Daily Life

If you haven't heard I am back home. I will explain later in a different blog why I decided what I did, but for now please enjoy a couple of the articles I wrote while I was there.


The man I am today is nothing short of a slap in the face to my former four year old self. Chores are the first thing on my mind after the sun illuminates the creaking driftwood that makes up my home. It's nothing to strenuous, sweeping the stairs that climb the tree house, feeding the 8 cats and duck, and reacquainting the banana peels, avocado skins, and coconut shells with their mutilated brethren in an already overpopulated compost pile. My caveman instincts take over as I scour the raw jungle, dodging the annoyingly placed crab spider webs, for the next potassium filled victim in an endless cycle of gather, eat, toss. On most days handfuls of Honohono, Perslain, and Hawaiian spinach add the natural green coloring to my morning smoothie. After my morning rituals its time to pay rent. Four hours of weeding, racking, and cutting through the thickest overgrowth any land can offer. After a quick dip in the ocean and a shower I am off to scare the crap out of every mom. Getting a ride to the closest town, which is about 17 miles away, is as easy as saying hello to my surfing buddies. The Shanta, sticking your thumb up and pinky out, seems to be a fit replacement for the thumb out technique that has started oh so many wonderful horror stories. The Shanta comes in handy when complete strangers (oh uh four year old self) are driving in the same direction I am headed. A quick hitch, or slow walk, into town proves worth it when internet access, processed foods, and new people are around every corner. Just to pour salt in the wound of my pre-pubescent self I start as many conversations as possible with anyone who has a friendly smile (I am in Hawai'i so I will have to narrow my search a little) The librarian from Marquette, the mother of three who grew up on the island, and the white curly haired man with a bride ordered wife from some South East Asian country all prove to be great conversationalist in a community full of stories littered with "Bra" and "Yeah?"

Town proves to be just as interesting as the people who helped get me there. You won’t find a Wal-Mart, McDonalds, Home Depot or hardly any other business that all of Western civilization knows the jingle to. A couple of restaurants, one gas station, and one hotel prove to be sufficient for all the slow going locals on the entire island. The natives here fight with great passion to keep it that way. Akue Alsera (the very kind lady who grew up on the island) is afraid if they let one of these community killing business in then what is to stop the whole island from becoming a plastic version of its former beautiful self. She stresses community the whole twenty-five minutes as we drive along the coast to my place. "People are real selfish these days." In a deep Hawaiian accent full of long vowels and broken words, "No one stops to think of their children. That's why we fight so hard to keep windmills, expensive homes, and golf courses off our land. So our children can experience the same beauty we were brought up in."

It is not foolish to think that these people are from a different time. Their thinking, and more importantly their acting, center not around money or objects, but the human experience. To preserve what they know they will sit outside any rich kooks’ mansions with loud speakers day and night until the vacationer gets the point that a gated community, is no community at all.

Molokai

Life on Molokai is slower than anywhere I have ever been. With the continuous bombardment of pacific waves always within ear shot, there is a rhythm to the days and nights. If humidity so strong it literally sticks to your skin, and bugs like roaches, spiders, and centipedes aren't your fancy than don't bored the single engine plane with the three other passengers. A simple slide of the top layer of richly colored overgrowth will expose a floor of endless entertainment as creatures, only God could find beautiful, flee in every direction in hopes they won't run across one of the many geckos perched behind a lave rock or old rotting papaya. Every step I watch with intimate attention. Kittens, a duck, and frogs lay in the same lifeless motion as they try to beat the heat. What a heaven it is to be surrounded by my favorite comfort food, bananas. Its like a childhood dream interrupted by Freddy Cougar when I found out that after an entire day of eating them IM STARVING!!! 10 bananas, a papaya, and a coconut don't go nearly as far as that damned Skipper and Gilligan make them out to go. I am stuck in another perpetual hell because the one thing I crave is salt. The ocean gives you that needed taste in times like these, but when natural springs polish the water into a murky brown like that of an endless ocean of non-carbonated Root Beer, discovery channels shark week springs into my minds eye. The narrator speaks calmly about how sharks are coward of hunters, they love to swim back and forth on shallow, barely visible, reefs. This did not inhibit me from diving in after 4 hours of playing dodge the extremely painful, 5 inch, centipedes as I raked yard and beach alike.
...minutes and a brisk walk later...
It's amazing what hunger will do to the psyche and emotional attitude of a person. Banana number 11 and some coconut water don't make a splash in my endless stomach but they do send a ray of much needed hope to my spirit. I am lucky, no no, I am blessed, beyond any understanding of my own, to be where I am. I'm living every 10 year old boys dream. I just picked a coconut off the ground and whacked it open with a machete and drank the naturally purified water from its sliced cranium. I am looking out of my tree house window at Maui and Lana'i. Kahoolawe is set off in between as if a Hawaiian star reader put it there on purpose. I eat, work, and live off the land. I have a plethora of books ranging from Digital SLR Cameras for Dummies to Tolstoys War and Peace. As I'm writing a gecko chirped harmoniously at the naked sound of freedom. I'm on an island in the pacific, surrounded bu complete strangers with only the shirt on my back(well at least for now, my luggage was lost by Mokulel Airlines). Just to add that little extra helping of awesome, behind me sits and old acoustic Gibson. It use to belong to Eddy Vegger, the lead guitarist of Pearl Jam. I guess hes my neighbor!!!
I've set off to find myself through all of this. To the best of my knowledge, im still lost.
Until my next voyage into town...
T.J. Brown