PICS
so here is proof that i actually was in "paradise" although it looks like something more out of us weekly.
let me for one moment unpack my two refernces in that last sentence. the first was to an episode of this american life where ira glass aptly points out that every time the word hawaii is mentioned, everyone's response is "ooh, that's paradise." how the very idea of hawaii has defined our notion of paradise without any first hand experince of it. it's something that has just seeped into our cultural consciousness, been accepted as fact and never again questioned or compaired with its actuallity. before visiting, this is what i found problematic about the place. well, i am here to tell you that it really is paradise.
since returning home, i've been rereading some joan didion, especially her work on honolulu. she had a very strong attachemnt with the actual place, one that i can very much relate to. in her essay "letter from paradise" in "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," she writes,
"I went a wary visitor. I do not believe that the stories told of lovely hula hands merit extensive study. I have never heard a Hawaiian word, including and perhaps most particularly aloha, which accurately expressed anything I had to say. I have neither enought capacity for surprise nor enough heart for twice-told tales to make you listen again to tedious vignettes about Midwesterners in souvenir shirts and touring widows in muumus and simulated pearls . . . And so, now that it is on the line between us that I lack all temperment for paradise, real or facsimile, I am going to find it difficult to tell you precisely why Hawaii moves me, touches me, saddens and troubles and engages my imagination, what it is in the air that will linger long after I have forgotten the smell of pikake and pineapple and the way the palms sound in the trade winds."
And my second refernce in that first sentence, is of course, to the notoriously sleezy, yet always addicting gossip mag, us weekly. you know where they have the "candid" shot of someone like cameron diaz running on the beach looking "just like us" or at least appearing to be having a good time. that's what this picture reminds me of. except, that i was really was having a good time,
i am starting to feel like most of my 'real' experience are mediated through some kind of representation of the experience. like when you see a live elephant for the first time and it is striking how much it resembles the elephants in photographs.
MAY 08, 2007 09:32 AM
Welcome back to your place...transported from paradise. Your journal today is simply beautiul, in pictures and in words. Thanks Scout! 
Doesnt DOG the bounty hunter live and work in Hawaii? 
You know, my friend went on their honeymoon there a long time ago as well as my sister. The Brady Bunch went there and brought back something with a curse, even thought they had a great TVtime! Growing Pains went there too and Kirk Cameron fell in love with a Hawaiian girl. An artist friend I met in Skowhegan was born and raised in Hawaii.
My clients went there over the winter and brought me back some peaberry kona coffee beans...heaven from trees. These people have been everywhere and yet the mother raved that i need to just pack up and move there! (and she is more reserved of a person)
But today, I get another perspective...perhaps the most real, from you. Five-star review, Scout style.
ps. you look so happy and beautiful.
MAY 08, 2007 09:41 AM
That photo really does look like it came out of US Weekly. I love the smell of Hawaii when you step out of the airport and all the warm, sweet smells hit you. Of course, 30 seconds later I am melting from the humidity. But that initial realization that you are on an island is usually a happy one. You look incredibly happy in the picture, it made me smirk. Have you read Moloka'i? It's a touching piece of fiction about a young girl taken from her home and family in Honolulu and shipped to the leper colony on Moloka'i. The characters are fiction, but this did happen to the people of Hawaii. Ok, the rambling is over. 
MAY 08, 2007 10:01 AM
MAY 08, 2007 10:10 AM
MAY 08, 2007 10:37 AM
MAY 08, 2007 11:04 AM
wow.....very lovely......at least paradise while you were there! 
MAY 08, 2007 11:09 AM
MAY 08, 2007 11:22 AM
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MAY 08, 2007 12:37 PM
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MAY 08, 2007 01:47 PM
i`m going to paradise this week !
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