Kaua'i Reflections, Day 4: Dead Lizard

"Aloha."

It's only the millionth time I've heard that. Sonia, dressed in a long, floral dress, motions for us to bow our heads, and we receive leis around our necks. These leis are not the general welcoming color of orchid purple that we received on our first day to the resort. These leis are green.

We are here for the timeshare lecture.

A representative works us down to the bottom floor of the resort - shallow stairs and dim hallways with low ceilings. There is the smell of baking cookies. Ahead, like a near-death experience, a brilliant light shines through the glass doors, and we pass through to a dozen hotel portraits, stalwart and proud, looking over a luminous, angelic view of the cresting waves of Hanalei Bay.

This is where they will try to sell us property.

12:00 PM

"I'll compress my usual 90-minute sales presentation to seven minutes."

Covertly, I set my stopwatch.

12:20 PM

He's still talking.

Over a flurry of satellite photographs, artist's conceptions, blueprints, price sheets, whiteboard drawings, value propositions, room layouts, trading option sheets, and hotel point exchange brochures, his ninety-minutes-now-seven-minutes-now-twenty-minutes presentation drags on.

I'm scratching out my own figures on a piece of paper. Every once in a while the agent looks over to see what I'm writing. Selfishly, I shield my work.

12:30 PM

I stop the timer. He's done.

Thirty minutes.

We don't buy anything.

1:00 PM

"How's it going, man?"

I look back. It's the bellman, heading by with a cart full of luggage.

"Not bad," I answer. "You?"

"Pretty good," he says, his voice fading away. "Better if my wife wasn't cheating on me..."

1:30 PM

The sand reminds me of Johnny's Seasoning Salt. We are leaving soon. The clouds obscure the easternmost point of the island; the weather is changing. A rising wind is tugging at my shirt; I watch the surfers slip the lashing waves that rip back against my feet, digging holes around them, leaving a slime of salty wet sand on my toes.

There's no plan today. I feel like having an ice cream cone - it's a far cry from sailing four-foot waves in Na Pali, or dangling at thirty-six hundred feet. But desires are just that ephemeral; nowhere in the social contract does it say we need to make our inclinations match our surroundings day after day.

It still feels strange. I constantly question myself in times like these, standing, watching others move themselves in time and space. I ask what right I have to hang onto silence, stillness, storing up my entropy. Some never quit running.

8:00 PM

Nobody sits inside at the Cafe. Rain, shine, day or night, everyone sits outside. Dad and I sit down at a balcony edge table and order. Seven ounces of tenderloin in a thin wasabi sauce so minimal it looks like it was drawn on the plate in colored pencil. Miso-marinated prawns perpetually ready to burst.

Hanalei Bay is invisible, just a stretch of negative space in deadblack until the next shore's lights. Past the balcony, it looks like there is literally nothing. By morning, we will see the verdant crag again, looming massive and fog-enshrouded. We will see the same schooner, beaten by bay waves, shoved first to port, then to starboard, tugging against a firm anchor.

I regret not being able to sail these islands. For reasons concerning outcomes of history, legality, and profitability, it's not a circle I can hope to close for some years yet - Hawaii simply isn't friendly to private sailing charter, not least for the situation of the weather, which can turn temperamental without warning, damning sailors to double-digit waves and gale force winds suddenly and without safe harbors.

Later, I walk poolside, navigating by gas-fed tiki torches and cyanotic underwater lighting. The beach disappears into the same nothing I saw from the balcony; proximity is no aid. I take a step and my foot drops into muck. I chance a look at the resort. It is a terraced fortress. It is a mammoth of beige lego pieces. A light burns in the penthouse on top - the bay's only lighthouse.

I'm not sure whether it's okay to want to go home now, but home is what I want.