Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Masochasm
When it’s heavy enough
I can carry it anywhere
lift it from the ocean’s floor
and smash it through the very sky
When it’s too much for mortals
I can’t keep my hands off it
cradle it close to me
all through the night.
And if it might sting me
or cause me to shudder
as if I were injured
or wounded or worse
or only to clench myself into a fury
smoldering under the quicks of my nails -
if it causes me anguish
I love it forever
buckle myself to it
longer than life.
Well I feel better now; I don’t know about you but it feels good over here at ‘hut Central to articulate the angst that burdens me - and this one is a personal biggie. Shall we turn the page and enjoy a few more uplifting notions, then? Let’s do. Here, then, as if you didn’t expect them, are a few more Tropical Tidbits:
* The gift shop for the mountaintop observatory that sold only certain kinds of candy: Milky Way bars, Eclipse gum, Starburst fruit chews....
* Noted after seeing a number of billboards for various political candidates: natives look really great in native garb, but white guys look really stupid in leis.
* Instructions on the label of my Australian sunblocker water-shirt which I used while snorkling: “This shirt will maintain 100 SBF whilst maintained in good condition.” I rather like that my clothing is using a more arcane vocabulary than even I do myself, and I’m a pretty arcane guy.
Okay, once again I’ve crammed a few photos into the extended entry. I’m getting rather fond of extending my entries in this fashion. Entry extension just makes me feel like more of a man. So share the joy and click below if you dare - these photos include some shots of the creepiest place on the island.
This is a stone at the entrance to the Mookini Heiau at the northern tip of the island. This particular heiau, or shrine, was enormous both in size and significance. At this particular stone, tens of thousands, if not more, human sacrifices were laid out and stripped of their flesh. Can you see the indentations where the bodies lay? For such a quiet, beautiful place, it was really rather morbid…
This is a picture of one of the walls at Mookini - these were, at one time, thirty feet tall, and were started in about the year 1000. The place was deathly quiet, and the stones looked to me like so many skulls. Although there was a palpable sense of history and tragedy here, though, the site didn’t feel holy - it felt more haunted. That’s a fine distinction, but one to which I bet a lot of people would be attuned.
After a nice sojourn at the creepy heiau, we went down the road to a charming little town where we had a delicious lunch and did some entertaining wandering. This is a picture of the side of one of the tumbledown houses there. I liked the textures, and that’s going to be enough today to merit a spot here on the ‘hut.
Once again I face a desk laden with other people’s hard work, which I am going to have to read and analyze with a critical pettiness. I always find tuesdays to be the hardest days to get through. But with the image of the sacrificial stone in my mind’s eye, at least I’ll know that, though things might be better, they sure as hell could be a lot worse.
