Yes, well, starting with a title like that, what can I possibly say that would maintain the drama (thump, thump, thump - that's my and I hope your heartbeat pulsing anxiously and expectantly).  Actually I spent all morning following up on yesterday's trip to Kaimana Beach in Waikiki.  That's across the street from Queen Kapiolani Park.  Instead of working on "The Sword of Kamehameha" yesterday after blogging like I planned, I got engrossed in reading Mark Twain's "Roughing It," and his journal entry for the third day of his visit to Oahu (Chapter 64): 

"Near by is an interesting ruin--the meagre remains of an ancient heathen temple--a place where human sacrifices were offered up in those old bygone days...This ancient temple was built of rough blocks of lava, and was simply a roofless inclosure a hundred and thirty feet long and seventy wide--nothing but naked walls, very thick, but not much higher than a man's head. They will last for ages no doubt, if left unmolested. Its three altars and other sacred appurtenances have crumbled and passed away years ago...If these mute stones could speak, what tales they could tell, what pictures they could describe, of fettered victims writhing under the knife; of massed forms straining forward out of the gloom, with ferocious faces lit up by the sacrificial fires; of the background of ghostly trees; of the dark pyramid of Diamond Head standing sentinel over the uncanny scene, and the peaceful moon looking down upon it through rifts in the cloud-rack!"

It occurred to me that what he was writing about couldn't be too far from where I was sitting on the beach, so I set out the rest of the day to try to find the temple or whatever might be left of it.  Alas, to no avail.  I found neither stone nor placard, and even my usually acute sixth sense abandoned me.  Returning back to the beach tired, sunburned and disappointed, I sat and contemplated Diamond Head in the near distance. 

Diamond head was quite clearly an old, blown-out volcano - mot much of a surprise, I guess, given that the whole island is two massive volcanic ranges, the Koolau and the Waianai, that meet in a great plain in the middle of the island creating a convenient way for H2 to connect the South and North shores.  Ah, Northshore.  Now there is a place I like to go when the muses have me in their grasp and won't let go till I sacrifice to them in the form of a chapter or two of...well, something...right now historical notes and scenery descriptions I might use for the fourth or fifth sequel to "Kingsley & I" and "The Sword of Kamehameha." 

The next day, after having penned maybe 20 pages of notes or so for my upcoming books, I drove to Mokuleia - to the end of the road on the Northwestern-most shore of the island.  While hiking maybe two or three miles to a grotto I had previously discovered perfect to jump in and cool off in, I walked across a plain, not unlike that separating the island's two volcanic chains and not unlike the area I yesterday imagined Mark Twain riding his horse through on the way to Diamond Head. 

An eerie feeling swept over me.  It was as if spirits were trying to cry out from the ground - from within the fourty or fifty human-hewn lava blocks scattered oddly about, some in a straight line like an ancient wall, others in neat geometric circles as if they were the foundation stones for huts.  I stopped and put my hand to the hot, red, dusty earth beneath.  It seemed to pulse in my hand. As I stood there entranced, I imagined it the red, dried blood of the earth, temporary recepticles of the souls of the spirits that seemed to be surrounding me with wheezing, mournful cries.  I had stumbled I was sure on the ruins of an ancient village. I looked to the ocean, maybe a hundred feet away, and could visualize in the salt spray a score of long outrigger canoes, calling the souls I had somehow called out of the rocks to board them to the souls at last away across the great sea. 

Like the ancient heiau (Hawaiian temple) near Diamond Head that had so completely disappeared, this village I was standing within had also  vanished, their imagined cries alone somehow animating the barren plain.  I sensed that what I was feeling was their collective desire to live and walk once again, if only for a moment, upon the earth they had known.  The usual, cool tradewinds suddenly stopped and reversed.  A hot, dry, mummified breath seemed to pass through me - the "Kona" wind from the Big Island of Hawaii - like a sigh, an exhalation, the kind that comes just before a victim in the last throes of death suddenly sputters, coughs and comes back to life for just a moment before dying.  I felt Pele, the Goddess of the Volcano, Queen and Ruler of Big Island, brush my cheek and ear, and I swear I heard her whisper to my heart, "Write what you have seen and felt.  Tell the world the gods and goddesses they have forgotten, the ancient ones, the countless children of the great kings and high born are not yet completely dead.  Write.  Write of the Sword of Kamehameha, and in the writing, bring the ancient meles (Hawaiian historical chants) back to life." 

Maybe it was the heat.  Maybe the burning sun.  Maybe the stark lonliness of the area.  But maybe, just maybe, it was the muse in the form of the rocks about me. I felt as if I were being blessed to feel the legend I had been researching so diligently these last couple of weeks.  I decided to take it as an omen, and thanked the gods, and the moment I did, the trade winds returned, the seas crashed against the sharp lava rocks and the spray brushed back a cluster loose curls of hair back into place.  If this is what it is like to be kissed by the muse, then, I gladly accept their challenge.  What more can I say?  It is already starting to pour forth from my fingers onto my computer.

Sincerely,
Gary