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"Trying to breathe Hawaii's past into the present:"
plate lunch stand with an old
tuna fish can for an ash tray.
grade school photo with floral patterns on shirts and dresses, our brown faces, white teeth above bare feet.
beer in the back yard, and an open guitar case, someone's aunty doing Hula in a tank top, sexy, and thick with good living.
picking
puka shells at sandy beach before the sun rise, with sea turtles floating just beyond the shore
break.
buying lunches from a truck at the beach, packed in a card board box, wrapped with
white string, chop stick, napkin, 2 scoop rice, macaroni salad and teri beef.
picking sea weed
out of our pubic hair in the outdoor fresh cold water shower at makapu'u beach park.
seeing
Gabby Pahinui wild eye'd and lost in a bar's parking lot at night, after drinking at a koko marina bar, trying to numb the loss of a vanishing era of an innocent island, Atta, Blah, Joe Gang, Sonny and Gabby's
mythical waimanalo backyard, slack key, guitar soul soothed the whole 1970's island.
coming down
off the ridge into valleys along muddy trails, strewn with broken open fallen guava, pink and teaming with
fruit flies, the moist forest along streams feeding ginger blossoms, walking down into the dryness of
the flat land of the valley mouth.
stealing mangos off the trees.
Picking watercress from
the crawfish filled fresh water spring fed flats of Beano's Pearl Harbor farm, eating it right there, standing in the water.
spear fishing with Kaipo and John John at Ka'a'ava, them teaching me
how to lure a squid from it's hole, find the fish in a lava bed, reminding me to let the little ones go, and to only spear the big fish, ... and only what you can eat.
Hanging with the men as they buried
the kalua pig wrapped in banana leaf, encased in hot rocks in the ground over night, talking story until
dawn, when we dug up the delicious steaming meat.
Val Ching weaving hats at Waikiki beach for
tourists, a retired fire fighter now "beach boy", his once hard body and brown leather skin
now slightly soft with the gentleness of middle age, he, sleeping with my mother at night, teaching me to "throw
net" for fish in the day. practicing in the park, using tree leaves for pretend fish.
the whole
crow's nest bar room all laughing to Kent Bowman (aka "kk cow manua"), drinking primo beer.
long gone kailua drive in and portlock pier.
plump frogs hopping across the wet grass on
a rainy night, before pesticides all but killed them off.
snails on the sidewalk in the dewy morning on the way to school.
cock-a-roaches running for cover when we'd switch the kitchen light on in
the middle of the night. the clicking of gheckos on the window sill. the purr of island doves outside my bedroom
in the early morning. the clatter of myna birds in the banyan trees in the red streak of sunset.
a brown paper bag filled with plumeria, the needle and thread sticking to our fingers from the flower's
milky sap, as we made leis out on the lanai.
old Chinese man behind the counter of a cracked seed store
with a tide chart on the wall, huge glass jars filled with pickled plum.
Japanese lady grinding ice into
shave ice cones after school.
the smell of resin and catalyst soaked fiberglass in the garage, as we
patched a surfboard.
my cat's rough tongue licking the salt of evaporated ocean off my skin when
I got home from the beach.
Jerry lopez: The soul surfer with the Buddha's hands, who's bones
must have been wrapped in a mystic's skin to be that Zen like calm above a bone crushing reef. His
relation to the water had nothing to do with profession. It was spiritual and sensual. He was devoted to
E'hukai beach and something simple and eternal... His woman must have had to make peace with the ocean. (Who could stand in the way of such love?) - or - (to share him with her like that).
the friggit birds circling
high above the drooping still wind palm fronds in a Kona weather calm before a storm that could last days or weeks, full of wind thrashing, white water wave capping, while we searched the shore line for big
green glass fish net balls that broke lose and drifted all the way from Japan.
an old Hawaiian man floating way outside the line up on a homemade wooden paipo board, nobody drops in on him. in the shore break we all are bobbing in the ocean, waiting like seals with our hair slicked back by the salt water. an incoming
set is greeted with hoot's and hollers from body surfers jockeying for position with swimfins and mostly
friendly young man aggression.
buying fresh ahi poke' at foodland, sand still on our feet, no shirt, no slippers, wet trunks.
no shoes, no shirt, no problem.
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