Reverence

So many years have passed since I’ve thought about the story of Retu, an islander with a feathered head dress, who I came to know after making a badly translated joke about his mother’s vagina.  When I was 16 years old, a girlfriend and I took an adventure to an island off the coast of South America. Famous for its massive statues that tower over the perimeter of the island, allegedly built to honor its ancestors, the island felt as though we were stepping into an ancient tomb. With an enigmatic breeze whispering secrets too softly to hear, but whose potency saturated our consciousness, I remember feeling an alertness stir up within me. The feeling one gets when walking around wide eyed through the dark.

During the month we were there, the island was being used as the setting for a famous South American soap opera, a melodrama packed with sex, ghosts and omens. We shared the flight over with the entire cast, whose chain smoking filled the cabin during the 6 hour flight to the most isolated island on the planet.

Somewhere early into our adventure, we found our way into the company of two cast members, a handsome actor named Marcelo and a forgettable cameraman whose name I don’t remember. On the patio of our bungalow, we sat together as the sun melted over the horizon. Sipping piscolas and chain smoking, they told us folklore of the island; stories of haunted beaches, altered dimensions and a tale of human sacrifice. I grinned and rolled my eyes as their enthusiastic tales of the occult continued into the hours of darkness.

I sat back in my chair to see the first few stars appearing in the foreign sky above me. As I gazed into the deep abyss of the universe engulfing me, I pondered the origin of my solid resolution regarding any and all ghost stories I’ve ever heard, and my complete disappointment with anyone who has ever told me one and actually believed it. Out of the dozens … no hundreds of stories I’ve heard, I have yet to hear one firsthand, well… from anyone other than those tripping on some hallucinogenic substance during their alleged vision. I’ve often wondered whether it was the influence of my father’s tendency to quickly dismiss anything regarding the ethereal world… or if it was the screaming anti-ghost motivational speaker-voice within my head whose purpose is to put a defensive doubt shield around me in order to protect me from feelings of fear and vulnerability.

A trail of dust rising up behind us as we spun out in their red jeep, we headed across the island to one of the sacred beaches they had referred to in their legend of the sacrifice. It was the forbidden beach, not to be trespassed upon. My hair was tangling and twisting in the wind, my eyes watering as we sped by ominous mountain silhouettes and glowing lights from the torches of shacks that dotted the distant landscape. As we came up onto a landing, Marcelo slowed the car and turned off the lights as we looked out onto the vast Pacific and the beach below, the howling wind bending the nearby palm trees almost on their sides and the sound of waves crashing onto the beach below. We climbed down a path until we reached the sand, the two of us carrying some collected firewood and the guys with a case of beer.

As much as I love a good bonfire on a beach, the whole scene felt terribly uncomfortable. There was no way that we were going to succeed in maintaining a bonfire in the blustery wind, and I vaguely remember we had forgotten any medium for starting one.  I impatiently stood and watched our two companions try to open a beer bottle on a rock, because we were also missing a bottle opener. The cameraman was becoming more seasoned in liquor as the night wore on, and his personality was turning from one that was fairly forgettable to obnoxious. The typical buffoon who starts the night silent and then has a few too many and starts to embarrass himself and everyone around him with bodily coordination problems and awkwardly slurred conversation topics that no one can quite comprehend, much less, translate from a foreign language, and even if one could, would have any spark of interest.

Leading up to the arrival on that forbidden beach, the night was like a balloon of warm magic and mystery. As it quickly deflated with the reality of bitter coldness, un-open-able bottles of beer, a flameless bonfire and an insufferable drunk- all I wanted was to teleport to my warm bungalow and dream of the sunshine of the next morning to come, free from the bond of the current circumstance harmlessly holding us hostage with terrible company. To top it all off, he started taking beer bottles and throwing them high up into the air, letting them fall and smash onto a nearby rock as he shriek-laughed.

I felt disgusted and helplessly stuck, knowing it was many miles back to our place. As I concentrated on relaxing my shivering muscles, and contemplated more suitable future nighttime beach attire, the moment was frozen by a hollering in the distance. We all jumped up in fright, trying to adjust our eyes in the darkness to catch a glimpse of the source of the screams. My heart began pumping fiercely as a glowing figure climbed down off a cliff and came running straight towards us with something shining in his hand. A tall man with a long flowing white beard, wearing a white gown quickly approached us at an alien quick speed, screaming a repetitive chant; as though he was casting a spell upon us… we all took off at top speed down the beach through the sand, stumbling up the rocky path up onto the landing to the jeep.

The shadowy man was so much faster than we were. Somehow, like an antelope, he had bound over the rocks and hill and arrived before the four of us had. In his hand, he was holding a spoon and began letting the air out of the tires by pressing it on the air tube. Marcelo jumped in the driver’s seat, and we all climbed in as he threw the jeep into reverse, almost driving backwards off the cliff into the sea below. I was gasping for air as he hit the gas pedal jolting us forward onto the dirt road on which we had entered. I looked behind us with the feeling the ghostly man was breathing on the back of my neck, sending shivers down my spine, my ears ringing from the cold. My heart pounded in my whole body as we raced back closer to the main road. No words were exchanged, and the guys dropped us off in front of our bungalow. My friend and I went straight to bed, shaken by the turn of events of the night.

I have never forgotten that night. I still don’t believe in ghosts, or many other matters of the occult. I didn’t see any evidence of human sacrifice on that beach that night… or phantoms… or feel any altered physical dimension that made me feel like I was going backwards when really I was going forward. But, for the first time in my life, I had a jolting awakening to the power of an extreme perceived reality of another culture. A recognition that the beliefs of others and of what they value as sacred and true can manifest with great intensity. That the foundation of their convictions has been threaded together for centuries by the lore of their ancestors, and it is the fabric of their existence. That when entering the many assorted sacred physical and emotional spaces of this diverse world and its people, one should tread lightly... and with reverence.