Kauai/Princeville, day 8
Daylight Savings Time! Last observed in Hawaii in 1945, so no effect here. Except that we’re now 6 hrs behind folks on the east coast, rather than 5.
Yet another rainy/lazy day, and that’s just fine with us. I’ve begun working on the setting(s) of Jim Brasfield’s Celan, to be a part of a larger set which will include Palladium, the poem of his I set a few years ago now. Celan is quite brief, and enormously evocative for/to me. I am planning to include several different settings of this poem within the set—1st, 3rd, 5th/last, with Palladium and Renaissance 2nd and 4th. My initial concept is to use Celan to set the scene for the larger poem to follow, as it seems to do a fabulous job of articulating the nature of expectation. So Celan’s several settings are next on the docket.
I’ve also begun tiny sketches of solo cello music, simply inspired to do so by correspondence with a friend…hoping this develops into something I can send off as a surprise at some point, but this is right now a fun little diversion.
It’s very clear to us that our time here in Hawaii is nearly over. Having been here since January 11, it’s become quite ‘normal’ to wake up, write, have breakfast, write some more, go diving, nap, look over the day’s writing, sleep well. Two more weeks of that, then back east. We’re desperately hoping that Surf City will be inhabitable by then (still a complete mess since Sept, 2018’s Hurricane Florence), so that the routine can continue, perhaps with some diving excursions in Wilmington, NC.
We are to head to Ireland on April 14, and our return flight is currently scheduled for July 14. There’s so much we’d love to explore while in Europe, but we’re now seriously wondering about that plan. Today’s headline news about northern Italy essentially shutting down, well, doesn’t instill confidence in the wisdom of our travel plans in Europe.
And, at the same time, everything we’re reading about the isolation of populations large and tiny for the sake of public health resonates enormously with our experience on Molokai, at Kalaupapa’s leper colony…
