this morning i was disturbed by a very obvious white patch of skin above my left eyebrow that wasn't there yesterday. i mean, whiter than the rest of my western european-ancestored face. skin cancer? not likely. i mean, hell, i haven't seen the likes of some good ol' fashioned vitamin D since i was in high school. and that was (ahem) ten years ago, or so i've been told. i then realized that, no, i didn't have that monster-making pigmentation diease with which michael jackson was supposedly stricken, i was simply peeling from a surprisingly fierce sunburn. this is a memento from two full days under sun on grass, and in spite of copious sunscreen applications.
our two day trip to awaji island (first time off honshu) had all the makings of an epic. we got up[2] at the ungodly hour of 2:30 am and drove a twisty turny[3] road through the mountains of nara. we had breakfast, already ragged, at a rest stop with a ferris wheel and a view of the awaji bridge. and then they played soccer all day, suckers, and i watched and screamed and shook my homemade pom-poms.
that night i walked to a party much too far away for my amateur high heel gait. the sultry air was just perfect for my strapless dress, though, and i got a whispered compliment about my hair that was quite unexpected. it was a little too three bears for me, though. this bar is too quiet, this one too loud. this one has too few people, this one too many. this one has no dancing, and in this one, the DJ sucks. i had a good time, but i didn't stay out late, and rather than break my face or my feet, i slipped off my shoes and walked back to the hotel with jill.
the ride home the next night was even worse than the drive up. after two full days of cheering in the elements, we piled into a car bound for a three-hour traffic jam. after we emerged from that mess, worn out and not certain about our path home, we chanced to meet a rainstorm that would keep us on the edge of our seats all the way home. you see, this particular road is prone to rock slides[4] which take enormous chunks of the road down the side of the mountain (and cars too, if they're there), and a downpour like fake movie rain doesn't help. quiet and tense, we slalomed down the mountain past the construction where the last fatal rock slide was. there was so much water everywhere, but kara and i both gasped when we passed an unbelievable, violent torrent on one side...and it was only the first one. that's when i was truly scared. she drove like crazy to get us off the road before the whole thing washed away, but i was also afraid of hydroplaning. it was a delicate balance. we arrived home around midnight, and i practically wept.
[1]
i reject "gray" as a viable spelling of this word. i mean gray is too broad, no gravity, all overblown hand gestures and monotony. now grey is a word that's squinting its beady black eyes. it could be the color of a mean sky or the dense fur of a wolf with its eyes trained on you and its hackles raised.
[2]
"got up" is a generous idea. in reality we whipped our underslept carcasses into some clothes and stumbled through the mist into dark cars.
[3]
another romanticization. this road is so twisty, half the time you're heading back the way you came. every drippy, endless tunnel from which you emerge has a 90 degree turn so you can never see what's ahead, nor can you see the alleged light. it feels like you're driving straight to hell, and it looks like it too.
[4]
a fancy term for Crushing Freefall Of Death.
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