Last line of the last song
In Hana, late 1990s. Lisa Kristofferson photo When the Rolling Stone story showed up on my phone Sunday afternoon, it felt like the last line of the last song of a magnificent playlist. Kris Kristofferson was dead at 88. The luminous obituary of the “American Renaissance man” was hardly unexpected. More than a decade earlier, in “Feeling Mortal” Kris wrote of “ That old man there in the mirror And my shaky self-esteem Here today and gone tomorrow That's the way it's got to be With an empty blue horizon For as far as I can see.” That empty blue horizon could have been the view from the home on a hill in Hana where he lived for decades with his wife Lisa, raising a bunch of kids. At the end of 50 miles of two-lane road clinging to cliffs above rocky Pacific beaches, passing lush jungles and postcard-perfect waterfalls, Hana is Maui's Brigadoon. An achingly gorgeous hamlet in Paradise, a place that stops time