weeds

i'm in a hatin' mood tonight. so let's talk about weeds.

i've been busy, so i haven't been monitoring the yard particularly well. and since it's been somewhat rainy and windy, the backyard (and other places) sprouted out with WEEDS.

let me acquaint you with some of the varieties.

perhaps the most hated and virulent species is the Nutgrass. it looks nice and all, it has a kind of distinctive waxy green leaf, with a lilting curl to it. you can recognize it by this sort of triangular spreading of leaves, centered by this stalk with the "nut" that gives this grass it's name... KILL it on sight. and if you see it in the middle of a bunch of normal grass, you must dig out practically everything to get to the nutgrass roots. believe me, if you don't hit this weed hard and fast, it has a real skill at spreading, and choking out the legitimate grass.

and then there's the clover-leaf. willow loves this weed, because the leaves are shaped like little hearts. HA! it's no doubt some evolutionary camouflage, meant to seduce little children into protecting them. what a foul and sinister weed this one is! it grows in bunches with roots that tunnel through legitimate grass stands, so that you practically have to tear up the turf to REALLY get at them... i hate 'em!

there are other varieties, but those two are the worst.

what doesn't work: 1) the weed and feed fertilizers. these seem to only feed EVERYTHING, both the grass and the weeds. i've never seen good results from their use. 2) the garden weasel. this implement, with its six interlocking toothed gears, are supposed to be good for weeding. unfortunately, they are neither specific nor aggressive enough to take care of the aforementioned weeds.

what works (somewhat): individualized attention. meaning: sitting on a stool, with a garden tool of some kind, stabbing roots and pulling weeds in their entirety out of the ground. ONE AT A FREAKING TIME. must be a metaphor for life in this somewhere.

violin meanie

i'll admit it, i'm becoming a violin meanie. a violinie. a viomeanie... anyway. i'm becoming the sort of parent i used to hate. the pushy parent. the demanding parent. it all has to do with the violin. yes, we kind of pushed our kids into it, thought it would be good to get them into some classical instrument... (piano is just so blase, and besides, I could teach them piano: the same flawed basics i learned when I was shoved/coerced/black-and-white-mailed into it). so almost every evening, it turns out that I'm responsible for practicing violin with the kids. and you know that they don't particularly want to, i mean, they are very good kids, and they do things out of obligation, and (yerg, i feel so guilty) we've already brainwashed them to think that this is all something they WANT to do, we actually threaten that we will sell their violins if they aren't really into it, and they object, and make nice... but anyway, i have to force them through their lessons. and some nights are good, but some nights are pretty awful. i feel like a freaking parrot/parent sometimes: "aiden, look at your bow. look at your bow. LOOK AT YOUR BOW. okay, how many times do i have to repeat myself!? look at your bow. okay, so where does your thumb go? good! now put your other fingers on the bow. okay, okay, pretty good. now let me help you... aiden, stop moving your fingers, i'm trying to put them in the right place. aiden, stop moving your fingers. STOP MOVING YOUR FINGERS. make them stick. make them STICK! LOOK AT THE BOW!!!"

parenting involves many hypocrisies.

a part of me is just cracking up at myself. i mean, i was the stereotypical obedient, but inwardly rebellious, child. i was the one making up plans for how I was going to handle the whole parenting gig, be this really super-patient, super-tolerant guru parent who was always close to his kids. and yet, here i am, following in my own parents' apparently not-so-ill-advised footsteps... i am being the authoritarian dick-tator. i am being the violin meanie. oh well. someday i will try to explain this two-faced situation to my kids. soon as i understand it. (then again, maybe that's why my parents never told ME. or maybe they were just saving this secret up for the ultimate vengeance: "Ha, where's your hippie idealism NOW???")

no solicitors please!

you know what i hate? solicitation!

the other day, like one of the few days where i had open time where i could just sit down and do some serious writing, well, i headed over to the nearby starbucks over at waikele, ordered a venti mocha no whip frappucino, and just sat at an outlet to try to type away. i'm about halfway through one sentence when this old man who's sitting across from me asks if i'm a student. out of politeness, i say no. that of course begs the question, what am i doing there, sitting and typing so seriously? and then, somewhat reluctantly, i tell my whole life story. what? you're an acupuncturist? what? you're 36? you look so young! i'll admit, i'm a sucker for such one-sided conversations, because it makes me believe for a moment that i'm interesting enough that a complete stranger would talk to me straight out of the blue (ha, if only that ever happened when i was single and the stranger was just my type: female hetero).

after about five minutes or so, i'm fiddling with the power cord with one hand, and my face feels like it's starting to cramp from smiling so much. politeness is one thing, but i've got some work to do! and just when i think it's about to end, the guy drops the bomb: "listen, you're such a nice guy, i'd like to tell you about something i've just discovered..." jeez, they must write a script for this kind of thing! no matter what it is they are trying to tell you, as soon as they mention how nice you are, you're IN FOR IT! it could be a pyramid scheme (no, it's not a pyramid scheme! not technically, anyway), or healthy water (which this was), or religion... it's all the same. the script runs on after that, and while you're still reeling in disbelief, all the early exits get passed, and you're in for one long and tedious ride... struggling to negotiate alternative transportation options to get off and get back to where you were before, just innocently sitting there...

i hate it!!! and for some reason, i'm such a target! and besides, it seems like starbucks and other "innocent hangouts" are prime hunting grounds for these sales-hungry bastards...

what i hate about solicitation is the desperate energy that's fueling it. i mean, honestly, neither party REALLY wants to be there. neither party is REALLY interested. but because one party (the salesperson) NEEDS to make the pitch, well, once it starts, it's like it has to play out.

i feel sorry for dudes like that. i mean, i want to help, but gods, man, if you'd just told me your sorry situation, i'd be half more willing to help you out than if you try to sucker me in with insincere attentions... i feel like you just wanted me for my money (truth).

but honestly: if i really wanted something, i'd have searched for it on the internet, sought it out and bought it. or i'd have heard about it. something. the day and age when "secret" and "privileged" info that just might save my life is passed on by old dudes in coffeeshops... well, if it even ever was, it now particularly isn't.

primary colors

Primary Colors
Not long after we’d broken them in,
And before we’d
Drawn on
the quarters
My brother, sister and I
Were given a choice:
What color to paint the walls
of our bedrooms.

Dean, eldest, chose blue
Blue like 8 feet
At Rec. Center One
treading like mad
while the swim coach
paced impatient for a target
for his left slipper:
the first to drop hands
or chin in water.

Kristine, youngest,
chose pink
pink like a volcano in reverse
sunset over clouded Waianae range
when earth tried
to swallow fire.

I chose yellow.
I imagined it happy,
And the color of beginnings.
Breakfasts (besides the multicolored
cereals) always glowed yellow:
Grapefruit, buttered toast, waffle.
And eastern sunlight shafting in
Between glass louvers
And my sandy canthuses
Always stained the world gold.

My parents painted the walls in a couple of days.
But the colors never quite dried
and as we played,
studied,
slept,
and dreamt
bouncing off the walls
their wet insistence stained us again and again.

Now I am older,
with a bit of jaundice in the eye.
We are all older,
my brother, my sister and I.

But no matter where we have gone
or what we have done
in years between
we could neither deepen nor wash out
the stains of who we are,
or who we have been.

A three-colored rainbow
has little choice but to span a gap.

Which makes me wonder:
when our parents asked us, so long ago,
did we really choose our colors,
or did the colors choose us?

tightened: Extreme Unction, Last Rites

Extreme Unction: “Last Rites”
People will suddenly love me when I’m dead.

They will stand in black in a rainstorm
before my grave
and weep tears from eyes
that never used to look twice.
They’ll eulogize the kid they never knew
with phrases like “nicest guy in the world,”
“always had a smile on his face,”
and other non-specific compliments.

What is it about endings
that make people so fond?
Is the heart made so by the
sudden distance and inaccessibility?

Do we perfume the dead
with words too sweet
verbal ambergris
out of sentimentality
or truth?

Or is it that death itself
its sans fragrance
speaks the lie in life
leaving us at
a loss for words?

What’s that first rule of politeness?

“If you can’t say anything at all,
say something nice.”

reworked: Bowed Reign

Bowed Reign
Mars-ilani’s symbol is either
A) a horseshoe,
B) a three-colored rainbow, or
C) the embrace of a community.
Take your pick.

I was born and raised in Mars-ilani,
and, like the fruit of a tired tree,
fell and returned here,
laying roots in its rusty soil.

Now, when I look upon Mililani’s symbol, I see
D) None of the Above.

I see, instead, the inevitable arc
of middle class life.

For if a rainbow,
it is on the verge of
collapsing in on itself,
teetering unsteady on
one invisible pot of gold.

And if a horseshoe,
then it’s a horseshoe magnet,
drawing the iron luck in my blood back
to join the rust of its soil.

If an embrace,
then it holds me like
an umbilical culdesac noose.

I am None
of the above.
I came from below,
And like Icarus
(before my spectacular return),
spent but a moment in the sky.
The ego dreams mastery,
But that’s all.
And when the pretend reign ends,
All that’s left behind is
The symbol of a promise
And the shape of its fulfillment:
bowed and asymptotic.

reworked: marsilani (paint the town red)

They named this town “Look to the Sky.”
What did they mean?

Lower to middle class
Suburbanites
who moved here in the late 60’s
Likely thought it apt:
Hope,
look up,
and you too can someday reach the stars.

Maybe they meant
the town itself was the sky
and everyone else
should look to it:
a “city on a hill.”
After all, its streets were named
after heavenly bodies:
Meheula meant “the path of the sun”
And Aohoku was Hawaiian for Jupiter.
(Did that make the people the stars,
Or just the empty spaces?)

But I think the name wasn’t meant
a promise or a boast
It was a signpost
And we’ve all mistaken
the finger for the moon.

Look up!
Look to the sky!

Don’t see it?
Then look down.
Ancient tectonic rifts buckle
the sidewalk concrete in places.
The floor of the town
is superimposed over the earth
like bandaid over wound.

Still don’t see it?
Then look around.
Look at your neighbors,
your classmates,
your friends.
Look closely,
Squint.
You’ll agree
Everyone’s so perfectly ordinary-
perfectly ordinary.
Are they for real?
(For that matter, are you?)

If you still can’t see,
Look up!
Really look up.
If you do,
all you’ll see, through the telescope lens
and haze of street lamp,
is a glass mirrored ceiling.

And where your reflection should be,
Standing in the midst of this town,
you’ll see, far above you,
the planet Mars:
blood soiled,
canal scarred,
rumored of life,
certain of war;
and a Martian,
searching for intelligent life.

Mars:
where you come from
where you’re going
where you always already are.

I’ll make things painfully obvious for you:
I’ll paint the town red,
the same red as the dirt stains covered up.
It does us good in the long run
Not to pretend things are anything else.

Painfully obvious:
The old name doesn’t work
It obfuscates
So I’ll change the name to Mars-ilani:
town of past futures
and futures passed,
where we aliens,
shy of escape velocity,
find home
away from
home.