In Hawaii on the Lam with Captain Charlie
I am in the ocean, doing nothing, just bobbing.
I am facing a golden-sugar beach a low pink hotel, a thatched shack baking in the morning sun. To my left, a long crescent stretch of bay, a cradling arm around a basket of blue. To my right, a stone jetty. Beyond it, a harbor full of oceangoing boats and the houses on the side of the mountains of the city of Lahaina. Behind me, the limitless Pacific. All around, sea birds loitering in the swells, which lift and gently drop me, my arms out, toes brushing velvet sand.
“He’s working on his wave theory. This morning for breakfast he brewed and drank enough weed to put a horse in orbit. He’s been out there for three hours with his eyes closed ... imagining that he’s a piece of kelp or a jellyfish.”, says Captain Charlie's wife. She watches from the beach while pondering his oracular musings. “It isn’t by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world ... by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves.”