Have Well, Laugh Often

One week ago, I sat on the beach of Paia Bay and took turns looking out at the ocean and down at my Astrologer's Datebook. Notebookless, I used the lines meant for addresses to scribble my thoughts. They went something like this:

I read two things today--

1. When the moon is in Taurus, people are extra protective of what they have. "There is a feeling that it is necessary to protect the status quo or what one already has (key phrase is "I have"). The need for financial and material security is strong." -Jim Maynard

2. We only know about having and nothing about being. "Being and having. Being does not belong to man, only having. Thee being of man is situated behind the curtain, on the supernatural side. What he can know of himself is only what is lent to him by circumstances." -Simone Weil 

If our being is hidden from us behind a curtain of human misery, then it is no wonder why we invest so much of ourselves in our possessions. 

Paring down, for me, is about peeling away all the layers of false security. Raw. Naked. Three years ago I wrote a poem; I was very stoned; it went like this:

I don't know where to start

and I know not where to go next

the record stops

You can flip it, for the other side

but is it over yet?

My pen writes against my wishes

My heart aches to my despair

What awaits me? Tell me, ink.

Naked. Raw.

My mind searches, echoes in the silence

Every stitch fills space-- each makes stronger the whole..

Ready to be cooked. Not ready yet, though. Raw.

Naked. Free. Empty.

I don't know where to start.

This is not a poem worth publishing. 

But I find in reading it, a sense of longing. For being at peace with nothingness, perhaps.

Raw. Naked. This is when we are vulnerable. Raw, we are vulnerable to the fires of the world, to the wicked flames of our defensive brothers and sisters. Naked, we succumb to the possibility of being dressed by others; that they will choose our garments, our identities, our mark on this world. 

But aren't we all already doing that? Are not we subject to interpretation already? Does a tree make a sound if there is no one to hear it? This is a philosophical cliche, but one that speaks to our inevitable destiny: Does what we do mean anything if there is no one near to hear it?

So we possess. We possess this dress and that one, this necklasce and that boat and this lamp and that apple slicer. I have therefore I am. Isn't that what Descartes said? 

There are probably many thousands of writers who could argue for minimalism more elequantly than I, but what interests me is this: If one cannot escape the defining quality of having--cannot get at her being from the other side of the curtain-- how does one then have well? If I cannot be my best self, what might it look like to have at my fullest potential? 

Thoughts to action: I will write about every thing I own, and own nothing not worth writing about. Whether these writings will be interesting enough to post, we shall see. Little did I know, as I dotted the i's of my final sentence with a determined flick of the wrist, someone around the corner was hotwiring my car and driving it away.

Yes, never ignore the precise timing of the universe. Her ruthlessness is softened by her sense of humor, I think. 

Sunday, February 22: a bad day to park in the Mana Foods parking lot; a good day to start thinking about what I have, what it all means to me, and how much of my self-understanding I'm willing to invest in such things. 

Lessons learned:

1. Know your license plate number by heart.

2. Bumper stickers serve as more than indicators of political standing, alma mater and sass: They might just get you your car back before it ends up on top of a rock in a pineapple field with no speakers, stereo, glove compartment, seat covers or your favorite jacket.

3. Make friends with a towing company, and have their number in your phone. That way, if you're so lucky to be able to retrieve your car, as I was, you won't have to work with someone who's laughing in your face because you brought studs and lug nuts and hope that your car might make its way out of the tow lot with a crooked tire and a little love.

4. Laughing makes everything better.

We Got Spahk

This past week, I've been itching to write. I jotted a few things down here, typed up a few lines on my ipad mini there. But nothing came out of me that said, "don't stop! Someone will want to read this." I counted the days since my last blog post: six. I asked myself, "Did I live a day worth writing about today?" 

For six days, I'd answered 'no' to that question by not writing when I felt the urge to. So, I thought, something's gotta change. And since I don't see anyone following me around with a pen, I'd better get to it.

Friday morning, I ate my cereal quickly and hopped in the car with Jeana when she left to take Lei to preschool. She dropped me off at Marilyn's house, with whom I make soap and frozen pizzas and run errands and whatever else she feels like doing on a whim. Her husband Ricky dedicated his morning to helping me find a car, as my own search has been slow and unrewarding, mostly due to my passivity and denial that one won't just turn up in the driveway one day (yes, I'm realizing how much I really take for granted my handy, generous mechanic of a father).

We arrived at Ricky's friend's car lot, who was willing to give me a deal on a Honda Civic he thought was running just fine despite its cosmetic quarks. We test drove it up Haleakala Highway-- the big test: It ran great! We stopped back at Rick and Marilyn's house for a moment before starting it up again and-- nada. "No spahk" was Rick's catchphrase that day, with his Haliimaile-born pidgin. "Noo sparhk. Buhmuh."

To distract ourselves from the hunk of metal blocking the driveway, we turned around to face the '88 Nissan Pathfinder he had laying around (Ricky buys cars from auctions and fixes them up-- a common side-job on the island, and elsewhere I imagine). We replaced the starter in that car, and wouldn't you know it: "Nooo spahk. Buhhmuh."

We tried this and that, this again and that again on this car and that one. By 3 that afternoon, we had returned to my Honda with a new distributor in hand. Looking down at the old one under the hood, I was worried about not knowing how to line it up right, considering I didn't know what a distributor looked like until that morning. We both hesitated a moment, until Rick smiled:

"We ain't no scaredycats. The one thing I ain't is a scaredycat. Too many people have fee-uh, ya know what I mean? We might not get it right, but we ain't gunna have fee-uh."

That said, the old distributor came right off. We rigged the fresh-out-the-box toy where we thought it might go. I'm not sure how much Rick knew what he was doing-- "I've never had luck with distributors," he said once and again. I certainly didn't know what I was doing. But we did it anyway. One 4pm lunch--and a fight with some plastic piece that has something to do with connecting wires--later, we cranked the key and-- "Ha. Noo spahk." 

Wow, was all we could say, over and over, totally defeated for the day. "Well we got some hands-on experience," we tried to redeem one another. "Rough day," we joked. It wasn't really funny, but we laughed anyway. We cleaned up, with a bit more tinkering in between sighs and jokes. When we were ready to start pushing the Civic to get it out of the driveway, that smile of Rick's returned. "What if it starts!" he said, smirking. One foot out the car door, he cranks it: Vroom. 

"What!" was all I could say.

We had spahk. In fact, we had more than spahk. That thing got us all the way up Piiholo Road--2,000 feet of elevation packed into 3 miles of windy mountain turns.

When I walked in the door that night, I said I'd be in the office the next day, "since I didn't work today. Today I was a mechanic." 

Ha. Hardly.

I didn't buy the Civic. I don't know if we really fixed anything, or if we got lucky when it ran for us that night. But we didn't have fee-uh, and I did have a day worth writing about.