The airplane mechanic's father

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The retired airplane mechanic was in a better mood today when Lilith and I ran into him and his dog. The dog is fuzzy, with an almost human face. Not regal like a Portuguese water dog, but mutt regal. I told him about my letter to Arlington National Cemetery and, knowing it couldn't happen, he said he'd like to sit down and talk to my parents for a long time. His father enlisted on December 8, 1942 and was sent to Darwin, Australia in a troop ship that was lucky not to be sunk. In Darwin, they were to protect an airstrip, but the Pacific was so dangerous that no one delivered supplies; they were on their own. Had to drive long distances to find food. "My father said you don't know how completely a person can change until you see someone who is hungry." I said we have a friend who was a Khmer Rouge survivor who had described that state to us. At one point, they were told that the Japanese were coming to take Darwin, which they bombed persistently. His father's group was given weapons, told to hold the airfield as long as possible, and then to scatter. Each one on his own. But the Coral Sea battle ended that, and they remained in Darwin. His father died at 59, before he could retire, and his mother is buried in Punchbowl, because she had all the documents required to prove she'd been married to a veteran. "Gotta go," he said, as ever, and Lilith and I headed to our cemetery to walk.

My letter to Arlington National Cemetery

 

On hearing of the demise of the Wilson Center in Washington, DC

I had an internship with _The Wilson Quarterly_ for a summer after college. Hardly a site of radical activity, it was a place where people gathered to think and do journalism. I ended up writing an essay on Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, which was published in 1989, a year before I moved to Hawai`i. Here: https://www.wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/undefined/marianne-moore-and-elizabeth-bishop

This archive is likely to disappear, as the current administration just announced the elimination of the Wilson Center: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/continuing-the-reduction-of-the-federal-bureaucracy/

Today also brings news of websites being "scrubbed" that reflect on American diversity, including those devoted to African Americans, Asian Americans and Women (Americans) at Arlington Cemetery. And elsewhere.

So, I put this long ago essay of mine up to preserve something of my archive. But it, too, will likely disappear.

Lilith balks

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Lilith is a dog of qualities. One of them is not obedience. Truth be told, I don't demand it of her, though I keep her on a leash to avoid mad dashes at chickens, or dashes into traffic after chickens, or lurches toward mongooses. When we walk, one of her "words" is "balk." (Other words are "pirouette," "stare with big dark eyes," "snuggle.") I'll be striding along, when suddenly there's a jolt on the leash. Were I fishing, this would be a good sign. With Lilith, it's evidence that she's smelled something, or wants to pee, or that she simply wants to look me in the eye and announce her volition. A woman was driving by at the cemetery office when Lilith balked today. "Oh he doesn't want to walk!" She had a wide open face and smile, a flower tucked behind her ear, and was going to a funeral. "Oh, she smelled something," I said. She balked several more times before our walk ended.

On the hill, Journey roared toward us on his John Deere vehicle and stopped. Said he was going to his great grandmother's funeral today. When I told him about a woman who'd stopped to comment on Lilith's obstinance, he said, "that's my grandmother! Was she wearing orange?" I had not noticed. "I'm excited," said Journey. "I won't have to be at work."

 

As we left the cemetery I saw a group of people wearing orange gathering outside the main building. "What's it about orange?" I asked Journey. He didn't know but he did say she liked to be flashy.

 

My review of Deborah Meadows's BUMBLEBEES

 Please find the review here. Deborah Meadows is a very fine, very smart, poet. https://www.ronslate.com/on-bumblebees-poems-by-deborah-meadows/

Social Security checks for the dead

I nearly ran over the man and his dog a few weeks back. He started to curse, then saw me, and said "oh, it's you." I was horrified. Today, he yelled across the street from me on Hui Iwa that his side of the street was "spooky." Lilith and I went over to inquire as to why. "The traffic goes so fast down the hill, and the buses make the sidewalk shake," he said. Cosmo liked to go up there (overgrown, choke full of smells) and was pulling in that direction. We chatted a bit, then I asked how the man is handling "the apocalypse." 

 

"Oh it's a bunch of Koreans!" he said. I wondered what Koreans had to do with the apocalypse and indicated that I meant the current political situation. "My wife's Korean, and we're having a large family reunion on Maui. I like her brother-in-law, who's Indian, but the Koreans touch you, put their arms around you." He doesn't like that. "There's nothing to do on Maui, either," he added. "They're all doctors and dentists, lots of moolah."

 

As for Social Security, there are lots of dead people getting checks, he told me. "Urban legend," said I. Not true. "You just don't know what to believe now," he responded. Clearly, he didn't believe me either.

 

The death of the cemetery walker

S lets me in on all the conspiracy theories, not because they're good stories, but because he believes in them. We haven't talked much since the election, and after the inauguration, he's rubbed it in from afar. So, when he descended a cemetery hill in his John Deere vehicle the other day and swept across the road to pull up next to me and Lilith, I wondered. "Remember Renn, who turned out to be Rand?" he asked. Yes, the walker who had recurring cancers and hobbled a lot at the end. "He died. You can find his obituary on the cemetery webpage." The last time I saw Rand on my street, he said things had been rough but he was planning a trip to Paris. 

 

Today, I followed S to his battered green van. He was sitting in the driver's seat, attending to his phone. He wasn't sure he wanted to see me, that much was clear. So I pulled up to his open window and told him that I'd emailed Rand's widow. That she'd emailed back. I read him the message. Yes, they'd gone to Europe ("Yay! He made it!"), enjoyed food and the Alhambra, despite the neuropathy in Rand's feet.

The last time he walked in our area (after 30 years of it!), he and his daughter had gone to the cemetery, but S wasn't there. Must have been his day off. "He was thinking of you," I told S, whose eyes had softened. "That made my day."

 

I never talked much to Rand, who had great purpose in his gait. But I wish I had. His obit is chronicle of a life very well lived. He was a Vietnam vet, an early childhood expert, a psychologist, a tai chi master, devoted poker player. "He was the least judgmental person I ever met," wrote his wife of over 50 years.

 https://www.valley-of-the-temples.com/obituaries/rand-berkline/obituary

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.

 

Name into verb

The mortician, Paul, dressed in dull blue scrubs, said he's really tired, they all are. I asked if a lot of people die this time of year. He said yes, they've been partying since Halloween, poisoning themselves, and "the chronic illnesses just drop." I handed him a card advertising _More Lilith Walks_ and told him he was in it. Thanked him. Said that Lilith and I are walking this month for suicide prevention. "I guess you get some of those, too," I said. He nodded slowly. "I'm afraid the rate will go up now," I said, "what with people losing their jobs." He agreed. It's not just jobs and the country, he said, but the world. "I'll have to look into that book," he said.

 

Along the way, S drove by in his John Deere cart. Raised his thumb high. We also ran into the tour bus driver who wears Kansas Chiefs gear, including a #15 jersey. I looked into his bus, said "I guess Jalen Hurts."

A member of the resistance

"I like your shirt!" said a woman with ehu-colored hair, about my age. This month, I wear suicide prevention teeshirts, but those were stinky, so I'd pulled on a psychedelic Harris/Walz shirt. She proved to be something of a despairing optimist, had taken on three issues, all of which are personal to her. Autism, education, trans-rights. She'd worked toward a ph.d. in American Studies at UHM in the 1990s before her marriage broke up and she moved to the mainland, where she worked in seven Barnes and Noble stores. She'd organized the opening of the Kahala Mall branch back in the day, and had also worked at the Ala Moana store. After a while, we exchanged phone numbers and agreed to stay in touch. "Keep wearing your shirt," she said. It's important. I have no idea if this is a Lilith story or not, but it mattered.

Lilith and I are walking for suicide prevention

 Lilith and I are walking 50 miles in February to prevent suicide. If you're on Facebook, you can find our donation page here: https://www.facebook.com/donate/959122402350482/959122432350479/

If not, feel free to give directly to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention: 

https://afsp.org/

After one walk, Lilith enjoyed a kid bath:

ICE cold

"It feels like 9/11 every day," I said to a like-minded walking friend, retired airplane mechanic, today. "I figured out what happened to the plane in Philadelphia," he said, out of the blue (I thought). "It was ICE." "Because the passengers were from Mexico?" I asked. "No, because it was so cold out." He was talking about ice.

 

Whose land is our land?

Lilith and I ran into S. getting out his John Deere cart, holding a flag. He was about to put it up the pole at the cemetery. Spotting me, he said, proudly: "Trump claims this land!" "I think you mean Kamehameha," I said, noting that the flag was Hawaiian (or at least the state flag).

 

"Do you know this guy?" I asked Uncle John, showing him the photo of the MAGA supporter who repeatedly yelled "You're a shit!" at me the other day. "I had a bad encounter with him over his cap." "No," said John, "and we don't condone that behavior. Everyone has a right to their opinion. America will gain prominence again!" That last to get my goat. I have so many of them, and John knows them well.

 

I told him that Lilith and I are walking 50 miles this month in support of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention). "Oh, he said, it's been a thing for a very long time on this side of the island, all the way to Kahuku. I've had friends who killed themselves, and I was there once." His daughter's boyfriend's dad recently killed himself. "No one suspected a thing, because he was so happy, so outgoing, would do anything in the community." I asked him to refer people to 988, the suicide prevention hotline. He knew it already.

 

Lilith and I logged 3.1 miles today.

Lilith and the man in the MAGA cap

I leaned over to take photographs of a broken monitor with leaves scattered on it. The man who'd just gotten out of a van came toward Lilith and me, saying "it can probably be fixed," though he changed his mind when he saw it. He was a Hawaiian man, carrying a guitar case on his back, wearing an Inauguration 2025 MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN cap. I said I was sorry to see his cap, as Trump is leading us to ruin. 

 

"Oh no! Biden's one socialist. They're communists! The media doesn't report that the last election was stolen." He put his face in mine and yelled obscenities. I called him on calling liberals "pussies." He looked and pointed at the relevant point of me, said "women have them." I said that if you use the word as an insult, you're being misogynist. "I can't use the N word, but a Black person can," I said. "I call a N----- a N-------, because that's what they call me!" 

 

We walked to the Hui Iwa crosswalk across Kahekili; we were both crossing, and the light was against us. He started yelling at me about my privilege (he's got that right) and my living in a fucking castle and how I don't know anything. He gets his information on the internet, he said. I asked where. "RUMBLE." He's going to put his podcast there. I said I would look for it. He started to walk into the highway and I cautioned him, as the traffic was going by. "I take care of MYSELF," he said.

"There are all these people on the streets," he said, "poor," and said Biden had never talked to a homeless person. His son was convicted. He pardoned him. I asked if Trump had talked to homeless people. Oh yes, he saved some of them. I told him I'd had a grandfather who was homeless. "That's your grandfather, not you. You're shit."

 

"I bet you don't believe in God, do you?" he demanded. "I'm a Buddhist," said. "I knew it!" As Lilith and I continued up Hui Iwa, he turned up Kahekili toward the cemetery. I could still hear him yelling. "You're shit!" 

 

At the light, I asked if he heard himself. At the light, I asked myself the same question. I had yelled back.

 

Lilith looks for chem-trails (but it's cloudy)

 

As Lilith led me by (her) nose to the guard shack this morning, S. popped up from his seat where he often sits out of sight. "Keep your eye on the sky!" he said to me. I felt confounded. Say, what? "Keep your eye on the sky," he repeated. "What am I supposed to see?" I asked. "Chemtrails," was his answer. Big streaks across the sky--"you haven't seen them?"--that don't disappear but get bigger. He held out his hands as if holding a large balloon. "Elon Musk's rocket?" "No, that's such a fake." He laughed at Musk's "backward rockets."

 

He was surprised I hadn't seen the trails. "You're one of the most observant people," he said, "holding up an imagined camera." I assured him I hadn't seen them. "Having a hard time breathing lately?" he asked. Yes, from the vog. He gave me a sideways look. "My mother-in-law can't function when there's vog," I add, but when there isn't any, she's as lively as they come. His side-eye was so wide I saw his profile.

 

These days, Trump gets folded into the grand theory. "There are four Trumps, you know." I said I do know that there's more than one Melania. Well, S doesn't pay much attention to her. And there are SIX Bidens. "Have you seen the Biden who's 6'6"?!" He repeated yesterday's news that Musk now appears taller than Trump in photographs, though he isn't in real life.

 

I muttered something about Monday, about all the billionaires at the inauguration. S. noted that I don't seem to trust Musk, though he didn't buy my suggestion that Musk wants our money. That's just the start, he said, as Lilith and I headed up the hill. From behind me I heard, "You're making progress!"

 

Up the hill I ran into K, snuck a picture of him weed whacking (I love the way workers resemble monks in their protective outfits). To his, "how you, aunty?" I responded that I'd been fine until I heard more conspiracy theories from S. K. said he enjoys the theories. But he held his head like a a balloon, and then showed it exploding.

James Berger takes on my work

Jim Berger has written an essay on my work, especially about the Lilith walks. I fear this Diogenes is growing weary, no longer knows where to shine her lantern, or be led by her dog's bright eyes. How do we write from inside this moment, or this cluster (with an f) of moments? Is it possible? Does it require indirection, like allegory? It will certainly require flotation devices, lest one drown. (And other protection against other elements, like fire.) Grief generally works to contain loss; what can we do when it's so uncontainable? Anyway, more on that another time. Here's Jim's kind essay:

You can read it here: https://jacket2.org/article/date-diogenes-and-dog

Who's a lunatic?

 

S--who told me yesterday about the Cabal--was driving off in his John Deere vehicle. A younger man was sitting in the guard shack. "Don't believe anything S tells you," I said. "I don't believe anything anyone says," he responded. This set me back on my heels a bit. "His ideas are lunatic," I said. He looked me in the eye, said, "and your ideas?"

 

It gets harder to write from inside the moment, when the moment itself seems infected.

MORE LILITH WALKS

 Imminently from BlazeVox, and available for pre-orders.

https://www.blazevox.org/shop-1/p/more-lilith-walks-by-susan-m-schultz