Well, dear blog friends, I have been on about a three week
hiatus. That is what happens when you
park your butt on a practically deserted beach in Hawaii. Nothing.
You don’t think about much, you stare at the ocean waiting for something
to hop out and amaze you and you plow through a year of unread New Yorkers and
New York Times Magazines.
The Guilt of Not
Reading
I am clearly convinced after a year of New Yorkers that 75%
of the time I only read the very short articles and the cartoons. I kind of came to that realization a year
ago, so I stopped my subscription last November. They were piling up like planes in Philly
waiting to take off during a thunderstorm.
I feel smarter for having consumed them, but guilty for not getting to
them on a timely basis (plus I was paying more to ship them every year to Kauai
than my actual subscription.). It’s a
great magazine, I just was feeling never caught up.
Which, is also, why, just before I left for this trip that I
cancelled my NYTimes Sunday subscription. I realize this is not a huge
commitment on my part, but at $8.00 a week (two medium soy mistos at Starbucks
– blond please), and a year long pile of unread magazines, I knew I was not
holding up my end of this relationship.
The incredibly nice lady on the other end of the line tried every trick
in the book to keep me as a customer, but the overriding guilt of seeing parts
of last Sunday’s paper still there..this Sunday…oy!
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| 2 of these vs.. |
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| NY Times Magazine..and piles of unfinished guilt |
So after reading a
full year of The Ethicist (I border between ethical and criminal) and Diagnosis
(holy crap, I think I have about 17 diseases), a great article on Sex Ed by one
of my classmates from high school (which was a cover back in November..), I
finished the pile that I had sent to Kauai and took a deep cleansing breath. Here is a link to the Behind the Cover Story and the Sex Ed Story..
Back to Nothing..with a side stop in LAX
Not a whole heck of a lot happened on my trip to Kauai and
Los Angeles (27 brief hours), and that is what a vacation is supposed to be
about. I don’t consider going to Europe
or visiting my parents or any other place that I have not been a “vacation, “
that is traveling. Here are my quick shots of LA. We stayed at a terrific B&B right at Hollywood Blvd. and Fairfax called The Hollywood B&B. I totally recommend it http://hollywoodbandb.com.
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| The pool in the backyard |
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| Hanging by the pool |
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| My feet at the pool |
Arriving in LAX is HARSH at 5:30 am, after an overnight flight (well less than five hours), so we made a stop at Randy's Donuts. BEST DONUTS EVER!
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| Randy's Donuts..YUM! |
I also got a call from one of my good friends from High School. He is pretty famous because he and his girlfriend Liza inherited a cell phone from one of Adam Sandler's pals. It was all over the news..here is Bob..He is awesome! He was participating in a new reality pilot being taped for Animal Planet, so we tried, in vain to hook up
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| Bob in High School |
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| Bob now, as a STAR! |
So, for lack of anything better to do, we did a studio tour..Paramount Pictures. Actually, it was pretty interesting..but we saw NOBODY famous, or even close. Oh well.
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| The Kid and I |
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| LOVE THIS MOVIE! |
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| Johnny Ramone is buried here! |
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| There is a super cool Buddhist section.. |
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| Hanging in Larchmont |
Back to Kauai...
A vacation is when you can go to “that place” where you are
compelled to do nothing, and if the spirit lifts you, you, oh, I don’t know, do
whatever you damned well please.
It took me about five years to figure out that is what Kauai
is to me. It’s a vast canvas of gorgeous
scenery that stares back at me and says, “breathe”, “do nothing,” “don’t check
your email.” I am generally good on the
first two, the third, takes practice each time I arrive. I have been arriving to the same shack on the
beach for about ten years now. Yep, this is the shack. I am not giving you the link to this place because I don't want you honing in on my annual vacation time.
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| The shack |
The New Traveling
Companion
This year we introduced a new player to the mix, we always
invite people to come join us, really, we say, we are going anyway, just
come. A few have taken us up, none have
regretted their journey here, even when their luggage has become lost,
sometimes, terminally. I travel to Kauai
with a back pack and carry on. Life has
gotten easier with kindles, a Hawaii Library Card for wi-fi and a washer and
dryer. So, besides our nephew Hayden,
who was a godsend of endless friendship and carousing for our son, it was my
new camera. Here he is up on a surfboard!
It’s not a particularly fancy camera, but it comes with two
lenses, and when I received it for my birthday this year. I wanted to take better pictures of my son
playing sports, and now, it’s a frequent, nearly constant traveling companion.
Every morning when I would take my walk on the beach,
catching the sun rising around 6:23 am, I had her with me. We saw the most inspiring things…a turtle
laying nesting and covering her eggs that first morning, crab condominiums
rising on the beach before the tide has risen, the crabs scampering to the sea,
as my looming shadow approached them, the thrilling sunrise, and the huge
crashing waves. Its very quiet at 6:23
am, but there is a lot going on at Maha’ulepu Beach. If you want to know more about this gem, check out http://www.malama-mahaulepu.org.
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| Crabs heading to the sea |
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| Mama Honu laying eggs outside our house |
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| Good morning crabby |
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| Sunrise on the beach |
I think of taking pictures as an evolution. I have always
loved taking pictures, but when you start really taking photos of the small
stuff, not the big landscape, its like you have settled into a different kind
of place. I first understood this when I
was entrenched in scuba diving. After
150 or so dives (plus or minus where you go), you pretty much have seen the
“big stuff”, you are comfortable that nothing is going to rise out of the dark
sea bottom and eat you, and if it does, oh well. You have gotten over that need to explore
what its like past the mythical 130’ ft (less fish, a bit of a buzz), dive with
sharks, explore wrecks, German U-boats, and you have are tired of taking
pictures of fish butts with a cheap ass camera.
Before I was a diver, I didn’t understand bird
watching. Bird watchers have a bucket
list.. a list of all the birds that can be found. A few weeks ago in Slate there was a segment
on this.. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/07/birders_the_central_park_effect_proves_that_jonathan_franzen_is_the_world_s_most_annoying_bird_watcher_.html
Scuba divers who are in it for the fish have a similar
list/bible. I have dive logs with hundreds of dives with not only the technical parts of my dive, but what fish I
saw. Sometimes its an exhaustive list,
and sometimes, I would spend an entire dive just seeking out something elusive
and rare, like a frogfish off of Bequia or Spanish Dancer catching a ride on the jet
stream off of North Carolina. It became
not enough to see that elusive fish…you want to photograph it, so you can share
that with everyone else who dives, and those who could care less. So, entire tanks of air could be spent hoping
an octopus would emerge from the coral, getting just that perfect shot of a
queen angel fish, or capturing a Moorish Idol off the Hawaiian coast. When people ask me what my biggest thrill
was, it was probably diving with an unanticipated manta ray one night off of
Little Cayman. It was magical how she
danced and did loops before us in the dusk, consuming plankton, putting on a
ballet at 35’ below the surface for our dive lights. There is something about
seeing nature like this that makes you feel not only awkward, but rather,
useless. I would post my pictures, but they are all on slides..like the ones you put in a carrousel.
Plane Landing..gotta go..
Well, the plane is about to land, so I am going to sign off. Here are my brief thoughts about flying Virgin America..DO IT..Of course, they were a little effed up with our take off in Philly, but once you are in the air. It's like a dream come true. See those screens on the back of your chair? That is an endless array of movies (not free but good!), and best of all, when you want something to drink or eat, you order it, and it shows up..in like 5 minutes or less. Not when they feel like wandering around the cabin. It was divine...
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| Food and Drinks truly at your fingertips! |
And I saw this handsome devil in first class, my only celeb spotting, and it was on the plane back to Philly. Terrence Howard, Philly boy...looking good baby...Hello Philly!
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