Lahaina

April Fool’s Day. And I feel foolish for going to Lahaina in JEANS and sneakers and a polo shirt. I was thinking of job hunting, not of the climate I now live in, especially on the (south)west side of the island where Lahaina is, which is the dryer, more desert climate. (I wouldn’t use the word “desert” myself, though...it’s dryer and less lush than Haiku and Hana, to be sure, but it’s still pretty green, not like sand dunes or anything.) It was hot and sunny, of course, and EVERYONE else was in shorts and a T-shirt. I saw lots of tattooes and lots of Crocs (I bought a pair! finally! and they are comfortable! I remember when I briefly dated that cute little James kid years ago in Portland, the one who took those awesome photos of me back in the Melcliff around the time I started Dreck, he was the first person I knew who wore Crocs, and they were so cute on his little elfin feet, so I’m happy to finally have a pair of my own), and lots of shirtless boys with skin the color of tan leather. K. drove me there, she is very friendly and said I can ride with her whenever in the future if it coincides with her work schedule – she sells or buys pearls retrieved from oysters in some store on Front Street there, I think. She told me to watch for whales’ tails in the sea as we drove by – the prime whale season is mostly over (February and March), but it’s still possible to see them. Most of the way to Lahaina (it took us only an hour in her car) looked like one long stretch of public beach, but K. warned me that some areas are not safe for swimming, not due to sharks but rather to coral reefs, which you can scrape yourself on badly. I read in her Hawaii guidebook that all hula dancers were originally male, just like actors in the time of Shakespeare.

K. dropped me off in Lahaina and I turned in my application at Foodland (the Lahaina location is expanding) then spent the afternoon exploring Front Street, which is a wonderful concentration of art galleries (LOTS of them – I saw paintings done by Sir Anthony Hopkins – didn’t know he was an artist as well as an actor), discount stores, T-shirt shops, surf shops, restaurants, cafes, ice cream and shaved ice shops, and little marketplaces with kiosks like at Saturday Market in Portland, but with totally different weather. I brought my pair of jean shorts missing the top button to Ruth Ann at the Needlework Shop (by the Banyan Tree, a huge tree with 12 trunks that was planted in 1873 and is the largest and oldest tree on the Islands) and she said she could fix it and I inquired “It won’t cost too much then?” and she sort of scoffed and said, “A dollar.” It’s weird how some things (groceries!) are more expensive here than in Portland, while other things, for example liquor, are strangely about the same price, and then still other things – like the bus fare, which is a flat dollar whether you’re going one stop or all the way to Kahului, or getting a button fixed on your shorts – are CHEAPER. It’s a spectrum of relativities.

I’ll go back to Lahaina Friday or early next week to pick up my shorts and turn in some applications – especially one to the Cool Cat Cafe, a 50s-style restaurant with a full bar and (reputedly) the best burgers on Maui – although K. told me, “I don’t think it’s going to work for you to work in Lahaina,” and I know what she means – it will take an hour and a half to two hours each way on the Maui bus to make that commute. So I’m going to focus on trying to get something in Paia, which is a much shorter ride – in fact I could probably walk there if I was feeling up to the challenge. I tried to get a library card but I need a bank statement first showing my Maui address. I bought a pair of sunglasses, a ring from one of the kiosks, and the Crocs, which I can’t wait to try out on the beach. Got a waffle cone with two scoops at the Maui Swiss Cafe, which is very cute and very pink (it has Fred Flintstone out front driving a pink cart with a pink laminated menu).

On the bus back to Haiku two incredibly stoned hippie guys got on and sat right behind me and had an inane hippie conversation with phrases like “respect each other, man, it’s all we got” and “we’re all clowns and life is a circus!” They got off at the same stop I did, and I could tell they would’ve been happy to strike up a conversation, which I wanted to avoid at all costs, so I started walking really fast, to lose them. I walked home in the dark, and cars came along now and then and lit the way in front of my feet (no flashlight), and it was a little lonely and scary, but I didn’t feel lonely or scared, in fact the warm breezy summerish night put me in a mood of poetry, and I composed most of a poem as I walked home, which I’ll post here tomorrow after I add to/revise it a little.

Futile as poetry is, I can’t help but write some now and then.