Today Is Forever

    Thirty years ago R. Julian Dashwood, a Britisher, found himself broke and hungry in Sydney, Australia.  Standing in a free food line, he determined never to be dependent again on how others mismanaged the world.
   
When the economic atmosphere cleared, he found his personal paradise, as many pressure-trapped city dwellers yearn to do, on Mauke, in the Cook Islands of the South Pacific.  He married a native girl and supports himself by selling seashells all over the world.

    Readers may recall previous mention here of Dashwood's psychological bout with the natives.  When they refused to collect shells he got a movie projector and showed some old films, free at first, to the enchanted natives.  Then he told them it would cost a penny to see them.  They had no money, so he paid them to collect shells and they used the pennies as admission to the movies.

    THROUGH A mutual interest in shells, Dashwood and Bennett Foster, L.A. adman, have maintained a wonderful correspondence.  Perhaps Dashwood's latest letter will inspire or disenchant those who still hope some day to take off for the South Seas.  The man's a poet as well as a philosopher.

    He begins, "I smile to myself sardonically, thinking of you sitting in that ghastly office, imagining the delights of a tropical paradise.  At this moment the paradise is a slatey gray with sheets of rain driving in off the sea.  The fishing has gone sour for months, a situation for which I blame the Dulles-Macmillan bomb-testing firm.  My battery-driven radio has gone phut and it will be months before I can get it fixed.  You have no monopoly on grievances, only a variety of same.  But whereas mine will probably culminate in a magnificent semi-public row with my Polynesian wife, thus disposing of a lot of already cracked crockery and a marvelous discharge of libido, yours will probably find a final outlet in a stomach ulcer.

"BUT SERIOUSLY, I think most people work out a compromise of sorts with life only over the grave of several dreams.  Some, like myself, attempt to preserve parts of the dream in reality — a difficult tight-rope performance.  But of this I am certain: One always gets what one wants provided one wants it badly enough to sacrifice everything to the achievement thereof.  And even then the laugh is with the Fates and Furies because although man unquestionably consciously creates the situation, the final result is seldom quite in keeping with his original intentions.

    "IN MAUKE nothing ever happens.  This is why time passes with almost terrifying rapidity.  There are no permanent values;  nothing lasts;  one is here today, gone tomorrow and forgotten the day after.  Even the tombstones are made of soft coral and soon crumble away."

    Expressing thanks for books Foster sent him, Dashwood continues: "I enjoyed them immensely, particularly 'The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit,' Vance Packard's ominously fascinating 'The Hidden Persuaders' and 'Lolita,' for me the clinching argument in my contention that the American way of life is shot to pieces on the moral front.  What a beautiful pool of iridescent slime."

    DASHWOOD continues:  "I have only one complaint.  Time.  I have lived in the islands for 30 years and I cannot recall as many individual events.  In an environment where age carries no great penalties or burdens, one is lulled into a false sense of extended youth.  There is forever 'today,' tomorrow is somebody else's affair.  If the world came to a standstill we would slide off with complete absence of fuss.  Our preparations for the future are confined to making the best of the present.  We have a fine home, acres of unused land, three pleasant children, and no savings, no insurance, no superannuation schemes.  And nobody cares.

    "TOTAL ESCAPE?  Maybe.  Probably as nearly as humanly possible.  Escape from people who could certainly bore me;  escape from the rat race and financial worries;  escape from practically everything except myself, and the best answer to that is to be so fond of oneself that the idea of separation is intolerable.  You probably couldn't take it anymore than I could Los Angeles."