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By Root 556 0

the clouds reflect the unseen light. The tops of the clouds are always illuminated because they are the last to reflect the sun, sometimes at sixty or seventy thousand feet high. Once it’s dark, you lie on the sand and wait for the first star. If you’re with friends, there’s a game to see who will spot it first. When it’s completely dark, a celestial panorama begins unfolding above you: single lights turn on, then a string of them, then galaxies. I’ve never seen the heavens look so vast as they do from an atoll. The first light is usually a planet, Venus or Mars; then, very slowly, subtle, distant needle pricks appear in space, and as the last glow of the sunset ebbs away and it grows darker, the stars shine more brightly. Finally the sky opens and the Milky Way and other constellations explode in a panoramic umbrella of lights that reaches from horizon to horizon.

As I sat up to my waist in shallow water with my friend from New York that afternoon following the second hurricane and watched the night come on, she asked me if I had ever seen a shooting star. I told her yes, that you usually see them “over there” and I pointed up to the sky. Just as I said this, we saw the flash of a shooting star exactly where I was pointing. It was as if somebody were striking a match across the sky, but there was no sound, just a streak of light.

As I’ve said, small things mean a lot on Teti’aroa.

There have been several important influences on my life. Philosophically I’ve felt closest to the American Indians; I sympathize with them, admire their culture, and have learned a great deal from them. Jews opened my mind and taught me to value knowledge and learning, and blacks also taught me a lot. But I think Polynesians have had the greatest influence because of how they live.

In Tahiti I learned how to live, though I discovered I could never be a Tahitian. When I first went there, I had illusions of becoming Polynesian. I wanted to fuse myself into the culture. However, eventually I realized that not only were my genes different, but the emotional algebra of my life was unsuited to becoming anything but who I am, so I gave up trying and instead simply learned to appreciate what they have. I suppose I was learning the same lessons that I did from Jews, blacks and American Indians: you can admire and love a culture, you can even attach yourself to the edges of it, but you can’t ever become part of it. You have to be who you are.

When I discovered Tahiti in the pages of the National Geographic in the library at Shattuck, what impressed me most was the serene expressions on the faces of its natives. They were happy faces, open maps of contentment. Living there has confirmed to me that Tahitians are the happiest people I’ve ever known. The differences between Polynesian and Western culture are deceptive. In the United States we think we have at our disposal virtually everything—and I emphasize the word “think.” We have big houses and cars, good medical treatment, jets, trains and monorails; we have computers, good communications, many comforts and conveniences. But where have they gotten us? We have an abundance of material things, but a successful society produces happy people, and I think we produce more miserable people than almost anyplace on earth. I’ve traveled all over the world, and I’ve never seen people who are quite as unhappy as they are in the United States. We have plenty, but we have nothing, and we always want more. In the pursuit of material success as our culture measures it, we have given up everything. We have lost the capacity to produce people who are joyful. The pursuit of the material has become our reason for living, not enjoyment of living itself.

In Tahiti there are more laughing faces per acre than in any place I’ve ever been, whereas we’ve put a man on the moon but produce frustrated, angry people.

I can hear some readers say, “Why do you want to run America down, Marlon? You’ve had it pretty good!”

Well, America has been good to me, but it wasn’t a gift; rather, I’ve earned it by the sweat of my brow and