Interview on the beach, my feet and hers unshod, heels planted in the soft wet sand, warm water rolling and receding between our toes. In a cloudless sky, the morning sun lays its warmth upon our shinny faces as we stare with squinting eyes into the endless steel-blue horizon. The surf seems to suck the breath from us as it races back to wholeness, a parental healing, before the next wave fills our lungs with fresh, clean sea-scrubbed air in the rush to greet us again, playful as children at a wedding reception pulling and tugging with a frayed rope. Our thoughts, in concert with our rhythmic breath, play on the music of the lazy warm waves like a spring breeze with laundry on the line; and for the longest time neither of us say anything.
T: Does the water remind you of home?
K: Somewhat. It looks very similar but the feel and texture and smell are quite different.
T: How so?
K: The water on Hyneria was much softer, slippery and I suspect had a slightly different molecular structure. I wish I could explain it better, but it felt wetter, was less inclined to bead. The sand, too, had a different feel; more clay-like and slightly darker in hue. Where this sand absorbs the sun and increases in temperature, the sand on Hyneria, year round, maintained a constant warmth--never too hot nor too cold. I miss the carpet-like feel too.
T: Interesting. Do you mind if I change the subject? I'd like to ask you about The Hood.
K: Not at all.
T: Give me your first impressions.
K: Surprised. I had an image in my mind that bore no resemblance to what I saw that first day and what I came to know over time. In my mind, based on everything I'd heard, he was a monster, a creature that took pleasure in another's pain, power hungry, arrogant, egotistical, manipulative and physically repulsive. I imagined him as a mass murderer, someone without conscious, pathological, convinced beyond argument in his own intelligence and knowledge, someone with a vision that would brook no interference, someone who took what he wanted when he wanted it, someone who had long forgotten what it was like to need, to want, to be without, someone insulated from reality, someone living in their own world--in short, someone madly delusional.
T: Well, that begs the question, if he was not these things, what was he? What did you come to know?
K: It's complicated. You sure you want to go down that road? This isn't a ten minute conversation.
T: You have no idea how intrigued I am.
K: Okay. I'll begin with this. The Hood was larger than life. He was one of those rare individuals that simply is not like the rest.
T: Charismatic?
K: More than that. Much more.
T: You're going to have to explain that.
K: Not sure I can. The sense is more experience and feeling than thought. In his presence you feel as if he is not of this world, not in good or bad way, but from the way he walks and talks and thinks and moves and stands and sits and converses and questions and listens and looks, from the way he ponders, his curiosity, his intelligence, his touch, his vision and past and experience; his taste in all things tangible and intangible. And, his pure physical appearance; the bearing, the posture, the tilt of the head, the shape of his nose, the clarity in his eyes, the breath of his hands, the stoutness of his shoulders from which hung the most magnificent robes. Take all of that, if you can, and try and wrap your mind around such an individual, one which controls, leads, rules billions of subjects that live on thousands and thousands of worlds and yet, when you are in his presence, you feel as if you are the center of his universe, as if there is nothing more important to him at that moment than engaging with you, listening carefully to your answers.
T: Sounds almost as if you admired him?
K: I wouldn't say admired. Perhaps I came to see the limits of my own judgments, my own assumptions, the limits of my own understanding. I came to see that the universe is something more than just our thoughts about it. And, in time, I came to see something I'd never seen before--my destiny. And here is what is interesting. Without The Hood. Without him being who he was, needing what he needed, engaging me the way he engaged me, I'm not sure I would have . . .
T: Would have what?
K: Can we take a break?
T: Sure.
K: The morning is slipping away and I'd like to go for a walk before the sun gets too high and the wonderful warm colors fade.
