Groundwork

It’s been a while since I’d skipped rocks on any substantial body of water, and it showed as I struggled to get much of anything across Hilo Bay. But as my shoulder flared it occurred to me that rocks can teach you a thing or two about what it means to be an upstanding member of a society.

Getting hit in the head by a rock teaches you to work on your agility, and that standing your ground can be a painful process.

Maybe it’s not that simple…

With little else to do but let my mind roam free in the face of next-to-no-business at the Lomilomi tent for the first annual Hilo Bay BBQ Team Cook Off I tore through an autographed copy of the Bikram guide to yoga which had been left to me as a parting gift from my previous life as a semi-unwilling gigolo.

This was a “Will work for food” engagement in a somewhat tainted sense of the term. There would be a bill attached to my services, but half of the contract stipulated that I be allowed to consume all the grass-fed beef, chicken, pork-butt, rib tips, corn, kalo, uala and lau lau I could pack away for the duration of the event which went down between 9am July 3rd and 4pm on the 4th.

Bay-front Hilo has lost some of its spectator glimmer at least in the eyes of the locals since camping out at the bandstand has been outlawed by the Gestapo, and burning of over-the-counter ordnance in the public parks mercilessly cracked down upon. But the cops left me to myself for the most part after they walked by the tent as I crackle-popped the cervical vertebrae of a dirty redneck refugee of Guam—a victim of a malady I can’t pronounce he blamed on military-based side effects of either nuclear testing or Vietnam—with my bare hands. It was hot and I don’t remember the details.

It’s the rocky and treacherous sound of moving bones and joints that inspires fear and/or awe in the hearts of people. It’s the common dread of personal paralysis I think. Though as always I was there to do a job and as a genuine professional, I was not there to prey on public fear. I was there to prey on pain. Though after this dry run, it seems that bodywork and barbecue may be mutually exclusive as I only worked on four people over the entire event including a huge pregnant haole woman who saw my table and tackled me as I was heading off for the day.

Even the Team, “From Hawai`i,” who had commissioned me in the first place only sent their leader Joe to me. My work—as ever—was flawless, but as I sat there hour after hour, thumbing through the gospel according to Bikram, and a spinnakered galleon fired empty mortar blasts from the bay building up to the 8pm pyrotechnics, I took a minute to wonder if my own negativity was influencing business.

This is a foreign thought process to me for the most part, but I have been depressed. And the Kohala coast was the last know sighting of my dignity which vanished rapidly at the end of one of those long weekends you might see in a romance film where the girl has to make a choice after being told that the boy didn’t put his life on hold, jump on a plane and hitch-hike up the Queen K just to crash her hotel room and sip Tropical Itches poolside.

There is a great deal of rock between Hilo and Kohala. Massive jagged peaks and valleys full, and raging streams of smooth volcanic afterbirth which I hoped—along with the petrifying amount of meat and kalo(and maybe even Bikram) might serve to strengthen me, my head, my heart and whatever else is kicking around my insides these days.

The Lomi deal was contingent on me finding a suitable place to stay as “From Hawai`i” would be camped out at ground zero for the duration; no place for a working journalist trying to maintain top physical health for a grueling schedule of four customers. No mere parking lot would do.

Fortunately for all involved—the four customers, The Team, various onlookers, etc—I had a standing invitation to visit the Enocencio clan, sturdy Hiloians and militant Mormons firmly dug into the landscape like the double fist-sized kalo they farm from the ground 100 pounds at a time amid the goats, chickens, pigs and constant threat of foreign invasion.

They take the kids direct from Alu Like right out of the projects and toss them headlong into the fields, forging a hybrid respect for labor and authority with a god-fearing Latter Day Saint. With the debut of Michael Bay’s spin on Transformers looming on the July 4th horizon, the kids were begging to be released from lo`i duty to which their master “Mr. James” replied with a dismissive grin, “I think you’ll have plenty of fun. You’re going to transform taro into poi!”

This is tough-love Hilo style circa 2007. That awareness of earning every scrap of food, water, clothing, pride and self. And every mixed moment of humor and pitiless resolve that you might not recognize for what it is until much much later that has carved—at least in this case—a family in stone.

While Bikram is preaching his backward bends, these people are perpetually going forward, pulling roots from the soil, harvesting and epitomizing the true heart of “busting ass” and “living off the land.” If the millionaire yoga guru showed up in Hilo, they would calmly listen to his banter, explain to him the error of his thinking and then shoot out his tires if he didn’t leave.

They fully support the visitors, as long as they stay visitors by leaving. And these guys might floss their teeth with Bikram’s ponytail and make a chicken coop with his bones as soon as his welcome wore thin.

As evening faded and the children screamed on subjects as varied as who got to ride who’s bike and why did Makana piss on everyone? a run down hippy woman with a face as creased and worn as the lava flows made her way through the small crowds accompanied by a man dressed hotly in a white full length chicken suit, both of them preaching and clucking animal rights and ecology distributing non-biodegradable fliers which littered the grounds later when the rains came. The clan mentioned that maybe they ought to be up in the mountains protecting the rights of living animals butchered senselessly rather than chatting up a pack of indigenously conscious carnivores devouring chicken long rice next door to a BBQ convention. Their propaganda came down hard on slaughterhouse conditions of course, but fell even harder on the deaf ears of a huge family of 3rd generation farmers with no shame and no compulsion to stop raising three more on anything that moves.

There is a strong sense of a stand taken a long time ago that won’t be changing anytime soon. Like outcomes, or at least paths determined well in advance. Walking in the footprints of ancestors on heels calloused by the land and never stopping to even think about fixing something that isn’t broken.

Those were my stones of wisdom or inspiration from the latest and maybe the last Hawai`i excursion before the Superferry springs from the closet, bringing unity to the islands and opihi pickers to Hilo. Where the Enocencio’s will be on watch with Blue Pit bull determination and Winchester firearms: Strength in muscle and intensity. The land may be changing slowly, but the foundation remains. These old rocks and the ones beneath will always be around in one form or another, long after all there is for us to know doesn’t matter any more. We could learn a good deal from them.