Kaua hele mai 'aina, kaua hele mai wai.
Trip Start
Sep 27, 2005
1
8
13
Trip End
Ongoing
Kapa'a, Hawaii
Saturday, October 29, 2005
Jojo and Uriah are playing cribbage while I listen to the night sounds of the jungle, the creaking talk of houses planted in red clay. This is our home and our shantytown symphony; purrrthump of a broken fan, crackle of cockroach wings at the door. Our couch is green velveteen; at night we sleep under a dragon kite that rustles and crackles in the wind.
Earlier tonight our roommates were playing ukulele and guitar and harmonica; even trumpet, this last a queer muted voice behind the closed door of Jojo's room. Outside it was raining; the house was shaking. I like these rains that come and go quickly, and soak through our t-shirts and puddle on the ground. You smell vaguely of wet animal, afterward, which makes sense. I notice it more here, how we are all sweat and skin and little else.
This land is wild and alive and intrusive in a way I have never known land to be. We live beside the wettest rainforest in the world, we live beside a green sea. You have to get out in it, you have to touch everything, you have to give yourself up. It is too beautiful here; there's no use belonging to the gray stones and deep green mosses of forests that are far away. Nor to you, who I left. But I can't help that.
I miss you.
--Leila
