After a summer of attempting to avoid the scorching heat and various natural disasters hitting central Texas, In June I found myself on island after island before I settled down with friends and family in July and August. From the brisk shores of Whidbey Island in Washington to Kauai in Hawaii to Culebra on the Spanish Virgin Islands, I boarded ferries and propeller-run planes to get to paradise. I joined friends as they read poetry and attended lectures. Here, I wore what I like to call tourism-core, the flowery and flowy patterns that signify leisure. As one gate agent proclaimed, it was clear I was a tourist almost to absurdity. It was also here where I found a new set of poems to write for this season of life: islands, leisure, and god.
it's not just about leisure itself but the ability to participate in leisure culture. From athleisure to its more islandwear compatriot, resort wear, leisure is a privilege in capitalism and in America. Brands are no stranger to this truth. From Scotch and Soda to the ultracool sunscreen brand eponymously named Vacation, a sponsor of a premiere for the show Palm Royale I attended, the consumer brand is no stranger to the idea of being guided by the idea and aspiration of leisure. But as I followed the threads further and began to pull, I started to unravel a deeper meaning. As I rewatched the famed vacation-laden series, White Lotus, on the long flights, I began to see hues and hints about escapism, hedonism, and the separation that islands seem to offer—from our communities, our society, and most importantly ourselves.
The show’s premise itself comes from a story in Homer’s Odyssey and then adapted into more poetry by Lord Alfred Tennyson. These lotos-eaters were sailors who, after an arduous war, went to an island off the coast of Libya to rest (Djerba). There they found themselves enamoured by the lotos flower. Once eaten, it imbibed them to want to stay there, abandoning their lives forever for the local lotos way. Here they knew only pleasure and escaped the pain that is life.
Tennyson’s life work often contained representations of his Christian ideals or a lack of their presence. This work came about early on for Tennyson and was rather simple, but it made me reflect on the way that the lotos island represents the absence of Christian ideals, and yet it is a paradise. And to return to society, to be in community, is painful. Was Djerba the bad place? Lord Tennyson seemed to think so. During this time, as religious fervour weakened throughout Europe, this poem also made points on secular materialism, and the worship of the physical over the metaphysical, including growing industrialism and colonisation in mid-19th century Europe. To be sure, religion has often been used as a premise to conquer, but the acquisition of territories was always physical. My previous article about culture and status got me thinking about this: As I began to see food, fun, and fuel flood into my surroundings as I entered more and more high-status environments, I was sure that materialism had won the war.
As Americans escape to the former and current corners of its empire, including myself (lapsed passport), what exactly does paradise present to us? What do we lose when we are there, and how does it work to pacify the rest of our lives? Is it worth it to come offshore, or is it best to be shipwrecked forever?
First, we have to examine the premise of life as painful, community as painful, and our lives as a struggle. The sailors didn’t have anything necessarily terrible to return to but it was just life, filled with expectations, relationships, and challenges: wives and children, duties and celebrations. It was not the paradise that the island promised. While there would be joy on land, it wouldn’t be promised or forever.
As we continue to chase Paradise in the present day, I wonder why the Adam and Eve story continues to resonate with us. It might be something to do with the fact that it’s something we thought we once had. The story checks off paradise as needing to have materialistic pursuits as the area contained an array of fruits and food. But it wasn’t until the famed bite that sin became part of the world. And sin, I think, is more about the psyche, the way that the soul, ego, and emotional selves wind together towards an ultimate self.
The ego and the higher self are constantly competing with each other for a place at the last supper. And they both make it, as the ego continually betrays us in the name of protection. Our Jesus tells us to love one another and our Judas tells us that we should be always looking out for the self, that others are trying to slight us, and that we must avoid pain at all costs. It’s not just about Christianity but overarching themes of escape and surrenderer.
First in the series is Simmer on St. Thomas. Here, I rode around the winding ways of the island. From our resort to local dives, during our fast and furious drives, I thought about what this island meant to those for whom it had become home. To begin again, to hide, or to renew the self? It seemed like this holding cell of sorts where time stopped. Where the hazy humid skies seemed to contain everything people had left on the mainland and that when the air rose and cleared it would all be waiting for them upon their return—but until then it was about having fun and not trying to look too hard.
Stoaway is a reflection of a time on St. Croix I had a while ago. Here I stayed on the island on a boat, with full access to the resort. While I was flying solo, I had my cross to bear as I ran and climbed through rocky beaches and highways with a yoga mat on my back looking for nothing in particular but a strong sense of escape. This came before a huge moment of conflict in my life as soon as I came back home. It is here I wonder why I went there when I had many questions to be answered back home. I think it allowed my physical body and mind to catch up with my brain. The way it tired me out and regulated my nervous system to prepare me for what was to come.
Shipwreck is about my time in Kauai. From muddy hikes, foggy skies, and planks of wood, Shipwreck is about the mess of it all: the pleasure we get from vacation, interspersed with our lives back home, and the temporality of paradise. It’s the belief that this time should come without challenges. Unlike the sailors, although our physical selves can remain in Kauai our minds can get caught up and any diversion from the pursuit of pleasure on vacation can knock us off track. But the islands Americans travel to are not just about the material and mental escapes we trick ourselves into but I think each of them also has the possibility to power the spirit, the soul, and get to the truth that the pursuit and prioritisation of pleasure should not come at the expense of connecting with ourselves. It’s realising that life, or aloha, also known as the breath is present with us throughout our journey from our hello to our eventual goodbye. That the more that we remember to breathe the less we feel the need to get-away. To be sure, every human life sailor or not will contain hardships, and it is in those moments we have to remember to breathe the hardest.
Sumergido is about surrender. After the ship wrecks, the bodies need to sink. I think of my time on the main island of Puerto Rico fondly, from dancing in San Juan to drinking passion fruit pouches aptly named Gasolina. One day, following a broken beat up convertible and a long walk later my friends and I decided to give up and just let the ocean take control of the day. As I floated there I stopped searching and reaching for the shore and let myself relax. I’m a terrible swimmer and at that moment I had decided to give up searching for a paradise where I never had to worry about the possibility of drowning. On the island of incantation, I had snapped out of it. No longer enchanted by the promise of the island’s surface, I let myself go, my heart responding with palpitations as I continued to be held by the water and the inhalations and exhalations of my breath.
Nafs are the soul in Sufi’ism. But they are also the ego. They encompass the psyche broadly and in Sufi’ism, we learn that to be in complete connection with God we must have passed several levels of Nafs. Otherwise, our beliefs and devotion are muddled through the lens of the ego. As I read Sufi legends on Whidbey Island, looking upon a bright sun, sky, and shore, I reflected on this and that is the second to last poem: Sunrise.
Sayonara is about returning. It's about a return to the self. It's a homecoming that involves lifting. As I flew out of Culebra, in the propeller plane, I sat still as the air floated us up and away from paradise. Culebra is known for its beautiful beaches and snake-like design. I would walk past the airport and towards the hordes of tourists from the ferry each morning, ready to get breakfast before it ran out. Tired of my daily scurrying and the amount of closed diners I left early. I left the beaches with bites, and foaming at the mouth for hydration but sure my time here was done. The thing about islands is that- at least in modern day- they actually are the most in need. For all its glitz and glamour, they are not real. They rely on the outside world, from underpaid workers and critters on the island to farmers and pilots living on the mainland to function. And in that way I think we fool ourselves when we decide to cling to the need to feel good and to have goods. While we might pretend our lives are isles, the truth is that our lives, ourselves, and those around us are just a propeller-plane ride away.
As I’m coming away from this trip resting and writing in a guest bedroom in Colorado I’m sure of the fact that the ferry and plane routes that bind us to another can be restored, and that the illusion of paradise eventually fades. Whether by external circumstances like my bites, or internal circumstances like the brain or the body, there comes a time where the arid air rises, we hold our breath, and the plane takes off.
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