Nuts n' Meat

Wal-Mart. I hate Wal-Mart. But it was the best I could do.

Though I would’ve preferred that it were otherwise, I didn't have time to poke around in the local shops. I was running late and needed one stop shopping—some place that was pretty much guaranteed to have alla yr. standard consumer items. The map the rental car attendant had given me showed several stores and some local attractions. In ballpoint pen, she'd helpfully circled the places she thought I'd might need to know about including some fast food restaurants, grocery stores and Marts both Wal- & K-. K-Mart was downtown. I fumbled around after it for about 10 minutes, along one-way streets, w/ names like Wailuku, Waianuenue, Kalakaua, Kinoole, Keawe, Kilauea, and of course, Kamehameha. Most of them were 1–way. Then I gave up. I didn't have the time, and I was certain I could find Wal-Mart. Sadly.

I'd been to one other Wal-Mart. A few years back, my sister was unexpectedly stuck in Chicago for several days. She needed to pick up some extra clothes to get her through till she could go home, back in Michigan. (I have contact w/ my family about twice a year, at most. It’s a not-particularly-mixed blessing to begin w/, but what’s even worse is that whenever I do see them, I somehow find myself doing something real nice like shopping for women’s underwear. That’s a little disturbing, isn’t it?)

My sister wanted to go to Wal-Mart, because it was more inexpensive than Target or K-Mart. (My family is obsessed w/ paying the lowest amount possible for everything. For some reason—maybe elves swapped me for the real me while my parents were asleep—I’m completely insensible to the idea of a bargain, which, I’ll grant ya, is not esp. practical.) Wal-Mart is cheaper—a little—but aside from that & the sinister presences lurking beneath the surface, it's more or less the same shit, as I'm sure you know.

Except maybe it isn’t. Not entirely.

While it’s true that at Wal-Mart, the only place that’s wide open is the parking lot. In that respect, the store in Hilo was no different. But here, as I walked away from my rental car, I found a people watcher's dream, esp. if you are new to the Big Island. Like any other Wal-Mart lot, there was a fuck-ton of people, most of them, dressed casually in across a middle class spectrum. From the outset, one thing that was apparently different was the ethnic variety of the people.

I live in Chicago—sometimes referred to as the most segregated city in America. 'Tho I've often wondered how one might go about determining that to be true. By the spatial dispersal of populations or some such shit? Are we just talking about where people live? What about where they shop, eat out, watch porn movies or strip shows, eviscerate gargoyles, make rum punch, design occultist objects to instill dread and envy in evil spirits that might otherwise consume them, slip on banana peels, and mail in their Closinghouse Sweepstakes shit to the seemingly deathless but ever gloppin' Ed McMahon? Huh? Whatta 'bout that? I'm really not sure myself.

I will say that while you do encounter an even broader range of ethnicities in Chicago, you really don't much see many of the Pakistani folks who live in the vicinity of Devon & Harlem down in Pilsen, where truthfully, you don't see many people who aren't Mexican. I’ve seen very few (read “none”) African Americans shopping in the enormous Korean & Vietnamese markets up north, and even fewer (read, uh, “negative none?”) fake Euro-trash wannabe spa-visiting young professionals from the Gold Coast hangin’ out by the Robert Taylor Homes.

In the parking lot of Wal-Mart in Hilo, Hawaii, people of various ethnic backgrounds are so intermingled that you pretty much, for once in yr. life, shut off that part of yr. mind that uses the mental shorthand of ethnicity to sketch out someone you've just encountered. (Had a friend who sang the praises of identifying people by race, etc. A lefty 'twas he, & a fierce champion of multiculturalism. He once went into a frenzy when my clumsy mouth did utter the acronym "P.C." Seems my flabby liberalism had been polluted by the right wing media conspiracy.

Well, like, I do think it's wise & good to preserve the cultural features of various ethnicities, both to keep those of you who have a heritage in touch w/ it, (I am whiter than the purest ground cocaine-- n' twice as stimulatin', but no heritage have I,) and to bring richness n' wisdom 'n alla that to the greater multicultural stew, as we can all only benefit from that, right? Except for that here's potential prob. #1 w/ taking this thing a little too far. If we're all off identifying w/ our own culture, how the fuck are we gonna even make cultural stew? Not only are you way across the kitchen from this Italian American guy who is, of course, superbad when it comes to alla that pizza/pasta jazz, (prob. #2--isn't this getting dangerously close to stereotyping, but more about that in a sec.?) asserting your meekrob, but he's committed to makin' the same damn food he's always made--being proud of it and therefore a purist n' therefore not wanting to throw any curry powder into his lasagna, ‘cuz like dude, are you saying it's not perfect already? No stew in the works here, 'cuz you don't even care what's in his lasagna, since yr. shit is already more perfect.

(And I, exactly middle-of-the-road white person, got nothin' to bring to it 'cept for a year's supply of Wonder Bread. When it comes to ethnic food, even Spam's been taken.)

Then there's that prob. #2 we bumped up against back there a minute ago. (Hawahawhaw! "#2!!!!") The thing heeeerrrreeee is that yer reducin' everybody to a type. Not an individual, which is sorta creepy & dehumanizing, in my opinion, & cuts me off from around 75% of what I like about people: their unique, personal perspectives, personalities, etc. as individuals. Sure you can learn from other cultures, but outside of a pretty generalized inkling, how the fuck are you 'sposed to identify w/ 'em? Isn't that an important part of what makes us understand each other? And isn't that the reason you read a novel, say, is to connect w/ characters, who are, by definition, I'm afraid, individuals? You might be fascinated by their cultural traditions, but you see these traditions through these characters' eyes. You see how they feel about them, how they've been uplifted & hurt by them, etc.

When I talked about the poet Ema Saiko way the fuck back there, that was sorta the whole point, how empathy's kept me sane—seeing how ol' Ema was able to express things I'd felt but also to elaborate on them. And part of why that was important to me was because of our different cultural traditions, but it was also meaningful because she was a different individual than I am! I think!?!

(I think Jim Jarmusch agrees w/ me: his films are populated w/ inner city gangstas who are deeply devoted to Japanese Budo, Japanese guys who worship Elvis, Italian mobsters who love Flavor Flav & a Native American who speaks reverently and passionately about William Blake. That's just 1 reason I dig his movies. But it's a big 1.)

Anyway... The Wal-Mart parking lot in Hilo, Hawaii. Man would that place put my old friend to the test. It's nothin' but stew. Well, I'm sure that's not entirely true, but holy shit, try neatly separating and categorizing the different ethnicities on display & then isolating their cultural traditions! Ha! You'd blow a gasket!

And maybe that's Hawaiian culture--which I know there are indigenous traditions, and I don't mean to belittle them. But I did get the feeling that a big part of Hawaii--outside of the rich resort n' winter home-buildin' crowd--was cultural synthesis. The cool thing about Wal-Mart in Hilo is that within this lively confluence, everyone feels like an individual. Frequently an eccentric individual--it's damn near overwhelming taking it all in. But I met an assortment of people in Hawaii who were fuckin’ remarkable as individuals. And they were often biologically or just socially intertwined in terms of culture and ethnicity.

One thing all Targets, K-Marts, Wal-Marts have in common (as well as all their monstrous brethren—w/ names both hyphenated and not) is the fact that they're fucking crowded--usually w/ young families, it seems. Unsupervised kids hurtle about. Like shoppin’ arteries, the aisles are clogged up w/ oblivious slothful cart bearing adults. The words, "Excuse me" draw no reaction whatsoever. To get through, you have to contort your body and when it comes down to it, push a little. It's aggravating, it's sad, it's claustrophobic.

I found everything on the hastily scrawled list I'd brought w/ me from Akiko's. Sort of. I had a pair of 1-liter water bottles, band-aids, antibacterial cream, and an extra flashlight to go w/ the one I'd brought w/ me. I didn’t do as well w/ food. I was in a hurry, and so maybe I wasn't being creative enough. I needed food that traveled well and would stay good for a while. I was rushing through the aisles, not even seeing things. I grabbed an enormous can of peanuts (a stake-out fave) and then found my second food group: cured meat.

I'd had Slim Jims when I was a kid & seemed to remember that they both chewed and tasted like shoe leather. People always say that. Aside from starving characters in the movies—most notably, Charlie Chaplin, who may’ve come up w/ the whole gag—has anyone ever actually tasted shoe leather? Probably. I'm gonna try it. Later. I swear. I'd do it now, but I'm wearing canvas sneakers.

But it was portable and would last until Judgment Day. Wasn’t that its whole raison de teat? So really hoping I didn't get lost and had to turn to it, I grabbed 1 pack of beef jerky. Jerky. Spam. Hawaii: The Land of Mystery Meats.

I fared better in my search for boots. There were many, many options to be had in a staggeringly large section of the footwear area. And most of these were quite affordable. I went with a sturdy set of insulated boots. For around $10 more, I could've had the same model with the addition of a steel toe. Later, after stumbling into a lotta hunks of rock, I realized that I should've spent the extra money--much as I later understood that I should've rented a vehicle with 4-wheel drive. Live & learn, I guess.

Speaking of eccentric individuals (and of the general friendliness of the Big Island,) I found one while I was waiting in the checkout line. There was a woman in front of me, shoveling a heterogeneous mixture of domestic items onto the belt in front of her. She was short and thin with brown hair that had been bleached blond in places by the sun. Her face was a deep bronze tone you can't get at any tanning salon. It was also kinda tough looking--leathery, you might say, 'tho that word has connotations of ugliness that I wouldn't apply here. (Leather again, and no B&D in sight. Fuck.) She could've been anywhere from 30-50. It was impossible to say.

She looked like she had just come from working in a garage. She had dirt under her nails and calloused hands. Her clothes looked as worn as she did. I don't mean used up--she was very much alive, not to mention unselfconsciously happy. She had shitty teeth--crooked, probably, to begin, but also showing signs of serious neglect. She radiated goodwill and good health.

Somehow, we got to talking. For the life of me, I don't remember how. Anyway, one of the things she was buying was a thermometer--the kind you use to take a person's temperature, not the climate's. She mentioned that it was the first thermometer she'd ever bought.

She had two kids, she said. "When I want to know if they have a fever, I feel their forehead." Seemed sensible enough.

She told me that she lived in a trailer on a large parcel of land nearby, and that she raised a lot of animals.

"This is for my mule," she said, neither blinking, nor showing any indication that she thought I might blink. Matter-of-factly put forward w/ the assumption it would be matter-of-factly received. It was. Almost. I'll admit I was surprised.

She seemed amused by the situation herself. But she wasn't trying to freak me out in a "I'm so weird, you're not" sorta way. Nor to come across as a standup comedienne. She was just making conversation. And when she'd been rung up, she very genuinely wished me a good day, and we said goodbye. Very nice lady. Very cool.

Still, if you ran into her in a Wal-Mart in Chicago, (actually it's in the burbs, but I can't think of which one,) or a Wal-Mart in Grand Rapids or wherever fuck you live (unless it's somewhere more off the beaten track,) you'd probably think she was weird. I did find her to be unusual, but only because I'd never met anyone like her. Not because she seemed out of place.