Life's a (Secret) Beach...

hey, y'all...lets get this blog entry started straight away...forget the "hellos" and "how are yous" and the pleasantries...so, here we go...

on sunday, lisa, john, and i went to a'asu beach...(pronounced ah-sue)...its on the northern side of the island...in other words, its on the complete opposite side of where we live...its on the side that has almost no inhabitants...in fact, we had to hike over a mountain to get to the very secluded, private shoreline because theres no road that goes to that side of the island...it was completely rural and isolated and naturally pure...no humans and no signs of humans...well, sort of...ill describe the beautifully secret beach as i explain the pictures...and theres a lot to explain...

i became googly eyed as i saw this house sittin on top of the mountain...we walked by it right before we began to descend the mountain...it was the last house in the final village we saw before we got into the thick samoan jungle...this lonesome yet peacefully quaint home was at the peak of this majestic mountain...and it instantly became my dream home...isnt it wonderfully splendid?...when we walked by it, a woman was hanging her clothes up and the children were watching tv...and with that splendid view of the ocean and the gorgeous island, it was a dreamy, calm moment for me...sure the house is small...but who could ask for anything more?...its so fantastically wistful and charmingly organic and serenely enchanting...i love it...my barbie dream house...

these two pics above are pretty much of the same thing...the top one was taken later in the afternoon while the bottom one was taken in the morning...it took us like an hour and a half to climb down the flippin moutain...and it took us like another two hours to climb back up it...the climb back up was terribly tiring and strenuous...i was actually extremely proud of myself for hiking up that mountain...it was literally two hours of nothing but deep woods hiking up hill...there was no flat lands...just up...and up...and up...there were a couple times i thought id die of exhaustion...but i just kept pumping along and hiking...lisa had a very difficult time and she says she's never gonna go on another hike again...it was definetly vigorously arduous...but i felt so proud for climbing up it and completing the task, that i would do it again in a heart beat...i was sweating buckets and my legs felt like noodles and my asthma was goin crazy, but it felt good, ya know?...its always very pleasing and rewarding to do something you thought you couldnt do...and there were moments, climbing up that huge, endless mountain, that i wanted to give up...

that picture makes our hiking look safe and comfortable...but this was early in our hiking...we hadnt got to the steep, rocky, wet, and heavily forested areas yet...with those happy little red ants and black lizards and ginormous crabs...it was like the amazon...or a national geographic special...

when we finally got over the moutain and walked through the bushes to our secret beach getaway, i forced lisa and john to pose for this picture like they were explorers discovering a new land...i love making people pose for pictures...and they always seem to be gullible enough to do it...

so this is a'asu beach...our tropically raw and beautifully clandestine south pacific beach...oh, it was righteous, man...i felt totally cut off from our world, and entered a natural, quiet, remote, and clean isle...a paradise untouched by man...no boats or signs or electricity or streets or people...wholly peaceful and pure...it was stunning...the thing that was so awe-inspiring to me was that i never felt in my whole life that i would get the chance to feel and see something so astounding...i mean, to be at a secluded and uninhabited tropical paradise in the middle of the south pacific ocean wouldve seemed impossible to me before this day...and when i was there at the beach, i felt so lucky and grateful to be able to experience the earth this way...i dont think many people get this chance anymore...i felt really blessed to gaze at the world from this small, exquisite, unpolluted, and secret corner of the world...

john and i decided to walk into the jungle and try to discover some of the remainders of the a'asu village...you see, hundreds of years ago there were people who lived on this beach...native samoans who lived off the land...growing bananas and taro and catching fish...it seems unfathomable that people could live on that beach...but i suppose people do it on survivor all the time...anyways, we found deep in the woods this old, neglected, dilapidated house...as you can see from the pic, its been many years since anyone has lived in the house...it was kinda creepy walking up to the ramshackle house...

this cemetary right outside the house made it even spookier...ive told you guys before that samoans bury their dead in their front yards...well, as ancient as this house mightve been, it looks like they buried someone here back in 1992...we were guessing it was a grandmother who maybe grew up in the house or maybe built her family in it or had ancestors that lived in it...either way, it was not only kinda scary, but it was also kinda neat to step back in time...imagining what her life was like in a'asu was magical, and as we continued to explore the house cautiously and adventurously, it was like walking into a time machine...a samoan history exhibit...

let me just tell you, i dont believe in ghosts at all...but after hearing tons of samoan legends of haunting spirits, i couldnt help but be tremendously frightened as we examined the dirty, dark, and forsaken home...but it was exciting...

this jesus statue was on a table in the house...i just had to take a picture of it...reminded me of suzy and our short obsession with everything jesus back in high school...what was up with that phase, sue?...we loved us some jesus...

those two pictures were of the back of the house and john sneaking back there...the bugs here were terrifying...you cant really tell but in the picture of that old, rundown door you can see crabs crawling up the door frame...those two big black dots are jurassic park-like crabs...it was damn gross...

i dont want this post to be too much of a history lesson...because i dont want to bore you...and im also not that educated about the history of american samoa...but a'asu beach is also home to "massacre bay"...in a nutshell, french explorers, one of the first group of westerners to set foot on the samoan island of tutuila (our island), in the 18th century got into a mysterious battle with the villagers of a'asue beach...no one really knows why the fighting began but, of course, the samoans were blamed for it...many people believe, including many samoans, that the islanders were cannibals and tried to eat the french men...but i dont think this is true...there were a ton of samoans killed in the battle (another part of this history thats still unknown is how many samoans exactly lost their lives) and only about 11 french guys...i just dont think the samoans wouldve tried to eat some men with guns and ships and cannons...i believe the french men, like all white men it seems, just wanted to conquer more land or something...or were just freaked out after seeing the dark skinned, tribal, spear-in-hands people...whatever happened, theres a memorial in the jungle off the coast for the french men that died...seems silly to me that theres no memorial for the samoans that died...but once again, the misunderstood minority gets the shaft...

what i find really fascinating about this massacre bay history is that many samoans that i talk to actually go on the side of the white french men...they tell me that many samoans, hundreds of years ago, were cannibalistic, ferocious, and untamed wild natives, and that they probably did try to kill and eat the french men...thats fine and dandy to me, but i also think that theres some sort of shame that samoans feel about their culture and past...in the 19th century, john williams brought christianity to the island and everything changed for its people...they began to believe in the bible instead of the island gods...they began to wear clothes and act like good little christians...they began to use electricity and become "civilized"...all my samoan students believe that john williams is the savior of the island people...he saved them from their brutish and feral ways...he brought them jesus and enlightenment...he made them sophisticated...my students are often embarassed to discuss how their ancestors used to worship island gods and maybe even had cannibalistic sacrifices...they feel guilty about how the ancient samoans used to be tribal and undomesticated...they feel ashamed and mortified by their pasts...so much so that theyve begun to see the white man as their salvation...and have even begun to blame themselves for violent events like massacre bay...they refuse to believe that the french couldve been at fault...it was their own people that are at fault...and thats incredibly sad and interesting to me...they should be proud of their history...no matter what it was...even if their ancestors were cannibals...heck, i think cannibalism is kinda cool...who doesnt want some hannibal lecter-ish cooked and salted human thigh every once in a while?...tastes like chicken...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_samoa

http://www.tamug.edu/mast/aasu/aasu.html

john and i went swimming in the ocean...it was wonderful...though the ocean creeps me out a bit (the whole undertow thing gives me the heebie-jeebies), i still love swimming in it and letting the waves crash over me...i even like the salt water...most people hate it, but for the same reason i dig chlorinated water, i like the taste of ocean water on my lips and skin...im weird like that...i was so happy and thrilled to be in the ocean that i even was brave (or crazy?) enough to stay in the water even after we saw two baby sharks (yup, sharks!) swim right by us...and, sure, they were babies, but they were still almost as big as my arm...so im sure they couldve bit my face off or something...but i didnt care...the beautiful paradise and clear, warm ocean water had me entranced and careless...

dont these pictures make you feel like youre in a episode of lost...i swear, you can almost see jack, kate, sawyer, hurley, locke, and the others...and if you look carefully, you can see the hatch...and the smokey monster thingy...

these final two images were taken at the peak of the mountain...its the southern end of the island where the villages are...remember the south side is inhabited...it was so magnificent to see the island from the top...to see how vast the blueness that surrounded us was and the minuteness of the leafy rock that i was living on...and to see those tiny villages made me feel even smaller...but at the same time, i felt grand...i never believed i would see the world like this...and there i was, seeing it like this...it was a glorious and superlative moment...i wanted to scream "im the king of the world"...dont worry...i didnt...but i fantasized about it...and leo decaprio was there with me, too ;-)

alright...i wrote way too much on this post...damn it all...why didnt you guys stop me!?...anyways, leave some messages...you guys have been doin pretty good...and im always elated when you respond to my posts...some of you have been writing me emails, and thats cool, too...of course, you dont want me telling the universe an embarassing story about you...

k, bye...love ya and miss ya...

-JOE

p.s....just wanted to inform y'all that the last greys episode of the three parter sorta rescued my sentiments on the show...im not gonna explain why, but i think it was back to the old greys anatomy and the wonderful soapy drama of the characters...though it suddenly seemed like the whole ferry boat disaster disappeared after meredith was found drowned, didnt it?...and the whole heaven thing was so after-school special, "the more you know"-type cheesy...remember that classic family ties episode where alex p. keaton goes to that dream-like heaven place?...i dont remember exactly what it was about...ten points to the person who can remember the specifics of that episode...anyways, thats what it reminded me of...

"O lands! O all so dear to me -- what you are, I become part of that, whatever it is."

-Walt Whitman, The Land