I don’t write in a journal everyday, but I have accumulated many entries over the past 50+ years beginning in 1966. Some items evolved into longer works. Among the leftovers little pieces survived. I thought a collection of these with a piece culled from the same date in a past year would make an interesting yearbook. The consistencies and inconsistencies of mind, skipping back and forth across time, provide varied perspectives. It is difficult to remember the context of the past we’ve lived; we also make suppositions about times that predate ourselves.

The few alterations from original drafts were to improve clarity. The worst of my work is not included. There remains enough mediocrity and immaturity to make me feel humble and you feel smart. There are also moments of accidental insight and incidental humor.

Author Stephen Crane referred to his little pieces as pills…apparently they were small and somewhat hard to swallow, but good for you.


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Monday, July 11, 2022

Dumping on Kailua

 

July 11, 2010  (I was 65)

 

                           Dumping on Kailua

         A sign on the path I’ve walked daily says, LITTERING, but the red

circle and the slash mark have weathered away, so now people take it

literally.  The next stretch of ground along the mountain is a garbage

heap, one hundred yards of indigenous Big Island crap:  lawn chairs,

broken toys, clothes and shoes, furniture, a Chinese decorated box, two shattered toilets, and a dead goat disintegrating under a split bag of lye,

lots of dirty blue junk with hibiscus flower designs, a mattress, tires -you

name the size.

         So, in the last two days since I decided I had to note this aspect

of Hawaiian life, across the gulch from the goat, someone has deposited

the carcass, or at least the rib cage of another bloody beast without the

courtesy of the bag of lye.  Anyway, this one’s covered with a half dozen gnawing mongoose.  Brings to mind Melville’s Redburn.  And added just

today, a 6’ satellite dish, the base and mooring, replete with dangling

cables.  Apparently, there’s just not enough good TV out here in paradise. 

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