December 2005 Archives
"She's never visited us," my mother-in-law observes. "But, then, she's always looking for meaning. And there's not much meaning over here."
She is speaking of a friend, the only friend who has never appeared on her doorstep, her current doorstep for the last 25 years, her Hawaiian doorstep. Everyone else, it seems, has turned up since the in-laws moved here from Los Angeles in 1980. Marlou and I are visiting for Christmas, and this talk of the absence of meaning round about Hawaii is making me nervous. No, "nervous" isn't very apt, and "anxious" doesn't capture it either. Actually, I am no worse than mildly unsettled. It's hard to get more than mildly anything in the Hawaiian Islands. Very hard.
It is the final day of our visit, Christmas Day, to be precise. Chestnuts may be roasting on an open fire somewhere, but we are having drinks and looking at the tropical bay. The water is dappled with various shades of turquoise and skyblue, remarkably transparent even this close to Honolulu. Low tide reveals arcing coral. The reefs here are said to be making an environmental comeback. I am making a comeback too, having spent a week and a half on these shores. I am wavering and wafting as gently as the distant waves. I am seeing things without focusing on them. It is unclear whether I am seeing but not focusing, focusing not seeing, or neither, or both. What is very clear is that I don't give a flying fuck. The last time I drank this early in the afternoon was, well, yesterday. And probably the day before. Although I'm not really clear on the day before. Not to say that I couldn't nail down the facts if the local district attorney insisted. But he isn't, is he? Insisting, I mean.
No, it isn't drink. It's Hawaii. And just in case you have a spinal cord injury, do not perspire normally and cannot regulate your body heat, don't assume that my condition has something to do with excessive air temperature or humidity. It has to do with what we did Christmas Eve. We went for a drive. Not even a particularly spectacular drive, but a fairly short jaunt up the coast to a bird refuge. On the way back, birds identified and everyone satisfied, we rounded a bay, a completely ordinary inlet with semicircular symmetry, waters of transparent blue lapping against a narrow white strip of beach, coconut palms draped over the sand like compliant street lamps. Just one of your ordinary Polynesian scenes. Tropical fruits within easy reach. Tropical maidens not much further. This sort of scene that completes itself instantly, presenting a tropical alternative to everything else. And if you're Paul Gauguin, and that everything-else amounts to the rest of your life in a poorly ventilated Paris bank. Or, if you're Fletcher Christian, and one option is white sand and brown breasts and the other is wooden bunks and Captain Bly, well, it's kind of a no-brainer, isn't it?
Everything in Hawaii is a no-brainer, because the brain is not in control. The cortex has been demoted, downgraded, and generally dismissed for lack of performance. Pores are in the driver's seat. The hair is alert. Certain parts of the neuro-anatomy perform a passive, intelligence-gathering function, but that's about it. Most of the body has been given over to lulling and lolling. In Hawaii one floats. Progress is measured in getting out, if you are able-bodied, standing up, if you're crippled. Polynesian paralysis, locals call it. Whatever it's called, there's no escaping it. Even in an air-conditioned car, curving the highway length of a lagoon, it will seize you. And yes, you Mr. Smarty-pants with your long list of must-read literary works, you will find yourself deep into a murder-mystery. Every word of which seems unaccountably vivid and profound. That is to say, having found meaning in the likes of Elmore Leonard, you are now ready to begin a doctorate thesis on the cross-fertilization of weltschmerz in Yanni and Karen Carpenter. And when you snap to and realize that for the last four hours you have been so deeply engrossed in waves and midriffs that you cannot remember the difference between a Mai Tai and a waterski, well, that's the time to turn the page. If you have the strength.
Under such circumstances, you can understand why Hawaiians leave much to geology. When your island is framed by idyllic coastline, lots of other things more or less take care of themselves. Which is why the best of Hawaii is pleasantly funky. Take lunch. On the day of the bird outing, the in-laws guided us directly to an authentic Southern barbecue in an authentic semi-abandoned Hawaiian strip mall. Which, on closer examination, proved to be an entirely inaccurate impression. First, every commercial inch of the cinderblock edifice was occupied. Including a post office, which happened to be closed for lunch. Never mind that lunch had extended well past 2 p.m., for if you had to choose between correlating zip codes with carrier routes versus, say, gauging wave heights and cleavage depths, you might just post the "back at" sign yourself. As for the barbecue, like many a booming Hawaiian business, it had a way of concealing itself. Like having no permanent sign, just a plastic banner with a Pepsi logo proclaiming "Uncle Bobo's Barbecue," with one end of the fabric unsecured and folded, concealing just enough letters to make you wonder if this was a barbecue or a bar. No doubt about the food. True smoky barbecue, rich and satisfying. The place is thriving.
As was I. On the day of our departure, the 8 a.m. sun in the low 70s and a pleasant breeze enlivening the bedroom, I found it very difficult to put on my pants. Not that I had worn any for the last 10 days. Perhaps I was really finding it difficult to accept the idea of pants. Having a sort of Platonic crisis. What are pants for? Are they an image or a thing? Or, was my body sliding perilously close to the end of the speed control dial? Shifting from slow to stop? Or perhaps it was trying to explore the meaning of "stop." But probably not. Meaning, as every true Hawaiian knows, is for the mainland.
