degree of separation a valid proof for this? Take any two people from different parts of the world, one from Mongolia and one from Congo. The conjecture claims that on average we can connect them with 6 people in between. There is no mathematical proof for this but empirical studies show that 99% of the people can be connected by maximum 9 edges. That means we are not as lonely as we thought. The beautiful girl I see in the bus can be my 5^th degree friend or the beggar on the street can be my buddy of 6^th degree. The pilot of this airplane might be closer to me than one of the students in my school.

Another interesting fact about the islands is their secret ugly faces which wait to be discovered with long time stay only. It is like people! When we meet someone, it is easier to see his/her good characteristics first because by default we are good people and want to see good things. However, the more time we spend with him/her, the more we realize that s/he has many negative points that we may not enjoy to experience. That is why I usually spend very few days in islands. The more I stay, the more I get bored of seeing the same thing everyday. Then I start to figure out those underlying scars, hidden under the thick protection of the clothes. This time we plan to stay only one night. Not because I will get bored in two days but because I have to get back to work by Tuesday.

At the airport, we wait for J’s colorful bag to appear behind the black exit. It is like Pandora’s Box. Wait enough, you will get yours… Fortunately, we don’t wait long. It is quick and clean. Airport is small so things are easy here. We take a taxi to the resort we have booked online assuming that it is very close to the airport. It turns out that it is actually 10 km from the airport. We pass the dirt roads, dusty lanes with motorbikes carrying live chickens, empty lands which seem promising big investments for the island’s future and poor village girls selling all sorts of things nailed on a wooden board which they carry along the roads. It is on the other side of the island and in a very isolated location. Once we arrive at the resort, we noticed that there is nothing around the place where we are going to stay. I saw only a few fishermen on the shore, a few red graves looking at the sea and several local women scanning the beaches for god-knows-what! Since we arrived very early in the morning and will leave later in the afternoon next day, I was afraid that the resort management may not let us into the room before the checking time. But the hospitality is beyond our expectations. The manager not only welcomes us into our room 3 hours earlier than the fixed check-in time also offers us a free breakfast as if we have spent the previous night at the resort.

We sit in the little restaurant section of the resort and have our breakfast, looking at the sea and thinking of what we might do after the breakfast. While we have our breakfast I could not stop myself eavesdropping to the conversation of two men sitting at the next table. One asked the other one, “Where are you from in Germany”. The other one answers “If you fold the Germany map from the middle, my town stays at the middle”. First one asks again, “How do you fold it? Vertically or horizontally?”. The other answers “Both”. They laugh… I laugh too! I like the dialogue because it was creative and unpredictable. Instead of saying I am from central Germany which would be absolutely true, he makes it a brain-teasing puzzle, like a painter who combines intricate methods of painting to depict a simple event. Then they talk about politics. Somehow I detect the word philosophy at one moment but I cannot understand how their conversation went from politics to the philosophy. Once we finish the breakfast, we go to our room… Then we more realize what makes this place different from others.

It is far from the main road and at the entrance there is one mango farm. Once you enter, there is also a butterfly farm –shall we call it farm?- . I don’t know how they make butterflies but it should not be difficult once you have flowers around. Every tree in the garden has its name written on it, both in Vietnamese and Latin. I understand neither of them so names do not bother me. The rooms do not have air-conditioner; do not have TVs, refrigerators. There are lamps on the ceiling which gives a small dim light when turned on. And there is also a large ceiling fan which revolves with a slow motion even if we maximize the power. The whole idea behind this resort is to create an eco-friendly environment and not to cause any trouble for the animals/plants living around. I see the solar-energy pane on the roof of the next house and assume that we also have one on our roof.

The bathroom is not closed with a roof. It has a wall, around 2 meters high and that is it. If someone behind the wall jumps a bit or stands on a few pricks, s/he can see us nude, taking shower. At the beginning, I feel a bit uncomfortable with the idea but soon I realize that I have nothing to hide. And who will want to see me nude anyway! However, I thought this might cause problem for J. Finally I found that she is even more comfortable than I am. She did not mind at all. I guess this must be something to do with the customs of the region she comes from. Women in the villages of Thailand usually take bath outside their homes –mostly in the dark- with a tight cloth wrapped on their body, below their shoulders. Although the village people behave freely like this, the city people have their own bathrooms in their houses and they lock themselves in before even taking their dresses off. The more we get civilized, the more we get shy, the more we get alienated to our bodies. Or is it religion makes us enemy of our own sensualities, enemy of our desires? Romans had bohemian lifestyles –of course for the cost of blood of the lower classes which constituted majority of the society- and Christianity could be considered as a reaction to this sensual world of Roman bourgeoisians. The rich were brutal and their world was purely hedonist. The slaves and the lower class needed to take revenge and they take their god beside them. At the end, like all other religions, Christianity too is a political standing and an economical revolution. They won the war by winning people’s hearts. However today they themselves become bourgeoisians, living in beautiful palaces or cathadrels without holding a real job which creates a tangible value for the society.

After taking a shower, we wanted to go to the beach to see what we have got in our large front garden. When we walked through the trees and colorful flowers, I saw a small green snake, crawling on the ground by drawing sinusoidal curves. It was crossing the pathway to get on a tree so that it will be invisible. Animals know better than us that invisibility is invincibility. Once it noticed that there is someone watching its movement, it stopped and waited for the danger go away. I got the camera from J and took its photo on the ground and later in the tree. It was very thin, probably as thin as my litle finger. J was scared and did not let me to have a closer look. I was also scared but did not want her to notice it. I guess this is what courage is: to be able to prevent others to see your fears. Once the little snake got camouflaged in the greenness of the tree, we walked to our ultimate destination.

The sea was so calm that it was not so difficult to imagine an ant on the rocks leaning down to the sea to drink water. It had the flatness of a lake and the silence of a misty morning in a mountain village. We were at the southern end of Vietnam but we did not feel like that. In fact, in the resort, almost every guest was foreigner. I guess the Vietnamese do not prefer a place where they cannot watch TV or they cannot have the privilege of sleeping under the cool blow of the AC. There are some fishermen on the shore, trying to bring their little boat back to the beach. The boy on the boat jumps down and pulls it. I can see his little muscles getting tense under his arm even though he is a school boy, not older than 12. A boy who lives in the sea, breathes in the sea, feeds from the sea, dreams the sea and loves the sea. This boy, most probably will trust the boat’s wobbling interiors more than the stable crust of the earth. He will chase the fish all day and will come back home everyday with the treasures he gets from the immense womb of the sea. He will bring colorful seashells for his awaiting lover, will bring unknown animals for those waiting in the market, will bring money for his parents so that they will find a suitable girl for him to marry, will bring dreams for himself to foster and rely on.

I sat on one of the deckchairs and tried to read the book I had brought with me. After reading a few pages, I was tired of the names of the places, people, different kinds of drinks and food. The book was supposed to be an erotic story and I was supposed to like it. However, the more I read it, the more I despised it. It was more like a fantasy story with fictional creatures. There was no love but just lust. I wanted to stop reading it before I totally detest this kind of literature. I also realized that it is not the erotic literature I like. It is the erotic scenes in novels where the characters seem genuine with their history of weakneses and strengths. I made a mistake but have no way to undo it. Unfortunately I had brought only one book with me. So I had to stick with it. I felt like I am a castaway in an island where the only other person is an unattractive woman with a face similar to mine. Wrong book equals to the wrong woman. Wrong woman equals to the disaster…

In the late afternoon, after having some sleep in the room, I went into the sea again. This time I wanted to swim as much as I can and enjoy the silky touch of the water on my skin. The feeling can be felt only in winter nights when you are wrapped in a wool blanket and try to read a melancholic story. The water was warm and soft, like the breasts of a Mediterranean woman. If you look at it for long time, you might get lost. If you dive into it, you might never come back. The sun seemed like penetrating to the surface of the sea in front of me. I thought it was sinking to complete the cycle so that it will rise back next day, through the mountains behind me. The sea was quiet. There was a big guy swimming far from me but I did not have courage to go that far. I stayed in the safe shore to make sure that my feet always touch the bottom of the sea. That is my connection with the earth. My existantial being depends on this feeling of safety. If I lose that contact with the ground, I will probably scream, make the world larger for myself while making it smaller for others. There was a family of three on the shore, a mother playing with her son and a father trying to sleep. A few Europen tourists were reading books –crime stories- and they seemed satisfied with the power of the sunlight which baked their skin through the long afternoon. I spent all my time there, diving into the water to see some little fish, swimming short distances and trying myself holding my breath up to ninety seconds beneath the surface.

J was busy taking photos of me and herself. That is what she liked the most when we go somewhere new. If she does not take photos, the place cannot be counted visited. It is not a habit, it is an obsession. Many people in Asia consider traveling as a proof of certain status. Every photo is an evidence of happiness, of affordability of travel expenses, of experience of something new. For me photos usually do not tell the truth. They do not depict inside our minds so we can easily cheat them. A forced smile cannot be differentiated from a genuine smile on a photo; a broken heart cannot be pictured with all the pain it caused to the bearer.

In the evening, we sit on the beach and have a nice dinner. After having a few beers, my mind is getting smoother, like a blank canvas waiting to be painted with a surrealist picture. I watch the blackness of the sea, holding the little body of J, feel her warmness close to mine and think about my past weeks when she was away. The more I think, the bigger the sea becomes. I feel as if the ocean will come over me and take me away. But what size of tsunami can clean us from our sins? What size of waves do we need to redeem ourselves? What size of sea monsters do we have to fight with to compensate our wrongdoings? Is there a fixed price of atonement for this indefinite blackness in front of me? If there is, will it be enough to enlighten the deep blackness inside me as well?

Next morning, I go to the little shop beside the reception office and look at the books left by other guests. There is a sign saying that we can exchange books. Most of the books are Dutch, French or German. There are a few books in English and they do not look like something I can enjoy. At the end, I find a novel about the lives of Porto Ricans in USA. The book won Pulitzer Prize so at least there is something I can rely on. I leave my supposed-to-be-erotic novel and take this supposed-to-be-funny story.

I read during the breakfast, after the breakfast, in the taxi and at the airport. J says “You look like you were hungry for days.” I nod quietly and keep reading. The airplane is small and we walk to the airplane. J takes the last photos, this time next to the airplane, meaning this bird will take us home. I keep reading in the airplane. I don’t even look out the window to say goodbye to the island. When we arrive at the HCMC airport, I feel home with its bitter memoirs and painful endings… “Yes”, I repeat to myself. “No man is an island especially when there is no island on which you can live forever.” “No man is an island when there is an unavoidable return to the reality”. “No man is an island when the waves carry the memories to the other shores as quick as the light travels, as short as an illicit love lasts…”

Phu Quoc, Apr. 2009