The Bostonian Abroad

Random assortments of various natures meandering meaninglessly across pages, screens, minds and inner eyelids. I sit here still in the sunny haze of powerful discourses, thoughts to tune and be listened to. There is hardly ever anyone who makes the differents. Old and new and the same always, but without joy, without want. Nothing left to do but burn in our own language, form it and hurl it at the passersby, monkey-dunging. Time this newness to be borne! :)

What makes someone a Hawaiian? If you are born here? What about if you are the third generation born here? The fourth generation? What's the point anyway? It comes down to our ape attitude toward anything "different" than us. "Localism", "Ethnocentrism", "Racism" - all are just we humans being our animal selves. We kill each other over differences of accent: "The Shibboleth", religion: Israel, N. Ireland, India, Pakistan, race: white on non, black on non, brown on non, yellow on non, red on non, etc. We are so sensitive to difference, I am sure we humans have found justifications for all kinds of ridiculousness. OOOk! Kamehameha schools is fighting letting in a kid who is not "Hawaiian"? That's the dumbest thing I have ever heard! But it doesn't surprise me. He is not "Hawaiian", even if he is the umpteenth generation born here. Who decides? People who themselves can not claim birthrig

Recently I have begun to feel the emptiness that comes from not having any friends. No, I'm not so anti-social that I have no friends at all. I am without friends for a couple of reasons. First, I live in the middle of palmy nowhere, a place where people move, try to live, then realize what a hole it actually is and escape back to any place that matters. Another reason is that this isolated locale has effectively cut me off from the goings-on of all my friends back home. (Boo-hoo, I'm the one that left, so I shouldn't cry over spilled coconut milk.) Yet another reason is marriage. Yes, it is being married that kills friendships the most. Spousally-banned, friendships end faster than a frat party once the keg's gone dry. Then there is the maturity thing. Friends that were way-cool back in the day become evil clingers-on as time progresses, and they don't. Getting shit-faced and screaming your undying love for an ex was socially tolerated at 20, maybe ev

THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD goes the booming bass of the stereos parked out across the street and down the hill from my home. From more than a football field's length away, the hip-hop, reggae or Jawaiian music assaults the very fabric of my being. Turn up the tv, but still it thuds so loud, you can't think of anything else but running over there and setting fire to all of them in their suped-up little rice racers. These ignorant assholes drink in the park, smash bottles, scream and yell, vandalize, and basically act like complete fools. They have no consideration for the more than thirty families living in victimized ear-shot of their assholery. Last night, I called the cops - again, and after two hours HPD's Finest came and got them out. I just had to yell, had to go to the edge of the fence and scream my protest. "Welcome to Palisades, " yells back one of these cowards while sulking into his mommy-financed car, with his baggy pants down around his thi

At the local "Y", I have found it enjoyable to exercise in an environment free from the type of nonsense I experience at the university gym. I have been to this meet-market a couple of times, and I realize just how much I don't fit in to the "young" scene anymore. (Not that I ever did, being that I was a geek in H.S. and went to the weight room to sit around talking till the teacher came in for his yearly inspection - prompting those reclining on the sit-up boards to jerk heavily upward while huffing, "a hunderd and one! . . .") You pick up a weight, say, a twenty-pounder, and some big mountain comes over and snickers at you while hefting half the room's weight. You set the machine to seventy pounds, and when you're done some super-dude comes over and sticks the pin under the machine and hurls it through the ceiling 25 times - grunting like he's nailing a manatee! At my favorite "Y", the folks are older, near or aft