aloha nui loa
I hear: sprinklers, crazy chirpy birds. I feel: relaxed, salty, clean. I smell: suntan lotion, herbed popcorn, conditioner, grass. I taste: herbed popcorn. I see: papaya tree, taro leaves, the inside of this cute cottage: greenish tiles, white curtains, sunlight.
And just now at the beach, aqua as far as you can see. Mountains. Islands.
How can I get on a freaking plane in six hours? My laundry is drying. Yesterday in Makawao there was a rooster wandering the streets. I saw my friend S last night, the photographer. He’s got a 13-year-old who grew up in this, and apparently, she appreciates the amazingness of it. It’s been so lovely to reconnect with people I adore here. To feel like I have a second tiny community here. I just snorkeled this morning and saw black and yellow fish feasting on coral, jamming away. The other afternoon B and I were out swimming in Wailea and she saw a turtle underwater, almost swam into him, it was so late-afternoon murky. So we watched the waves a while and up popped his skinny head and neck, poking up for a look-see. So cute and ancient and sweet. Turtles.
Delight. I feel the goldenness back behind my eyes, radiating. I feel excitement dusted off, refound, feelings of looking-forward-to. In general and specific. Like going home, seeing T, writing more proposal, writing book. It’s been so wonderful to rediscover a pulse, an aliveness, a “yay!”
S knows cancer very well. It was good to talk to someone who is so intimate with it. He said it makes you look a little more lived-in, a little more experienced, all that barfing and fear. Of course my thought was Fuck, do I really look old? But also, Yeah, okay, so my face looks a little different. Not everyone can see it. But I can. I can see how this whole thing has really changed me and that’s good. The scar on my collarbone, the je ne se quois about my body, and face. A thinness even when I’m puffy, somehow. I don’t know.
But I ran into an old Maui person in Lahaina the other night at the Halloween parade, J. He’s a Vietnam vet and just hitchhikes around the island, sleeping where he can. But he’s more immaculate and mannered and evolved than most homed people I know. And we talked for a while and he acknowledged the presence of essence in me. I said Thanks. Then I said, I’m not really sure what that means. He said something like, “real, juicy, flowing essence.” And I could see that he was seeing whatever goldenness has reopened in me.
So, two reflections: older, and essencier. Both true. And both, in the light of this white sun and blue sky and green everything and surviving and swimming and sand like powder under my toes, okay.
