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.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
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
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.
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.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
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
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
Friday, March 12, 2010
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
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
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
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
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
Sunday, March 7, 2010
FSZ.10.28.2009
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Dear Feed Store Zealots,
ALOHA! That means “Hello”, “Goodbye”, “Love”, “Breath/Breathe” and a whole lot of other really nice things.
So, Aloha, everyone.
It’s my first morning on the Island of Hawaii in the chain of islands that we know as “Hawaii”. The Coqui frogs are still chirping outside but they will soon go to sleep. Meanwhile, the crickets are non-stop and the mourning doves have just begun to coo-coo-ooo-ooo-ooo… The air is moist and warm, about 75 and holding. It has rained on and off since I arrived yesterday afternoon.
I should say a bit about the Coqui frogs. Coqui’s are a non-native invasive species accidentally imported to the Islands in what was probably a vegetation shipment from the Phillipines for one of the ‘Big Box’ hardware outlets on Hawaii. They are nocturnal, hence the dusk-till-dawn chirping, and have no enemies here. They thrive in warm, wet climates and have reproduced over the past 10 or so years like Eveready Bunnies. The sound they make altogether is a maddening cacophony: the first note is higher than the second, starting with a high ‘C’ and ending about a 5th or so higher: ko-KEE, ko-KEE. It is incessant and annoying until you learn to ignore it, and unfortunately is so close to the beginning notes of my cell’s ringtone that I keep reaching for the off button. No good: they just keep on thrumming.
Speaking of which, the charming whistle tune Verizon so cheerily provides as a ringtone is, in fact, the theme song for a commercial for medication purported to alleviate “Male erective dysfunction”. I’m sorry, but this just begs the question, why the need to qualify it as a “Male” dysfunction? Is there such a thing as “Female erectile dysfunction”? I mean, really. Where does the male ego stop? Why don’t they have a pill for “Male Inability to Do the Dishes”, or “Male Sensory Overload While Shopping”? (I can just see Mike’s face about now…) As if the occasional struggle to ‘perform on demand’ was the worst of the myriad male dysfunctions.
I have been challenged to get my son Matt’s garden back on track. The soil is freakin’ black with ground volcanic cinder, and in some places is downright clayey. Where clay came from on such new ground is a mystery to all. There is some sense that the soil is from the initial construction of the road system or construction of the random houses on this hillside. All the kids (my son, his financee’, and entourage) know is that the zucchini, tomatoes and summer squash grew enormously and then turned black and died before blooming.
Apparently, there is no quintessential guide to vegetable gardening in Hawaii, save an ancient tome written by an old Japanese lady in Honolulu. The microclimates on the Islands don’t lend themselves to one-stop gardening advice: Matt’s land is sloping, East face, rainforest, and cooler temperatures than many other locations (60’s-80’s). The sun rose at about 5:30 this morning and will go down at about 6:30. The days will shorten somewhat, but not the extremes we see in the higher latitudes. That whole tilted sphere in space thing.
Dude! I just squished a micro-cockroach that seems to have come out of my laptop… ew, gross!
The growing season for, ahem, herb, here is divined as ‘short’ and ‘long’. You can put some stuff in the ground and it will dawdle along for 6 months, and plant again for a 3-4 month cycle. Furthermore, if your plants stay in the ground, during the winter months they will die back, and then start growing again when the season turns. Imagine: a double growing season without winter kills! “‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d”…that’s Hamlet.
Now, Matt has chickens and a pig, so manure is not an issue. They say that things planted in pigshit did really well at first, but the black rot struck anyway. Someone told them to mulch their plants, but that seems silly in a rainforest, even counterproductive. Someone else told them to put shredded newspaper under their plantings to attract worms. Maybe. We are considering physical barriers, like moats, or copper strips around individuals or beds, or perhaps gypsum, which most bugs won’t cross. I plan on testing the soil in all areas: I think there is a shortage of potash and an overabundance of carbon. What we’ve decided to do is mix in more cinder in the clayey terraces to aid aeration and drainage. I’m concerned that this will increase the carbon levels. My strongest sense is to stick to what actually likes to grow here: tropical or Asian varieties like longbeans, Japanese eggplant instead of European, and Kabocha squash instead of zucchini.
One other issue that is distressing for this lover of dark, leafy greens: Rats. Another non-native invasive species, brought courtesy of the early European travelers, have a parasite called “Rat Lung Worm”. Kind of makes your butt pucker just thinking about it, huh? Well, if snails crawl across infected rats’ droppings they pick up the parasite. Then, the parasite’s eggs are excreted in the slime of the snails as they crawl through your garden. If humans unwittingly eat the slime that may have been left behind on, say, your lettuce or spinach, the parasite is transferred. The resulting infestation can do a number of things: you may have flu-like symptoms; you may sicken and die, or perhaps; as in the case of a local, formerly healthy, young surfer dude, end up paralyzed for life. Spinach=death. No wonder I can’t get these people to eat chard!
Other interesting notes: almost all of the milk, beef and eggs consumed on the Islands are imported. In a place where Bermuda grass is a major maintenance nuisance, of rolling hills perpetually misted and rained upon, of moderate temperatures and stable day length, cows and chickens are a rarity. Weird, huh. Fighting cocks are everywhere, illegality notwithstanding.
Driving through the upland suburbs of Hilo proper, we passed a pasture of about 2+ acres where 2 varieties of cattle fed on verdant silage. (Is that the proper term: silage? Or is silage processed feed?) Some were a rusty red with odd Asian-type faces, the others looked to be angus. They looked well-fed but at 5 pm, all were grazinggrazinggrazing: no chewing of cuds here. From what I have learned from Terry they may be short on feed, but I would say due to shortage of space, not grass. They Bermuda was about as healthy as it gets, definitely. There is a cow pasture next door and today I will investigate. By the way, no shortage of cowpies or rain or warm temperatures. Plenty of gleaning to be done here on a daily basis, I think.
As for Avocado ‘farming’: Matt laughed out loud when I suggested the idea. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has at least one avocado tree in their yard. They grow like weeds, along with mango, papaya, banana and plumeria. Now, rambutan, a fabulously odd-looking lychee relative is grown on plantations for export at a premium. The trees are like mulberries, which are also raised for local consumption, and the fruits are about 2” in length and protected by a tough, red skin with curly, non-painful spikes protruding all around. The skin is easily split and peeled with a fingernail, exposing a moist white flesh surrounding a grape-sized pit. They last forever in the fridge and are fascinating and beloved by children, Middle Easterners and Asians. Now stop it you guys! Great to carry on picnics to the beach for a thirst quenching, low sugar snack. Most of the fruits we’re used to, like apples and peaches, are mealy and tasteless, as well as expensive, by the time they get here.
Well, it hasn’t rained for at least an hour now, so it’s making up for lost time. The rain floats in sometimes, while at other it just pours monsoon-style. Still, the rain and the air hover at 75 degrees, making it one long tepid shower.
Here come the pounding feet of my grandson Adam, 4. He calls me ‘Auntie’, the nickname given to any post-pubescent woman on the Islands. When I introduced myself as ‘Tutu’, which means grandmother, he looked around and asked, “Where is Tutu”, his maternal grandmother who lives on Kauai. I’ve been away too long. For now he calls me auntie, but soon hopefully he will remember that I am Tutu Sky, Grandmother Sky, my favorite nickname. Little Maya, nicknamed Choo-chee (no one knows why, but then there’s Genghis…) is 2 and full of beans. She wouldn’t look at me for the longest time, but gave a big squeeze and kiss at bedtime.
I have a little alcove in the upstairs of the a-frame while Matt completes the room addition. Jungle light filters in through the windows facing west and east. Today we will finish taping and then paint the new room, and hopefully Matt and all will be able to move in there within a few days. He has taught himself to build on a scale that is impressive given his lack of experience, money and time. The addition juts out to the north from the angled wall that slopes away to the south. The upstairs is a large room with windows and a loft, with a nice-sized bathroom filling the gap. He plans on placing colored river stones on the floor of the shower, and beautiful blue and green tiles on the walls. It will be his/my first tile job. Hooboy!
Jobs are scarce, menial and low-pay. Everyone is working the system: Matt is making $65/hr installing solar panels, and is still eligible for the bulk of his unemployment. Dawn has unemployment, works under the table for a tax accountant (how friggin ironic!), gets WIC allotments and a childcare subsidy. The childcare subsidy goes to her sister, who lives here under the radar, and who is also on unemployment. I will look for jobs, but bartending and administration assistant look to be the only viable option for now. I will look at subbing, but they are already furloughing teachers every other Friday and sending kids home to deal with the budget crisis. Meanwhile, tourism is down, and will peak again during the holidays. Until then, everyone seems to be holding their breath.
Dawn said last night, much as she hates to admit it, that what the Islands need is a major hurricane to bring in Federal Disaster funds. What is this country coming to when people actually hope for disaster? What happens when we’ve run out of money for unemployment, welfare, food stamps, medicare, education, and bail-outs? Will we leave Afghanistan and bring home 100,000 troops? To do what, exactly?
In thinking about what is going on around us, I wonder how we will all find our ways? I read an interesting little book on the plane: The Mercy, by Toni Morrison. She’s a black woman who wrote The Color Purple, and Beloved. This story focuses on four different women in the tobacco and sugar plantations during the 1700’s. Each woman was trapped, enslaved, literally and otherwise, by the social and economic conditions of the times. Even the white woman, a mail order bride from the Netherlands, became a slave when her husband died of small pox and prevailing law made her very widowhood illegal: she was neither able to inherit her husband’s wealth or property. Nor was it socially, morally or acceptable under the religious leadership of the colony for her to remarry.
Her 3 slave girls were neither her property nor were they able to be freed. The 2 indentured handymen, whom the husband had actually paid in small coin, were now owing more years of servitude as the cash payments did not shorten their contracts.
All in the end suffered financial and physical ruin. All wandered a strange and forbidding landscape of intermittent lawlessness and oppressive European laws and mores. Survival came down to outwitting disease, starvation, violence and death. Love was not a concept allowed for any other than God, whichever God you chose or was appointed. None could escape their fate.
Today we have new laws, new mores, new ideas and technologies. But for each of us, outwitting death and destruction is still our unavoidable fate.
The point of the story is this: we can be forced into slavery, we can accept slavery, we can even choose to enslave ourselves. How we deal with any of these choices defines us free- thinking and –feeling human beings. Many of us are angry with our government, employers, the economics or our times, or are fearful of what is to come in such uncertainty. It is in how we defeat these circumstances that we define and create a possibility of personal freedom. If we fight wrongly, we risk enslaving ourselves, whether to the law or our own psychology. If we fight well, righteously, then, perhaps, we may free not only ourselves but those who follow.
All in all, I am content to be here, and look forward to what comes next. I have no idea what that is, but I know that in the moments of choosing that arise every day, I choose enslavement or freedom. I hope I choose well.
Love and hugs to all, especially my dear friends with whom I have enjoyed hours of debate and amiable companionship,
Celeste
Dear Feed Store Zealots,
ALOHA! That means “Hello”, “Goodbye”, “Love”, “Breath/Breathe” and a whole lot of other really nice things.
So, Aloha, everyone.
It’s my first morning on the Island of Hawaii in the chain of islands that we know as “Hawaii”. The Coqui frogs are still chirping outside but they will soon go to sleep. Meanwhile, the crickets are non-stop and the mourning doves have just begun to coo-coo-ooo-ooo-ooo… The air is moist and warm, about 75 and holding. It has rained on and off since I arrived yesterday afternoon.
I should say a bit about the Coqui frogs. Coqui’s are a non-native invasive species accidentally imported to the Islands in what was probably a vegetation shipment from the Phillipines for one of the ‘Big Box’ hardware outlets on Hawaii. They are nocturnal, hence the dusk-till-dawn chirping, and have no enemies here. They thrive in warm, wet climates and have reproduced over the past 10 or so years like Eveready Bunnies. The sound they make altogether is a maddening cacophony: the first note is higher than the second, starting with a high ‘C’ and ending about a 5th or so higher: ko-KEE, ko-KEE. It is incessant and annoying until you learn to ignore it, and unfortunately is so close to the beginning notes of my cell’s ringtone that I keep reaching for the off button. No good: they just keep on thrumming.
Speaking of which, the charming whistle tune Verizon so cheerily provides as a ringtone is, in fact, the theme song for a commercial for medication purported to alleviate “Male erective dysfunction”. I’m sorry, but this just begs the question, why the need to qualify it as a “Male” dysfunction? Is there such a thing as “Female erectile dysfunction”? I mean, really. Where does the male ego stop? Why don’t they have a pill for “Male Inability to Do the Dishes”, or “Male Sensory Overload While Shopping”? (I can just see Mike’s face about now…) As if the occasional struggle to ‘perform on demand’ was the worst of the myriad male dysfunctions.
I have been challenged to get my son Matt’s garden back on track. The soil is freakin’ black with ground volcanic cinder, and in some places is downright clayey. Where clay came from on such new ground is a mystery to all. There is some sense that the soil is from the initial construction of the road system or construction of the random houses on this hillside. All the kids (my son, his financee’, and entourage) know is that the zucchini, tomatoes and summer squash grew enormously and then turned black and died before blooming.
Apparently, there is no quintessential guide to vegetable gardening in Hawaii, save an ancient tome written by an old Japanese lady in Honolulu. The microclimates on the Islands don’t lend themselves to one-stop gardening advice: Matt’s land is sloping, East face, rainforest, and cooler temperatures than many other locations (60’s-80’s). The sun rose at about 5:30 this morning and will go down at about 6:30. The days will shorten somewhat, but not the extremes we see in the higher latitudes. That whole tilted sphere in space thing.
Dude! I just squished a micro-cockroach that seems to have come out of my laptop… ew, gross!
The growing season for, ahem, herb, here is divined as ‘short’ and ‘long’. You can put some stuff in the ground and it will dawdle along for 6 months, and plant again for a 3-4 month cycle. Furthermore, if your plants stay in the ground, during the winter months they will die back, and then start growing again when the season turns. Imagine: a double growing season without winter kills! “‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wish’d”…that’s Hamlet.
Now, Matt has chickens and a pig, so manure is not an issue. They say that things planted in pigshit did really well at first, but the black rot struck anyway. Someone told them to mulch their plants, but that seems silly in a rainforest, even counterproductive. Someone else told them to put shredded newspaper under their plantings to attract worms. Maybe. We are considering physical barriers, like moats, or copper strips around individuals or beds, or perhaps gypsum, which most bugs won’t cross. I plan on testing the soil in all areas: I think there is a shortage of potash and an overabundance of carbon. What we’ve decided to do is mix in more cinder in the clayey terraces to aid aeration and drainage. I’m concerned that this will increase the carbon levels. My strongest sense is to stick to what actually likes to grow here: tropical or Asian varieties like longbeans, Japanese eggplant instead of European, and Kabocha squash instead of zucchini.
One other issue that is distressing for this lover of dark, leafy greens: Rats. Another non-native invasive species, brought courtesy of the early European travelers, have a parasite called “Rat Lung Worm”. Kind of makes your butt pucker just thinking about it, huh? Well, if snails crawl across infected rats’ droppings they pick up the parasite. Then, the parasite’s eggs are excreted in the slime of the snails as they crawl through your garden. If humans unwittingly eat the slime that may have been left behind on, say, your lettuce or spinach, the parasite is transferred. The resulting infestation can do a number of things: you may have flu-like symptoms; you may sicken and die, or perhaps; as in the case of a local, formerly healthy, young surfer dude, end up paralyzed for life. Spinach=death. No wonder I can’t get these people to eat chard!
Other interesting notes: almost all of the milk, beef and eggs consumed on the Islands are imported. In a place where Bermuda grass is a major maintenance nuisance, of rolling hills perpetually misted and rained upon, of moderate temperatures and stable day length, cows and chickens are a rarity. Weird, huh. Fighting cocks are everywhere, illegality notwithstanding.
Driving through the upland suburbs of Hilo proper, we passed a pasture of about 2+ acres where 2 varieties of cattle fed on verdant silage. (Is that the proper term: silage? Or is silage processed feed?) Some were a rusty red with odd Asian-type faces, the others looked to be angus. They looked well-fed but at 5 pm, all were grazinggrazinggrazing: no chewing of cuds here. From what I have learned from Terry they may be short on feed, but I would say due to shortage of space, not grass. They Bermuda was about as healthy as it gets, definitely. There is a cow pasture next door and today I will investigate. By the way, no shortage of cowpies or rain or warm temperatures. Plenty of gleaning to be done here on a daily basis, I think.
As for Avocado ‘farming’: Matt laughed out loud when I suggested the idea. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has at least one avocado tree in their yard. They grow like weeds, along with mango, papaya, banana and plumeria. Now, rambutan, a fabulously odd-looking lychee relative is grown on plantations for export at a premium. The trees are like mulberries, which are also raised for local consumption, and the fruits are about 2” in length and protected by a tough, red skin with curly, non-painful spikes protruding all around. The skin is easily split and peeled with a fingernail, exposing a moist white flesh surrounding a grape-sized pit. They last forever in the fridge and are fascinating and beloved by children, Middle Easterners and Asians. Now stop it you guys! Great to carry on picnics to the beach for a thirst quenching, low sugar snack. Most of the fruits we’re used to, like apples and peaches, are mealy and tasteless, as well as expensive, by the time they get here.
Well, it hasn’t rained for at least an hour now, so it’s making up for lost time. The rain floats in sometimes, while at other it just pours monsoon-style. Still, the rain and the air hover at 75 degrees, making it one long tepid shower.
Here come the pounding feet of my grandson Adam, 4. He calls me ‘Auntie’, the nickname given to any post-pubescent woman on the Islands. When I introduced myself as ‘Tutu’, which means grandmother, he looked around and asked, “Where is Tutu”, his maternal grandmother who lives on Kauai. I’ve been away too long. For now he calls me auntie, but soon hopefully he will remember that I am Tutu Sky, Grandmother Sky, my favorite nickname. Little Maya, nicknamed Choo-chee (no one knows why, but then there’s Genghis…) is 2 and full of beans. She wouldn’t look at me for the longest time, but gave a big squeeze and kiss at bedtime.
I have a little alcove in the upstairs of the a-frame while Matt completes the room addition. Jungle light filters in through the windows facing west and east. Today we will finish taping and then paint the new room, and hopefully Matt and all will be able to move in there within a few days. He has taught himself to build on a scale that is impressive given his lack of experience, money and time. The addition juts out to the north from the angled wall that slopes away to the south. The upstairs is a large room with windows and a loft, with a nice-sized bathroom filling the gap. He plans on placing colored river stones on the floor of the shower, and beautiful blue and green tiles on the walls. It will be his/my first tile job. Hooboy!
Jobs are scarce, menial and low-pay. Everyone is working the system: Matt is making $65/hr installing solar panels, and is still eligible for the bulk of his unemployment. Dawn has unemployment, works under the table for a tax accountant (how friggin ironic!), gets WIC allotments and a childcare subsidy. The childcare subsidy goes to her sister, who lives here under the radar, and who is also on unemployment. I will look for jobs, but bartending and administration assistant look to be the only viable option for now. I will look at subbing, but they are already furloughing teachers every other Friday and sending kids home to deal with the budget crisis. Meanwhile, tourism is down, and will peak again during the holidays. Until then, everyone seems to be holding their breath.
Dawn said last night, much as she hates to admit it, that what the Islands need is a major hurricane to bring in Federal Disaster funds. What is this country coming to when people actually hope for disaster? What happens when we’ve run out of money for unemployment, welfare, food stamps, medicare, education, and bail-outs? Will we leave Afghanistan and bring home 100,000 troops? To do what, exactly?
In thinking about what is going on around us, I wonder how we will all find our ways? I read an interesting little book on the plane: The Mercy, by Toni Morrison. She’s a black woman who wrote The Color Purple, and Beloved. This story focuses on four different women in the tobacco and sugar plantations during the 1700’s. Each woman was trapped, enslaved, literally and otherwise, by the social and economic conditions of the times. Even the white woman, a mail order bride from the Netherlands, became a slave when her husband died of small pox and prevailing law made her very widowhood illegal: she was neither able to inherit her husband’s wealth or property. Nor was it socially, morally or acceptable under the religious leadership of the colony for her to remarry.
Her 3 slave girls were neither her property nor were they able to be freed. The 2 indentured handymen, whom the husband had actually paid in small coin, were now owing more years of servitude as the cash payments did not shorten their contracts.
All in the end suffered financial and physical ruin. All wandered a strange and forbidding landscape of intermittent lawlessness and oppressive European laws and mores. Survival came down to outwitting disease, starvation, violence and death. Love was not a concept allowed for any other than God, whichever God you chose or was appointed. None could escape their fate.
Today we have new laws, new mores, new ideas and technologies. But for each of us, outwitting death and destruction is still our unavoidable fate.
The point of the story is this: we can be forced into slavery, we can accept slavery, we can even choose to enslave ourselves. How we deal with any of these choices defines us free- thinking and –feeling human beings. Many of us are angry with our government, employers, the economics or our times, or are fearful of what is to come in such uncertainty. It is in how we defeat these circumstances that we define and create a possibility of personal freedom. If we fight wrongly, we risk enslaving ourselves, whether to the law or our own psychology. If we fight well, righteously, then, perhaps, we may free not only ourselves but those who follow.
All in all, I am content to be here, and look forward to what comes next. I have no idea what that is, but I know that in the moments of choosing that arise every day, I choose enslavement or freedom. I hope I choose well.
Love and hugs to all, especially my dear friends with whom I have enjoyed hours of debate and amiable companionship,
Celeste
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