happy talk

After my last post, we had a really lovely Christmas dinner at Plantation Gardens, from the kahlua pig mana puas to the delicate lilikoi cheesecake. I even had one big and excellent glass of wine (Carmel Road pinot noir, Lara)--my first drink in four days; exciting! Thanks to that, I'm sure, I was well enough Wednesday and Thursday for wandering out West.

 

Up in Waimea Canyon we talked story for awhile with an old SoCal endless summer transplant. He was like a white buddha sitting cross-legged and shirtless on the grass at the mile-high overlook, selling home-made trail guides and feeding pieces of his apple to a loitering rooster. In Hanapepe we grilled gallery photographers, perused the cluttered shelves of the western-most US independent bookstore, and hung out with the local cats.

Salt Pond Beach seemed different than prior visits; it was crowded. With both an unexpected throng of pasty, pretty obnoxious tourists and a smattering of locals camped in dome tents under the big trees. The perfect line of palms and layers of breaker rock remained beautiful. We strolled the tide line long enough to see a whale suddenly breach, twice, at the sparkly afternoon horizon. This keeps happening. You know a whale has breached even if you don't see it happen because a collective oooooohhh or aaaaahhhh rises from spectators on the next hill over or the pathway behind or ahead of you. We grow accustomed to seeing or hearing cetaceans jump into the air throughout the day. Wild. 

Our new favorite is Sea Glass Beach, still small and oddly located enough to be a bit of a secret it seems, and so named because that's what it's covered with.

 

It's tucked below the Port Allen industry at what used to be the town dump. The result is a kaleidoscope of ground-down glass that glitters like Edward Cullen when the sun hits it right. A fishing jetty frames the sunset edge. On the other side of the eastern break, car parts clutter a ravine and its tide pools, machinery so corroded and oxidized it appears camouflaged into the natural rock. The longer you stare, the more gears and cylinders you make out. Above all this we found another beguiling graveyard.

 

We've also been playing around on the cliffs near home.

For our South Pacific dinner theater in the low-ceilinged ballroom of the old Lihue Hilton, our table of ten--including a UW engineering grad student and his Midwest family--was front and center. The buffet was hearty and the drinks were cleverly themed.

I was certainly enchanted by the very sincere production. Nellie even actually washed [that man right out of] her hair in a water bucket on the stage, and I managed to restrain myself to only mouthing the lyrics to most songs. Phil liked it a lot too, engrossed in the local actor's bios he found in the program, and even purchasing the cheesy souvenir photo they took of us in front of a Bali Hai backdrop. Pretty romantic actually.

In times past it would have been our last night, but we find ourselves in new territory now. Something about turning into a new week and not clawing frantically at the edge of each fleeting moment. Something about watching the fire of sun rise out of the sea from where you stand washing dishes. Feels like we live here, or could. The strange rhythm of shutting everything down by 9:30pm and starting up at dawn takes on a nourishing cadence. I can't think of how to ever again wear socks, or use a hair dryer, or not see acacia in the distance without resentment. I gaze longingly at Kauai Community College, looming on the main road that gets us almost everywhere. I study the various people we see doing their thing in their car ports and front yards, and the high prices of milk and gas. I have a mind to visit the Humane Society, and to buy a yoga mat at K-Mart.

 As Bloody Mary told us in the musical:

"Happy talk, keep talking happy talk,
Talk about things you'd like to do,
You gotta have a dream, if you don't have a dream,
How you gonna have a dream come true?"