Thursday, August 19, 2004

Kimono My House

In solidarity with Tara and Phil, who have a lot on their plate as of today, here is a shortie from Tara’s last visit:

I was feeling a little burned out, what can I say.  Tara’d only been with us for about 24 hours but we made the most of every one of them; we cleaned, we hung pictures, I worked on my bike and my reading and by the time we got out of Yogi Steve’s Power Asana Weekend Freakout my body was just tuckered.

We ran to the store on the way home so I could apply a cold beer to my sore hamstrings, but the thing that really helped the aches subside was to get out of my wet workout shirt and compression shorts and into some light cotton lounge pants and a full-length silk kimono - royal blue on the outside, vibrant scarlet on the inside.  I was trucking around the place like a masterless monk, serene and enlightened… I felt my vitality returning to me through the fabric itself as it slipped easily and smoothly over my aching shoulders and exhausted legs. 

The kimono might not be totally practical for all uses and purposes, I warrant - but when it’s the right thing to wear, nothing else will even come close. 

Now I’m out of time, and I can’t find one of my little notebooks.  That means I need a Tropical Tidbit or two more than usual, and, just your luck, you’re along for the ride.  Once again, we’re working today with purely visual tidbits, and I’ve hidden them in an extended entry to protect them from prying eyes.  Not very successfully, but that’s my style.  Hey, at least I have one.

This is a carved wooden post at the Place of Refuge, which is a fascinating site despite being historical.  If you broke the law and got here before being killed, you were forgiven and got to go home as if nothing had happened.  Good snorkeling, too, if you’re into that sort of thing.

We took a “backroads” hike along the path of an old water trench to the back of the Waipio Valley. Here’s the trench we followed.  It’s very photogenic, as so many good trenches are, but I won’t bother you with the full range of my photographic excesses on this subject.  You’ll have to settle for this one.

On that Trench hike, there was a lot of verdure.  Here’s a nice close-up of some of the grass we saw along the way.  I mean, just the ordinary kind.  But in Hawaii, “ordinary” still looks pretty cool.