Only the corrupt departments

1.

Daniel came toward us, his retired military pace not quite a march, but also not a stroll in the park, and pulled out his ear buds. "Do you know what Gene Hackman's very first film was?" he asked. No. "Lilith!" I pulled an envelope out of my pocket to show him; I'd found it near the sign at the entrance. It was closed, but one side had a big heart scrawled on it, and words of love (and "even like") for "Papa." The impress of a boot was over it, but not strong enough to interfere with the sentiment. The other side of the envelope bore strips of post-it notes with asemic writing on them. The envelope was glued shut. Dan said he'd take the envelope to the desk. He ended with a joke about a woman and her carberator.

 

2.

At the Temple, Lilith and I peered around the closed-looking ticket shack, painted maroon like the temple. There were two men in the shack, the one who sits and watches cars (likely to fend off thieves) and another who sat at the desk. "No Uncle John?" I asked. "He's got the day off," said the first man. "Only works here on weekends." I said I know that he has a FEMA job during the week and I worry about his job. "Oh, he works for DoD," said the second man, glaring at me. "No need to worry." "But so many people are getting fired," I said. "Only in the crooked departments," he said. "They're people with families and bills to pay." "They work in the crooked departments," he repeated. "You're wrong," I opined. "OK, if you say so."

 

2.5

Lilith and I marched into the parking lot, between huge buses disgorging tourists and the rental cars that ferried others in. A couple was releasing their two Aussie sheepdogs from a car. "I like your hat!" said the tall man. Cardinals fan.

 

The purposeful walker

The purposeful walker and I have exchanged more syllables than words over the past few years. There was for a time an old dog, and a husband who walked the dog while his purposeful wife strode through the cemetery. She wears ear buds, listens to podcasts (I suspect), has a silver cross around her neck. Always leans over to scratch Lilith and offer her a good word (almost as good as a treat). Then off she goes. But today, she stopped, took our her earbuds, took the card advertising my book, inquired about the protest at the capitol a week ago. Her brother had worked in the embassy in Baghdad with the military. He'd told her about all the waste and fraud. She thinks of that now, but also thinks of the way Kamehameha Schools got "reformed," when "Mrs. Lindsey" fired so many staff members. "They got no respect," she said, "and people need that. They need their dignity." She'd worked at Kamehameha in HR, she said, a sheepish look on her face. Couldn't do anything about orders from above, but they could help people leave with dignity. And now social security and medicare. She's worried. Her husband's more hard-line, but she's thinking about her grand baby. What will happen there? Will they need to home school her, what with all the DOE cuts? "I'm Susan," I said. "I'm Janice," she said.

 

Protest in Waikiki

 

Protesting in Waikiki. A woman in a blue Punahou shirt standing on a hill in front of the beach, thrusting two third fingers at us and yelling. A woman who asks to have her photo taken, because she "disagrees with everything we're doing." A friend who goes ballistic on the trump supporting couple that attends all these protests. She carries a sign that reads, "talk to me, I'm friendly." When the police intervene, they cross the street to fly their trump flag. One policeman strides toward us. "I know that dog!" he exclaims. He's a neighbor, one who supported Trump. But he gives good advice on how to better attach Lilith's sign, which keeps sliding out of place. A young man handing out Socialist bumper stickers from a tray rather like a cocktail waiter, who asks if I taught English at UH. Says he was in a 200-level class of mine in 2007. Doesn't remember much about the class or my name, but does recall that we talked about Marcus Garvey and I grilled him about reggae music, which he loved. I did remember that kid! He lives in Seattle now. Lots of thumbs up from tourists, along with the "they're f-ing idiots" from others. I like marching through Waikiki, because it's where Ohio meets the Pacific in the midst of capitalism's dark splendor. We stopped at Tesla for a few minutes. I had to take off Lilith's DOGE (with E crossed out) sandwich boards because they kept falling down.

In the dark days

"That was another part of my life," he said, then paused. He'd just said he wanted to donate to Lilith's and my walk to prevent suicide. Two or three steps later he said he'd been in El Salvador "during the bad times," teaching three young women how to make latrines for their village. He'd left for a weekend. When he came back, they'd "Jim Jones'ed themselves." The army had come to the village and raped all the women.

Lilith manbarks

Lilith went manbarking today. Up at the top of the cemetery, a man waved us away, wanting to park where we were standing, as I talked to a fellow walker. (It's not as if there weren't miles of parking available.) When we got back from the top, he was putting trash into a container many yards away from his car. He smiled when he saw Lilith, This man with short-cropped gray hair and a sports jersey whose provenance I didn't recognize smiled at Lily. Moved to pet her. She barked. Tried again. Barked again. I told him she sometimes does this to men, though not always. Farther down the hill, we saw the man in black wellies who used to work at the cemetery and is somehow still there on Sundays. He greeted Lilith, who barked at him. Tried again. Barked again.

 

What is it that makes a Lilith walk? This is not one, really. I can't leave out part of the narrative, because that would require me to know what I was leaving out. I'm Lilith's narrative animal; she walks, and I write. But her first year or so is a mystery to me, perhaps to her as well. I imagine she's barking out of that first year of experience, the one I can't write about. But that's presumption on my part. A Lilith walk story needs a turn, a volta (as it were), a haiku-like surprise at the end. This one, insofar as it is story, has none of that. It's a mystery story without the evidence necessary to prove the case. I'm a detective with no looking glass, no fingerprints, nothing but my ears. She barked.

 

Back at the guard shack, Uncle K leaned over to pet Lilith. She was happy to let him.

 

Name into verb

The mortician, Paul, dressed in dull blue scrubs, said he's really tired, they all are. I asked if a lot of people die this time of year. He said yes, they've been partying since Halloween, poisoning themselves, and "the chronic illnesses just drop." I handed him a card advertising _More Lilith Walks_ and told him he was in it. Thanked him. Said that Lilith and I are walking this month for suicide prevention. "I guess you get some of those, too," I said. He nodded slowly. "I'm afraid the rate will go up now," I said, "what with people losing their jobs." He agreed. It's not just jobs and the country, he said, but the world. "I'll have to look into that book," he said.

 

Along the way, S drove by in his John Deere cart. Raised his thumb high. We also ran into the tour bus driver who wears Kansas Chiefs gear, including a #15 jersey. I looked into his bus, said "I guess Jalen Hurts."

A member of the resistance

"I like your shirt!" said a woman with ehu-colored hair, about my age. This month, I wear suicide prevention teeshirts, but those were stinky, so I'd pulled on a psychedelic Harris/Walz shirt. She proved to be something of a despairing optimist, had taken on three issues, all of which are personal to her. Autism, education, trans-rights. She'd worked toward a ph.d. in American Studies at UHM in the 1990s before her marriage broke up and she moved to the mainland, where she worked in seven Barnes and Noble stores. She'd organized the opening of the Kahala Mall branch back in the day, and had also worked at the Ala Moana store. After a while, we exchanged phone numbers and agreed to stay in touch. "Keep wearing your shirt," she said. It's important. I have no idea if this is a Lilith story or not, but it mattered.

ICE cold

"It feels like 9/11 every day," I said to a like-minded walking friend, retired airplane mechanic, today. "I figured out what happened to the plane in Philadelphia," he said, out of the blue (I thought). "It was ICE." "Because the passengers were from Mexico?" I asked. "No, because it was so cold out." He was talking about ice.

 

Whose land is our land?

Lilith and I ran into S. getting out his John Deere cart, holding a flag. He was about to put it up the pole at the cemetery. Spotting me, he said, proudly: "Trump claims this land!" "I think you mean Kamehameha," I said, noting that the flag was Hawaiian (or at least the state flag).

 

"Do you know this guy?" I asked Uncle John, showing him the photo of the MAGA supporter who repeatedly yelled "You're a shit!" at me the other day. "I had a bad encounter with him over his cap." "No," said John, "and we don't condone that behavior. Everyone has a right to their opinion. America will gain prominence again!" That last to get my goat. I have so many of them, and John knows them well.

 

I told him that Lilith and I are walking 50 miles this month in support of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention). "Oh, he said, it's been a thing for a very long time on this side of the island, all the way to Kahuku. I've had friends who killed themselves, and I was there once." His daughter's boyfriend's dad recently killed himself. "No one suspected a thing, because he was so happy, so outgoing, would do anything in the community." I asked him to refer people to 988, the suicide prevention hotline. He knew it already.

 

Lilith and I logged 3.1 miles today.

Lilith and the man in the MAGA cap

I leaned over to take photographs of a broken monitor with leaves scattered on it. The man who'd just gotten out of a van came toward Lilith and me, saying "it can probably be fixed," though he changed his mind when he saw it. He was a Hawaiian man, carrying a guitar case on his back, wearing an Inauguration 2025 MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN cap. I said I was sorry to see his cap, as Trump is leading us to ruin. 

 

"Oh no! Biden's one socialist. They're communists! The media doesn't report that the last election was stolen." He put his face in mine and yelled obscenities. I called him on calling liberals "pussies." He looked and pointed at the relevant point of me, said "women have them." I said that if you use the word as an insult, you're being misogynist. "I can't use the N word, but a Black person can," I said. "I call a N----- a N-------, because that's what they call me!" 

 

We walked to the Hui Iwa crosswalk across Kahekili; we were both crossing, and the light was against us. He started yelling at me about my privilege (he's got that right) and my living in a fucking castle and how I don't know anything. He gets his information on the internet, he said. I asked where. "RUMBLE." He's going to put his podcast there. I said I would look for it. He started to walk into the highway and I cautioned him, as the traffic was going by. "I take care of MYSELF," he said.

"There are all these people on the streets," he said, "poor," and said Biden had never talked to a homeless person. His son was convicted. He pardoned him. I asked if Trump had talked to homeless people. Oh yes, he saved some of them. I told him I'd had a grandfather who was homeless. "That's your grandfather, not you. You're shit."

 

"I bet you don't believe in God, do you?" he demanded. "I'm a Buddhist," said. "I knew it!" As Lilith and I continued up Hui Iwa, he turned up Kahekili toward the cemetery. I could still hear him yelling. "You're shit!" 

 

At the light, I asked if he heard himself. At the light, I asked myself the same question. I had yelled back.

 

Lilith looks for chem-trails (but it's cloudy)

 

As Lilith led me by (her) nose to the guard shack this morning, S. popped up from his seat where he often sits out of sight. "Keep your eye on the sky!" he said to me. I felt confounded. Say, what? "Keep your eye on the sky," he repeated. "What am I supposed to see?" I asked. "Chemtrails," was his answer. Big streaks across the sky--"you haven't seen them?"--that don't disappear but get bigger. He held out his hands as if holding a large balloon. "Elon Musk's rocket?" "No, that's such a fake." He laughed at Musk's "backward rockets."

 

He was surprised I hadn't seen the trails. "You're one of the most observant people," he said, "holding up an imagined camera." I assured him I hadn't seen them. "Having a hard time breathing lately?" he asked. Yes, from the vog. He gave me a sideways look. "My mother-in-law can't function when there's vog," I add, but when there isn't any, she's as lively as they come. His side-eye was so wide I saw his profile.

 

These days, Trump gets folded into the grand theory. "There are four Trumps, you know." I said I do know that there's more than one Melania. Well, S doesn't pay much attention to her. And there are SIX Bidens. "Have you seen the Biden who's 6'6"?!" He repeated yesterday's news that Musk now appears taller than Trump in photographs, though he isn't in real life.

 

I muttered something about Monday, about all the billionaires at the inauguration. S. noted that I don't seem to trust Musk, though he didn't buy my suggestion that Musk wants our money. That's just the start, he said, as Lilith and I headed up the hill. From behind me I heard, "You're making progress!"

 

Up the hill I ran into K, snuck a picture of him weed whacking (I love the way workers resemble monks in their protective outfits). To his, "how you, aunty?" I responded that I'd been fine until I heard more conspiracy theories from S. K. said he enjoys the theories. But he held his head like a a balloon, and then showed it exploding.

Who's a lunatic?

 

S--who told me yesterday about the Cabal--was driving off in his John Deere vehicle. A younger man was sitting in the guard shack. "Don't believe anything S tells you," I said. "I don't believe anything anyone says," he responded. This set me back on my heels a bit. "His ideas are lunatic," I said. He looked me in the eye, said, "and your ideas?"

 

It gets harder to write from inside the moment, when the moment itself seems infected.

Trump gets folded into conspiracy theories

Lilith made a bee line toward the guard shack at the cemetery. There's sometimes a chicken there, amid the rows of cut flowers in their plastic bonnets. I saw S. at the other end of the shack, said, "how do you like President Musk and the billionaires?" Oh Musk's not a real billionaire, he said; a fake. "They're just swapping Trump out the way they swapped out Biden," he continued. "Trump is 6'4 and Musk is 6'2" but in recent photos, Musk is taller." 

 

"Who are they?" I asked. THEM, he responded. The cabal. "What cabal?" I asked. He couldn't say. "You know," I said, "Steve Bannon is a racist's racist, and now he's accusing Musk of being racist." "Oh, Bannon was never in prison," S said. "He came out of prison with a deep tan, you know." (I pointed out that there are tanning salons in NYC.) "And the January 6 guys were never in prison, either."

 

"I don't believe you!" I said. "Because you . . . " but Lilith pulled me toward the exit, past heaps of old Christmas ornaments out for trash pick-up.

Revised mortician vignette

"Where's your aria this morning?" I asked the singing mortician as he leaned out of his red car in his dull scrubs to put on his new and very white tennis shoes. To be fair, he only sang once that I heard, and that was to test the valley's acoustics. Tariffs came up. Then "it's in the prophecy; man's rule is going to end. It's larger than people," he said. Didn't answer my question about what comes next, though I agreed with him that civilization might be ending. (See _Life After Doom_.) In general chemistry, he'd wondered why they were learning about other people's theorems; why was he paying for that? He's just paid $800 for new tires, but they came with "free" road service and tire rotation.

 

"EMTs used to be able to tell a person's condition by look and by feel; now they need their cell phones for everything." He wandered into a story about a young man in the back of a limousine during a wedding who offered to share the music from his phone. No one heard it. Turns out he had his headphones on. When he was an EMT, the mortician said, they were sent to Florida to learn reflexology; you can tell so much by examining someone's feet. As he pointed to his red Mercedes, he noted how much people get caught up in their things. Nothing matters during an emergency. Doesn't matter who you are.

 

One evening in NYC they picked up a homeless guy and then a judge, who was in cardiac arrest. There they were, next to each other in the ER, and the homeless guy had been there so much he knew exactly what treatment he needed. The judge died. All that training, the mortician exclaimed, and he died next to a homeless man. 

 

A woman called to say her baby was in distress. His team and lots of police descended on the building where the elevator wasn't working. So they climbed lots of steps, got past the mother, looked in all the rooms. "Where's the baby?" It was her son, as big as the mortician, he said, seated on the couch with a tummy ache.

 

I noted that Lilith was utterly fascinated by the smells there at the top of the hill, where the chapel and the morgue are. "Lots to smell up here," he said. "Chemicals, bodies." He had his shoes on and stood up. Leaned on the roof of his car, said that he was tired. Lilith and I headed down the hill. A man was trimming the royal palms from his perch over his large equipment. Another man in a cart kept his eyes on him. A spotter, I thought.

The singing mortician talks life and death

"Where's your aria this morning?" I asked the singing mortician as he leaned out of his red car in his dull scrubs to put on his new and very white tennis shoes. To be fair, he only sang once that I heard, and that was to test the valley's acoustics. Tariffs came up. Then "it's in the prophecy; man's rule is going to end. It's larger than people," he said. Didn't answer my question about what comes next, though I agreed with him that civilization might be ending. (See _Life After Doom_.) In general chemistry, he'd wondered why they were learning about other people's theorems; why was he paying for that? He's just paid $800 for new tires, but they came with "free" road service and tire rotation.

 

Before he became a mortician in Hawai`i, he was an EMT in New York. On one call, they picked up a homeless guy and then a judge, who was in cardiac arrest. There they were, next to each other in the ER, and the homeless guy had been there so much he knew exactly what treatment he needed. The judge died. All that training, the mortician exclaimed, and he died next to a homeless man. 

 

A woman called to say her baby was in distress. His team and lots of police descended on the building where the elevator wasn't working. So they climbed lots of steps, got past the mother, looked in all the rooms. "Where's the baby?" It was her son, as big as the mortician, he said, seated on the couch with a tummy ache.

 

He had his shoes on and stood up. Leaned on the roof of his car, said that he was tired. Lilith and I headed down the hill. A man was trimming the royals palms from his perch over his large equipment. Another man in a cart kept his eyes on him. A spotter, I thought.

 

Lilith and the little boy

"Puppy!" A little boy, dressed in a funeral suit of black and white, saw Lilith as we approached the chapel in Valley of the Temples. He was with his parents, who spoke Filipino, and an older sister. They were clearly early for the ceremony, as no one else was around. "Do you like puppies?" I asked, and approached the boy. His mother showed him how to greet a stranger dog, hand held out, still. I had to lean down over to hear him answer my question. He has a dog named Bowser. I punned, "Bowser, Wowser," and he responded, "No! Bowser!" Lilith was distracted by other smells, but I turned her around, like a small container ship, and started to pet her. The little boy joined in. "Black!" he said, noting the stripe of black fur she has on her otherwise gray back. He leaned over, hugged Lilith around the neck, and put his face down on her.

 

As Lilith and I descended the next hill--from the area where Marcos was once buried--I saw that the small family had come part way down the first hill. And then I heard the voices of friendly children hailing us.

Lilith encounters Christian nationalism

At the back of Valley of the Temples cemetery, up against the Ko`olau, the Wang monument features images of Lincoln and Washington tucked beneath a cross. On the other side of a nearly closed stone rectangle are large reliefs of the American capitol building and the white house. Inside the rectangle there are many niches behind black stone. No one seems to be buried there. Lilith and I found one of our worker friends there out front with a hose, watering grass (the pigs keep turning it up, he explained). The guy who bought the monument is 20 years old, he told me. He's married to one of the bosses, so he should know. He wanted it to be bigger than the monument for the Chinese general down the hill. The general, our friend explained, was a freedom fighter in China, anti-communist; he is beloved in his community here. Ah, see, he actually did something, I said. And he's even dead. Christian nationalism has its own rules.

 

The man who loves numbers

 

[I finished Lilith Walks 2 just before the election, but the encounters just keep coming.]

The man on the curb had moved to the sidewalk this morning, where he leaned against the wall. Coffee, cigarette pack, cell phone were in place. His hand trembled as he lit another cigarette. He wore his usual Seattle Seahawks shirt and Hawai`i board shorts. I told him my daughter works at Lumin Stadium. See, connections, he said. His mother was born in Tacoma, which is where my daughter went to college. As Lilith and I started to pull away, I stopped. "Remember you said that your twins were born on November 4," I said. "Yes." "I didn't tell you then that November 4 was the day my father died." More connections. Sometimes sad ones. He loves numbers. Looked at my shirt, which reads Nike 1972 (I have no idea where this shirt came from)." 1972. That was an important year for me," he said, tapping his knuckles against his head. "Oh yeah, I got married, he said, and then the twins came along in 1973." Sticking with numbers, I told him we watched _Beatles '64_ last night. He'd been in 8th grade, he said, and looked at my hiking boots. "You get Beatles boots den, you were cool," he said, lifting the yellow coffee cup to his mouth.

Young boys chanting

"Good morning!" yelled a boy (of 12?) at me; he was throwing a football with a friend at Ahuimanu Park. I pointed out that it was 3 p.m., and so he modulated to afternoon. As I passed by, he and his friend started yelling "Donald Trump for president!" I barked a bit, and the one boy yelled, "have a great day!" I wished him one, too. Considered turning around to talk to them. He kept his chant going. Lilith and I kept going, too.

Lilith and I walk uphill

Lilith and I didn't go to the cemetery this morning. We went uphill instead of down. As we left the cemetery yesterday, our two friends at the entry box informed us that Harris is dumb and talks in "word salad"; they said she was installed by oligarchs, having gotten no votes. (I said I voted for her for vice president, so I wasn't bothered.) And yes, we started speaking in high voices. A woman stood between us, wanting to buy flowers. Uncle John cut them for her with the paper cutter, leaving bits of color on the table and ground. The look on her face.