The difficulty in learning a language. A new way of saying things involve a new way of thinking. A new way of seeing. For me, perhaps, remembering. There are duolingos to guide you. Cuanto cuesta? How much do you want for that? They donʻt mean the same thing word for word. This is why it is so important to remember. There is a phrase in English that comes to mind as I feel sometimes, when I listen to manaleo. “I donʻt have a word for this.” Is it my lack of capacity for the moment or are there no words? I often feel that way translating my thoughts into Hawaiian. There must exist those words. I can not be the first Hawaiian feeling this way. And, so, I look for more words.
There is a word
This guy. He found a way to Hawaiians with baseball. He found me. We still talk. I still call him Coach and I was never on one of his teams (his brotherʻs once). This is how it comes. I donʻt want Argentinian horses. I want boys from ʻEwa Beach to know that pōpō, kini pōpō. Pōhili. There is a word for baseball.
Sports
I wake up every morning at 4:30 and the first thing I check is a newsletter, then the recap of the games of my favorite teams. I love baseball, and Iʻve loved it since before Field of Dreams. I took a class in baseball called Play Ball! when I was in Little League, coached by the high school coach/tv color man for University of Hawaii baseball (Pal Eldredge). I also took a class, upstairs in Bishop Hall, in creative writing. I was young. Those classes are as much resposible for who I am today as any middling choice I seemed to make about what to major in. I can send you pictures of me draped in Cowboys parapenelia from 52 years ago. My love for sports is legit. I knew I could write about sports when I watched a Phillies game in 1992 and didnʻt care about either team. I appreciated the pitcherʻs nuances. The shortstopʻs glide.
Kahoa
Brah, kahoa (ke hoa in songs) in Hawaiian. When I was that age, I knew EVERYTHING. No one could tell me shit. I read every book already. I knew you had the quote wrong. I snorted every line already. I took every shot already. I put my dick into every place they would take it. The realization comes more slowly. What feels good in the moment doesnʻt always feel good on Tuesday. Today is Tuesday. And although that wasnʻt on purpose, it makes a good point. Tuesday is always less than seven days away. You are an asshole. And you fucked up your only real job, evolutionarily speaking. Your kids should love you. It’s weird how patterns become patterns. I donʻt like my father. It feels like a burden to go beyond small talk. I look at posts here speaking about a father, what it means to be a man. My son does not like me. Shampoo. Rinse. Repeat,
Irony
How can you understand me if I don’t understand me? You and I are strange animals. I like the way you look naked. I like the way look at me when you’re not wearing clothes. I like your breath and the way your hair smells. I like that I didn’t have to tell you to love Black Sabbath. I like less and less. But I like you. I forget how to use the word love without being ironic.
Nothing less
The thing about faith is that it requires so much more. On a good day, I trust what I’m told by most. On a bad day, I don’t believe myself. Good days are often bad and vice versa. Your eyes give you away, more than your I’s, which say even more. I close my eyes and trace the walk down from the apartment to the corner gas station, sweating in the near-summer heat of the Mississippi and holding the bleeding condensation of Busch in their plastic hearse as I wade back upstream to the patio where I’d wait for you. The first sips take away the heat of the late afternoon while you work, while your child naps, swims or bathes. The sweat congeals against my skin under one too many layers of clothing. The sips become slugs. The days pass. And I wonder if I have traded nothing less for nothing more.
Eat butter
There’s a tribe. And I don’t have to taste your mouth to know if you’re in it. It’s not a cult.
I explained to my ex-wife once and I probably hurt her feelings but I wasn’t trying to. There is butter and there is margarine. They look the same. And that’s where it stops. This metaphor can be applied to most of pop culture. Hank Williams? Butter. Shania Twain? Margarine. Nirvana? Butter. Fall Out Boy? Margarine. Social Distortion, The Hold Steady, Drive-By Truckers, Seven Seconds, Bob Marley, Biggie, Loretta Lynn, Jack White, Gabby; the list is a long one. That’s all butter.
It’s okay to like margarine, especially if you grew up eating it. This is not a judgment even though it sounds like one. It’s an encouragement to eat butter.
Close your eyes
Lives change lives. Lives beget lives. Lives are lost. You can promise on your life with a straight look on your face and lie. Love makes the potential for that lie infinitely larger and smaller. But when you promise on love and mean it, you transcend the promise.
Everyone gets sad. Sadness is part of the human condition. Happiness as a goal is actually a very recent concept for people. Survival trumped happiness for most of our existence. Losing something hurts. And that’s always been around. Of course, there is a very large spectrum of pain defined by the person and the loss. But losing that transcendence is not just sad. It’s a loss of self.
Watching a life erode: if it’s your life, whether you choose to recognize it or not is self-chosen, and sooner or later, you figure out what’s coming and fix it, or self-destruct. When love erodes, it’s not just up to you, and it reveals beauty and terror. It’s mostly sad.
Eyes opening are a blessing, and eyes closing are fear. And the final closing most likely means oblivion. This is a metaphor.
The rime of the modern mariner
The idea of being abandoned is so painful to me that I resist it even when I am running in the opposite direction of my abandonment. I couldn’t feel the shackles fall from my neck, ankles, and wrists. I could only hear, “Now go!” But I was already running and, like a dog on a choke chain, continued to repeatedly asphyxiate myself as I reached the end of my line.
“Now go!” sets me free. I bristled because I didn’t get to say, “I’m leaving.” Petulant, foolish, little boy that I am. I didn’t see that you were pushing me off the Amistad and back toward the shore of life, back to the world. Like the Ancient Mariner, I had been the lot in a craps game between Death and Life-in-Death, and having been won by the latter, it had become the only life I knew or expected. That was not, is not, and shall not ever be a life.
I feel like a snake that’s just molted and am completely grossed out by the shell I’ve left behind. Thank you, thank you, thank you for telling me to fuck myself and die. Isn’t that ironic? That is where I found my life.
Why you growl?
I only feel bad when the sound goes down. I can see the next eight, silent hours. Silence from the outside. The inside is never quite less than a muffled growl. I see myself in some parallel universe, or even this one. Explaining to my pragmatic, European girlfriend what I mean by muffled growl.
“Why you growl? You mad?”
“No.”
“You mad at me?”
“No. The opposite.”
“Then why you growl?”
The short answer is, “I don’t know.” The longer answer that might take a few jumps over our language barrier requires a certain nuance with English, i.e.,”Why aren’t you growling?”
Growling is guttural and seems monstrous. There are examples across every culture when a noise means more than an articulated cry. I don’t want the next eight hours to be silent in any way.