The Boom that Came to Sarnath, Part 1

Being a Serial in Four Parts

To the readers of this chronicle I must apologize for my recent silence, but if they have perused the headlines, I suspect they have some knowledge of my misfortunes; and if retellings of the horrors that have beset me have, somehow escaped them--I hope that the following document will enlighten them whilst providing some clarification to those who have studied the relevant recent events as well.

It is true that I have sent six bullets through the head of my old friend, and yet I hope to shew by this statement that I am not his murderer. At first I shall be called a madman—or a burn-out. Later some of my readers will weigh each statement, correlate it with the known facts, and ask themselves how I could have believed otherwise than I did after facing the evidence of that final horror…

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here is how it all began:

We were sitting on a dilapidated sofa that had been manufactured in the mid-70s, in the light of a TV screen, on which an episode of Cheaters oozed, and speculating about the role of feedback. Looking around the giant, pock-marked coffee table in the centre of my friend’s living room, whose legs engulfed stacks of dog-eared, long-abandoned vinyl records, I had made a made a strange and vaguely incoherent remark about how cool those albums might sound if you played them now, scratched, long ago, as they were, not to mention weirdly warped and dirtied in their trackless somnolence. And now my friend chided me for such bullshit, since jacketed as they were, the albums could have been brushed only with the most ethereal coating of dust, and further, since they were stacked in a perfectly straight vertical manner, only the minute and inescapable warping caused by climactic shifting could have influenced their enduring disc-like shape.

“Besides,” he added, “you’re always talking about ‘noise’ and how cool it is. It’s really lame. What ever happened to music?”

“I’m talking about music. Noisy music. I mean, usually it’s music. With noise in it.”

“See, you just prefer noise because you can’t appreciate well-written, well-played music. I’d say you were tone deaf, but you do have a lotta decent records. Not that you ever play ‘em.”

“Sometimes I do!”

“Nope. You don’t listen to anything that’s got a discernable melody or lyrics.”

“Yeah I do!”

“If it’s Elizabeth Elmore.”

“Pant pant. No wait, I listen to other stuff sometimes—like Scratch Perry or Iggy or Mingus.”

“Not much you don’t. Not these days. And but the thing is that that’s all there is in good music: melody, harmony, rhythm, and how you put ‘em together through performance. I mean, you know me—I’m not a pop music fan or classical music fan or whatever. I’m a rockist. Diehard.”

“Yeah—I know—and Skynyrd is cool and alla that—and Drive-by Truckers are even better. But I’m tellin’ ya. You gotta embrace the noise. It’s part of where all that classic rock came from.”

“The fuck it is. At least Skynyrd could play their instruments. Take those jerkoffs you’re always goin’ on and on about. Whass their faces? Spaceship Z?”

“Spacemen 3.”

“Right. Those assholes can’t even play their instruments—beyond the most rudimentary 4 or 5 notes.”

“I know. Isn’t it cool?”

“Gaah. And since they can’t play or sing, they have to rely on squealing feedback, tinny little 3 note riffs, fuzz pedals and long droning instrumentals to make themselves seem like a real band.”

“But feedback, 3 note riffs, fuzz pedals and long droning instrumentals do make them a band. One of the coolest bands ever.”

“They suck.”

“No. They don’t.”

“No. They do.”

“Know what yer problem is? You just don’t give ‘em a chance. Five seconds and you turn the shit off. I bet if you listened to them enough, you’d see how much ass they kicked.”

“Bullshit. I could listen to them for a month straight—if I could stand it—and I’d still think they sucked.”

“Wanna bet?”

“OK asshole. Let’s do this. If I listen to ‘em every day for a month… you gotta give me your Stratocaster.”

“My strat?”

“It’s a fair deal. And besides, I’ll be rescuing it from your cheap amp, shitty effects pedals and general ineptitude.”

“It’s not a fair, fucking deal.”

“OK. How ‘bout this? I’ll listen to every Spacemen 3 album once a day for a month and I won’t listen to anything else. No music, no radio, muted TV. Whadda ya say?”

“Hmmm. Ida know.”

“I’ll throw in an Elizabeth Elmore flavored popsicle.”

“An Elizabeth Elmore flavored popsicle. That’s fuckin’ stupid. They don’t exist.”

“Look in the freezer.”

I wandered through hallways damnably suggestive of nighted caverns and finally crossed the threshold of a walnut arch that had stood since long before the previous tenants’ habitation. Within the cool air of the freezer lay a popsicle draped in a flimsy paper wrapper that bore the enchanting form of Elizabeth Elmore.

From the lugubrious shadows behind my shoulder, my friend spoke: “Found that on eBay. Been waiting to use it on you for a while.”

“That’s so hot. I’m gonna suck on Elizabeth Elmore. Finally.” Thus it became vitally imperative that I win this wager.

He smiled—sardonically it seemed—and said, “Don’t count yer Elmores till they’re hatched.”

The terms of the wager were soon agreed upon. As stated, my friend would expose himself daily to the alien strains of the group Spacemen 3, whose airs had opened awesome cosmic vistas before me in the past—though I wondered what effect listening to all of their albums daily for a month would have—even I had never done that. Should 30 days pass for him without a glimpse of such wonders, then my beloved Stratocaster, itself a more constant companion to me than any of flesh and blood, would be forfeit. It would be a heavy price to pay, if my luck should fail me, but it seemed necessary to assert this truth—that Spacemen 3 kick ass—once and for all.

Of course, an impartial third party would have to be commissioned. At first, it seemed that this might be difficult, as we suspected that very few would agree to expose themselves to such arguable “crap.” In the end, however, procuring the services of such a party proved rather easy. So easy, in fact, that I remember wondering if this was a sign that certain outside forces might be providing a positive momentum to our undertaking. At the time this was sheer whimsy, almost without a trace of ominousness. Now I fear that this accursed thought was all too accurate.

The maintenance supervisor for my friend’s apartment building lived on site. He was of Slavic extraction, though from which specific nation he hailed was impossible to guess, due to my lack of familiarity with Eastern European accents. A grizzled man of many years, he was perpetually unshaved and the dim white shirt he wore, which bore a cloth patch, reading “Abe,” highlighted his morose obsequiousness. Though he was always courteous, I found his watery eyes and satyr-like face to be vaguely unpleasant.

It so happened that on this ill-starred day—would that I could drive the memory from my mind—I left my friend’s apartment briefly to purchase a six-pack of beer. We had, it seems, run out of alcoholic beverages and had a craving for a little more. When I returned, I encountered the slouched, wheezing form of the “super” on the building staircase. It was an ancient tottering structure with rotten red carpet lining its hallways, and this gloomy fellow was often found poking at this stuff with a similarly aged vacuum that, sadly, seemed to do little good.

Abe was known to be ever interested in acquiring more money. In addition to the duties his occupation demanded of him, he could often be found walking the dogs owned by working tenants, watering the plants of vacationeers, or running small errands for the building’s invalids. (Once or twice we’d sent him for beer because we were too intoxicated to want to go ourselves. We quickly let discontinued this practice when he started demanding additional payment in beer—20% of whatever variety we were drinking.) He seemed to be a fine candidate for moderator of our wager.

Once I had attracted his attention—not an easy task given the damnable whirring of that blasted machine—a wage and a description of the requisite tasks were put into place. Abe was surprisingly astute when it came to negotiations—so much so that one wondered how he could still be merely a building “super.”

Abe would visit my friend six times daily—at unspecified hours. He would check first to make sure that he heard Spacemen 3 playing by listening at the door. In order for it to be audible in this way, my friend would have to play the music at cyclopean decibel levels, but this would only work in my favor, I reasoned, since Spacemen 3 really kick ass when they are loud. Then Abe would knock at the door to visibly establish my friend’s presence and verify that the daily circulation all of the Spacemen 3 albums.

I myself, of course, could visit as I liked, though my friend expected, he said with more than a little sarcasm, to be so deeply transfixed by his immersion into the group’s weird cacophony as to be unable to recognize me if I appeared at his door.

“My consciousness will be so altered that I, like, probably won’t even realize you’re there. Wait…” He extended the palm of his hand in front of me. His eyes stared as though blind. “Are you there?”

“Fuck off.”

“You are. Though I guess that doesn’t prove that you exist.”

“Blow me.”

“Now that ya mention it, you seem kinda cheaply theatrical.”

“Cheaply? Is that even a word?”

Without a glance, he pointed to a bookshelf, where many a moldering paperback lay. Amongst these ancient volumes rested an even more antiquated dictionary. I flipped open its threadbare clothbound cover and read.

“See,” my friend said, “there’s a lot more of grave than gravy to you.”

“It’s the other way around.”

“Cheaply? What do you mean?”

“No. Scrooge.”

“Oh.”

“And you were right.”

“Wait. But you said I was wrong.”

“About cheaply. It’s a word.”

“Told ya. Not that any of this dialogue proves that you’re real. ‘Cuz like methinks I see you Horatio. In my mind’s eye. Come to think of it ‘tho, you’re about dull enough to be real.”

Which remark led me to improvise a series of poetical images all centering upon the allure of his mother. Then I took my leave of him.

3 days passed, in which certain professional obligations claimed the bulk of my attention. The practice that I maintain as a private detective had been profusely busy, making it difficult for me to meet with my friend. I did, however, receive a number of e- and voice mails, the latter of which were often marked by a wholly unconvincing cockney accent, that purported to be communiqués left by either, or both, though always in identical tones of voice, “Sonic Boom” or Jason Pierce, the mad visionaries behind the shrieking gulf of sound that is the music of Spacemen 3. (Even more distressing were certain messages left by former Spacemen 3 drummer, Stewart “Rosco” Roswell, which scarcely deserve mention due to their utter silliness.) All of these missives concerned purported amorous habits of the group that are (and were) so obscene as to be best left undescribed.

In the 5 days that followed, my workload was lightened, however I saw little of my friend. My calls to him went unanswered. E-mailed messages were more successful, but the replies I received were strangely terse. Any invitations to visit or otherwise get together were politely declined, which I found quite strange, as my friend was never, ordinarily, polite. Through Abe, I was able to stay apprised of the status of our wager. The elder Slav proved surprisingly conscientious, though I still could not bring myself to enjoy his company. Daily he would call me from his cell phone to inform me of the influence of Spacemen 3 upon my friend. Doubtlessly the glee that I felt on hearing of the groanings, kicking of the walls that heralded my friend’s distress prior to Abe’s admittance as a visitor to the apartment discomfited Abe. Yet while these signs did not herald success in the current wager, they were, nevertheless, pretty fuckin’ funny.

The Two Towers of Babel

By the time I hit the parking lot of the Hilo branch of Wal-Mart, I was running very late, and the bad news was that I'd either have to arrive even later or forego lunch. I pulled into a nearby lot where a couple of fast food restaurants were located. There was a long line at the Subway counter. The windows of Pizza Hut didn't allow you much of a view, so I had to go inside to find out that it too was packed.

Bad luck. Under the circumstances, I decided to skip lunch, figuring I might be able to pick up something later along the way. And if not, how long could all of this possibly take? I might become hungry, but I felt OK now and figured I could hold out for a late dinner if necessary. Besides which, I had the peanuts. They'd hold me over for a while. They do when you’re at the bar, right?

I hauled ass back to Akiko's place. Unfortunately the traffic had intensified. When I finally pulled up at the bed & breakfast, I was almost an hour late.

I hurried over to the loft, but didn't even make it through the door before Akiko called to me from inside her office.

"Niko was looking for you. Could you go tell him you're here?"

With Akiko's urging, I headed over to the large house and called his name through the screen door. There was no answer.

I knocked loudly on the door. Nothing. I called louder. After a moment, I heard footsteps, and there was Niko. He wasn't especially impatient. In fact, he told me to give him about 10 minutes. He'd just taken a shower.

I headed back over to the loft. Akiko poked her head out and asked me if I'd talked to Niko. I told her that he'd asked me to wait. She thanked me for helping out w/ all of this. I said no problem and went out about lacing up my new boots and loading all the other shit I'd bought into my pack. Then I went and sat in one of the plastic lawn chairs and waited for Niko.

After a long day of travel, everything seemed surreal. I was on the Big Island of Hawaii. The luggage, the rain, being lost on that mountain road—I hadn't even had a real chance to stop and think—or even to just be in Hawaii. All of the visions I’d had of wandering languidly on a beach, maybe walking along paths in well-maintained but nevertheless lush fern growths—those images seemed hazy now, lost in daylight.

And now I had all this other shit to adjust to. I was still trying to process the strangeness (for me) of Akiko's place, not to mention of Hilo. And then there was the afternoon and evening ahead of me. Again, with no time to think, I'd been pulled in by circumstance. Again, I could've said no, but volcanoes? Lava?

I felt a small thrill at the idea. I remembered those 2 dark shapes as I'd seen them from the window of the plane last night. They seemed real, even now. Sure, they were dormant, but I could feel their influence. It was almost physical. Maybe it was my imagination, over-stimulated by a lack of sleep. I'm not one to believe in metaphysical forces, even subtle ones. And yet somehow, everything—every detail—seemed so weirdly appropriate.

Still, even if I was OK w/ where I was and enthusiastic about where I was going, I knew there was still a lot of difficult shit ahead. The drive to the park was going to be a job in itself. The full significance of traveling w/ & being responsible for a 16 year-old kid was beginning to sink in. Even under the best of circumstances, hanging out w/ a teenager was supposed to be difficult. And I didn't know how difficult. I hadn't had any real contact w/ someone that age since I'd been in high school myself. Add to that the facts that I'd just met Niko, he barely spoke English, and I barely spoke German. All in all, I was pretty sure it spelled hijinks.

And pretty soon, there he was, hauling his own pack. I opened the trunk for him and he threw it in. He was smiling, shyly, rarely meeting my eyes. A quiet kid, but easygoing, it seemed. We got in the car, and I headed off toward Hilo.

I had some trouble with the whole Highway 19/Kamehameha split. I hadn't had any trouble with it on my way to Wal-Mart, but I was still adjusting to the geography. I asked Niko to look at the map and to tell me what I should do next. But by the time he'd processed my request, (if he ever did at all,) I'd discovered that it didn't really matter. The street rejoins the highway just before you hit the big turn at the airport.

To get to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park from Hilo, you have to take Highway 11 SSE for about 30 miles. Once you get past Wal-Mart, the buildings quickly disappear, and the traffic dramatically thins. Pretty soon, it's just you and maybe a few other cars—sometimes none at all—and you can open up to a nice pace.

Somewhere in this vicinity, Niko and I struck up a conversation. It was predictably muddled, but not entirely unsuccessful. In some ways, I think it's less frustrating to attempt to communicate w/ someone whose language you don't understand at all, and vice versa, then it is to try to establish some sorta situational pidgin. If, for example, you speak some German, and the other party speaks some English, you find yourself chasing after these elusive, half-remembered pieces, and being lured into various dead-ends by words or phrases that seem equivalent but aren't. Whereas w/ someone who speaks an entirely unknown language—well there you pretty much let any notion of translation go from the outset and look for alternatives to it.

An example: Niko was very interested in the fact that I wrote. He wanted to know what I was writing about, of course. Aside from my blog and some journaling and that sorta horseshit, I also occasionally write fiction. Mind you, I am no good at it. It's something I do out of a love of writing rather than any literary aspirations. Mostly I write short stories, but here and there I work on a novel. It's wholly ridiculous—all about the metaphysical truths discovered in a guy's bowel movements--and I was having some trouble getting this across to Niko.

Part of it had to do w/ my reluctance to use the word "shit" (here Scheisse,) cuz like, you know, some people don't want you using that sorta language w/ their kids. Granted, Niko was a pretty old kid, and there seemed to be a "progressive" upper middle class parenting dynamic here. (E.g. w/o the slightest trace of irony, Niko referred to his dad as "Stefan.") Nevertheless, you never know how other people view some things, and people are often esp. sensitive where their kids are involved.

My sister, for example, was upset at a book I'd picked for my 2 year old nephew to read when he came to visit me. Walter the Farting Dog. I thought it was a hilarious, good-natured book. She was appalled by the word "fart." She said she didn't want my nephew using the word at daycare, thus leading the other parents to wonder what sorta person she was. To me this seems, uh, a bit excessive, but hey, he's not my kid.

Nevertheless, I resisted using the word "shit" until I ran out of options. Didn't help that the only other words that I could think of that had anything to do w/ shitting were Arsch, "ass," which you gotta admit, is pretty far removed from shitting, and the more pointed Arshloch, you guessed it, "asshole," which if German expletive coinage was of roughly equal value to that of English, well, asshole, shit... Which one's worse? Standards have changed, and I use both of 'em alla time anyway. Beats me.

Anyway, there we were, driving into increasingly wooded countryside, with the altitude increasing, and never have more fumbling attempts to mention taking a shit w/o the use of the word shit been made—and in some bizarre German/English linguistic hybrid at that. The conversation woulda been hilarious to watch, I'm sure. Belongs in some comedic film, maybe w/ both languages subtitled so that everyone out there could, we hope, know what the fuck is going on. I know I didn't. But so eventually it came down to shit. I just, uh, couldn't eliminate the word.

I think Niko apprehended the whole thing a long time before he made it clear that he did. I suspect that he was thinking he must've been reading me wrong--that some linguistic quirk was at work here, 'cuz like, is this guy telling me he's writing a book that, when you boil things down, is about a guy shitting?

Fact, he thought it was pretty funny, but he wanted to know what, if any, larger significance the excremental focus of the, uh, tale had. If shit had been hard to describe, satirical magical-realist stuff was even harder. He didn't know from Garcia-Marquez or Nabokov or anybody like that. In fact, and I'm not sure about this, the little fucker didn't seem to know who Kafka was! Holy shit! And he calls himself a kraut! Well, actually, I doubt he calls himself a kraut. He never did in my hearing, but you know, he is a kraut, and he didn't seem to know who Kafka was. I think. I could never quite ascertain that.

But so, OK, I mentioned Kafka and friends because just telling him what kinda story it was didn't make any sense to him—or not much anyway. His phrasing of English was so awkward that half the time I thought he was saying something entirely removed from what he meant to say. What's more, his accent was thick—not as thick, I imagine as was mine, when speaking German, but going back & forth, we got bogged down in discussing the story's tone—about which he really wanted to know. That's why I started listing off the names of authors, which largely or entirely he didn't recognize. I had a fuck of a time trying to say that these guys influenced, no, inspired, no, motivated—ah fuck—me. He didn't know any of these words. And it wasn't till about 10 minutes after we'd let the thing go that I remembered the word inspiriert. At which point, I hit myself in the forehead approximately 5714 times.

As if that wasn't bad enough, I asked him what his novel was about. Huh. Well, OK, it was about a party of adventurerers and some orcs and elves and other Tolkienalia. It had a complex narrative of both epic and human scope, as these things tend to. There was betrayal, struggles with the desire for vengeance, battles, quests, an 80 zillion year mythology type back-story etc.

I describe it this way less to belittle the kid, who I gotta say, I both admired for his ambition and imagination and just plain liked. (Plus, I'd be a hypocrite, as in my day, I spun many 20-sided die, as my 18th level paladin hacked off heads w/ his vorpal blade, etc.) (P.S. R.I.P. Gary Gygax. Just gone as of this writing.) Besides which, I'm not sure my story is as good as his. At the very least, he seems more certain about where it's going than I do about mine. I mean, fuck, he could probably give you a 100pp. synopsis on request. He probably has them lying around. And if that seems like a long synopsis, lemme just say that I'd be surprised if he pulled the whole novel off in less than 1200 pages.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that he writes poetry too—on nature subjects and about elves, etc.? He sez he finds the Hawaiian landscape inspiring for the type of story he's telling. I don't doubt it. Some places on the Big Island are at least as fantastic as any thing Tolkien dreamt up after smokin' a bowlful. (Notice how he’s holding a pipe in, like, every photograph that's ever been taken of him? Pot n' hobbits: 2 great tastes that taste great together.)

Anyway, the good news was that we had a common interest: writing, and we could work out a rudimentary sentence or two together, usually. The drive went faster, and I think Niko liked me better than he might some adults. Or maybe I'm wrong. He seemed pretty easy-going anyway, but he seemed interested in me and what I was about.

Fact, I got the sense—and maybe this is just me projecting my own analytical horseshit onto him--that he sorta looked at each of the adults around him while I was there—i.e. Akiko, Stefan and myself—as not exactly role models, but grist for the mill of looming adulthood. Dad was dad. I was a weird hippie artist type—at least that's how Stefan seemed to view me. And Akiko... Well, she definitely had a big influence on him.

When I remarked that I might like to attend morning meditation w/ Akiko, but I couldn't get myself outta bed much before 5 or so, and I always write 3pp longhand straight outta bed, (true,) he told me that meditation focused his mind, and as a result he got way more writing done. In his mind, that made the punishment of a 5 a.m. waking more than worth it. Hafta try it some time. (Unfortunately, I never made it to even 1 session while I was there.) He did seem to be on a roll.

A more sinister part of Akiko's influence was the way in which he was absorbing her taste in music. Every morning, right before she'd start in on breakfast, Akiko would put some new age muzak on an overhead speaker system. It had lotsa Chinese type harps n' percussion and that sorta jazz. It was inoffensive, but not esp. something you'd want to listen to. Unfortunately, you were sorta stuck w/ it while it was on, unless you were gonna crank yr. shit up really loud—headphones or otherwise. Like Run-DMC in the video for “Walk this Way. (Which I guess, at the end of this video, would mean you’d end up w/ some unholy union of Iggy Stooge and Yanni, or something like that.)

Anyway, this poor kid said he liked the same music as Akiko. I had a pretty strong feeling he hadn't heard it before coming to stay & that B&B. Again, a real whirlwind convert.

What's worse, aside from the new age shit, the only other music he could think of that he really liked was, gulp—if I was understanding him correctly, & I hope--River Dance! Aggggh!!! All this because I made the simple mistake of asking him if he wanted to turn on the radio. I figured he might force me listen to some crap top 40 stuff, but River Dance? Thank fuck they don't play that on the radio—or so he said. I don't know. We never bothered to turn the thing on & look for it.

See? Deeply frightening...

And I know I'm probably being an ass. I'm told I place way too much emphasis on someone's record collection as a means of getting to know him or her. (It does tell you a lot though.) I guess it's not a crime to like new age plink plunk or... even... (shudder) River Dance. (I guess.) But holy shit am I never asking him to make me a mix tape!

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.