Hawaiian Journal
page 21

 


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Lahaina

Saturday, February 21, 1981

I got the early morning ride I wanted all the way to Pa’ia, and didn’t have much trouble getting to Lahaina, once I decided to go there. Getting back was hard.

The paintings in Lahaina were disappointing after what I saw in Kailua on Hawaii. One painter had excellent technique for painting humpbacks and other undersea scenes, but his paintings sell for thousands of dollars apiece. Most of the low-cost work was also low quality, no promising unknowns here.

Alan and Lisa are here, and Bunny and her friend. I guess I should note Alan’s final assessment of Maui. The scenery was beautiful, but he hated the officials and the youth. A rentacop at one of Kahului’s malls hassled him for having parked bicycles— not riding them, just having them locked up. At Haleakala someone came late at night and made drunk noises while playing the radio loud. Alan shouted at them to be quiet, which I’ve never had the nerve to do.

It’s warmer and less windy here than it’s been at Seven Pools. I think the sky is clearing.

Shelter from the Storm

Sunday, February 22, 1981, George Washington’s real birthday

Last night was the worst yet, rain and wind. How can a person sleep when he’s being punched on both sides by wet balloons? In the middle of the net I had to close both ends of the tube tent and still it went foop foop foop in my face. This morning it was pouring so hard I couldn’t stay out of my tent long enough to take it down and run to the beach shelter.

So after going to the laundromat and drying my clothes and sleeping bag, I had mixed feelings. Did I want to go to Makena where it almost certainly would not be raining, or to Kaumahina, where I could probably get away with using one of the shelters? I opted for Kaumahina, and here I am, at last with a dry notebook, or at least dryer than it was.

With all the wind, I have to really— concentrate isn’t exactly the right word— force myself to relax. I sort of feel that the river of life is too turbulent and violent, and I have to struggle to keep myself from drowning.

Drinking Water Pipe Stream was a raging torrent, so was Puohokamoa, which I might expect, but Haipua’ena was a clear gentle stream. Why wasn’t it swollen like the other two? I’m mystified.

I’m not sure how I want to spend my last week here. I’ve just about decided to forget Haleakala. I wonder if the drought has been broken in California.

Monday, February 23, 1981

There’s the sunrise, a bit farther off the end of Keanae than I remember it being last time. It didn’t rain at all last night, but the wind continued.

It’s a windy sunny day here. I was riding the palm tree, pretending its curved trunk was the neck of a dragon.

I can’t forget. I lost my rope yesterday and need to buy another one or I can’t set up my tube tent. One Maui map, one sweater, one rope, one sheet of rebirthing affirmations, total items lost.

The Monday crowd seems to take more time to enjoy the park than the weekend people, though I realize the park’s biggest attraction is its flush toilets.

Here I am at Haipua’ena Falls again. The pool, alas, is about the color of a sewage lagoon. It’s just mud from the rain, but still it seems uninviting, unesthetic. The waterfall itself looks pretty.

The pool was ugly, but refreshing.

I finally have the awela poem the way I want it. When I realized the first and last stanzas could be haiku, the rest fell into a format of alternating three and two line stanzas mimicking Japanese linked verse.

The cats are out this evening. I saw three, a gray striped tabby, an orange striped tabby, and a black striped tabby.

And here’s the orange spotted tabby who I often see in the daytime, inside a garbage can nibbling on something. There may be others. They’re all pretty shy.

It’s warmer than yesterday evening. I haven’t put on a second shirt or long pants. But it’s still cloudy.

Tuesday, February 24, 1981

It’s raining almost sideways. I’m glad they took that into account when they designed this shelter. It rained hard much of last night. I’m so glad I came here to Kaumahina. When it lets up I’ll go to Pa’ia to get food. I still have some of those dried peaches, seven ounces of cheese, and two loaves of bible bread. I won’t go hungry real quickly.

There’s a skinny balding man walking across the park, yelling like Tarzan. Ah, Tarzan, my childhood hero, from Johnny Weissmuller’s old movies, with long-haired Jane in her bare-shoulders jungle minidress. Yeah. I want a lover like that, but without the mind games she always played on Tarzan.

Haipua’ena and Puohokamoa are both raging torrents today. The pool below Puohokamoa Falls isn’t even a pool, but a coffee brown foaming surge! The falls somehow suggest dirty sheepdog fur.

The man who gave me a ride out of Kaumahina, the same one who gave me a ride to Koki Beach last week, has stopped here to have a sandwich.

I rode to Pa’ia with this man. We talked about poetry and Arthur Hailey’s latest novel (which I haven’t read). He showed me a religious poem on the back of a little Christian book. For a poem-prayer it was pretty nice, and could go with any religion.

In Pa’ia I did laundry, bought some twine when I couldn’t find any rope, and somehow lost my canteen. Another hitchhiker in the back of my first ride attributed this loss to either Maui dope or bad karma, and babbled about a radio station that plays “Fucking rock and roll from 6 p.m. to sign off!” It’s almost enough to make me not like rock and roll. After he got out, the driver said he had an old canteen I could have, for which I gave him six dollars. He said he didn’t pay nearly that much for it. I said that’s what they cost now. He took the money.

Then a clean cut dark haired man with a HUGE backpack walked up the road. I asked where he was going. He said, “Hana.” I said, “It’s 35 miles, you’ll never walk that far before dark, so you might as well wait here.” He agreed with that.

We stood in front of a gate with a sign:

Of course the man had to go in and take some guavas off the ground. A car stopped. “I hope that’s not Bill or Les,” I said.

The cleancut man was ready to camp here if he had to. I said it looked like bad news and we’d get a ride to Hana. He had such a big pack because he was on a sailboat that got shipwrecked in Lahaina, in fact the one I saw leaning at an angle when I was there. He’d already gotten a ride all the way around East Maui from a woman from San Francisco, and gotten laid in her motel room. “Where’s she now?” I asked.

“Back in Honolulu,” he said. “I’ve got her address in San Francisco.”

He also had an adventure with two drunk Hawaiian men. They got him stoned and wanted to buy his swim fins. He refused to sell. One of the men judo-chopped his neck and said, “GET OUT OF HERE YOU FUCKING HAOLE!” He walked away. They followed in the pickup. After awhile they stopped hassling him.

He said their conversation started with, “California girls are really loose, eh?” and went downhill from there.

We finally got a ride back to Kaumahina after about an hour from a hippie in a pickup camper. He and the cleancut man stopped to pick a bunch of psilocybin mushrooms, which he called, “shrooms.” He talked about how important it is to tap the cap when you pick them so the spores can sprout. He explained how the mycelium lives for 8 weeks, and the potency of the shrooms depends on how old the mycelium is. I decided not to trip.

Then I got off at Kaumahina and twisted my twine into an acceptable rope and wrote all this down. It’s dark and I feel restless. Now what?

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