ISLAND
Why are so many people in awe when I say I grew up on an island?
Reflecting the difference between iconic images of places and, on the other hand, how they are experienced when you live there - this is what I wrote about ‘island” in an essay reflecting on iconic images elsewhere. (see link below *)
“Are these iconic representations ultimately a fantasy, like the popular image associated with the word “island”, of a lush tropical paradise with swaying palm trees and long sandy beaches? The southern Caribbean island where I grew up is arid, a rocky desert island, with small, intimate coves, not always sandy.
On the other hand, there is much more to the image of ‘island’ as a lived experience – in terms of what it means to be both self-sufficient and cut-off from the world.”
As a lived experience, the island is a rich and all-encompassing universe unto itself. It evokes the adaptiveness by necessity that comes from isolation, the Robinson Crusoe finding inventive solutions.
It is to be a world unto its own, of self-sufficiency, of endemic solutions, with the development of the island’s own language, cuisine, architecture, music, that are different from those of the rest of the Caribbean, different from those of the mainland Venezuela that is only 50 kilometers away, and very different from the Dutch colonial culture that had such a strong influence on my imagination as a schoolgirl. It is a pride in what is "ours" - di nos.
Being bounded by the sea can also mean being protected against invasion and against being drawn into the great wars of the world. Perhaps it means also protection against infiltration by dangerous species, like poisonous snakes.
And at the same time, there is the longing to go across the sea, the sense of being limited, bound – especially bound by strict, hierarchical social norms, enforced by “what people will say”. And how that can kill creativity. And sensuality.
More so than a longing for the great cultural centers of the world, with their art museums and classical music concerts, I yearned for the natural wonders that could not be found on our little island. Here is a passage, in the words of the twelve-year-old Mira, from my fictionalized memoir “House without Doors”:
“There are no rivers on the island. Only when it rains can a roi in the countryside fill up with water and for a while turn into a river of sorts, but we are never there to see it. The waters in the roi go down almost immediately after the torrential rains stop and all that is left is a dry, washed away riverbed.
(…)
I have always wanted to see the Mississippi. Or the Amazon. Somehow the Rhine, “our river”, seems mild and tame. There are no Tom Sawyers and Huckleberry Finns building rafts to float down the Rhine, helping runaway slaves. There are no crocodiles lurking below the waters, ready to tear you apart.
As if I have seen the Rhine! In school we learn by heart “De Rijn vloeit by Lobith in Ons Land” the Rhine flows at Lobith into Our Country. Our Country. But after reading all those books about Our Country, I have come to know the Rhine so well, that I sometimes forget it is so far away from our little island in the sun.
No, we have no rivers on this island. There are no mountain peaks with melting snow, there are even no high mountains, only hills, and it does not rain enough to keep the waters streaming in the roi.
And even if there were a river, where could it possibly flow to, on such a narrow little island? As soon as it would come down from the hills, it would already be at the sea. There are no vast stretches of countryside for a Great River to wind its way through.
We do have the red Plain of Hato, which I imagine to be an endless desert where you can get lost for days. When the sun is very hot you can see a bluish flickering of light hovering above the horizon. It looks like there is a pool of water, far in the distance and you rush on to quench your thirst with the cool waters of the desert pool, only to realize that you can never reach this oasis which is just a play of light on the hot red earth, a fatamorgana.
There is a dusty road going through the plain from Hato to San Pedro and after the rains the road is washed away, so that the car can easily get stuck deep in the mud. It never happened to us, because Papi is such a cautious driver and he will always turn back the car, if he sees large puddles of water on the plain.
No, at the most you can get stuck in the Plain of Hato. You cannot really get lost. It is just a strip of red earth between the high rock wall with its stalactite caves on one side and the rough sea of the North Coast on the other. And there is no river flowing through it.
I want to go away on a raft floating down a river. I want to travel through canyons and large open plains, exploring undiscovered places. On this narrow little island, everything ends at the sea.
There is nowhere to go.”
***
Notes:
Photograph of Westpunt by my grandfather, Benjamin Gomes Casseres, probably from the nineteen forties.
*In my essay Arctic Reveries, published in Wild Roof Journal, I reflect on the images of glacier, iceberg, fjord while trekking in eastern Greenland: https://wildroofjournal.com/issue-12-rita-mendes-flohr/
****