Mountains and Islands

Speed bumps. You know them, those jolting bars of raised blacktop placed across roadways or in parking lots to control drivers' speed. Today, I traveled a long, lonely road to my pal Steve's farm. He wants me to write some copy for his new website. I've been buying his jams and jellies for a couple of years now. Anyway, I couldn't help but noticing the placards warning motorists along the way of those sharp rises in the pavement. Diamond shaped and yellow, they look like yield signs but say, "speed hump." That's what they call them here. Speed humps. What an image. There are some in things in life that should not be rushed and humping is one of them. Steve has tiny dogs that dart around in front of the car as you pull in through his gate. I stopped, of course, for fear of hitting them, and the gate closed on my car door. It's a thrash and bash mobile, so no harm was done. He waved me in, shouting, "Don't worry. They're fast. ...

The tradewinds are dead, dead, dead this morning and the vog , like Old Man River, just keeps on rollin ' alo -o-o- ong . Our zucchini leaves will be fried before noon. Cilantro? Fugettaboutit ! It's history. Lettuce? No chance. On Saturday night, Ron was watching something on the History channel while I was, as always, parked on the couch, legs crossed Indian style as we used to say (though I'm sure that's no longer PC) with my laptop, believe it or not, on my lap. The announcer made a reference to Casanova . Ron rose from his spot and headed to the kitchen to get himself a beer. This was an anomaly , since that's typically my job. He stopped en route , right in front of me, and stuck his gut out as far as he could, swaying his back just a bit for added effect. I looked up. "What do you think? Could I be a Casanova ?" he asked, a goofy grin plastered just below the mustache. "Maybe a casse role ," I said. Yeah, it was hilarious...

We were on our way to town the other day - we needed beer and wanted papayas - listening to that venerable radio news source, NPR. They're professional. They're knowledgeable. Master journalists. The two anchors talked about the exploits of a firm owned by Blackwater , the company doing work in Iraq. I'll admit I tuned out for a moment, mentally that is, my mind somewhere far away. As I stared through the window, the woman's voice faded, to become vague and distant, obscured by the whir of passing trucks with over-sized mud tires. Then, a single word wrangled my attention away from the buzz of traffic, the passing foliage, the dashboard squeaks. "Did she just say, ' subsiderary ?'" I asked. "Yes, I think she did," Ron said. "Un-f#$@%^ believable," I said. I didn't say that out loud of course, because that would be crude and classless, but I thought it. OK maybe I said it. The male voice followed, using the same w...

When I told Ron I would become a writing tutor, he said that was impossible, since I'm not English. (I have so rubbed off on this guy.) Together, students and I hammer home thesis statements and smooth paragraph transitions. We identify possessives and the need for those pesky apostrophes that go with them. We ensure proper tense and article usage, fix sentence fragments and run-ons; you get the picture. It's satisfying to see the lights come on when they recognize the errors themselves and craft fine sentences right before my eyes. There is, however, a dark side to the tutoring trade, a sordid element, a seedy underbelly. On Thursday afternoon, a girl approached the desk while I was working with another student. She waved a paper in front of me, interrupting our session. I recognized the form. Some lower level English course instructors require that students review each assignment with a tutor. The tutor checks off each element reviewed, then initials the sheet. ...

I am standing at the kitchen sink washing dishes when I hear Ron get up from his nap.   "What do you want for dinner tonight?"  He asks.  This is the first and most important question we address most days. "I don't know.  Anything," I say.  This is my customary answer.  (It's our version of, What do you want to do?  I don't know.  What do you want to do? )   "We can have that masala sauce we bought the other day with some chicken and stir-fry vegetables," he says. "We have stir fry vegetables?" I confirm.  "Yep.  I bought some," he says.   "Sounds good to me," I say.  "Are you getting up?" I ask, dishes rumbling in the sink. "No. I just had to pee," he says.  (Are you riveted yet?  I swear to Pele, this is how boring we really are.) "OK. Have a nice nappy," I say.  That's what we call it.  A nappy.  I resume with the dishes. Left to my own, inner mental devices, it's...

Adventure!  That's what my buddy Kathie and I had today.  We traveled to Kaimu, to The Kalapana Cafe.  It may well be the best burger you can get on this island.  The end of the road was quiet.  There were a few monks with shaved heads milling about in loud, yellow and orange robes. One girl in a bikini advertised the perils of mis-stepping on the lava when so clad, a nice strawberry on her thigh and a bleeding knee.  A few tourists, a local or two.  A dog curled up in the corner by our table.  We disturbed her nap when we sat down, so she sauntered over to another, unoccupied corner.  Papayas were ripening on the trees that grew out of the gravel adjacent to the place.  Coconut palms, noni and mango trees lined the parking lot. Kalapana Cafe may be the only burger joint in the world with outdoor seating and fresh orchids to accent each table.  We ate a satisfying, all-American lunch, then meandered out onto the pahoehoe ourselves, not wearing bikinis, thankful for red cinder dus...

Ah blissful ignorance!  A year ago, I had no problem launching into a new project, typing away for hours on end, tiny springs in my fingers, a story teller telling a story, welling with confidence.  No misgivings.  No reticence.  I was good and I knew it.  I had been accepted to a program, goll - dernit and my mother and friends had been telling me I was awesome for half a century.  Now, I know better.  I have been trained to recognize crap when I read it, and when I write it.  I can still spend hours piling words onto a page, only to see them for what they are; a rambling, aimless heap of dung.  There's no story in this effort and there may never be.  It's words, sentences, paragraphs, lying around haphazard, like Jenga blocks after somebody gets cocky and pulls too hard, or too slow, and the tower crumbles.  Some of the sentences are good, no doubt, but it will take Herculean effort and no small amount of luck to assemble and re-write it all into something readable.   So ...

Four miles in 45 minutes, 12 seconds today on the guinea pig wheel, aka the treadmill.  Woohoo!  My sneakers were like tiny rockets, flames blasting from their heels.  Smoke billowed up from the rubber conveyor.  Smokin'!   As it turns out, I lost three pounds at the residency.  Makes me rethink my diet strategy.  Move over Jenny Craig.  Outa the way Weight Watchers.  No exercise, extreme sleep deprivation, college cafeteria food, tables sprinkled with mini-candy bars, occasional cookies, plenty of carrot cake and ample amounts of alcohol consumed well into the wee hours - that's the ticket. Follow that with a train ride and three days eating hunks of halibut as big as your head, wash them down with heavy ale and those pounds just melt away.   As I read the job postings for English Composition and Creative Writing instructors at colleges across the country, I can't help notice one glaring element they all have in common; college teaching experience required.  I have teachin...

Ron and I took a quick trip to town for out third fleecing of the week by Hilo grocers.  We were out of TP and diesel for the convertible (aka the tractor) and needed tofu for the stir fry he wants to make tonight, so we loaded the trash and the reusable shopping bags into the car and headed for town.  Stopping at the Glenwood transfer station to unload the trunk of rubbish (no trash service here, folks) we proceeded on to an otherwise uneventful if hot, muggy and wallet-emptying sojourn.  Our highlight came in the form of a woman, older than Delaware, walking at the speed of frozen syrup, out of the store and along the sidewalk as we walked in.  She was wearing an orange and yellow flowered smock, black and white checkered capris and a floppy hat that seemed to weigh her head down on one side, cocking it to the left.  She passed us and was just far enough to be out of earshot when Ron said,  "Now that's an outfit." He leaned toward me as he said it, talking out of the s...

There's a tiny rash under my left nostril that's been bugging me for weeks now, so I traveled the coast to Honoka'a Town to see the doctor.  He gave it his best guess, shrugged, prescribed some ointment and sent me on my merry way.  I expected the journey to be rainy and it was, but only in short, bursts and squalls.  For the most part, it was nice.  No big surf in the ocean. No great gale force winds. It was just a day, and a descent one at that.  Felecia has fizzled and veered northward toward O'ahu and Maui.    Tex Fine Foods provided lunch; kalua cabbage wrap, sweet potato chips and a malasada to bring home for dessert later on tonight.  Love Tex.   The island seems quiet these days.  Maybe it's because the prospect of the now dwindled storm put a damper on things.  Maybe tourism is down a little more again this month.  Traffic was light along the highway.  Tex was not so busy.  Service was fast. I had the radio tuned to a local radio station as I headed back th...

I don't like hurricanes.  I don't like the threat of hurricanes.  I'm not keen on tropical storms, either.  That's what they say Felicia will be when it finally comes a knockin .'  Right now, however, she's classified as category four, which is no slight breeze.  Felecia is approaching from the southeast, which means it will hit our island first.  Now, if you look at a globe, you can see that the Hawaiian Islands, the most isolated archipelago on earth, is but a speck on the vast Pacific Ocean.  You'd think the odds of us being hit by a hurricane are roughly the same as someone winning the Powerball lottery.  The thing is, someone always eventually wins that lottery, even at a bajillion to one.  So too do hurricanes, given enough shots at it, eventually hit these islands.  The last big hit was Iniki , which nearly wiped Kauai off the planet We've had a few near misses since then.  There are no hurricanes in Colorado.  I'll take my chances with a n...

Charlie the chicken.  I've taken to calling him Chuck instead.  Charlie rhymes with Harley, which is one of the cat's names.  Chuck rhymes with cluck which is what roosters do.  They also crow.  Roosters crow at dawn, of course.  They belt it out whenever they hear other roosters crowing from however far away.  They crow if a car speeds by or a bird sings in a nearby tree of a bee buzzes overhead or for whatever the hell reason and whenever they jolly well feel like it.  Ron finds this endearing.  He has already told me at least a dozen times not to get too attached. "They don't live very long, you know," he says. "He's a rooster," I say.  "I'm just sayin'," he says.  "I wouldn't get too attached." "He has a tiny head and an enormous body by comparison and he poops on the driveway and crows all damn day," I say. "He's a good boy," Ron says.  "He seems to like bananas." "He...

Home. I learned on the way from the airport yesterday that Ron has endeared himself to the new neighbor by firing off shotgun blasts.  His objective in making such a racket was not to kill anything (although if the neighbor insists on being pissy, that could change).  It was instead to scare off the pig family that has chosen a spot near our water tank to nest, or burrow, or whatever pigs do to set up house.  Apparently, new neighbor guy likes to sleep during the day. He told Ron that shooting to scare them would do no good.  He insisted, and we've heard this before, that you have to kill them to get rid of them. Well, they're gone, probably to someplace quieter.  We were told we couldn't grow zucchini here too, but that was hogwash, pun intended.   Speaking of noise, we have a new critter, another interloper that Ron has named and feeds and calls, "good boy."  Charlie the chicken.  More specifically, Charlie the rooster.  He's pretty, but annoying.  His favor...

No cookies were tossed this afternoon, by me or anyone else on board.  No turkey on sourdough with tomato, mayo, mustard and onion, either.  Star of the Northwest was spared, as was the plankton rich, puffin pocked sea. It's a miracle of modern medicine (bonine) and a testament to the tranquility of Reserection Bay.  The mellow ride held fast until we hit the open ocean, where the swell was met with a storm that rolled in.  I stayed on deck for most of the trip, pelted with cold rain and a brisk, chilly wind that helped keep the queasiness away.  Gail hung with me for shorter stretches, then went inside for beers and warmth.  Thank goodness I had on my Gorton's Fishstick-guy hat.   We saw eagles, stellar sea lions (on the rock in the middle of this photo), mountain goats, dahl porpoise, jelly fish, pink salmon and puffins.  The Kenai Fjords are grand, beautiful steep faces, craggy, rugged, stubbled with evergreens from timberline to the sea. Yesterday, we spent some time at the...

I know that writers are lousy but enthusiastic dancers.  They are great huggers.  Some are good singers.  A few play guitars.  One, I hear, plays the oboe.  I play the ukulele.  Badly. Badly is an adverb and adverbs are for sissies.  Where was I?  Oh yes.  Writers.  They are adventurers and homebodies.  They are flirts and back-patters.  And huggers.  Did I mention that? It's true, especially at the end of a two week intensive residency.  They stand in awe of their colleagues' eloquence, wit, lyrical prowess and overall, kick ass wordsmithin.'  Writers are sensitive - especially poets.  They ache to tell stories. They tell them in verse. They tell them with prose.  It's what writers do. Besides dance badly, that is.  Shit.  Am I a sissy or what? Writers drink. Boy howdy can they drink.   Howdy!  Writers need encouragement.  We are fragile.  If you don't understand us, you'd do well to support us.  We do not need encouragement to drink, however, nor is prodding r...

Last night, propped up, sleep deprived and feeling a little out of my element, I was about to bow out early from a party with my fellow writers here in the dorm.  It was fun, and I enjoyed chatting with individuals throughout the evening.  Truth be told however, I'm a little shy in certain situations.  Yeah, you read that right.  (Give me a break, all you knuckleheads who know me!)  Literary conversations with smart, well-read people slam home the fact that I should have spent less time watching Gilligan's Island re-runs or riding my bike or whacking fuzzy yellow balls or careening down mountainsides and more time as a thoughtful grown up with my schnoz poked into the pages of the classics.    I was poised to muster a graceful exit, to rise from my seat and bid everyone goodnight, when someone told a joke.  A joke.  They might as well have started passing around the coke tray.  All the world's a stage for a joke junkie.  I stayed, of course.  And all that stuff about bein...

You wanna be where you can see, troubles are all the same, You wanna go where everybody knows your name.    (Theme from Cheers) I was driving through the mountains today, gawking at the 14ers along highway 285, feeling fine, soaking in the scenery, pondering how I might figure a way back to this place.  The radio faded, so I hit 'seek.'  The numbers fluttered, then landed on the first notes of Man in the Mirror .  I started snapping my fingers, singing along.   Gonna make a change, for once in my life... I got to ... It's gonna feel real good, gonna make a difference ... and burst into tears.  Shit! Did I mention that I had a lovely dinner with the Cress family at my/their house?  A steak as big as a tractor tire, but much tastier.  Of course, I've never eaten a tire, so I'm just assuming... On Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Gloria Beim delivered the stellar news: I have no arthritis in my hip.  None.  Nada.  Zippola.  Did I mention this already?  I ran out of ginko a while...

As I sit here typing and refusing to pay for a wifi connection, I wonder if this kooky font will transfer via cut and past from my word processor to the blog. No matter. I’ll write it now in this whimsical way and hope for the best. It was a fun packed, whirlwind weekend in L.A. La la la la la la..... I caught up with some old friends at a part Friday night, some I haven’t seen in way too long. Good food, chilly libations and lively conversation were had and enjoyed by all. There was a nice beach bike ride on a congested fourth of July.  It was so crowded, there were spots along the way where we had to walk our bikes, wedging through the throngs that had spread from party houses out over the path. My only mishap was a dribble of beer on my hand made my a staggering young delinquent shouting, “USA, USA!” Cops were everywhere - on foot, on bikes, on horses - as were revelers and weirdos. What’s not to like about L.A? Stretches of sand were completely covered by towels and shelters and ...

To kill time yesterday while my car was being inspected, I walked to town for a nice lunch at Aloha Luigi, then down to the bayfront to pick up some mints at the candy store strong enough to kill the garlic from my ceasar wrap. Back at Midas, I was told I needed new back break shoes. Mine were cracked. I saw the cracks for myself. So while they fitted the Focus for those, I strolled over to Starbucks, right next door. There I sat reading my classmates' manuscripts and enjoying a slightly sweetened iced coffee when the woman sitting next to me leaned over, tapped me on the arm and asked, "Excuse me. How do you spell heritage?" Really? Is this years-long Hawaii experiment just one big cosmic joke, a bad dream from which I will never awaken and during which I will be asked to spell simple, everyday words wherever I seek solace? I spelled the word. Thankfully, this lady turned out to be different from the man at the library (please refer to a previous blog for that stor...

I broke my own person treadmill record yesterday, jogging four miles in 45:30.  That's pretty slow by most standards, but it's Speedy Gonzales for me.  I ran to Michael Jackson as my version of a tribute, so maybe that's why the feet flew so fast.  I defy anyone to listen to Jam and not move.   What a day; Michael, Farrah and the incessant rain. Farrah Faucet lived life on her own terms.  She was beautiful and smart.  When faced with a terminal disease, she fought the good fight.   Cheers to you, Farrah. I remember where I was when Elvis died.  I had seen him in concert (with my parents, no less) just a month earlier.  I can also picture the exact moment when I heard the news about John Lennon.  My friend and soon-to-be-housemate Lori and I were moving a mattress on the top of my Volkswagon Beetle to our new digs.  We were holding onto the plastic handles through open windows in a futile attempt to keep the thing from catching air as we crept along.  The two of us gasped w...