going home again

The T.V. in my mother's new condo is always on -- even when there is no one home to watch it. A wall-mounted flat screen, I imagine the high-definition faces exist to greet her when she walks through the door after another 16-hour shift. When I arrived home on a recent Friday night -- my mother still at work, my brother asleep -- I was welcomed by The Long Island Medium, warm and glowing.

"I fell off the bed last week," my mother tells me the next day over lunch. It happened like this: home from another long day/night at the nursing home, she sits on her bed. Reading one moment, the next she is on her back, a sea of white wall-to-wall carpeting keeping her afloat. "I must've fallen asleep sitting up. I could've cracked my head on the nightstand. I was lucky."

She told my brother the same story, and a few days later, a pillow appeared on the floor near her bed.

"Sounds like he's worried about you," I said.

"He does what he can."

What he can do isn't much these days. Out of rehab and newly fired from another job, he mostly hangs around the condo sleeping or smoking or watching T.V., not paying rent, intermittently taking drugs and then trying to quit them. He says he's moving to Vegas next week. Somehow, he's driving an Infiniti.

I didn't want to be in Phoenix, but a sense of duty had pulled me east. The older I get, the more inexplicable it seems that this is my family. My mother: naked, gaunt, her body looking, somehow, like it's trying to swallow itself. With every visit, she appears smaller. Is this the same woman who used to read "Are You My Mother?" to a four-year-old me every night before bed? Who taught me to roller skate? Who used to drag me down the hallway, screaming, by my ponytail? She is disintegrating, and I never feel more alone in the world than when she looks at me, her eyes brimming with raw pride and affection. We speak different languages. This is the person who loves me more than anything, but I do not trust her.

We went shopping together, a play at being functional. I don't think we'd shopped together since I was a kid. Then, she used to steal things in front of me, but she doesn't do that anymore -- at least not that I've noticed. We went to only one store, Pier 1 Imports, my maiden voyage to this strip mall port. Walking through the automatic glass doors, my nose was assaulted by scented candles, a cloying stink cloud permeating the air. Everything here was glittering, ornate, overwrought, often without function. For Halloween, displays of animatronic witches cackled at my mother, and she smiled in return, her new bridge twinkling among decaying teeth. How many animatronic Santas, snowmen and bunnies had she seen before this one? But there she was, enchanted, as if seeing it for the first time, a child.

"Isn't this one neat?" She kept thrusting bejeweled picture frames in my face, soliciting my opinion. I squinted, repeating the same phrase I'd uttered a thousand times already. "It's not really my taste."

When it came time to pay, Mom couldn't find her Pier 1 credit card. With a line of people behind her, she poured the contents of her purse onto the counter, scavenging among the envelopes and rubber bands and prescription bottles. With a tight smile, the cashier offered to look up her credit card information.

"Can I verify your address?" she asked.

"I don't know it," Mom said, frustrated. "I just moved."

It had been three months.

Imaginary Postcards (pt. 2)

(continued from here)

1.

Photo by Ji

Dear Dicky,

Today I learned that Adriana and Ji don't like Morrissey. WTF?

2.

Photo by Adriana

Dear Dicky,

I lost the keys to our rental car somewhere inside a Long's Drugstore today, and 2.5 hours of vacation were lost in consequence. We scanned each aisle countless times, ransacked the trash bins, combed the parking lot, but these keys had something to prove. The Long's staff rallied to help us, interrupting their workday to join the hunt, and I was touched by their genuine concern.

I felt like a stereotype -- another absent-minded woman losing her keys -- and inside, I was beating myself up for it. Repeatedly, I apologized to Ji and Adriana for my fuck-up, but they responded only with reassurances. "Yes, we're stuck at a drugstore," Ji said, "but it's a drugstore in Maui and it doesn't get much better than this." I thought of boyfriends from vacations past, and wondered if they would've been so kind.

We ate fish from a cart in the parking lot and weighed our options. I was ready to call a locksmith (a $300 pricetag for new key), when an employee ran from the store, a fistful of silver flashing. The keys had been hiding among the water socks. I went back inside and thanked every employee personally. To myself, I vowed to be a better person.

Later, we took the long way to Waimoku Falls and the Seven Sacred Pools -- the West Maui Highway. The landscape here is alien, a little like land coming back to life in the decades following a wildfire. I piloted our car through the winding dirt roads, stopping occasionally to inspect the herds of grazing Maui cows, who seemed somehow more relaxed and friendly than mainland cows. "Moohalo!" we'd shout to them. The cows would only masticate and stare in response, but we could see the pineapples twinkling in their eyes. And all along this narrow road, the bluest ocean was always to our right, a constant companion crashing against the lava rocks.

"What planet is this?" one of us asked.

If you filmed landscapes like this, I think I'd enjoy your work more.

3.

Dear Crystal,

I ate the best meal of my life tonight -- our last in Maui -- at Mama's Fish House. Granted, we got incredibly stoned in the car beforehand, which proved a little embarrassing since the parking lot was valet-only. I had to relinquish our smoke-filled vehicle to an attendant who slid behind the wheel without making eye contact. Heightened senses or no, I still think it would've been the best meal ever. I'm pretty sure.

We ordered three appetizers, three entrees and three desserts. I think the waitress was a little afraid of us -- three women who ate with such abandon and gusto. Several dishes were served in coconut shells, and Adriana asked for a spoon so she could scrape out the flesh. At the meal's end, these were our only leftovers -- our plates were bare -- and so we took the coconut shavings home with us in a box. The bill was over $300 before tip, which I'm sure you find horrifying, but it was worth it.

On the ride back to our vacation rental, we listened to our favorite Maui old school radio station, and sang along to Exposé's "The Point of no Return." On the eucalyptus-lined road to Hai'ku, we stopped the car short because so many frogs were hopping into the road. Illuminated by our headlights, a single frog waited, looking up at the three of us expectantly.

"Go touch it, Ji!" Adriana squealed. Ji exited the car and walked toward the frog. As she got within striking distance, she took a step backward, paused, and then moved closer again. She reached out her hand, but then snatched it away, stepping backward. This happened several times before she turned toward us and said, "I can't! I'm scared."

"I think I can handle this," I said, rising from the passenger seat. I crouched next to the frog and stared him down, the headlights cutting through the fog around us, creating a spotlight. I was surprised by the frog's muscularity -- the little guy was ripped. Our eyes were locked as I reached out and touched his clammy back, shocked that he didn't move as my fingers grazed his skin. I turned and looked up at Adriana, still behind the steering wheel, in awe.

"Kiss him!" she shouted.

I turned back to the frog and lowered myself into plank position. As I moved my face toward him, he leapt away. Instinctively, I assumed a frog position and hopped after him. I chased him to the edge of the eucalyptus grove, but I wasn't quick enough -- he'd disappeared into the foggy woods.

I stood, balled my fists and turned my face toward the low-hanging Maui moon, howling, "Unrequited love!"

I know you haven't been too interested in traveling to Hawaii, but I think you'd like it here. So many things remind me of you.

4.

Photo by Adriana

Dear Shannon,

I brought three books to Maui (two on my Kindle). This does not include my copy of Maui Revealed, which is the only one I've cracked for six days on this island. I'm carrying my journal too, but my pen only appears to sign checks. Is this living in the moment? I'm writing these postcards now, here on my blog, because stopping to write about anything that happened as it was happening felt impossible. I did buy some postcards on my last day in Maui, which I scrawled hastily on the first leg of my flight, and then mailed when I changed planes in Honolulu. I can't remember anything I wrote.

I hope you haven't found any more poop in your library. I'm still trying to figure out what I should do for Thanksgiving. It's not the same without you.

Imaginary Postcards (pt. 1)

Our plane is circling above the island, making our final descent into Kahului, but through the cabin windows, there isn't much to see. Clouds. The darkening sky. Adriana has the window seat and Ji is on the aisle. It seems I have made a sacrifice by volunteering for the middle, but I only wanted a guaranteed sweet spot for the return trip. I am planning for the end before anything has begun. A few moments earlier, Adriana was singing "Knocking on Heaven's Door." We have not yet seen the island, but as we descend, Adriana says, "I want to get pregnant here."

1.

Second waterfall. We hid our cameras in the forest after this. Photo by Ji.

Dear Lei,

Today we went chasing waterfalls and Adriana surprised me. The guidebook described the hike to the Four Falls of Na'ili'ili-Haele as an "adventure" -- a category that is distinct from an "activity." On the trail to the first waterfall, through the bamboo forest and across the wooden plank that served as a bridge, families were turning around. "The waterfalls here aren't any good," a mother tried to reassure her young son who was too tiny for the rock-climbing.

The first waterfall was small, but after scaling the slippery rocks, we were rewarded with the gorgeous second waterfall. Before I could take in my surroundings, Adriana jumped into the pool. She glided through the water, a bespectacled mermaid home to breed.

The pool, the falls, the pebble shore, the birds chirping in the bamboo forest: it was enough for me. More rock-climbing and a trip up a rickety rope ladder attached to a 12-ft rock face would be required to reach the third waterfall. I was ready to call it a day here (guidebook: "This is as far as most people will go"), but Adriana was already out of the water and climbing. "If gyms were this spectacular, I'd be so fit." I remembered the time I brought her once, years ago, to my Burn & Firm class at the Hollywood YMCA. Twenty minutes in, she was balled up in a corner of the gymnasium, head between her legs, hyperventilating under the fluorescent lights. Who was this creature now, climbing waterfalls barefoot in a hot pink bikini, as I slipped around in my waterlogged tennis shoes? Reluctantly, I followed her up the side of the rock.

The hike was worth it. At the top of the third waterfall -- more breathtaking than the previous two -- we took turns jumping into the pool 30 feet below. We hadn't packed any food, but it didn't matter. As we splashed around, perfectly ripe passion fruit floated toward us. We'd suck out the oozy flesh and watch the discarded rinds drift away with the current.

"I'm done," said Adriana as she floated in the pool. "If this vacation ended now, I would be completely satisfied." It was only Day 2.

So . . . have you killed my plants yet?

2.

Photo by Adriana

Dear Mom,

I am in Maui. I don't think I told you I was going. Sometimes I feel guilty when I tell you about my travel plans because you've never been anywhere, and I know it's not for lack of interest. When I visit anyplace other than Phoenix, I know I am making a choice. I wonder if that occurs to you too -- even though I don't think you've ever said anything to make me feel bad about it.

We stopped for barbecue today at a shack on the side of the Hana Highway. I love driving here and it makes me think of my other favorite drives -- the Pacific Coast Highway through central California and Australia's Great Ocean Road. Not that Hana looks anything like those places -- it's just that same feeling of otherworldliness. There is a waterfall every few miles. The guidebook described a condition that is common among vacationers: beauty fatigue. It hasn't happened to me yet.

The barbecue stand was out of mahi-mahi. We didn't think we'd make it to Hana before sunset and the guidebook warned that our food options were limited. Jesse, the islander behind the grill holding a Heineken says, "Chicken or Pork?" After explaining that I don't usually eat meat, he says, "What? You come all the way to Maui and you not gonna try the pork?" He has a point. "Pork," I say. He piles my plate high with the stuff and I carry it to the long wooden picnic table.

Did you cook pork when I was a kid? Because I don't remember it ever tasting this way -- I don't think it would've been possible. I tell myself that it's Hawaii falling apart in my mouth and it's paradise. With some help from Ji and Adriana, my plate is cleaned.

How is James doing?

3.

Photo by Adriana

Dear Chris,

Today my camera fell off a cliff.

Yesterday, we met a guy working a roadside barbecue stand who offered to show us around Hana. When we asked how much it would cost, he said, "Spend the day with me and at the end, you decide what it's worth." He told us his Hawaiian name at least three times, but I can't remember it. He also goes by Jesse, so that's what we call him.

The first place he took us was the Blue Pool, which is on private property, but Jesse's somehow related to the owners, so it was OK. In fact, I've noticed that he addresses most everyone we meet as "brother" or "cousin." The water in the Blue Pool is spring-fed. We took turns drinking from it and then letting the water pour over our heads, the force of it making our skulls vibrate. "This is your baptism," Jesse said.

He drove our rental car through the winding roads of Hana with a Heineken between his legs. I don't know why this seemed acceptable, but it was. Maybe because my father always drove with a beer between his legs? Maybe because the sky was full of rainbows? We made stops for waterfalls, beaches, and to gather food: fruit, banana bread, avocado, and once, a salad (which involved Jesse hacking away at the brush along the side of the road). We listened to the Knife ("This sounds like music for people on Ecstasy") and Bo Diddley, which Jesse liked better, though he kept singing over the vocals with impromptu island songs.

He wanted to cook us fish for dinner, which meant fish would need to be caught. This meant scaling the side of a cliff, the dirt crumbling beneath our feet as we took tentative steps, clinging to whatever protuberances we could grip in the wall of rock. We eventually settled into a perch and watched Jesse stand in a tree for a half-hour, surveying the surf below, scanning the tide pools for the telltale silvery glint. We watched the Heineken bottle slip from his hands and crash a few hundred feet below. And then he was off, armed with a backpack and a net, bounding down the side of the cliff like a kid playing hopscotch.

We watched the water and waited. Sometimes Jesse was visible among the rocks, but mostly he'd disappear for long stretches of time. Silently, we considered what we'd do if he didn't come back -- how would we get out of this place without his guidance? -- but we kept our fears to ourselves. When the silver camera slipped from my hands and fell soundlessly below, we all thought that it could have been any of us. When I moved to look over the cliff for any sign of it -- maybe it got caught on a rock, I thought -- Adriana said, "No. Don't. Stop."

Nearly an hour passed before Jesse returned to us, his blue backpack heavy with fish. "Sorry that took so long," he said. "You hungry?" We went back to a home that wasn't his -- another cousin? -- in a neighborhood that felt a little like South L.A., but with a better view, and watched him fry the fish whole. We ate fish eyes and drank beer on a stranger's porch as the sun set over Hana. Stuffed, we left Jesse with a fistful of cash.

How is the pizza in New Haven?

(to be continued)

moohalo

I went to Maui for a week with Ji and Adriana. We saw a lot of these:

According to the Shepherd of Hana, aka Uncle Jesse, rainbows are NBD. "I see them every day. What's really cool are moonbows. You can put your hand through them."

Also, we did a lot of this:

And then I came home to this guy:


Roaches are a rare thing in my apartment. Clearly, he was straggler from Lei's week of hard-partying in my absence.

More later...

detritus

A couple of months ago, Chris bought a truck. Last weekend, he crammed its shell full of camping gear, sparing only enough room for Nico and a few succulents. Joel offered himself as co-pilot for the nearly 3,000-mile drive east, where C will spend the next two years at grad school.

A few things I inherited:

Beer: 1 can of La Playa, 1 bottle of San Miguel, 1 bottle of Red Stripe

1 bottle of Jagermeister

1 bottle of Pamplemousse Rose Perrier

Assorted frozen foods including (but not limited to): cheese blintzes, chocolate soy ice cream sandwiches, TJs vegetable gyoza potstickers, eggplant & zucchini, a bag of frozen corn, mini croissants

1 ice pack

1 Bikini Kill cassette tape

1 Crass cassette tape (a gift for Dicky)

1 broom
1 dust pan
1 roll of bubble wrap

Assorted cleaning products
1 bottle of hydrogen peroxide
1 bottle of isopropyl rubbing alcohol
6 light bulbs (of varying shapes, sizes and wattage)

a pile of recycling (which remains near my front door, awaiting transfer to its temporary resting place in the blue bins outside my apartment)

houseplants: 1 mother-in-law's tongue, 1 Euphorbia Obesa, 1 purple shamrock (grown from a cutting I'd given Chris as a housewarming gift when he moved back to L.A.).
1 Echo Park Time Travel Mart mug

countless strands of dog hair

Chris spent his last night in L.A. at my apartment, and when I woke Sunday morning, he'd already picked up Joel. I could hear them bounding up and down the stairs, loading up the truck. I didn't want to watch, so I hid in my room for a while, and when I sensed they were nearing the end, I made my way downstairs, into the unwelcome sunlight. The truck was parked in front of my building and they were making the final adjustments. My neighbor -- a middle-aged black woman to whom I had never said more than "Hello" -- was taking photographs, trailing Chris and Joel, their arms laden with boxes and crates, like she was some kind of moving day paparazzi.

She turned to me.

"I'll get you the pictures later. You'll want to remember this day."

Which is funny because I've already forgotten the moment his truck pulled away.

kitchen drive

Dicky's work challenges me. In last year, much of it has become performance-based, which is to say that his participation (e.g. projecting slides, playing recorded sound, etc.) has become part of the work. He'll usually leave some elements to chance, rendering each performance unique.

Generally, these performances are long. If he's projecting film, it's not edited. The camera is handheld and sometimes it's out of focus. If he's projecting slides, there are a lot of them, projected for varying durations. The images are often scenes that I find unpleasant: Phoenecian landscapes, the meeting of desert and concrete. If a score accompanies, it is tape-recorded and tinny, projected from a single speaker cassette player, and it often sounds like noise: random sounds, snippets of conversation, rustling, breathing, etc.

Everything about it is defiantly analog. It's raw and without technical sophistication. It tests my patience, and that's part of the point, but it doesn't make the experience any less uncomfortable.

A recent six-hour performance featured the re-creation of a roadtrip in someone's kitchen on a Monday afternoon. I wasn't there. Dicky sat at the kitchen table, projecting slides, drinking coffee, playing his score, making conversation with those who had come to watch and who had become, unwittingly, his roadtrip companions. Some of the images were from trips we'd taken together -- of note, our annual holiday ride to Phoenix, on the I-10 across the most bleak stretches of the Sonoran Desert. I hate that six-hour drive, but I appreciate his rendition of it. Particularly in the form of a six-minute clip where INXS kicks in toward the end.

two days

July 3:

The yellow dress was a mistake, I think. Biking from Hollywood to downtown on the hottest day of summer so far, it showed every streak of perspiration. When we stopped for iced coffee, I asked Chris if I looked dewy or sweat-soaked.

"A little bit of both?"

He was being kind. We sat under an umbrella and wiped the sweat from our brows with paper napkins.

The dress was a parasail, catching the wind and billowing around me as I rode toward the museum. I tried to contain the skirt with the grip of my legs, but I wasn't always successful, the white of my thighs flashing at oncoming traffic.

At MOCA, I heard my recorded voice come through a single speaker, childish, played on a cassette tape as Dicky projected the accompanying slides onto a screen. We only caught the tail-end of his performance, and I'd walked into the room just in time to hear myself. The images and recording were from Big Family Day a month prior. I remembered following him around the museum that day, frustrated because he seemed to be running away from me, camera and tape recorder in hand.

"What are you doing?" I'd asked.

"Creating documents."

His response had annoyed me because it seemed like ambiguous art-speak, but now it struck me as quite literal.

On this day, the museum was filled with experimental music. In the courtyard, Liam was making noise by touching dry ice to triangles.

Hours later, I was on a rooftop on the edge of downtown, drinking Modelo and Jim Beam. The heat and the alcohol were bringing out the best and the worst in all of us. We told stories from our childhoods and some of us became children. There was crying and hair-pulling. A girl punched a boy. Someone grabbed my head and tried to kiss me as I stood very still, lips clenched, as he pressed his face against mine. When he tried a second time, I pushed him away, saying "NO."

On the plant-covered rooftop, mosquitoes buzzed beneath the yellow dress, sucking on my thighs. Above us, fireworks burst and faded.

July 4:

I love a good fireworks show, and I can't remember the last 4th of July I didn't watch one, but when Dicky suggested an 8 p.m. showing of Tree of Life, it seemed like the right idea.

The film was flawed, but when it worked, it was wonderful, evoking certain feelings from childhood I'd forgotten. It also made me deeply sad to confront the reality of never again experiencing things for the first time.

I'm not planning to have children. As I've grown older, I have a hard time identifying with kids despite willfully living much of my life like one. The film made me recall what it actually felt like to be a child -- not just pretending at it. The truth is that kids intimidate me, and I wonder if it's because I envy them.

After the movie, Dicky and I wandered aimlessly around Hollywood, discussing the film and how it made us feel -- in the language we lacked as children. A single white firework went off above our heads, and I was reminded of a 4th of July years ago. It may have been 2004, and from the roof of the San Francisco Art Institute, we watched fireworks explode over the bay, the bridge. The fog rendered their shapes invisible, so they merely lit up the clouds -- red, then green, then blue -- a Technicolor storm.

On the Walk of Fame, a black woman sat in a plastic chair wearing only a bright yellow bathing suit. As I stared, taking in her outfit, I tripped in my three-inch platform sandals. Then I decided she had the right idea -- the night was an oven.