Lilith at Tesla, Kalakaua Avenue

 

Lilith and I walked in Waikiki yesterday evening, she with her sandwich sign "DOGE" (with the E crossed out) and I in my Jack Smith fan club shirt (though it was my Cards cap that earned me a fist bump from a deluded tourist, who thinks they'll be good this year). We were mostly older people who remember. In response to a sign welcoming Canadian tourists, a couple stopped to talk about tariffs and to say they feel for us in the USA. An Australian woman who missed her dog, displayed on her phone, said she's sorry for us. 

 

And then: the tall young white man who walked down the line of protesters yelling "pussy" in their faces. 

 

More young men, telling us to clear off the sidewalk as the police came, at least a dozen of them. "How many policemen does it take to change a light bulb in Waikiki? All of them." The young ones, and they were mostly young, look like my son. I want to hug them.

 

A woman who looked at Joe's sign, which included an image of Musk saluting fascistically, and said he'd done that out of love. Her face wrinkled with concern. She'd seen it on tv. (Joe said he had, too.) When we got to her claim that Obama had done it, too, we knew we were in deep--nay, shallow--water, and she wandered off.

 

A man who yelled at us about government fraud and waste. When I told him it was my turn to speak and said, "Musk is just taking our money," he responded, "Musk doesn't need your money." "Oh yes he does," said Joe.

 

A woman with a red-capped husband and small blonde child, dressed in a red wrap of some sort, who chanted "TRUMP" and waved her fist in the air. She tried to get her child to do same, but the little girl did not. I saw her from the back, this confused child, and felt some tenderness toward her (as I do for Musk's small boy).

 

A man who said Trump is wonderful (two shakas worth) and makes America strong in the world. I said "Europe doesn't seem to think so." "I'm European he said; you should try living there. It's turning Muslim." "I live here," I said.

 

The security guard who told A. there should be no cussing, because children were around.

 

A, who at dinner said of the woman who served us burgers, "she didn't vote. She can't. She was a felon."

One sheet to the wind

The retired airplane mechanic leaned against the hill as if the sidewalk were itself a gust of wind. He walks a large dog, fuzzy as his person's legs, whose face looks more human than most. I asked if the man had watched the speech last night. "I had it on until I felt sick to my stomach," he said, gruffly. Rumbled, rather, then sputtered like a bad engine as he spat out that "he's going after social security." As he leaned over to tie his Brooks shoe, he put his foot on the dog's leash. Dog took this as invitation to play. "Goddamn it, STOP!" he yelled at the dog. "Get down!" He was making no eye contact when he said he was sorry, but he was in a very bad mood this morning. (I said I'd noticed.) "The Republicans are nothing but Nazis at this point, and the Democrats . . ." This particular gust took him to imagining a German soldier near the end of WWII, desperately needing ammunition and supplies. But the trains weren't bringing them. The reason, we both knew, was Auschwitz. "They were shipping off Jews to be killed. And those Germans were STILL following Hitler." He leaned over to tell his dog everything was ok, as Lilith and I headed downhill.

 

Only the corrupt departments

1.

Daniel came toward us, his retired military pace not quite a march, but also not a stroll in the park, and pulled out his ear buds. "Do you know what Gene Hackman's very first film was?" he asked. No. "Lilith!" I pulled an envelope out of my pocket to show him; I'd found it near the sign at the entrance. It was closed, but one side had a big heart scrawled on it, and words of love (and "even like") for "Papa." The impress of a boot was over it, but not strong enough to interfere with the sentiment. The other side of the envelope bore strips of post-it notes with asemic writing on them. The envelope was glued shut. Dan said he'd take the envelope to the desk. He ended with a joke about a woman and her carberator.

 

2.

At the Temple, Lilith and I peered around the closed-looking ticket shack, painted maroon like the temple. There were two men in the shack, the one who sits and watches cars (likely to fend off thieves) and another who sat at the desk. "No Uncle John?" I asked. "He's got the day off," said the first man. "Only works here on weekends." I said I know that he has a FEMA job during the week and I worry about his job. "Oh, he works for DoD," said the second man, glaring at me. "No need to worry." "But so many people are getting fired," I said. "Only in the crooked departments," he said. "They're people with families and bills to pay." "They work in the crooked departments," he repeated. "You're wrong," I opined. "OK, if you say so."

 

2.5

Lilith and I marched into the parking lot, between huge buses disgorging tourists and the rental cars that ferried others in. A couple was releasing their two Aussie sheepdogs from a car. "I like your hat!" said the tall man. Cardinals fan.

 

The purposeful walker

The purposeful walker and I have exchanged more syllables than words over the past few years. There was for a time an old dog, and a husband who walked the dog while his purposeful wife strode through the cemetery. She wears ear buds, listens to podcasts (I suspect), has a silver cross around her neck. Always leans over to scratch Lilith and offer her a good word (almost as good as a treat). Then off she goes. But today, she stopped, took our her earbuds, took the card advertising my book, inquired about the protest at the capitol a week ago. Her brother had worked in the embassy in Baghdad with the military. He'd told her about all the waste and fraud. She thinks of that now, but also thinks of the way Kamehameha Schools got "reformed," when "Mrs. Lindsey" fired so many staff members. "They got no respect," she said, "and people need that. They need their dignity." She'd worked at Kamehameha in HR, she said, a sheepish look on her face. Couldn't do anything about orders from above, but they could help people leave with dignity. And now social security and medicare. She's worried. Her husband's more hard-line, but she's thinking about her grand baby. What will happen there? Will they need to home school her, what with all the DOE cuts? "I'm Susan," I said. "I'm Janice," she said.

 

Protest in Waikiki

 

Protesting in Waikiki. A woman in a blue Punahou shirt standing on a hill in front of the beach, thrusting two third fingers at us and yelling. A woman who asks to have her photo taken, because she "disagrees with everything we're doing." A friend who goes ballistic on the trump supporting couple that attends all these protests. She carries a sign that reads, "talk to me, I'm friendly." When the police intervene, they cross the street to fly their trump flag. One policeman strides toward us. "I know that dog!" he exclaims. He's a neighbor, one who supported Trump. But he gives good advice on how to better attach Lilith's sign, which keeps sliding out of place. A young man handing out Socialist bumper stickers from a tray rather like a cocktail waiter, who asks if I taught English at UH. Says he was in a 200-level class of mine in 2007. Doesn't remember much about the class or my name, but does recall that we talked about Marcus Garvey and I grilled him about reggae music, which he loved. I did remember that kid! He lives in Seattle now. Lots of thumbs up from tourists, along with the "they're f-ing idiots" from others. I like marching through Waikiki, because it's where Ohio meets the Pacific in the midst of capitalism's dark splendor. We stopped at Tesla for a few minutes. I had to take off Lilith's DOGE (with E crossed out) sandwich boards because they kept falling down.

In the dark days

"That was another part of my life," he said, then paused. He'd just said he wanted to donate to Lilith's and my walk to prevent suicide. Two or three steps later he said he'd been in El Salvador "during the bad times," teaching three young women how to make latrines for their village. He'd left for a weekend. When he came back, they'd "Jim Jones'ed themselves." The army had come to the village and raped all the women.

Lilith manbarks

Lilith went manbarking today. Up at the top of the cemetery, a man waved us away, wanting to park where we were standing, as I talked to a fellow walker. (It's not as if there weren't miles of parking available.) When we got back from the top, he was putting trash into a container many yards away from his car. He smiled when he saw Lilith, This man with short-cropped gray hair and a sports jersey whose provenance I didn't recognize smiled at Lily. Moved to pet her. She barked. Tried again. Barked again. I told him she sometimes does this to men, though not always. Farther down the hill, we saw the man in black wellies who used to work at the cemetery and is somehow still there on Sundays. He greeted Lilith, who barked at him. Tried again. Barked again.

 

What is it that makes a Lilith walk? This is not one, really. I can't leave out part of the narrative, because that would require me to know what I was leaving out. I'm Lilith's narrative animal; she walks, and I write. But her first year or so is a mystery to me, perhaps to her as well. I imagine she's barking out of that first year of experience, the one I can't write about. But that's presumption on my part. A Lilith walk story needs a turn, a volta (as it were), a haiku-like surprise at the end. This one, insofar as it is story, has none of that. It's a mystery story without the evidence necessary to prove the case. I'm a detective with no looking glass, no fingerprints, nothing but my ears. She barked.

 

Back at the guard shack, Uncle K leaned over to pet Lilith. She was happy to let him.