This will be worth it when Alzheimer's kicks in

The Obituary of Kevin and Lauren Mansolillo

The grief never goes away, I suppose, but comes and goes with varying intensity.

Yes, it’s horrible when you first hear the news; all the little fibers of hope you had ground up and consumed by that chair the doctor asks you to take a seat in. All of a sudden you’ve gone deaf and blind and feel nothing but the raging of your heart and the eruptions of your brain trying to reassemble the universe. But despite our imaginations humans are not volcanoes, we can change nothing, and so our bodies sit dead in that chair while in dreams we hurl boulders and earth until we clear a mountain pass for the dead to return through. All that returns, though, are memories, bright but fading and you scramble to close that portal of your mind, preferring to lock them in death rather than reinvent them in life. Then the tears, hot and dry.

I had never hugged my uncle until that night. I wouldn’t even sit with him in the waiting room, I just didn’t think he had a right to be there. After my father died he married my mother to help her with the three kids. By coincidence, I was reading Hamlet at the time, and could not help but notice the parallels between my life and the Danish prince. For six years I received weekly foreboding visits from my father in my dreams and lived in terror of my uncle’s intentions. Six years he lived with us and provided for us while I fantasized about dismembering him before he could give my brother an advance on his allowance in exchange for murdering me with a fork dipped in Poison Dart frog over who should get the potatoes first at the dinner table. I had many delusions, expressed in vitriolic fanaticism. And he just took it. All of my hatred, my judgements, my doubts, my blame, my insanity, he just took it, understanding that he would never be my father, his brother. He didn’t try to be either, which made me hate him even more. I despised that my King Claudius was nothing like Shakespeare’s. He wasn’t a father, but he wasn’t an enemy either. I can’t say what exactly makes a father except for a Y chromosome, but whatever it is, Bruno still has never tried to do it. At least he better not have put that Y chromosome in me, or we’ll be taking a few steps back in our relationship. Not that I’ll ever find out, really.

I’m not much for science, which I think includes heredity or genealogy or DNA testing or whatever it is you do to figure out who your biological parents are. It’s not that I’m stupid, it’s just that I’m lazy. Or at least choosy with where I focus my energies. I haven’t much of an interest in the sciences so I refuse to understand them. I could, I just choose not to. The first biology test I was ever given in high school concerned mitosis which I found to be not only invisible but far too complex of a process for 12 year olds, most of whom were still having trouble with their cursive Z’s. I decided I didn’t care for sciences of all types, accepted the D+, and never studied for a test again. There are many things that I don’t understand because I don’t care for them. 

For instance, my mother tried to force a love of music on me by driving me to piano classes twice a week as a kid but the elderly lady teaching me had a face like a crusty sock and smelled like what I now know to be turpentine. The smell was so foul that I covered my nose with my shirt while I played which made seeing the keys exceedingly difficult. She thought I was cute. I thought she was heinous and did not care for her. She still haunts my ears and nose when I see live music or attempt to play an instrument myself so I avoid music pathologically.

I had a dog once, too, but he bit the hand that fed him. Mine. Beyond the insubordination I was baffled and offended by an idiom being so literally enacted. It really wasn’t more than a nip, it didn’t even draw blood, but I hated that animal for putting his teeth on me so I went to the kitchen and sliced my index finger with a butcher’s knife to make the bite look more vicious. The scar is still there, actually, I nearly cut myself to the bone in my childish incompetence. I rinsed the knife and left it in the sink. “Vernon!” “Vernon!” I beckoned just loud enough for only him to hear, and into the kitchen he trotted, tongue lolling and tail wagging, expecting another treat out of my hand, or maybe the hand itself. I squeezed the dripping blood on to his salivating lip and let him lick the rest of it. I felt no pain, just the prescient joy of knowing I would never have to endure a pet bite again.

I began to feel woozy from the blood and saliva mixing inside my finger, a perfect state to be found in. Screaming with a great burst of imagined fear and fury, I lured my mother to the kitchen where she found me rolling on the floor in elevating agony and the terrified dog cowering in the corner, unsure why I was shrieking. As my vision faded I saw my mother’s eyes put the pieces together precisely the way I wanted them to.

When I woke up, I was lying on the leather couch in the living room with a Zip-Loc bag of ice on my head and Bruno taping a pad of gauze to my finger. My father wasn’t dead then, but Bruno had always been a small part of my life. The way my mother told me was that father was stuck at work and couldn’t come help me. Bruno was in the area, she said, and came over to bandage me because she hated blood and had to get the dog out of the house. She wasn’t lying about the second part, but I don’t believe that Bruno was in the area. My father did. But I didn’t understand how he could arrive so quickly that the blood was still pulsing fresh into the bandage when I awoke. I think he was fucking my mother even then. Of course, at the time, I didn’t know what fucking was, I was only seven or eight years old. Yes, seven, mother wasn’t even pregnant with Abby yet. I was old enough to wonder why it was Bruno and not my father who looked me in the eye with great suspicion and asked how I came by that cut. I told him Vernon bit my finger when I tried to scratch his chin. He really zeroed in on that spot, said Bruno, or something like that. I could tell he thought I was lying, and that worried me, so I went back to crying and screaming about how much it hurt and how much I hated that dog. Crying always got rid of Bruno, who went to the kitchen and picked the butcher’s knife up out of the sink. He rubbed it somberly with a dish rag and looked at me as he muttered, poor dog, poor dog just loud enough for only me to hear.

It was that memory that came to me in the waiting room as I gazed through burning tears at Bruno and Abby locked in a gushing embrace across the magazines and valley of floor tiles. I remembered how he had let me get rid of the dog. How he had accepted that I’d rather mutilate myself than to face victimhood again. Vernon was just one of the many instances in my life where I chose to evade rather than face a problem. Science classes, music, women, animals; I forced a mundane comfort into my life by avoiding challenge and pain. Bruno knew this about me and permitted it because he knew it was a father’s role to change these things, but that’s not what he was to me. 

When Kevin and mother died, I discovered how I truly was, and recognized the pathetic way I had led my life, devoid of trial, of passion, of love. I had been a poor son to mother, a poor brother to Kevin and Abby, and unable to accept my uncle into my family. Choking on my hemorrhaging pride and the bile of emotion streaming from my eyes back into my throat, I crossed the valley of floor tiles into the open arms of my only remaining family. And then I did what I felt was the only way I could pay back the deceased.

Of the few things I consider myself good at, I believe writing to be the only one that approaches excellence. Speaking to people is not easy for me; I lack trust and patience, I have difficulty expressing just one thought at once and, as I’ve previously explained, I put no effort into things I do not care about. Ninety percent of conversation is banal, contrived, and carried out for no greater purpose than mutual self-indulgence. People just like hearing their own voices and their own opinions so they spit them out at the rubber walls we call listeners, or conversation partners. Writing, in my mind, subverts those disinterested, unreceptive walls because a reader must actually choose to look at the information before them. Rather than just smile, nod, and think “what a fool this person is, I wish he would close his fat mouth,” a reader may ingest words, roll them around the pallet a bit, decide whether these words are agreeable or not and then decide to spit or swallow. The conversation may end at any point at one party’s choosing without being rude or inviting a look of shock or hurt. Through my observations of my mother’s relationship with Bruno that it is very important to not invite looks of shock or hurt for they lead to loud snoring on the couch in the living room which keeps me awake for hours. If my mother and Bruno conversed in writing I likely would have never experienced the guttural suffering of a congested moose that is Bruno’s snoring. Writing, in other words, resolves conflicts by avoiding conflicts. At least in my life. And so my way of honoring my deceased brother and mother, after years of neglecting them and mere weeks bonding with them, was to avoid the funeral entirely, but write the obituary.

However, an obituary, it turns out, is really just another beginning. In publicly announcing the end, you stretch the open wound and the grief pours in. I wrote a very engaging obituary. Well, graphic, honestly because I wanted to dispense glory to my family’s deaths. In retrospect, the descriptions of indented skulls and showers of premature blood did more to stoke mockery and psychiatric evaluations than they did to heroize the crash. Again, hindsight being twenty-twenty, I should have waited until Bruno’s conversation with the killer, but I had no way of knowing that that would ever happen. The man simply vanished for a time after the crash. My account was overly-fictionalized, and probably should not have been published, but I was still tender from the loss and committed to a selfish glorification and somebody at the newspaper seemed to like that. I think a part of me actually thought someone would read it and be impressed. Which I suppose isn’t entirely farfetched because you came to us didn’t you?

But you were not the only one who reached out. There was kindness. Cards, flowers, small sums of money arrived from all over the country with fond memories of my mother. She was a very popular woman, apparently, who traveled a fair bit in her youth. I never knew that she had lived in seven different states growing up. I never met my grandparents and so I never asked about them, but through the outpourings of paper love I discovered that my grandfather was in the Air Force and dropped bombs in Germany and Korea. He moved his family, which was just my grandmother and my mother, to different bases and my mother had made quite a lot of good friends. Not good enough to ever come over for dinner, but good enough to send flowers. Of course, flowers die, especially in the heart of January when nobody is home all day so for a time we were coming home to find dead flowers on the doorstep which was in considerable, unintentional poor taste. But death is an afterthought to death, it’s taken for static, past. When you send flowers to honor somebody’s death, you don’t see them die, so you believe your gesture lives in perpetuity in the gratitude of the deceased’s family. It doesn’t. It twists the knife. Just like the kind words do.

It was sad learning so much about my mother from the condolences that came after the obituary. I realized that I had spent more time aestheticizing her life than actually honoring it; I gave her new life when I should have treasured what had already been there. I didn’t because I couldn’t. I didn’t know her the way that a child should know his mother. I couldn’t tell you her favorite color, her favorite flowers, what she liked to read and where she did it, I still don’t know how she met my father, or why she married his brother after he died for that matter. For the first time in my life, I felt guilt. I had treated my family like chemistry, something that I didn’t care enough about to make any true investment.

Over the weeks following the obituary, as tangible and intangible thoughts and prayers and offers of favors dumped on to the front steps I did my best to open up. I made breakfast the morning after for Bruno and Abby but didn’t know how to work the stove so it really just consisted of milk and cereal at impeccably laid place settings. I think they appreciated the effort, though the meal was silent. Bruno literally jumped in surprise when he found me in the kitchen in the morning setting the table. I haven’t been accustomed to eating meals with the family since I dropped out of college. Which, if you must know, was after my fifth semester, and only about a month before Kevin and mother were killed. My stunted attempts to connect to my remaining family have prevented me from returning to my education or to work. Things like eating breakfast, reading letters, speaking to Bruno and Abby, and now contributing to your project here have kept me from placing my life back in order. Of course, I plan to be a writer anyway so this correspondence with you is important to honing my craft, I suppose. Like I said, the obituary was only a beginning, for grief, for family, for my own vision. My life is on a new path thanks to this project you’re doing, and I can already feel myself entering a cooperative reality more than I ever have before. I’d like to help because I must atone for the damages I’ve caused and for my absentia from the stories surrounding me.

You’re studying the deaths of Kevin and Lauren Mansolillo, right? Murders, really. Or seeking the circumstances surrounding them? Your email sounded very Truman Capote-esque, I’m looking forward to seeing how my family’s insight affects your project. We have stumbled blindly through a fairly astounding story, I must admit. I’m pleased you’re eager to learn it. The start, I think, is at the Krispy Kreme on Meldoorn St. in Waldorf, MA.

Today I looked fear in the eye, and I think it got the best of me.

Sundays are lazy on the farm. Often there are few people around, as groups slowly trickle back in from weekend excursions. There’s no time to go anywhere, really, except close spots.

This Sunday I—and all the Obies—felt a little stir crazy. The farm can be incredibly boring at times, and Sharon, Melissa, and Matt planned a trip to Honoka’a for groceries and time-killing. This, I must admit was sensitive as they didn’t let me know of their plan until they were sure there would be space for me to come along.

I decided I  didn’t need their pity and instead hitched up the hill to Kalopa State Park with a couple of Zak’s friends who told me of the plantation tradition in the Honoka’a region that existed up until about twenty years ago. I hadn’t thought of the land’s history in such recent terms and was astonished to learn that the area’s farms used to house thousands of resident sharecroppers in tent cities. It was a hereditary, self-perpetuating industry that took far too long to break up. The idea of essential Hoovervilles running along the Big Island was perturbing, and put the Hawaiians’ distaste of Capitalism into perspective.

When we got to Kalopa, Charles, the driver, mentioned that the park had “tons of trails” and I could be occupied all day. Looking at a map, however, I found only two trails. One ran along a gulch on the western side of the park, with a few branches back to the main road. The other was a much longer horse trail that ran along the eastern perimeter.

I took the gulch trail, expecting to find a viewpoint where I could read and write for a little. This proved to be a vain hope, as the trail was narrow and crudely carved between trees and never opened wider than a few feet. I amended my plan, deciding to pick up the horse trail and complete the three and a half mile perimeter of the park.

Walking along the horse trail, listening to music, I suddenly heard a deep, steady panting, like someone hyperventilating. I took off my headphones and it got louder, closer. Around the bend ahead, a big yellow dog trudges, barely able to keep his feet, but determined to avoid me. He was wearing a strange collar. It was gray and padded like a neck brace; a black strap with an antennaed box was wrapped around the outside. The box was black and had a blinking red dot like a homing device or a bomb. He dodged off the trail and I tried to follow, holding my water bottle out to him. He was more adept off the path than I and I soon lost him and regretfully turned to seek out the trail. By the time I found it, it was 3:30, about three hours until dark, and I knew I had to get moving if I was to read at the park’s picnic area.

I continued along the trail for about half an hour until it split into three, none of which were on my map. Frustrated, and not willing to guess in a strange place, I decided to turn back the way I came.

About a mile along the way I exchanged pleasantries with some bikers, the first people I had seen since entering the park, and turned down a trail.

At 4:15 I was positive I was in new territory, and had been so for at least a mile. It was an hour and fifteen minutes until dark and I was at least two and a half miles from the nearest road, wherever it may have been. For the next fifteen minutes I took ground and subsequently turned back, not sure which the better decision was. During a pause when I debated whether taking the new trail because all trails must lead somewhere or retracing my steps to determine where I had messed up, two more suffering dogs came staggering down the trail.

They were English setters, identical up to the pockmark on their noses, and they were both wearing the same collar as the earlier dog.

The first things that popped into my head were the twins from “The Shining” and I stared at the dogs, petrified. Dogs are not allowed in the park, these dogs were not with people and, from the look of it, they had been lost for days. They began to pick up speed towards me and I immediately ran in the opposite direction. I began yelling for help, convinced the dogs were a horrifying omen from the island to get out of the park or die of dehydration. I called Melissa but her phone was off. The thoughts of spending the night in the park set in.

I stopped running when I couldn’t breathe anymore and turned around to see the dogs standing, staring at me from about 150 feet down the trail. The thoughts of never seeing the mainland again set in. The dogs glared at me for a few moments and then, as if I had left their jurisdiction, turned and reluctantly hobbled away.

I breathed a sigh of relief but was possessed the rest of the trip back. I managed to find my mistake: in my haste to get past the bikers I had failed to see the proper trail marker behind one of them, and taken off down the wrong path.

The whole way back along the gulch I heard barks coming from hundreds of feet down below. Dozens of different barks, coming from a depression where I knew no four legged animal could possibly access, let alone survive. Reaching the road at 6:00 felt like finding paradise. Sweet psychological paradise.

I only saw three humans the whole time I was in the park, and never in proximity to all of these dogs I saw and heard. When I passed one lady on the way back, I realized that I hadn’t heard any barking for a minute or two prior. A minute after I passed her, the barking resumed.

I can’t stop thinking about where they all came from. And whether they’re spending the night in there. And if they’ll live through it without water.

Sort of a dramatic way to leave off, huh?

Nobody could give a flawless explanation of the dogs. AJ, the Canadian, had the best guess; that local farmers used similar-looking proximity collars to allow their dogs to roam. But that doesn’t explain how they got into the fenced park, or why they were famished—unless there’s a hole I didn’t notice and an abundance of cruel farmers. But how can anyone ever explain a haunting? They’re not supposed to add up.

The dogs are neither here nor there now; it’s January 28 and I’m sitting outside security at the restaurant-less Kona International Airport with eight hours and 45 minutes until boarding. American Airlines’ only flight today is the one I’m on so I can’t even check my fully loaded, 47 lb. duffel until 7:15. To top it off, I’ve got diarrhea like you wouldn’t believe, so I keep lugging my stuff from this uncomfortable stone bench to the cramped toilet stall. It will be a long day.

Which means I have a little time to catch up on reading and writing. This past week has been so exceedingly boring that I haven’t been able to bring myself to jot anything down. Even now I can’t determine what’s worth noting. The biggest events were falling out of a moving truck and puking all over the warehouse lawn the following morning. True highlights of the trip.

People watching at the airport is entertaining enough, though, especially after three weeks of seclusion from what increasingly feels like the “real” world. Tourists really do stick out when you’re at an airport. Not just because of Hawaiian shirts—those certainly don’t help—but because of the air of superior indifference they carry with them. Hawaiians are perpetually mesmerized and responsive to their incredible environment. They continuously beam with appreciation and reach out to anyone who might share their love, whether that be by picking up a hitchhiker or by striking up a random conversation on the beach like my new friend, Jay. They are aware that there are forces far greater than themselves at work in the islands and they seek to engage them naturally and respectfully. Golf isn’t really a Hawaiian thing.

Tourists look like they’re privileged enough to go on vacation to an exotic land. And they know it, the way they load golf clubs and the kids’ snorkels into their sporty rental cars and zoom off with a big, vapid smile.

While I may not quite be a hali (Hawaiian term for white people that translates as ‘one with no soul’), I certainly don’t feel the same connection with the land that Hawaiians and my fellow farmers do. Many people claim to find themselves on trips like these, but I only ever felt lost and out of place. Shame and guilt follow as I see the signs for horse and ATV rides that I know are only there to appease the imperialist nature of my people.

I’ve seen far more than the average tourist and I haven’t even spent $100. My experience should be the norm, but the Capitalist system connotes productivity and expenditure. Hawaiians take tourists’ money and show them the sights, but know that these people will never feel the island like they do. The islands themselves are a treasure that foreigners (including Americans) can only ever half-appreciate and it’s tragic how the drive to see the exotic is exploited.

But then again, statehood gives Hawaiians a key to the rest of the world and allows the 4th of July, and the Super Bowl, and other fun American novelties to permeate the culture. It absorbs the island in a giving way, naive of what it takes or perverts.

Though, hell, if it wasn’t the United States some other foreign power would probably take it anyway, so maybe it’s not such a bad thing. It could be worse.

Mixed feelings have been common on this trip. A week ago I couldn’t wait for today. Now I feel like I could spend another month or two on the farm. Sure, basically everybody is totally loony, but they’re good people, and the island’s beauty and power is humbling. It hasn’t been such a bad lifestyle, sharing food with twenty people, showering weekly, and living in a tent. Still, it will be nice to sleep in a bed again and rejoin the world of structure.

It’s 5:00 PM on a Wednesday which means the weekend started an hour and a half ago. It has also been about a week since arrival and my comfort level has been as inconsistent as a narcoleptic. Which is sort of the way I feel, actually. I haven’t ever really felt fully awake since I got here. It might be the new, early to bed, early to rise sleep schedule, or, more likely, it’s the religious ganja indulgence. (Don’t call it weed because weeds are bad.) Each break, occurring at 9:30, 12, and 1:30 is a stoned, exhausted food grab and smoke-up. Some are more fun than others, and are entirely subject to my mood at the time.

It’s always the same casual talk about work, bugs, drugs, or Hawaii’s sacredness, and the atmosphere is light and laid back. I still can’t seem to talk to anybody during breaks, though. When I’m tired, hungry, and high I am generally less gregarious, but apparently the close proximity of new people has tripled this usually mild handicap I call Stevie syndrome. As such, I spoke not a word at work today as I increasingly became aware of my silence and consequently sank further into myself.

Melissa and Sharon have made friends, though, which now means they want to stay on the farm this weekend. An hour ago I was considering going to Volcanoes National Park alone just to get away for awhile, but after drinking a beer and loosening up a little bit by talking to—who would have guessed it—Eric, I’m not terribly upset about sticking around for a bit. It at least avoids a lonely and expensive trip to Safeway.

I think the Green Sand Beach is on the docket for tomorrow.

This weekend alone could write a novel. I’m going to do my best to explain this, but I’m not sure about a lot of things right now.

Nine people and a dog piled themselves and their weekend luggage into an unregistered, uninsured, barely running pick-up on a Thursday afternoon. After a quick stop at Blane’s Burgers they shortly made another stop at Enterprise to rectify the space issue. Enterprise had no cars, but Eli ran into a friend and decided to run off to his house with the dog.

With more room in the back, the drive to South Point passed more comfortably and we arrived at the southernmost point in the United States with only mild cramps.

After taking a quick jump off the 60-foot cliff, we loaded back into the car and drove to make camp at a field just inside a quiet cove.

The night passed, talking of the universality of beings, their inherent slavery and, of course, the impending Revolution. Melissa, Sharon, Matt, and I actually spoke honestly for once. Nobody really wanted to argue humanity’s oneness because it’s so core to our new friends’ value systems, but Melissa called reincarnation into question, startling Max and Jesiah who had taken this belief for universally granted. The Revolution—which consists of a simultaneous, worldwide elevation of consciousness to the plane of united existence, whereby disarming and revising the world’s governments and economies—was discussed at least into rational terms. There’s a lot to pick at that one, but it’s frustrating and invasive trying to make an obstinate person see your way, and everyone I’ve met here is more obstinate and positive of life’s meaning than the previous. I’m glad they’re happy, I just don’t think remotely like them. It makes conversation difficult sometimes.

Anyways, we made it to the Green Sand Beach today. Simply put, it was amazing. A volcanic, dusty plain breaks without warning into a deep, oceanside gulch between sandstone cliffs that house positively emerald green sand. Beautiful weather and water made the beach the most lovely I’ve ever seen.

Instead of returning to the farm, however, we are sleeping at Eli’s friend, Enoch’s house in Ocean View—which is actually a former Native American church that Enoch has picked up as a neighborhood mediation center. “People come to find themselves,” he says. I’m not convinced that he can find the deed to the place, however.

Enoch has three children, none of which live with him but with whom he feels a strong spiritual bond. One of the women he lives with also has a child but is unfortunately kept from her during this transition to Hawaii. The other woman, Tiffany, is about as exciting as a Triscuit.

After an evening of listening to America bashing, love professing, and the sweet guitar of Jesiah Love, I have retired to the back room of a building which I am not entirely sure is not being squatted in.

The last few days have been interesting. We stopped in Hilo for dinner on the way back Sunday night and KC told me something very curious. Eli, apparently, is not Eli, though he would probably tell you he is of everyone and everything so his name is not important. What is important is the reason he changed his name.

KC explained that a few months ago, Eli’s home was raided by the DEA. He went on the lam, and Zak, the farm’s owner, allowed him to become an undercover WWOOFer at Pu’u’ala while the police look aimlessly for him.

Eli buried the hidden life of Wesley Johnson—his old name—and adopted a new identity so transient WWOOFers like me won’t spill the beans. KC apparently thought I was trustworthy, or he just can’t keep a secret. I think the latter.

Obviously, I told Sharon and Melissa, and Melissa told Matt, whose presence is becoming bothersome as he tries to wiggle his way into making a constant foursome. Melissa’s sharing of this information that I procured and felt was sensitive exacerbated this frustration with the Matt situation. But it’s time wasted to go into that.

I’ve become closer with a number of people on the farm. I feel comfortable speaking up at Jesiah’s or Eli’s wild spiritual objections to every scientific fact ever produced, and actually enjoy shooting the shit at work. Once you get talking you realize you’re not as different from all these hippie folk as you previously thought.

Playing football at the beach today was another surprisingly grounding experience. Some people actually knew what they were doing, and a lot participated. Little common interests can, and must go miles here.

That can get difficult, however, when reminders of the differences come back with steam. Like when you share the bed of a speeding truck with a nude girl, dancing and spontaneously laughing at the full moon. She was seeing something she liked, I guess. I’m just not sure I want to get naked and see the same thing.

I am exhausted again. Last Friday, Sharon, Melissa, Matt, and I hitched to Wa’i’pio Valley with full packs, ready to hike over the mountain to Waimanu Valley. It’s a narrow, crumbling 15.3 mile roundtrip that guidebooks and locals alike say takes six hours each way.

Well, we made it to Waimanu in about three and a half hours, mostly driven by my headstrong insistence on getting ahead of the group. Apparently I really don’t like talking when I hike. I always attributed hike silence to being around my family, but I guess I’m the same way with friends.

After a grueling trip, the stony beach at Waimanu appeared out of a thicket of dying coconut trees. The ocean was higher than at Wa’i’pio, revealing no sand, and making the land look more like a quarry than a beach. Where the rocks met the trees, a small stone walkway wheedled through ivy and ripening coconut and guava trees, opening along the path into small, sea-walled campsites. We proceeded to site number seven, a spot that rang with the sound of the powerful waves and provided a view of the waterfall that lay about a mile into the valley.

A fire proved impossible due to damp wood, so we made friends in another campsite and cooked our potatoes on their stove. “Pele willed it,” said Ana Sofia, the indigenous Hawaiian friend of Pu’u’ala, when we ran into her at a restaurant in Honoka’a on the way back the next day. She also alluded to the one truth, declared life’s illusory quality, and Hawaii’s acceptance of us as evidenced by our safe passage. She would say these things sober, I think, but I still always felt she was on mushrooms eighty percent of the time. She was another extraordinarily kind human being, though, so she can eat as many psychedelics she’d like. Ana Sofia is a fabulous example of the locals. Everyone is laid back, filled with love, and eager to help anyone who needs it. 

The man who gave us a ride back to the farm talked to us for twenty minutes on the beach before offering. All he wanted was to have a conversation, and his six year-old daughter was into the idea, too. We joked about our trip, the mainland, and pig hunting like we were all the oldest friends. It’s bizarre how connected you immediately feel to everyone you meet here. I can see why many of the folks on the farm are positive that humanity is a single entity.

My eyes burn from constantly being looked into and I find myself sympathizing with, understanding, and encouraging everyone I meet like I would myself. It just comes naturally on the island.

The other WWOOFers have started to warm up a little to us over the weekend. KC, Liz, Ashlee, Max, Jason, Jeffrey, Michael, and Ari all have been especially friendly with us transients recently. Eric has not said a word or even acknowledged any of us. Phil has been more sober but still glowers at Melissa, Sharon and me like he wishes we never came. Kaika and Eli are friendly but don’t really seek conversation.

The greatest enigma is Jesiah. Around everybody, when he is plucking his banjo and singing with his drawling voice he is effusive and light-hearted. But when the numbers are smaller or dominated by transients he separates himself to smoke and stare unblinkingly inside the warehouse, his haggard face and beard made static by thought.

Of course, I want to be friends with these hippie people, and the best way to get there—work—began today.

Being new, I’m not trusted with tying my own shoes let alone operating any form of machinery. My task today was to pull up hundreds of feet of weed mat buried under pounds of dirt and roots while Matt weedwhacked a new row to plant vanilla. We worked in an enormous, mostly overgrown field shaded by lines of Ohana trees that will someday provide the structure for scores of vanilla—an orchid. 

I got dirty, had a hell of a workout yanking up all the mat, and I think made some good headway. Matt and I, in seven hours, managed to clear one row of super-weeds and weed mat and it felt like an achievement. That was with an industrial weed-killing monster. I don’t understand how people did this with oxen and rock once upon a time.

I was exhausted, and it brought me to an understanding of why transients aren’t particularly liked. I was too tired to help with the group dinner so I decided to make my own later. This seemed to bug people. I thought it would be alright that I would just fend for myself, but it’s not really that cut and dry for transients. The five of us have done a combined eleven days of work (Matt and Peter started work last week) while consuming a quarter of the food in the past two weeks. Everyone else has been on the farm for an average of about three months. They put their entire lives into the farm, desiring to live off its gifts and learn the trade themselves. A bunch of college kids with no real interest in farming that eat their food and offer very little in return is just a nuisance. We’re an insult to their lifestyle and a burden on their home. But they still have eighteen more days of us.

Today was not yesterday in the slightest. Sharon, Melissa, and I hitchhiked to Hilo, declining the invitation from some farmers to go to Anna’s Pond, a swimming hole and waterfall. It was a friendly invitation, dispelling some of my previous discomforts, but we all needed a day to decompress and process the situation, so we went Hilo-way.

We walked along the highway, wrought with doubt, mostly instilled by the dubious chuckles of the others when we left the farm. They could tell we were all a little nervous about hitchhiking. The first ten minutes were discouraging. Some folks waved, some honked, and most ignored us until, after what seemed like miles of walking, a farmer in a rusty Chevy pick-up with a full bed pulled up beside us.

Farmer Kyle was the first man I ever hitchhiked with. He only drove us two miles, but he still managed to arrange a produce exchange between our farm and his. A true Hawaiian businessman. We forgot to mention we really weren’t authorized to make deals like that and never actually called him. Melissa probably still has his number in her phone.

After him it was Dr. Flip, driving a Toyota Corolla in his ER scrubs and apparently eager for company. He treated us like tourists, giving advice, pointing out landmarks, warning us about Leptospirosis (a real nasty stagnant water bacteria) and engaging in casual and reassuring conversation. He was a remarkably friendly man and drove us all the way up to Rainbow Falls in Hilo, which was about as exciting as a showerhead. We stayed only briefly.

After a short walk back to town we spent the rest of the day eating and sleeping on the beach in Hilo. Lunch from the farmer’s market (chicken mosobi and papaya) tasted like it was killed/picked that morning, though the pad thai dinner from a beachside restaurant tasted like hot peanut butter and raw noodles. In light of our morning nerves, the day was a resounding success. If you’ve never hitchhiked, make sure you do it in Hawaii because the chances of having your organs harvested are significantly smaller there than, say, middle America.

Over the next few days I’m going to put up my diaries from my time in Hawaii working on a kava farm. It was a damn weird time as some of you know. The story is pretty incomplete in my head, however, so I’m revisiting it as I put it up for public viewing. Oh, bear in mind that I also submitted this for Winter Term credit. Enjoy Jenny! Well, and maybe Mom, too…

January 8, 2011: Day 1

I am freaking out. I’m not sure if it’s jetlag, substance excess, or shock-induced social incompetency but I was a mess out there tonight. Just couldn’t get it going with anybody. 

After a lovely day to the oceanside cliffs that reside below the farm with the Oberlin crew—Melissa, Sharon, Peter, and Matt, whose names you will probably want to know—we returned at dusk to the warehouse weary and ready for dinner.

I’m not sure what I expected dinner to be like, but what was happening was definitely not it. Through today I have only met people sporadically since I spent the early portion napping off the travel. All these spotty introductions, I suppose, led me to forget how many people are living here because seeing everyone together in the warehouse at once sent my jaw to the floor. I thought there were like eight people; turns out the five of us make twenty-one! And thirteen of them have lived together for months! We were like a herd of elephants in black wool.

Our little Oberlin gang was forced outside because there simply wasn’t enough room in the warehouse by the time we got back. So we sat alone under the front awning and played some cards until, out of the blue, Jonnyy comes out and sits down at the picnic table. 

Jonny’s about my height, with long, greasy blonde hair that sits like a bowl on his head, and eyes so blue that, if you look at them long enough, you can see clouds in them. To this point, I know him as the baker of the farm—not exactly the confectionary kind but, hell, you know what I mean.

He starts a conversation and immediately ends cards. (Everybody is eager to make friends.) Jonny tells us he is 29 years old, and has just returned to Pu’u’ala (our farm) after living in his parents’ Mizzoula basement for the past three months. To make matters worse, his 18-year old, former meth-addict, live-in girlfriend broke up with him because of his decision to return to the Big Island. Though the girl didn’t sound quite like my type, I felt for Jonny. He’s the nicest person on the planet—so nice that I paid him an exceedingly rare compliment. He made an effort unlike any I’ve ever experienced to befriend us outsiders. He even attracted, over time, Phil—the farm’s eldest, at 50—to our table.

Phil was very, very drunk. It took him literally two minutes to walk the eight feet from the warehouse to the picnic table. He barely beat Peter—who had gone inside for a beer after Phil initially got up—to the last seat, and was not pleased when Peter tried to snake the chair from him. Melissa moved over on the bench for Phil to ease the tension, and he took the seat with a blank nod and grin at Melissa. He sat down across from me, and quickly became the scariest dude I’d ever met.

The first time I spoke around him I noticed his eyes dart towards me and stick there, like he had forgotten how to move them. Little weird, but no big deal. But soon I noticed that every time I laughed, talked, or even breathed, really, he’d focus in on me like I was Keanu and he was a damned Machine. Each subsequent time he heard me the stare got a little longer and a little more like a glare. He got in my head so much I couldn’t follow the conversation. I was terrified of offending the farm’s longest serving member on the first night and establishing an awful precedent for the next three weeks. I sat in conspicuous, gulping silence for a few minutes, trying to avoid his gaze until dinner was ready and he staggered in to eat. I stayed behind, wondering what the fuck he had been thinking while he got his food. Then I went and got mine.

I ate fast and then skedaddled to the tent on the pretense of jetlag. It was only partly true.

I felt real weird tonight. Somebody dropped the term “transients,” using it as a pejorative. I’m no Ivy Leaguer, but using my moderate deductive powers, I think we’re transients. I’m hoping it’s just a first day in a new place thing but I guess we’ll see. 

Tomorrow we’re off to the farmer’s market in Hilo, and work starts Monday.