A Terrible Rain

Just as I was dealing with the most trivial amount of rain on Sunday, poor old Kauai was about to deal with another rageful hurricane. Today, as I ate my lunch of Spam musubi in silence on the steps of the lecture hall, waiting for my literature class to start, I thought of the island.

In a moment of pure imagination, with no real basis on what violent rainfall and winds would look like on my favorite parts of the island, I pictured the little buildings and elements of nature that make up my mental diorama of Kauai struggling to withstand the storm. Only roughly a month ago, I was running down the windy roads towards Kalapakī Beach, or hiking on the rocks of Shipwreck Beach alongside a luxurious golf course, or, most vividly yet, laying on the shore of Poipu with a novel and pineapple juice embellished in the coconut of my sunscreen. These were, in recent memory, the closest feelings to paradise that I could get. 

Taking small bites, I was reminded of my glorious walk alongside Old Koloa as the residents prepared for the annual parade. As I walked with a musubi in my right hand, I passed the familiar buildings of Koloa, which in turned inspired me to write more about it in this blog. My heart ached when I imagined them with an ominous gloom overhead, flooded in a mess of murky water and trashed objects. When I looked at images taken after the disaster, I was surprised, but also not surprised, that my mental image was fundamentally the same. 

There wasn't anything they could do. The poems we are studying in literature are from the Romantic period, and looking at nature through a lens of sublimity, I find it easy to accept that we are at the mercy of nature. The only thing that can be done is to continue to move forward. My heart went out to my family and all the other residents on Kauai in hopes to speed the restoration of daily life. I know that eventually the island will slowly begin to return back to the way it was. Unfortunately, like with most disasters, the place will never really be the same afterwards. There are still scars left on the islands as reminders of Iniki, and I know that despite the fact that this hurricane was not as devastating, there will be some. 

So I finished the last bites of my musubi, knowing that the only thing I could hope for was that everything would be okay.