blather from polynesia
this landscape demands deference, awe. sometimes instead of the standard white powder fare, jet black sand and lava meet the sea, at the foot of cliffs stacked like shelves along the coast; steep, jagged, lush. postcards here don't lie -- everything really does look like that: water & sky blueing into one another, & those magnificent sunsets & silhouettes. I've been here a week & already dusk has become ritualistic. about 6pm, I'll look up into the sky to see what sort of sunset it's going to be -- the brilliant orange ball of fire plummeting into the cloudless horizon? the sober pastels? forbidding black stormclouds ushering a pale yellow sun seawards? pink & violet cirrus plastered against the velvet darkening? always it's stunning; we are constantly looking for different places to watch the evening's offerings. and always, what follows is that bulging black net of stars, the engulfing darkness, and the cool cotton feel to the night air.
meanwhile I'm climbing craters & having lunch nonchalantly in them, & wondering if it's possible to come away from this place without a single photograph of the family smiling goofily in front of palm trees (it isn't), & wondering why, in this spectacular, wild & untamed place, where the very land is in the process of being created under our eyes, there are people who seem to spend all their holiday time sipping cocktails by the Hilton manmade lagoon. it's astounding that the kitschy bar & the swathe of bathing pools are all that some will know of hawaii, when just the other day I put my hand over a reddened gash in the ground, from which hot, white steam placidly issued, like little planetary exhalations ... that's mostly it, really: this place, more than any other I've known, never lets you forget that the planet is alive, & the indelible residue this leaves in one's soul is -- as I have said -- deference, and awe.
and I leave on sunday! I have a sense of breathlessness, I want to climb into all the valleys and shoulder into every azure wave and clamber & cut my woefully tender feet on all the black volcanic rocks, and clench my toes into all the multicoloured sand on the island ... already there is not enough time simply to sit & watch the waves coil & billow into themselves, in all their infinite & beautiful variations -- even though I have already, I admit, spent an unseemly amount of time doing just so.
