It's Raph's birthday weekend and so I get no say in what we do. That's our deal. No compromising on your birthday weekend. So Raph made me stay up late. At about 10:00, we drove to Kalapana, which borders the most recent lava flows, the ones that tourists regularly photograph with the speed limit signs sticking out of the lava. Raph needed to know if you could see the lava on the hillside from this side of the lava flow. Sure enough it lit up the hillside and turned the clouds orange. More impressive than that was the silver sheen of the lava, reflection of a plump moon, so bright, we had moon shadows. We scuttled along as Raph set up the tripod and took painfully long to snap a picture. (I am not known for patience.) But soon my tendencies to fall asleep and my impatience with his pace faded, and the three of us (Raph's cousin Jason was also there) were having a grand old time taking ghost pictures in the lava. We did the old flashlight tricks, though I only posted the "LOVE" shot, not Jason's "FUCKER" shots. And the whole thing reminded me of days gone by, times in college or at the beach in Rhode Island, when boredom was the mother of invention and entertainment and beautiful landscapes the medium of our art.
