The woman who thinks she knows me

She crossed Hui Iwa in front of us, a short woman in baggy shorts and slippers. She held some large leaves and smaller flowers in her hands and looked through chain link at the culvert, diamonds of light shining off the water. As Lilith and I approached, she asked me what the building on the other side of the culvert is. I said it belonged to a spiritual group that holds meetings there, though none in my recent memory. She had light brown hair that fell to her shoulders, another flower behind her ear. A young woman, some scabs beside her mouth. "I've seen you somewhere before!" she said to me. She stopped our conversation a couple of times to say she'd located the memory of me, but lost it again. "Did you go to UH?" I asked. "No, BYU. Took a Samoan class at UH, though."

 

She asked where I live, and I gestured "up there." "That's what they say in Kaneohe; up the road," she responded. "I am . . . " Her mouth formed a word, but didn't sound it. As I leaned my left ear toward her, I realized that the soundless word was "homeless." As if shame. "Can you get into a shelter?" I asked. "None of the shelters will take me," she said; "they'll take everyone else in Kahalu`u, but not me." I said I was sorry. "You should be grateful," she said.

 

So many rats

I ran into our neighbor with a little brown dog and a big white dog at the dumpster. Both dogs pulled toward me and my mostly empty trash bag. "There's a rat in there," I told him. In the early a.m. I heard a big crash and wandered to the living room. Maeve, the ginger cat, had a dead rat in her mouth; Claude, the gray and white, was staring at her. Maeve dropped the rat beside a chair, whereupon I plucked it up with a plastic bag and deposited it in the trash can. "So many rats," I said to the neighbor. I asked him if he's in the military. He said no, but many of his friends are, and they're freaking out. Getting fancy dinners and all. I threw the rat in the green dumpster. Bryant sent me a photo of a rat in a trap in Volcano. Was that the hot dog eater, or the almond butter lover? The trap hadn't quite finished the job, so he had to. There have been more since. So many rats.

Lilith and the fuzzy man contemplate poop

The man with the fuzzy legs and the equally fuzzy dog wiped a handkerchief over the deep lines in his forehead, those that seemed to hold up his thoughts, along with his thinning gray hair, and said, "I can't even think about the future. This turd is going to bomb Iran." I held up the bag that contained Lilith's poop, and he wished it could be put into a Big Mac and sent as a gift. His phone rang. Lilith and I walked on.

 

A response from Arlington National Cemetery

 

A review of Io ed Eucalipto (in Italian)

 https://www.vocidallisola.it/2025/06/20/io-e-eucalipto-di-susan-m-schultz/

And now I have my Italian homework for the day! 

Here is a translation: https://www.vocidallisola.it/2025/06/20/io-e-eucalipto-di-susan-m-schultz/

A podcast on walking and dogs and writing, with Ann de Forest and Ernesto Pujol

Things are tough right now, but I had a wonderful time talking about my Lilith Walks series yesterday, here: https://walklistencreate.org/video/walking-america-6-walking-with-a-dog-ann-de-forest-hosts-ernesto-pujol-and-susan-m-schultz/ 

And BlazeVox made news item out of it. https://www.blazevox.org/news/walking-with-lilith-susan-m-schultzs-more-lilith-walks

Death and life in the morning

The rooster was standing beside a dead chicken. As Lilith and I approached, the rooster walked away, but in a circle that arrived back at the dead chicken. 

 

Ola pulled his John Deere off the road to say "Hey aunty, how you?" Beside him was a younger worker, neat as a pin in his aloha shirt. Said he was exhausted. Long week at Valley of the Temples. Ola got off the cart to pet Lilith. She minded it not one bit. "How's the baby?" I asked. Ola puts out his hands. "Big as one nugget," he says. Just had their first ultrasound. "He . . . or she . . . da baby clapping, or looks like." New Year's baby. "I look, say, I made that!" At the guard shack, Uncle John says he'll get me a nice red cap. Already got one, I say. STL on it.

 

As we walked back, the rooster was still there, with his dead friend, companion, lover, fellow traveler. Another chicken had showed up. They stood at attention, curious and somehow wise.