things i learnt on kauai (6)
Posted 19 May, 2004 in life shiz
kauai’s one of the islands at the northwest end of hawaii. it rains a lot. you can hear the storms coming. it sounds like someone turned on a faucet, and then the rain starts pouring. we chased the sun around the island two or three times. twice we wound up on donkey beach. one time it was boiling, and another time it was sprinkling really nasty sharp drops of rain. both times we said “donkey!” in shrek’s scottish accent a lot.
i learnt a lot about myself on kauai, even though i was supposed not to be thinking about anything. one of the things i learnt is that i am a chickenshit. the path down to hideaways beach, on the north shore, goes steeply down. there are some concrete steps and, further down, some rusty old poles for handholds. later there is a rope. a rope! you hang onto it and kind of haul your way down. the path scared the crap out of me. it also made my quadriceps burn like a motherfucker.
there was another thigh-torturing path, down to queen’s bath, which is a beautiful tide pool set in black lava rocks. the tide fills it up and drains it out again. it had been raining, of course, and the path was super-slippery. so were the rocks by the pool. that one made it hard for me to walk down steps for a while. my thighs just wouldn’t cooperate. plus i was scared of slipping. the fear made me stand really stiffly, and so every time i slipped, i’d jar my old back injury (the one where i fell on the street, yes, i am a genius). i was scared of falling, injuring myself, and worst of all, crying like a big sissy, which is what i tend to do when i fall down. it’s been mostly out of embarrassment, since i have never really injured myself that badly in a fall.
my wussiness continued. we went snorkeling. the feel of my nose sucking into the damp plastic on the mask, and the mouthful of rubber tube with its teeth grips, made me nauseous. i was convinced i couldn’t get a full breath through the mask. i couldn’t even put my damn flippers on without getting them full of sand when the tide washed in. i put my head in the water a grand total of once with my snorkel gear on.
i did overcome my ridiculousness long enough to take a hike along to opa’a falls. we walked through a river and i discovered that reef shoes have better grip than sneakers on wet ground. the problem is, they stink like death when they’ve been sitting out wet. on the last day there, i tried to wear my reef shoes again. holy shit! the other 4 occupants of the car complained. then they sprayed cologne on my feet. the stank got even worse. the guys in the car told me the story of vanilla death. the burritos in brooklyn used to give them stinky poops. one day they sprayed vanilla perfume in the bathroom. they told me there is no worse smell than the combination of vanilla and poo. when we stopped to drop a video off, i threw my reef shoes in the trash. get the mesh ones, not the neoprene wetsuit-fabric ones, guys. or you will pay. in stank. you will live in stankonia, with andre 3000.
i also remembered that it’s important to do good things and not to expect recognition or rewards for doing them. i remembered this because one of my traveling companions emptied the dishwasher every day, cleaned up after we ate, and even folded my laundry for me, all without saying a word. i know if i’d cleaned the house almost single-handedly every day and no-one had acknowledged it, i would have gotten pissed. she didn’t, and i found that extraordinarily big of her. finally, a few days before the end of the trip, i thanked her for it. maybe next time my lazy ass will actually help to clean up without complaining, instead of just aspiring to be like those who do. O also does things for me all the time without expecting anything in return. i really should learn from him, too.
i also learnt about geckos. one thing i learnt is that geckos kind of have detachable tails. the first day there was one in the bathroom. i picked it up and played with it, and suddenly i pulled half its tail off. the severed tail-end wiggled in my hand. i felt really bad. but the guys assured me the tail grows back. the other thing i learnt about geckos is that they eat each other. we watched a couple of them on the ceiling. there was a big gecko, a small gecko, and three flies. the big gecko ignored the flies and ate the small gecko instead. it had its tail hanging out of its mouth, and i saw it slurp the last bit up. i didn’t realize that creatures sometimes eat each other for fun. that’s kind of fucked up.
we talked about politics. our main topic was the prisoner abuse at al ghraib prison, in particular the picture of the naked human pyramid of prisoners, strategically positioned so that the top person’s balls would be on the other person’s neck. we talked for a long time about balls on your neck. among some of the subtopics covered were: what balls on your neck would feel like, where exactly on the neck the balls would fall, the size of shaquille o’neal’s balls, and whether he could put his balls on someone’s shoulder from a standing position, were the person short enough.
ok, i know, the pictures were fucked up. i know we were all disgusted by it. but right now, i feel my opinions, and the opinions of other american democrats, are so completely ignored by the current administration that there’s no point my even saying anything, here or anywhere, because no-one who could do anything about it would listen to me. i don’t mean to be pessimistic, but i feel i have no voice in this country whatsoever right now. that’s what i’ve learnt, not from kauai, but from the bush administration.
so i won’t talk about politics. instead i’ll tell you i ate so much fish on kauai that i may not eat it ever again. it was good, but i ate a serious ass-load of it. opah, ono, ahi, and some buttery fish that had such a vowely hawaiian name that i can’t remember how to spell it. vowely hawaiian names were an endless amusement for my dumb sense of humor. “pua!” i would say from the back of the car. “i need to take a pua pua. hanapepe? i never even touched her!” then someone would reply, “na, wili?” “na, wili wili!” someone else would respond. later we tried to burp place names. “kapa’a” was a fun one. can you believe i am almost 30? no, i can’t either.
hopefully i can continue to keep examining myself and the motivations for my actions off kauai as well as on. some of the things i find out about myself suck; it’s not fun to realize you’re a lazy chickenshit. but i’d much rather find those things out and do something about them than never know how much of a loser i am.
oh, and this lazy chickenshit needs a writing job. email me if you got something, although i already know the administration is doing as much for our economy as it’s doing for iraq, i.e. worse than nothing.