2/24/10: Older Instincts

I had a science teacher once who told my class that the moon is no bigger on the horizon than it is in the sky. But it always seemed mammoth, like a planetary floodlight. He insisted that it was an illusion our ancestors had passed down to us- the lingering eyes of hunters who had watched the horizon. I've never tried to prove him wrong by measuring the moon, but now I feel the old eyesight regaining control. There is no way to know my progenitors, but I feel their sight now swiveling in my head.

In an urban matrix our eyes function in planar space. Menus, books, computer screens, billboards and tables all tribute the rectangle. The commercial world is stacked like playing cards, easily read and shuffled. But I have left that, and play in twisted space now, in a jungle of bending shapes. My job depends on me reading the collage just as my ancestors did. Standing in a bed of elephant grass bending over my head, I crane my neck slowly left then right then up then down, watching all angles of serpentine branches in green leafy clothes, waiting for a piece of red to touch the sunlight. I once walked in forests and saw only trees of faceless portraits. Now I shift my glance to the horizon and many patches of color pierce my eyes, kindling the old instincts. I even found a Jackson chameleon today, a slow little commuter hoping not to be spotted.

2/20/10: This is It

Went to Hilo today to indulge in the Earthly pleasures of energy. One is the simple buzz of social interaction- of walking on crowded streets and seeing and hearing other people operate on Saturday, witnessing the way so many objectives in a city mesh like cogs. The other energy I speak of is food- the simple fuel of life. Nothing is more pleasant than satisfaction bordering gluttony, and nothing tastes better than dark chocolate, Kona coffee, and hot dogs after another week in the fields.

On the street front there was a grand sign proclaiming "This is it: Thrift Store and more." I walked into a cavernous room leading to other colorful rooms, and asked a woman behind the desk if this was it. "We have the thrift shop over in the back, the kids toys in that room, restaurant right here, and adult entertainment section behind those doors," she said. "Would you like a free donut? It's our one year anniversary." What a store, I realized, a typical Hawaiian conglomerate of leisure before aesthetics. In the same place on could buy vintage clothing, cap guns, leather thongs, and finish it all with a dollar hot dog.

2/17/10

There are no longer walls or doors in the passage of time. I am not walking down a hallway, but rather, swimming through a stream. My life simply seems to flow together now, with nothing to really lay anchor upon.

We were discussing the time phenomenon this morning. I told Jennifer and Hans that when I lay my head on my pillow at night, it seems that no time has passed since the night before, when I was in identical position. I am not going to bed after any day in particular, but after any day at all. Every event of going to bed blends with every other one, and every waking up leaks into every other waking up, like spilled milk on a level surface. Hans called it the closest to a groundhog day phenomenon we would ever experience, and it seems only minutes ago that he said it. And I remarked on the phenomenon with Jen today, and I mentioned that the walk home was one anonymous in a stack of many. But this evening Hans arrived with the lower half of a boar body hanging from his hand, its legs dripping blood on the sidewalk. He was holding a machete with the other hand and said, "pork chops tonight," and that is what I will grapple, to anchor today in time.

2/15/10

I don't hear music often. I don't hear it secondhand, drifting from cars or hallways and I am not injected with it by high sterile speakers. But in the evenings I sometimes listen to a song or two through headphones when I walk beneath the stars. And all of that energy, that grooviness and that swaying strong beats sleeping inside of me, wake up and remind me what I love. And they remind me not to love in excess.

The most memorable moment of today's picking was reaping an orange that was big enough to only sit clumsily in my two palms together. It was wide and wrinkled like a granddaddy orange let grow forever, and it must have been four pounds.

2/14/10: Happy New Year

Interesting things happened today. And when interesting things happen, they become the new subject and scope of my time. I am demoted to state of passivity, of a dangling indirect object in my own life's sentence, watching the interesting things assume the nominative position. I no longer count minutes, but simply allow time to pass me as I stand still in the road. My neighbor, Richard, some time ago mentioned a ceremony at the Wood Valley Tibetan temple, several towns away. I went with him this morning to slip into this strange hole in paradise.

Southern churches in America are full of sideways glances, aggressive proclamations, and saccharine smiles every Sunday. No one slips through the system without being showered and slathered by the love of Jesus, but more so, the stares of other church goers. I expected something of this community, but I was very wrong at the Tibetan temple.

A group of thirty perhaps had gathered in the open-air shrine. Brown and red wood twisted amongst one another in strong arches. I placed my fruit at the base of a mountain of offerings to the glinting gold Buddha, smugly watching over the crowd from the rear corner. WE sat crosslegged on carpet in rows facing one another, rather than the idols. I was completely oblivious to custom, letting my hands shift amongst positions, and scrutinizing myself mentally- was I dressed correctly? Was my hair too unclean? I was waiting to feel the seething heat of judgment, but I experienced nothing but quiet warmth, and a nonchalant sense of community.

We were served tea and rice to symbolize auspicious tidings for the new year. I likened it in my mind to plastic wafers and tart communion juice, without the blood spilt. What ensued was no sermon or hymn or lesson, but a chant- a chant in the room of smoke unfurling. The English phonetics were typed under the Tibetan scripture, spelling guttural sounds like "zhay war se nim ghom oord." This was no lilting four-beat eight-tone christian hymn. It was no velvet harmony and chain of resolutions. These sounds were deep and forged with breath in the belly, and slow and wandering, without looking for a place to end. We turned through twenty five pages of texts, singing several loops, echoing several syllables hundreds of times. It was all soft and restful, and humming with invisible smiles.

At the end was a climactic ushering of the new year. We gathered in a circle and each grabbed a handful of flour from the bucket being passed. On the same count we all threw it into a white mist together, like quiet fireworks.

2/12/10

By now the absurd has become normal, the struggle has become routine, and mustering inspiration to write is not an act of touristic awe. Time is in full swing, rounding a gentle curve like the pendulum falling through the bottom of its arc.

Friday is a half a day of work for me. I went out to pull weeds today as I have on other Fridays, but today was exceptional because Hans brought the tractor. Orange trees are docile and wide, like well fed kings. The weeds that surround them and gnaw and pry and twist their tendrils around the bark of orange trees are densely clustered, growing at tight angles shrouded in darkness, choking one another for a view of sunlight. They cling to trees, they cling to each other, and they cling to the hands that pull them, like relentless famished beggars. But they will never learn not to cling to tractor tires or the machete blade. Tonight I met Jimbo the quietly spiritual neighborhood icon. He is polite and earthly, and I hope to see him again.

1/11/10: Split Time

I haven't been intent on writing my feelings recently. In my mind I mulled over the merits of keeping consistent record of thoughts, and the uselessness of recording the same things each day as well. So I decided to write about it. I'm constantly pulled between the vital present and the commanding force of now, and the faint, scrupulous call of the future- the duty of retrospect.

So I am lingering between two habitats of being- one of the lush and lively now, and one of the future tourist in me, eager to see the slideshows of Hawaii. There is so much space to infiltrate in the narrow crevices of life's surface- so much to explore between the grains of sand, and most of us only walk on top. I would be cheating no one if I exited this moment, but would simply be destroying my own desires.

1/7/10: Natty Self

It seemed like an hour passed before a car finally stopped for me. I must of watched dozens of light-skinned, elderly couples pass in sleek rental cars, all wearing sunglasses and frowns for me. But a van slowed down, and in a quick seize of ecstasy I folded my sign that I had scrawled that morning, and ran to the windows. "I can take you most of the way," he said. "Watch out for broken glass under the seat." Only seconds of silence elapsed, and we were in motion again.

"I only picked you up cause I thought you was a bitch," he said in a heavy accent from somewhere East of the Atlantic. "Not that I'm some creep looking for a bitch," he said, "And I mean bitch in a liberal, non offensive way."

No introductions were needed, and he asked only one question: "You working on a farm down there?" When I told him yes, he tore a wide portal of thought open. "The problem with the fucking system is it's like modern slavery. They've got you imprisoned in a hole in paradise, without mobility or friends, groveling your way out, so that ultimately idiots like you are begging for rides from assholes like me. And I mean these words without offense? You know what I mean?"

I was sitting directly behind him, in the only other seat in the van, and watching the ardent movement of his head and hands as he spoke. The car swerved over lines as he developed the more passionate points. He had a black ponytail streaked with silver, and deep lines around his mouth. He was missing half of his left pinky finger. He would turn around for brief glimpses of eye contact, like a wild cab driver in Manhattan.

"And the worst part of the whole fucking system is that you're always on the clock," he said, "You know what I mean? You can break your back for those assholes all day but you can't clock out, cause you're imprisoned right there on their land. And then they expect you to be grateful, to kiss their ass for even giving you such an opportunity." And the ironic thing was, he really had my situation pegged. He really outlined the capitalist hunger that gnawed at my boss, and the vicious snare of the work exchange system that has trapped so many on the island. Once he was finished with socialism, he turned to philosophies of metaphysics, religion and friendship. I sat behind him, quiet as a sponge.

"Believing in God is like playing the Superbowl," he said. "It's not enough just to be excited, but you actually have to pick the right team. There is only one Reality with a capital R," he said, "But infinite little r's amongst us. You could believe that we're driving West, or in a convertible, or that it is raining right now, but it simply isn't so. What does it matter what we believe outside this world? We are simply chained to this life, so we might as well make the most of it."

And near the outskirts of Hilo he became so overwhelmed by thought that he pulled the car to the side of the highway, procured pencil and a scrap of paper, and outlines his diagram of life. In an arc he drew the letters S-C-R-I-P, narrating after each one the evolution of Sex, Consciousness, Respect, Integrity, and Peace. "A friend of mine asked why I don't include T for Time," he said, "But I told him an evolution already includes time- each one leads to the next." He drew a rectangular outline around the R. "In an arch, this is the keystone," he said. "It is what holds the structure together."

I found Hilo and the Bob Marley birthday concert finally, lounging in the sweet glory of a sunny day. I remember the singer on the bandstage pointed to a small girl in the front of the crowed before a certain song. "This one I devote to you, sweetheart," he said. "You are da future, and many men will tell they have love for you, but you must remember be true to yourself first. Be Natty- that is- Natural."

2/6/10

I spent a day in solitude and on the wings of my bicycle. Every piece of time seemed to rapidly slip together. One of my bosses, a woman, came to clean the hostel. She scoured every surface with aggressive fingers, envisioning the clean benches beneath guests she will never have. Then she sat down in front of me and said, "Tell me about your ambitions."

Her children moved away a decade ago, leaving this quiet farm for West coast colleges. She let me talk endlessly on dreams, visions and philosophies that perhaps no one else will ever hear, listening in stillness to my childish lullaby. "You cannot build a hundred story building without a solid foundation," she said. We talked a long time about raising children, and then she invited me over for dinner.

Her husband offered me mead, which I had seen him bottle and scrutinize for so long, but had never tasted. He poured me a glass made from limes, bright like soda, then a glass made from oranges, strong like vodka, then a glass made from lillikoi, gentle as ginger. He stayed drunk all night. I ate many plates, and she told me how her son used to eat, and how much she would feed him when he came home. It was the first time in a month that I ate with a family, and the first time in a month that I filled my role as a son.

2/5/10

Well if you want to sing out, sing out
and if you want to be free, be free.
Cause there's a million ways to be,
you know that there are.

2/3/10

Another day passed rife of thoughts over doings. The boss allowed us a generous break from hard labor today, assigning us an ornery task in building fruit parasite containers instead. If he is indeed on the frontier of science, then I hope for a footnote in the annals of discovery, perhaps as a fleeting technician, or an appearance in the movie of this place, credited as second white guy.

Farm labor is one of the most liberating practices. The city of vines lets me be its destroyer, and the fruit that falls joins me briefly for the energetic conquest. I look in the mirror once in the evening. Sometimes I feel I left my reflection in Providence, because I only live on one side of the glass, the side reality is on. I ate seven pieces of fruit today, a variety of oranges, tangelos, bananas and papayas, ready to fall to me from the vine.

2/2/10

Just picking today. Just Hans and I tonight. Just the stars to fill the place of art on the walls.

2/1/10

Four weeks ago, during my last days in North Carolina, I mailed myself a package of a bundle of materials I knew would be essential to my life in Hawaii. The first week that it did not arrive I was anxious and vigilant in monitoring the mail. The second week I was worried. The third week I had pushed my worries into the corner of my head for resignations. This week I had forgotten about it entirely, until it arrived today, and I remembered that some of the best things in life are not things.

Finding constellations is surprisingly difficult, because the sky is studded with so many stars. It is not the few gems shining in the darkness that I am used to from home. The night sky is like a wide beach, with countless crystals winking down at me.

1/31/10: Porpoise Purpose

I went snorkeling with a friendly neighbor today. We were beneath the water of the Place of Refuge- an ancient Hawaiian sanctuary. The water was clear, and I watched blue and yellow fish swim over canyons of coral shaped like strange broccoli. I saw dark shapes shifting far below me, like specimens beneath thick liquid glass. They rose and grew larger, until they were squirming right below my belly, and it was clear they were dolphins, large and blue. A pod of dozens swam below and around us, moving with us for minutes, and their squeaking cries were loud like radio waves.

1/30: Lost and Found

Three are many things I would do simply to heighten my stack of experiences. Neither good nor bad, they simply wait to be had, like cold bullets resting in a chamber. Today Kenny drove me through Hawaiian seascape to the end of the world. We began in a truck high on the mountain's slope, with two hitchhikers perched in the cab for purposes of weight and stability, Kenny declared. They each wore thick blond dreadlocks clinging stiff to their sides, and dark brown teeth rounded on the edges, and long cracked nails. They cheered us on from the back, asking to go faster as the truck careened down dusty paths.

Kenny promised he had driven the path at least several times. The pavement ended early in our descent, tapering to coarse broken black rock. The path began a steeper descent, and we left the rock behind for red sand. The earth seemed gutted by brigades of heavy four wheeling vehicles before us, stripped of solid pathways. Our truck plunged and bounced over sharp, three-foot tears in the land, spinning over rifts that snared one wheel at a time.

He insisted on speeding through the steep pits of sand, because otherwise, he said, we would simply be stuck. The white truck was turned red by the time we came to the coastline, and the springs beneath it groaned badly. Gutted steel frames of trucks were rusting in several places along the way, and I realized, if you get stuck on those paths, your car is there forever. WE reached the sharp lava rocks, leaving the sand. On one horizon the blue sea was limitless and bright, and on the other, stacks of broken, black lava towered high, without interruption by a single plant. It seemed like the inside of a molecule.

And finally we were there- the Rainbow Gathering. Kenny said it would be lovely time. "Dancing by the fire light," he said. We approached the edge of a wide grove of trees, crouched on the shoreline .The first human we saw was an old man, completely naked. He stared at us silently, only his dirty dreadlocks quivering in the wind. We found the colorful banner draped across trees behind him: "Welcome Home," it read. Another man crouched in front of it in the sand, his eyes fastened on the ground. He pulled minute blue pieces of plastic out of the sand. Later, I learned he was on an LSD-induced litter crusade. And inside the hollow stirred the most bizarre world.

It seemed almost post-apocalyptic, a teeming cluster of motley families, wearing only rags and cracking coconuts around pit fires. Naked children ran in and around crowds, people were sleeping beneath trees and sprawled on the sand, and guitars and flutes were humming in different directions. A man drew breath from a plastic bong, his back to the wind, then scooped up his young bumbling daughter, and waded into the tide with her. So I sat in the sand and read and let the wind talk to me, because, honestly, I hate that hippie shit.

They are a band of voluntary outlaws, wearing masks of compassion over hearts of bitterness. They have chosen isolation rather than integration, savoring the secrecy of being high every waking hour, and talking smack about the rest of the world behind its back. They group government, commerce, and every family that is foreign to them into an entity that is hostile, one that has driven them there. I hear comments spliced in every conversation about how much better this life is, about constant reassurance for the struggle I hear a diatribe about how the government is poising Americans with sugar-laden Skittles.

So I chose the high and challenging road home, deciding not to break Kenny's bliss by asking for a ride. "Kenny- if you can't find me, then I've found the path home," was the note I left propped inside his truck. Three hours before sunset I started walking back the jagged lava path, the sun dawdling before me and the moon staring at my back. I made it way from the beach, away from the black rock, and into the sand pits, and suddenly, I was lost.

The jeep trail simply faded away into nothing but brush and tall grasses. Every horizon faded into infinite rows of the same plant I was standing in. Brown grass, black brushes and windswept trees were the only pieces of the landscape. Nothing stood out. I began sweating and my heart was ticking louder and louder and then I started running. I ran uphill, fast and hurdling bushes. I ran until I reached the crest of a hill and looked in all directions. Still no change in the horizon, just the infinite fractal bushes. I could smell the fear leaking out of me. But then I saw something moving- a shifting black mass.

I looked at the pies of poop blanketing the ground and realized that I was in a cattle pasture, and the specks roaming the slopes far away were enormous cattle. I found tractor tread marks in the dirt and followed them up and up the hill, turning my red shoes brown with coats of dust. In my head echoed over and over: Where there are tracks there are roads. Where there are tracks there are roads. I climbed and climbed the hill, slipping in dust like I was walking through flour, and then I heard a cow's cry, ringing like a scream rather than a gentle moo. I kept walking with my head down, and began hearing more moos, breaking into chorus and after every cry rang another one. Then the ground began to tremble and the dust shivered around me, and I watched dozens of cattle running across the plain, slowing to a halt in a semicircle on the path before me. I was surrounded by a massive mingling cry, by massive animals, alone on a desert plain without trees. My heart began racing and I walked back down the hill, quickly, quietly, and low to the ground.

I watched them move step by step towards me, still screaming, and I began to run. I ran down dusty slopes, sliding through thorny bushes and over rocks. I ran until I saw a fence far-off, and and then ran harder towards it. I rolled under the barbed wire, and looked back at the cattle I had left on the other side. Then my mind rang with joy again: fences lead to roads.

I looked down tot realize I was red with dust and blood, after running hard. But I kept a quick pace along the fence, moving tirelessly uphill. After miles of walking I saw bright and tiny arms waving on the horizon and I knew they were the white arms of windmills, the windmills I knew from South Point Road. I yelled victoriously and showed the finger to any cattle watching, and walked two hours along fences until I climbed over at last, at the road near the windmills.

I came out of the ranch around sunset. The road is narrow and poorly paved and only connects two points. At the bottom is the Southernmost beach on the island, and a the top is where I live. Cars passed seldom, and it wasn't until the eighth one that I got a ride. The man asked me where I'd been, and I told him I was late walking back form the beach. I asked him if he lived nearby, and he said yes, that he owned the 4,000 acre cattle ranch behind us.

1/29/10

Kenny says Hawaii is the farthest island from any continent on the Earth. It certainly feels that way. I am on top of a floating fortress in the ocean.

No time to write the next entry now, but it will be worth waiting to read.

1/28/10

Tensions are mounting and straining on the labor frontier. Some workers asked to negotiate with Morton this morning, and were asked to leave. I coyly walked around fields with a picking pole, staying far from the heated rift.
After work I ate two pieces of fruit, one pound each and ruby red. I will miss that color on grocery store shelves.

1/27/10

I can feel the growing momentum of time, gaining speed quickly in the first quarter of its fall. Three weeks ago almost I was nervous, restless and walking with heavy feet. Now I feel the rhythm gradually merging with my own, so that I draw my strong beats in time with those around me.
Nothing would distinguish another day of picking except the rising tension between workers and the bosses. Before Emily arrived, we quietly shoved our cumbersome discomfort into the backs of our minds. But now she has lit into our bosses with the blade of aggression. Currently our contract requires twenty five hours a week of hard labor. We are supervised continuously and urged to pick more efficiently and with less rest. And pulling down each fruit is like putting cash in the bosses' pockets, who are not working in the sun with us, but watching the money pile up from afar. So what drives the commitment to efficiency and "personal excellence" my bosses encourage? If I exceed their expectations twofold, I don't see another dime. In fact, the faster we pick fruit, the less hours we earn, and the more we have to work. We are hoping to forge a less slave-oriented system.
I love riding my bike after a long day. My legs are sore, but the sloping lava streets call.

1/26/10: Gutes Essen

We were blessed with German guests. Two women arrived in the darkness last night, turning the screw in a fateful construction. I convinced them to stall their trip to the South Point until this afternoon, once we returned from work. All day in the fields I let visions of cliffs dance in my mind. We were all there, finally, soaking in the last strands of sunlight. It is so powerful to see the sun slip off the horizon, as though it were holding on by fingertips, and then the colors fall behind it. The German women were insistent on cooking us dinner tonight, which no one protested. Immediately eggs and spinach, olives and cucumbers, and surprisingly passion fruit and vinegar all joined fingers and danced through the kitchen. I was giggling all through the meal, just sheerly ecstatic at what our barren lifestyle had suddenly become.

1/24/10

Every other night there are new crazy people in this home. Drifters become characters, and characters become fixtures, all ushered into our tiny paradise by the gatekeeper Hans. The evenings are colorful and high-spirited, and then the mornings are tense and quiet and down turned eyes. The people who entertained us the night before meander in from the backyard, hungrily and silently eyeing our breakfasts. We workers mutter about Hans like he is a dumb child, dim enough to lead stray dogs home. I am not being paid in cash, I am being paid with food. When I see derelict and homeless humans, the kind that seem to magnetize to Hans, shuffling around barefoot and hungover and with their faces in my only income, I can only feel cheated. I have been pulling weeds all day, and luckily I experienced dinner, the greatest satisfaction before the dirt clods drifted in.