Speaking of food...

Uncle Ron is retired and now works dawn to dusk every day driving his little CAT up and down our dirt road. He has colonized the wild hillside with ti plants and tropical flowers for a friend who does flower arrangements for the hotels. He has planted dozens of papaya trees up and down the road-- and tiny hot hawaiian chili pepper plants, and enormously bushy basils.

He has buckets of eggplants, green onions, a huge asperagus patch, and a wall of bitter melon behind his house. His cousin catches wild chickens, fattens them up for a couple of weeks in pens, and then eats 'em. Ron even carved a path up the steep hillside and built a pen for his geese and ducks where they honk and hiss and lay huge eggs. Sweet potato carpets all around the pen, and the greenest longbeans you've ever seen climb all the way over it. His longan, mango, avocado, coconut, noni, guava and lychee trees are all fruiting, and the lovely bunches of bananas are all narrow and green. In the winter he had clementines and oranges and limes and pomelos.

He swats away my impressed noises. He told me they used to produce tons more food-- now they're retired, he's toned it down. Too tired for all that work. This he mutters while manhandling a wheelbarrow full of cement to repave the side of his house. Which he built.

This is all on scavenged land, with scavenged materials, and an incredible amount of work. And he makes more food than his whole household (three generations, plus cousins and a daycare) can eat. He tells me-- take whatever basil I want, whatever peppers-- there's so much it's almost an irritation to have all that food to cope with.

Food, Form and Substance

I noticed a brightly painted sign on the side of the road: Mana Ohana, community owned, community grown. Vivid papayas, cheery pinapples and luscious mangoes crowded out the cheerful text: local produce, locally grown, organic!

I was intrigued, so I followed the signs to a huge old restaurant space. As soon as we walked in a haole woman jumped up and shook our hands, and launched into an energetic monologue about the virtues of the fruit stand, of vegetarian, GMO free lifestyle, her many community projects, and how we too could become a part of the coop for only $500, or equivalent labor!

As she talked she filled up the back of a name card with a list of all of her projects:
Malama kauai
Kohala Center
saveourseed
gmofreekauai
activatekauai
iwikupuna.com
KKCR 90.9
Wed 7-9 9-11
11-8
Kauaiworld.com
kane i ono uma
islandbreath.org

Her blue eyes were shining as she talked about her triumphs with protecting Hawaiian gravesites from developers and sending a charter for indigenous rights to the UN, and writing grants, and getting rid of Monsanto, and working with everybody, absolutely EVERYBODY on the island. And it is going to be this space, this ACTIVE space! An open space! A community, and with potlucks, everyweek, and we will open another one on the other side of the island, and incorporate art and music! She pumped my hand and punctuated her talk with fist-pounds, and gave me a stack of business cards to pass around, and a mango.

I have been furious about this all week.

Why?

The store was empty.

There was a low bucket of cracked and spotted mangoes. There was a bag of spidery Rosemary. And some bruised basil. There were a couple of coconuts, and several small jars of honey for $10. Some tiny pipinala and some wilted lettuce.

All those ideas, ideals, plans. All that purpose and zeal and excitement.

And no food. No actual local, organic, delicious produce. No actual ability to DO anything besides fill up the air with talk.

We need more local food, more enthusiasm for local production. But you have to have something to SHOW for it! Something worth buying! Ideals are great! But all that activism is just noise if you cant produce anything.

Settling In Again

We went on an adventure-- traveling across continents (N America and Europe) and oceans (Pacific and Atlantic). I took my toddler to Big Important European cities and also to no-name American rural Edens. In the course of 6 weeks of traveling we saw important sites, heard a hundred different languages, used dozens of public bathrooms, and crossed paths with thousands of people with lives and worldviews all radically from us.

Rosie learned how to say, Bonjour, Au Revoir, Merci, Pardon Moi, WC, and "I live in Hawaii." And now we're home.

Getting off the airplane the passengers underwent a transformation: they turned from a group of tired strangers into a mob of giddy tourists. We transformed too-- we shed our traveler skin and became-- just ourselves again. At home.

Coming back, I noticed the vividness of the shiny dark green leaves, the bright reds and pinks and rainbow oranges of the flowers along the freeway, the dense golden light.

And somehow my malihini-meter has been reset to Zero-- everything feels as unfamiliar and novel and foreign as when I first moved here, 3 years-plus ago.

Gradually, I'm regaining my at-home footing, while trying to remember the traveler's broad perspective of this enormous world-- enjoying mangoes from the neighbors tree, but still savoring the last few inches of our Dutch smoked gouda, while the flavor and memory lasts.

ROY'S

It was our 6th anniversary last night and we indulged ourselves. For the first time in Rosie's 25 months of life, we left her with a babysitter and went out to dinner.
It was sort of, totally, SPECTACULAR.
Roy's Prix Fix tasting and Hawaiian menus.
I can't really describe it, so here's my tone-poem, free-association, modern dance interpretation of the evening's partakings:
snappy limu seeweed gelatinous sprigs, caramel sauce on meaty ravioli, crispy wontons with ponzu, flaky fish , sesame oil and chili edamame, filet mignon melting onto wasabi mashed potatoes, crisp fried lotus root salad, misoyaki butterfish, asperagus and mac nut crusted white fish, chocolate lava souffle and four delicate little scoops of tropical sorbets with tiny fruit cubes on top, all sworled with elegant dabs of flavorful reductions and sauces on wide plates, low lighting and the sharp awareness of a rare event combined to make a singularly ROMANTIC evening. Roymantic? Har har.
I found myself feeling geriatric next to the waitress who talked like this:
"I just graduated from high school? And I got accepted to UH? And um, the, um, apple turnover? Is baked in puff pastry? And served with a caramel, um, crust?"
We got to watch the commotion in the kitchen through a huge window. Reminded me slightly of the lemur cage at the zoo. But it was inspiring, and absolutely DIVOON.
Happy anniversary, honey! Let's do it again next year!

The nail that sticks out, or something.

Today we went to the beach with the playground to wear Rosie out a little bit (sun, slides, sand and surf, dude. It'll wipe anybody out.) We've only lived here since October-- that's, what, 7 months? We ran into four separate families that we know. And as the months go by, the island is only going to get smaller.

Living here is my first experience with having to make a community work. Knowing that we're going to be here for a long time, with these same people, in these same situations, over and over-- makes me approach problems slightly differently than I've needed to before.

My first example: the librarian is an SOB. He's notorious. Every parent on the island knows of him, and stays away from his library because he is so rude and HATES children. Every time we go to the library (every Friday, 11:30) he tells Rosie to "be quiet or get out!" This is especially annoying when she's saying things like, "Rosie! Loves! Libwawy!" I'm sorry, is his heart three sizes too small? You'd think an elementary school librarian would be thrilled to have a kid squeal, "yaaaaay, books!!"

But anyway. The first time he kicked us out, I was so angry I thought-- I hate that guy, I'm never coming back.

But then I had the first creeping feelings of community-mindedness. "waaaait. I live here. The library is within walking distance. It has everything I need in a library. I'm not going anywhere. That's MY library. I refuse to let his issues offend me so much that I disappear. I'd be the one losing out."

I donno if I am explaining it properly, but it was sort of a revelation. I can risk continued encounters with this nasty person, just because this is my community and I want to work it out! And I can't let myself get too offended because-- what good will that do?
Maybe it's the kind of lesson you're supposed to learn in 4th grade, but. You know. Maybe I'm a little slow.

I can see this kind of community mindedness in the way that long-time locals interact. You can't really afford to have any kind of intensity in relationships. No big blow-ups or involved dramas-- because in 15 years you're still going to be running into these same 300 people at the beach every weekend. So people are very even, very laidback-- in a way recalcitrant-- with their interactions. Which isn't to say Kauai is some magical Utopia-- there is drama. But it's like family drama-- you may get into a big fight on thursday, but of course you're coming to the BBQ on sunday. And of course your kids still go camping next weekend. Who knows, you could be grandparents to the same baby someday-- best not to make any bad blood.

So wave to everybody as they go by, be polite in traffic, watch out for all the kids at the playground. Even if you haven't met each other yet, you will, and soon.

A Letter to the Editor

This letter was published in The Garden Island Newspaper on April 8, 2009:

Color blindness is wonderful

When someone asks, “Are you haole?” I respond, “Why what I did?”

When someone says, “What comes after two?” I respond, “Tree.”

I now say “da” instead of “the” and always great people with a friendly “howzit.”

I legally changed my name from James to “Kimo.”

President Obama says there is not a White American or an Asian American or a Black America, there is only the United States of America.

Color blindness sure is a wonderful thing, or should I say “ting?”

James “Kimo” Rosen, Kapa’a

Any guesses-- is this tongue in cheek? Is this a joke? It couldn't be-- could it-- for REAL?
If it is... how is saying "ting" and "da" colorblindness? And what's the opposite of color blindness anyway-- colorseeingness?
And since when is blindness of any sort a virtue? How about color-seeing-but-it-doesn't-adversely-effect-my-behavior-or-thoughts-ness?

Happy Buddha-mas!

Sunday morning, the choir stood in front of the congregation. The organ started up a four part hymn, and we sang along in four part harmony, reading out of our programs:

Softly Blew the Breezes
By Paul Carus and R.B. Bode

Softly blew the breezes
On that glorious morn
In Lumbini's Garden
Where the Lord was born.

From the earth sprang flowers
Birds in warbles sang
While through earth and heaven
Strains of music rang.

Gods and men and angels
All for worship came
Glory to Lord Buddha
Glory to his name.

Organs and hymn harmony, folded chairs, and meandering talks by aged ministers are not the sole providence of protestant Christianity. At least in Hawaii, the sects of Buddhism that were imported with the Japanese plantation workers have morphed into something with plenty in common with the Baptist or Episcopalean churches down the road. George Tanabe gives a wonderful description of this Hawaiian Buddhism in his article, "Shaka Buddha."
Sunday was Hanamatsuri, Buddha's birthday, and was officially declared "Buddha Day" by the mayor. We followed a family in Sunday best as they filed into the Veteran's hall. They paused in front of a lei-decked fountain with a carved canopy and poured a small dipper of sweet tea over a glistening little statue of a lean standing Hotoke-sama, or Buddha. Then they bowed with their juzu beads between their hands.
I love ritual, but I'm a wimp, and just gave the little Buddha a shrug and a nod as I went past. Which is more disrespectful-- skipping the ritual, or aping it without understanding what it is or how to do it? I'm not sure, but my bashfulness won out, and I went, unshriven to my chair. Rosie recognized Sari-chan from playgroup and the two pudgy toddlers chased each other around the hall.
In the program, the Kambutsu-e, or the rite of "bathing the body of the Buddha" is explained.

A flower shrine known as a hanamido is set up in front of the main altar as a symbol of Lumbini Garden. In this shrine is placed a statuette of the infant Buddha, pointing his right hand toward the heavens and his left hand toward the earth. The sangha offers flowers and pour sweet tea of the image... This simplified reenactment of the Buddha's birth signifies glory and joy that filled the worl at this event.

The choir sang, the ministers of the various sects and missions on the island entered in a procession, most of them in starchy black robes and stiff silk collars. They each offered flowers and tea, and lit insence before a large alter on the stand. The Jodo missions, the Hongwanjis, the Shingon mission all seemed to be cut of the same cloth-- their ministers are mostly young men from Japan, with their clean and attentive young families bowing and smiling to their congregants, greeting them in heavily accented English and answered in heavily accented nisei Japanese.
The one notable exception was the Tibetan buddhist minister-- a middle aged white guy with a fluffy ponytail, white slack and sandals, and his congregation of two tall and floral-dressed blonds. Afterwards they stood in a knot by the muffin table while the room full of nisei and sansei sworled around, greeting each other ("Oh Mrs. Nakamoto!" "Mrs. Ishisawa. How are you?")
Some things reminded me of the smidgeons of Buddhism I saw in Japan: Sari-chan's daddy chanted the Sutra "Kan Moku Ge" in a high intense tone, a bell chiming, the insence filling the air. Then some things seemed straight from sunday school: awkward teenagers passed around koa collection bowls, and an aging minister gave a slightly rambling account of Siddharta's birth and early life, with snippets of buddhist wisdom sprinkled in.
I was mostly chasing my toddler, but one Dharma or teaching caught my ear: "Be your own light." If you are hungry, does your friend offer to eat for you? If you need to go to the bathroom, does your friend go for you? of course not. So if you are seeking enlightenment, you have to get it for yourself. Life is the cataclysm-- be here and now and don't worry too much about the mysteries of the past and the future.
With my Christian background, Matthew 6:34 echoed in my mind: "Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."