“Drive fast on empty streets/With nothing in mind/Except falling in love and/Not getting arrested” Hunter S. Thompson
I wanted to start this story off about the idea of storytelling and why accuracy and timing don’t really matter. There is no such thing as being right, making sure everything happened in exactly the way you are telling it.
I actually began this story last night, Thursday. I have so much I want to share that I made notes, typed them out and then cut them up in some sort of order. They have been sitting on my coffee table since then, because it is now Friday evening.
There is a lot I want to tell you this week and I thought laying everything last night would help me organize my thoughts. I came home tonight, with order on my mind and sitting on my little, outdoor glass table was a tin of banana bread, with a hand written note from my incredibly sweet neighbor. She left it as an apology for thinking her chimes were making too much noise in the wind.
I am writing this now, because I know she is going to read my story and I don’t want to keep her waiting. Somewhere, down below, I am going to get to talk about love and an experience I had. This lady lost someone very, very dear to her and as a person, who has done a pretty shitty job in that world, I can’t imagine what that feels like. I am talking about decades of a shared life and then nothing, but the screaming silence of the disappeared. So, fuck the rest of the story. Chimes in the wind are voices of the angels and they are a comfort, almost as good as the banana bread.
OK, now let’s get to what I started writing last night.
“I need to be honest with you, as I always try so hard to be. The truth is, it has been a very upsetting week on a deeply personal level. I have traveled from the mountain top to the cess pool and I really want to tell you about it all. I got home tonight (Thursday) after two glasses of red wine on an empty stomach and decided it would be a really shitty idea to waste your time on my meanderings.
There is a lot I want to to talk about this week, which is kind of funny. I was very happy my last story resonated with so many of you. I would lie, which I suck at anyway, to say I don’t care if my stories touch as many of you as possible.
My last story, me sitting at one my favorite spots, was a pretty decent hit, at least based your responses. I was so happy to be sitting there on a supposed work day, just telling you guys a story. To me, it was as close to heaven as I will ever get and that is all I wanted to share.
I was thinking last Sunday, right after putting up the last story, that I was just in a shitty space. The story is like a giant exhalation of words and then there is the moment of what’s next?
I was going to write this story about the hopelessness we are all facing. The whole idea of tackling global warming is a fucken joke, because the people pulling the strings don’t give a shit. They’re making too much money and they will die before they change.”
Now, you gotta work with me here. We are back on Friday evening. I have had all the banana bread I need for the night, because dinner is somewhere out there, after we take care of business. I am now going over to the coffee table to pick up some of those stories and I will not make you suffer through too much of it, but there is a point to be made.
Before this week happened to me, which I can’t wait to share with you, I was set on writing a story without a happy ending, which is just not my style. I was overcome with feelings of helplessness in terms of our fate on this home of ours.
There are people starving to death in camps in places like Uganda, Burundi and Kenya. Italy wants to send its illegal immigrants to Rwanda for some kind of processing. Not even going to touch the immense travesty with Israel/Gaza. With the world’s attention diverted by the Israel-Hamas war, Iran has executed at least 229 people. Of course we have the Land of the Free and the Home of Brave, fucking over the Third World for its sole advantage. The idea of dividing up the world into those with and those without, is at the nexus of the human crisis, the barbed wire in the Rio Grande.
COP 28 has just ended in the UAE. For those of you who don’t know, this was the United Nations Climate Change Conference. There were thousands of people representing the oil and gas industries, lobbying hard to have a toothless closing statement.
Wealthy nations embarrassingly guaranteed $700 million to address the needs of poor and vulnerable countries from the ravages of climate change. This covers about 0.2 percent of the estimated minimum of $100 billion needed every year. Think about that equation.
It was also confirmed at that meeting that we have a total of about 44,000 species threatened with extinction.
You don’t even want to know what I think about the intoxication of AI and how it will eat us all in the end. Our intellectual vanity will unleash a plethora of techno-Frankensteins on us all.
In the midst of smothering under the weight of all this hopelessness, I fell in love. Wait, I take that back. I don’t think it’s a process. I saw someone and something happened, before I knew what was going on. My heart exploded, because that’s what I think love is about. To me, it is a perfect moment. You don’t blink, you don’t think, you don’t breathe. Every single cell in your body is the perfect sound of that wind chime. It is the most beautiful harmonious moment, invented by angels. When you even think about it, it has already happened, so you kind of run after it.
My 78 year old heart still had the goods and in a way, that is the best part of the story. I experienced a kind of happiness I had given up on, because I didn’t think I even had the juice. I experienced around 36 hours of a kind of magic that I happily can’t describe, because there are no words. However, I am sure I wrote too much and said too much and somehow flooded the flame. I guess I am supposed to be sad it crashed and burned, but I have nothing, but joy in my heart. I am fucken alive and that is what matters most to me in the aftermath of the afterglow. The details belong to myself and another.
You know, when I was thinking about all that is wrong with our world, I was naively thinking wouldn’t it be great to end this story with the idea that as long as we can love, the world will spin around us, but never own us. I’ll be damned, it happened.
I am not done. There is more. The night of the relationship’s implosion, I put on my 20 lbs.vest and went walking in the rain, which turned into a kick-ass downpour. Listen, lest you think I am some mindless Pollyanna, I was incredibly upset and shattered at its abrupt demise. Walking in the rain seemed like a perfect lashing for my totally fucking up a good thing. In the damn downpour, my left earbud fell out and floated away, a devastating aural loss.
I was pretty low and the next day, I walked into a dream I have been having for years. I love this place more than I can say. It is a different kind of love than the technicolor, emotional fairytale I was just talking about. This is about an indebtedness to a place, caring for me in ways for which there are no words, just gratitude. I may have an opportunity to actually use my words to be a positive influence on the future of this island. It’s a funny business, if you don’t risk falling, you can never fly. It is a love lesson as well.
I almost done, please hang for another paragraph, maybe two. The night of this dream occurrence, I went out walking again, this time with only my right earbud.
It was seriously, Kauai cold. I went out feeling like a mother fucken warrior. I went out in the cold, windy evening, with my sweat pants, sweatshirt and that one damn earbud. On my way back up the hill, I was marching, with syncopated arms, just like a gladiator. In my right ear was Santana’s Soul Sacrifice, dancing my soul, hugging my healing heart.
I love you all and the world is going to do what it does, but as long as we can love, fuck it, we’re alive.
Blessings