Ay, howzit?! So what, happy life? No worry.........bum-bye pau........garans ballbearings!

I grew up in the middle of a bamboo forest. I loved that forest........so silent.....a silent refuge from the realities of Hilo. Those bamboo stalks loomed so high, rising straight up into the heavens. There was no need for verbal communication in this refuge. I would watch my tall goong-goong ("grandfather" in the saam yup and sei yup dialects of Cantonese) with his strong, sinewy arms, chop down a few choice stalks. Then he would cut them into equal lengths and later splice them into bamboo "spears" for his beloved pole beans to wind its way up into maturity. Much to his dismay, his grandchildren loved to use his spears for actual combat in our games of "mortal combat". When we grew tired of such martial arts games, we would revert to the usual small keed games of cowboys and indians......whenever someone fired at us point-blank we could miraculously escape demise by leaning our bodies to oneside and yelling out "BANGKYUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" to signify that the deadly lead had missed us and instead richocheted off some object behind us. We could thus escape that moment of reality by simply yelling out, "BANGKYUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I followed my goong-goong everywhere. He taught me how to use a knife, how to plant beans and potatatoes, how to raise chickens to maturity, how to kill the chickens (I could never stomach doing this......maybe that's how the term of being "chicken" originated), how to bring the chickens to market. I learned to use an old Chinese scale, a replica of which I still keep with me. But most of all, I learned about suffering and death. You see, I watched my beloved goong-goong on his last lap in the Hilo Memorial Hospital......watched him suffer, watched my strong goong-goong in utter, devastating pain.....a pain so intense that even he couldn't bear.........a pain so ferocious that it threw him into a coma..........and that's how I watched him die........with his mouth agape and his eyes wide open..........a reality no cries of "BANGKYUUUUUUU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" could earn us a respite from.

When I see people in modern day Honolulu living their spoiled, privileged, status-seeking lives I marvel at how much removed from my childhood reality this strange, alien reality is. I truly do not belong and do not fit in here. Where am I, really? What am I doing here?