Well, it turns out I didn't do a thing about the "oobleck" yesterday, other than put down some cardboard where I have to walk. The water component has mostly evaporated, leaving the oil. So now we've just got oil laying around. A lot of it is under things, literally 1000s of lbs of things, so my plan is to just use Formula 409 and paper towels to clean up the areas I can reach.
Keeping sales up and keeping Ken's little business here alive takes a higher priority. I have to keep this shebang going for 3 more years, anyway.
The plan had been to move back to Hawaii, after all, I grew up there. It's why I've been saving up cash, almost a thousand bucks so far, so if things got bad in a hurry here I could always buy a plane ticket for there and be out of here.
But realistically speaking that makes little sense. There are a lot of things I love about Hawaii but there are also a lot of things I hate about Hawaii, not the least of which being that it doesn't matter that I grew up there and not in some privileged enclave. I'm a "haole" and will always be a "haole" and I have met people who even I thought were fresh off the boat due to their whiteness and blondeness, and turned out to have been there as a family since the whaling days. But someone who's any sort of brown can show up there and get a warm welcome that no "haole" no matter how deep their roots there, will get.
I have two sisters back there who managed to marry well, so they can live their lives in their own little bubbles. I was back there in 03 and visited quite a bit with the older one, who lives with a level of fear and general caution I found a bit jarring. Didn't know her next-door neighbors, was afraid to ride the bus, was jumpy as a rabbit when I took her to a working-class place I'd found for fish sandwiches. The younger, being blonde and blue-eyed too, no doubt has her safe circuit of places to be.
I'm not happy living that way. I like to get out and circulate.
There are gut feelings about the place that no amount of mulling over and "gaining perspective" and so on can fix. At best it would be a flimsy patching-over, said patches to fall right off in the near-tropical heat. My dream of getting a room to rent near the university and then somehow going out to the North Shore and Windward Side to pick shells isn't a very practical one, as it's a couple hours on the bus each way. Plus a "haole" picking "their" shells is never welcome. It was OK when I was a thin, tan, obviously quite poor, kid in the 70s. Now, not so much, and there's law on "their" side as gathering seashells etc for commercial purposes is illegal.
I'd just end up holed up in my little room, getting out to Waikiki to play trumpet IF they'd let me, as a "haole" who stands up and makes noise, as trumpet-playing is considered, is a "haole" who needs a good pounding down, or at least being banned from playing "any brass instrument" on the street in Waikiki.
I could get by as I'm too much of a survivor not to. But aside from a last gasp, to see the old places before I die, I'd not be happy there at all. And I'd not waste a plane flight, as the old places are gone; covered with houses and paved over and bays killed with silt and once-healthy ecosystems now just dead coral and only fossil shells on the beach.
I can't even go back and be a writer, as there's nothing to write about in Olde Hawaii. First, it's all been done to death. Second, the "haole" thing again - Barack Obama could have a second career in "Hawaiian Studies" and that would be fine, although with a "haole" mother and a "popolo" father, having gone to Punahou, the local snob-factory, er, elite prep school, it's hard to say how much of the local experience he had growing up other than smoking the local weed. But the important thing is he's not white. He could say things I could not allude to without literally being burned in my bed.
Oh yes, "haole" habitations have the curious property of being more inflammable than average in dear old Hawaii. It happened to an artist who'd been a mentor to me as a teen (they'd gotten him drunk on wine when when he dozed off, lit his place but contrary to their plans he'd awakened and ran out in time to live). It's happened more recently to a "haole" who dared to rent out surfboards in Waikiki, first his house with himself and children inside - thankfully their dogs started making noise and they got out in time - and then they burned out business in Waik's, taking out the public surf racks and the police sub-station there also. No one will be caught.
When I was a kid on Portlock Road, a kid friend of ours, Ross, had his house burned. Ross had been a nice kid; a good friend. Rumor was it was "local" trouble, blamed on their taking some lava rocks back from the big island or some nonsense. More probably, Mr. Ross, had proven to be better at something than the locals, and he had to go. The huge black balloon of smoke went up and Ross and his family left, I guess for the mainland because we never heard from them again. And the house sat empty for years, their pool becoming a haven for frogs and toads.
There were too many of us, between people and dogs, to burn out. Instead it was the typical story. Dad was promised work at good pay to get him to the islands, then once we'd moved in the deal was changed (yellow man speak with forked tongue) and Dad had to take any computer programming work he could get. He was in the precariat before it was cool. I'm given to going on about how he should have used his hobby carpentry skills and joined the carpenter's union, but that probably would have been a really good way to have something fall on one's head from a story or two up, or have a tragic car accident.
I can't physically be in Hawaii and write about this stuff or even think about it. It's a land where the tiniest wrong sort of glance, the wrong shade of word, can get you into some really deep shit. And if you're "haole" they won't break a sweat looking for you in Hawaii.
Sunday, March 1, 2020
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