# 64 From Easter Island to Big Sur: Please welcome Sonia Haoa Cardinali!

A middle aged couple walks in to the Henry Miller Library sometime in 2019. They come down the path under the redwoods like so many others have done before them. This time however I wonder:

Who is the woman accompanying them!

She looks like she’s from the island.

Turns out the woman is Sonia Haoa Cardinale from Easter Island/Rapa Nui.

We had a wonderful afternoon!
We are now connecting again via Zoom for this podcast. 
I am touched by much of what Sonia says.

Please share this episode with anyone you think may enjoy it.

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Rapa Nui
Sonia Haoa Cardinali
Thor Heyerdahl
Anakena
Kon Tiki
Mata Ki Te Rangi
Link to some of Magnus' photos from 1983

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Henry Miller refers to Easter Island many times when he dreams himself away from ‘civilization.'

“If you elect to join the herd you are immune. To be accepted and appreciated you must nullify yourself, make yourself indistinguishable from the herd. You may dream, if you dream alike. But if you dream something different, you are not in America, of America American, but a Hottentot in Africa, or a Kalmuck, or a chimpanzee. The moment you have a "different" thought you cease to be an American. And the moment you become something different you find yourself in Alaska or Easter Island or Iceland.”

―  Henry Miller,  Tropic of Capricorn

"Christ will never more come down to earth nor will there be any law- giver, nor will murder cease nor theft, nor rape, and yet... and yet one expects something, something terrifyingly marvellous and absurd, perhaps a cold lobster with mayonnaise served gratis, perhaps an invention, like the electric light, like television, only more devastating, more soul rending, an invention unthinkable that will bring a shattering calm and void, not the calm and void of death but of life such as the monks dreamed, such as is dreamed still in the Himalayas, in Tibet, in Lahore, in the Aleutian Islands, in Polynesia, in Easter Island, the dream of men before the flood, before the word was written, the dream of cave men and anthropophagists, of those with double sex and short tails, of those who are said to be crazy and have no way of defending themselves because they are outnumbered by those who are not crazy."

―  Henry Miller,  Tropic of Capricorn

"But I have thought often of a place like Easter Island, I can do without