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.