Basia Unleashed

I believe it was Robert Louis Stevenson who called the people of the South Pacific islands “God’s greatest work”. Captain Cook called the islands of Tonga “the friendly isles” and if there is one place I would happily be castaway on, it would be Tonga, because dear reader, you can believe the hype. It’s all true. Sit in your car for more than three minutes doing nothing except look mildly perplexed, and someone will rap the window and ask if you need any help; don’t worry, be happy; nothing is too much trouble; just call me; give me your hand, I won’t let you fall…that’s my Tonga.

I could talk about these islands being everything you imagine when you think of a South Pacific idyll; about palm laden shores of crystalline blue waters and white sands; of vast clear skies; the smell of tropical blooms and coconut. But while these things make Tonga so appealing, they are not what make Tonga so valuable. Its people are its greatest treasure.

Maybe this comes with being a little beyond the pale when it comes to the global rat race. Maybe you have to forego the luxuries, the trappings, the money, the big businesses and all that comes with everyday life. None of that is there in Tonga and in some ways, Tongans will always be richer for those reasons alone. And I am richer for being given the gift of meeting God’s greatest work.

Posted by Basia at 2:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“At that instant he saw, in one blaze of light, an image of unutterable conviction, the reason why the artist works and lives and has his being—the reward he seeks—the only reward he really cares about, without which there is nothing. It is to snare the spirits of mankind in nets of magic, to make his life prevail through his creation, to wreak the vision of his life, the rude and painful substance of his own experience, into the congruence of blazing and enchanted images that are themselves the core of life, the essential pattern whence all other things proceed, the kernel of eternity.”

Funny where you find love. Or where you fall in love. Or where your soul takes flight. Or where you find a certain something you have never found or maybe felt before. If home is where the heart is, then mine can be found beating happily somewhere off a bumpy Pacific island road, somewhere through a coconut plantation that stretches down to a sea of unimaginable beauty and colour, somewhere where there is a hammock strung low and where everything shimmers and time stands still. So still. Do you hear it? That whispering sound of gentle nothing?

Posted by Basia at 4:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)