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. »