aloha report, v2.1
i have eight mosquito bites.
after nearly a week in tropical bug-land, this is a record low for me. i am one of those people you should always try to sit near at a picnic or while camping or in the forest or any other such place where biting insects are likely to be looking for a feast, because they will ignore you entirely in favor of chomping me to bits. i am like a bug lamp. but anyways. only eight bites! they are torturing me, but at least there are only eight of them. thank you, oh makers of DEET. how i love thee.
i still, however, have managed to get myself some funny blotches of redness on my shoulder and neck. sun poisoning, maybe? i dunno. i think it might be a reaction to the tropical plants that kept reaching out and touching me today. but it's not so bad. i think maybe, just maybe, it's worth it to have some skin irritation to be able to go on walks like this with my dad?
this path is just off of ke'e beach, the northwesternmost point of the island and the furthest you can travel by car. ke'e is also the northern end of the na pali coast, which covers the entire west side of the island and is inaccessible except by boat, or your feet. the kalalau trail, the most famous hike in hawaii, and the only way to really see na pali, starts here. over christmas B and i did the first four miles of the kalalau, taking the two-mile side trip to swim in hanakapi'ai falls. and it was gorgeous. but today, i contented myself with chilling with my dad, and stopping for little breaks on the rocks. 
and for C, only for C, i made my dad take this picture. note the thumbs, please. 
after lunch at zelos — grilled mahi mahi tacos and beer battered mahi mahi burgers — and our walk at ke'e, me and the p's headed home to veg. i finished the secret life of bees, decided i wanted to live in a honeycomb, and delved into the source of trouble. it's good but the stories are getting a little heady for my sun-addled brain. i went for a walk at dusk and ended up at the neighborhood beach again. and there, i made the most amazing discovery. my elbow, when covered with sand, looks just like a toasted everything bagel. 
yes, these are the things that one discovers, and finds astounding, when one is wandering solo. things like mosquito bites. and elbows. at least i'm not taking pictures of my feet again. but really. such constant, slow solitude, after new york recently, just makes me want to — i don't know. just take these really big breaths to make sure i don't forget anything. actually finding room and space to breathe, alone, after everything that has erupted in my life in the past six months, i feel this mixture of total relief, and refreshment, and happiness, and wistfulness, and thoughtfulness, and acceptance, and just this need to stretch my arms out and somehow hug the whole world, and release it again. there's a line in the secret life of bees that describes dusk as the unknowing place between coming and going. dusk is the time of saying goodbye. and it kind of makes me ache on the inside. but i guess ... i guess if something is going to make me ache, it might as well be a dusk as pretty as this?
after nearly a week in tropical bug-land, this is a record low for me. i am one of those people you should always try to sit near at a picnic or while camping or in the forest or any other such place where biting insects are likely to be looking for a feast, because they will ignore you entirely in favor of chomping me to bits. i am like a bug lamp. but anyways. only eight bites! they are torturing me, but at least there are only eight of them. thank you, oh makers of DEET. how i love thee.
i still, however, have managed to get myself some funny blotches of redness on my shoulder and neck. sun poisoning, maybe? i dunno. i think it might be a reaction to the tropical plants that kept reaching out and touching me today. but it's not so bad. i think maybe, just maybe, it's worth it to have some skin irritation to be able to go on walks like this with my dad?
this path is just off of ke'e beach, the northwesternmost point of the island and the furthest you can travel by car. ke'e is also the northern end of the na pali coast, which covers the entire west side of the island and is inaccessible except by boat, or your feet. the kalalau trail, the most famous hike in hawaii, and the only way to really see na pali, starts here. over christmas B and i did the first four miles of the kalalau, taking the two-mile side trip to swim in hanakapi'ai falls. and it was gorgeous. but today, i contented myself with chilling with my dad, and stopping for little breaks on the rocks. 
and for C, only for C, i made my dad take this picture. note the thumbs, please. 
after lunch at zelos — grilled mahi mahi tacos and beer battered mahi mahi burgers — and our walk at ke'e, me and the p's headed home to veg. i finished the secret life of bees, decided i wanted to live in a honeycomb, and delved into the source of trouble. it's good but the stories are getting a little heady for my sun-addled brain. i went for a walk at dusk and ended up at the neighborhood beach again. and there, i made the most amazing discovery. my elbow, when covered with sand, looks just like a toasted everything bagel. 
yes, these are the things that one discovers, and finds astounding, when one is wandering solo. things like mosquito bites. and elbows. at least i'm not taking pictures of my feet again. but really. such constant, slow solitude, after new york recently, just makes me want to — i don't know. just take these really big breaths to make sure i don't forget anything. actually finding room and space to breathe, alone, after everything that has erupted in my life in the past six months, i feel this mixture of total relief, and refreshment, and happiness, and wistfulness, and thoughtfulness, and acceptance, and just this need to stretch my arms out and somehow hug the whole world, and release it again. there's a line in the secret life of bees that describes dusk as the unknowing place between coming and going. dusk is the time of saying goodbye. and it kind of makes me ache on the inside. but i guess ... i guess if something is going to make me ache, it might as well be a dusk as pretty as this?
posted by Amy S. Choi at 1:42 AM
1 Comments:
didn't the secret life of bees just make you want to eat honey with everything? i honestly believed for a while that it would cure all my afflictions...
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