Welcome to High Maintenance Land

We probably have pretty low crime rates in Hawaii, I don't know the statistics, but if so, I think I know why: nothing lasts here.

With the heat and moisture, everything you might treasure becomes organic in no time. There are the termites for the wood things, the rust for metals (even stainless steel rusts here), moths for the fibers, earthquakes for glass and china, and mold, mildew, rats and mice for everything else. Just try and hang on to something, anything, in the tropics.

Dust to dust.

It's hell, if you have just a few things you want to last for your kids or grandkids. Not an option: everything must go.

Or it's heavenly if you long for an uncluttered existence. Hoarding, storing, and collecting do not pay off. It's a very utilitarian climate with high incentive for keeping things flowing -- today.

how the otherworldly can become normal

I was shocked into a realization of my exotic life by a call from a surveyor last night. The woman calling was clearly from the Sowuth. I pictured tiny flowers on her huge blouse, and tight stretch pants.

Me... I was in the middle of frying sweet potato (putaytuh) chips. I felt an urge to tell her about my day, about how I was standing in my kitchen in a wetsuit from swimming in the ocean just a while before, and how I was headed out to my hammock with my beer in a minute to watch the sun go down. These are my everyday things.

Something about the genteel voice on the other end helped me to realize how far I've sailed from the domesticated creature I once was. And I'm glad of it. If Pele is creative and destructive, my life in her shadow reflects her power by the old me burning away and the new me forming right before my eyes.

Living on fresh rock, some of it only days old and some of it a hundred or so years old, requires new roots from a person.

the visitors

While we have our share of plaid bermuda shorts, dark knee socks in sandals, and camera-slings to decorate our drives, the really interesting tourists are the ones in stealth mode.

Wearing normal clothes and eating at a normal restaurant, the people around me seem to get it that Hawaii is just another place with life as usual. Until last night, when the illusion was burst by a young woman looking at a menu and asking, "Would it be too weird for me to order pork in Hawaii?"

Huh?

Let's draw some conclusions, and please add any other possibilities that come to mind:

• Hawaii doesn't seem to have pigs (it does), so pork must be imported (it is)
• The woman was Jewish and was escaping a kosher life on this vacation
• Pigs aren't indigenous to Hawaii (are they?) so she thinks she should have a taro pizza
• Hawaii is special in such a mysterious way that one must eat accordingly

You tell me!