All posts tagged: Hawaii

Home from Hawaii

I arrived back in New Zealand yesterday, just in time to miss the (strong but fortuitously undamaging) earthquake in Christchurch, and my parents adopting a newborn kid goat on the farm. Hawaii was wonderful, amazing, perfect. The weather was ideal. 27 degrees every day (85ish), 24 every night, clear and sunny with tradewinds and the occasional rain shower that swept in, cooled the land, and then swept out again. I got to see my little sisters (the first time all three of us have been together since my wedding), and we cooked up a storm and hung out on the beach and up in trees and generally tried to pretend that we were little kids again. We even sang all those horrible children’s songs we used to sing, like “Found a peanut”, “Baby bumblebee” and “Little green frog”. This is some of the stuff I did: I also sewed, and cooked, and planted exotic fruits, and generally enjoyed spending time with my family and being on an idyllic organic farm. It couldn’t have been better, …

Hawaii: A million words. Part 2: the gates of Paradise*

Published by The Dreamstress

When I was young visitors to my parent’s farm would rave about it. They would show up at the front door exclaiming “It’s paradise!” “A tropical wonderland” “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life!”. I thought they were mad. I’m older and wiser now. I no longer compare the wildness of true Hawaii to the manicured estates that we are presented as ideals in the media. I appreciate the honesty of the farm, a working piece of land that made a living for my parents, and don’t need to tidy away all the tools and compost heaps that make it what it is. The farm is set up a valley. You turn off the main road which winds round the coast, and head mauka (mountain side) up a narrow, rough dirt road. In a small car the centre median scrapes the bottom, rocks and fairy grass meeting metal. On one side of the road the steep valley wall, an inhospitable mass of sharp shoulder-high grass, thorny trees, and rocks rises. On the other, …

Hawaii: a million words. Part 1. Flying home

Published by The Dreamstress

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. And so I try to give you pictures But there are some moments so sublime, so fraught with incandescent beauty, that no picture can begin to capture the depths and layers of wonderment, the euphoria felt with every sense, and ever fibre of your being. That is what words are for. To work with the pictures to convey a brief, shadowy semblance of the actuality of such moments. A fragile simulacrum in palest pastel scents and colours. For me, visiting Hawaii, visiting home, is one of these moments of perfect euphoria after another, the feeling of rightness and perfection only heightened and illuminated by the obvious imperfections of the place, the human flaws that make it interesting. This is my simulacrum for you, my attempt to replicate an assemblage of moments so vivid, so saturated with scents and sounds and textures and colours, that your very soul smiles. You fly into my parents island on a little plane: 8 or 12 passengers who laugh and joke …