Two Hawaiians, a Sunset and a Memory

Two Aloha-shirted Hawaiians of generous girth were strumming their ukuleles on a small stage in front of the hotel’s poolside bar in the late afternoon, rehearsing for the night’s performance. It must have been the low season, as both bar and pool were deserted. and the singer, unburdened by a leis-laden audience’s Mai Tai-soaked expectations, was going through a mele as if trying it on for size, his voice loose-limbed with an easy grace. Wrapped in the ukuleles' lolling strains, his falsetto notes tumbled out into an uncongested airspace, where no ceiling formed by small talk, disjointed laughter or tinkling glasses impeded their progress, so they unfurled their wings, lifted themselves into the hibiscus-brushed breeze, and climbed, hopscotching and frolicking on their ascent, skipping from Tiki torch to treetop to balcony. Some straggled, loitered on windowsills. Some, afraid of heights, fluttered back down to rest on top of beach umbrellas next to shadows of palm fronds. Still others hang-glided out over the sand and the lapis water, lured by the marigold light. So that, when they alighted on my hotel room balcony ten floors above, they were fragments, excerpted by the intervening air from the upflowing cascade into a broken yet voluptuous murmur, a soft, lilting South Seas benediction floating around my head. I’d just sat down in the balcony chair, alone, my wife being inside the room busying herself with the correct placement of luggage after we’d checked in. And so it was that I found myself looking out at the beginnings of a sky-painting Maui sunset accompanied by air that quietly sang. Maybe it was my senses unwinding after the bustle of the journey, or maybe it was simply that I was caught unawares, but the feeling of contentment, the almost Zen-like awareness of the here and now, that overcame me at that moment was something no convergence of sights and sounds has been able to reproduce in the 20 years since. It was, to be sure, an experience I’d paid more than a negligible amount of money for. The irony is that it was the first time I truly understood the simplicity of happiness. Mahalo.