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shoreless edge. And from the road, the high horizon, dim in mist always.
If only I had the time, and the peace, I could paint and write epics of the island forming in the sea.

Thursday, 26th Dec. 1940 4 p.m.
Words fail, the pencil fails to convey the gigantic might of the coast here below Hilo. I crossed half a mile of giant round boulders and sharp aa, all black and spray-glistening, to get to this vantage point. From one point to another, always expecting to see a final point in the distance. But here, as at other places, the lava cost continues endlessly. Great sharp hills of black are all around me. They rise more than forty feet from the shite foam. And the waves beat furiously, from the deep shoreless ocean. It is cold and windy. The sky is full of low blanks of purple clouds. The sea is deep eyeless blue, heavily moving. This is unconscious power, monstrous in its nature. The mood is a hundred times more intimate to life than any poem. And that one could find secure footing, a ledge on which to recline, close to the black and white strife, is the wonder of the world of the coast. A thousand denials and refutations in city talk of experiences like this could not move one boulder from this scene of a million boulders.
Black, uncompromising black, in a dull blue sea.

Another day:
The train ride from Hilo to Paauilo: deep gullies of black stream beds and rivers dropping over the cliff into the sea. Sugar mills at the mouth of rivers. The railway