Divisions

Living down at Alii Villas for a year, I had the experience of listening to the jack hammers that cleared the way for Alii Lani. I work from home, so I heard this for some long daylight hours, six days a week, just like all the other tenants, and just like the folks using those tools. One of my neighbors, driven to illogic by the persistent pounding, blurted, “It should be against the law to make all that noise.”
“How quietly do you think our building got made?” I countered.
“Well, yeah, but… this is enough now. They don’t need to keep building.”
And so the sentiment goes. It may be a deep down gasp when we realize that another subdivision is going in. It may be a deep down belief that this was our ancestor’s land. Along with these thoughts, we add curiosity about the new homes, and consider hopes for our children to live somewhere nice. Next comes the bewilderment at how it grew to this.
Let’s look at the way our race (human) does these things. My kids are a good example. With two bedrooms for three children, having dibs on a room didn’t work. They had to hash out arrangements and discuss options. If they hadn’t all moved to our new house on the same day, I guarantee you that somebody would have claimed a room solely on, “I was here first.”
Using “getting here first” as a basis for ownership is problematic. It includes the idea of getting here, which hints at everybody once being the new guy, even if that was way back when. Obviously, treating the new guy as we want to be treated doesn’t work when the new guy just comes in and takes over. In the same way, a new takeover doesn’t repair an old takeover.
Because the American nation has a penchant for taking over, we solved how to do this (with each other, at least) a bit less bloodily. We now require the new guy to use money and the old guy to want the money more than his dibs. I have no comment on the system’s problems. I only wish to say that this is now how it’s done, and can be done by a determined anyone.
The point of such a discussion is to say that we all want our children and grandchildren to live well. Determining rights to livable places based on any sort of dibs will harm more people than it could help.
I love open spaces, likely we all do. There’s nothing like time in the wilderness and places of profound silence. Sometimes I get to enjoy them. All the time, here or there, I am connected with all creation by more than blood. We share the air. I am also connected with the earth by more than gravity. In the words of the Desiderata, we are all children of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars, and we have a right to be here.

Feasting

I enjoy eating out. It’s one of the luxuries in my life that has remained constant despite my changing tastes. I have tried most all places, upscale to hole in the wall to experimental. I’ll eat just about anything once, and twice if it’s good.
I have to wonder about those places that serve tiny portions of food in a pool of sauce. They pour the sauce on the plate, not on the food, drizzle in another colored sauce, and then scribble on your plate. Then they put a pea in the middle, garnish it with a stick, and send it out to you. Maybe there’s a subliminal message written in the sauce that says, “You’re not feeling hungry.” Maybe the stick garnish is so that you can write back.
They have to write the sauce names in French because we lose so much in translation (and comprehension.) Who wants a red butter sauce? But buerre rouge sounds much more mysterious. Besides, you don’t have to sit and figure out what they used to make it red. In Germany, a Chinese restaurant had to double translate to get to English, so I ended up ordering something called “dead chicken with black fungus.” I just had to see what it looked like, even if I never took a bite. It was chicken chow mein.
The more upscale steak houses give quite a presentation. They wheel a cart of vegetables to your table, to show you the evening’s selection of side dishes. Nevermind that you just paid for a fifty acre cattle ranch in the desert Southwest by ordering their smallest steak, you still need to eat your vegetables. For eight dollars a spear, you can get asparagus on the side. And so it goes. You can choose from potatoes large enough to serve Ireland (and at about the same outlay as the whole country), carrots charged to make you squint, and beans priced per.
Some of the pomp is pretty hard to swallow. At times like those, I find myself fondly remembering my last corn dog and lemonade.
Waiting tables is a challenging job. Think multitasking on steroids. I always feel a bit apologetic about asking someone to wait on me, until I remember that it’s their paying job. I suppose the tradition started back when people had servants. In our buffet and self-service world, being waited on sometimes feels a little strange. But if it helps somebody to get their bills paid, well then alright. As they said in Maid in Manhattan, we are trained to serve, but we aren’t servants.
My husband and I generally share a meal. Portions in most mid-range restaurants are plenty for two, especially with dessert. That way, we can afford to eat out twice as often, and we have room for dessert.
When I’m completely hungry, there’s nothing like a good mix plate. Talk about a meal to leave no room for dessert. These are the places to go if you are facing or just came from a hard day’s work.
Family feasting is the best, of course. My brother and his wife buy disposable plastic containers before they host a pot-luck. Then everyone gets a take-home buffet after the event.
When my hunger is small, I butter a tortilla and warm it. I’m pretty sure that it just doesn’t get much better than that. Since a buttered tortilla can be so satisfying, I get a better perspective on upscale fussiness. We get hungry for novelty and search for more and more, and fancier and fancier, without remembering the wisdom of the ages that less is more. Remember how it is to bite into a really good apple?

Living the Wild Life

They got it right when they called the outdoors great. Although it often feels very much like the wilderness is shrinking, I’ve been in enough boonies to know that there still are boonies to be found. With such outlying places comes a certain inevitability of adventure. That’s part of why I think being outdoors is so great.
I might as well admit from the start that I spent a good fifteen years as a hunter. For those of you that dislike such things, you can rest better knowing I’ve turned in my rifle for a camera. For those of you who might appreciate my experiences, you can know that I fed my family alright and got some big ones.
We started each morning before light, drinking cups of instant coffee at the African fire pit more for warmth than to wake up. One particular morning I must have been extra chilled, because I drank a fair share of joe. As luck would have it, that was the only morning we didn’t take any breaks or stops. After six hours of driving in the bush, I was squirming, but I wasn’t about to be the first to ask for a break. I was the only woman in a truck of six men. Right when I thought I couldn’t tough it out, we stopped. The guide had spotted an elephant, and everyone got out their glasses to take a look. We weren’t hunting elephant, but it was the first we’d seen. I was equally amazed, and… I really needed to step out for a minute. The guide gave me a distracted go-ahead, and I dashed away. Little did I know I had dashed into the brush where the elephant intended to go. A couple of minutes later, a rustling of gigantic proportions alerted me to the convergence, and I departed my ground-level WC at a run. My khakis had made it only a bit above my knees as I ran back to the truck, which I could easily make out by the flashing of twelve binocular lenses in the sun. The guys were awfully quiet when I made it back to the vehicle, until I started to giggle. Compared to being squashed by an elephant, exposing myself to a truckload of hunters was the small stuff.
Such experiences change a person. Where before I would have thought about a messy public restroom with “good grief!” I now greet even the messiest with, “A Commode!” I’m more grateful for real coffee, as if that were possible.
Out and about in nature, I think about how elemental our world is. If I needed to make something right there and then, I have sticks, rocks, wood, plants, and dirt. Basically, out of those things plus water and petroleum (with some fire thrown in), we have shaped our world into how we know it today.
Being out for a while reduces me to thinking about what is essential. There isn’t a whole lot that I really need in life: Water, shelter, food, and companionship. Some might argue against this, but having a perceived purpose really isn’t a basic need. I enjoy a life rich beyond having my basic needs met. I fear becoming someone who thinks she needs all the beyond.
Anywhere on the globe, a simple hike with my walking stick gets me into the outdoors frame of mind. For this to work, there are some requirements such as a lack of pavement and relative quiet. I don’t have to go far or be gone long to feel like I’ve connected with something wholesome and primal. The longer treks out of doors tend to bring on realizations of how far away from a natural state we have gotten in everyday modern life. But then on the longer treks, my hunt begins afresh for a manawanalua bush (any shrubbery of sufficient size and density so as to conceal my person.) I guess everyday modern life has its benefits as well.