Hawaiian Ice

More about Hawaiian Ice

I am standing ankle-deep in the Pacific on a morning that has no business existing — a frozen coup d’état staged against the tropics. The whole island looks nationalized by cold light. Palms turned socialist blue overnight, cliffs drifting like state secrets in a fog of bureaucratic frost. This is not climate — this is policy.

Beside me stands my associate, the ice bear — silent partner in this operation — a creature of impeccable instincts and no voting record. He watches the horizon with the grim patience of a committee chairman waiting for testimony that might change the future of civilization.

We are waiting for the Eskimo.

Out there he advances in his narrow kayak like a diplomatic envoy from the Republic of Cold. The paddle rises and falls with bureaucratic precision. He carries the Hawaiian ice — strategic reserves of frozen certainty — and when he lands this beach will erupt like an election night nobody trusts.

Mark my words: when he gets here, everybody’s going to run to him.

Not because they understand the situation — nobody ever does — but because ice represents order in a warm and undisciplined universe. Ice is authority. Ice is infrastructure. Ice is the last honest substance in a country drowning in melted promises.

The sun hovers over the ridge like a failed campaign slogan — bright but ineffective — radiating light with no warmth behind it. The ocean rolls in metallic sheets, a federal program of repeating waves approved by committees long since forgotten.

My friend the ice bear shifts beside me, leaving enormous tracks that fill with shining water — public works projects completed without debate. He understands power better than most politicians. He knows that control belongs to whoever arrives carrying the cold.

Soon the kayak will scrape the shore and the invisible crowd will surge forward — tourists, ghosts, economists, retired prophets — all desperate for a piece of Hawaiian ice, the rarest commodity in the tropics and perhaps the last reliable currency.

Until then I remain here on the beach — Galien Beauregard “Gonzo” Boudreaux Bunsenstein, Political Animal — waiting with a polar bear for a man in a kayak to deliver the only thing left worth believing in:

Cold.