Awwww, DWE, I love the cowlick or is it just morning hair?
@both you and lazylazyjoe: I've lived by a lot of oceans in my life--from the bathwater warm Atlantic in west Africa to the freezing cold Pacific in northern California, with some Florida Atlantic and Caribbean and Samoa Pacific thrown in, in between; the ocean in Hawaii was by far my favorite temperature--perfect! I've only been to the Big Island and Kauai but I would love someday to go to Maui.
Since this is the picture thread, I will go root through the iphoto attic and see what I can come up with:
Here is Lima Peru where those that surf (quite a few, excellent breaks) have to walk down those cliffs to get to the breaks and then back up again. The water is wet-suit cold.
There is a park called the Malecón that runs for miles along the top of the cliff. It has a skate park, running paths, a poetry garden, tons of art and people hanging out at all times of the day and night. Whenever I had time to walk the 5 miles back from downtown to where I was staying I would walk the length of the park. This statue is called The Kiss.
Lima
another view:
Lima
Does that sculpture not make you want to be kissed like that??!
And that reminds me of a favorite poem:
Gate C22
At gate C22 in the Portland airport
a man in a broad-band leather hat kissed
a woman arriving from Orange County.
They kissed and kissed and kissed. Long after
the other passengers clicked the handles of their carry-ons
and wheeled briskly toward short-term parking,
the couple stood there, arms wrapped around each other
like he'd just staggered off the boat at Ellis Island,
like she'd been released at last from ICU, snapped
out of a coma, survived bone cancer, made it down
from Annapurna in only the clothes she was wearing.
Neither of them was young. His beard was gray.
She carried a few extra pounds you could imagine
her saying she had to lose. But they kissed lavish
kisses like the ocean in the early morning,
the way it gathers and swells, sucking
each rock under, swallowing it
again and again. We were all watching —
passengers waiting for the delayed flight
to San Jose, the stewardesses, the pilots,
the aproned woman icing Cinnabons, the man selling
sunglasses. We couldn't look away. We could
taste the kisses crushed in our mouths.
But the best part was his face. When he drew back
and looked at her, his smile soft with wonder, almost
as though he were a mother still open from giving birth,
as your mother must have looked at you, no matter
what happened after — if she beat you or left you or
you're lonely now — you once lay there, the vernix
not yet wiped off, and someone gazed at you
as if you were the first sunrise seen from the Earth.
The whole wing of the airport hushed,
all of us trying to slip into that woman's middle-aged body,
her plaid Bermuda shorts, sleeveless blouse, glasses,
little gold hoop earrings, tilting our heads up.