It is easy to dislike Hawaii if you’re in Waikiki. It’s a crowded not-quite-anywhere strip of hotels and shopping and pale unadventurous architecture, it smells of coconut tanning oil and second hand smoke and spilled mai tais. Homeless people stroll the avenue side by side with Japanese tourists sporting t shirts that make no sense. …
“I really enjoy forgetting. When I first come to a place, I notice all the little details. I notice the way the sky looks. The color of white paper. The way people walk. Doorknobs. Everything. Then I get used to the place and I don’t notice those things anymore. So only by forgetting can I …
On the Mamalahoa Highway between Waimea and Kailua. I adjusted the levels some on this photo, but there’s no sepia post production filter on it. The sky was indeed that weird flat white, and the hills and fence posts weathered brown and gray.
This morning at the breakfast buffet, I did something a little weird. After I’d emptied the rest of the sugar packet into my second cup of coffee, I filled the little brown package with salt, folded it in half, and tucked it into my wallet. That seemed a better thing to do than stealing borrowing …
Auntie made one of her students pass over his song book to me. Now I have a binder with her playlist and the names of everyone who committed to show up at Anna Ranch to entertain us. I have a color xeroxed watercolor of a hale (house) by a bridge and I have a little …
Even though it’s pouring rain, all the windows are open and I’m barefoot. I am wearing a sweater over my tank top, there’s a cool edge on the air, but it’s just while I write, if I were moving around at all, I’d be too warm, pronto. It’s our last morning in Pahala, a former …