The Night is Dark and Full of Terrors
I traveled round the world looking for a home.
I found myself in crowded rooms feeling so alone.
On the flight to Hawaii, while the airplane was running over a scenery made of water and clouds, I felt a strange feeling, and I’m not sure if it was due to the hangover and the few hours of sleep of the nights before. My journey from east to west in the United States, after one month, was coming to an end, and from that point there was just the ocean in front of me and no land to go on. I thought how much I wanted to still devour all the feelings that this experience was giving me: the impressive landscapes, the vibes of the cities, getting lost between strangers in unknown streets. I thought about all the stories I heard, all the eyes I met. Somehow, for the first time, I felt alone and extremely sad.
Where that sadness was coming from? It was because somehow I realized that I could have lived the rest of my life like a gipsy? Moving from place to place, mile after mile, without ever stopping, without finding any peace? Because living in that way I would have accepted to renounce to a relationship or a family? It were just melancholy for having left so many lovely people behind that I wouldn’t have met again anytime soon? Questions over questions were obfuscating my mind, in sharp contrast with the clearness of the ocean below.
When people were asking about my plans, I didn’t know what to reply: of course I had my ready answer, like a scratchy record to play at the right moment, but every time I spoke those words felt so false to me. I didn’t want to come back in Europe and start the same old daily routine there: I wanted to stay, don’t know where and for how long, but whatever new experience in a place yet to discover would have been great. I thought how insane borders are, how just a mere stamp on a piece of paper prevents us living wherever we want.
When the night falls over the ocean, the water seems darker than the sky above which, in the absence of any artificial light, is entirely covered by millions of little shiny dots. Guess I have never seen so many stars in my whole life. I imagined they were as much as the questions in my head, and probably, like in a dot-to-dot game, I would have never found the big picture connecting them all. I fell asleep: the best thing to do sometimes is to sit and, like in a stormy day, wait for the rain to stop and the sky becoming clearer. Sometimes questions leads you nowhere if you don’t have the right answers. It is better to focus on the certainties, the feelings, the experiences. The answers will come, when they want to. Maybe not the ones you were waiting for, but, after all, is not the unexpected the best part of this life?
Once arrived in the Big Island of Hawaii, a stunning landscape and a perfect weather welcomed me, and it felt like a blessing after that long restless flight. Layer by layer, the soil reveals every past eruption by its colour; little drops of silicate on the ground are told being the tears of Pele, the goddess of creation and destruction, who is believed to have made the islands in the fascinating Hawaiian culture. It’s amazing if you think that those black rocks between your hands are actually coming from the inner side of the earth; also how our lives are rather simple compared to the complexity of mother nature, its intricate powerfulness. When you reach the coast where the lava flows into the ocean, you can’t do anything than keeping your breath in front of such a marvelous imagery. Beautiful flowers with vibrant colors grows up in the middle of this waste land making you believe that, through patience and time, something will blossom even in the most arid place.
In Oahu — probably the most known island of the Hawaiian archipelago — there is a strange dichotomy between the wild land created by Pele and the huge metropolis built upon it: somehow, seems like has lost its divine nature. Since I experienced several days of heavy rain which prevented me from exploring the most beautiful beaches of the island, I mainly stayed around the Waikiki area. Here you will find an huge traffic, tons of skyscrapers, luxurious hotels, shops and tourist traps like everywhere else in the world. People drink tons of alcohol spending the nights in some club with shit music, cocaine pass in front of your eyes in the same exact way it happens in Milan, London or New York. I found this yet seen routine so sad to be seen also here, and I asked myself about the point of living in a place that everybody calls paradise when you’re actually living the same old hell.
One day before leaving I had the chance to meet Laith, a local guy of Palestinese origins who studies and work in Oahu, who has been so nice to show me what I actually loved the most about the island: the neighborhoods where locals live, their typical food, an amazing view of the Waikiki area at night, from an hill far away, under a perfect starred sky. Last but not least, his favorite spot: a small cove, difficult to reach, where you can drink some beers while huge ocean waves crashes against the rocks below. It was then, I realized, that I saw the real Hawaiian paradise.
Suggested Soundtrack
Madonna, Drowned World / Substitute for Love
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