| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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I ate a little bit of lilikoi haupia this weekend and I savored it and it tasted pretty good and I managed not to hate myself afterward. I ate a thin person's portion of it, and it followed a very small lunch of homemade moonfish poke, soaked in ginger and onion and rice vinegar. I also drank a couple glasses of wine, a couple of raspberry Stolis and sodas, and one great big beer at the Hanalei Gourmet. Not all at once though. I went to Kauai to sleep. I never went far from Vicky's beach house the entire weekend, except to walk to the plaza in Princeville one day, for no reason at all, and the next day I jogged a short, slow, 3-mile stretch down the dirt road. Mostly I slept, dozed. I swam over the reef, laid under the tree in the sand on the beach, and read short excerpts, letters, in The Sun written by people who struggle with weight, body image, food. I also read several more stories in an Alice Walker collection I've had on my nightstand. I drank a lot of hot tea. I did some yoga on the front lanai. The tourists drove by in their shiny red Jeeps and Mustang convertibles. They gawked, or pretended not to gawk, but I paid them no interest. I wasn't doing anything for the show, I wanted to stretch, breathe, strengthen, and meditate on the ocean in front of me and the soft salty breeze on my skin. Their stares did nothing to disturb the tranquility. Away from home there is nothing to do. No chores, no computers, no errands, no work, no worries. I went to bed every night at 10 p.m. and woke up no earlier than 8 a.m. The air in Kauai let's you sleep. I didn't have dreams. Vicky and I didn't talk much. We listened to music. We peacefully coexisted in and around the house, only mentioning with amusement the noisy roosters or the Kentucky cardinal that taps on the window every morning. Vicky inherited the house from her father, who built it himself in the early 70s. One morning we foraged in the thick growth behind her house and sawed down two tall bamboo trees. We dragged them back to the house and severed them into three foot lengths, which she would duct tape and wrap and check as luggage on the return to Honolulu. Then we picked pomello and vi apples from the neighbor's yard. I cried twice during the weekend. Once, briefly, for my loneliness, while I sat in a lounge chair on the lanai and read in a literary journal one woman's account of her job as a counselor and social worker for men convicted of domestic abuse. I cried because I knew that their victims probably measured their options carefully, between the pain of abuse and the fear of the battle ahead if they left. Between black eyes and broken bones or the obstacles, the poverty, the struggle, the loneliness of leaving. In fear, most women choose black eyes and broken bones over poverty and loneliness. It makes me feel better to think it that essentially most women who are victims of domestic abuse don't realize they have that choice, and so essentially no choice exists. I cried again the next morning. I sat on a large black rock at the water's edge at the far end of the bay, well out of sight of all the beach-front homes around the bend. I cried at the thought of going back to the mainland for the December holidays, of arriving in the airport terminal and seeing my mother for the first time in three years and knowing I will cry. Maybe I will cry because she doesn't recognize me at first. I look much different now; I often have to re-introduce myself to people I already know but who haven't seen me in a long time. Today on the outside I look more like the daughter she always wished she had. The one she tried to force me to be with daily weigh-ins and strict diet programs, suppers of lettuce and cucumber salads, marking the depth in the peanut butter jar in the cupboard, checking silverware for traces of forbidden foods. Now, in a way, I am that daughter. On the outside. I will cry because I've missed her so much. I will cry for my longing for the soulfulness, loyalty, love and acceptance and family solidarity that growing up through several marriages and divorces I learned not to bother to cultivate, but that I witness all around me in Hawaii. Where I am from there is no such thing as unconditional acceptance. But after eight years I've finally met at least one of the conditions. I'm not entirely certain what the other conditions of love are. I think one of them involves moving back to the mainland. Or money. There is always talk of economy and the cost of living. She'll be wearing one of her fur coats. I will find it comforting, because I know that she's got nearly everything she always wanted. As I sat on the rock and cried, I felt eager to stand in the airport terminal and wrap my arms around the coat and cry, embracing my mother, a woman of improbable strength and volatility. A fighter, a survivor. At the plaza in Princeville I bought a dress on sale for twenty dollars plus tax. It's a surfer girl dress, a small, delicate casual cotton dress. It's a day dress, with straps that crisscross in the back. It's nothing much, but it fits pretty good and it's something to wear that I don't have to think about beforehand. I can just put it on and go or bunch it up and stuff it in my beach bag. I wore a similar dress until it was in shreds, so it was time to get a replacement. At night time there was a minus tide. Vicky's friend Peter drove us to Hanapai in his truck, which rumbled in disrepair. We donned reef booties and headlamps and carried flashlights. We explored the exposed reef, peeking in on the secret nightlife of snails and sea cucumbers, crabs, shells, coral and fishes. We watched a good-sized eel catch a fish and try to eat it, like a snake might do. The fish proved too big for the eel so reluctantly, after a short struggle, the eel released the fish, which was stunned, motionless, perhaps poisoned. Vicky yelped when she found an octopus and Peter tried to pry it from its tide pool. All the while a perfectly full moon rose in the east above the Kilauea cliffs, mingling with clouds and sky and stars. The waves crashed at a safe distance from the reef where I stood by myself. I turned off my lamps and watched the moon bows in the ocean spray and pondered the cost of living. |
I'm fearing the holidays a little bit too. How is the eating thing going for you? I worry. That piece of writing was absolutely lovely. |
no lie. |
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thank you. |
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I think there should be more nekkidness on this site. Bring back the Bed Cam!!! |
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i also wish i knew what poke is. |
I come here because I don't have a choice. My life is set, and fate-which-is-physics has declared that I must spend x-amount of time reading and or writing at Sorabji.com . I don't get it, either. I, also, wish I knew what poke is. |
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the topic of poke was covered in a recent, previous lesson. What Are You Eating For Lunch, Subtopic E, Paragraph 4, Line 7. |
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JOHN! JOHN WATERS! The man is brilliant. He walks onstage with this big green velour scarf, talks to us for an hour and a half. He kept me in stitches. He's a funny man. Talking about a show he did with a scratch and sniff card--"People paid me to smell farts! Around the world, people paid me for this! The number would pop up, they would scratch the card!" He's the best ever. If he ever comes to speak near you, go see him. |
He's the guy who directed "Pecker," right? |
I do a search on cost of living and I get Sarah. I scratch the pad and I get Cat. I type in creative rock climbing and find archeology and physics and technoshamanic rockabilly funk. I glide my index finger in ever increasing circles and >poof< there's a vodka tomato soup recipe from Droop. I whack it real hard and the 404 fades into pictures of roses on walls downunder. I count the counter on my websites and wonder how some one who does not exist can captivate and facilitate such creativity, such enduring dialog from so many incredible people from around the world. I am amazed that people from all over the globe send me emails about their internet addiction. But the reason I log on is not the Susan Bees ejecting from the dvd player...not the server delays which structure my free time nowadays...not the impossibily long load on some of the strings...the reason is the introspective, self destructive, self absorbed, pedantic and worthless waste of time my writing has become by comparison ... to grocery lists for breakfasts, lunches and hints on using steroids, and the intraneuronal warring of nonsensical pornographic if not disjointed novellettesdinners. Has this, then, become the cost of living? Are you listening Liz? Cuz if yhou're not, I'm writing for no one again. |
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He'a flamingly gay, and very funny. He talked about how he spends all his life eating other people's food. "No, really. It's all I do. I fly places and get free food. One of my boyfriends actually broke up with me--'I feel like I'm eating someone elses food,' he said. 'You are,' I replied." |
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Antigone. were you listening to Tracy Chapman? |
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that's exactly the album i was thinking you were quoting from. maybe if i told you the right words at the right time would you be mine? |
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It's nine years ago again. Thank you Mark. |
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