Lost, But Not So Much

Welcome to another installment of what Whitney and I are calling ‘collective blogging.’ To refresh everyone’s memory, we will both be writing blog entries on the same topic every week as an exercise to see how different our thought processes and memories are. Hopefully it will be good practice for an idea we have for NaNoWriMo 2009 – to write the same novel, but separately.

Today’s topic: If you were to become stranded on a remote, tropical island, where would you choose to become marooned – and what would you bring with you?

I recently finished reading the book The Sex Lives of Cannibals, by J. Maarten Troost.  It was fantastic.  The guy has a writing style that reminded me of Tom Robbins and Christopher Moore – highly entertaining.  The premise of the book?  The author and his wife decide they are sick of life in the West and that living at the ‘edge of the world’ is just what they need.  So they go to the Pacific island nation of Kiribati.

This got me thinking.  If I were to do the same thing – pick a random, far-flung island to basically become lost on for an indefinite period of time, where would I go?  The Caribbean was immediately ruled out, because it is not nearly remote enough for what I picture when I hear “remote tropical island.”  Or maybe it’s just not exotic enough for my taste.  I don’t know.  Anyhoo, after some consideration, I decided it would have to be somewhere in the Pacific, preferably somewhere in the vicinity of Bora Bora and the rest of French Polynesia.  I spent nearly 2 weeks in French Polynesia a couple of years ago, and I would go back in a heartbeat.  Seems as good an area of the world as any to be stuck.

Obviously a place like Tahiti is too commercial to qualify as remote.  But the Cook Islands, which are about halfway between French Polynesia and Fiji, can certainly be classified as remote.  I don’t know about anyone else, but I have vaguely heard of Rarotonga, the main island in the Cooks, before.  But I have never before heard of PukaPuka.  It’s a coral atoll in the Northern Cook islands.  It’s inhabited, but hard to get to and definitely remote.

So, off to PukaPuka I would go.

The next question becomes, what would I bring with me?  It’s self-imposed marooning in this hypothetical situation, which to me means I must have time to pack for my idyllic, nearly-deserted island.

After much consideration, I have decided I would bring six vital items with me, in addition to clothing, shoes, and toiletries I suspect may be unavailable on PukaPuka.

Item #1: Books I know I can read over and over again.  To be specific: the entire Harry Potter series, Sahara by Clive Cussler, Death By Black Hole by Neil deGrasse Tyson, and The Ancestor’s Tale by Richard Dawkins.

Item #2: yarn and knitting needles, to make myself blankets when I get bored of thinking.  I get cold when it’s cooler than 75 degrees outside, so while it may seem odd that I would want blankets on a tropical island, for me it does make sense!

Item #3: my trusty Celestron binoculars and a star map of the Southern Hemisphere, because in addition to being an ideal place to star-gaze, I’m also providing myself with a fantastic opportunity to learn the constellations of the Southern sky.

Item #4: Moleskines and a lot of pens, so that I can write about my experiences on PukaPuka (perhaps returning home one day with my own version of The Sex Lives of Cannibals!), and also so I can keep track of my musings in the absence of a personal computer.

Item #5: An internet access card, just in case I find a way off PukaPuka and want to contact the rest of the world via email or Twitter or Facebook or… you get my point.

Item #6: My boyfriend, because he always keeps life interesting, which I am sure would be especially true on a remote tropical island.

To read where Whitney would strand herself and what she would take with her, go here.

Patronus Quest

It’s Friday! Collective blogging day!

In case you don’t remember, this is an experiment my good friend Whitney and I are doing. Each week we come up with a topic to blog about, and then we write separate blogs on the topic. It’s a test to see how different our takes on certain things really are, and if we’d be successful writing a novel in this way for NaNoWriMo 2009.

This week’s topic: What Type of Patronus Would You Have?

OK. I realize I may have just lost a bunch of people. What exactly is this patronus thing you speak of, you might be wondering. To that I say this: you really need to read the Harry Potter series. It’s wonderful, and you are missing out by not reading it. But this post is not about the merits of Harry Potter, and I don’t want to digress too much.

Patronus: the result of the charm Expecto Patronum, a conjured protector that takes on the silvery, ethereal, semi-transparent form of an animal. The animal always has special significance to the conjurer (examples: Harry’s Patronus is a stag, which is the same as his deceased father’s; Dumbledore’s Patronus is a phoenix, which is symbolic of his pet phoenix, Fawkes.) These are especially useful for getting rid of dementors.

Did I lose you? Damn.

Dementors: soul-sucking bad guys in the wizarding world. They are initially presented as the guardians of the wizarding prison Azkaban, but as the books progress they join the evil Lord Voldemort and attack witches and wizards who are against their cause.  Dementors feed on happiness and good feelings, forcing their victims to relive their worst memories.  A Patronus cannot feel the devastating effects of a dementor and is therefore the ideal shield against a dementor attack.

The form your Patronus takes is incredibly symbolic. It is a direct reflection of y0u, your life, and your feelings – in some ways your Patronus is the very essence of who you are. It can reflect your true love (as in the case of Snape), your family (like Harry), and/or many other aspects of your personality. As such, a whole bunch of quizzes exist to try to help you determine what your Patronus would look like if you were a witch or a wizard.

When Whitney and I decided to write about this topic, I took a bunch of those quizzes. I was left completely dissatisfied. They told me I’d have things like a wolf, or a bear, or a deer, or an otter. I didn’t agree with any of them. Then I noticed that some of the quizzes are actually links to websites that talk about animal spirits and other new age, spiritual items.

I’m not really so much with the animal spirits and totems, if I’m being honest. I have trouble with the concept of animal energy and vortex power and crystal healing. Not for me.  This created a problem for me, because I still had not come up with anything I felt comfortable embracing as my Patronus.

Then, on a whim, I looked up what these websites have to say about flamingos. I have thought flamingos were the greatest thing since sliced bread my entire life. My parents tell me it probably has something to do with the teething ring I had as a baby – it was in the shape of a bird with one stubby little foot, and it was pink.  I don’t know if there’s anything to that, but I can tell you that flamingos have always been my favorite thing to see at the zoo.  And I took my fascination seriously – I posed for pictures in front of the flamingo exhibit on one leg proudly anytime I could.  Everyone in my life has at some point given me a gift that involves flamingos.  And the icing on the flamingo cake: my one tatoo is of a flamingo, standing on one leg in a small pool of water.  It was with high hopes that I read the description of what a flamingo animal spirit/totem means.  It would make so much sense if my Patronus were a flamingo.

Flamingo Spirit: is colorful, wild, and gives light.  The word itself is from the Latin word flame.  Flamingos have the ability to change colors and have a shape-shifter association. The Egyptians believed these creatures to be the living embodiment of their Sun God, Ra.  If you have a flamingo spirit, you are likely to mate and breed for life (like a flamingo), and you are likely to be dedicated to your choices and reach further than most are willing to go in order to achieve your goals.

Now, I’m not sure I fit ALL of that.  But I think I fit a good deal!  And given that a Patronus is supposed to reflect the inner you and/or the superficial animal you tend to gravitate towards, I don’t think it’s an unreasonable conclusion to reach - that if I were to wave my wand and utter “Expecto Patronum!” (with the proper concentration and focus on a happy and powerful memory, of course) from the tip of my wand would burst a beautiful, silvery flamingo, which would protect me while standing serenely on one leg.

If you want to read about Whitney’s quest to discover her Patronus, you can read about it here!