Esoteric Bowl

He was beaming. His happiness showed in his walk as he came towards me. His face glowed with a smile from ear to ear, as he told me the news. He and his girlfriend of less than a year were going to have a baby. He was happy, and I was happy for my longtime friend. He told me how much having a child meant to him. How he would be the father that he had always wanted, but never had. He explained how his life would be different now, and how this one event would change his life forever.

I saw very little of my friend for the next nine months. He was often busy with taking the girlfriend to the doctor, attending Lamaze classes, shopping for baby furniture, buying baby clothes, and doing a number of baby-related things that must be done prior to the baby’s arrival. I admired his commitment, and it was good to see that his excitement remained through time.

On the day that the baby was born, my friend wept with pride. He litterally got down on his knees and thanked God for the beautiful daughter that he had been given. In the days that followed, he was the proud daddy in every sense of the word, handing out cigars to friends and passing strangers alike, and sharing photographs and stories of his child with anyone that would look and listen. It was as if he wanted the world to know that this wonderful child was his, and that he was her daddy.

As the next few months passed, problems began to arise between he and the girlfriend. My friend was still a little upset with her for naming the baby Kashmir, after the popular Led Zeppelin song, but I tried to reassure him that the name was pretty and unique. As he and I talked, it became apparent that there were bigger issues that he and the girlfriend were having. I did my best to listen, said very little, but did try to convience him that young couples with a child are going to have problems now and then.

Some time had passed and I assumed that the issues between my friend and his girlfiend had worked themselves out. Then one evening after work, he called me on the phone with rage in his voice. Apparently girlfriend had moved away, taking the baby and most of their possesions with her. She left a note explaining that she had moved to the island of Kauai to live with her parents, and that she wanted no further contact with him. I tried to calm him down in every way possible, but there was no calming his anger.

A few days had passed when my friend showed up at my home. He told me that the day following our last conversation, he had caught a plane to Kauai. Once on Kauai, he went to the parent’s home, but no one was there. He then broke into the house, went into the kitchen, took out the butcher knives from the kitchen drawer and hid the knives in select areas of the living room. He then left the home, hiding and waiting for the girlfriend and her family to return. Once they had all come home, he approached the house with violence on his mind. Fortunately, the mother had called 911, and the arrival of the police had prevented any physical harm to anyone. The police talked with him and told him that they would let him go if he returned to Oahu at once. He agreed.

I asked what the hiding of the knives was for, and he explained that he had planned on getting into a fight and using the knives to kill everyone in the house. I thought he was making some kind of sick joke, but he wasn’t. He went on to explain that he could have
succeeded before the police arrived, but the thought of stabbing someone didn’t agree with him. Aside from the anger that remained within him, he said all of this so nonchalantly, as if he were recounting a minor event. I looked at my friend of several years, and for the first time, he frightened me. This whole ordeal now consumed him, and he had obviously lost all rational thought.

The last time I saw him, it was on a Friday. He seemed to be in good spirits despite all of the events that had taken place as well as recently losing his job. Emotionally, he had his good days and his bad, much of which depended on the tone of conversation that he had on the phone with his now ex-girlfriend. He told me that he was planning on getting partial custody of the child, and that he had given all his money to a lawyer. I was just relieved that there wasn’t further talk of knives and killing.

On the following Sunday, his mother called me. She asked if I had heard the news about her son. She told me a tale that left me speechless, explaining that the story was also in the Sunday paper. Apparently that Friday evening he had talked to the ex-girlfriend on the phone and a verbal fight developed. Then Saturday morning he went into a gun shop. He asked the clerk there to see a particular handgun, then he inserted the bullets that he mysteriously had with him. He then pointed the gun at the clerk. He pushed the clerk into a walk-in safe and closed the safe door. Then he opened the cash register, taking just enough money for the cost of a one way plane ticket to Kauai.

How he managed to conceal a gun in his bag and get to Kauai, I still don’t know. He picked up the bag from the luggage carousel and walked through the airport. Fortunately, there are undercover police at the airports. They randomly stop people to check their baggage due to the large quantities of marijuana that pass through the islands. My friend just happened to be one of those randomly stopped; the gun was found and he was arrested. Later, he would be convicted on numerous charges.

In the last conversation that I had with him, he explained from a prison pay-phone that his intention was to kill all of the ex-girlfriend’s family members, including the baby and himself, leaving the girlfriend alive so that she could experience the loss that she had given him. Although he was a friend of many years, I have never sought further contact with him. I don’t know if he remains in prison or if he is still in the islands or not. The entire event shook me up. The thought that he could and would kill those that he loved most left me wondering what chance did I have if one day he were angry at me.

I’ve never participated in the Friday Five before, but what the heck.

You just won a million dollars:

1. Who do you call first?

Mom & Dad.

2. What is the first thing you buy for yourself?

A plane ticket. I’ve always wanted to travel throughout Asia.

3. What is the first thing you buy for someone else?

Something they would enjoy and wouldn’t buy for themselves.

4. Do you give any away? If yes, to whom?

Yes. Give some to my parents and some to friends.

5. Do you invest any? If so, how?

Invest in myself to further my education, and maybe open a Krispy Kreme franchise.

Sometimes, when I feel as if I’m running out of fuel, I’ll walk over to the campus and find a secluded bench away from the crowd. Once seated, I’ll break the slices of bread that I have brought along and toss the pieces in the surrounding area. The small gray doves will come to feed. I’m always amazed at their trusting nature. The mynah birds eventually arrive to investigate what it is that they are missing. Their funny yellow feet always amuse me.

Once all the bread has been scattered about, I will take a breath and then release it. I’ll close my eyes in silence, leaving all the world behind, absorbing only that which surrounds me; the sound of soft cooing of the birds, the scent of damp soil in the air, the occasional gust of wind at my back, the sound of the tree branches thrashing their leaves, and the warmth of the sun that kisses my face.

I can’t possibly describe the euphoric state that fills me, but there are times when I wish that I need not open my eyes again. However, when I do open my eyes, the world is anew; and so am I.

I used to watch her from across the room as she prepared dinner. How beautiful she was in all her subtle movements of dicing and stirring. Her hair would gently fall to the sides of her face, as her eyes were transfixed downward towards the cutting board or stove. From time to time, she would look up to see what I was doing, only to see that I was watching her. A smile would come to her face, and her eyes would shine. Oh how her eyes shined.

She would prepare this killer meatloaf with shoyu and mayo. It was so moist even three days later. She would cook miso soup, adding fine cut green onion and tiny little cubes of tofu. I still don’t know how she cut those cubes so small. She made these delicious fried patties with a recipie of egg, tuna, tofu, and green onion. She called them Tuna-tofu-patties, but I refered to them as Alison-cakes.

I would watch her hands as she made musubi. Her little hands moved like those of a sculpter, molding and forming the rice into a piece of artwork. She would then dip her fingertips into a bowl of water and wrap a sheet of nori around the rice so effortlessly.

Sometimes I would walk into the kitchen, asking if she needed any help. I knew she would decline my assistance, but I would ask anyway. I would grab another beer for her out of the refrigerator, and place it beside her near empty. From behind, I would wrap my arms around her and gently pull her body next to mine. I would whisper in her ear, and her head would tilt up and to the side, and that smile would once again come to her face.

A rare post from Grumpy Grandpa Kane:

You young people today have it so easy. In my day, we didn’t have blogs to express ourselves creatively and to write our thoughts and feelings in. We had to keep all of our thoughts to ourselves, and our feelings were pushed deep down inside of us until they would fester and boil and agitate us to the point where our heads would explode. And we liked it!

In my day, if someone wanted to write, they kept a diary. But you had to hide it from your parents and siblings or they would find it and mock you and tease you and call you a sissy and a pussy for the rest of your life until you cried. And if you didn’t have a diary, you wrote vulgar and obsense things on the bathroom walls with a lot of smut and f-words in them. And we liked it!

And we didn’t have blogs to organize mass support for political candidates at the local coffee house while siping coco lattes. In my day, we organized at a local university and slept outside in the cold and we got high and sang songs that we didn’t know the words to
and we got our heads cracked open by the police. That’s the way it was, and we liked it!

On Saturday, I decided to go out to get a late lunch/early dinner. I decided on having Chinese food, but when I arrived at the restaurant the place was packed with people. Not a problem, Manoa has many restaurants to choose from. I walked over to a nearby Japanese
restaurant, but they were closed. I then went up the street to the noodle house, and they were packed with a line coming out the door. Darn those senior citizens and their early meal specials!

It was about this time that I was struck by a craving for lasagna. Such lasagna cravings are almost always present, but usually the craving rests latent beneath my skin. Now the craving had spread beyond the flesh and had entered the marrow of my bones. Unfortunately, with all the restaurants here in Manoa, there isn’t one authentic Italian eatery in the bunch.

I remembered seeing a little hole in the wall Italian restaurant several blocks away on King Street. The weather was clear, and the walk didn’t take too long. However, when I arrived at the restaurant, it too was closed. I then remembered seeing another little Italian style place a few more blocks up and began walking.

When I arrived at the restaurant and saw the Closed sign in the window, I just had to laugh. The craving had now turned into a quest, and lasagna had become secondary to my drive to find an Italian restaurant that was open.

Since I was now only a few blocks away from Ala Moana Center, I decided that I would see if they had something to satisfy my craving and that would put this quest to an end. If all else failed, I could lower my Italian restaurant expectations and visit the Food Court.

When I was about a block away from Ala Moana, I saw Pietro. I had seen the place several times through the years, but never actually ate there. But the name sounds Italian! I glanced through the window at what others were eating, and everyone had pasta. Jackpot! I now understood how Columbus must have felt at the end of his journey.

Pietro is a nice place. Not fine dining nice, but comfortable nice. You have to understand that I generally eat out in places in Manoa, where the food is great, but most times it is served on a paper plate or a plastic bowl, and breakaway chopsticks are somewhat the norm. So anytime I visit a place that offers a chair where all four legs touch the floor simultaneously, I’m usually impressed. Anyway, they didn’t have lasagna at Pietro, but at this point I didn’t care. I ordered the spaghetti with sausage and mushrooms. It was tasty, and the fried onion placed on top was a nice touch.

What detailed plan does John Kerry have on the issue of health care? What are Howard Dean’s thoughts on immigration? How do John Edwards and Wesley Clark approach homeland security differently? What design does Dennis Kucinich have for solving the problems in public education? What strategy does Al Sharpton have for improving relations with North Korea? What approach does Joseph Lieberman suggest in balancing the budget?

All of these questions are valid and fair, right? But unless you are deeply involved in the campaign for one of these candidates, you probably don’t know all of these answers. I have made every attempt to keep up with the democratic primary process; watched the debates, read various newspapers, and visited countless websites, all to gain an understanding of the candidates and the issues. Still, I am left wanting.

I was hoping that I could rely on the media for in-depth coverage of the candidates and the issues. Instead, I have heard it reported more than once that all the candidates pretty much believe in the same thing. With the issues so easily pushed aside, the bulk of the media directs it’s attention towards polls and personality.

I’ll accept that reports on polling and personality have their place in the media in covering the political process, but that place is certainly not on page one or as the lead news story of the day. The media’s fascination with polls has often seeped into the debates, where questions about the “horse race” receive as much attention and validity as the real issues do.

I fear that the media coverage of the Democratic presidential primaries is a sign of what’s to come in the presidential general election. One only has to look at the last presidential election to see what kind of results we receive when the coverage of the issues takes a backseat to polling and personality.