Island Time

As anyone who has come within ear-shot of me in the last 3 days knows, I just got back from a trip to Hawai'i (yes, it has an ', it gets edited out, for "ease of use" perhaps...) where I had the time of my life and where my brain and heart still reside, my body has unfortunately decided to come back to Seattle. I still feel like I'm there though and am having an interesting time readjusting to life here. I am slowly getting back into the swing of things here, though periodically odd feelings hit me, as one did tonight.

On that glorious paradise floating in the middle of the Pacific they have something called "Island Time", which is just the Hawai'ian version of Gay Standard Time, otherwise known as being late. The Gays have brought it to an art form and like to refer to it as being "fashionably late". At times they are so terribly "fashionable" they arrive and *POOF*, they literally become a Prada shoe. It's a sight to see, granted, but a wee bit annoying. Case in point, my birthday party started at 7pm last night, except it actually started at 9 when stunningly fashionable people arrived. But they did come, we had a wonderful time and I haven't a single complaint about the entire evening really, but I did chuckle as those 2 sets of pumps and a stiletto heal walked through my door.

Tonight I had a little piano-social-pot-luck thing to go to. It was lovely, we played for each other, ate a tastey pot-luck dinner and generally tried to pretend that we aren't all big music nerds who want other big music nerds to talk to. It was fun, I left at about 10 pm, and as I was driving home I thought about my friends in Honolulu. I looked at the clock, which said 10:15 and the thought struck me that it was only 7:15 their time, the night was young and the sun barely down. My night was, for all intensive purposes, over, theirs was just getting started. I then remembered what it felt like to be on the other side of the equation, relaxing at 6pm on O'aho and imagining that it was 9pm on the mainland, and how sad it was that those poor suckers' nights were tapering off and mine was just beginning. I would shed a tear and sip my umbrella'd cocktail with a sigh and a smile. I had felt like I had gained 3 hours of my life back, every day, morning and night, despite the fact that 24 hours still filled the day and that mine had merely been shifted a wee bit. I felt it none the less, and was more relaxed while on the island because of it.

Island time is talked about either with a roll of the eyes or outright scorn I found, but I suddenly have a new appreciation for it. It seems to grow out of the fact that somewhere in the mind, whether conscious or sub, the people on Hawai'i realize that the rest of the world is already at work or done and headed to bed, while they are just getting up and showering or sitting down to dinner before catching a movie. They smile a little, sit back, relax and hang loose. We should all be so lucky, and I've decided that I will be that lucky, whether in Seattle, lovely Hawai'i, New York, Paris or the Moon. My Gay Standard Time will now be Island Time, which in the end is not really being late, but is just sitting back and enjoying life for 3 hours more every day, without pressure, without worry, without the rush. I feel more relaxed already, and if it makes me a bit more fashionable, it certainly can't hurt.