Esoteric Bowl

I can’t quite remember how long we were out at sea. One loses all sense of time when surrounded by miles and miles of ocean. I do know that we were out long enough for me to get beyond the seasickness, to develop my sea-legs, and to accumulate a few paychecks.

If traveling directly by sea from Hawai’i to San Diego, it doesn’t take too long. But our ship wasn’t traveling directly. Instead, the Navy had us out in the middle of the Pacific performing all kinds of drills, playing war-games and basically traveling in circles. I didn’t mind though. I was a fresh young sailor on his first voyage, so everything was somewhat of an adventure.

When we finally pulled into San Diego, the entire crew was excited to touch land. As luck would have it, two friends and I all had the duty off for Saturday and Sunday, so we planned to spend our liberty weekend with some San Diego nightlife on Saturday, and on Sunday we would take the bus to Mexico.

The nightlife in downtown San Diego is what one would expect in a military town. A lot of saloons, titty-bars, strip clubs, tattoo parlors, and pawnshops, with a couple of diners here and there. My friends and I did some bar-hopping and drank a lot of alcohol in the process. One of the friends decided on getting a tattoo, so we hung out there while he got his tattoo. Then the other friend decided he too wanted a tattoo. I decided to walk around some.

Still somewhat drunk and buzzing, I walked down the main street of downtown. I happened to see a young women in the backseat of a taxi which had stopped at the intersection. She was beautiful. And more importantly, she was smiling at me. As I crossed the intersection, she mouthed a question to me, “Do you want to party?” Heh.

I didn’t exactly know what she meant by “party”, but I was nineteen years old, a little drunk, and a sailor that had been out to sea for a long time. As I saw it, “party” could mean a lot of things, but at the time, all of the definitions seemed good to me. Needless to say, I got in the taxi.

As we drove on down the road, we introduced ourselves and shared some small talk. She was the stereotypical California girl; blond, tanned, and giggly. I like giggly. She asked me if I wanted to get high, but I declined. I told her the Navy does random urine-checks, which I don’t believe they did at the time, but it was an easy way for me to say no and still be cool. She asked if I would mind if we quickly stopped at her friends house so that she could pick-up a lid. I told her that I didn’t mind. She told the driver where to go, and he turned the car and drove in that direction.

We arrived in little time at the apartment complex of where the friend lived. As I paid the cab fare, she pointed in a direction and told me that she lived one block down. As we walked towards the apartment complex, she noticed that she didn’t have enough money with her. She asked if I could loan her $60.00 until we got to her house. It sounded fair to me, so I gave her the sixty dollars.

She explained that the friend doesn’t like her bringing strangers to the home, so she asked if I would sit on the bench while she went to the apartment. Sure, no problem. I imagine that I sat on the bench waiting for approximately 20 seconds before the tiny bell went off in my head. I got up from the bench and looked around the corner of the building. At the other end of the long passageway, my eyes met her eyes as she was climbing into the same cab. The driver looked at me and told her to hurry up, and they quickly drove off.

As I walked several miles back towards the ship, my buzz wore off and so did my anger. I had to laugh at myself and remember that the night could have turned out much worse. Some lessons costs more than sixty dollars.

As my father prepared to return to Viet Nam, I asked him why he had to go fight in the war. He looked at me and replied without pause, “So you and your brothers wont have to.” It was a simplistic answer to a child’s complex question, but somehow my father’s response was understood.

Like a family heirloom locket, I’ve carried my father’s words close to my heart for decades. One can argue about the politics of war, be it Viet Nam, Iraq, or any war in between, but for each generation involved in such conflict, the greatest hope is that this war will be the last so our own children wont have to face it.

As I watch the news and see the daily roll call of young faces of men and women being lost in Iraq, I feel helpless within the tragedy. These kids, and many of them are kids, are conceivably young enough to be my children. I continually question myself as to how my generation and I could have allowed this to happen. It was my generation that grew up on war, watched the realities of the nightly carnage and destruction, spoke with eloquence about the alternatives to war, and sang songs about the promise of peace. We were the generation that would do things differently, intent on preventing all war so our children wouldn’t have to face it. Somehow, I feel as if we have failed.

Strange weather we’ve been having.

It all started just before Halloween, when hard rains began to fall and continued for about a week, causing major flooding in some areas. This was followed by a couple of days of sunshine with the occasional passing shower. Then Kilauea, with the help of Kona winds, brought a haze of vog that settled over the islands for a couple of days.

Then once again clear blue skies and sunshine appeared for a day or two. Then strong winds with 45-mph gusts arrived, tearing down power lines and leaving more than 9,000 homes without electricity.

Today, it rained a little. And the sun shined a little. And the gusts blew at times. And the humidity brought back that familiar stickiness. Outside the sky is gray and it looks like a storm may be on the way.

All this weather change has a way of throwing a person off balance. Do I wear the windbreaker jacket or not? Should I eat saimin to warm myself up, or should I have some ice cream to break the heat? And when oh when should I do the laundry?

When Colin Powell accepted the post of Secretary of State four years ago, his popularity surpassed every living American. A retired four-star general and former national security adviser, Powell was synonymous with the victory of the first Gulf War. Powell had an aura about him that exemplified courage and dignity, and his mere presence demanded respect at home and abroad.

Four years later, Powell is leaving his position with little to show and a great deal of his aura and reputation tarnished. While history will remember his accomplishments of the first Gulf War, history will also remember his 2003 appearance before the United Nations Security Council where Powell insisted that Saddam Hussein had huge stockpiles of anthrax. Not only have those claims since been proven false, but it has also been shown that Powell, along with others of this administration, knew the claims were false at the time.

Defenders of Colin Powell suggest that Powell was being the Good Soldier, publicly supporting President Bush despite his personal disagreements with the Bush preemptive doctrine. Although the good solider analogy makes good copy, it is like the stockpiles of anthrax; complete fiction.

One lesson of the Abu Ghraib scandal is that the good solider is not always the one that goes along, but rather it is the one that has the courage to go against the grain. White House officials were quick to point out that the soliders involved in Abu Ghraib knew the rules of war and the Geneva convention, and even if they didn’t, they should at the very least know right from wrong.

What’s good for an enlisted soldier, is good for a retired general.

General Eric Shinseki and others put their careers on the line in objecting to the lunacy of the Iraq war plan. Unfortunately, Shinseki and these other courageous good soldiers had neither the political clout nor the public recognition that Powell enjoyed. Aside from President Bush, Powell was the only person that could have put a halt to the march to war. If President Bush would not listen to Powell’s objections in the White House, Powell should have resigned his post then and made every attempt at publicly putting the brakes on this war. He knew the information was false, and more importantly he understood the consequences of what a full-scale war in Iraq would bring. Instead of the good general thinking about the fate of his soldiers, the politician played along to get along.

A maiden voyage across the sea,
exploring a world bestowed to thee;
Revolt of one and Spirit shaken,
A blind eye turned to all forsaken;

A child arrives with soft hair of corn,
Savage irony not lost in thorns;
Sins of the journey placed in his stead,
Taste of his passion was just as red;

With a heavy heart, You know I’ve tried,
A Swallowed voice along with my pride;
Temple pounded and the Soul taken,
Deaf ear given to all forsaken.

I don’t know if it’s still the case, but back in the days it was a rule in Hawai’i that all fourth grade children enrolled in public school would learn to play the `Ukulele. In theory, it was a good idea. The `ukulele is a big part of the history and culture of Hawai’i, and it remains a key element in the local music of today.

I can’t speak for all the classes, but in my fourth grade class, we didn’t focus much attention on the relevance of the history and culture of the `ukulele. Instead, we were to learn three songs by a specific time so that we could perform those songs in front of an audience of our parents.

I learned the first two songs, but I was having difficulty in learning the third, which was the theme song to Hawai’i Five-0. I know it’s a lame excuse, but I couldn’t get my little fingers to move that fast.

On the day before we were to give our performance, the teacher announced that everyone should come up to her desk (one at a time) and show her that we’ve got all the three songs down. Those who didn’t, would not be allowed to participate in the performance.

Needless to say, I didn’t rush up to the teacher’s desk. Instead, I took this last opportunity to try to force myself to learn the song. If I didn’t learn it now, I would have to admit my failure to the teacher and to the entire class. I sat at my desk and practiced throughout the entire class period, all the while my panic grew and grew.

The teacher announced that the class was just about over, and asked if everyone had come up to her desk and played the three songs. I sat quiet, hoping that she wouldn’t look at me and realize that I had not played. No one said anything, so we all put our things away and were reminded to bring our `ukulele to class the next day.

There we were, the entire class standing up on stage in the school cafeteria facing our parents and other guests. With `ukuleles in hand, we played the first two songs magnificently. Then came the Hawai’i Five-0 theme song. I played the first few chords that I had learned, and then for the remainder of the song, I pretended to strum along and did my best to fake it. I considered it a small miracle that I wasn’t found out. If there’s a moral to the story, I suppose it’s that sometimes you just gotta fake it.

This month marks the third year in which I’ve maintained an online journal. In the past three years of blogging, I’ve probably written more consistently than I ever have, and in doing so have shared memories of my youth, written about my day-to-day adventures and misadventures, posted photographs and poetry, expressed myself politically and creatively, and stepped atop the soapbox on occasion.

I’ve learned some basis HTML code along the way, although I still have a great deal to learn in that department. I’ve had four site adresses, three site designs, three hosts, and banned over 1,000 or so spam addresses.

The three years of blogging has also given me the opportunity to discover many interesting and creative online journalists from around the world, some of which I am fortunate to call friend. Some of the friends that I met three years ago are still around and blogging stronger than ever. Some friends have long since moved on to other things, while new friendships have been made. Blogging mirrors life in that sense.