The Reef - 1995 - Entry 2
W. Dire Wolff

Harsh reality amid paradise dreams, rocking in an uneasy peace. Ocean side lanai on white sand tucked between the aqua blue and black lava. Black lava so dry and hot, that it digs and cuts in the noon sun. Pancake flat waves lapping on bare feet. Dripping wax from idle boards. Time wasted waiting for the Endless Summer to appear.

People hewn by machete slicing the dry coconut brown husks, discarded on the black lava ground. Harsh, cruel, and removed from the riches of the tourist’s paradise. They have no need for an idle haole, killing time on their side of the island. Retreat to the lanai and wait for Pipe to shape hollow. There in the hammock dreaming of the Rising Sun people...

“Sumimasen,” their voices echo in my dreams, like tiny birds chirping by the waterfall. Pristine people shaped from the porcelain clay. Painted with a wispy brush and fired to form a fine china tea cup. Separated from them by the thousands of miles so aqua with blue. Meeting here on the island, looking for something called Paradise.

Such a short time to be back on the mainland. Surrounded by the fellow haloes lost in our rude decadence. Then the radio plays. It was the same radio that played Kurt singing David’s song. Now the news that I never planned for...August 9, 1995. The summer had ended for me. There was nothing more to wait for.

A comic still waiting for birth in my laughing mind’s eye, “The Tour from Hell”. Lighting always strikes a Dead Head twice, the stage came tumbling down, and stampede at the Deer Park...it had to be the “Last Tour”. I knew that much by mid-July. Too many projects to jot down some ideas and send them off to Jerry. It would have to wait for autumn. Now in he wouldn’t be there. “The Tour from Hell” was the last memory to be committed to history for us, and I missed my window.

So I went to the book store and bought a copy of “Siddhartha”. That I could read the words to console. Down through the ages. For only we know what we experienced in our own moments of enlightenment. It can not be learned through teachings or following the Illustrious One. But I will often remember the times I was in his presence and that my eyes beheld a Holy Man.

Jerry wouldn’t care much for any of that Holy Man Crap. But however lost we got from time to time, we shared those brief moments of knowing and enlightenment. Leave a little bit of him on the road behind me, and take a piece of him to comfort me on the road ahead. Then beam back into cyber space and search places that will become part me, of us, of the frontier that has yet to be imagined