Hawai'i Four.
I do not have a singular narrative about the last 20+ months, so tighten your seat belts.
I now live on the rim of an extinct volcano, which now has the harmless sounding name, The Punchbowl, but really, it is Puowaina, the Hill of Sacrifice, whose first known use was as an altar where Hawaiians offered humans to their gods, killing violators of the many taboos, or kapu - which involved being stoned, clubbed, strangled, drowned, stretched offa trees, or burned alive. It is not the only volcano I see on a daily basis, but it does make one thoughtful living in proximity to such a thing.
The islands of Hawaii literally leap from the ocean, scaling themselves into rugged mountains clearly and impressively visible from the sea. The proximity of the seaward (makai) side to the mountain side (mauka) is a constant reminder that this place is hugely different from the comparatively flat, dull, landscape-free New England, New York City, Netherlands that I have lived in.
It has a wild, rich green beauty and orange, iron-rust tinted soil, a pleasant smell of the always near and present Pacific Ocean that are a constant reminder of one's place on the planet. As a result, the roads wind everywhere, two lanes to one lane, sudden left turns, three one-ways in a row, no straight shot home other than the one everyone is using.
I am reminded constantly, too, that I don't exactly belong here. I am a member of a minority, surrounded by descendants of the native Hawaiians, by people of the orient and Indonesia, living in a kingdom wrested from its rightful owners. That Americans were the ones to do the wresting, rather than the Japanese, Dutch, or Chinese was a mere matter of timing. I hope that one day these islands are returned to their rightful inhabitants, but I fear that is unlikely.
++++++++++++++++
Christmas Thoughts.
I remember Christmas Eve, 1976. My dad shook me awake, and said "Come along..." and we went up the three stairs and along the upstairs hallway toward his study to her "sewing room."
In it was a large box, containing the pieces and parts of a drafting table, which, door closed and locked for secrecy, we assembled and stood up in all its shiny glory, right down to the armature on the side for making things level, facing the east window, and adorned it with a bow. The door was sealed, off I went to bed, and dad, too, with mischievous smiles.
Usually, we woke up as kids, rushed down to the fireplace to see the stockings. We each had huge, needlepointed stockings, big enough to loosely cover a large adult foot, filled with the contents of a large paper bag she kept in the back of her closet and filled, all year, with goodies she happened upon for each of us, some of them quite expensive and luxurious: diamond earrings for my sisters come to mind, sister Neile says "No earrings, always some candy and chocolates. Always some small games like jacks. Always overflowing."
Not this morning - in front of (at least me) dad ushered mom to the door to her sewing room, opened the door, and let her in first. She saw the drafting table, and after a moment of oh-mouthed, stunned silence, put her hands to her mouth and burst into happy tears: she now had what she needed to do, to get badass at Landscape Design.
Over the next many years, Mom assembled a perfectly enormous library of gardening books: butterfly gardens, english church gardens, you name it in gardening, she had a book on it. A troop of (to me,) elderly women came to clear out the wall of them, after her death, the female iteration of the Illuminati or Masons: the Garden Club of America, in about an hour.
My rough calculation is that they trundled about an English ton of books, 2240 pounds, into some secret library where they plot to deploy enormous beds of flowers, which apparently make people happy, and if that isn't a Plan For World Domination, I'm not really sure what is.
You've Been Warned.
++++++++++++++++
Things I looked for coming here:
- No Lyme Disease!
- No mosquitos (but I've heard of them.)
- No Snow
- No deep icy puddles to step in in your nice shoes on the way to work, leaving you with cold wet feet all day
- No icy wind that pierces four layers of clothing in 1/10th of a second
- No radical 110˚ heat
- Few American Taliban
- Fantastic Weather
Things I found out but did not expect:
- Drivers here are, well, terrible, maybe. More on that later.
- Not a common through-port for friends who are travelers.
- American Taliban.
- There are a few straight roads, but weird stuff happens to city planning when you crunch your mountains (mauka) up against the sea (makai, the "a's" look like waves), apparently. The result is a lot of corkscrew roads, (and flavors of rain,) which get very interesting up in the mountains as an Uber driver especially when there is Road Work.
- Speaking of which, driving, which great public transport in NYC and the Netherlands had me spoiled rotten. The Bus here is pretty awesome, but fantastically time consuming, and, why no trams?! How much is your time worth?
- Rainbows! Fat ones, skinny ones, rainbows that climb on rocks, tough rainbows, sissy rainbows, even ones with chicken pox! Seriously, we got an enormous variety of rainbows. It apparently causes car accidents. See below.
- Having to drive, after 30 years in NYC, where I was driving twice a year. There are a LOT more people/cars on the road.
- Living in a wrested colony, and not being happy about it. Don't get me wrong, it is an honor and a privilege living here, but I am a Haole, and sense my intrusion on this native culture.
- Unlike NYC and Amsterdam, people here are generally happy, by nature.
- People still see fit to start up weirdly personal conversations with me, even if I'm in a circle of people already conversing.
- The sheer variety of rain, from the rainbow-food that makes all the rainbows happen, what with the thin rain coming from behind the mountains opposite the sun, which you have to have to get a rainbow, to that thing in Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach, where the Cloud Men do wild stuff, and the sky falls.
++++++++++++++++
On Driving in Hawaii.
The last time I drove regularly, probably 1992, I drove a LOT. At 24, I drove for work, for a law firm in Fairfield, CT, as a title searcher, a court filer, a researcher, a vacationer, and I toured as a Deadhead, clocking about 60,000 miles a year for 3 years. New Haven, Bridgeport, Hartford, all the small towns around Fairfield, I knew every nook and cranny of every Town Hall and courtroom.
I had this fantastic white Toyota pickup with a cab, named Bessie, after a summer camp school bus that took us on canoe trips and into the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and an awesomely hot inside-and-out red-headed girlfriend named Lora Maltin, and we had a blast. I drove a LOT.
But I think there were an awful lot less people on the road: it is not just Hawaii... there are a lot more people driving now.
But some things I've seen which I didn't see while driving in NY, CT, Maine, to 250 or so dead shows across the states, and in and on the way to Detroit more recently, that I see here now:
- Cross three lanes of traffic with no signal.
- Signal? What's a signal?
- Here, lets see you turn out of the left lane in front of oncoming traffic, even though a light would let you do so safely in 90 seconds, excuse me while I knock over this fire hydrant avoiding smashing into you and others
- Go ahead, go ahead, there are 19 cars behind me through 3 red lights in all the middle of an intersection, but Aloha, go ahead, take your 180 seconds to be sure
- Why, why would you need headlights after dark?
- I'm just gonna go turn ahead of you, that's okthanksbye.
- The deep-seated need to make an enormous amount of noise with your motorcycle at 3 AM, waking up (literally) thousands of people. You, sir, and yes, you are male, are an Sr. Varsity Asshat.
- Pot holes the size of hubcaps and 4" deep. I thought that needed freezing. Not so, apparently. Good luck, tires.
- Tiny cars tailgating at 40 mph with a single foot to spare.
**
On a happier note, I've been making fantastic kombucha and ginger beer, exploring the Instant Pot, and have more happiness than anywhere I have lived, driving home in the beautiful sunset and doing basic but challenging work. Many of the people here are interesting and cool and have good stories about having been born here or migrated here, one of whom had his 40th anniversary here today. And, it is a generally happy place.
So, there's that.
