“The Church says: the body is a sin.
Science says: the body is a machine.
Advertising says: The body is a business.
The Body says: I am a fiesta.”
― Eduardo Galeano, Walking Words
I'm reading an incredibly turn-me-inside-out book by Lewis Hyde the author of
The Gift. The book is called
Trickster Makes This World.
"Tricksters are usually thought of as boundary crossers, characters who find the limits and violate them, or keep them lively. Lewis Hyde reimagines this function, saying that tricksters are "joint-workers." They seek out the joints of this world--sometimes to disrupt them, sometimes to move them, and sometimes just to keep them limber.
Tricksters sometimes attack the joints of creation, and sometimes simply oil the joints with humor, keeping them flexible. All those who do so are artists in the most ancient sense, and their creations, no matter how unsettling, are the works of art that make this world what it is."
On any night of the week one of them Trickersters along with their relations are close. Coyote loves the land around us. Earlier in the year we had conversations with our neighbor, the Sheep Lady, about the many losses of young sheep because Coyote is hunger. Coyote is always hunger.
I have a pair of sterling and copper earrings of Coyote howling at the moon. I asked for these ornaments one birthday or Christmas when I was feeling particularly rebellious; wanting to raise the feel of a howl in my winter-worn reality. Wet and dark weather wears on me. But Coyote and his kin howl during all kinds of winter weather. I listened to them as I checked on my breakfast simmering on the burner outside.
The small iron table that sits between our parked Subaru and the steps to the wagon's front porch is laden with food on the large painted china serving dish that belonged to my Aunty Lily. A slice of coconut cream pie for Ma; a bear claw pastry to substitute for the coffee cake Pete's mom Rose would enjoy; a scone made with whole wheat flour for Dean Pete's dad; a serving of Chicken Lo Mein for Uncle Billy; a large can of Miller High Life the champagne of bottled beer for Daddy and David and Cousin Buff ( who didn't drink for many years but did when times were young in Kuliouou); and a cup of smokes for Mary Ann, Ma, Dad, and David the smokers in the family. Food for the Dead.
When we were kids Daddy would tell us stories about the food left on the graves for New Year where he grew up in Waimanalo, or was it Kaneohe? Only the best of foods were left out, and it was these times when his too-often hungry belly was full. He was a rascal, a
kolohe kid then but if I remember the stories, he never took it all (the food). His genes -- the rascal and the generous one with very little to give, but who did anyway-- have moved through. I always knew that about my brother, but now? Now I recognize how those traits have tricked me all these decades stored in my joints they are turning finally slipping the traps that have looked so seriously at life. Finally, I see there is a wisp of smoke, a sly cloud masquerading in me and finally I see what Hyde is writing about when he reminds me, "The Gods (the dead) depend on humans to feed them", to
live on.
Hyde continues, "The classical trickster figures are most at home on the road or at the twilight edge of town. They are the consummate boundary-crossers, slipping through keyholes, breaching walls, subverting defense systems. Always out to satisfy their inordinate appetites, lying, cheating, and stealing, tricksters are a great bother to have around, but paradoxically they are also indispensable heroes of culture." Reading
Trickster acts like Yellow Dock on my digestive system when I have eaten something that looked good but goes through rough. Older brother and sister, Medicine plant, rearranges my want.
For several nights now when the sounds of wheels on asphalt are silent, and the quiet of the land is only broken by Coyote, I've been watching and listening to stories told by very, very successful Hawaii men two of them grew up in the same valley that grew my brother David and me. Each of these interviews with another Kuliouou kid made good have raised questions in me; and in the process I find the answers that are missing. In those interviews on
Long Story Short, Trickster has greased the screws in my joints and asks, "Where is the long story, long?"
Pete and I are planning a winter project that will answer the question, "Where is the long story, long?" With the nights long and days short there ought to be enough time to sort through the years of writing I did when we lived at 319 Dalene Way in Kuliouou Valley. Those columns include many stories about life, and the people of Kuliouou. My cousin "Buff" (Jacob Lau) lived just up the valley from my family home on Dalene Way. Earlier today I read his obituary online. Cousin Buff passed away earlier this year at 89. Oh my. Tears of grief, and memories of a time and a man who was kindness in so many forms of the word flooded my sight.
In his memory, and to regale the belief that the long story of a person's life is tricky, and a valley such as Kuliouou which means "lumpy knee"in
Hawaiian ought to include more than just the ones of the kids who made good as in highly visible, publically successful, and valued for his net worth. No discredit to the
Tommy Kaulukukuis and the
Walter Dods, but there are other stories of Kuliouou that make such a difference to me.
The book I will write,
Kuliouou, the long story, long will include this story, "Sound of Pick-up-Sticks Was Soft, A Reminder of Gentler Days" originally published in my column Makua O'o in Hawai'i Island Journal, October 1-15, 2000.
"I've been whistling a lot. A pair of beautiful songbirds lives in the valley and they whistle a trill-a-li-la-li song that's hard to imitate. Most days the friendly long-tailed whistler dressed in feathers like tux-and-tails calls across my back yard, and I answer. When he answers me, I feel affirmed. The whistling between us creates a gentle feel to my day. Maybe it's just that sometimes words are too righteous, and divide me from the rest of life. Whistling, on the other hand, is a collection of tones and the sounds connect me .. with what? Everything.
A small pottery vase with a curved bamboo handle sits in my kitchen. Sometimes I move it off the shelf in the corner, and bring it to the table when the long smooth sticks can be reached easily. Pete's eating tools of choice are chopsticks so it makes sense to keep them close-by. But have been thinking about the simple way in which a slightly different fistful of sticks used to keep me entertained for long stretches day after day.
When I started to remember how a can of Pick-Up-Sticks entranced me I searched for them. The ones I found were made of plastic instead of wood and no longer came packaged in the hard cardboard tube with a metal cap on top. The sticks were thinner and not as tall as I remembered them. But more disappointing that that was the absence of the sound that came from my childhood game.
Clumped together in a fist, the sticks could be held tight or lose. When you opened the hand it was the sound that signaled the start of the game. it was the stargate, the passage, between afternoon-time 1959 and playing anywhere at any time.
It's funny how the games i loved as a child were often ones with flexible rules. I know there were rules about how to and which one to pick up. I know there was a rule about getting more points when you picked up one color ... was it purple? And, I think I remember you had to pick up the black one last.
One primary rule stuck: pick up the sticks without moving the others. Otherwise, most of the rules were bent, changed or ignored when I played with some friends and maintained, adhered to and challenged with others. How little I have changed in the decades since those early years.
My preference for games is still to play with few rules. I never cultivated the discipline for the counting-watching and awareness of card games. In short stints I have played Cribbage and Hearts, but if asked tomorrow, I would be without memory of the rules let along the finesse to play well.
The year is passing quickly. Like sticks dropping onto a cool linoleum floor, I hear the movement of time. I see time stacking up and slipping down into a collection of moments, years decades. The rules change all the time. My companions and challengers come and go. Still one remains constant. Sometime ... tomorrow, next year, 20, 30 years tomorrow my stick will be picked up and then who will notice whether the other sticks moved, too?
In the morning light when Kuliouou is in half-tones and the air still cool, I spot a long-time neighbor raking her yard and picking at the dried-up croton leaves.
"Hello," I call across her cement block wall. Her greeting is always friendly, though my walks to her side of the valley have become less regular. She squints searching for the name to match my face. I help her, because I remember she won't ... remember who i am. "Yes, of course Calizar. You look good!" She says, "Younger since I last saw you."
That makes me chuckle and the two-comment exchange is plenty to start chewing that fat.
Mrs. L. remembers my mother. They would be nearly the same age if Ma were still alive. "She was a lot of fun, your mother. I miss her. That man," she points to the hedge just beyond her croton hedge cut far to low by her son who is no-yard-man-by-her-definition, "I miss him, too. He just died last year. Nice man."
We shared a few minutes of the day, and laughed at the reality of forgetfulness. "I have to ask my daughter to sign this thing for me. Why? Because I cannot remember my own name." In a quarter of a morning's hour, one tiny Chinese woman remembers that my mother was a lot of fun, recalls a long ago tragedy we shared, and tells me her grandchildren don't like it when she confuses their names. I wondered if she knew my mother whistled while she cooked, and playing music-by-ear on a termite-riddle stand-up piano.
Our small-time, friendly neighborhood -kind-of-chat was familiar, gentle words, lots of laughs, remembering, forgetting and raking up fallen leaves. Like the sound of Pick-up-Sticks falling, I listen with the ears of that small child whose heart opened up with those gentle sounds. Listen, can you hear them?"
~o~
Thank you, mahalo nui to all those gentle and tricky sound makers of Kuliouou. And to you, my Believing Mirrors, friends who value my art, and keep me at the keyboard sniffing for words, I ask for your prayers: "Keep me in your prayers each day, as the winter sets in, helping me to gather those stories and
pili them into a book that can be passed like genes, or mist in an island valley. I may reach across the email channels or leave a message on your cellphone to check in when I begin another day of assembling this long story, long." Knowing you are there can make this journey much less lonely.
Are you with me? Let us dance and move our joints as our bodies say in our ways: "We are a fiesta."
