Routine Activities
Volume 10 of the Book Series
Born in the Sea
By Nick Niels Sanders
Published by Exotica Indica
Publication as of April 2021
2
October 2
It was 7:30 and once again twelve castaways were gathered on the beach, lining up in two ragged rows, grateful that the day seemed to be cooler than yesterday.
Roger started off with qi’gong exercises, then moved on to the form: “Starting position. Exhale. Bounce the Ball. Strike palm. All in. All out. Grasp bird’s tail. Extend and push. Single whip. Strike past ear. White crane. Push to the Right. Push to the Left. Brush knee. Parry and Punch. False Close. Push. Good. Close up and I will show you what comes next.”
He demonstrated “carry tiger.” Having demonstrated, he led them through it several times. Then they went back to white crane and moved forward from there several times. Then from the start twice. Then qi’gong for a few moments and off to breakfast.
Before tai chi, Marcella had fried slices of smoked beef, adding enough oil to produce a taste and texture approximating that of bacon. After tai chi, she added water to pancake mix and soon had pancakes available to join the “bacon” and syrup for breakfast.
When Paul came for his helping of pancakes, Marcella told him that they needed more water. Paul immediately turned to Ralph and James for assistance after breakfast in this errand; Roger overheard and volunteered to help.
James followed Jeanne from tai chi to the Kitchen Tent, positioning himself behind her as she sat, making another careful study of her burns. Circling around to squat in front of her, he summarized the condition of her back on this day.
“Yesterday, you had 36 actively healing burns, ten of which were more than half healed. Today, all ten of those and three others are completely epithelialized. That means that they have at least a very thin layer of skin over them; they may still be quite fragile, but they are no longer in danger of infection. Rubbing them might still be painful and might remove that skin covering and require them to do it again, but it is an excellent landmark in any case. That leaves 23. The three largest are healing slowly, partly by contracting and partly by growing skin from around the edges. Even at your spectacular rate of healing, it will be 3 or 4 days before they are healed – which will be a week sooner than we might have expected. The other twenty will heal over the next couple of days.”
“This sounds like very good news to me.”
“I think so too. I think we should continue with what we have been doing, since it seems to have been very effective. Two honey treatments a day and sea-water soaks every couple hours while you are awake. Can you continue to put up with that?”
“Sure.”
“Good. Have a wonderful day.”
Ron took his place behind Jeanne as she ate breakfast, sketching her back.
James was concerned about the fishing net. He really wanted to get it fixed so that they could have a big fish supper. Paul and Ralph promised to help when they got back from getting water.
Jim sat off somewhat by himself, ate, and took out his recorder to begin working on a new theme. Ron rejoined him after sketching Jeanne’s back, sitting facing the rest of the group, alternately eating and sketching.
Mark put in a late appearance for breakfast, and carried his plate back to his lean-to.
Maria, Julia and Marcella set about cleaning up the kitchen; the four men on water detail headed across the lava ridge to the spring; Jim and Ron continued with their artistic endeavors – Ron for the first time sketching the women cooking and cleaning up. Valerie and Jeanne left for the infirmary; Michelle went to help in the kitchen.
Morning Activities
In the infirmary, Valerie administered sea water soaks followed by an application of honey to Jeanne’s back. As usual, Jeanne fell asleep as the honey treatment was completed. Today, unlike previous days, her nap was a brief one.
The four men set out with eight jugs for water. They went directly to the place where they had excavated access to a pool of water, found it full, and filled the eight jugs. Thus loaded, they made their way more slowly back to camp. They arrived as the women were finishing up the kitchen. Ron and Jim were not visible, but flute noises from the east suggested that they had wandered off in that direction.
After her treatment and Dr. James’ assessment of her burns, Jeanne was feeling really good and very energetic. On top of everything going well with her healing, she had remembered a conversation with Ralph and realized that she was living in a dream come true – but she and Ralph were not taking advantage of it. She went looking for Ralph.
She found him in the Kitchen Tent, talking to James about possibly going snorkeling later, tying knots in the fishing net in an effort to restore its function. He turned to Jeanne, saw that “special look” in her eye, and asked James to be excused.
Walking through the kitchen, grabbing two pieces of pan bread from a pile Marcella had set aside, Jeanne led Ralph from the Kitchen Tent, around a couple of palm trees, toward the Coral Beach divider. They climbed over the lava flow in silence. Jeanne turned to the right to follow the lava flow out into the water, to overlook the coral forming at the bottom of the small protected bay formed behind it.
“I can’t believe we nearly missed it.”
“Missed what?” Ralph was clearly puzzled.
“Do you remember what we talked about on that little island the first afternoon of the cruise?”
“Yes. Well, we talked about a lot of stuff. But I’ll bet you are thinking of the talk about being marooned on a desert island and running around naked all day.”
“Exactly. And where are we?”
“Well, I guess we are marooned on a deserted island.”
“Yes. And how are we dressed?”
“Let me see. Oh, yes, I would say we are both naked.”
“And we have been for days now, haven’t we? But now we are alone, just the two of us, on a deserted island, naked. And I want it to stay just like that for the rest of the day.”
“OK.”
“How many times a day did you say you would make love to me?”
“Well, now,” Ralph was fighting for time, realizing he might be held to an idle boast made at a moment when it had seemed the circumstances would never arise. Further, he couldn’t remember what he had said.
“It doesn’t matter what you said. I just hope we can have fun being naked together, going exploring and maybe making love, as the spirit moves us. In three days, my burns will probably be healed, and everyone will put on their clothes again, and it won’t be nearly so much fun anymore. Right now, I like being with you and watching the coral in this very clear water.”
Reassured, Ralph looked into the water and was fascinated by what he could see. There were little fish scampering in and out of walls of coral. There were little crabs and schools of yellow-tailed fish small enough that one of them would have been comfortable in a teaspoon, but Ralph knew they were yellow-tail tuna and would one day weigh hundreds of pounds each.
It seemed they spent a long time gazing into the water, but it felt longer than it was. Jeanne wanted to be farther from the others. “Let’s move on and explore the island some more.”
“OK. Shall we swim?”
“Not yet. I have these two pieces of bread Marcella made; I brought them for us to have for lunch. I can’t swim and keep them dry.”
“Then let’s walk.”
They did so. As they prepared to turn the corner at the top of the bog, they came up to the mass of bushes. Ralph picked a large red flower for Jeanne to put in her hair. It was just the right touch. They stepped across the stream
, which was now dry again, and followed the edge of the bog back to the water. Side by side, they sat on the sand near the lava flow separating Coral Beach from Rock Beach, looking out at the waves breaking on the reef.
“Ralph, you’ve had naked women around you now for several days. What do you think about that?”
“I dunno. What d’you mean?”
“Women are all the same and yet all different, just like men. But men seem to like to look at naked women. Is there something you are looking for? Are you dreaming about fucking with all of them? What are the thoughts you have about them?”
“Oh. Well, I really like looking at you.”
“OK. Thanks. But what about Val?”
“Val’s a skinny little thing, and she looks at me as though I’m some sort of disease. I don’t find anything attractive about Val as a woman, though I like her and I’m very glad that she’s here as a person and because she is such a wonderful nurse.”
“OK. That’s good. What about Julia?”
“Julia has the face of a 65 year-old and the body of a 30 year-old. She’s very hard for me to figure out. I think she’s probably old enough to be my mother, but her body is slim, firm and unwrinkled and her breasts still stand up on their own like a young woman’s breasts – like yours, for instance, even though hers are bigger than yours – one expects them to be droopy, but they aren’t. I guess I might wonder if Julia’s breasts are as soft as yours are.”
“Hmmm. That’s very interesting. I wonder if the others are thinking of me as a skinny little git with tiny tits.”
“I don’t think you have tiny tits at all. They fit nicely in my hands, or in my mouth.”
“Not yet, dear. Don’t touch me… and put that bad boy away. What about Maria?”
“Oh, good god! Maria’s like a fertility goddess who just stepped off the pedestal of some Greek statue. Her curves are all accentuated in a sort of hyper-feminine way. And yet, she kind of frightens me. She isn’t the least seductive. She’s sort of super-smart and super-competent – you should have heard her giving orders on the boat after Dr. James told her she was in charge of getting food and water to shore! And she’s so clearly dedicated to Dr. James it isn’t funny. I wonder what he has that keeps her in such a thrall.”
“Wow! You’ve been paying attention, haven’t you? Yes. For all that she is so beautiful, Maria is perhaps the least threatening woman on the island because she’s so clearly a one-man girl. But what a body. Many a girl would kill for a body like that!”
“Yes. So what do you think about the men?”
“You know, women are different from men. I look and I see bodies, but bodies are not, for me, the most interesting thing about men. I care about a man’s soul. And part of that soul is all about how he cares for me and that he finds me attractive. If I ever have to be stranded on an island with only one person, I choose you.”
“Really? And no one else?”
“Well, Dr. James does come in handy if you get your back burned. But he comes equipped with Maria, the gorgeous hunk sex goddess. No, I think just you.”
“I’d like that.”
“Well, we have a day, right now.”
“Yes we have. But you have burns on your back.”
“You let me worry about the burns. You just lie back and relax. You can play with my breasts if you want…. I like that…. Oh, my! …. Let’s see what that bad boy can do today.”
They didn’t worry how much noise they made.
Jim and Ron had wandered off. As Jeanne and Ralph were at one side of the lava barrier between Camp Beach and Coral Beach, Jim and Ron were at the other, sitting on the sand spit, Jim occasionally playing his recorder while Ron worked with pencils on his sketches.
Each of them felt a certain satisfaction with being focused on his art, but, in a way, each felt a certain dissatisfaction at not being among the others. Neither spoke of this as the morning passed. They rejoined the others when the time came to be out of the sun.
James, at the center of a working group that included Marcella, Maria, Val, Shelly, Paul, Roger and Julia, was involved in tying knots and directing the process by which knots were undone and redone throughout the fish net. By a process no one understood, a consensus had been reached on the correct way to fix the net, and all those present were hard at work on it.
They had lifted the net and carried it out into the early morning sun, where it was pleasantly warm and where visibility was at its best. Considering the slow pace at which the net had been created, the speed of repair was remarkable, and the participation of everyone in sight in the project was equally remarkable. As the sun grew warmer, the net moved back into the shade of palm trees and tent, with all hands still active. It became obvious that more fiber would be needed, and there was little supply left. Paul dropped out of the tying process to whittle more fiber, managing with some effort to stay just ahead of the repair parties.
When 10:30 arrived and it was clearly time to be in the shade, no one had to move – everyone was already in the shade.
Mid-Day
The fishing net work party remained working and chatting away about almost anything. Jim and Ron returned. Jim sat off to one side and played his recorder, creating fluty music to accompany the working fingers. Ron sat down with Paul and began helping whim with creating fiber for the net repair. But he had an ulterior motive in sitting with Paul.
“Paul, I’m puzzled by what James was talking about last night. I hope you can help me.”
“I’ll try.”
“Quite so. Well, what he said seemed to indicate that we should be willing to set aside our own personal choice in favor of the greater needs of the community.”
“Sort of, yes.”
“And that seems to me to mean that we need to discern what our role in the community is, and somehow bend our personal choices to fulfilling that role.”
“Well, not quite.”
“How so?”
“I don’t think he said anything that implied that you were to figure out your role in society and use that as a basis for making choices. In fact, what he said never really referred to role, though clearly role is implicit in much of what he was talking about. What he said was that you should be willing to use your own free will to enable the will of the greater community. He also did not define what he meant by greater community or how you can tell what the will of the greater community is.”
“Paul, are you trying to be helpful? This feels more like a smoke screen than a clarification.”
“I’m being helpful. Let’s try some examples. An easy one first. In Sydney, you are in a choir. When you sing in the choir, you have the free will to choose to sing any note you want, but what you choose to sing is the note the choral piece needs – the note required for the greater good of the choir as a whole. This is true whether you are singing bass, baritone, tenor, alto or soprano; so the issue is not specifically about your exact role but is more about the need of the greater organism and what part of that need you can fulfill. Surely that is clear.”
“Quite so. And you are right, the greater will is the same regardless of my role in the choir; my role in the choir defines my path toward accomplishing the greater will. Quite so. But you said that was an easy one?”
“Yes. Let’s think about you and your life in Sydney outside of the capsulated environment of the choir. What is your role? Let me just name a few roles you play: Son, brother, partner, artist, taxpayer, citizen of Australia. Within your family there are agendas and needs, but your family is only a subset of the citizenship of Sydney. If your family were intent on planting a bomb to destroy the Symphony, which would have the greater call on your free will, the will of your family or the will of the populace of Sydney?”
“Quite. The populace of Sydney.”
“Indeed. And your relationship with Jim is YOUR relationship with Jim, regardless of whether your family approves or not – among other things, you have an obligation to your societ
y to support the ideals of individual autonomy, equality of status regardless of personal choices that have no effect on others. Even if you did not love another man, your society calls you to oppose bigotry, including homophobia, not only in your family, but in society at large.”
“OK. I think I see what you are saying. You imply that there are larger and smaller agendas, and I should look to the largest agenda I am able to understand.”
“Well said. So, you are a citizen of Sydney and a citizen of Australia. If the general sense in Sydney is to do something that will be very damaging to Australia as a whole, where do your allegiances lie?”
“Quite so. With Australia, of course.”
“Which implies, among other things, that you owe to your society the duty of paying taxes and being informed on issues and voting.”
Routine Activities Page 1
