A Christmas Turtle

Legend tells us that Kauila, the turtle, can transform herself from a Goddess into a turtle. As a turtle she scooped out the trenches that allow the fresh water to percolate through the black sand giving fresh water to the people. Kauila comes onto the beach to play with the Keiki (the children) to watch over them and to protect them from harm.


For Christmas I polished my toenails–didn’t want you to think I had gone completely primitive.

For Christmas Eve I painted the living room–haven’t finished.

For Christmas Day, Daughter Darling Baby Darling and I took ourselves to the beach.

We know if we drive far enough we will eventually find water, but so far, we hadn't seen much of it. Daughter Darling said, "Here I live in Hawaii, and can't find the ocean."

We wanted a sandy beach, not lava encrusted one, and so we drove about an hour and a half to the Black Sands Beach, where Hawaii spread herself full-out in a glorious display of wind, surf, palm trees, crystalline water, and an estuary adjacent where water lilies blossomed and a ducky swam through.

And it was there we saw three Hawksbill turtles sunning themselves on the beach.

The black sand at water’s edge–fresh water–where it trickled under the sand running into little pools, Kauila's gift, looked and felt like Caviar.

Baby D played in the Caviar sand, mushing it through his fingers, smearing his legs and tasting it occasionally. I believe he would have spent the entire day there given the opportunity.

After the beach we drove into Naalelehu and had our Christmas meal at Hona Hou, the southernmost restaurant in the United States.

And so back home, and today, Sunday, in the early hours, it is raining. For the last four days, however, we have had sunshiny glorious weather, and we got the shipping container emptied after 19 loads to the house, the last four with help.

There are angels in Hawaii.

This is the way it works: You go to the dump--called a transfer station--and find two fellows looking for yard work. You hire them, and they bring two others to finish emptying the shipping container–affectionally known as The POD. (I know, a company name, but the POD in the Papaya Field sounds better than the shipping container in the Papaya Field.)

You go to the Propane store and ask if they will install batteries. No, but the man standing next to you says he will do it for $65.00. After installing 12 new batteries, Pete helps you start the John Deere “Gater” that ran out of gas. Do you know where the carbonator is? I didn’t, but he did, and with “Quick Start” squirted and gas primed you get the Gater running.

You see a man walking down the street with a white “Silky” (breed of chicken) on his shoulder–you stop–he shows you three chicks from his back pack. They stand, not jumping off, not pooping on your car window sill. He has chickens for sale–you have been wanting chickens.

Scenes from Hawaii.

You sit outside the Post Office and watch a lady limping toward her house, and from the house an orange cat limps, a mirror image, toward her.

A man sits up a hot dog stand in the Y between the two highways and supplies lunch for two weary travelers 3 days running. (Guess who?)

You follow the moving fellows behind their truck and watch the play, the friendly boxing, the jumping off the truck, road surfing behind it, catching overhead branches.

You are painting and an anole (small lizard) perches on the edge of the paint tray–you shoo him away lest he fall in and paint a track across your floor or the wall.

A couple is cutting the enormous grass that grows beside the road; you stop and thank them for widening the road. They tell you they are cutting it for their horses who love it. It is not sugar cane they say, but the horses love that too.

About 15 people wave as they pass you on the road, and about 15 mongooses cross it before you reach the highway.

You start the Gater and drive up the top 5 acres of your property and stop and pick oranges and star fruits and drive back with the evening wind ruffling your hair and it feels almost as good as a horseback ride.

And then you go to the beach and find that the turtles...

Merry Christmas!

Two Blogs sent in one day, forgive me, but I had to wish you a Merry Christmas, and I promised you the first paragraph of Mark Twain’s Hawaiian book. And so, here it is:

“The date is 1840. Scene the true Isles of the Blest; that is to say, the Sandwich Isles--to this day the peacefullest, restfullest, sunniest, balmiest, dreamiest haven of refuge for a worn and weary spirit the surface of the earth can offer. Away out there in the mid-solitudes of the vast Pacific, and far down to the edge of the tropics, they lie asleep on the waves, perpetually green and beautiful, remote from the work-day world and its frets and worries, a bloomy, fragrant paradise, where the troubled may go and find peace, and the sick and tired find strength and rest. There they lie, the divine islands, forever shining in the sun, forever smiling out on the sparkling sea, with its soft mottlings of drifting cloud-shadows and vagrant cat’s-paws of wind; forever inviting you, never repulsing you; and whosoever looks upon them once will never more get the picture out of his memory till he die. With him it will stay, and be always present; always present and always fresh; neither time nor distance can dim its features, or dull their charm, or reconcile him to the thought that he will never see that picture with his eyes of flesh again.”

That is all I have.

So, what happened to Mark Twain’s manuscript? Some writers have made its disappearance a topic not even Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson could solve.

Some believe it was rewritten into Twain’s book, The Confederate Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, for many of it feudal concepts and practices which come under attack in Yankee had their inception in Twain’s observations of the Sandwich Islands. However, no one knows for sure.

And now you must be tired of my ramblings and so I will say, “A Merry Christmas to all and to all a Good Night.”

I love every single one of you,

Joyce

An Attitude Adjustment?

December 20, 2009

It’s 4 AM. I’m writing by flashlight. Outside a monsoon rages.

The avalanche of rain pounding the roof has drowned out the frog’s song, or maybe it is too much for them and they are snuggled in their bed as I am.

This is the most severe rainstorm we’ve had since our arrival. It rained before, but mostly at night–You know, like Camelot, “It never rains until after sundown.”

Yesterday, because of the rain, we opted not to unload any goods from the shipping container, but to use electricity not made on our property. We drove into the little town of Kea’au–washed clothes at the Suds shop, went grocery shopping, and took ourselves to a restaurant called Hokulani's Steak House.

One couldn’t possibly sit inside at Hokulani's for the outside is splendid even if it does overlook the parking lot. While the rain pounded, and the temperature was set to bathroom comfort, we watched the rain hit the people and the cars, and the Niagara Falls of water course off the downspout. I could see Gene Kelly dancing under it as he did in the movie Singing in the Rain.

Hokulani's makes the best garlic, ginger (with a Thai dressing kick) chicken sandwich this side of De Friscos in Eugene Oregon.

After wading the parking lot we drove home through 10 thousand road lakes. DD said if we poured cement in those lakes we would have a smooth road. Imagine, though, cars would be stuck in it like the dinosaurs in California’s La Brea Tar Pits.

Trudging inside, and flipping on the kitchen light, we began to unload the truck and “Wham.” The lights went out! Guess with all the rain the solar panels weren’t soaking up rays, for there was none.

Unpulsed this time, we got out the solar pack that DD had the foresight to order one for her and one for me. This pack has lights, plug-ins, and it will even charge the car battery. (Given it is charged, of course.) DD, BD and I climbed into bed with the laptop we had charged with the car cigarette lighter on the way into town. We snuggled in and crafted a business proposal while baby D, like a persistent cat, was determined to get my pretty red lighted mouse.

When the thunder and lightening began this morning I was hoping it meant the storm was moving on, but soon the avalanche of water fell again. I wouldn’t care except some sunshine on the solar panels would be nice.

"CRASH!" The thunder and lightening is fierce. I tremble to think about how much water is on the road right now, but I am thankful we got home last night. Remember the Hawaiian lady who said living as we were would make us appreciative? Yesterday I was thankful for clean clothes and a wonderful lunch, and getting home, and having lights by some source, and a laptop that worked, and DD and her darling son who is happy through it all.

It is quiet outside, I wrote through the storm, and I just heard a frog sing.

The Isle of the Blest

“If only the house would burn down, “ wrote Mark Twain, “we would pack up the cubs and fly to the isles of the blest and shut ourselves up in the healing solitudes of Heleakala and get a good rest; for the mails do not intrude there, not yet the telephone and the telegraph. And after resting, we would come down the mountain a piece and board with the godly beech-clouted native, and eat poi and dirt and give thanks to whom all thanks belong for these privileges, and never house-keep any more....What I have always longed for was the privilege of living forever away up on one of those mountains in the Sandwich Islands overlooking the sea."

One doesn’t have to burn down the house to move to the isle of the blest, burn a little bridges maybe...
After his four month and one day assignment on the Islands, Mark Twain yearned to return, but never did. He wrote a novel with a Hawaiian setting, but sadly it was never published. Only 17 pages of it exist unless it turns up in someone’s attic. A visitor at the University of California at Berkeley can view those 17 pages in the Mark Twain collection.
I have the first paragraph of the novel. I will copy it for you on a later blog.

I have been feeling narcissistic writing about me all the time, but I’m the one with my fingers on the keyboard. Unless you write to me, and some are, bless your hearts, it is just me and the white page. And then I throw my ramblings into a bottle, called cyberspace, where it floats all the way from Hawaii to the mainland

Isn’t technology grand?

But being without it is traumatic. I couldn’t get Internet connection for a few days and I quaked, finally got ATT, but my signal is still weak.

I am sitting on the edge. One day I fall into discouragement. The next I’ve had an attitude adjustment. I’m fragile like the Noni fruit growing on the tree behind our house. They don’t look fragile, but are large lumps of gnarled white fruit that at first glance look like breadfruits. The trouble is ours are either green or black. Either too green to eat, or black rotten. I ate a bite of one I picked beside the road--tasted like green.

Noni’s are sold mainly as juice, and a company in the vicinity places the juice into capsules. There is a Noni company in the vicinity that puts the juice into capsules. Noni’s will, so they say, cure anything.

While in Hilo getting the car from the Port, and the Broadband from UPS, daughter Dear, Baby Dear and I took ourselves to lunch at a charming place called The Ponds. It had the Hawaiian slide windows that make an open wall, and no mosquitoes, and outside a freshwater pond where two guys were practicing the surfboard paddle. That is standing on a surfboard with a long oar and paddle oneself around on it. It was the bunny slopes. The advanced riders ride the Pacific’s waves.
It was perfect at The Ponds. The temperature was perfect. The weather was perfect. We drank iced tea with Liliqoi fruit juice in it. The Liliqoi is a yellow passion fruit and everything we have had with its juice is delicious. The iced tea looked like a Tequila Sunrise-- dark on the top, beautiful yellow on the bottom. DD had a hamburger, I had sashimi. We had a Liliqoi chiffon cake for dessert that was so light it melted in our mouths like cotton candy. (They told us we had Liliqoi on the property but so far we have not been able to find any.)

A Hawaiian lady sat at a table beside us–I have great respect for a woman to takes herself to a fine restaurant and is willing to eat alone. She ordered the full fare, escargot, a salad, lamb chops, wine. She was charming, lived in Dallas Texas for awhile, but came back here. We talked about our children, and she told us that living as we were will make us appreciative everything. This island is healing so she said. Also she told us that we must go to the Tsunami Beach. There you can find treasures, glass rolled up on the beach for mosaics, she found a complete brown glass Purex bottle with the Purex imprint on the glass. Now that was even before my time.

She lives in the Tsunami zone, but if the water rolls out, she is not taking the car, but has a tandem bike where she will put her child on the back and they will head for high ground. Usually there is ample warning, for Tsunamis are created from some geological event, usually an earth quake a long way away.

It is my favorite time of the morning. The sun is coming on. We have had a monsoon all night. The sound on the rain on our roof almost drowned out the sound of the Coqui frogs. If I listened carefully, though, I could hear their little chirping behind the driving rain. I have come to rely on the nighttime singing of the frogs. Now that it is light they are silent.

And so I changed the name of my webpage to The Frog’s Song. It is fitting, the old name I once used for my journal that some of you graciously read... Little did I know then, with Life’s Twists and Turns where I would be now, or that little chirping frogs would lull me to sleep.

Aloha from me to you.

http://thefrogssong.com/

P.S. IceRyder "Yes."

One of the Sandwich Islands, December 2, 2009

I’m experimenting. I’m sitting on the porch using my laptop plugged into the little solar panel Daughter D gave me as a gift before leaving Oregon.

A few moments ago my laptop went into Hibernation mode, which meant, I guess, I had used up its batteries. I can plug it into the wall socket, or use my full-sized computer, but just think the sun is there shining in all its potent glory, warming us, sustaining us, and powering my computer.

Hallelujah!

I had decided to stay in bed all day today if that suited me as I believed all my synapses and neurons looked like cat fur after the cat had put a claw in a light socket. I did stay in bed for awhile, but finally poured myself out, and sitting here is refreshing, wonderful, and from my seat on the porch I can see DD taking a picture of BD sitting in the mowed grass.

The temperature is comfortable probably in the 70's. Husband Dear told me it was 10 degrees when he got back to Oregon–so cold that our cat Zoom Zoom’s poop was frozen. Zoom Zoom is on a different Quarantine schedule that the other animals, but when Husband Dear travels back here Zoom Zoom will come with him.
The shipping container hasn’t arrived yet, but our pickup did. The car and truck became separated in Oahu, poor dears. Now, though, we have the truck and not a rental car.

On Wednesday, that was day before yesterday, Daughter D, Baby D and I drove to Utah–we didn’t really leave the island, but we drove from the Hilo side of the island to the Kona side, and it looked like Utah. We left the rainforest and drove through an arid stretch of land where tufts of grass grew on a barren prairie sort of landscape and even cactus dotted the terrain.

This island is a wonder.

I will take pictures for you, but that day I needed to focus on driving. The drive was incredible; we coursed down the highway over ravines deep as Oregon’s Multnomah Falls is high. Everything that could be green was, and in the ravines we looked out over the tops of trees where blossoming umbrella trees dotted the canopy with red flowers.
When DD awakened and told me she had a nightmare about the grass growing, I decided it was time for a break. (We are afraid the jungle is claiming along with various mechanical devices sitting outside.) Before coming here we worried about these ten acres supporting four horses. Now we need animals to munch the grass and think about 25 horses might do it.)

DD had suggested we go to Kona and we went for it. We drove the beautiful drive, went swimming at our favorite pool at the Sheridan Hotel, watched the surf at sunset and Daughter Dear treated us to an exquisite dinner overlooking the ocean with the gift card her co-workers the Battered Woman’s shelter gave her.

And then I was fried the next day. Why? Overdid it I guess. On the way home I got stopped by the police for speeding, I had been doing 55 on the highway, and didn’t see the 35 mile zone. It was 10:30 pm. That used to be early for me, not anymore. (The day we used up all our solar power and the lights went out we went out we went to bed at 7:30.) The policemen said it was the witching hour when the drunks and crazies were out–and the police. He didn’t give me a ticket, but it served to totally unnerve me. And coming home BB got tired and was crying, and the three miles of potholes was the clincher.

I was ready to move.

It helps to clean.

Look what I found:


The future novelist of Hawaii got off the ship in Honolulu. He was thirty one years old–not a novice, but not famous either. He had been landed the exotic assignment of writing a series of articles for the most important newspaper in the American West...He was Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910), and he had only recently assumed the pen name of “Mark Twain.”

 This was taken from the foreword by A. Grove Day wrote for Twain’s book, Mark Twain in Hawaii Roughing It in the Sandwich Islands.Mark Twain only spent four months and one day on the Islands. He wrote 25 articles for the Sacramento Union, and he often looked back on his adventures, and wrote a novel with a Hawaiian setting. What he wrote is still being collected in anthologies, used in advertisements, and quoted over dinner tables.

 He wrote:
“No alien land in all the world has any deep strong charm for me but that one, no other land so longingly and so beseechingly haunt me, sleeping and walking, through half a lifetime, as that one has done. Other things leave me, but it abides, other things change, but it remains the same. For me its balmy airs are always blowing, its summer seas flashing in the sun; the pulsing of its surfbeat is in my ear. I can see its garlanded crags, its leaping cascades, its plumy palms drowsing by the shore, its remote summits floating like islands above the cloud wrack; I can feel the spirit of its woodland solitudes, I can hear the splash of its brooks; in my nostrils still lives the breath of flowers that perished twenty years ago.”

Tiki Picture--loaded where it wanted to

Hawaii Dec 8


Oh I love getting up in the dark and going to the computer, and outside, between my bedroom window and the Tiki room, the morning awakens. The sun doesn’t burst over the hill in blazing glory, but subtly brightens as though God is reversing the dimmer switch She turned down last night.

It is pouring down rain. The light glowing on the green between here and the Tiki room is a green undescribable, lime/forest, gorgeous. Oh dear, that rain will make the road muddy, and the shipping container truck is scheduled to arrive today.

We sent the cars early so they would be here first, but alas shipping companies do their own thing. I am being warned that the truck might not get the container to our property. Oh, please please please.

We had enough hauling in Oregon. The truck didn’t make it up the hill to our Oregon property so we used the Company pickup truck (our truck was forging its way here) to haul everything down to the shipping container parked at the bottom of the hill. Actually that worked well, as the container was four feet off the ground, and would require carrying furnishings, boxes, etc. up a ramp. With the pickup we could stack a load into the back of the truck, drive down the hill, then off load onto the container. Here, though, I do not want to make ten million trips over potholes carrying furnishings. And Daughter D and I cannot handle some of the heavy equipment stored in that container. (Husband Dear will not be here.)

I am chewed up from mosquito bites as Husband D and I spent last night outside installing an on-demand hot water heater. Bless his heart, it was complicated and intended for a professional installer, but we think he got it. We’ll see when we turn on the gas this morning.

We are rather fried from the last month of packing and the move and being here and all the things to do. We were grumbling last night that we dealt with crap at the other house, and here the previous owners left more crap. What is it they say if you dig through manure you might find a pony?

Actually there were two horses grazing by the Tiki room this morning. Two of the neighbor’s Icelandic Horses wandered through. Wish they would stay longer and eat some of this grass that can grow as high as the house. (I’m not exaggerating this time.)

Before I complain too much let me tell you that first you are keeping me sane. I know you are out there and I am here, but I feel our connection, and I know some of you are pulling for us. I love having you there.

Second I have to tell you about the Coqui frogs that sing every night. They are tiny little frogs and have a sweet “Kopi” sound, like birds chortling. They coordinate their call—it’s a mating call--with the night sounds of bugs, birds, whatever. It sounds like the jungle. I love them. I can’t understand why some people find them objectionable and consider them to be noise pollution. They are not indigenous, and there seems to be resentment to imports. Some people want to eradicate them, yet they do good eating insects, spiders and roaches. Why would anyone complain? You who remember my journal The Frog’s Song know that motto was “The frogs call the rain that settles the dust for our journey.”

No dust here.

First Day

Dec 2, 2009

In the Tiki Tiki Tiki Room, in the Tiki Tiki Tiki room, all the birdies sing and the flowers bloom, in the Tiki Tiki,Tiki room--Baby D’s favorite song.

That song came to be Baby D's before we knew we had a little auxiliary building on the property--it's a car seat settling melody. When we discovered we had an out-building, and a cute one at that, we dubbed it the Tiki Room. There were various plans for it, Husband D’s office, my office, but our first day here Daughter D fell in love with it. It is larger than her bedroom in the regular house, and has such potential for an interior designer like her. (Open side walls, screened-in, needs more screening in the eves.) "The energy there is really good," she says.

The Imagineers from Disneyland must have copied the road to our house when they built the Indiana Jones ride. If you endure the three miles of potholes you will land on a lush green compound in the jungle—our property.

I fell into cultural shock the first day at the house. The road, the primitiveness of it, the “What have we done?” aspect. Daughter D felt lost. I felt lost. We all had low-grade colds, so were not in the best of humor or condition.

And here I was quoting Thoreau not long ago, “I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately…”

Yet, I know living deliberately is not so much about where one lives, but ones attitude. Right now mine stinks. We decided we wanted the adventure, and knew a REALLY big change will force something. That something is yet to be discovered. A new way of thinking, perhaps? Daughter Number One says if you change 29 things (that many huh?) in your life you will change your life. The question is will we like the change? Some of my friends say, “It will be perfect.”

I wrote this before I had Internet connection, but we brought the computer in a suitcase, both a lap top and a full-sized computer. So you see we had priorities. And we have electricity. I thank God every time I flip a switch and our solar power works. And once we connected the propane, we smelled gas from the range, so I refused to use it. (I brought a one burner propane camp stove, we are using that.) Daughter D says, “Some amenities would be nice.”

The house is cute, and by nightfall that first day, I settled into it. Coming here was like going to a mountain cabin. You schlep in your stuff, you feel you are outside your element, but you enter into the house, and yes, you are camping, but it’s all right. Daughter D said it was like going to sixth grade camp. The previous owners left some furnishings. Bless their hearts. The furnishings serve us, the enormous amount of junk on the property doesn’t. We have a bed, a couch, and other things. I brought clean sheets and towels, and we went to a Laundromat and washed the in-house comforters. Daughter D put the two bunk bed mattresses on the floor in her room, and that’s where she and Baby D sleep.

I like the simpleness of the house, and I shudder whenever a box comes in. I think of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s book Gift from the Sea, and her beach house where she kept it simple, and let the sand blow through, and brought in shells she gleaned from the beach—each one a metaphor for her mind droppings.

Our belongings are traversing the ocean as I speak. So are the cars. The question is, "Will the trucker get the shipping container past those potholes and to our house?

P.S. I will attempt again to give you a picture of the Tiki House. After an hour or so to download it failed.

Hawaii, Dec. 1

Moving Day
We're in Honolulu.

I jump out of our rented Dodge Ram pickup–necessary for hauling the stretch 700 doggie transport doggie kennel from Continental to Aloha Airlines to see if Bear can be checked in early. We leave at 7:30 on Hawaiian, he doesn’t leave until 9:00. Because Bear, Daughter D’s Newfoundland dog, is over 150 pounds he must go Cargo, and that from Honolulu to the Big Island is Aloha Airlines.
Daughter D jumps out with Bear to give him a last minute bathroom break.

Husband Dear decides to be of assistance, leaves the motor running to keep the truck cool, closes the truck door, and the doors lock.
Baby D is sleeping in his car seat.
He’s locked in.

We’re locked out!

Peaches, our poodle, is loose in the truck, Hope, the cat, is in her carrier.
Daughter D, in a panic, runs into the Cargo building to see if they can call the National car rental company. I call 911. Shortly sirens and a big green fire engine blaze down the road, and like the military exiting the ships at Normandy, about 8 firefighters, swarm over the truck. Thus begins the arduous process of trying to break into a truck that is built like a tank.
One might think that firefighters could break into a vehicle instantly, but so as not to damage the truck, they are careful using leavers, snakes, I don’t know what all. They pry and pull until finally one brilliant firefighter manages, with a long pole, to push down the automatic window button. The window opens.
One of our saviors opens the door, and Happy, happy, happy, Daughter D is united with her child.

Baby D, who was sleeping in his car carrier the entire time, awakened wondering what all the fuss was about.

Peaches didn’t bark at the men breaking into the truck as I was alternating my stare from her to the baby the entire time.
Daughter D and I, however, lost 6 of our nine lives.


We began the journey the day before by driving from Eugene to Portland to send Bear off on Continental, the airplane that would take him, and the one where we could make connecting flights in Honolulu, a necessary stop to retrieve the animals from Quarantine. We spent the night in Portland in a Motel, and the following morning, each of us schelping two of the biggest suit cases allowed, plus carryon’s, plus Peaches and Hope in their hard airline approved carriers, we made out way to the airport.
We were like the Beverly Hillbillies with present time update.
We fly the 5 ½ hours to Honolulu, retrieve the animals, go through the procedure of renting the Dodge truck, eat sushi from a little carry out place. (It was really good, and inexpensive–that delighted us, as most everyone tells us how expensive it is to live in Hawaii), and deposit Bear at Aloha Airlines. Now we can carry Peaches and Hope in soft carriers and they travel as carryon luggage to the seat with us.
We rented a hotel in Hilo–if you come to Hawaii stay in Kona, not Hilo. It is old Hawaii, rather run-down, and not dog friendly. The animals had to spent the night in the mini van. I got up early to check on the temperature.
We didn’t want to go to our house dead tired and in the middle of the night.
Our first day.

To be continued....