Waikiki

The Waikiki harbor is both paradise and purgatory. 

I suppose that is just the way the life is, contradictory opposites constantly colliding to achieve balance. Could you love the light had you not known the dark? If you had not gotten lost in the valley, would you have climbed that mountain? In the absence of water, would your world burn in the flames of wildfire? Without feminine, what is masculine?

Even our order grows out of the root of chaos. So, what happens when the butterfly finally flaps its wings? Will the earth fall into the sun?

Anyway, Waikiki is a tropical vacationland, but for some reason on its shores I do not feel completely free. I have spent the past few weeks climbing volcanoes, swimming in underwater caves, surfing, hiking in jungles, touching waterfalls, and slowly fixing everything that broke on the boat during my transpacific crossing.

My list of repairs was long and daunting; leaks, broken fridge, broken engine, broken radar reflector, broken radio, broken radar reflector, ripped stack pack, torn jib sheet, shredded reef line, and a fragile mind.

For the unraveling of my mind, I had to find a way to sink myself back into the earth. I laid in the grass, buried my body in the sand, sat in rivers that eventually flowed to the sea, hugged trees, and smelled every flower I saw.

The engine had a lot of air trapped inside and a transmission leak. I had the transmission re-sealed before I left San Diego, but one of the seals was off-kilter. I was able to fix it, without pulling the transmission, by carefully working around it and pushing the seal down. The trapped air came out easily by starting the engine over and over and over and bleeding, bleeding, bleeding. I could have done it at sea, but am grateful I didn’t, I was more one with the wind without it.

I put on a new radar reflector, re-wired the radio, had the stack pack sewn back together with reinforcements, ran a new reef line, and added Freon to the fridge. When I went to fix the jib sheet, I couldn’t get my square knot out! I tried a marlin spike, teeth, knife, and all my might. I spoke to a rigger and he said, “Hell if you can’t get it out, the wind won’t be able to either.” So I just cut away the strands that dangled around the knot and made it look like a Voodoo doll. Voila, my jib sheet was fixed.

The marina in Waikiki is called Ala Wai, which means “waterway”. It has a surf break that I can walk to and luxury hotels towering all around it, but it is stifling to work in. Sure it rains there, but there is not enough water falling from the sky to wash the piss off the grass. And it’s so hot you could fry an egg. I found out some of my neighbors are cooking more than eggs, they’re cooking crystal meth. Last weekend one of the cooks robbed a couple on the dock next to me. 

Then, just today, someone leaving one of the boats said, “Sell that shit quick, I’ll be back in a bit with McDonald’s.” Then another one called out, “You left us the strainer right? We still need it.” 

I have seen people leave that boat with drooping eyes of glass and doubt they’re over there making pasta with that strainer. 

I wish I could take the lost souls that surround me and sing a song that shattered their confusion and left them in the afterglow of peace.