Flirting with the Baroque: O'ahu Diary (Days 9 and 10)


The sunset walks continue.  They provide a fertile combination of people-, light- and water-watching that I can't seem to resist.

Each day, for instance, I think that I have witnessed the smallest bikini the mind of man could possibly conjure, and each day I am proved wrong. (The other day I found myself contemplating trying on a Ferrari-brand, blaze-red bikini.  I pulled myself up short: I think this is the sign that I may have been too long in Waikiki.  A Ferrari bikini.)

But the beach here is marvelously motley, I have to say.  And aesthetically catholic, with - I hasten to say - a small c.  A panoply of chiseled forms are certainly on display, but virtually every other body type imaginable is as well.  And no one ever bats an eyelash to see a woman wading through the deep surf at the same hour every day, archly self-fashioned as an Ophelian Edward Gorey damsel in a soaked Grecian dress.





Of course, as the signs (complete with ominous shadow) chide,  this beach is meant for "passive enjoyment."  What a phrase.  But who am I to argue with the authorities of the beach, particularly when that beach is sans souci.

So I set my mind to passivity.





And if this passivity took the form of light-gazing in previous days, this time it was the clouds' turn.


Which is really another species of light-watching, to be honest.  I like to think of it as a Baroque pursuit.


Speaking of Baroque pastimes, the fireworks display was, as I hoped, a weekly event. This time I watched it from the edges of the Lagoon, legs stretched out in the sand, face turned up to the sky. 


Perhaps next week I will try to get closer still.  There is nothing that I love better than that feeling of being right under fireworks, so that when they burst, they appear to be rushing towards you out of a flat sky.  The whole of heaven falling on you like a Hitchcockian dolly zoom.

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