God hides the fires of hell within Paradise.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014\u00a0 Paul Coelho\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the early ninties, a man I was dating, I\u2019ll call him\u00a0Nick, invited me to his private island in Tahiti. His mother was Tahitian and a\u00a0friend of hers had left the island to Nick in his will. He descibed the woven
thatched huts he had built there: a kitchen, a bedroom and a living space. And\u00a0he was still building. I was thrilled to be getting away from my own life. I\u00a0was feeling lost, I didn\u2019t have a place to live and I was afraid of being alone. I wanted to leave it all behind.<\/p>\n
I packed bathing suits, shorts, t shirts, cotton pants\u00a0and blouses, books to read and writing pads and pens. I threw a couple of
long-sleeved t shirts in my suitcase but I probably wouldn\u2019t need them. I was\u00a0headed to an enchanted garden with warm trade winds, blue skies, crystal clear\u00a0oceans, white sand beaches and making love under the stars. Nick knew Marlon\u00a0Brando who owned land in Tahiti. I was about to meet Marlon Brando. I couldn\u2019t\u00a0have been more excited.<\/p>\n
We took a night flight and arrived in Papeete early in\u00a0the morning. It was still dark when Nick rented a car for the hour drive to a\u00a0motor boat that would take us to his island. He fell asleep twice on the drive\u00a0and I had to grab the wheel and wake him up before we skidded off the dirt\u00a0road. We got into the motor boat and took the ten minute ride to the island\u00a0where I\u2019d be staying for two months.<\/p>\n
As we approached the island, a Tahitian man, Henri,\u00a0with legs like tree roots was waiting for us. It looked like a dream as we\u00a0exited the boat and three little kittens ran over and brushed against my legs. Nick\u00a0pointed to the bedroom and told me I could settle in while he and Henri took a\u00a0walk around the island so he could see how the building was going. I gazed\u00a0around the room. There was a large bed and no doors. There were no closets or\u00a0shelves so I\u2019d be living out of my suitcase but it was a small price to pay for\u00a0the beauty that was all around me. I sat at the edge of the bed, closed my eye,\u00a0listened to the tides and felt a sting on my face. I swatted a mosquito. It\u00a0bled on my cheek.<\/p>\n
It took fifteen minutes for Nick to walk the perimeter\u00a0of the very small island. When he got back, he made coffee and toast, we ate\u00a0and he said he\u2019d see me later as he started to take off with Henri again to
fell coconut trees and work on the huts. \u201cWhere\u2019s the bathroom?\u201d I asked. He\u00a0pointed and walked away. I headed over there. It was a hole in the ground, one\u00a0of the many things Nick had forgotten to tell me. There were no toilets. No\u00a0running water. The winds blew huge coconuts off the palm trees. The kittens had\u00a0fleas. Wild chickens and roosters squawked and crowed. There were holes in the\u00a0ground that Tupa crabs had dug. I decided to go for a swim but thick, slimy black
slugs were lying at the sea bottom. Most daunting of all, the mosquitos rode\u00a0the trade winds and smashed up against my face.<\/p>\n
I put on a long pair of pants and a long sleeved t\u00a0shirt, I lit a mosquito coil, sat on the floor beside it and cried. I didn\u2019t\u00a0know what to do with myself so I stayed there until Nick came back around
dinnertime. We ate and Nick was so exhausted from the work he had done, he fell\u00a0asleep in minutes. No making love under the stars. I lay on my back, watching\u00a0the mosquitos, little vampires, make their way through the netting and land on me\u00a0for a blood fest.<\/p>\n
When I got up in the morning, my face was completely\u00a0swollen. Nick looked at me and said, \u201cWow!\u201d and he was off with Henri. He told
me that Tupa crabs attracted mosquitos so I walked around the island with a BB\u00a0gun, slid it into their holes and shot them. I didn\u2019t do it for long because it\u00a0felt like I was committing Tupa genocide. That evening, when I told Nick I\u2019d\u00a0been mediaiting at the top of the white sand beach, he said, \u201cWho needs to\u00a0meditate in Paradise?\u201d<\/p>\n
He never took me to meet Marlon Brando. Or to the\u00a0Gaughin house. He stayed on the island and built up his home. He was absent\u00a0most of the time and after my first week, I wrote a poem called \u201cThe Agony of Paradise.\u201d\u00a0I was lonely and felt defeated. I had hoped to leave my life behind, but there\u00a0was no getting away from me. I was afraid ask for what I needed. I was afraid\u00a0to tell Nick how I felt, and he didn\u2019t notice. For me, this was hell, not\u00a0Paradise. After a month, when I told him I needed to leave, he looked stunned. \u201cAren\u2019t\u00a0you happy?\u201d he asked me. On the flight back, I felt disappointed in myself. If\u00a0I couldn\u2019t be happy in Paradise, where could I be happy?<\/p>\n
I figured that one out. The island was Nick\u2019s Eden but\\\u00a0it wasn\u2019t mine. I couldn\u2019t live someone else\u2019s life. I had to create my own. I
rented an apartment when I got back. It was no frills but I was happy to write\u00a0during the day and lie in my own bed in the evening. There were no insects\u00a0eating me or roosters crowing as I sat back against my down pillows with a\u00a0cuddly cat beside me that didn\u2019t have fleas. My mosquito bites healed. My\u00a0loneliness was filled up with my friends. I \u00a0started speaking up and asking for what I needed. I stopped running away from myself. I came to understand that it’s okay to need things, that Paradise is not a place. It\u2019s a state of mind. There will always be people who have more than you do but that has nothing to do with Paradise. It isn\u2019t about perfection. It\u2019s about finding a way to speak up and work out your differences. Where giving and caring bring a lot of joy. It\u2019s a place to make peace with yourself. A place to find your own truth and live in it and by it.<\/p>\n
Voltaire said, \u201cWherever my travels may lead, Paradise\u00a0is where I am.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
God hides the fires of hell within Paradise. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u2014\u00a0 Paul Coelho\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 In the early ninties, a man I was dating, I\u2019ll call him\u00a0Nick, invited me to his private island in Tahiti. His mother was Tahitian and a\u00a0friend of hers had left the island to Nick in his will. He […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2666,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2667"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2668,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2667\/revisions\/2668"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}