Aloha to the moment

This wee buddha has been travelling with me for most of my adult life. I bought it in Oahu, the Hawaiian island most people talk of when they think of this Pacific paradise. And paradise it is. On many of my travels I arrived at exotic sounding destinations only to find them flea-worn or mundane. Not so Hawaii. It had hula-dancing girls garlanded with leis dancing on golden beaches pounded by musclebound pacific waves and, in the interior, green like you've never seen, rainforest green and lush, dripping life in a squawking racket. Mist enough for your mood and the ocean crashing like the wheeze of an immense beast.

On Oahu I stayed at the University ground hostel. I went to see this recently released film that was all the rage called Sex, Lies and Videotape (remember videotape?) at the campus and then a talk about feminism straight afterwards. I was in heaven, geographically and spiritually. Feeling that I was in heaven must have been the reason that I felt that I had to climb to the top of the nearest mountain and sacrifice myself to the Polynesian Sun Gods.
I met a crowd of Fife laddies and we decided to climb Diamondhead Crater, the Volcanic rock jutting out the shore just shy of Waikiki. I decided to do this wearing only shorts and flip flops. That's right ONLY shorts and flip flops. Maybe it was the fact that I'd visited The Falls of Clyde tall ship the previous day in Honolulu and felt that Port Glasgow connection to the place. Maybe I was just a wee nugget who didn't really give these sojourns the respect they deserved. Whatever, by late afternoon I had climbed and descended the volcanic rock and lay shivering and hallucinating in my campus bed, sick with sun stroke. There was a South African guy there by my bed who asked if I was okay between telling vile stories and asking "You can't hate a South African, can you?"

I got better and only had a day more on this gorgeous island. And off I went, a wee nugget in my pocket that was this buddha figure bought at a local market. He has been with me all this time, good and bad, this reclining blissed out icon of the way a moment can sound when it is wet, green and misty in the interior with ocean waves tossed and curled by the muscle of the moon sounding in your ears and wetting the golden sand where your toes sink.