polynesian paradise

In what became a fairly startling revelation, I learned today that an acquaintance has sold off everything she owns and moved to French Polynesia. For a moment, I was surprised because, locked inside my own little mind, I often take for granted that there are other people in the world who feel precisely as I do, who yearn for escape and adventure. Then, of course, I was beset by envy. She just did it, without thinking of the practicalities of it, without doing it "correctly," without working out how she would live or what she would do. She said that she realized, after visiting there last month, that she needed something more out of life and thought she would find it on the islands.

I have never been there nor ever really considered it an option but I can imagine the beaches and the lush overgrowth, the supersaturated color of the water and the warmth clinging to the backs of my knees and my spine. I can imagine riding a rusted old bicycle and waving to women dressed in white, I can imagine the smell of the thatched roofs and the jungle after a rain.

It is no longer enough to suck at the drippings of the imagination when, with a bit of effort, I could pick the fruit and taste its meat.