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.
