Conditional Truths

     This will be a very brief love affair, I know.  It's quite strange to know that.  To live in a place- to call a house a home at the end of a long day, to accept that the sun sets in Princeville and that avocados are more expensive at the farmers' markets because the vendors buy them at CostCo, and that the swell belongs to the North in wintertime- these are truths of my life.  But only my current life.  Only right now.  Geographically conditional truths.

      I am at a beach today.  Anahola, a place of locals, which I will never be.  The sand gives easily under my feet, and the sun and clouds are holding hands to create that perfect, pot of island gold beach day.  The ocean does not need to roar here, and so it whispers, softening driftwood and coastline, making question marks out of edges.  I am mostly alone.  In my periphery I can see a few tanned, black-haired boys with spear guns slung over their shoulders, an octopus who melted into the saltwater an hour ago hanging limp from a holster.
 
     The sand crabs are my favorite companions.  I watch them, and they me, each half carefully respectful of the other's space and quiet and reverence for the Pacific.  We say hello and politely move on when we find ourselves too close to one another.  I like the way their clean their homes, climbing to the surface handful by handful, a careful assessment followed by a spray of sand.  They leave the soft beach pocked with two-dimensional archways; grand entrances to hard-fought abodes. Sand crabs have no reason to run from the ocean.  They understand it.  I have seen them predict to the quarter of an inch where the surf will draw its line and sit calmly at the end of their world, winning their games of chicken.  I wonder if they sleep well in their tiny homes.  If they notice the constant, guttural groans of the sea in their ears.
   
     This is a truly beautiful place.  A siren island, entirely aware of its own appeal and peril.  Green mountains thrust out of the ocean like spires of a church where the structure is the deity.  You are meant to worship what you sit inside.  It stands tall, and alone.  The oldest of its brothers and sisters, Kauai does not need us.
 
    When you are here, you sit in the very center of the earth.  Everything else is a satellite- less blue, less green, less fierce, less gentle, less kind, less cruel, and so much smaller.

It is a little known fact that most of the Earth's gravity is generated by a 550 square mile island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  (The rest is generated by my grandmother, whom we can all thank for Denver's population boom.)
 
      I have yet to see a Kauai spring, but I imagine an atmospheric rush of warm-color flowers and sweet mangoes and seafoam spray from the whales as they say their yearly goodbyes.  Spring in a place without winter has to try harder, be louder.  Without the swell of torch gingers, or the purple orchids, would we take notice?   The desperation of Christmas lights in a tropical place is easy to spot.  We feel it like we feel how far away everything is.  But spring?

     We are not quite friends yet, this island and I.  It seems to [correctly] suspect that my allegiance lies elsewhere, and is unwilling to pester for new congregants.  As much as that is the case, our fondness for each other grows every day. I am clearly the more difficult half to love in this scenario, Hawaiian islands being paradise and all, and so I do what I can to earn my keep and stay in its good graces.  And while I may not pray to its spires, I can certainly understand those who do.

     I will be sad when I leave here.  Devastated, I would think.  I will mourn the sunsets, their shades of pink folding into more shades of blue than there are words for colors.  I will miss Kapaa Town. This strange, tiny place.  This slow-moving mobius strip of palm trees and blue sky, and shops custom-made to mirror the aloha shirts that wander in and out, shave ice in hand.
     I will close my eyes occasionally and wish that I was back here under the thick canopy, listening to birds sing to each other about how the sun springs from the sea in the mornings and sets the clouds aflame.
 
     There is so very much to love, and so little time to love it the way it deserves.  Inevitably, our exit from this pretty, green place will rush on us like a riptide, will grab us without apology and without permission, will happen so quickly that we might forget to breathe deep the eucalyptus that one.last.time.

   The best any of us can hope for the ability to look straight ahead, even with the blinders off.  To decide to be where we are.  To love everything there is to love with ferocity and intention. To notice.

   For me, I will live happily inside my geographically conditional truths for a few years.  I have time to get sticky with mango juice in the springtime, and sing with the birdsong choir in a place of worship that is not my own, but madly beautiful just the same.  And when it is time, I will have a squeeze of lime over velvet papaya, wake up with the curtsy of a sunrise, and find my way back to my grandmother.