Haleakala

I shed a few pounds yesterday. I left bright and early for Haleakala, the volcanic crater that dominates much of the island. I feared that the twisty drive up to the summit would be as difficult as the road to Hana, but it was fun and lovely. I passed through areas that looked like California and Kentucky. The curves were extreme, but I felt confident in my rental car (and have learned that one doesn't need to brake at every turn). The views became more and more spectacular. It was clear at Haleakala, so I never passed through a cloud layer, but I could see clouds down below me in surrounding directions.

A few steps up from the parking lot of the visitor center was a grand Martian vista:



Exactly what I had been hoping for out of a crater.

I applied my suntan lotion, packed my bag with the necessary things, and began climbing down the Sliding Sands Trail, which would lead to the crater bed. I took a side trip that looked promising and was delighted -- no, I wanted to get down on my hands and knees and thank the goddess Pele -- that the path led around the narrow rim of a cinder cone. So I walked all the way around Ka Lu'u o ka 'O'o. My own closeup pictures didn't turn out very well, but here I am looking at people (very far away) walking the rim:



Extraordinary. It was climbing up one steep side of the rim, however, that I first came close to death. My little heart was a conga set. I stopped to rest and reapply some suntan lotion (I'd probably been hiking for an hour and half already, and I was 10,000 feet closer than usual to a cloudless tropical sun.)

I continued walking, and walking, and walking, taking picture after picture and enjoying the landscape of red, yellow, black, brown, and gray rock. I came to a great turnaround point but saw the flat bottom of the crater in the distance. I'd been walking about two and a half hours. I forged on and eventually made it:



That meant, alas, it was time to climb back up. I was amazed how just a few minutes of walking up a moderate incline would make my heart beat like mad. Of course, much of the path was loose sand, giving the muscles a little extra torture. I walked. I took a sip of water. I walked. If a rock offered a few inches of shade, I rested. At one point I propped my bag up and stuck my face in its shade. Eventually I made it back to people, and they livened me up a bit. "You're not gonna die, Paul! Look at all these oldtimers and youngtimers!" But the last hour, having climbed up many, many steep switchbacks, was the hardest my body has ever worked for me. Eventually I would walk for two minutes, rest for one.

I made it back to my car, grateful for the beauty and experience, but exhausted. More pictures are here in my Hawaii set.

Thanksgiving dinner, a little strange, consisted of ahi poke, a spider roll, a hamachi roll, and the sushi chef's special gift: raw shrimp.

Boyfriends in Hawaii

Not as much to report today -- not of the concrete stuff, anyway. Or maybe I've lost a little steam. This morning I drove up around west Maui, as far as I could go until the beginning of the winding section with one-lane roads I now avoid like boobies. The mountains I passed were beautiful. I passed also lots of resorts and condos, took a few side streets, stopped at a beach or two. But it was a little rainy, so I decided to head back to the southern shore. My guide book told me that Keawakapu Beach was beautiful and that Stephen King had a home nearby.

I stopped and sunned and swam for a couple hours. It was lovely, lovely. The sun was amazing and I listened to Callas singing Lady Macbeth. Never again, never again, never again -- or will there be another singer like her? Now I realize: that was probably my last beach trip on Maui. Tomorrow is a drive up Haleakala, some 10,000 feet above sea level, a walk down into the crater, and then a stumbling back up. If you don't hear from me by midnight tomorrow, Pacific time, I broke my leg and am drinking my own urine to stay alive.

That's all the news from Hawaii. In other news, my pseudo-boyfriend used the L word in an instant messaging chat last night (we've been seeing each other about once a week for the last two and a half months), and an ex is returning to San Francisco. I dare not say he wants to try again, but he says he does. (Foolish boy, there is a Matthew Barney out there for you somewhere. No need to settle for a mediocrity -- and a talent to be "tackled." Take that! Always reeling them in with the humility and then a quick punch to the kidneys!)

The L word. It's totally cazh. That's how I'm taking it. I like to pretend I have magic powers of gravitation. I like to pretend I suck in men and change their possible orbits forever. (Most of all, I like exes who have never really had another long-term relationship. And I do not approve of blond exes who have somehow found romantic happiness with someone other than me.)

My pseudo-boyfriend is totally Bloomingdales. Totally gorgeous. Totally smart. He's totally wounded, totally drunk, totally tall.

But I forgot to tell you! It's raining tonight. I'm sitting on the lanai in warm, tropical rain!

Hell, connecting in Hawaii

Well, I didn't take any pictures of myself today. That's an accomplishment.

I slept in a bit, woke up around 8 not really knowing what I was going to do all day. I couldn't go back to the same beaches, though they were glorious. Today wasn't the day for the large trek to Hana or up Haleakala. I checked my map. Right in the center of Maui was a state park. I read the description in my guide book and decided to go.

It was a pleasant drive. There's a lot of Florida and California in Hawaii. A lot of mainland United States. We have achieved incredible homogeneity, from guard rails to lane striping, K-marts to Starbucks (there were two within shouting distance in the Honolulu airport). But as I approachedWailuku, the mist-shrounded mountains sprung up. A left turn, and I'm passing through a neighborhood along the bottom of a valley. (Pictures are here in my growing Hawaii photo set.)

Since this small adventure had taken me nearly to the northern coast of Maui, I decided to head east toward Paia (which I'd heard was a cute hippy town) and to Ho'okipa Beach, home of big waves and surfers of all kind. And having missed the turnoff for the beach, I decided, hell, I'll drive a little ways along the now-famous road to Hana.

The Road to Hana: Fuck the road to Hana! The deepest level of hell is the road to Hana, and its basement is the return trip. Now, some people will undoubtedly love the road to Hana. I'm thinking of men with small penises and fast cars.

But let me start at the beginning, because I died a little today and I want to remember it. I was attracted to the road to Hana because it supposedly curves through a tropical jungle (and I like jungles). I started off on my trek, and I was pleased to be behind a wimpy driver. That meant I could be wimpy, taking the curves as slowly as I liked. And the curves weren't bad at all; one disappointment was that we were noteoceanside . We were stuck in the middle of Florida-California. We weren't going steeply up or down. So all was well until . . . the one-lane sections started to appear. One-lane bridges and one-lane stretches of road the twist around a bend so you can't even tell if another car is zooming around that one-lane device of death. But, like I said, I was second. The car in front of me could crash, and I and the ten cars trailing me could do our best to turn around in that one-lane madness and head back to two-lane civilization.

It was 11 when I started on the road to Hana, and I told myself, sure, I'd drive for an hour and then turn back, unless totally compelled. (The 50 miles to Hana generally take 2 to 3 hours.) After 30 minutes of near misses with cliffsides and Pontiacs (the dominant rental car here), I was ready to turn around. I waited for a chance. I missed a couple. Finally I found one, just past the so-called Garden of Eden. I turned around and lay in wait for a car to follow back (I did not relish competing on the one-way switchbacks with the eager Hana-bound caravans).

Even Bush, Gonzales, Rumsfeld, and Mukasey would recognize this as torture.

Eventually, magically, I made it back to the land of two lanes. And this time I managed to pull off at Ho'okipa. And although no one was in the water (presumably too rough) and no one was evening sunning on the sand, it was incredibly beautiful. Not Florida and California, not even Earth. Don't believe me?



Look at that gosh-darn ocean! That clear substance covers and cleanses this dirty earth and is undoubtedly sentient.

And it made me hanker some beach time. I headed back down the center of Maui to the southern shore and stopped at Kameole 1, 2, or 3. I'm guessing 2. I battled the sand and relished it. I caught a little sun before applying lotion. Even went swimming a little before applying. That meant I was covered in sand (especially the hands) at lotion time, making for a little sandy exfoliation. I lay back and enjoyed the breeze and surf, counted to sixty over and over as I tend to do when lying in the sun. Listened to Verdi's Macbeth in anticipation of seeing it at SF Opera next week, and listened to Mozart because he fits in with the sparkle of the ocean.

Tadzio and Aschenbach were playing the games of Apollo together (Frisbee and football toss). Tadzio was a dark-headed lean thing with a vulgarly defined abdominal muscular structure -- as if such musculature were possible! Other beach meats: I begin to admiremanblubber. Old and young men alike are neatly padded for winter. Sometimes, true, it looks healthy, like a warm seal.

I got my sun and water and decided to head back to the inn. I'd had nothing to eat but a bagel and cream cheese (which really is probably more than most of us Americans need, at least a couple days a week). So at 4 I walked over to the sushi place next to the inn. (One of the gays at gay night last night told me that all the tuna here was so fresh it was to die for.) I ordered ahi poke, a local favorite consisting of diced raw tuna in a spicy sauce. It was some serious fish. And delicious. I added a roll of eel and avocado, also tasty.

And then it was nearly time for sunset, so I walked along the beach and snapped a couple dozen photos. With the sun behind them, I couldn't tell how these people were gesturing. I should have guessed they were connecting. That's what people do.

Lava in Hawaii

On the lanai. It's nine o'clock. The fountain is gurgling and the wind is blowing.

Things: things to tell you about. The little things: Big Beach and Little Beach, though it seems like centuries ago I discovered: the water is clear. I can see my feet on the sand. (Where I'm swimming, there's not much down there but sand. Which is good, because I don't want to touch something living or slimy.) And of course the water is warm. The sand is white and the water is warm. Some of the sand is so deliciously smushy.

Little Beach is the combo gay and nudist beach. There is a surprisingly large contingent of old people who like to be nude: what could have passed for my grandparents at a family reunion was lounging about in the nude a few feet from me. There were only a few gays. No true love, no sex, not that I'm looking.

But also the very beginning: getting in the car and driving south, technically aiming for Big Beach (and Little Beach, its next door neighbor), and thinking, "California is the place I love. This is like California, in some ways more dramatic, definitely warmer, but it is not California." I have found a place that makes me resonate: California. California, and I've only scratched your surface.

I stopped at Starbucks (and don't think for an instant that all of this is supposed to be interesting!) and I thought (racist-like), Why is one of the whitest boys I've ever seen working in a Starbucks on Maui? Shouldn't he be in Georgia, or Kansas? I had a bagel; I was surprised how delicious (warm and crispy) a bagel from Starbucks could be. Sitting there, having finagled my boat of a rental car into a spot in some damn strip mall's parking lot, I mustered the courage to continue driving.

(Why am I here? The senselessness and the shortness of life! One must live and experience and have stories to tell at Heavenly Bingo? But why am I alone? Why am I alone? So I think I'm living the high life. So my bills are paid; I've worked long and hard enough to earn six weeks of vacation. People don't go to Hawaii alone. Freaks do, maybe, and people who go unattached in order to maximize temporary attachments. But you? You are in Hawaii?)

(Fuck yeah, you're in Hawaii, and it's a goddamn state in these goddamn United States of Connect-a-gezoink. No big deal. And being alone? You have a minor introversion disability, but you're hardly alone. You relish your individual freedom as much as you hate sleeping alone. Who could be here with you? No one, really. It wouldn't be Hawaii you were exploring; it would be him. People always trump places and things.)

I continued driving through Californian landscapes and reached Big Beach, possibly inferior to California except for two things: the water was not freezing, and it was crystal clear. And so I had to float in it -- the ocean of California is an evil brooding thing, full of caprice and not little force. The Maui ocean is a humongous mother who lulls. But clouds are possible even in Hawaii. With the coming of shade, I drove south.

And this was an old-fashioned road, the kind with little regard for lanes. This was a road surrounded by what I took for dirt; but it was lava rock. Cooled lava had been blasted to the side so that asphalt could be laid down and a 1.5-lane road built. Scary, driving on a road where you or the on-coming must pull to the side (side permitting, of course).

(I am reminded how common my experience is. Thousands come to Maui each year and experience the same beaten tracks. How do they write about it? More directly? Less personally? More poetically?)

I reached La Perouse Bay. Many come here to snorkel. Fuck fish. I just want to see "lava fields" and "cinder cones."

And I must say: Magma truly bursts through the surface, and lava pours out and out and out and eventually cools. In a perfect world, I would have walked up those streams of lava rock to the source. In a perfect world, I'd bounce on the moon and swim straight through Jupiter. La Perouse Bay's lava fields were incredible: Rock, piles, masses of scratchy noisy rock, born in an instant, creating land beneath your feet. I took dozens of pictures, realizing that they would not capture the reality.

I'm not sure what's planned for tomorrow. Possibly some driving; possibly some self-indulgent sunning and swimming.

Pictures!

Narrow road to La Perouse Bay
Originally uploaded by Zauberwelt.

Just a quick note to say I've uploaded a million pictures to my flickr site, here. I liked the lava fields at La Perouse Bay even more than I expected I would. Pardon the several self-portraits. It was an exercise in existence. More later, possibly tonight. Maui's one gay bar appears every Monday evening, for two hours only. I'm headed there now.

Robot lungs in Hawaii

I am sitting on the lanai outside of my room. An artificial fountain hidden by tropical plants and the dark gurgles gently, while the wind, a real wind, flutters the palm fronds. I'm sitting on a medium-height bar chair at a medium-height bar table. A glass ashtray tempts me, but I can never smoke until they invent robot lungs.

It's dark in Kihei, in Maui, in Hawaii. Travel here was not glorious but fine, bearable thanks to my practical distaste for anxiety. Certain things I expect to happen: I expect to feel uncomfortable and burdened behind the wheel of a rental car, and I expect to accidentally pass the resort on my left, then drive too far for a turnaround, then pass it again on my right, drive too far, and just barely manage to get it right the last time around.

It's only 9:30. I could hop back in that strange car with low windows and drive up and down the strip. But I'm choosing to relax on the lanai. I will wake shortly before the sun; I'm facing west, there will be no fiery birth from the ocean (but certainly a cooling dip tomorrow evening), but curiosity, a reliance on my eyes and on light will compel me up.

During one of my airport struggles (beware: you can land in Honolulu to total desertion, not an airport attendant in sight) I ran into a lesbian couple. They were seeking help from a driver waiting for the person indicated on his sign. I listened in, sorta butt in, since they seemed to be having the same problem as I was. Overheard that they were from San Francisco as well. We ended up near each other on the shuttle and talked a little more. They asked where I was staying, and after I told them they warmed up a little bit: "Oh, so your family!"

Ay yi yi, maybe it's time to ditch the beard and long hair and put on another fauxhawk? And definitely double my testosterone suppressants.

Pina, usw.

A little tipsy, but that's okay. It's Friday.

Haven't written in a while. Been busy. Work and a wonderful pseudo-boyfriend keep a thirty-something busy.

When I'm drunk I sometimes say strange things, like "Ideally I'd love everyone exactly as long as they want to be loved," or something like that.

Tonight I say, "I love everyone." My exes, even my blond ex still (even though that passion was apparently a delusion; oh, H., why do I care about you tonight? Is it sex, and the memory of deep stares? Sex was by no means perfect, though I do not remember a waning), and of course my pseudo-boyfriend. Though not love. I don't use that word. And not using it is freeing. We are exploratory, I and this tall dark beauty, this sad redwood with the poetic back. I am afraid to admit him; it insults exes and may discourage trueloves (you know, the ones who love you at first sight and want to spend every moment basking in your literary and musical genius?). But he is there.

And I love a new person, by way of review: Pina Bausch, the choreographer whose Ten Chi did strange things to the people of Berkeley and the Bay Area tonight. Pina Bausch -- until a week ago I thought it the somewhat senseless name of a dance troup. It is Pina Bausch, the dancer and choreographer in Almodovar's Talk to Her and my favorite movie, And the Ship Sails On. (Ah, if ever humanity's beauty were doubted: look only at Mirko -- and again, and again, and again, until your heart overbeats.)

But I mean Pina Bausch, and let me throw out a few phrases, lest I forget what was seen: Zellerbach, second row on the aisle, feeling air moved by dancers. The two ladies, one makes me think of Marianne Faithfull (unknown until S. and that mysterious, passionate theatrical moment, The Black Rider) -- and no, not the tearing of the gauze, but Marianne's black dress, the heels punching out the belly like my own, the voice coming from a smoked lung. Old dancers, dancers of a different sort, dancers who speak. The sheer audacity of three hours of nonsense, rapidly combining the humorous with the beautiful. And the snow that began in the first half continued to fall through intermission and throughout the whole second act. I worried about the dancers' slipping feet, but they played surely in the paper snow. The main narrator reaching to the audience's fingers and counting them: uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco. The old blond man's wispy hands, encouraging us to snore. The memory that escapes me, and the most important: when was it I loved the narrator most? The second narrator: "Chopsticks! Hara kiri! Samurai! Sushi!" The first narrator, ah! Her grandmother would sit in the rocking chair, and she would sit . . . here!

Alone I was. True, I prowled that intermission audience like a lonely seventh grader. Surely, I thought, surely my aura and energies will attract something, somewhere. Next week, alone on an island. Intended, hoped for: rebirth (again). Reorientation to the (useless, temporary) majesty of this (inconsequential) orb.

But not sad: magically programmed to believe that one scruffy jaw is worth more than a hundred vindicated gods.