Rule of the 9

So it's officially been nine years since my life was thrown into a topspin. Hard to believe so much time has past and yet i look at what everyone is doing now and it kind of makes sense. most of the crew who was there that night are now married, have a couple of kids and a spattering of mortgages. some of them even own their own businesses and have become very successful, earning a spot on that prestigious local who's who in hawaii business list, "40 under 40."

i for one, have resisted the magnetic pull and security of a conventional family and a profitable business. maybe not what richie had in mind for me, but a good life nonethless.

i always think back to what he used to always tell, or scold me about...it was funny because our other bro marc, with all his clandestine achievements, was normally scolded about the exact opposite attribute of me. we were both overachievers in different directions. like on the color spectrum, i represented red and marc was violet. somehow rich was able to fill in all the spaces from orange through indigo.

so what have i learned since then...

crudest buddhist

morning cup of coffee and a bowl of miso soup...with rice. or how about waking your first, second-generation man-cub at four in the morning with a toe twist and handing him a splintered shovel? my grandfather was nowhere near your stereotypical nissei, but there were many ways that apple fell close enough to the tree to become part of it's root system. he passed on peacefully in his first daughter's arms on jan 10. i was asked to do part of the eulogy as kind of a "from the grandkids" portion. trying to come up with ideas wasn't as easy as i first thought. he was such a stoic, strong guy...but there were these moments. you knew he was joking, and it was hilarious, but they came out so sporadically that it always took a second or two to register.

he took me on my first fishing excursions to ala moana and the less popular, ala wai canal. i remember catching jellyfish while he would bring in the edible stuff. i remember bringing them home in a bucket for my grandmother to see. although i don't remember ever carrying the bucket. he always brought an extra pole in case some person randomly walking by wanted to try to catch something. once i hit this chinese guy in the face while attatching the lead. don't ask me how.

funny how i was brought up around so much more christian people, went to a christian school, attended a christian church, even have mostly christian best friends, yet my thinking and most of my core lies in buddhism and taoism.

why the heck do burial coordinators at gravesites all look the same??? i mean seriously, no matter what ethnicity, they can't go to work without three quarts of oil to slick back their mane from the seventies.

the coolest part of the "inurnment" was after the playing of "taps", the sargeant presented a perfectly folded flag to my grandmother, thanked her for her husband's tribute and saluted her with such respect you'd think she was a general about to retire. i guess that can be expected from someone who will fight for people he will probably never know. my props to all of them.

thought to provoke

last weekend started off like any other. series of random events in no particular. gulping down hot green tea to counteract the furor-driven rantings of my friend's cousin. then saturday happened.

i called a friend to do a not-so-common posting and...well:

K: how did you know i was in town?
Me: what? you're in town?
K: yeah, i just got in. so i guess you didn't hear about popo(grandmother)
Me: No.

anytime someone says "so you didn't hear about," is always a negative event. popo pang, the woman who hanai'd(calabash/adopted) me into her family was on her last limb. she was a giant of a woman at 5 foot nothing. she was the thread who kept the family together and the inspiration behind many of the family's great endeavors. she gained the respect of some of the most influential people not only in hawaii, but in a good part of the continental u.s. the words "honor," "courage" and "virtue" were what she became, not just spoke of.

i was lucky to be considered a "grandkid." and like many of my other fortunes, i never took it seriously. i hardly visited, i never called and worst of all, i never took the time to embrace all the gifts she was willing to offer.

"To our minds, time moves linearly, but to our hearts, time remains a mystery. Time is a gift. Never waste a gift"

too many secrets

a post in the Panamanian Journal alludes to heteroglossia being purely speculative. how can you rightfully say something that occurs all over the world can be reduced to a theory?

Uncluttered

itinerant war veteran. hero or transient zero? one of the banalities of my job is to make the discernment between lewd and obnoxious, or just a byproduct of systematic abuse. we responded to a call today involving a man flagrantly exposing himself and claiming to be a war hero...he was doing so, just across the street from an elementary school! not sure how heroic he would have looked to all the parents had school been in session.

Confusion Endurance

ume in sake, pineapple on pizza, salmon rushdie and that baliwood chick. i'm all for embracing uncertainties and befriending the paradox, but certain things, like the sunless tan and non-dairy creamer, have soaked their way into our post-modern society. makes me cringe to think what kind of opinion our kids will have of us. at least they can't blame us for the three-story platform shoes.

Ug-lee driver