The ship’s resident marine biologist admits he was drawn to the study of sea life after watching the black and white Tarzan movies, where the hero falls into a giant clam and struggle between man and, well, giant clam ensues. Such a film plot wouldn’t inspire me to become a marine biologist; it would inspire me to write better movies. But he looks like a natural whale watcher; he has a wondering eye.
“Tomorrow, we’ll be in Mauritius! Ah Paradise ! Paradise is wonderful AND beautiful…, ” another professor goes on. She’s rehearsed this lecture in front of her mirror (girls can tell.) I use the term lecture loosely. I wouldn’t consider an hour’s time of elusive idioms to be educational.
She’s having a go at her interpretation of the Mark Twain quote, “… Heaven was copied after Mauritius.” Twain operates on what I just now recognize as Credo quia absurdum, and so, during this time abroad, do I. I’m afraid I move through days believing I am entitled to forget and start over--my litany of observations. This may be a parable of either my life at sea, or my life itself. Paradise is all in the mind. I’ve come to understand. It cannot exist independently of it.
As a result, I jumped aboard an orange catamaran in academic pursuit of finding the mythical clam, and this fabled paradise—just another day. I went snorkeling through schools of electric blue fish. I dove down farther, scraping my belly on the ocean floor. I saw an albino eel. I swam as far as I could until I could no longer hear the boat’s reggae music, and I no longer had the energy to swim. I floated on my back and made snow angels in the Indian Ocean. I started to cry so I put my snorkeling mask back on, and fogged up my goggles.
My ideal island would have lots of sand, and coconuts, and jungle and no people.
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