Wiretap - Re-birth

Episode Date: September 7, 2020

A young woman is mistaken for a resurrected ancestor by a remote tribe in Papa New Guinea. A man is reborn into a new life after being lost at sea for two and a half months. And the story of a caveman who contemplates the mysteries of birth back before anyone knew where babies come from.

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Find the latest season wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC podcast. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and you're listening to Wiretap on CBC Radio 1. Today's episode, Rebirth. When I left, I had no plan of being gone this long. I just sort of had this sense that the world was so much bigger than, like, our little corner of it, really. This is Emily Richmond For the past four years

She's been sailing around the world On a tiny boat by herself During that time She's been to a dozen countries On four continents And she's docked at countless ports I spoke with her via Skype On her last night in Borneo

Where she was hiding out from the rain Before setting sail again the next morning I tend to stay in places Like at least a month or two So I've had all these different Boyfriends in different places, like, you know, boyfriends named, like, turtleize and named after, like, spirit guides and stuff like that. And you, that becomes your life when you're there. Like, you, you hunt for your food or you dive and spearfish and ride horses.

And, like, I mean, literally, from month to month, everything about your life changes. Speaking to Emily, you get the sense that in these past. few years, she has lived dozens and dozens of lives. With each port, she's offered a chance to start fresh, to be reborn onto the shores of a land where no one knows her. But there was one place Emily landed, where her rebirth transcended the myth of the traveler and suddenly became something more literal. While sailing around Papua New Guinea, Emily stumbled upon a cargo cult. A cargo cult is a religious movement which arises in certain isolated tribal society. After having sudden contact with modern technology, these groups form believing cargo to be

bestowed from a supernatural source. And when Emily arrived at the shores of this particular tribe, she was greeted by a huge welcoming ceremony. People were coming out to meet in the road, putting these sort of floral necklaces with you know, really large shells around my neck. They have this sort of like spiritual leader who I guess had like had visions that I was coming before I got there and so this woman, the spiritual leader, she grabbed me and was like wrestling me to the ground and they were shoving all this money at me and like I had no idea it was going at the time

but like the next day they explained to me the entire doctrine which is that according to them when they die they will be reborn with white skin. They think that their ordinary skin is sort of like peeled away and underneath they have white skin. So they said when you arrive in the village the first person in years with white skin of course immediately they're thinking this is our ancestor this is our ancestor returned to sort of like bring on the great change to to bring us wealth to bring us prosperity did so did you consider just embracing it at a certain point just settling into this great new life of being worship not at all no they just they're just putting all their hopes in you really you know like they're hoping that you know like these people are are so impoverished like

you know at certain years of the crops don't come up they've got very little food, and to have somebody place all of their, like, hopes and expectations on you, God, that's an enormous burden, especially if you've got no prospect of actually delivering on it. We think of rebirth as a fresh new start, but whether you're entering the world for the first time or the second time, you're always born into the expectations of the people that surround you. Emily only stayed with the tribe a few days before she moved on once again recommencing her cycle of reinvention

of arrival and departure. It's always difficult to leave like I'm leaving right now and right before you called there was like a stream of people coming by to say goodbyes yeah it's always hard you know like you don't know when you're going to see people again

or if you're ever going to see them again and mixed with like the sort of emotional impact of going out to sea where everything is completely unknown, everything's variable, like it's a huge risk to sort of like toss off your dock lines and go out into the unknown. Steve Callahan also found rebirth at sea, but only after facing death. When he was a young man, not yet 30, Steve's marriage fell apart, and he was adrift. Fed up with the pressures and disappointments of human connection, he fled across the Atlantic in a small sailboat in search of freedom and adventure.

After a few months, sailing around Europe and the western coast of Africa, Steve headed out into open waters once more. for his return journey home. I sailed out about a week or so and was having a pretty decent time of it, actually, although the weather was getting pretty rough. And the night of February 4, 1982, something hit the side of the boat at night.

I always presumed it was a whale, but it could have been a shark or some big creature, maybe a sea monster, who knows. There's a big bam in the side of the boat and a lot of water rushed in, sinking the boat very, very quickly. I was filling up the water. I leapt up and grabbed all my emergency gear,

got up on the deck, and inflated the life raft, and bailed out just before morning and went drifting off with the winds and the currents. Frankly, I thought my chances of survival were almost nil because I was pretty much dead smack in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which meant that I was weeks away from the shipping lanes, even where I would have my first real chance of getting picked up, and I had nowhere near enough water in order to get that far.

So there were times where I felt in my most desperate moments that, well, here I am, I'm going to die, and nobody's ever going to know what happened to me. So it was a really, really depressing time, and it lasted about two weeks, which was the first. The period of time it took me to learn how to produce water, catch food, you know, get familiar with the raft, and slowly that evolves into basically living like an aquatic caveman. I live primarily off of a species called Dorado or Dorad because a school started forming around the raft within a

few days. They used the raft as a kind of rendezvous point, and they proved to be very smart and capable. The spear guns that I used to catch the fish was a really small spear gun, almost a bit of a toy, and it wasn't really made for catching these large fish, and they would pull the shaft of the spear out and break it, so every time I'd put it back together and made it a little bit better was a great day. You know, basically the entire experience of survival is like life, but in extremes. The lows are incredibly low and the highs are incredibly high. You know, you have a little failure that in normal life wouldn't make any difference, but it could kill you out there. So it's really depressing. On the other hand, producing in just a little bit of water, just enough to drink,

say, or something like that. It was this huge moment of elation. So it's very volatile emotionally. because there's no backup. Anything can go wrong and kill you at any moment. But there were many things I saw that were beautiful. And in fact, there's a passage in the little log that I kept. I scribbled on these bits of paper. And it was after some particularly spectacular night, you know, amazing stars and looking out and seeing all the Dorado around the raft,

like little silver platters hovering under the raft. because, you know, there's all this bioluminescence in the ocean. Anything that goes through it creates all these, like, billions of teeny, teeny fireflies and just amazing stuff. And I wrote, you know, well, this is a view of heaven from a seat in the hell. It was not a pleasant place to be. It was a horrible place to be. But there were really amazing things that I witnessed through going through it.

You wrote in your log at sea, I have lost all but my past, my friends, and of course, the shirt off my back. Ho, ho, will I make it? I don't know. Was there anything in a kind of perverse way liberating about having lost everything, all of your possessions, when your ship went down? you know when you lose everything and your life is really on the edge you're given an incredible gift which is a clarity about what really is important in life and it really clarified for me all my weaknesses at 30 years old i was actually physically in pretty decent shape as good as i could be. But my weaknesses really were in dealing with people in humanity. I was very, very self-protective, and it was kind of more of a self-centered existence. And it took going through that experience to really

figure out that I needed people a lot more than I thought I did, that I was no sea creature, that Somehow I had to come back and make a more meaningful life where relationships and people were a bigger part of it than they had been. After two and a half months, I did actually pilot my way across the Atlantic, and I ended up about 60 miles south where initially I was headed. And when I first landed, I was born, it was like literally being reborn, like a baby in terms of, you know, colors and sounds and things were like I'd experienced them for the first time. And, you know, it's like all my senses were stuck into an electric socket or something or other. It was just like everything was highlighted. But then I also was very naive again about people. I had over-romanticized people.

And I guess over the years, what I've come to grips with is that despite the fact that we can be selfish and all these things, there's also our capacity to have compassion and be generous and be kind. And that really is something that has changed my life a great deal. I have healthier relationships, and there's a bit more feeling of connection to other people and purpose. in life. If you're absolutely loving your summer read and don't want the book to be over, your experience doesn't actually have to end when you finish reading. I'm Matea Roach, and on my podcast bookends, I sit down with authors to get the inside scoop behind the books you love.

Like, why Emma Donoghue is so fascinated by trains? Or how Taylor Jenkins Read feels about being a celebrity. author. You can check out bookends with Matea Roach wherever you get your podcasts. If I had the choice, I would choose to be a reborn as a turtle as it floats through the depths of deep, soft water. Oh yeah? That's what you'd like to be reborn as a turtle? Well, first of all, if I was reincarnated into a dragonfly, I wouldn't find that very fun because they only live two days and then like, oh, I have to die now again. But a turtle can live over 200 years. So it's about quantity as much as quality for you.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, let me ask you this. Would you rather go to some beautiful afterlife or would you rather be really? reborn and live different lives over and over and over again forever. I'd just be reincarnated because I think then you could see all the different facets of life from a different point of view. If the beautiful, if the heavenly afterlife is sitting on a cloud all day and eating grapes and looking like Caesar, I don't really feel like it...

You think it would be boring? Yeah. I seriously find no appearance. to being dead. Do you think that's why people like the idea of reincarnation because they get to avoid death? Well, partly that. But I also think that people want the idea of a second chance. How do you mean?

Like, who knows what mistakes you made, or if you're a selfish person, or if you're a bad person, or if you're mean, or, you're, you're, or, you're, you're, or, you're, you're, or. a bully or something like that and it's super nice to have a chance to fix that and if in my next life I could change anything I wanted to I'd want to be a better sister oh yeah how so well I don't know if you know this but like sisters and brothers just kind of fight and I sometimes just say to myself, I don't really need to be exceedingly generous with my sister because she's your sister and you see her every day. And I don't think that's very nice. And who knows, I mean, if my sister died today or tomorrow, God forbid, I would be sad that I hadn't been nice to her before that. What keeps you from doing that now? Like just being nice here to your sister now in this life?

Well, it's kind of difficult to imagine that someone could completely start over because if you've lived the same way for who knows how many years, it's difficult to change the way you were. So it just seems so much easier to wait until your next life. But for all we know, we only get one chance. Maybe there is no rebirth. Maybe there's just birth, and we have to make do with that. After a long, terrible struggle in their cave near the clearing in the trees,

Grub and Thack held their newborn. She had a hairy protruding forehead like her father Grub, and good strong lungs like her mother, Thack. Grub chewed through the cord that connected the baby to Thack, and as he did, he thought, How do these bloody screaming things get into a woman's belly? Later that night, by the fire, Grub tried to remember where he was before he came out of his mother's belly. Grub could remember yesterday and the day before that, all the way back to a time when tiny Grub was sitting on a rock, watching a furry animal flee the thwax of his club, his first memory of being alive. But before that, nothing. He thought and thought, and trying to think so hard, hurt his head.

And still, nothing came. He asked others where they were before they came out, but no one could remember. They told stories, though. There is a place behind the large hills, said Ack, where the babies are stacked before they come. Babies come from great snake, said Gar. Woman meet Snake in dreams. Gar spent most of his time falling from trees,

and Ack walked around with three fingers in his mouth. Grub did not trust either of them. Grub needed to know the secret because he wanted to have more babies. His neighbor, Ruck, had about ten. Atok, Par, Gogg, Tah, Ruck Jr., Fogg. There were so many he couldn't keep track. They were hardy children, too. One two-year-old had a beard almost as thick as Grubbs.

And altogether, these mighty children raced up and down Grubbs' rock pile. Grubb's rock pile, stealing rocks, and even though he shook his great stick, he could not stop them. Grub saw that more babies was better, and he wanted as many as Ruck. Many more little hymns and hers to scatter around and steal rocks for him. But he was stuck at just one. Why was he stuck? Fack saw Grub was sad, and she did not want him to be sad.

She wanted him to be happy for one baby, which was something, not nothing. She told him to go ahead and give the baby a name. Gag, Grubb said. Gag was his mother's name, or maybe his father's. He was not sure. He'd not seen either in a long time. Gag and other gag had both died long, long ago, while gathering fruit they had been stepped on by mammoth.

the days passed and grub thought about the problem of how to make more babies all the time he made offerings throwing rocks and melon rinds at the moon if he could only hit it he'd think maybe he could shake the moon loose of its babies it was possible anything was After he made his offerings, he returned to Thack and put his arms around her waist to see if her belly was getting bigger. He kept his hands around her all night, but could feel no growth. Thack did not want Grub to be sad. So every time there was a rumble in her stomach she thought might mean a baby had come,

she would run to tell him. She'd point at her middle, and he would lay her on the ground, placing his cheek to her stomach and listening for hours. But it was never a baby. It was always just frogs. Frogs gave Thack indigestion. Was it connected to the lightning somehow, the forms he saw in the clouds? The plants Thack ate.

Should he dance in the big fire, scream at the big tree? The medium tree? Beg old fat man in the sky. Make Thack squat over the fire? while he cooked a fish. Could he get a baby in him? He'd not ever seen a baby in a man, but maybe he could be the first.

Did the ostrich dance make a baby, the alligator dance, licking trees, licking belly? He sometimes dreamed of babies. Maybe he had to pluck one out of his dreams and stick it into Fax's belly. But he always woke up before he could. Was it mangoes?

His neighbor, Ruck, ate a lot of, of them. The pits piled high outside his cave door. Grub tried it and ate so many he made himself ill. He threw up and rubbed the mango that came out onto Thack's stomach. One is good, said Thack. One not good, said Grubb. How could one be good when Ruck had ten? useless day of dancing, screaming, and throwing things at the sky. Grub came home to the cave. It was getting dark, and Grub was sad. Thack did not want him to be sad. She wore her good summer warthog pelt to cheer him up. It gave Grubb ideas. Fok-thock? he asked, hopefully. Thok-thock, answered Fack. They laid themselves down upon the earth, and Fack took Grub,

into her arms and offered him the comfort of warm hidden places. The next morning Grubb would do all his dances, make all his offerings, and nine and a half months later, when the new baby finally did come, Grubb knew for sure that of everything he tried, it was the alligator dance that had been the secret all along. He could tell by the baby's sharp teeth. And so every morning he would repeat the dance, hoping for Thack's stomach to rise once more. He would dance all day, and sometimes the dancing was good, and sometimes it was not. And when it was not, when he was sick and tired and frustrated from trying so hard and not succeeding, when there was nothing else left, he would return home where there was Thack, who did not want him to feel

sad, and so offered Thok-Thok. And sometimes, Thok-Thok-Thok lasted well into the night. great Canadian actor walking down St. Catherine Street. Lauren Green. Yeah. I don't really see celebrities every day, I'm a little overwhelmed. Howard, Lauren Green from Bonanza. Yeah, how many Lauren Greens are there? Lauren Green, beautiful mane of white hair walking down the street.

I was the only person that recognized him. I waved, he waved back, is very respectful. I gave him his elbow room. The guys earned it, but he knew that I knew he was Lauren Green. Of course, he knew that he was Lauren Green. And I knew that he knew he was Lauren Green because he was Lauren Green. He looked great. Lauren Green Howard, who died in the late 80s?

Well, he died like a celebrity death, like Johnny Carson's dead or, you know, Janice Joplin's dead or whatever. They're dead, Howard. They're dead, but they're celebrity dead. It's not the same thing. It's like a normal mortal human being who dies and gets buried and stuff. Well, Howard, I haven't, I mean, they're just as mortal as you were. Haven't you heard the expression, celebrities, they're just like you and me? That encompasses the fact that they die. They're of flesh and blood.

So you're saying to me that, like, Elvis is dead and Michael Jackson's dead and two back and all of them. They are very much dead, yes. You're just so naive. I am. You're just celebrities. They don't die like normal people. They need to find a way to reintegrate into society. So there's a huge mechanism involved to fake their death.

It's a ruthless world, you know, the celebrity world. I mean, it's just nonstop action. They have no privacy, you know. So you think, so all these celebrities, they've all fake their deaths. the vast majority. When you hear the little murmurs of so-and-so is still alive, and, you know, John Lennon's still alive, and Paul McCartney's still alive, and all that kind of stuff.

Paul McCartney is alive. No, she's the irony. Paul McCartney's actually dead, and John Lennon wears Paul McCartney's face. And where do you get this from? You never heard, like, the quote people say, like, you know, so-and-so is dead, they live on through their music. Yeah, that's an expression. That means, it's figurative.

I mean, it means that, you know, we continue to enjoy their art. No, they want you to think that it's figurative, but it's really, it's literal. No, I think, Howard, it's art, you know, makes us, you know, immortal. That's the worst kind of immortality I can imagine, just to have your stuff resonate through the years. What does that mean to be actually immortal? That's the goal. You know, the day after your alleged burial, you sit down, you have a big steak dinner, followed by a big fat cigar. Okay, so then by your logic, if I'm a bit of a celebrity because of, you know, the radio show, that would make me immortal also.

What? No, no. You're going to die-dye, and it's going to be like early, you know. you know, like premature style, you're not going to live forever, nor will your work? Okay. How are you going to be a celebrity? From what? Maybe you committed some kind of unpartnerable crime or something, some horrible, awful crime. It would kind of be like a slap.

On Wiretap today, you heard Nellika Dager, Howard Chakowitz, and at the beginning of the show you heard Emily Richmond, whose journey can be followed at bobby rounds the world.com. You also heard Steve Callahan, author of Adrift. 57 days lost at sea. Wiretap is produced by Mirabirdwin Tonic, Crystal Duhame, and me, Jonathan Goldstein.