The first thing I noticed was the heaviness of the air. Very warm, but not unpleasantly so. And of course scented with plumeria and hibiscus. I arrived on Maui as the tail end of a storm system fringed the island with silvergray rain. The same system that had made a mockery of roads in Hilo, on the Big Island a day ago, converting them into raging streams. Almost three feet of rain was dumped onto the island, and flash flooding was the order of the day. Maui was spared somewhat, but my brother's domehouse up in Keokea is beginning to spring a leak...

The first thing you notice are the names: Haleakala, A'alae, King Kekaulike High School, Pukalani Junction. These tell you that you are home, tell you that this place is the one you dreamt about when you were but a wee lad, not truly knowing anything about America since all you knew were from books and magazines, and National Geographics. And when you first came here, the real America was so much more (and so much less) than what the word and pictures in those texts conjured up. Instead it was Hoopalua, Maalaea, Baldwin Avenue, Haiku... a green, lilting music. Hawaii.

My flight over was, quite possibly, the best I've had on this particular 'commute.' First of all, Aloha Airlines started a direct Kahului (Maui) to Oakland run last year, which is quite convenient for an East Bay nomad like me. If bro Nathan is busy fighting wilderness fires and can't pick me up at the airport, BART is but a shuttle away. And Berkeley a few minutes north. Anyway, Nate picked me up at Tolman at around 7:30. I had spent the night at my office, after getting back in at almost midnight, from Golfland and the DDR Savages' Party ;-) That little, spontaneous, excursion threw off my schedule for the day and I lost several needed hours of syncing up docs and apps on my iBook and my G4. So, I decided to just do an all-nighter and get to OAK in the a.m.

Had breakfast at an airport cafe with Nathan, talking for a while, then ran at the last minute to the boarding gate, where I was literally the last person assigned a seat. The flight wasn't full at all, and as luck would have it, I was the only one in my row of 3! Seat A, row 8. Window, looking outside at a glorious Bay Area early morning. Soon enough, as we were aloft, I accepted a complimentary mai tai from a dark-haired beauty of a stewardess, and her smile and the drink put me almost instantly into a 35,000 foot high dreamworld and I stretched out and curled up on those lovely, empty seats for a brilliantly witless, stunned sleep to home. After staying up all night, kept company only by Nik and the ever-present Sparky (who finally gave up at half past 3), it was most relaxing and lucky to spend the 4 and a half hours back to the Islands recumbent like that.

It must have been a dreamless sleep, as no fragments survive from that time period. In some ways it was disconcerting, waking up and emerging to the familiar landscape of Maui; I felt like I hadn't left at all... but all this means is that the last six months in the Bay Area went by so fast, an angel's expended breath. Which means it was memorable: so much happened... enough to fill the next six months here with contemplative weblogs on one thing or another that I saw or felt this past spring and summer. But the question is begged: where is "here"? Is it this weblog space? Is it inside of me, in that ineffable place I call home? Is it in the dynamic exchange of bits and bytes, on their way to unpredictable translations in your neuronal pathways?

Wherever it is, whatever shape the enigma chooses to present itself, it smells now like plumeria blossoms...

{ net.casting }
^