The gossip trader

 

"What, no drink of water, no bathroom break?" asked J at the front desk. "Just wanted to say hello," I responded, "and to say I miss my friends at the guard shack." She knew about S being "terminated," but nothing about Uncle J. "How is it that I sit here all day at the entrance and you know more than I do?" she asked. "Oh, I pick up gossip when I enter, drop it off at the back of the cemetery, pick up more and return it." She guessed that the boss didn't want the old loyalties any more; he's installing his own people. She was especially fond of S, who'd once called her one of the best looking people he knew. He'd been kind when she'd had surgeries a few years ago.

 

Up the hill, O and H came zooming around a corner in their John Deere vehicle (lots of them buzz around the grounds like mad golf carts). I pretended to recoil in fear. They stopped, and O fell to the ground in meditation position, right on the asphalt. Lilith came over and he formed a kind of kind arch over her, as he offered her his attention. Fur flew. "You made my day," he says. Upset with the boss. "He tell me what for do when I already know what for do; it's annoying."

 

The day after Memorial Day: acres of little American flags, paper plates, eggs, fruit cups, crackers, entire lunches, a half-peeled grapefruit. In one trash can, evidence of the new Popeyes in Kaneohe, alongside the usual McDonald's brown bags and napkins. A large Coca Cola cup, with plastic straw and loud flag motif, sat on the grass.

The [word] is not love

 

I called him on it. "[Word] Paul," O called the mortician. "Did you actually use that word?" I asked, wondering at Paul's reaction. "Oh he was ok with it. I use [the word] with my [Hawaiian word] friends on the mainland; you're my [word]," he added. They call me the [word] too. "I'd never use that word," I told him. "The word wouldn't hurt kids growing up now," H added. As if. 

 

"Well, it's just a word," said O.

Lilith encounters a reader and a poet

On our way to the bus stop to meet the poet from Cebu and St. Louis, Lilith and I ran into the man who reads my books. We'd met in the cemetery a while back, so I told him the cemetery is going to hell, what with downed trees and fired staff. "I believe in enjoying the moment," he replied. "I hope things work out in the end." They'd found a mass in his kidney, said he could live with one only. So he's enjoying his life, still has both kidneys.

 

The poet from Cebu and St. Louis got off the bus and crossed Hui Iwa Street. I introduced him to the man who reads my books, who asked if the poet is in them. "Not yet," the poet said. Lilith had greeted the poet as if he knew her, and was happy to receive the other man's blessings, as well.

 

After dinner, the poet from Cebu and St. Louis looked at my books on the shelf, made from Philippine mahogany by my husband. He pulled one out whose font he liked. "It looks lighter than the others," he said. "Well, except for the pieces about gun violence," I responded.

 

In Portland once, a poet introduced me as the woman who "goes into the DARKNESS." Oh tell me, where is the light?

How many walks fit on the head of a pin?

 

"How am I going to pull all of this together?" I asked Rachelle, on a day of many Lilith walks at once. "You'll think of something."

 

She and Aldon (who runs the Waikane Store on Kam Highway with his mother) had caught up with us at the front gate, said they were going to join us on our walk. Aldon did a fist bump with Uncle J's brother at the shack; said he missed their father, a prominent preacher. Aldon did lots of fist bumps on our walk; he knew Ola's grandpa, the bus driver. We all knew Paul the mortician, who suggested that I go to their meeting this evening (they're all Jehovah's Witnesses) to find out about the prophecy (change of leadership is coming, not meaning just Trump, but even perhaps human leadership). He muttered about the backstories to S and J getting fired, but would say no more. 

 

As we walked up hill, Aldon talked about languages (he's learning Hebrew), including the politics of pronunciation, quoted a Biblical verse, recommended movies, marveled at Lilith's high energy. Said he loves the Bible, detective stories and gangsters. He and R lamented the spate of accidents on Kam Highway the past few days. Attempted murder last night at the Hygienic Store. Their mental health outreach, the strange things people yell at them when they're handing out JW materials. "One guy yelled BLACK SUNDAY in my ear," Aldon said. "What's that mean?" He didn't have a clue. He tries not to argue back.

Post-termination walk in the cemetery

"I gather things have changed," I said to R at the guard shack this morning. He laughed awkwardly. The shack is being renovated; apparently they're going to add a walk-in closet. "For skeletons?" I asked. New windows, raw 2x4's, another guy seated on an office chair in the middle of it all. Up the hill, I approached Uncle J's brother, still seated in a chair beside the temple parking lot, the better to move cones when large buses pull up. He's a man of few words.. "It's not us," he said. "It's management. And look at this zoo." 

 

I gave Hoku the aloha shirt I'd promised him. He sports "formal wear" on Fridays (it's a work tradition), even as he spends hours weed whacking. I congratulated them on still having jobs. Lilith leapt toward Ola for her attention, then back to Hoku. Well, there were stories. S had overlooked some thefts by three guys (also left go). And Uncle J had been caught on camera giving flowers away. I chalked some of this up to anger at management. 

 

"Such a sweet crime," a friend says on the phone, "taking flowers."

 

from Startles

Stories are grim, but moments burst out like peonies. On Elepaio, a sign reads: “Private Sign / Do Not Read / $500 Fine.” I like the anonymous wit and the threat to me, who can’t be seen by the sign maker. In a framed, cracked mirror, I see my own torso reflected through the encroaching forest, take a selfie, which requires my face, my cap, my camera. I shoot a private photo of the private sign, and post it.

The joke’s on me, but who told it? That’s the funny part. I try to tell the canoe builder a “funny story,” but he asks me if I have any. I tell him one, but it’s not funny. I wonder how he knows about my stories. We’ve exchanged paranoia.

The tall husky mix who walked miles with me ran around the ranger’s cabin after a pheasant and brought it back in her mouth. Veered sharply, trotted back the way we’d come. How we choose other souls to accompany us; how we ourselves are chosen, is a mystery. She wore a collar, so someone had chosen her.

The story was framed by two episodes of forgetting, the first a face and the second a name. Both people recognized me, in a recognition scene that went only one way, or bent before it arrived, like a driveway in the forest. That way, you can’t see the house at the end of the road. It’s built-in privacy, and you can get fined for trespassing. I make the mistake of not asking, again.

Where we once belonged is no longer where you are, my friend. Two years ago you were still alive, looking forward to your granddaughter’s visit, a house on your land, a poetry workshop. You’d told me years before that you were no longer afraid to die. Were you still afraid of the violence, of not being found soon enough to tell the broken story of your death? Does death become you now, like a prayer scarf?

It’s the one way nature of the sign that makes me laugh. Someone has invited me into a conversation I can’t sustain, like talking to the dead. A grant writer invents new words for now forbidden ones: woman is now person; equity is now assumed. Because racism doesn’t exist, we indulge it more. We call it fairness.

Just when you think you belong, you trip hard on the rock of being seen as stranger. To be, long. A temporal measurement, as if duration were the only key. Sympathy sometimes leads to bad writing. Those who try too hard are both admirable and foolish.

 

On forgetting

 

Turns out I had met Bobby at the Ranger's cabin, that he was the man who makes canoes, and that he'd seen my photograph of one of his projects. 

 

When I got to the turn on Elepaio Road, off Haunani, I saw a dog in the distance staring at me. I stopped. She approached slowly, stopped again. She was a husky mix, tall and thin, with salmon collar and a sweet temperament. When I continued my walk, she came with me. I'd stop for photos, she'd veer off to flush pheasants, and once, two pigs. We walked to the end of the road, past the tall pines, and turned around. We walked and walked together, though she paused often to mark territory or to sniff. She came down Haunani with me, turned right on Maile. We got as far as the ranger's cabin. I wanted to ask Bobby about the dog, but he was gone. 

 

A sudden WHOOSH and the dog sprinted after a pheasant. They ran behind the cabin, pheasant screaming, until I saw, through the space between garage and cabin, that the dog had the pheasant in her mouth. She came running back. Not a gift I want, I thought. But as she came toward me, she veered suddenly and ran back toward Haunani, pheasant lodged firmly in her mouth. A chicken clucked next to the garage.

 

"Where's your dog?" asked a woman I ran into shortly after. When I said "Lilith," she remembered. She remembered my name, too. I told her that I don't recall names well any more, and she described the process by which she locks names into her head, but also told me about the time--horrified--she forgot a good friend's name. She's seen the light, collared, beautiful dog around. The dog walks the perimeter of her property near Elepaio. "Some dogs just wander," she said, lamenting that a lot of people now call animal control.

 

"I'm Michelle," she said. I tried the brain lock trick, but locks increasingly seem meant to be picked. 

 

--Volcano 

Another termination

My last few conversations with S in the cemetery were largely about Uncle J,, who has been terribly depressed lately. Word had it that he'd quit his other job and was doing extra hours at the cemetery. I delivered an envelope to Uncle J a couple of weeks ago; in it was material from the Mayo Clinic about depression. I wrote a note to him from Lilith and me and added that "S cares about you." Today, S--who was "terminated" a week ago-- texted me to say that J had been fired.

 

Lilith and I have been interacting with S and J for ten years now, through COVID (they denied it) and Trump (they loved him) and Biden (he was demented) and Harris (she was dumb). We hardly agreed on anything, except that we loved Lilith and were oddly fond of one another. More recently, the cemetery politics had gotten very nasty, and I talked to them about that, as about mortality and friendship. You can't help but feel deeply in such a place. 

 

I worry about them, S and J. I grieve for that community (another employee had quit recently under the stress of surveillance and problems with the boss). And, since writers are always problematic in this way, I feel the probable loss of my 10 year project, Lilith Walks. In our own ways, Lilith and I will have been "terminated" by the vulture capitalists and their henchmen. I will not lose my livelihood, but my stories, my threads, my documentation, part of my vocation have been taken from me.

 

When I get back to O`ahu, I'll seek out Lilith's and my remaining friends, and see what they make of all the unmaking going on around them. Cut trees, cut people, cut cords.

 

Two disasters

 

1.

 

I'd been sitting on a rock wall for hours at the Jaggar lookout, staring at Kilauea burping lava but not yet erupting, when I saw a man standing behind me wearing a Gauley River teeshirt from West Virginia. "Wasn't there a mining disaster near there in the 30's," I asked him. A woman who may have been his daughter said, "yes, Hawk's Nest Tunnel." I told him about _The Book of the Dead_, by Muriel Rukeyser. I remembered that lots of miners died of silicosis; the corporation hadn't sprayed water on the rock before the miners drilled into it. That the corporation brought in African Americans from the south to work during a strike and they also died of silicosis. 

 

His father was a coal miner; had been trapped in a mine for days once. Dangerous work. They just lost two miners near them recently. He'd wanted to be a history professor, but didn't finish school after his daughter came along. His wife was a teacher, then a principal. He noticed when he worked at her school that he was smarter than the teachers. They were good at what they did, but one woman left her keys in her car every morning, and he had to retrieve them for her. No common sense, he said. 

 

2.

 

Seated beside me, after the couple from Texas left because their time on-island was running short, was a gray stubble-chinned white man with an accent that had nothing to do with Hawai`i. Did I hear him mention Arkansas? Lives in Pahoa, loves Ledward Kaapana's music, but wasn't at the concert the other night. He'd lost his house in 2018. "It was like a big party on the road down there," he said, "every night, because no one thought their house was getting destroyed." He'd stayed in his house until the last moment because other places had been ransacked while their owners weren't allowed in. One guy had a house up a hill, and he was in there when the lava started pushing against the walls. Horror movie. Yes, he'd seen the destruction of camera V3 by Kilauea a couple of months ago, as the tephra got closer and closer and the lens finally broke. It had taken a long time to get things straight after his house was destroyed.

 

"So the volcano destroyed your house and you're up here watching Pele now?" "Yes, I prefer to watch up here."

 

Someone asked if he'd leave Hawai`i. No, he likes it here. There's nowhere he'd rather be.

On "termination"

My cemetery buddy, Scott (he of all conspiracy theories, meditations on mortality, lover of trees, who cared about walkers like me, and asked after us when we disappeared, who visited his late wife's grave most days, who spoke his mind to the bosses), just texted me to say that he'd been "terminated" by Valley of the Temples cemetery. Lilith and I will miss him. 

 

God damn the vulture capitalists.

 

On chickens

He waved from his truck going by as I took a photo of yet another stump (HELCO had taken down a lot of trees next to power lines during the month of storms). The wood was nearly saffron, a flag pole of splinters sticking up from a rough table. As I got to where he'd turned in at the old ranger cabin, he greeted me. "You've got chickens," I noted, as a hen and several chicks walked in front of me. 

 

I told him that when I lived in Charlottesville, Virginia there was one rooster in town that caused quite a kerfuffle. No one wanted it around. "Should have killed it," he said. He'd grown up in Arlington. Half-Hawaiian, half-Minnesotan, dad in the military. 

 

Of these chickens, he said, "they're moa--m o a--he carefully spelled it out for me. The chickens brought by early Polynesians. They're great for this place; they eat mosquitos and centipedes. Strangely, you can hunt them all the time. There are seasons for pheasants, even doves (they were brought in to hunt), but the moa have no season." He said he'd killed some of them. "Do they taste good?" "No, I get them for my friends who work with feathers."

 

"I'm Bobby," he said. "Nice to meet you," I responded. As he walked toward the garage (where I had once taken pictures of a canoe) and I up the hill, I wondered if we hadn't met before.

 

Volcano, sans Lilith, though I did show off her photo

 

"You're taking pictures of houses," he asked, or stated gently. He was Dennis, and beside him was Miss Teresa; with them both was a pale colored pit bull with amazing light eyes. I said I take pictures of everything and turned on my instagram to show them. As usual, nothing relevant showed, so I put down the phone. I said I'd been to Led Kaapana's concert last night. "My wife's related to him," Dennis said, "Ledward and Nedward and the rest of them." I told them I'd seen an `io on the power line above us, once stared at it for a long time as it looked back at me. He said he's seen pueo on this street, so doubting my classification, I suggested that perhaps I'd seen a pueo. "Hard to tell the difference sometimes," he said, "though it's easy to spot a barn owl."

 

I took the dog's picture, and then theirs. They're neighbors on this street, and he lives across from the sheep (goat) down the road. "Do you have an old truck with bones on the top?" I asked. "Yes, the bones were for my grandson, who loved dinosaurs; he played with them a lot. The hip bones looked like eyes, so he put them next to each other. I hope he remembers those days; he's a teenager now." The truck really has to go, he opined, though it had got him to work back in the day.

 

I thanked him for the truck, said I'd taken lots of photographs of it over the years. "It's a wonderful truck." Some other neighbors drove up, and I kept walking, stopping at the goat and the truck to take pictures. He said I should drop by any time.

Photo spread from Italy, with prose

 Pina Piccolo has kindly published a sheaf of my photos in The Dreaming Machine, along with other photos sprinkled throughout the issue. 

Take a close look at the entire journal. https://www.thedreamingmachine.com/ 

 

Disappearances

"S told me that people become attached to the trees next to family member's graves," I said to a woman who was standing next to a stump, looking confused. She hadn't visited in a while. I pointed to another stump nearby. "There's a man who comes to that grave--lots of tatts--I haven't seen him in a while." She said they'd picked the grave site because of the tree. And now, she noted, it's all about money. The late trees had stood in the line of sight between the upper road and the new water feature, its bright gold arrow and sign, "OCEAN VIEW." Two of my favorite trees died for that sign.

 

Jo, who sits at the front of the administrative building, had no idea what happened to S; she's also been texting him. No response. She spoke quite softly. "Gotta watch what you say now; there are cameras everywhere." Smiled, said she was lucky because her camera had no audio.

 

In the conspiracy theorist's absence

Today, three cats lay down in the unmarked spot where S had always parked his beaten up green van. He had names for them.

Design of darkness (to appall)

 

"You're here on a Monday," I said to Uncle J, who was alone at the guard shack. S was not there, hadn't been for days. J was there because someone had to be. I asked if he'd been laid off. J didn't know. "He said that in a year no one who works here now would still be there," I said, "but he said that to me just last week."

Up the hill, Hoku and Ola said that S had been put on administrative leave. They didn't know what that meant, exactly. He and the boss didn't get along, they said. Lilith accepted their attention with benevolence.

 

On our way out, I said "administrative leave," to Uncle J. "Oh no, he's gone. He took all of his stuff with him. Won't answer my calls, and if he doesn't answer mine, he won't answer anyone's." I told Uncle J to take care of himself. Neither of us mentioned the fat envelope I'd passed him recently with Mayo Clinic information about depression and treatment. "S cares about you," I added.

 

I told him about our cat that went from not eating to eating everything in sight. "I guess I'd better start eating again," he said, vape smoke wrapping around his now thin face. "This was all done by design," he added.

Territorial imperatives

1.

 

A young bearded man was standing behind the receptionist Jo at the entrance to the main building at Valley of the Temples. I thought he wanted to say something to her. No. He smiled, looked off toward the mountains. "Men stand behind me," she said with a grin. She lives with men; she likes that. The men are young, eye candy; doesn't hurt, you know. Has arthritis in her knees, her neck, her hands, can't open cans or much else. Men leave you alone. She used to live with women, but it didn't work. "Territory, you know." "Don't take this wrong," she said, looking in my eyes. "But the one woman was a retired professor. She said to tell her whenever something was wrong. But she wouldn't listen. She could talk, though." And then there was the woman with three master's degrees. Also impossible to live with.

 

"I'll keep my degrees to myself, then," I told her. "Oh, we can talk just fine," she said, "but we couldn't live together."

 

 

2.

 

"I'm SO tired," a woman said to the mortician, who was standing near the entrance. "I've worked 9-9 three days in a row." "Why you do that?" he asked. "Because I have three jobs," she said.

 

The mortician said he was exhausted. Always at work. Why? I ask. He answers the phone when it rings; spent too many years in emergency management not to. "It's not an emergency any more when they're dead, is it?" I asked. "Oh yes it is . . . there's a family to deal with."

 

The conspiracy theorist talks love and death

The conspiracy theorist sounded bored. "I haven't looked at the video yet," he said. "The first one was botched so badly, was so clearly fake . . ." We walked away from the guard shack to talk. J is doing better, except when he isn't. Goes to the bar across the street; helps him feel better at first. S's father was an alcoholic, and his sister died of it. He offered a litany of the guys in the cemetery who've been in rehab. One had resembled "those guys you see beside the road, so thin, looking 100 years old." But he met a woman--she saved his life--and he's been clean ever since.

 

S mentioned his late wife, "the nicest woman you could ever meet. I miss her every day." I asked if he'd gotten remarried, as he wears a ring. "Oh no, I knew I'd never get married again, so I kept it on, plus it protects me from the Filipina aunties and their nieces. One of the maintenance guys, 15 years ago or so, offered me $20K to marry his sister in the Philippines. 10K up front; another 10K when the deed was done." He wanted none of that. The one guy he knew who'd married a Filipina woman was crazy about her. But they still got interrogated."

 

I asked S how long ago his wife died. Twenty one years ago Thursday, he said.

 

Meta Lilith story. (Not meta Lilith, but meta story.)

One tale I forgot to tell: "It was that second tomb," he said, "where a guy who owned a hotel was buried." I verified that the last of this line of tombs going up hill used to belong to Ferdinand Marcos, after his brief exile in Makiki, before his body was returned to the Philippines. All the tombs have rooms and roofs; you could house a lot of homeless people up those long staircases to where the views are especially good. "After he died, the family didn't care about his wife, who had a Filipino caretaker." I knew what was coming. "So she gave all her money to him. He comes by in his Mercedes once in a while, a happy camper." 

 

I've always preferred the meditative mode, looking inward to where the outside still impinges, but you can take time to think about it. Wandering thought, as it's referred to in Michael Pollan's new book on consciousness, the kind our phones too often mute. A mode that admits both the profane and the holy, like the photo of a muddy patch on asphalt that gleams like "Piss Christ." When I began my Lilith Walks they seemed like side notes. so ordinary that they actually _were_ ordinary. At best, they might be read as allegory. And yet, they're not that. They are the thing itself, this world of greed and death, layoffs and virtual replacements, bullies and wanna be's, tourists and local people, what is seen and what is lived.

 

Maybe the objective story is all I can write for now, when the subjective mind gets too close to public pain and anger. (It's a public / private partnership, like so much these days.) Not allegory but scale, this dailiness the scale I am able to witness without breaking.

 

Race, class, gender. Hint: they no longer exist.

Over a Lilith drive-through grooming session, Hoku on one side and Ola on the other, each making Lily's fur fly, I mentioned I'd heard that the big bosses had been at the cemetery. "One of them's a billionaire!" said Ola. There's money in what I discover on-line is called "the death care profession. "I'd like to have dinner with him." He won't bother with you guys, I muttered cynically. "Oh we local guys, we got our ways."

 

At my computer, I look up the Executive Leadership Team of the corporation that owns the cemetery. It's located in Houston, Texas. At the top of the webpage I read: "Humanity is at the heart of what we do because at its core, the cemetery and funeral profession is all about people." There are photos of the bosses, nine white men and one white woman (who is, of course, in human resources). Below them, two more white men, Divisional Vice Presidents. The men are in suits and ties. They all smile, except the last one.

 

On weekends, the cemetery is full of families: Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Pacific Islander. They bring flowers and picnics and some of them burn incense in rusted trash drums. During the week, the place is full of workers: Hawaiians, mostly, a local white guy, who's a lower boss. If you walk after 8:30 a.m., you'll compete with huge tourist buses and rental cars going to the Temple. Usually the mix, while awkward, isn't toxic. There was an argument one day, I'm told, between tourists and a funeral party. Many of the tourists have no idea they're in a cemetery. Most of the grave stones are flat.

 

As we get closer to May, it gets hotter. Lilith and I were thirsty by the time we left the cemetery. I asked if they had any water in the guard shack. "What would you put it in?" asked S. I pointed out that they used to have a refrigerator outside the building next to the flowers. "It went the way of the trees," S. said. "Same decision-maker, too."

 

Death and life, Inc.

 

Lilith steered me to the door of the guard shack at the cemetery (she knows where to find her people). S came out and pointed past the display of flowers for sale, meaning he wanted to talk beyond the Cyclopsian eye of the new camera. The big bosses are around, and not just a couple of them, along with a large group of competitors. Twenty-two of them! Think of the airfare and hotel for all those people. Must be 100K. Something's up. S thinks the place is going to be sold, but even his source inside the company hadn't heard anything about the visit. M told him they'd been looking to see how big around the trees are at the bottom. How many plots could be put into that space. He thinks it's M but can't be sure. Oh, they want to put in a feature like the one here, he was told by one boss. But you know, you'd send two people for that work. Plus, the two businesses hate each other. In one year, S said, we'll all be gone. They bring in their own.

 

I told S I met a writer who wondered what people who work in a cemetery talk about. Oh, life and death, I'd said. "And everything else," he added.

Things mothers say

When you're grieving (as he had been for his wife) and people try to give you advice, S told me, "It's like you're in Missouri telling me what it's like for me in Yugoslavia." He'd had a girlfriend in Florida whose mother had them over for dinner each week. They brought a friend who was very short, and sensitive about it. "Don't say anything about her height," the girlfriend had told her mother. Just as soon as the door opened, of course, the mother let out a southern "why you so short, girl?" I told him that the second time my mother met my college roommate's parents, who had moved from Japan decades earlier, she told them how much their English had improved. S and I groaned. 

 

"I'm old and wise," said the man up the hill, walking with his wife. "No, you aren't," I replied, "you're a Cubs fan."

 

The former snail hunter of Kahalu`u feeds her chicken

Her cigarette smoke preceded her; as we turned the corner, she muttered something about "our nation." A hen paced beside the fence, demanding to be fed. The woman's brother-in-law had died this morning. He'd had Alzheimer's, as had his parents; his wife has Parkinson's. "She's mean," the woman's sister. "Complain about something new! Like Trump. I know she's worried about finances, but at that point in our lives, don't we need to find something that brings us joy?" Her own worry lines showed through the cigarette haze. "Trump's completely ruined us." The hen yelled; we walked home, though Lilith would have preferred to continue staring the chicken down.

 

from Startles

Startles

I’m shocked but not surprised, startled but unmoved. We'd been the American empire, but suddenly—how suddenly?--we are Romans. Afraid that he won’t be remembered, the president promises to erect an arch for a triumph to be announced later (TBA). Why can’t blasphemy be more fun? You cross over a hill and there it is, the Colosseum!

Festivals of blood replaced by rivers of tourists. We only see what others built, saw diminished, shored up, sold tickets to. To see is a neutral verb. But to see so many seeing so much; I had not imagined so many! I told a boy in Temple valley he was taking photos of a Brazilian cardinal; he didn’t look up. We confine seeing to our own devices, bearing witness in so many private rooms.

“The public” used to park for free. Now, instead of flowering bushes, we get poles with signs on them, telling you how to pay. With your entry to the Temple, you can get a faux Japanese shirt for $58. Tourists mimic pilgrims at the mock temple; to see is to take a pilgrimage, if you follow your maps closely enough. The Holy Sea it ain’t.

The feeling is heavy on us here, where a graveyard mimics Trump’s America. The boss insults his staff, tells them to “get over” their grief if they’re suffering, to “stop eating so much” if they’re heavy. Cameras on poles have replaced the security staff, like some nightmare out of Jeremy Bentham. Tree stumps accumulate, some red setter orange with red setter eyes staring up. Warehouse the dead in these plots or behind black walls.

Nature is our refuge, is it not? The sharply angled mountains, green, promising waterfalls when it rains. The earth, rich and dark, piled beside the road. A man with cut grass fur on his boots, green on brown leather. Another with dirt under his nails pets my dog.

To arrive at refuge, we crop our images ever more narrowly, leave off the absences of bushes and trees, the accumulations of signs. The space of the image grows small as a die, nearly as prone to chance. “It’s my opinion, and I have the right to have it,” a neighbor says, after telling me he “hates poetry.” Who’s to grieve if consolation’s odious? Who’s to praise the ruins?

 

Lilith marche en francais

"Ah, vous etes francaises," j'ai dit aux jeunes femmes au cimetiere. They stood at attention and smiled. "Je parle un peu," j'ai dit. Elles etaient de Bretagne and je leur ai dit que j'y suis restee pour une nuit a Quimper avec des spirituelles. J'ai entendu une petite fille appellant le Temple un chateau, et apres une femme qui criait, Guillaume! a son mari. "Il y a beaucoup de francais ici aujourd'hui," je lui ai dit. "Tu as entendu! Nous sommes avec des amis." 

 

The tourists arrive in clumps: German, French, Indian. Yesterday, I met a family from the Big Island who'd never been to the cemetery/Temple. Kona side. "What happened to the old guy who walked a dog in here for a long time?" asked Dennis the other day. "He died," I said, "and I found out that his son had been one of my students."

Chapgpt edited my French:

« Ah, vous êtes françaises », ai-je dit aux jeunes femmes au cimetière.
Elles se sont arrêtées et ont souri.
« Je parle un peu », ai-je ajouté.
Elles étaient de Bretagne, et je leur ai dit que j’y étais restée une nuit à Quimper avec des sœurs.
J’ai entendu une petite fille appeler le temple « un château », puis une femme crier « Guillaume ! » à son mari.
« Il y a beaucoup de Français ici aujourd’hui », lui ai-je dit.
« Tu as entendu ! Nous sommes avec des amis. » 

Valley of the bad air (after Gary Pak)

"Do you know R's mom? Nicest lady there is. She's large. Someone offered her a chair at a meeting and she said no, she wanted to stand. "You sure you can stand that long?" asked the boss, who chides her on what she eats. Chides everyone. "You see those trees over there?" S asked. He meant the ones on the hill between Kahekili Hwy and the mountains, lovely trees. "They're going to cut those, because they take up space where plots could be put." "Doesn't the cemetery have a certificate for being an arboretum?" I asked. S snorted. Said uncle's having a really hard time, yes; family problems, job. "He's in a bad way," Ola says up the hill, "but he's doing nothing to make it better. Quit his other job." He's depressed. I asked after the woman who worked in front of the temple; she quit the company, I was told. "At least we got Jesus in the White house," I said to S. "Oh, that's not Trump. He's been dead at least nine months. Notice how much shorter he is now. Down from 6' 2" to 5' 10. And there was the 6' 7" Biden, too. Someone's pulling the strings."

 

These days, I take pictures of stumps of bushes, the beautiful retriever orange/red of tree stumps. The final part of a quest narrative, I read, is lamentation.

A gray day in the cemetery

Uncle J has lost his bluster. Lilith and I stopped to say hello, get our trilled "Lilith Walks!" out of him, a handshake, a pet, something. Perhaps I shouldn't have opened with, "I'm sorry to hear the security guys got laid off." "All of them." Uncle is working some night shifts to cover, but at least there's peace and quiet then. But I don't think it's my comment that dampens the mood. His face has thinned over the last few months; even his beard has lost its attitude. "My cousin had one stroke, and then another, and another," he told me. Lilith and I hope his cousin gets better, and walk off in the thin rain.

 

That loving feeling

Daniel usually wears an emergency green vest and walks the path between Kahekili and the cemetery. Today, he wore a dark vest and walked next to the highway to avoid water and mud. I called him on it. Hadn't seen him in months, it seems. "I read your stories to my grandkids on facetime before bed," he told me. (That may be the very best review I've ever had.) I walked over mud patches so I could hear him better. "A homeless guy asked another guy for money. The other guy said he only had big bills. So give me one, the homeless guy said. It was an electric bill." Daniel has given me one bad joke every time we've talked over the years.

 

We'd missed the waterfalls, and couldn't see the mountains for the clouds. "If you go up to the top," Puna told me, "you can hear the stream coming down. It's loud. He remarked that the cemetery feels empty these days. The security guys were let go (replaced by cameras on high poles). "Felt like family," he said.

 

Tender tree mercies

"Did you survive the near-apocalypse?" I asked the young man at the gate this morning. He wears his baseball cap backwards, is unfailingly polite. His first name is Scottish, and I keep forgetting it. Many days he tells us to "walk safely." He thought they'd survived, and said S had talked to the big bosses about their immediate boss. "Oh, I was thinking of Trump and Iran," I said, realizing that the two conversations were oddly congruous.

 

On our way out, I saw three men standing together. They had the look of bosses, so neatly dressed. One had an HR (Bob) Haldeman haircut. "Are you the big bosses?" I asked. The local guy, dressed in a snappy aloha shirt, asked how they could help me. "Stop cutting down so many trees," I asked. HR (Bob) launched into the "damaged in the storm" rationale. "No, lots of trees were cut before the storms," I said, to which he nodded, slightly. "The place is beautiful otherwise," I said, as Lilith and I headed home. 

 

We're expecting another bad storm.

 

A big day in Lilith stories

1. 

 

"We were all waiting for you to get back," said S at the cemetery shack. I wondered why. "Because of all the destruction," he said. Yes, I'd seen evidence of downed trees, ex-bushes, new vistas no one wants. Fresh absences after two weeks away. "Those two trees by the turn toward the Temple . . . people get attached to the trees near their loved one's grave," he said. That would be the man with lots of tatts and a locals teeshirt; I've seen him often beside the one tree with flowers and family members. Kind of ironic, I tell S, that I was away reading from my book about befriending a tree when all these get chopped down. "They broke in the storm," another worker told me. And the bushes?

 

Lilith and I walked to the top, saw our two buddies there, and headed back down. S sat in a green maintenance vehicle, wrapped flowers in the back, Padres cap on, talking to the guy who sits in his silver truck early mornings. S said he's not allowed onto the Temple grounds any more. "Oh, I snuck in the other day, cuz he [the man in the truck] wasn't here. He chases me away." "Not any more," said S, the man in the truck nodding along. That was then. Now it's fine if you go in. He doesn't care any more.

 

Before moving on, I said we'll see if Iran survives the night. "Oh, that war is FAKE," opined S. "Iran can't control the Strait of Hormuz; they have no navy or air force. And the moonshot is even worse! You can see the CGI all over it." For an instant, I found his words a balm. If the war is fake, who needs to worry? If the war is fake, why feel despair at 3 a.m.? I looked up in time to see another green vehicle coming at Lilith and me. The two workers in the truck were staring up the hill. "Stop!" I implored. "Are there pigs up there?" No, mangoes. A mango tree full of fruit. That's what held their attention. S said he'd get a big stick and come back.

 

2.

 

On the other side of the chain link that separates Ahuimanu Park from Kahekili Hwy and the asphalt path Lilith and I walked on, we saw the park custodian whacking at high grass and weeds. Getting ready for the next storm. "You investigated all that water?" she asked. "It's moving!" There has, in fact, been a stream running down the bike path, even in the absence of rain. "It's coming out of the hill there, where the ground fell down," she said. 

 

She'd put a county lock on the gate to keep out the homeless guy that comes around; the lock's now gone. "He's the guy who steals flowers from the graves--the urns, too--and takes them to 7-Eleven down by the Hygienic Store to sell. You should write about this." I expressed surprise that I hadn't seen him. "Oh, he does it late at night." She offers a litany of stories about homeless (and homed) folks who do strange things. One guy took her to court for sexually harassing him, because he said she said he had small balls! (I already knew the punch line to this one.) "And the judge was laughing, just like you are now, and saying that's not sexual harassment. And I told him, besides, I have a wife, I'm not interested in his sort." Ka ching, there it was. The punch line.

 

I mention Iran, because that is what I do. "The bridges and power plants! Oh my god, what's gotten into him? Is he bipolar or what? Schizophrenic?" I suggested we didn't know, but he was not of sound mind. She returned to the subject of people in her park. "They complain there's no toilet paper, and I tell them the homeless people burn the rolls, so we stopped providing paper. And they come out of there disgusted, wondering what to wipe their asses with. It's coming out of your ass, so don't feel so disgusted," she said, before Lilith and I continued toward home, the bike path stream gurgling beside us.

 

This morning in Tehran

Deep in her dementia, but still at home, my mother knocked on a neighbor's door at 2 a.m. "The sun didn't come up today," she told them, thinking it was 10 a.m.

 

This morning, our demented president threatens to make that statement true for Iran.

La Parola da Casa: podcast on Io ed Eucalipto (I and Eucalyptus), Lavender Ink/Dialogos

 You can watch the podcast here. I'm at home, desperately missing the sound of Italian. Thank you to everyone who made the Italy trip possible, including Federico Preziosi, Pina Piccolo, and Lou Vezzali.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qdwpk18QxYs&t=175s 

Jesus' side arm

On our way out of the cemetery, I wished Uncle a happy easter and Buddha's birthday (in three days). "This is the day Jesus whups the Devil's ass," he said brightly, adding "peow, peow" sounds to his trigger finger and thumb sign. "I thought Jesus liked peace," said I. "Oh, he does . . . "

The last flight home from Rome

The young blonde woman in a Texas sweat shirt and Seattle Mariners cap (it was her boyfriend's, but I told her about Brendon Donovan anyway) had grown up in Indonesia, but lived in suburban Minneapolis. She was moving to Hawai`i with several other Marines. The weather would remind her of her first home. And Iran? "I have no business there." I told her about a Chinese dissident I met once who learned how to fail a physical exam. She's going to look into her bad joints. She wondered where on Oahu to live, after she and her boyfriend get married. Between them, their housing allowance is 6K a month . . . you can live on that, my husband said. (Local people don't benefit from the military's socialized housing support.) Toward the end of the flight, she scrolled and scrolled through photographs of her and her boyfriend (I infer). I passed her my phone number, in case.