Recently, I told you of my island in the South Pacific of my mind, where I spend a great deal of time…
Walihi lies north of Tahiti and southwest of the Hawaiian Islands. Far from the shipping lanes, it is a small island that has been charted by only a few seafarers throughout history. Walihi, pronounced ‘Volley-High,’ roughly translates as “The Island of Limitless Love and Endless Beauty to the Edge of Time.” Sadly, Walihi is not immune to the cycles of weather and human nature.

Early on the morning of Tuesday, September Eleventh, I was collecting seashells in the Lagoon of Romantic Love on the southwestern shore of the island, standing knee deep in water of such a translucent blue green that no artist’s palette could ever capture it. Ka’ne, my pet dolphin, was leaping and playing just a few yards away. The tradewinds cooled the sun, crisp on my neck and shoulders. Suddenly the seashell basket that was floating beside me drifted seaward so fast that I could not grab it in time. At first, I thought the tide was simply changing.

Then I noticed an increasing pull upon my legs. The draw became a surge. The water was draining from the lagoon with such force that I was knocked off my feet. The sea was leaving the shore.

I staggered to stand upright. Ka’ne leapt high but his powerful tail could not propel him forward and he was swept away. Any escape was useless. The outer reef, that just a minute before had been invisible and submerged, now stood exposed. Fish, suddenly stranded, flip-flopped their useless tails in puddles of wet sand and rough coral.

The empty lagoon had fed the growing surge offshore. It was not a wave but a waist-high wall of water moving incredibly fast and with force. The reef filled instantly and the lagoon was consumed. It lifted me up, gently at first, and shoved me along at increasing speeds. Suddenly I was thrown over the beach, across the park, over roads and through the fields.

Palms were ripped from their shallow roots. The Plantation House splintered into shards of glass, mahogany and sandalwood. Wild-eyed livestock thrashed to keep their heads above water. The wave carried us relentlessly forward. I could make no resistance nor offer help as friends flailed past me. The red striped walls of nightclub Mocambo zigzagged to abstract expression. Books were torn from their shelves and the shelves ripped from the walls in the Library of Progress and Modernity. The bleachers in the volleyball stadium dissolved into splinters of broken bamboo. Onward the waters pushed over the island. The great surge began to slow as the wave ran up the Valley of Higher Thought and destroyed the temple. The Eternal Flame of Reason was snuffed instantly.

Usually caused by the sudden displacement of land in an undersea quake, a tsunami or kai e`e, is a rhythmic wave of kinetic energy. As it crosses the ocean at speeds over five hundred miles per hour, a tsunami often passes under a ship at sea unnoticed, for the wave averages a height of only three to five inches.
When it meets an island, a tsunami does not collide but rather envelopes. Water is piled upon the land kinetically.

This is not the source of its great destruction; the advance of the water destroys little. The devastation is wrought when the waters are sucked back to sea with a hellish force and uncontrollable fury; its retreat, its panic carries everything and everyone away with it.

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GORDY GRUNDY is a Los Angeles based artist.