Hawai'i #8

Perhaps I can learn to grow taro…

It’s one thing to smuggle a relatively small cocker spaniel into the occasional National Park motel room….it’s another class of feat entirely to successfully smuggle a 95 pound Rottweiler in and out of a high-rise resort hotel room three days running. Perhaps Dennis was moving ‘Lita in and out through another dimension though, because we managed somehow to get away with it.

One day, Dennis kidnapped me and took me to the taro farm just back around to the eastern side of the island where he spends his time when he’s not on the seawall in Kona. We took that rental car there down a lava flow off the main road. What the hell, it was insured. Actually, it was much better than the road to The Racetrack in Death Valley.

Truly idyllic, it was. Miles and miles of unspoiled coastline, backed by pristine green hills. A fresh-water spring making a nice-sized pond right in front of the ocean. Thriving taro patches and vegetable patches, fruit trees, flowers, herbs. I sat with an old Hawaiian elder and watched him make a native medicine out of some sort of nuts or seeds.

After spending a wonderful day out there, Dennis stopped on the way back & came back to the car with a Melona bar for me…. I’d never heard of them before, like a popsicle made of melon ice cream. Sounds strange, but was delicious.

Aside from the taro farm, spent the last days just relaxing….down at the wonderful crystal-clear salt-water tidepool at the Royal Kona, down on the seawall, hanging out at Terry’s house with Dennis, or down on The Grassy Knoll At The End Of The World. Had a wonderful dinner from Don the Beachcomber with Dennis & Terry on the lanai the last night with the last perfect sunset.

On the very last day before we got on the plane, I walked out the lava spit down by the seawall to return the lava rocks I’d taken from the other side of the island. By then I’d learned a bit about how Pele feels about people that take her children home with them. Ideally, they should have been returned to where I’d taken them from, but that wasn’t really possible. So I went and gave my apologies; as I was doing that & saying my prayer of thanks for all I’d experienced the waves lapped gently at my feet. But as soon as I opened the first bottle of sparkly black sand to pour it out, a huge wave came to drench me from head to toe. OK, bitch…I get it. Take your damn rocks.

I went back to the seawall, dripping wet, to tell Dennis and Terry that Pele, or maybe it was her bitch sister, had spit on me. Dennis suggested I look upon it as a blessing & I got on the plane with the salt water dried on my hair and skin and clothes. Supposed to be more healing that way.


Now I’m home, back to what passes for real life. I remember telling Dennis one day while we were at The Grassy Knoll that it was like the world is a big illusion of a cage. And most people don’t think anything of it; it’s a real cage for them and they don’t even see it. Then there are a smaller number of people like me, who see the cage for the illusion that it is but don’t know what the fuck to do about it. Then there are an even smaller number of people who know that the cage is real for everyone else, but also that it simply doesn’t apply to them. I’ve met a very few people like that in my life, Dennis was just the latest. And maybe the most amazing. He just texted me to tell me he’s seen dolphins four days in a row now and I can see him in my mind’s eye, down there on the seawall in Kona. It’s an oddly comforting thought: the world may go to hell in a handbasket, but Dennis will always be right there on the seawall, weaving away with an aloha and bits of cryptic wisdom and that dazzling smile for every single person that walks or drives by.