Last night I hunted down the 20 or so things that had sold as of last night, to have them ready to pack today.
I also practiced the shakuhachi, working on each line of Nori No Miyama and making pretty good progress on it. In the shakuhachi scale there are actually three Ro's, the bottom one, the one next up, then the high one which is really the bottom note of the third register.
It's one thing to twaddle through the page of exercises in the Koga book, playing them in otsu, the bottom register and then kan, the next register, but to play this piece is harder. And play it I will, until I can do it well.
I've chosen this one piece because it seems about the easiest of the ones Rinban wants us to learn, and also, if I can learn one piece for each session of the shakuhachi club, IE one a month, then at the end of my time on the mainland here I'll have 24 pieces under my belt and that's plenty to busk with. I'd say I know Hinomaru pretty well, then I'll know Nori No Miyama, so that's 2 so far. With 24 pieces I can do plenty of busking.
I drank less than the night before, but I did drink last night, a bottle of makgeolli and 500ml of my diet 7-Up and soju mix, mixed down to about 5%. When I woke up my headache was bad. Bad enough that even with tons of packing to do, I'm not going out.
Instead, I drank a mug of water and a couple of aspirin, and then a mug of tea. My headache is largely gone but I still don't feel too great. I have a theory that, with my years of heavy drinking, my sense of how hydrated I am has become distorted, and that my headaches are due to being dehydrated.
I will have to taper down the alcohol, and get in the habit of drinking regular cups of water - no lime juice, no fuss, just down a cup of water when needed like I did when I was a kid/young adult in Hawaii.
I also am re-reading Unfamiliar Fishes by Sarah Vowell and about halfway through. It's not a piece of great writing but there's a ton of information in it, probably mostly right, and it sure brings up memories. Names I remember from those of our neighbors on Portlock Road. The heiau above Waimea Bay that I, as a kid, thought was peaceful, quiet, and a bit boring. It wasn't boring for the unfortunate people who got sacrificed there, I guess. Things about the "Mission Houses Museum" that I thought must by the epitome of boring, and that now I want to go see.
I was so ashamed of coming from a "backwater" like Hawaii as a young adult. I guess a parallel might be someone who comes from the middle of Kansas and gets away to the big city and never breathes a word about where they came from or their encyclopedic knowledge of corn farming or ranching. They think everyone will think of them as a hick. And these days, you'd fascinate the city slickers with your corn-farming or ranching knowledge...
These days, to me, there's no more fascinating place. Even the "history" of my own family there is interesting. I guess my dad moved us there because my grand-aunt had been at least passing through, as part of her eventual job of Grand Poobah Of All Military Libraries In The Pacific, since the 1920s or 30s. She'd settled there, in 1309 Wilder Avenue no. 1402, across the street from the Scottish Rite Masons building and just down the street from Punahou School. Visits to her were a very regular thing to us kids and I suppose she's really talked the place up to my dad.
We'd started as typical Mainlanders. Moved to a bigger house than we'd had on the mainland, had just bought a new car, the bigger house was in a ritzier area, and so on. Typical mainlander's mistake, treating a move to Hawaii as a move up in expenses/status/consumption. We ate, with few exceptions, food that was shipped in from the mainland.
But we kids "went native" as much as we were able to, even in the Portlock Road days. We'd spend hours whooping it up at the beach, wore as few clothes as we could get away with, treated shoes as very optional. And we were very enthusiastic converts to the religion of Yick Lung.
I feel very fortunate that our childhoods coincided fairly well with the heyday of Yick Lung. Yick Lung of course was those little packets of Chinese style preserved fruits and seeds and peels and so on. There were many, many different kinds, and they were sold in a number of different sizes of bags from the little bitty 10c bags to large ones costing over a dollar. My mother was very controlling about food but somehow could always be talked out of a dime or a quarter for some Yick Lung.
As we became poorer, my parents never stopped being "mainland" but we became more "local" just to survive. And I, I realized with juddering clarity now, became the most "local" of all. I, who held all things "local" in utter contempt! I, who expressed more than once my disdain and even hatred of "locals". But I'm the one who became a competent reef fisherman, able to bring home a stringer of fish reliably. I'm the one who learned to dip-net for smelt in the Punalu'u river where it met the sea. I'm the one who learned to forage and gather things, find and string kahelelani shells to buy my first good surfboard, and while that gig lasted, find and soak and strip, curl up and pin, dry, haolekoa pods for $1 a bread-bag full.
Out of all of us, I, with my teen-years dislike of "locals", am the most "local" looking. I have dark hair, green-brown eyes, and tan the darkest. I'm the one who looks like they're "something". And except for my mom, my siblings didn't care for my stringers of fish. Nor would they curl haolekoa pods with me, nor could they be bothered to pick up a single kahelelani.
My older brother, blonde and grey-blue eyed, had options like robbing tourists, working at the airport, and eventually joining the Navy. The two younger ones, one brown-haired, freckled, and with big blue eyes, had that just-stepped-off-the-plane look and as soon as she could, stepped on a plane and into the Army. The youngest, blonde and blue-eyed, got in with the most powerful gang in the islands, the Christians, and is now married to a chief of ... the 2nd most powerful gang in the islands, the police.
I'm just amazed that all these things I thought were so parochial and boring, even embarrassing, are actually interesting and considered cool now.
All I know is I can hardly wait to get back to the place. I really intend to be in a position to do absolutely nothing for a year when I get back. I figure it will take me that long just to acclimate. I'll fish, pick shells, practice shakuhachi, visit all the museums, and eat lots of good food.
When I came up here to the Bay Area after crashing and burning in my attempt to retire early in Hawaii in 2003, part of my reason was the mainland is a big place and I could go anywhere. Now, places I figured could always be some sort of a backup are a hard No. They're all affected by natural disasters, man-made disasters, or too many Nazis. In addition to almost all of the mainland being more expensive and much more difficult to get around.
For now, I need to be practiced enough on the shakuhachi for busking starting in April. It really is a seasonal thing here. 6 months on and 6 months off. It's still the cold, dark-early part of the year now and rain is forecast for this Thursday, the very day the next shakuhachi club meeting is.
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