A problematic aloha

I’m in Hawaii (again) and I’m being confronted with my mixed feelings about the US.

Happy New Year to all. I know we’re well into January now and for many of you the idea of a break will be long behind, but greetings nonetheless.

This week is not so much a story but a little bit catching up, a little bit reflection, a little bit rant. Strap yourself in.

I’m in Hawaii (again) and I’m being confronted with my mixed feelings about the US.

This is the sixth time Liz and I have come to Hawaii and pretty much every time I have hatched schemes that will lead to me moving here. Or spending six months here. Anything that will allow me to submerge myself in the place. This time is no different.

The first time I came here I was concerned that I would develop a physical panic of being in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, on a very small landmass. I’ve sometimes felt this sense of anxiety at the thought of being far from the ocean, at being marooned miles from the edge. The idea of living somewhere like Broken Hill is unfathomable to me. (Even though I have great affection for my father’s home town).

So I should not have been surprised when being very close to the edge, constantly, was so comforting.

The problem with moving here, or taking up residence for three or so months, is the fact that it is actually part of the United States. That is a negative, but I also acknowledge that it is also a positive.

Many people would question my sanity. Consider: the utter hypocrisy of the place, the grasping, vicious domination of capital, the promotion of corporations above civil government, the primacy of the individual at all costs, the guns, the lack of healthcare.

Driving up the island yesterday, past the sodden fields of taro that made me think, inevitably, of my neighbour and her eternal struggle to grow the stuff in Tempe, was a lesson in the contradictions of this place.

Blokes rode past us on motorcycles, not wearing helmets. I guess it’s your problem if you come off, particularly if you don’t have health insurance, but it’s your choice. And yet, the signs on the side of the road reminded us that wearing a seat belt was THE LAW. Why is that the law but not wearing a helmet? Is it because it could potentially cost some corporation - or even the government - more to clean up the mess after an ignored seatbelt but the fallout from not wearing a helmet is far less? Why is one an individual choice, but not the other?

There is always a prioritising of civility and politeness in the States. In Hawaii people really do greet you with ‘Aloha’. They say ‘Mahalo’ instead of ‘Thank you’, even the white people. They talk of taking responsibility for the land and ocean, of respecting tradition and history. The Hawaiian language is everywhere, making navigation in the car interesting because the street and highway names are so difficult for our white tongues to say. I am an outsider here, but I am also acutely aware that it’s the white people sitting in the resorts, being served by everyone else.

I think the visits here are always fraught because I try to figure it out. I try to come to terms with the country while I’m here, when I will never be able to do that. This state is physically removed from the rest of the place, but it’s also culturally removed. I have a juvenile, romantic idea that it offers a glimpse of what the US could be.

As we waited at the airport at Lihue to get the little bus to the car rental place, I noticed a young man wearing a tshirt that said “Virginity Rocks” across the front. He was standing with a woman who looked to be his wife. She would have been lucky to be 20 and was juggling two small children. The man in the tshirt didn’t smile the whole time. I didn’t see him talk to his wife.

What looked like his father and his impossibly scrubbed brother - also with wife and child, at least one, in tow - were sensibly and courteously discussing the hire car and who should catch the small shuttle bus to the car rental office, if they couldn’t all fit on the next one, what with the baby paraphernalia and the unsmiling brother wishing he’d never done it at all. In my head I called them “the mormons” because there was something about them that said “religious right” but given the scrubbed guy was wearing a Seattle Seahawks shirt, I thought maybe this was not correct. I don’t know if there are many Mormons in Seattle. Or if indeed if they were Mormons at all.

I kept looking at the unsmiling man’s tshirt. I couldn’t understand it. What are you trying to say?

I resigned myself to not knowing, much like I should give up on ever trying to understand this place.

Some other notes:

• I’ve started my reading year with Didion and Babitz by Lili Anolik, because I am nothing if not a literary lives junkie

• This piece about women’s needlework as an act of resistance reminded me of the ways in which my mother, grandmother and aunts have used it to express love, to provide for people they don’t know when they knit for charity, keep their hands busy and to no doubt, keep their minds under control. As I once heard my aunt say: “If I do nothing I just sit here and start to get angry”.

• We’re on Kauai and I am once again enjoying the company of the chickens that seem to rule this place. They are so comfortable with people and I am fond of the way they rush to the sliding door when you open it in the morning.

Mahalo for reading.

If you ever feel like showing your appreciation, feel free to ‘buy me a coffee’ (make a small, one-off contribution).