7 Oceana
If you haven't done so yet, you should hie thee on down to The Island Chronicles, a column cowritten by Boing-Boing Blog writer Mark Frauenfelder and his partner Carla Sinclair. As it explains on the L. A. Times website, which picked up his column soon after they started e-posting them, "[They] uprooted themselves from Los Angeles and moved to the South Pacific. Their first stop is Rarotonga. They brought their two young daughters with them."
Although the columns are brief, it is an entrance in to a world that has always been interesting to the Western observer: as with all similar inherited notions of the 'sauvage', we are torn between seeing the "South Seas" as a place of cannibalism and unrestrained sexuality: our ultimate borderlands, what the region between Europe and Central Asia was to Europeans, Africans & Asians alike. Our "dog men" (like St. Christopher, who has the head of a dog - betcha didn't learn that in Catholic School!) and Amazons are still trapped in our heads, only they are Gauguin's nekkid chicks and Margaret Meade's visions of perfectly unselfconscious virgin-whores face-à-face with stories of man-eaters and head-hunters.
Some things are true. A grain of truth lay behind each lie; my grandpa, a Marine who was stationed somewhere in the South Pacific (one of the many Natives who enlisted to protect the United States with the added benefit of escaping rural poverty), told me about an encounter with "some of those black birds" who were laughing and joking. When he asked the local liaison why they were staring at him, the liaison said they were "bushmen; they thinking of eating longpig". My grandpa bit and asked what longpig was. "You longpig," he said, grinning.
Anyway, life in the South Pacific. Read what it is like. The email list is especially nice: you get funny posts like the one from Mark with an e-photo of this nasty growth on his leg and a request that maybe someone could identify what the heck it is so he can treat it - there are no doctors for thousands upon thousands of miles.
Although the columns are brief, it is an entrance in to a world that has always been interesting to the Western observer: as with all similar inherited notions of the 'sauvage', we are torn between seeing the "South Seas" as a place of cannibalism and unrestrained sexuality: our ultimate borderlands, what the region between Europe and Central Asia was to Europeans, Africans & Asians alike. Our "dog men" (like St. Christopher, who has the head of a dog - betcha didn't learn that in Catholic School!) and Amazons are still trapped in our heads, only they are Gauguin's nekkid chicks and Margaret Meade's visions of perfectly unselfconscious virgin-whores face-à-face with stories of man-eaters and head-hunters.
Some things are true. A grain of truth lay behind each lie; my grandpa, a Marine who was stationed somewhere in the South Pacific (one of the many Natives who enlisted to protect the United States with the added benefit of escaping rural poverty), told me about an encounter with "some of those black birds" who were laughing and joking. When he asked the local liaison why they were staring at him, the liaison said they were "bushmen; they thinking of eating longpig". My grandpa bit and asked what longpig was. "You longpig," he said, grinning.
Anyway, life in the South Pacific. Read what it is like. The email list is especially nice: you get funny posts like the one from Mark with an e-photo of this nasty growth on his leg and a request that maybe someone could identify what the heck it is so he can treat it - there are no doctors for thousands upon thousands of miles.
posted by Unknown @ 02:09
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