The Path is My Teacher

The path along which I walk twice daily is well worn. It varies from the width of a truck to no more than a mere few inches, or the length of my foot. There is a small creek alongside to the north that meanders darkly beneath alder, willow and oak. Every morning and some afternoons for more than a month now I walk my young dog for his relief and mine, finding a small moment of peace and beauty amidst this noisy and busy suburb.

Every day there is some small or large change, though the path itself never leaves its course.
A few weeks ago, I noticed for the first time a meadow of blue chicory glowing in the morning sun. Just a few days ago, though, someone mowed them all down, and I was hugely disappointed to see mere stubble in its place. Nothing stays the same amidst a universe in motion.
There are however some things about this path that do not seem to change, at least not in human time. The broad, hardpacked beginning is sure beneath my feet. But there is a point, not far along, that must be attended to, each and every passing, with absolute clarity. There is a point at which the path narrows to little more than 6 inches where it falls off some 15 feet or so to the creek below. The slide is littered with broken branches and rocky outcroppings. The soil is loose and there are no foot or handholds. At this point, all wandering of the mind must halt while I carefully watch each and every step so as not to slide down to end a muddy, bleeding mess.
I have shepherded my daughter along this path, and always take care to remind her of the narrows. One day, we walked along with her friends, and were very certain to warn them of the dangers at this particular point. We all fared well, and went on to find insects, toads, and a small beaver dam further down.
On the way back, though, one of her friends, excited by our finds, paid no attention to our warnings, and was only saved at the last minute from a nasty accident by my daughter's quick thinking and deft hand.
Since then, whenever I pass this way, I remember that day, the rush of adrenaline at thinking how badly her misstep could have gone.
When I was a working naturalist, leading young students through the oak woodlands, redwood forests and marshes of San Mateo's coastline, we would call back, "Trail Hazard", when coming to such a potential danger. The call would be repeated, student by student to ensure that no child, wondering at the immense or minute beauty around them would misstep and be injured. But there is no 'leader' on my daily sojourns, and usually no followers. But for the trail itself, I am on my own. The path is my teacher now, and I have become  its student.
Now as I walk, I am especially mindful of my steps at this point. I do not wonder at the Universe and how it spins eternally, nor fret about future concerns. I turn my mind fully to the exact task at hand: step by step I navigate this treacherous passage thinking of one thing only, and that is this narrow strip of earth and safely getting by.
It is a reminder of life, and the paths we tread moment to moment and year by year. At times the path is well-worn, clearly marked and free of obstructions and dangers. But there is always a point at which the path gets tricky and our safe passage comes into question. It is then, through attention to our steps and the nature of potential danger, that we take a risk so that we might walk into our future more assured. While I look forward to the place where the trail provides me with a higher vantage point of a lovely bend in the creek, where I might sit in quiet meditation, or of returning home to the things that must be done this day, upon reaching this particular place, I stop all other thoughts but of this exact moment and tread with intention.


Image courtesy: http://iamagonistes.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/rocky-path.jpg

Amends in a Teabag

Since we rescued the puppy now known as ‘Buddy’, I am compelled to walk, early, each morning for his comfort. He will not relieve himself in the patio, for which I am actually very grateful. Our daily ritual includes time for me to microwave a cup of English Breakfast tea, drag on walking clothes, slip into flip flops, wrap the leash around my waist, and then bolt out the door to skip down the stairs for a first pee (his, not mine) at the base of the nearest young redwood. From there, we walk the short length of pavement, cross the parking lot, and happily wind our way down the slippery gravel-lined driveway that ends at the creek trail.


On most mornings I am still groggy as I watch Buddy light out at a racetrack pace down the packed dirt trail, stopping here and there to sniff and mark various other claimants’ weeds and shrubs.(I no longer pick fresh dock to munch in the mornings along this or any other public trail for this reason. Lesson learned by observation, not experience.)


On a particular morning I might be happy or sullen or cranky or expectant. Moods come and go lately, none sticking for very long as they used to, except for the growing sense of contentment and general calm that has recently settled into place. On this morning I was quite happy, to the point of quiet joyfulness as I wandered behind my exuberant friend, noticing today’s offerings of freshly shed wild turkey feathers, flitting black phoebes, clouds of blue chicory blossoms, and the glint of morning sun off the trickling brook.


Coming upon my usual sitting spot – a high bank overlooking a charming bend in the creek – I sat to finish my dwindling cup of tea and light a cigarette (gross, I know, but easy does it...) I was mulling over events of recent days, events which had caused a stir in my group of friends; my ally and her sometimes-enemy had crossed swords over the issue of inappropriate overtures toward new members of the group, me in particular. As my mind wandered over what had been said and by whom, wondering at what it all meant in the grander scheme of our work together, I began to notice the trash left behind by human visitors to ‘my’ spot.

There were empty plastic water bottles, beer cans, broken bottles, a cardboard beer case that had been flattened for a seat, cigarette butts and gum wrappers. Moments before, in my calm, the litter and trash had been nearly invisible, but having returned to the turbulent thoughts and emotions of yesterday, the garbage now loomed enormously in front of me.
 Full of self-righteous indignation, I chastised my fellow citizens for their insensitivity and irresponsibility in this place of natural beauty. Worst of all, right next to me, in my own special spot, at the base of a young oak that served as my personal backrest, was trash! Not down below, or hidden away in the brush, but right next to me.


What idiot, I thought, was such a useless waste of flesh as to be so lazy as to cast off garbage in a shared public idyll such as this? What selfish, mean-spirited urbanite had so little respect for nature and their neighbors that they would carelessly toss their bits of paper and plastic to the side as if this were a dump, not a park for the serenity it might gift its visitors? Why, this was the very proof and evidence of Man's utter lack of respect for the sacred, and I didn't need much more than that to condemn us all to an enternity of rag-picking in some hideous slum in some horrible third world country.
 But then, looking closer, I began to see the bit of refuse not 2 feet from me more clearly, and suddenly recognized the offending bit of paper and string, dangling there on the bent blades of grass. It was a teabag. It was an English Breakfast teabag to be exact. It was, in fact, my English Breakfast teabag from the day before.


The day before, embroiled in the emotional turmoil, in a fit of pique and outrage, my anger with myself for my part in the controversy had been expressed in anger and disrespect turned outward toward any one careless enough to enter my sphere of influence. I remembered the morning before, sitting here, cursing God and the Universe for turning on me, for creating this unwanted disturbance in my fragile sense of right and wrong, of betraying my trust in this newly acquired internal peace, of allowing other people to violate boundaries I had just now learned to identify and was barely able to defend.


I remembered plucking the worn bag from my cup, and casting it aside as if to say, “To hell with you, to hell with nature, to hell with my fellowship, to hell with God!” My embarrassment, my humiliation, my ego in an uproar, I had done unto others that which I felt had been done unto me: I violated the sacredness of the very nature I had claimed to protect and serve. And here, a day later, I was again, perturbed, upset, angry with the world. How easily this sense of contentment can be shoved aside by trivial events! How in the world will I deal with the next major upset in my fragile little corner of the Universe if this is all it takes to send me teetering into an emotional tizzy?


Suddenly, my mood shifted. My perspective shifted. Suddenly, the air around me seemed to glow, the sound of the creek’s waters, musically roiling across rocks and fallen logs, the flight of birds from limb to limb, all surrounded me with a quality of light and beauty I had completely missed just seconds before. It was as if a scrim had been rolled away, and a giant spotlight had appeared from the heavens above. Illumination, insight, understanding.


I laughed! I laughed out loud. Then I apologized to God and Nature, the creek and its’ inhabitants, my fellow human beings, my ally and her sometimes enemy, my working group, and finally myself for my foolish part in creating both the original disturbance, and its ongoing effects.


I plucked the offending teabag from its grassy hook, placed it in my pocket to carry home to my garbage where it rightfully belonged. And then, I asked God, “How else can I make amends for my foolish ego?”


The answer was immediate and unmistakable. My attention was drawn to the creek’s edge where a discarded white plastic grocery bag rustled in the breeze amidst the strewn empties and flattened cardboard and stinky cigarette butts. "Done," I said, and ambled down the steep bank, picked up the bag and began filling it with everyone else’s garbage. Some of those butts might even have been mine...


“Thank you, God, for the opportunity to so soon set right my wrongs,” I thought and said aloud, as I and my faithful Buddy made our way home, cleaning up the messes of yesterday.

Today, with a teabag, I began my amends.

Season to Taste

Sobriety. It's interesting. Waking awake. Hearing my own thoughts in clear stereo, overlaid with ongoing revelations and realizations. Complicated yet simple. Motion pictures of emotions sensed in multiple layers of resonance.

Did you know you can 'hear' music through your teeth? It's true, we learned, we experienced, at the Exploratorium this weekend. There's an interactive display with speakers wired through a narrow rod: you slide a plastic straw over the rod, put earphones on to block out ambient sounds from the crowd, grasp the rod between your clenched teeth, and voila! music can be heard via the bones in your head transferred from your teeth.

What else have I been missing?

Did you know you can almost drown in your sleep? And that if your cat is astute, he will wake you before you suffocate? Were you suffocating in your sleep and so he woke you, or were you drowning in your dream because you were in actuality suffocating because your cat insists on sleeping as near to your face as possible? Did he save you, or was he the cause?

These are the thoughts of the sober. I can't remember the thoughts of the inebriated. The thoughts of the sober are confusing enough for both of us.

After hearing music with my teeth, I began to wonder what I've been missing with the rest of my body. Can I see color with my toes? What if I could? Would I wear open-toed shoes? Wear toenail polish? Trim my toenails? Sand my callouses with more pumice? Place the soles of my feet against the Van Gogh? Would I dance in red or blue?

What if, like some other species, we had antennae that could not only collect information, but send messages as well? Would you have antennae if that were the case? Would you want to collect and send information via wavering appendages on your skull? Perhaps we do already, though it seems strange to consider. Are our mouths not strange enough as it is?

Lips, teeth, tongues: the conveyors, the purveyors of meaning, of emotion, of intention. Do not our mucous membranes absorb chemicals, and hence our brains transform simple compounds into pure pleasure: brown gravy, chocolate caramel cream sauce, merlot reduction.

When you listen to my words, do you watch my eyes? or my mouth?

When you clench your teeth, what do you hear?

What is the sound of one jaw dropping?


Photo courtesy: Bright Sides on Flickr: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3512/3224830310_51d592ccec.jpg

Here is the only Where

After publishing my post, "It's 1969: Do You Know Where Your Mother Is?", it occurred to me that some of my students might just find and read it from my Facebook posting. Not so good. As a (former) teacher, I am/was supposed to be a paragon of virtue, behavior above and beyond reproach, with impeccable manners, if not timing. No runs in the pantyhose. Well, that's not me. Won't do at all. I am simply too complicated. Ergo, no longer a teacher. In public school. In California. Which is a shame, if you know me at all. Or not, if you know me well.
One of my favorite saying is, "You can't get lost if you don't know where you're going." Likewise, "You can't get there from here." That says it all.

I was in Borders looking for, of all things, a book. Seems like Borders has been Walmarted, carrying everything from chocolate and coffee, to pens and wrapping paper. I started looking for the hardware section, but ran out of time. I was also looking for a toolbelt.
The book I needed was for Danno's birthday, a good book on home repairs for his new job as Maintenance at a large apartment complex in Ashland. Large meaning 160 units. Maintenance meaning what they don't do in my apartment complex.
Storming in through the double doors after searching for parking for 10 minutes, after driving for half an hour searching for the right mall in a city apparently composed of malls surrounded by suburbs, the nouveau feudal American landscape, and clearly running out of time to shop in any meaningful way, I accosted the nearest Borders employee from 20 feet away, "Where are your handyman books?"
I had clearly startled her, no doubt. She jumped, and almost took her eyes off her computer monitor. She tipped her head in a very professorial mode and scanned me over her bi-focals. The wind I had created coming in rustled the pages of the magazines at the front of the store, which was deserted at 10 am on Good Friday.
She glanced to the left, and started giving directions, but I was already moving, having quickly located her focal point, and noticing the gigantic signs pinpointing specific genres. I could here her voice over the vague musical background in summation, "...But you can't get there from here."
That caught my attention.
You can't get there from here.
What an interesting notion.
I stopped mid-aisle.
"That's a great title," I called over my shoulder, en route to Home Improvement.
And so it is, if you Google it: books, stories, music, you name it. It clearly has fascinated better minds than mine in the past.
It wasn't until I had passed Western Fiction that it occured to me what a misnomer that statement is. If you can't get there from here, where can you get there from? Obviously you can only get there from here. Here is the only where to get anywhere from. (Grammar police, back off!)
It might not be easy. It might not be efficient. You might have to make a lot of turns. You might even have to back track, or get out a map, or even ask directions. But you certainly can get anywere from here.
No wonder it's such a popular title.

Picture credit: http://www.johnlund.com/images/JL-interchange__2FG.jpg

It's 1969: Do you know where your mother is???

April 13, 2010


Dear Feed Store Zealots,

Today is my son Danno’s 23rd birthday. Yea, I know, huh. Matt is almost 29, with 2 kids, and a mortgage. I suppose having a mortgage is an accomplishment, or at least it used to be. The ‘old’ American Dream and all. Danno and his girl, Cara, are working for their apartment complex up in Ashland. He’s maintenance, she’s office staff. So grown up! Scary. No, I don’t feel old at all. (Sarcasm)

I don’t have a mortgage. I’m still renting. I think I may always be renting. I think that may be ok. I can always paint the walls orange if I want to, and they can just paint over it and take it out of my deposit. A fountain in the yard under a beamed pool house is another matter. I remember the pool house in LA. It was right out of a magazine. Mom was like that, always making things like they were right out of a magazine.

When I turned 15 my parents threw a big party for me and my friends. We were living in a great old house in The Valley. San Fernando, that is. Yep, that’s me: an original Valley Girl and Mall Rat. The party was outside on a warm September night. Mom floated candles in little cups on the surface of the black-bottom pool, and we ate hot dogs and potato salad in the fern-draped pool house, under the 16th century carved lion’s head on the wall. It was really gorgeous, except I never did like potato salad. I don’t know what she was thinking: maybe she was dreaming of an all-American life she had seen in the movies as a kid. We never ate potato salad normally. My friends thought it was totally cool, though. They devoured the potato salad.

The candles looked like giant stars as they whirled on the currents of the pool driven by the automatic filtration system, humming in the background. There was a long table covered with food and sodas. Our favorite rock and roll on the turntable brought outside for the occasion. Boys and girls giggling under the huge sycamore, dangerously dark brick decking that changed elevations twice along the length of the pool. Paper cups and streamers, lights hung from the branches, my parents trying to stay out of the way and chaperone at the same time. I was a goddess for an evening. By Monday I was back to being my same old nerdy self: too smart for my britches, Mom used to say. I never quite figured that out. What does smart have to do with britches?

At 10:30 the boys had to go home, and we girls set sleeping bags out on the floor of the pool house. That’s another thing: the bags were those flimsy cotton jobs sold just for slumber parties. No padding. I can’t sleep on anything harder than a mattress. The night was spent tossing, once we finally did go to bed.

We had been planning on sneaking out for days before the party. What self-respecting 15 year olds wouldn’t have? The boys were staying at one of their houses nearby and we had arranged to slip out the driveway gate around midnight and rendezvous with them down the street. Problem was, the gate had been padlocked by my knowing parents from the other side. I suppose they were inside watching while we gathered at the gate and came up with plan B. How stealth can 6 teenage girls be? Especially after all that soda, and potato salad.

We decided to climb over the back yard wall, 6’ tall and made of concrete bricks. No footholds whatsoever. We managed, giving each other legs up, only to find ourselves in the neighbor’s yard, which, as it turned out, was also locked. Somewhere around 1:30 we gave up and got back to the pool house, hugely disappointed, slightly relieved. All but Cheryl Peterson. She was furious. She was the wild one in the bunch, and my mom did not like me hanging out with her at all. Mom was usually right, but that didn’t make me any happier back then than it does now.

Cheryl and I once hitched from the Valley to the Strip, yea, Sunset Strip, at midnight one summer eve. This would have been in ’69. Can you imagine? What were we thinking? We cruised awhile, avoiding cat calls and whistles. At least I was. Again, Cheryl was disappointed. At that point, I was definitely naïve and not too into ‘getting laid’. Cheryl? Well, she was always up for anything.

Cheryl and I once snuck away from a church group sleep out at San Onofre beach and snuck out to party with a Hell’s Angel bunch camping nearby. She’d met one of the guys at the beach and he had invited us. You betcha. Bowls of pills, plates of powder, dishes filled with doobies. Lots of Jack Daniels. I don’t remember how the hell we got back to the church group. I do remember being woken up just before dawn, having just gotten to sleep, as the entire camp group searched the grounds for my brother Rick, a year younger, who had disappeared sometime in the night. We found him the next morning in his sleeping bag, sound asleep on a cliff ledge about a hundred feet above the ocean. We tried to convince them that he had always been a sleep walker, but no one believed us. I think they thought he was possessed or something. We went on one other trip with the church group, but that turned out to be an utter fiasco.

That time we took a bus out to Park City, Utah for a ski trip. The first day, I slipped off the lift onto the icy run and broke my tailbone. The next morning I struggled to wake from a fever induced nightmare. I had relapsed with the Hong Kong flu and stayed in bed for the next 3 days with 105’ fever living on aspirin. They refused to send me home. I had to bus back, sleeping in the luggage rack because I was too weak to sit up. They were mad at my brother and I, I guess, because we tried to smuggle my boyfriend and his buddy into the motel. He wasn’t in the church group, but had driven his antique black volkswagon bug all the way from California with the intention of staying secretly with my brother and I.

Naturally the church kids were appalled at this plan, and poor Erik and Eddie spent 3 miserable nights in an unheated laundry room about frozen to death. They would come back early from skiing, sneak into my empty room, shower, steal snacks, and dash out before the group got back from their skiing. I can’t believe Eric even speaks to me anymore, after all I put him through.

Mom didn’t let us go on anymore church trips, which was fine, because I couldn’t stand the insipid songs and prayers anyway. I’m not Christian, either, so it really was lame to begin with. We thought the trips would be fun. I guess our idea of ‘trips’ was a bit different from theirs. No kidding.

At any rate, I am happy to be mortgage-free. A pool house would be fun, maybe not as much as when I was a teen, but then what is? I wonder what stories my sons, now adults, have from their teen age years? Matt shared one or two, but not until he was safely relocated 5,000 miles away. Danno? He’s within driving distance. He went through the DARE program, so he was sober until he turned 18. He’s been making up time. We never let them join any church groups, though. Just to be safe. I mean, what would Jesus do… at 15? What would you?

Have fun,

Magpie

The Four Levels of Sadness: Imagination's Junkie

I admit to being a thrift store fanatic. That's not the sad part. The saddest part, and there are more than four when you stop to think, is what and who is to be found there.

The First Level of Sadness
... is when you pull out that little blouse or dress only to shrivel up your nose in disdain. Oh my god, you think, someone actually wore this. Not only that, they bought it new and then wore it. Maybe even with pride at how fabulous it looked, or so they thought.

The Second Level of Sadness
... is when pay perfectly good money for some godawful item to wear to the annual Grossman Easter Party, knowing full well that it is perfectly awful, and that some poor schmuck wore it in good faith before you. It is hideous, and that is precisely the point: it must be hideous to pass muster, or else you would have passed it  by for something judiciously whimsical that actually looks like a fashion statement you, and only you could have pulled off. Or so you'd like to think.

The Third Level of Sadness
... is when, in a moment of true insanity, you buy that eloquent fashion statement, realizing full well that you bought it once before and finally after a single wearing, or perhaps having allowed it to hang relentlessly in your closet, gave it back to the thrift store and were somehow obliged to buy it back. Truly sad. And, of course, you promise yourself to never again, for the second time, buy back a thrift store find you really should not have bought the first time.

The Fourth, and Saddest Level of Sadness
... is the day or so after Christmas when you join the throngs of after-Christmas shoppers who were sorely disappointed by the somehow meaningless gifts from family and so, end up, alone again naturally, combing the racks for that singular item that will assuage that terrible sinking feeling that you are so unloved and fashion-challenged that you are here, once again, searching for the ineffable gift to yourself that will enable you to face the world.

This last, and saddest level, strikes me as the quintessential American disease of "Not Enough". When you have shopped for family and friends, online and up close and personal, for weeks, days, hours before the stores closed on Christmas Eve, yet you return not to 'return', but to buy anew. For you, glorious and loving mother-wife-friend spent more than you should have or wanted to in an attempt to prove your consideration for the loved ones in your life, but ended up feeling somehow empty instead. The emptiness consumes the consummate consumer, forcing your hand to your purse to your plastic personhood to prove your worthiness and power. Yes You, Great American Consumer, must buy to be.

And that is truly sad.

Women shop to experience not so much shopping, but the imagined event of wearing that gorgeous outfit found wanting a warm body to give it meaning. We shop and as we do we imagine ourselves entering the room, looking fabulous, earning the praise and jealousy of the other women in the room, imagining their envious looks and pleasantries in the form of, "Oh, my, where did you get that??" You see yourself not so much in the mirror, as in the mind's eye, glamorous and funky and tasteful and thrifty, appearing as if in a fashion mag, looking years younger (or older) and infinitely enviable.
It is in this imagining that we exist in multiple realities and our existence is thereby magnified, amplified: we live, in our minds, in an alternate reality.

That is why we shop. We don't really need more stuff. We hunger for more experiences. We are imagination's junkies.

Is this sad? Of course not. If it were, television and media in general would not have their appeal. Why do men watch golf? Is it really for the scintillating scrutiny of the hushed voice overs describing in tepid detail the positioning of the club, the flight of the ball, the thud and roll on the green? No. Men, too, like we women, crave the satisfaction of their imaginary realities. Football fans, churning on bar stools like blood-crazed sharks are in fact living the life of Riley, feeling the sink of cleats into muddy fields, the clank of armor-against-armor, the thrill of the victory dance. We are an imaginative people, look you to our cars and cities, whose craving for experience has been mediated to the great benefit of the producer-species, manufacturers.
Why else sell beer with the use of buxom babes bouncing on beaches, bottles in hand?
But who am I to criticize our national pastime? I shop with relish, trained to it from birth. If not, my mind would lie fallow waiting for immeasurable happiness in the form of a sunny day, stormy night, or love's first kiss.

I am not sad. I am happy. Truly. I imagine I am, therefore, I might be.

[Painting:"Retail Therapy" by Des Brophy http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.desbrophy.com]

The Sorcerer's Game

The Dragon rose from the sea, shedding salt water like pearls from a broken necklace across a ballroom floor. She roared with delight, raising steam in great clouds as she went. Freedom, freedom on the wind, scattered sunlight off waves and rippling muscles loosed from the pressure of the deep. How long had she been hidden there? And where was the Sorcerer now?

The sylvan green coastline in the distance marred by high-rise resorts insulted her senses. Had it been so long? The humans had spread even here on this remote island chain. Their smog and noise assaulted her senses. She cast her awareness abroad, seeking the chartreuse glare of the Sorcerer’s energy field.

Ah, there he was. She banked hard to the northeast, rising high above the heat waves of the spewing volcano, calling a greeting to the great goddess Pele. A burst of crimson lava and plumes of acrid sulphur answered. The dragon laughed at the thought of people, once settled like cats before the fire, running in terror.

The Sorcerer’s field shifted from its resting greens to active cerulean blue: he had seen her and was rising to meet her. But where? She cast about with her extraordinary sense of space across the surface of the planet, seeking his exact location. Suddenly she had him: he was aloft! Fool! The skies were her domain. Now, finally, she would put an end to this.

Beneath her, cetaceans rose for air, and dove again, grey backs like seashells in the undulating waves. Their minds sent messages of fear and anger. The humans were interfering with their birthing grounds, pouring their filth into the seas at an ever increasing rate. She sought for their minds’ images and saw huge underwater ships spewing sound waves, disrupting communication throughout the underwater worlds. Her rage rose in her throat, her tail lashing in fury. How dare they, puny worthless beings on two legs! What had the Gods been thinking when they created these vermin? Well, she would tend to that later. For now, she sent her strength.

Suddenly, a twinge of recognition, a memory of a tin pot full of earth and pungent herbs. He was here! But where? There was no land, no ship to carry him this far to sea. And then it came again. She veered left, and dove, but it was too late. The bolt dug into her flank like spurs, sending a cascade of scales steaming into the water below.

The Sorcerer stepped out from behind the clouds, huge in spirit, though small in form. His feathers shone rainbow in the sunlight. He had taken the form of a phoenix! How had he gained such power?

He struck again, with less intensity, and the blow skittered away, harmless. What game is this, she thought, then banked suddenly coming up underneath him, melting the cloud with her fiery breath. His arms raised, he gestured to the sun as if to say, I’ll meet you there, then vanished into the light.

Her wingbeats carried her after him, following his gleaming trail. She laughed out loud to think of how she would embalm him in flame when she caught him, ending this challenge for once and for all.

At once, she realized her mistake. He had been following her, hidden again behind the clouds! Too late, too late, she banked.

His feet came to land on her back, and he reached forward, grasping the tips of her ears like reins.

“Tag! You’re it,” he laughed into the wind, then vanished.

She shrieked with fury, and careened after him into the sky. "Sorcerers!"

The Blue Dragon

Her favorite was the brilliant blue ceramic dragon from China. It sat on the dresser like a sentinel, overseeing the goings on in her room. It had come from an antique store in old town Auburn in the Sierra foothills and cost about $2.

The minute she saw it, the little girl had begun counting her quarters from her allowance to be sure she had enough. Then she cheerfully approached her mother, tugging at her to come look at this new treasure.

Her mother, distracted by a bright copper pillbox hat with sequined netting, was charmed by her daughter’s excitement. For years, the little girl had ignored the frilly girl-things in the stores, the lightly used ‘tween stars’ uniforms, in favor of these Asian artifacts.
She had once begged for a cloth Geisha doll upon a stand that was ridiculously overpriced at $12. Her mother, feeling horrible, on a budget, denied her. Later out of guilt, she had gone back, bought the doll, and placed it prominently on the dresser.
Now, dusting, the mother gently straightened the Geisha’s kimono and adjusted the parasol to a more demure attitude. An old tin pot, filled with flowers made from feathers, sat near a framed photo of her own mother cradling kittens in front of the fireplace.
From what thrift store, on what spending spree, out of what need, had that strange container been paid for with silver from the jar by the door? Next to it was a beautiful, huge conch shell decorated with a carving of a Victorian lady. An old memory rose as a lump in her throat.
They were in Aberdeen Harbor, Hong Kong. It was raining hard off and on, and between downpours, the air was muggy and hot enough to make you feel faint, moving from air conditioned cars and hotels to the overburdened streets. Arab women in long white robes weighed down with jeweled gold clustered under the protection of huge dark-skinned body guards. It was 1973. Her mother, descended from the black Irish, had taught her to walk through the crowds holding a lit cigarette in front of her to shield her from the crowds.
They were walking along gang planks strung between floating junks, while Chinese vendors screamed and gestured their way through hard barters on board. Very few guilo’s dared enter this strange city, but her mother was ferocious in her intent to collect the rarest of seashells for her collection.
Following closely behind her mother, and feeling the omnipotent presence of their 6’4” bodyguard behind her, the girl, 16, noticed an odd-looking dog floating belly-up in the water alongside the boat.
“You know, they don’t bother to teach their daughters to swim…” her mother said over her shoulder, descending a rickety ladder into the belly of a merchant’s ship. The smell of diesel, salt water, rotting flesh and bitter tobacco made the girl faint with nausea.
When they returned, hours later, to the hotel, she had tried to nap but her parents’ voices, arguing forever about money spent that was not yet earned, forced her from her room and down to the lobby. The bartender was happy to bring the girl her usual: Manhattan rocks.

The mother was startled by her daughter’s voice.
“Mom? Are you crying?”
“No, just cleaning up, honey.” Then she hugged her daughter to her like a life jacket, stood, and suggested, “Want to hit the thrift store? I need a hat for Easter.”
Her daughter shrugged. “Sure, mom, if you want.” She moved the blue dragon slightly left of the Geisha and nodded with approval. “Let’s go.”

The Fly Button

Dear Feedstore Zealots,

I couldn't help myself. Lucy followed me into the shower and wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote her story. Once again, I have met the NPR challenge using the same 4 words (see if you can figure out what they are... duh.), referencing the same general setting, and limiting myself to exactly 600 words. This one is a bit more whimsical, but then Lucy is only 9, after all.... Did I mention today is April Fool's Day?



Lucy reached under the ruffled bedspread and pulled out her sewing kit. Inside was a large ziplock bag full of buttons. Lucy loved buttons. She had been collecting them since she was four. Her favorites were always shiny. Today she was planning on sewing her newest, a golden metallic fly with red rhinestone eyes, onto the blue sweater Poppa had brought home yesterday. Soon they were going to the corner diner for pancakes. Poppa always took her to the diner on Saturday mornings for a plate of giant pancakes and a mug of hot chocolate with whipped cream. She loved the whipped cream. The waitress always piled it high above the rim of the white mug. Lucy would watch it melt down into the brown liquid, not touching it with her spoon, just licking a little off the top as she watched. Poppa read the weekly, grunting over the columns like an angry giraffe. He made her laugh. She didn’t understand why he got so mad at the paper. It was just a stupid newspaper with a lot of stuff about politics and government. She liked the ads at the end, though. The ones with all the pretty girls telling you to call them to chat. Poppa said the ads were inappropriate, but that was just a trick of his. He liked to play tricks like that, using words like ‘inappropriate’ or ‘mature’. Sometimes he tricked her into eating things she didn’t like by using words like ‘organic’ or ‘healthy’. He only let her eat the pancakes and hot chocolate so he could grunt over the newspaper.
The blue sweater was really pretty. Poppa said he found it at the little store near his business, Planting the Seeds of Change. She thought the name was pretty funny because there weren’t any plants at all in his office, except the one plastic palm that stood by the front windows to make people think about plants. He called it ‘marketing’. She thought marketing was what you did when you went get groceries.
She pulled a spool of thread from the kit to match the blue of the sweater and drew it through a slender needle. She bent over her work and carefully attached the fly button above the embroidery. She had really been excited when she first saw the sweater. It was decorated all over with leaves and flowers from different plants, just like an Easter bouquet. She thought immediately of the fly button, thinking it would be a good trick to make it look like it was flying just above the plants. It made her laugh. She couldn’t wait.
Her Poppa didn’t even notice. She had come out of her room and twirled around and thrust her little chest out to show off her work, but he had just grunted, as usual, and headed for the door. Lucy sighed. He was so grumpy lately. On the way to the diner he said almost nothing except to watch for the mud in front of Mrs. Simpton’s lawn. She always watered at night, even when it rained, and sometimes mud flooded the sidewalk. Sometimes Lucy would stop to rescue the worms, but today Poppa was in a hurry.
They slid into their usual booth at the diner. Lucy loved the shiny red upholstery that matched the table tops. She thought it looked like a Mickey Mouse diner. That made her laugh. Poppa looked up from his paper and smiled.
“I like the sweater,” he said. “Nice button.”
Lucy grinned. The fly glittered above the plants. It had been a good trick after all.

NPR's 600 Word Challenge: Keep the Change

Dear Feed Store Zealots,


In what is a slight change of venues, I have written the following story and submitted it to NPR's 600 Word Short Story contest. Why not? After all, how many self-indulgent personal examinations can you stand? Unless, of course they are universal in nature.
The contest requires that your story be no more than 600 words, and include the following 4 specifically:
Plant
Fly
Trick
Button
The story must also at least in some way reference a photo of an open newspaper on a red cafe table.
I love a challenge like this. There's a great little book for creative types who have hit some block or other called, The Blank Canvas. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in creating anything. It is also very useful for teachers. The most important concept it related is this:
a blank canvas, page, etc., is inherently terrifying for many people. But, it you simply draw a circle or square creating a boundary, the psyche is released from the fear of infinite possibilities and can work again. It makes perfect sense, and I've used the technique in many ways since.
So, this 600 Word challenge is probably the easiest writing assignment ever, at least for me. I could write dozens of them, each completely different in content and style. The addition of the requirement for the 4 words and the photo makes it fun and ultimately even easier. I think mine ended up at 598 words. I wrote it in one fell swoop, watching the word count at the bottom of the page, and learning only halfway through what was going to happen to my characters.
The funny thing about writing is that you often are not sure where you're headed. Or what is going to happen to your people. That often stops us from writing. But it shouldn't. That's what makes it 'creative' vs. report writing.
Last thing: it took about 90 minutes, one cup of coffee and one cigarette. I wish I could do this all day long!



"Keep the Change"

His eyes fell on the girl’s jeans, wrapped tightly around her legs like a toddler begging for sweets, as she delivered his eggs. He noticed the blur of chalk marks along her thighs. Yesterday there had been blue stains on the fingers of her left hand. He wondered about this, as he wondered about all things relating to her. He never asked, though, for anything but eggs over easy, no bacon, and tomatoes instead of toast. Her smile drifted as she set the plate before him and asked if he needed a warm up.
On Thursday he had brought her a plant, Thai basil, from the farmer’s market. She had been surprised, (or embarrassed?) at the gesture. Since then he had kept his distance, going so far as to sit in the other girl’s station. But today, he had been emboldened by a slug of single malt.
The whites of the eggs surrounding their bright yellow centers glistened on his plate, and by some trick of the light, winked at him knowingly. He stabbed them, vigorously stirring the runny yolks into the hash browns, and smiled at their destruction. “Button your lips,” he muttered. His mother always said that, “Button your lips, buster,” when he was being smart.
“What? Did you say something,” she asked. He hadn’t realized she was nearby. How had that happened? He always knew when she was close: he sensed her, or more likely, smelled her, as she moved, tending to the needs of her patrons like a saint.
“Uh, well, actually, no. I mean, I was talking to myself. Not that I talk to myself, but rather the eggs. I mean, I was talking to the eggs, they weren’t talking to me…” He halted.
She was looking at him, closely. He was crazy, he was sure that’s what she was thinking.
“I’m not crazy,” he murmured.
“No,” she laughed, “you’re not crazy. Aren’t you a teacher, at the college?”
She was talking to him, asking him a personal question. As if she weren’t an angel, a sacred being sent to salvage his soul. As if her floating essence wasn’t the air of life to which he desperately clung every morning.
She waited, for a moment, for a response. He looked at her dark eyes, her spun sugar hair – why did women do that to their hair, turn it all kinds of colors, none of them natural, not even close? She was waiting.
“Uh, yes, a teacher, that’s right. How did you…”
“Oh, I don’t know, you just look like the type, you know, professorial and all.”
He glanced down at himself, and thought, “’Professorial’”? Where did she get that word? A waitress, using words like, “professorial”. How would she know what a professor looked like? What, was she a student? She could be, most of the waitresses in town were students trying to get by. He’d never waited tables, but he knew that’s how it worked. He had gone to college on scholarships, never needed aid. Private university back East.
“There’s chalk on your jeans. Yesterday you had blue fingers.”
She brushed at her jeans, looked at her left hand. “Oh, I play pool, a lot.” She laughed. “Tournaments sometimes. More money than here.”
He stared at her. A fly landed between them. He reached out and smashed it with the flat of his hand on the red linoleum table. She looked startled. Then she asked, “What do you teach?”
He stood abruptly, silently drew a twenty from his wallet and tossed it over the remains of the fly.
“Psychology.”
He left without another word.

The Palmist

March 29, 2010
Dear Feed Store Zealots,
Stranger things have happened in my life than inspiration, but none so strange nor strong as the latest psychic events that have sent me spinning.
About 2 weeks ago I stopped in at the local bar, a divey place made more or less interesting by the lower life forms found lounging on stools in front of empty beer bottles, and hundreds of signed dollars mounted on the walls and ceiling like calling cards of the damned. It’s not my favorite place, but it is pretty much the only place within safe driving range. Is it me, or have dives lost their romantic edge as I age, feeling like the only person in the place with even half a brain, and at least a quarter of a decent body? I really wanted to play a couple of quick games, alone if need be, as very few of the patrons will speak to me let alone challenge me to 8 Ball. What is it about a lone female of a certain age, 50, that is so uncomfortable or threatening? Only some of the men will even look at me, and the women for the most part feign ignorance of my presence entirely.
That is what made the gypsy happening so strange.
I had just walked in, and was approaching a stool to claim as temporary home turf, removing coat and scarf, and trying to catch the incredibly lazy and somewhat hostile bartender’s eye to order a drink, when a woman behind me shouted out, “Hey, what’s your name?”
I turned and saw a nice looking mid-forties brunette about 3 beers gone sitting with another woman of similar ilk. She looked reasonably friendly. I didn’t know quite how to respond, and was assessing her sobriety and recklessness, deciding whether she was being friendly or potentially offensive. She hollered again over the juke, “I’ve never seen you here before, where are you from?”
Now I was really stuck. Eye contact can be deadly under certain circumstances. What is my name? Where am I from? Am I Maggie? Celeste? Am I willing to deal with this one, or try to casually ignore without offending? Where am I from? Here? There? I’ve had eight address changes in as many months, living out of my car and surfing couches since October of 2009. I’ve been in Marysville, Hawaii, Middletown, and now here, running from a bizarre cult, from ego-destruction, from unemployment, from a bad relationship, from a hostile daughter-in-law, running from myself most of all. Who am I? Where am I from? How do I answer that?
“I’m a gypsy,” I stammered, the first cohesive thought worth uttering since her demand.
She jumped up and came right up to me, right in my face. I brought my coat and scarf up in front of me as if fending off a charging bull, thinking this was going from strange to dangerous.
She thrust her hands under my nose and demanded, “Read my palms, then, Gypsy.”
Oh shit, I thought, then, Fine. I set my things down on the nearest stool, hooked the bartender’s eye with a caustic glance, and told her, “I need a beer and my glasses. Then I’ll read your palms.”
She skipped over to her stool, grinning at her friend, who promptly stalked out to the patio for a smoke. I kept wondering why in the hell did I do that? For once, just once, I should learn to keep my mouth shut. Crazies aren’t what I was up for at that moment. I was feeling down and frustrated and trapped in this hell hole place, and wondering why I’d even gone in there in that frame of mind. It was compulsive, the bar scene/ pool scene has become compulsive, a habit I can’t break. It gives me some sense of purpose, playing pool, and an excuse, to be honest, to frequent drinking establishments alone. I’m not here to pick up guys, I say, just to play pool. Great line, and not altogether dishonest. I’m here like everyone else, to get buzzed and avoid loneliness through these haphazard and meaningless interactions with strangers. A pseudolife, with ‘single serving’ friends, only perhaps more than ‘single’, more like ‘double’, but insignificant and insubstantial nonetheless.
My beer arrived, I dug through my purse for my glasses and the woman hovered expectantly. I admit to feeling a bit of power in the situation, power over my non-existence here, because this woman wanted from something from me, and I was in a position to provide it. Or was I? It was dawning on me that I don’t really know how to read palms. I mean, we used to dabble in various forms of the occult when we were teenagers, and truth be told, I was fairly well-versed in the foundations. Life line, heart line, head line, whorls in the fingertips, creases in the side on the hand, the look and shape of the hand itself, and the wrapping of fate around the wrist in a strange chain-like band. In fact, I’d recently had my palms read by a near-blind man in Hilo just before I left. He was unerringly correct in every single statement. Scary in his accuracy, but his final call, that I would soon be doing the very thing that would make me happiest in my life, seemed like a strange throwaway in an otherwise unsettling, and dispassionate reading.
I was thinking all these things as I took my first sip, and turned to the woman, standing eagerly at my elbow, palms upturned, waiting my mystical intervention. What right do I have to do this, I thought? Well, it’s just a bar, and this is just some bullshit encounter with a nearly drunk woman, and when I’m done I can get over to the table and rack.
So, I took her hands into mine and we both stared into her tiny palms. They were soft, gentle hands, but worn looking, and they were small, almost child-sized. I looked up at her eyes for a moment, her look so full of trust and anticipation, it made me feel like a real asshole. What the fuck am I doing?
And then came an awful feeling, a sinking feeling, like when you know what you’re about to do is going to go badly, but you’re somehow committed and you can’t stop. I looked away, I looked back, I stared into her hands. I saw the lifelines, in both hands, saw them clearly stopping right in the middle, no connection to the wrist lines, no crossing of the heart lines. Just a dead stop. Hers had not been an easy life, in fact, it had been hard, and lacking in satisfaction or fulfillment of any dreams. It was a sad life. And it was about to end abruptly.
I knew it in my belly before it entered my conscious mind. I knew the words were going to come out of my mouth, and I couldn’t stop them, not by my will or hers. It had come to this. I had to tell her. I thought for a moment to lie. I can’t lie. I’m a terrible liar. It shows all over my face. I had to tell her, but I didn’t know how. So I did what I do when that happens. I took the filter off my mouth, what filter there is, and let the words fall from my lips.
“You don’t have much time. You need to get your things in order. Prepare your family…. I’m truly sorry.”
She just stared at me, then looked down into her hands. I watched her face, my mind spinning. What have I done, what right do I have…
“You’re right. You’re right. Oh, Jesus. How could you tell? How did you know?”
I shuddered. I literally shuddered. She just stared at me, then we both looked into her palms again.
“I don’t know what or how, but it’s very very soon, and you need to get your things in order and prepare your family. Where are your children?”
She was crying now. I was crying. The bar was silent except for the juke which seemed somehow muted.
“They just told me I have a terminal brain tumor. They gave me 6 months. I don’t know what to do…” She cried quietly, tiny tears slipping down her cheeks. I held her hands in mine, no need to look anymore. Just holding them, standing at the bar, people looking away, staring from the sides of their eyes, silently. Shit. Shit. Shit, was all I could think. What have I done?
She slumped onto the stool next to me. I edged over, carefully letting her hands fall back to her. What have I done? Was all I could think. This poor woman. I should have lied. I couldn’t lie. How the hell had I known? What the hell was I thinking. What can I do?
And the only thing I understood at that moment, was that I had done what I’d been asked, without any agenda or need, just out of a sense of fatalism and inexplicable obligation. A momentary confusion when asked my name, where I was from, had led to a flippant response, self-defined gypsy. A brief time in my life when I decided to learn about palmistry more than 35 years ago, the compulsion to walk into this dive for a game, the off-chance of meeting this woman who was so obviously in need of something ineffable, momentary relief from a pain that would devour her. I had only done what I’d been asked, and I had done it according to some inner knowledge, some innate ability to read the signs creased into a palm.
We talked about her children, about her life at the moment, but the tumor did not come up again. Her friend returned, looked at us briefly, then sat to drink by herself. The other patrons stayed clear, the bartender would not look at me again, not for days would he look at me, and as it turned out, he would never speak to me again and soon quit the place for good. That is another story, not for today.
I suppose I could have just said that she was finally going to have what she wanted, like the palmist told me in Hawaii on that black night in Hilo. But those weren’t the words that slipped from my tongue that night. The truth was told. How I knew it, I don’t know, but she did, and knew to ask the stranger who wandered in for a drink.

There is much more to this life than can be dreamed of in your philosophy. Hamlet.
I will say this: I left immediately, never drank my beer, never played a game of pool. I went home, smoked a little, and stared at the blank tv. I could have given the same advice to anyone, for in truth, none of us has much time left, and we should all get our things in order and prepare our families. We will all die, that is the natural conclusion to these lives of ours. How we live is the question.

Much love in the mysteries,

Maggie

Wetness upon Wetness

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Dear Feed Store Zealots,
Raining, raining, raining… at least it’s warm, about 70 or so and slowly rising as the sun rises over the ocean. It is pretty early, about 6:30 and everyone is still sleeping. The grandkids, Maya and Adam slept in my room last night so Momma Dawn could drive over to spend the night with my son Matt in Kona.
Kona is the dry side of the island, resplendent with white sand beaches, as opposed to the black sand on the wet, Hilo side. Matt’s installing a large industrial solar array on a white metal roof: he came home this weekend dark brown from the neck up and the forearms down… classic working man’s t-shirt tan. It takes about 2 and a half hours to get over there, but after days of rain it is a fantastic break, even for a day.
Everything is wet here: the ground trying hard to soak in the daily rain, the trees clean and shining, the mold and mildew softening furniture and clothing and skin. My skin has taken on a warm glow, the wrinkles in my face easing with the moisture and the tonic effect of rain and sea water. Not drinking so much, or smoking, and sleeping 8-10 hours a night, I feel calmer and more peaceful and want to start working out again, get in shape.
Uncle Dave just arrived with little cousin Muffata in tow, telling stories about spear fishing for Opakapaka and having to swim hard against a powerful undertow last Saturday. I was at the favorite beach, Richardson’s, that day, too, and I experienced the undertow while swimming in the little bay. The waves were 3-5 feet coming in over the reefs, surfers everywhere farther out, catching the waves about 400 yards from shore. Between the reefs and the lava-rock beach there are coral formations and a lot of tropical fish and sea turtles.
I had swum out with ease, aided by the tide, and was rising and falling like a leaf floating on the incoming waves. A few other swimmers and snorkelers were out, but not many, due to the warning signs posted on the beach. The lifeguard watched casually from his perch, longboard resting against the base of the tower. I am and always have been a good swimmer, used to compete when I was a teen and later was a lifeguard and competed with other lifeguard teams in LA. I was fairly confident, but knew I was handicapped by my bum shoulder.
After about 20 minutes I was cooling down below my (narrow) comfort zone, and getting a little tired. I had drifted farther out than I realized, probably 50 yards from the reef-surfers, and could see the other swimmers much closer to shore than I. Breast-stroking to keep my eyes on shore, I started back in. But every stroke forward left me pretty much where I started, and I could feel the sucking of the undertow on my feet when I stopped to rest my shoulder which was starting to ache.
Hmmm… I thought, this is going to be harder than I thought. I looked to the beach where my friends were hanging out, drinking beer, barbecuing, chatting and tanning. They weren’t concerned about me, knowing from past experience how strong and stubborn a swimmer I could be. In years past I would have swum out past the reefs and jutting volcanic peninsula to the open ocean to call dolphins and turtles, and swim in the cold blue of deeper water than the tepid inner coves. Today, without flippers or glove as last weekend, I was much slower in the water, and already running out of steam.
I rolled over onto my back and just kicked for awhile, letting the forward motion of the waves carry me to shore, but when I rolled back over to check my progress I realized I still wasn’t getting very far. Last time I tried swimming unaided, I found that my weakened left shoulder made me swim in a big circle if I didn’t compensate somehow. That was ok then, but now I needed in.
I slid over onto my side and began the classic deadbody tow, striking hard with my right arm, supporting my left on my hip, and frog-kicking like hell, trying to stay as high in the water as possible, sliding along the surface like a skidding saucer. Slowly, but surely I made headway, finally reaching the innermost cove where the newly arrived Midwesterners and little keikis played in mellow shallow water. I dragged myself to the rocky shoreline, winding my way half in and half out of the water through the submerged trail between the rocks to where my friends were partying.
Moonbunny, who had been watching apparently, flippers in hand, ready to come in after me, looked relieved, but a little pissed off. “Next time…” he said, indicating the flippers, “don’t do that again without telling me.” I felt idiotic, huffing and panting, out of breath and shaky. “Shit, Bunny, I forget that I’m not as young as I used to be.”
“Age has nothing to do with an injured shoulder.” He passed me a teriyaki skewer, Corona, and plopped a hat on my head. “You are nothing if not stubborn.” A doob came my way, and I gladly drew down the sweet, green smoke and gazed at the sea, getting silvery now as the sun started to slide behind Moana Kea to the west, knowing the Kona skies would be lighting up in vermillion hues while the purple bruise of the Hilo sunset would soon be upon us.
A soft rain began to fall, sending tourists and soft locals scampering to their cars. Those of us who know better pulled hats and towels over our heads, huddled closer under the sole umbrella, amused. Within minutes, the beach had all but cleared out, leaving us the run of the place. As I’ve said before, wait 30 seconds for the weather to change in Hilo.
As the sun returned, and the life guard climbed down from his post, the women dropped their bikini tops relishing the semi-privacy and sensual freedom of toplessness. I, of course, being the prude that I am wearing a conservative one-piece, looked on with curiosity. The two other women were forty and fifty respectively, golden tan from daily exposure, bellies and breasts one color. Clearly the Tahitian influence was embraced on this little stretch of sand. It pleased me to see them, so pretty and confident, and made me a bit jealous to be under wraps still, this haole skin still not ready for un-screened exposure, this grandmother body too soft and flabby to be seen by anyone but my intimate.
A late arriving batch of white-skinned, towel-bearing, bad short-wearing mainlanders wandered by, the women looking anywhere but at us, the father-husband looking nowhere but at the two beauties. The newbie women looked utterly uncomfortable, but I swear! I could hear the man’s thoughts: This is why I paid all this money to come here, and man am I glad. While his wife was thinking, goddammit, I knew I should have stuck to my diet! Stop oogling, Harry!
“Harry, Harry! Bring the chairs, Harry, for heaven’s sake. There’s no place to sit…”
Like the warm black sand and humps of rock aren’t somehow appropriate seats. Or maybe lowering and raising her considerable hulk to the ground would prove too strenuous. Or maybe she just needs Harry’s attention right now. He bustles over, yanking his eyes from Maya and Krista’s beautiful reclining bodies. His kids, in their early 20’s, maybe late teens, hardly notice, their eyes on the sea, the rocks, the outcroppings, the ironwoods swaying and singing in the moist, warm breezes. Taking it all in, all in.
We pop more beer, Douglas checks the hibachi, Bunny lights another spliff. The ladies recline languidly. I am rested and want back in the water, but know better. The ocean won’t settle down till the sun goes under, and I won’t swim after dark. Maybe tomorrow.
But it will be days before I can get down to the beach again, even though I know that somehow the liquid womb of the sea is exactly the tonic I need. Ancient Hawaiians, up till the past generation even, drank seawater daily as a cure all to stave off physical, emotional and spiritual depletion. If you relax and don’t fight the saltiness, it does taste good, and does seem to be a calmative and restorative. But then, we are mostly salt water, so it makes sense, except for the increasing toxicity from pollutants and the recent burst of microbes from effluent flushing out of Hawaii’s soils from urban developments.
Cuts and scrapes gotten in the ocean or in town or in the upland country require diligent cleansing and monitoring for things like necrotizing staphylococcus (‘flesh-eating bacteria’: a menace in hospitals that can kill you in 72 hours if not annihilated with a concoction of multiple antibiotics and transfusions) and other less-deadly but exotic bugs coming on planes and boats from all over the world. Drinking the seawater these days is a game of Russian roulette.
I doused scrapes gotten from the husky’s chain with hydrogen peroxide, scrubbing to get out any germs, remembering my last tetanus shot was here in 2005 after stepping on a nail at the preschool where I was an indentured slave for a summer. Then the wounds were tinctured with purple gentian, a powerful topical antibacterial, and then coated with Neosporin to keep out any airborne bugs. Three days later only one, the deepest one, shows minor signs of infection. We’re talking scratches mind you. Red, but not pus-sy, and scabbed over well.
Like I said, another wet day in Paradise.
Love and Aloha to all my friends in Brown’s Valley,
Celestial
PS: Maggie says Hi, but she’s cranky from a shortage of pool playing. I think she’s in withdrawal from snuff and Cope. Tables are too far away and at a buck a game, and a $10 (bad, warm) drink minimum, it’s a once-a-week-if-that habit now.

Eternal Womb of the Hawaiin Night

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Dear Feed Store Zealots:

Last night a monsoon threatened to inundate the work site upstairs. The upper deck has been turned into a construction zone for the addition with sawhorses supporting plywood work benches, drywall, boxes of what not, you know the drill. Only half the space is covered by the roof extension, so Matt had attached a 20x40 silver tarp to the roof, suspended over a temporary raised railing at the eastern end and dropping two stories over the side, to the ground below, tied down with free weights.
The rain came so suddenly and quickly it filled the tarp, breaking the stand-off holding the center up so the daily rains would run off, theoretically. Well, it was a swimming pool for the stars now, and it took all four of us wahine’s to hold it up from underneath, empty the water, and set up a new prop. Meanwhile the rain was coming down harder and harder, sounding like millions of drums, forcing us to shout to each other, even as we stood but a foot or two away.
Prop in place, tarp resettled, the women went back downstairs and I settled in for the cigarette I had come up there for. In the length of time to get halfway through my smoke, the clouds suddenly parted, and the moon, just past full, peered through the masses of grey, igniting them from behind like a spotlight. That fast, the squall was over. Unbelievable.
I’ve been in places before where the locals would say, “Don’t like the weather? Wait 15 minutes and it will change.” Well, in Hilo, you’ve got about 30 seconds between one weather event and the next: now it’s hot and muggy, now it’s misting. Pouring rain now, brilliant sunshine within minutes.
I had just received the phone message from my girlfriend in Chico that my cats had disappeared the day I left for Santa Cruz. I heard the sad tones in her voice and knew the cats were gone, after a week trying to settle them in. My cats’ safety while I was gone was one of my main concerns about coming over here. It would have been too expensive to kennel them both, and flying them over would have meant not only the expense but two months in quarantine at the airport. Clearly not workable options. Having them stay at Katie’s property was the only solution that seemed even remotely realistic.
Now, I know many of you would have (and did say) just shot them and been done with it. But, Lorenzo, my 5 year old Himalayan male was like a child: Sophia called him ‘brother’. He would sneak under the covers at night, tickling with his long fur, and snuggle the entire length of his body against mine, sometimes with his head on my upper arm like a pillow. He would refuse to leave my bed whenever I was ill, and crawl into my lap when I was sad. We’d found him at the Chico Farmer’s Market years back, a tiny ball of mottle white fur and light tan points, he fit in the palm of my hand.
The day we brought him home, never intending to get a kitten but there we were, he immediately skittered across the wood floors and lodged himself under the torn box spring cover in the guest room for hours, a huddled shivering ball of terror.
Days later he delighted us with his antics, climbing the wooden clothes rack sitting in the sunny living room like a drunken acrobat. He was always very playful, never scratching or clawing, and tolerated Sophie’s torturous play with aplomb. We would play ‘Kitty Bowling’ sometimes, rolling him into a little ball and sliding him down the long hallway into a triangular target of soft toys and stuffed animals, making us laugh insanely as he tried to slow his slide, paws scrabbling for a hold, tail whipping around, only to crash into the obstacle.
I can’t bring myself to tell Sophie. Fortunately, she has two new kitties of her own at her dad’s house, so hopefully she won’t be too sad.
I, however, suddenly aware of all I had left behind in coming here, broke down in stifled sobs, not wanting to be heard by the women and kids in the house. Fat tears, hot tears, gushing like the monsoon, almost frightening in their intensity. Wrenching dismay at the sacrifice of my two feline charges, the abandonment of my daughter, the loss of my home, my job, my lover, my self-esteem. Is this why I had come all this way, to lose everything I thought was mine, and for what?
Playing at being grandma to little brown skinned babies who could not decide whether I was ‘aunty’, ‘tutu’, ‘grandma’, intimate family terms for a total stranger. Living with virtual strangers, my son treading the DMZ between me and his Hawaiian family: he who has become more Hawaiian than Haole, his post-modern neo-Hawaiian fiancé and her lesbian sister and girlfriend, their children for whom haole’s are unwelcome strangers who come and go with such rapidity… Why had I come? Why had I left? What was the use of flying over here only to be oddly alone in a sea of people?
I grabbed a flashlight, a smoke, and slid outside to walk on the soaking ground down the long winding driveway shrouded in undulating shadows as the moon slid westward above me. And just like the squall, my tears suddenly stopped, my face wet, eyes swollen. I had reached the road and stood in the full moonlight softened by shredded clouds, now relieved of their loads, reflected in the puddles still dappled by last minute raindrops.
A 10acre pasture stretched out to the north, studded here and there by skyscraping eucalyptus rustling in the warming breeze. Other than the sound of the leaves and the quieting chirps of the Coqui frogs (who by the way sing in a 2-octave span that sounds like they’re hawking French fries in downtown Paris – ‘Pommes Frites? Pommes Frites?’ [pome-FREET]) it was eerily quiet after the deluge and madness of the sudden drenching rain just 5 minutes ago.
I came here to see differently, think differently, feel differently. I do, too, but not how I thought I might. Instead, feeling the same way but about different things. Loneliness, a sense of isolation, of uselessness, of despair so completely out of place in Paradise. Of getting old and losing my place in the book of life. What page was that, damn, but I’ve read the same paragraph three times and I don’t remember a word of it until I start over. And then remembering the words gliding by but unattached to any meaning or relevance. Remembering what I have ‘forgotten wrong’ as my brother Rick so hilariously mis-spoke last summer. Where is my mind? Where is my heart? Where is my place in this world?
Starting back the way I came, beneath the soaring eucalyptus, I was startled suddenly at their utter beauty in the darkness, their dripping bark gleaming like slickened phallus thrusting branches into the warm, eternal womb of the Hawaiian night. Dawn, my daughter-in-law, calls them ‘Rainbow Eucalyptus’. I thought it was because of their wood, used for furniture, flooring, or chipped into mulch for the gardens. But it is clearly because of the coloration of their bark: long, narrow strips like the runs in stockings ranging from pale green to dark blue, pale haole skin tone to dark mahogany – the color of the children when they come back from the beach, their dark skin sunburned to an impossible hue – layers of colors blending into one another or juxtaposed like an impressionist’s canvas.
Bewitched, I move slowly along the narrow driveway, turning my flashlight to one tree after another, each so gorgeous in the nighttime, I feel stupid for not noticing them before. I vow to come back soon with paints and brushes to try to capture their beauty, feeling defeated before I even start, for their beauty is for me this moment, this very moment of rain-soaked moonlight and grief that rises as suddenly as the daily storms that blow down from the north or in from the east.
Returning to the house, lights winking in the dark, children giggling as aunty Kale’e tickles them gently, Hawaiian pop on the radio, I realize I am homesick for … meaning, purpose, not place.
Searching, searching, I send love and a reminder to nurture one another, like the rain and the sea and the rich volcanic soil nurtures the spirit of these islands, alive with possibility, even when we are blinded by our inner storms,


Celeste

The Morning After Halloween

Sunday, November 1, 2009
Aloha Feed Store Zealots!
It is a balmy afternoon, clear blue skies host soaring mountainous clouds, lofted by mild winds from the north and east. Are these Trade Winds, I wonder? Have to ask…
I have been immersed in a book called Shark Dialogues, by Kiana Davenport. “An epic feminine saga, beginning with the fateful meeting of a nineteenth-century sailor and the runaway daughter of a Tahitian chieftain…”
As I read the stories of 5 generations of mixed breed Hawaiian mothers-daughters-sisters, I am swept away into the past layers of Hawaiian history, even as I sit among my new Hawaiian family. There are so many thoughts coming, it’s hard to keep up.
My own son has partnered with a mixed-blood native. He himself is of mixed blood descent: full-blooded Armenian on his father’s side; Irish-Scottish-English-French-Indian-Spanish-Dutch on mine. But their children look like classic South Pacific stock, clearly the strongest of all the genes in the pool.
My ‘daughter-in-law-to-be’ is tall, handsome, brown-skinned, and voluptuous. A love poem from my son to her in the early days of their love affair dotes on these and other qualities: her sweetness, loving tenderness, sensuality. He practically drools.
By nature, calm and even-tempered, he is more at home here than he was in California. He fits, oddly enough, with his slightly Arabic features: arched black eyebrows over Etruscan eyes, a moderately hawked nose, full mouth, and very curly blackish-brown hair.
The Islands have been a deep-fried melting pot for several centuries. I don’t believe there are more than a handful of ‘pure’ Hawaiians left post-contact (post-discovery, colonization, annexation, statehood). Mixed with Phillipino, Japanese, European, African: the Hawaiian race is no longer distinct or discreet.
My daughter in law has seen to it that I have chores to pay my keep. Animals came first, then once-a-week cooking, one week’s bathroom duty, and now increasing childcare. And of course, I am constantly cleaning or doing dishes or helping with construction. It started subtly, but I have a growing sense of being the nanny. I feel a subtle sense of being in some way indentured.
I don’t know enough yet about the culture to differentiate traditional patterns of behavior from this particular constellation of personalities. I am happy to help, but I am not here to be the live-in grandma so that everyone else can go about their business while I keep house and tend children. I actually, like Momma, like to work and be busy out in the world rather than at home. Sister Kale’e (Ka-LAY-ay) ran away from her life in Kauai to be the live-in Auntie, along with her fulltime girlfriend, Ulu. For Kale’e, it is perfectly suited to her personality, her quiet, self-contained passivity. Ulu, more the outgoing tomboy of the pair, is happy being with Kale’e here in the tolerant bosom of her family. The kids are just part of the package.
I am wondering if it would be my role in this culture to be the Tutu (grandmother) who cooks and cleans and raises babies while the younger generation covers the more demanding worldly work. Or if it is merely efficient to assign roles and duties as needs arise.
I also wonder at myself, who for years spoke of the need to return to more traditional roles as a means to approach sustainable societies again. As the oldest, as the non-reproductive female, as the one with almost 30 years of child-rearing/housekeeping/landtending experience, it would have been my role to pass down traditions through storytelling and modeling. I see the value in this, but I resist and resent it at the same time.
Teasing the threads loose that make up that odd patchwork of feelings is challenging. I personally don’t much care for childrearing 24/7. It bores the hell out of me, makes me feel like I’m suffocating. I also hate being ‘expected’ to do anything. Ask, and I will. Expect, and I will misbehave. That’s just my infantile inner self acting out as usual. I will acquiesce to most reasonable requests, but sometimes I say “yes” out of habit, then resent it later. “Yes” to avoid conflict in the moment, but only setting up worse conflicts later on. I must remember to invoke the ’24 hour rule’: time to think it over. Just because someone asks or demands something of you, doesn’t mean you have to instantly decide.
There are also feelings of wanting to be independent so that I make the calls, I am in charge. I am definitely a territorial Alpha female. To be under the thumb due to circumstance to anyone, especially a younger woman, is very hard to swallow. Even a lovely, sweet woman who is the mother of my grandchildren.
And of course, the sense that I want to contribute, and I want some say. I will happily fork over money for room/board, and ‘play’ with the kids, but not live-in nanny. I would rather work fulltime and not be encumbered by toddlers. I love my kids, but I need adult time and isolation.
I am at the mercy, somewhat, of my situation, one of my creation. I have no money to speak of, no partner, no car, no job, no home. My own young child is under the protection of her father while I figure this thing out. I feel stuck, not free. And I am fearful of becoming even more stuck, unless I find a way to balance my personal freedom with my familial responsibilities. I feel like a man would if he had been stuffed into a woman’s role. Not impotent as much as zipped shut, unable to bust out and get ‘er done.
Other threads from the unraveling of my teaching career at the hands of an egotistical wannabe and the subsequent financial freefall that caused entangle my thinking. But that’s not the worst of it. My ego is in tatters. I didn’t see it until I was hanging out with my old friend Moonbunny who also lives here in Hilo, as fate would have it.
Moonbunny and I have known each other for about 13 years. He was a naturalist at Exploring New Horizons Outdoor School in the Bay Area, of which my ex-husband was former staff-turned-Executive Director. Moonbunny got his nickname from his infamous late night erotic wanderings. Forever a chick magnet, he was the most female-minded man I had ever met. At 40, he has a job to envy, and a 2nd story corner condominium looking out over the Hilo harbor from my favorite beach on this side of the Island. He is in love with a Kansan dairy girl of Dutch descent with blonde hair, bright blue eyes and a voluptuous 6’ frame. Go ‘Bunny.
‘Bunny and I were very close friends, and some suspected we were lovers, but we never even considered going there. We loved each other instantly, but completely platonically, and so it remains. It was ‘Bunny who could see the damage, as I was his mentor for 2 years, and he, of all my friends today, knows my commitment to fundamental educational and social evolution. He knows my qualities and creativity with children, abiding adoration of the natural world, and utter abandonment to the telling of stories and making things of beauty. He knows my soul, was there when I finally decided to leave my husband who had been running my life for 12 years. He was there when I announced that I was once again miraculously with child at the ripe age of 41. He was witness to my capitulation to the pregnancy and resignation to more time with a man I had come to detest. He left the school that year, unable to work under my husband any longer, in part from watching me suffocate in grief and resentment, trapped by the last of my children even as I thrilled at her. He was my friend who deserted me out of his own sense of sanity and morality.
To find him here a mere few miles away, working, as always, with the thrown away children of our culture, was to find a wellspring of acceptance and affection like almost none other in my life. It’s hard to explain how much it meant to be able to tell him even a fraction of the story of YESCA and the Foothills. And to have him remind me of who I am, and of my true calling and spirit.
I told him I couldn’t stand working for anyone else, that I have a vision of how to deliver an Outdoor Environmental Education using the International Baccalaureate thematic structure via Montessori methodology with a Fine and Performing Arts emphasis under an elegant system of management lifted from our old ENH program. (Really, and truly, I do.)
“Sounds like it’s time for you to start your own program,” he grinned.
“And don’t tell me I don’t know enough, or have enough experience,” I blurted, and slammed the counter with my palm.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said, leaning across the counter to rumple my out of control curls. “Let’s go look for whales.”
Later at the beach he brought me flippers, mask and snorkle, and a swimming glove for my right hand to make up for my increasingly useless left arm. Swam them out to me in the ocean where I floated effortlessly in the lolling tide. The air temperature runs 75-90, the water 70-75. The sky cloud-studded, the ocean a strange silvery-grey-blue. Honu (sea turtles) glided by and tropical fish tugged at algae and other living creatures attached to the coral-stacked ocean floor. The sand is blazing white against the black lava outcroppings under soaring palms and Norfolk Pines. Idyllic hardly comes close to describing my first swim since arriving 5 days ago.
The air is so warm and moist, you at first are intensely aware of the sensation of your skin: it’s there, it’s alive, it’s touching the world through the air. After a few days, you begin to lose the sensation of your skin, and instead begin to become aware of the air which is flowing in and around everything you see. The air surrounds you now, and pulls you into the awareness of the earth and life so abundantly springing forth on all sides. Now you are aware of the living things as extensions of your self, your skin no longer a boundary but an organ of communication, of knowing. Skin sensation becomes emotional/spiritual/mental on a hugely enlarged field. The field of awareness has expanded beyond you to the world, but not in some intellectual abstract way: in a very real, personal, interdependent way. It completely shifts your consciousness outside yourself, and strangely internalizes the external world.
You have to do this: come to the islands, strip naked, and float in the sea under a soft rain. You merge with water: you and the water are now linked through your consciousness, there is no separation. Blurred, you ‘feel’ beyond your frail skin to the extended edges of the water’s experience. You and the water share experience. I swear, the water learns from you, as well.
My grandchildren have been playing in the little blow-up pool, rigging a hose down a slide into the 2 feet of water, for hours. The filtered sunlight slowly tans their already almond-colored skin. Their dark, curly heads slick in the sunshine like seals. They squeal and scream and giggle, their Aunty Kale’e watching from a plastic chair.
Such a strange juxtaposition of elements; plastic hose, pool, diapers, climbing structure, preformed chair: all from some factory in China, courtesy the petroleum industry: all imported for the enjoyment of the children of Paradise. Will we know any longer how to live, to play after Oil?
The mango trees sway and whisper in the breeze, answering, “Always.”
A word about “Feed Store Zealots”: I cannot write to an abstract audience. My stories have always come from my expectation of who will receive them, and in what context. For now, it suits me to think of my companions in dialogue at Ray’s. I visualize the characters I came to know over beer and tobacco, scattered amidst the dusty shelves of weird oddities destined for some ranch or farm. Senior Bradley standing at the counter or busting off to answer this call or that. Big John with his Big Cup, AJ humbly snarfing his next smoke, Silver Buckle Mike and Buxom Debby, and of course Terry Stevens contemplating the odds of the next flip of the troublesome quarter. I also see my drinking buddies at The Bar: Lovely Linda, Jolene the Joy Machine, The Three Mikes, Rose & Jerry, Chuck & Gerry, 8-Ball Randall, Hard Hat Dave and Windmill, Buddy Joel… You are all still so much a part of my internal landscape. Perhaps you will all be the subjects of letters to my family here, once I ‘gypsy’ again.
Son Matt cannot believe I have purchased a 24 pack of Red & White Bud’s. Neither can I, but how else could I bring you all here with me? It will be good to see your faces again, but for now, you are my crazy-ass comrades from Brown’s Valley. You, Ray, say, “You’re different. But, you’re alright.” You have no idea. Well, maybe now, you really do. You’re absolutely correct: different, but alright. And better all the time.
Aloha,
Celeste

Hawaii for Idiots

Friday, October 30, 2009
Aloha, Feed Store Zealots!
This morning came earlier than expected as sunshine finally graced our ohana (“Home”). From the upper deck I can see the ocean, facing east, and the strange mist that rises from the active volcano, Kilauaea, to the south. Magpies and doves sound off from the towering mango trees as an insomniac koki frog chirps from the underbrush.
I have been assigned the task of animal upkeep, which is fine. Two cats, one gorgeous Siberian half-breed named “Haole Boy”, which means “White Boy”, 7 hens, and a miserable 4month old sow in a metal pen out back. The penned hog was dropped off by a brother-in-law who did not have room for it anymore. A male is due in a few days to join her. She stands now in several inches of unavoidable perma-muck and I am appalled at this disgusting situation. Today I will rake excess hay from the chickens for her to at least rest upon: it is one thing to raise an animal for food, another to leave her in a 4x6 cage with no place to rest, nothing to occupy her intelligence or nourish her soul. How could one ever eat such a being? What would there be in such a creature to feed you? Meat? Suffering? I think not.
Yesterday I finally began to understand why I came here. Something that had been asleep slowly woke. It rained hard all night and was only somewhat diminished by mid-afternoon. Greyness and damp surrounded us as son Matt and I drove north to Hilo proper, talking privately at last about family issues and the daily grind of family life. He shook his head at the story of the legal battle brewing between his adopted father and I, and I wondered at how this young man had grown so wise and settled in a strange land.
The dialect of the Islands, “Pidgin”, and the slight upward-turning drawl of the locals, are very easy to pick up, and once in place, difficult to lose. Mothers will chastise their young, “not to talk pidgin: it makes you sound ignorant.” But it’s something like ebonics: if black kids in the city speak like white people they are brutalized by their friends. But white society presses their tongues to lose the cadence of the streets in favor of classic American-ese. Hawaiian children have also their own language of lilting and strangely drawn out or suddenly halting vowels and softened consonants. “Haole”, sounds like “Howlee”, and means oddly enough, not just ‘white’, but ‘ghost’. “Hawaii” is actually pronounced, Ha-VA-(stop)-ee. Soft, halting, evocative. Like the Hawaiians themselves.
I mention this because my speech is beginning to change slowly, even as I wrestle against it. I don’t want to sound like some stupid haole woman trying to be Hawaiian. Matt says, “It’s OK. It makes it easier for the locals to accept you. At least you’re trying to be here, and not looking down on them.” I feel foolish, but understand. It’s kind of like swearing around some people but not others. It’s like learning to accept “nigger” from your friends, but not say it yourself, except when it does really fit. And sometimes it does.
I am not here to become Hawaiian. I am here to become a better haole. To gentle my Irish nature, remember how to live in peace with family, neighbors and the Earth itself. To feel the rain on my skin without resorting to the purported protection of an umbrella. To live in a house of 6 women and 2 men sharing one bathroom without rancor. To sit with my grandson Adam by a fire (Ahi, just like the red-fleshed tuna we enjoy) of wood scraps under the South Pacific sky wondering “if the ‘ahi’ will eat the ‘ohia’ (wood) all gone.”
Yesterday I remembered why I came here: for love and acceptance and peace among relative strangers. I was beginning to find it amongst my Feed Store clan, with the Carlisle’s and the Stevens. But it seemed as if I was already on an island in a sea of suppressed resentment and fear. It felt like I could not be myself, but had to press myself into a mold not of my making. The history of the Fellowship struggle, of the poisonous competition between Bruce Helft and myself nipping at my heels like Bea with her cattle. I felt enslaved to the short past of my existence in Oregon House so that a trip to the grocery store or post office became a mine field of looks and gestures designed to erode my confidence and sense of safety, of belonging.
When I got off the plane in Hilo, the local security guards smiled warmly, their smiles broadening as I smiled in return to the point of silly grins as if we were long-lost friends who were so very glad to see each other, yet constrained by circumstance from hugging our greetings. On the Islands everyone is ‘cousin’, ‘sistah’, ‘bruddah’, or ‘auntie’. “We are family,” they say, and mean, with their eyes and flashing white smiles. It only takes the slightest genuine smile to generate absolute warmth and hospitality.
At San Francisco International it was mayhem as the Hawaiian Airlines crew tried to accommodate each and every passenger checking in. They were so intent on being helpful that they ended up swamping the desk, clogging the doorways with baggage still to be checked, while passengers tried to navigate the self-help computer screens with the somewhat less-than-helpful assistance of the crew. It was typical of Hawaiians to be so steeped in Aloha as to be inefficient.
Finally, a young man, whose one bag (which would have fit the contents of all three of my pieces of luggage: pity the handler who has to haul that, I thought) was just 4 pounds overweight, became testy and critical of the woman in charge of check-in.
“Your customer service is utterly ludicrous,” he snarled.
“Sir, I am only trying to be helpful,” said the woman.
“Well, you’re not. You barked at me, and you are not being helpful at all. This is anarchy!”
I’m thinking:
You idiot! Don’t you know what is about to happen to you? I do. They will put a little mark on your ticket that means, ‘Give dis bruddah da shit, Cuz.” So now, everywhere you go on the islands you will have a hard time. You will go through security checks tree times. Your luggage will be the last off the plane. Your food will be cold, and maybe even contain bodily fluids. The smiles you see will be fake and will really mean, ‘Stupid Haole, go home.’ You will hate Hawaii, and will never want to come back here. You will not have Aloha.
But, uncharacteristically, I hold my tongue, because I don’t like him either, and I feel sorry for his pregnant wife who will experience the subtly hostile indifference aimed at her husband. Locals will sense her unease, even as they revere her femininity and expectant motherhood, making her a minor goddess on this Island of matriarchs. If she defers to him, she also will be lost. If she is strong and gets him under control, and learns to smile first and ask second, she may atone for her husband’s rudeness. They have a chance of happiness here if she can muster her maternal confidence.
But she does not. She is meek. She thinks he knows best. She is all of 25, married to a pompous asshole, 6 months pregnant.
Now the crew is asking him what country he is from. I cannot help it, but laugh out loud.
They are in for it.
There is no counter word for Aloha. But it’s there, nonetheless. It’s there.
Today, I practice my Aloha.

Love, Breath, Peace,

Celeste