Born on the Cusp Between Air and Water

The term “concrete jungle” is attributed by some to the 1945 Academy Award winning movie, The Lost Weekend, about an alcoholic New York writer played by Ray Milland.  Alcoholism aside, it is an apt title for an island built on bedrock and formed of tar and limestone, rebar and cement, marble and stone. Created by the never-ending construction of buildings, the incessant digging and trenching of streets, the constant need for more man-made structures to house the masses who live and work there, I have often said that, once finished, it will be one hell of a city. 

I lived and worked on the dense island of Manhattan for more than twenty-five years, reveling in everything that it offered up. Now I live in another type of jungle on the remote island of Yap, one that grows and changes as fast as the buildings on that other island. Sitting atop a mound of coral, the thick vegetation propagates unremittingly, wrapping around anything in its path like developers keen on claiming every inch of land, going up when out is no longer an option.  

Beneath the sidewalks and roads of the concrete jungle, a labyrinth of subway tunnels, pipes and basements, rat warrens and sewers weave unseen over and across, under and beside. Eight thousand four hundred miles to the west as the albatross flies, another intricate maze of tunnels and burrows keeps the jungle alive, keeps the water flowing and the debris of decayed plants churning to maintain life above.

Much like the swarms of pedestrians and cars, trucks and bicycles, taxis and limousines pushing and creeping through the city’s potholed, trash-strewn arteries, the denizens of that other jungle dig and climb, skitter and skate, slink and hide in the twisting vines and banana trees, coconut palms, hibiscus bushes and cascading bougainvillea. Sea turtles inhabit the edge of the reef while buzzing insects, some the length of my thumb, toothpick thin geckos, and hulking monitor lizards as long as a yardstick scavenge in the interior. Like the people who inhabit the city, there are those that are always in a hurry, those that hang around the edges, those that come out only at night.

A black storm cloud races across the Pacific island, bending the vegetation to its will, changing the mood of the surrounding ocean from blue to grey and back again.  A monsoon battles from the open sea across the fragile land and out to sea again leaving destruction in its path.  

In the city, sky-darkening clouds release a torrent, hurling the river’s tide across a highway and into nearby buildings, moving parked cars with its force and depositing them like abandoned toys a block away. When the sun comes out again, vines climb out of narrow cracks in the payment, shimmying up the side of the buildings, reaching for the light like all vines in all jungles. One day they will claim the cities, all cities, just as they claim tropical forests.

Both islands are small. Manhattan sits on less than 23 square miles of soil and concrete. More than 1.6 million people live within its boundaries. Yap has 134 islands and atolls of which only 22 are inhabited by fewer than 11,000 residents.  With a total land area of approximately 50 square miles that stretches across more than 100,000 square miles of ocean, the four main islands make up just 39 square miles of that total.

Born on the cusp between air and water, Aquarius and Pisces, in a landlocked city, I felt confined despite the open plains surrounding it. Escaping to the concrete jungle as soon as I reached the age of consent, I felt whole in its energy.  I have passed through deserts, trekked across mountains and watched the moon rise over grasslands, but I dwell between the air and the water of islands.