Geezer Love 3

Chapter 3: New Zealand

Suzie

Going bananas in New Zealand

Yvonne left April 6, and I had nothing to do but prepare three lectures and pack up.  There was a snag when I had to leave the country and get my passport stamped again.  I somehow got past the Immigration booth without stopping for the stamping, and had to take another round trip to Nonkai, opposite from Vientiane, Laos.  That’s another story that had nothing to do with Ken.

Songkran, Thai and Lao new year, April 13, passed and a couple more days before I unpacked my passport and looked for the stamp in vain.  What the heck happened?  I emailed Art, who informed me I could not have boarded the train for Bangkok without walking past the Immigration booth.  All I could remember was going straight to the ATM as I was flat broke.  He had bought the train ticket for me but had no record of the ticket, and neither did the railroad office in Vientiane.

I went to the officer of International Affairs at Thammasat, and she tried to track down my ticket, but nobody kept the receipts for more than a day.  We got a driver to take us to Immigration.  The official said I had two choices, either go back to Nonkai or go to jail.  We went straight to the central station to buy a round trip ticket, leaving that night and arriving first thing in the morning.  I had bananas for breakfast and spoke to the station supervisor at 8:30 when the station opened.  It took some explaining to convince him that I had been there and could tell him exactly what time to find me on the video.  Then it was just a matter of getting the technician to find the spot.  I was in the line of passengers going from the train to the station.  Just before I got to the Immigration booth, an official took my passport and looked at it.  Two paces later I passed the booth without stopping.  I could see on the video that everyone else stopped and placed their passports on the counter.  Not me, though I wasn’t trying to be different.

Jantima and I wanted to meet one last time, so she picked me up at the pier and drove to her house where she fed me lunch, then we went for a whole body massage.  We picked up Andy and tried to plan our panel for the New Zealand Discourse Conference in December.  This was at her new house where she had mango trees.  We picked mangoes and went to her sister’s house nearby for supper.  She had never spent the night in the new house before and the kitchen was not equipped, so we went to her sister’s for breakfast.  Her sister urged her to pick ripe bananas, and Jantima made me take them, though I was leaving the next day.  

Instead of having bananas for supper I went to the restaurant on the ground floor of Ruen Indra Court where I lived. and had a nice supper.  For breakfast I may have had a few but there were lots left.  A friend who taught architecture down the street from Thammasat treated me to lunch.  I packed up the bananas and went to the airport, but was so busy with overweight baggage charges there was no time to eat them.  

I forgot to eat the lady finger bananas Jantima made me take from her sister’s tree because I was too well fed.  Chicken curries on the plane, and extra yoghurt.  The bananas were so well hidden and in the pack in the overhead across the aisle and me at the window I couldn’t reach them when I thought of them and completely forgot, even after passing signs about $400 fines.  The dog sniffed them out.  Also delayed me by an hour.

Ken

There I was at Fuller’s Ferry, luggage-laden and patiently waiting for the airport express to deliver my lover. Three hours tested my patience – but, like a typical Canadian, I passed the test. Once eternity had passed, she showed up in a cab, complaining about the $100 it cost her to fly to me by taxi. Then there was the $400 fine she had to pay for her absent-mindedness. Newsies (that’s what I call New Zealanders)… Newsies (they call themselves Kiwis)… Newsies are brutally strict about protecting their country from foreign invasion. They are so strict that they fined Suzie $400 because she had forgotten she had bananas in her carry on bag. Apparently foreign bananas are a threat to New Zealand’s agriculture. What they appear to have over looked is that fining newly arriving visitors $400 for such an oversight is a threat to their tourism business. At any rate, Suzie was in a bit of a mood when she arrived in my arms.

But I had the cure for that mood. I countered the Government of New Zealand’s Over-Protective mood-spoiling $400 fine with my hug energy. Although they had done their best to disgruntle her, my hug won out, and she became warm and sunny again. The score: Kenny Huggers 1; Newsie Cops 0. (On the other hand, the Newsie cops were ahead $400!) Anyway, we got caught up in the delight of each other’s sunshine and boarded the ferry for Waiheke Island.

Half an hour from now, we would arrive in another world.

Other worlds are not as uncommon as we might think. Only a day or two ago, my body had left the world of Canada, boarded an airplane, and arrived in The Land of the Kiwis. All thoughts of Canada had left my mind. And now that I had left the City of Auckland, and headed for Waiheke Island, all thoughts of Auckland were gone. Thoughts are like people – they come and go randomly. Now they’re here, now they’re gone. It seems the bodies and the minds are more alike than I had thought. They are like the rainbows that graced New Zealand’s autumn skies – now they’re here, now they’re gone. So it was with Suzie in Hong Kong. She was gone and now she’s here.

Her presence made my mind go to Heaven’s Gate again. When we were in Hong Kong, we were unable to consummate our love affair because our genitals didn’t fit. I found myself knock, knock, knockin’ on Heaven’s Door, unable to get in. Now we had five weeks to get in. I brought two tubes of lube-we-can’t. Armed with two full tubes we’d slip past the gate-guardians and penetrate her fortress. We would lay siege to the walled city of Suzie’s inner world. “Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more…”  – this time I was ready.

Suzie

Nothing would have gone wrong if they had not performed the consort practice. But if the consort practice is carried to completion, the lamas eventually end up in hell for indulging in licentiousness. Everyone is affected by lust and craves the joy of physical pleasure. However, when a cultivator falls to this level of evil in his practice, it is a straight road to hell to meet the great celestial mara (devil).

She begins to think she was misled.  She thought she and Ken would meditate together in bliss and emptiness.  She thought she had found the perfect partner for the consort practice.  Now she reads that it is nothing but lust and they are on the straight road to hell.  She should have stuck to taiji, qigong, lojong warrior exercise.  Pushing hands is better than sex.  And reiki is good for falling asleep.   

The other thing she was too hasty about was rushing in before finding out why he decided to leave his wife.   She found out later that he could never get enough sex.  Did it really slip his memory or was he trying to conceal it?  And he never mentioned the girl friends.  One broke up with him because of the rendezvous in New Zealand.  She hadn’t met this one yet, but Lisa shrunk his head and counseled him that it was the feminine part of his nature that needed to be tamed, not his wife.   He was needlessly obsessed for months with wedding vows. She couldn’t remember if she had actually made that vow, but she did cherish and obey.  It was easy.  He never told her what to do, he just implied what should be done.  She was 40 before she figured out she didn’t need his permission, she could just act.  And then she went to Little Prick ’s bedside while her husband was at a Borough Assembly meeting.  The prick who had broken her heart had a broken leg from playing soccer with them and the kids. A real lame prick.

His memory is going.  His ex-wife’s eyesight is going.  They can get married for a third time.  She can be his memory, he can be her eyes.  He wants to move out west, but all his family is here.  

Ken

My mind was full of thoughts of penetration, engagement, and love. My body was on a ferry on its way to Waiheke Island. In order to get my way, I’d have to reconcile these two worlds – the world of my body and the world of my mind. Mick Jagger sang: “Cain’t get no – no satisfaction.” If I were to successfully avoid Mick Jagger’s fate, I’d have to meld the two worlds into one reality. I’d have to take the sexual bliss I could only imagine, and bring it into reality. Bring fantasy into life. And, if I don’t do that, I’ll be making love only in my mind. Does mental sex count? Yes, it’s safe sex. And yes, nobody gets pregnant from making love in their minds. But, does mental sex really count for anything?

How far I have drifted from the day I first met Suzie! Tantra – tantric sex – meditation. Wake up, Kenny!  Tantric sex is all about mental sex! Sex with imagined beings. Sex without Mick Jagger’s so-called satisfaction! Sex that leads to Heaven! Have I been distracted by Suzie’s tiny perfect body? Is it my one-track mind, my thoughts of full penetration that are keeping me from Heaven?

It was all quite confusing. But, slowly, slowly, I think I was beginning to get it.  Mental sex and physical sex. Heaven and satisfaction. Maybe the chick flick movies are right. Maybe romance is more about love and less about sex. Maybe it’s like Sandro Botticelli’s famous painting, The Birth of Venus. In this painting, the Goddess of Love’s right hand is positioned over her heart and her left hand is over her genitals: heart love and genital love. It’s the same idea that is confusing me in my relationship with Suzie. Tantric love and physical, sexual love. In my world, sex and love, physical sex and love are the same thing. But in Botticelli’s famous Renaissance painting, the love of the heart is quite different from love between the genitals. He depicts water, waves, wind, scantily clad angels, and floating flowers on the left side of his painting, where Venus is covering her heart. On the other side, where The Goddess covers her genitals, the painter shows earth, trees, a fully clothed woman trying to cover up the naked Goddess; quite different from the “heart love” side of the painting. Maybe this is the same lesson the Tantric Buddhas are trying to teach me. Maybe Tantra is about the love of Buddha and how it leads us to Heaven. Maybe sexual love is the distraction that keeps us chained to Earth.

OK, am I confused or am I not confused? Time for a review.

I am not my body. I am not my mind. But without my body and without my mind, there would be no me. So, I still don’t really know what I am.

And I don’t know what my soul is either.

Tantra is to do with love. Sex is to do with love. Tantra is practiced by celibate monks and nuns; sex is not. Sex is practiced by every Tom, Dick and Harry: love is not. Love gets you into Heaven. Sex is heavenly… 

This review is not helping! Something is still missing.

It was at this moment that I tripped over the truth. My body was on a ferry ride to Waiheke Island, my mind was full of fantasies about sex and love, when I realized the obvious truth: Men have two brains.

No wonder I am confused! My two brains had formed some sort or alliance, and were trying desperately to think as one! The brain based at the bottom of my body was clinging to its basic plan: get laid as much as possible, whenever you can, wherever you can. My upper brain was trying to rationalize all this into some sort of philosophic discourse about Heaven. And it wasn’t working! Both my brains added together did not have the thinking power to sort out this whole sex-Tantric thing. I had no choice but to ask Buddha.

Since Buddha himself was not present, I decided to work with the nuns and monks who formed such an important part of my community. But, since the nuns and monks were not present on the ferry to Waiheke, I decided to work with Suzie. For now, at least, we would work on my lower brain’s challenges. We’ll keep it simple. What kind of sex life/love life can a couple have when their genitals don’t fit? 

Suzie

What the hell does it matter whether the genitals fit if you’re doing highest yoga tantra?  Vajrayoghini fits in a space the size of your thumbnail.  A lingam is not a prick.  Not even a drumstick.  ‘Little pigeon’ is what my aunties call it in Cantonese.  Goo goo jai. They laughed at the slide of Longfellow’s little pigeon on the bank of the Eyak River.  Oh the volumes of love letters  that followed that prick, that ladyfinger banana size dick.  They’re still stored in his house, he thinks, but his jealous current lover won’t let him contact me.    Once my Prince Charming.  He introduced me to the love of my life.  I was the love of his life until it ended.  Now I’m going to rendezvous with a man of parts.  Me, the wahine who’s a gal of parts.  But the parts don’t fit.  If the prick weren’t so blunt it would fit in the cunt. The pony won’t go in the yoni. Might as well sleep aloney.  

Sue said we could sleep in the bedroom downstairs.  It had two twin beds we shoved together.  With a gap in between.  She met us when we got off the ferry and phoned Ron for a ride when she saw all my luggage.  We’d been friends for 45 years, since she and Scollon were classmates in the basic linguistics courses at the University of Hawaii.  We were all part of a child language seminar Ron started when he was writing his dissertation on my cousin Brenda learning to speak at age one.   Sue went him one better, recording her daughter Nani and her friend as she drove them to school in her VW, writing it up as her dissertation and publishing it in England.  She  went to work at the school of Tourism Industry Management because there were no jobs in linguistics.  The department chairman favored Scollon with all job openings.  The result is she now has University of Hawaii retirement as well as United Airlines and can fly standby with Jim everywhere they fly for peanuts.  They go to Waiheke every spring down under, renting out the house in the spring, then to Singapore and back to Hawaii, to LA to see Nani and to France in June, this year to Prague and Warsaw.

   I had stayed with her and Jim in Honolulu in September.  They had visited us in Haines and me in Seattle and Sue had stayed with us in Hong Kong when she worked for United.  They see my son Tom and his family in Singapore and even met his in-laws before I did.  We had all gone on a picnic together in 2013 when Christie went to a conference in Waikiki and her parents flew down from Oklahoma.  

Sue fell in love with Waiheke back in the 90s when she was still flying with United.  Then it was where poor people from Auckland went on holiday  because they didn’t own cars and could get there by ferry and bus.  She and Jim bought the house and rented it out to nuns for years before they started staying there spring and autumn and having an agent rent it out for big bucks summers.  Ron and Erin were neighbors whose house was being renovated.  They occupied the bedroom on the main floor, between the living room overlooking the bay and the kitchen facing the road.  It was about a hundred feet above the surf, and you could see it and hear it.  On moonlit nights it was spectacular.  I sent my son a photo Ken took and he said, “I want to live there.”  

Since it was autumn, Sue said I could stay as long as I wanted.  She would be there almost a month.  She and Jim didn’t drive there where they drive on the left.  We had thought we could hire a car, but it  turned out neither of us wanted to learn how to drive on the wrong side this late in life, though I’ve always had left leanings. 

Sue met us at the ferry and had Ron come to pick up us and our baggage.  We drove past the house Ron and Erin are having remodeled, then went to Sue and Jim’s house overlooking the beach.  You couldn’t just SEE the tide going in and out, you could HEAR the surf!  And the sunset was spectacular.  

During happy hour we put together a meal of Kiwi sweet potatoes, I forget what they call them, and salad.  Sue and Jim are there so seasonally they don’t keep a rice cooker or even any rice.  We settled in to check email after walking around a bit to see sand, sea, trees and sky.  There were lime and mandarin trees in the yard, and a kiwi fruit called figeoa. 

Sue went walking early when the tide was out.   We rode into town with Erin the first morning to go grocery shopping and talk to a travel agent. We had to get some New Zealand lamb and some fresh fish for curries.  Erin had a box of spices.  Their house was supposed to be finished in April but was taking several weeks longer.  

We made a habit of walking into town along the beach, shopping, then walking back, a round trip of about 9 kilometers.  The house was about a hundred feet above the beach.  We walked down to the beach, along it to the section frequented by nude bathers, then up to the road and into town.  I decided I had to go swimming before it got too cold.  

Ken

When the ferry arrived in Waiheke, we were met by our most gracious hostess and her neighbour. They felt they’d need two cars to transport all our luggage to our new home away from home. I only had two cases – Suzie had eight! What on earth could you pack into 8 cases? We were only going to be there for 5 weeks! It was only after we arrived and unpacked that I discovered what she really is. Suzie Wong Scollon is a little bit crazy.

What’s crazy and what’s normal? The answer to this mystery depends on one thing: are YOU crazy or normal? Of course, we all think we are the normal ones and it’s the others who are crazy. Of course! But, that is not necessarily true. Intellectually, we acknowledge that we might be the crazy one. But, deep, deep in the lowest depths of our hearts, we know we are normal and the other one is the crazy one. It’s normal to think you are normal. So, if you think you are normal, you are acting normal. It’s crazy to think you’re crazy. So, if you think you are crazy, you are… at least, you are acting crazy. So, assuming we can accurately assess ourselves, we are always right. If we think we are normal, we are normal. If we think we are crazy, we are crazy. It’s only when we are wrong that problems arise.

For example, let us consider Suzie Wong: just how crazy is she? Is it crazy to go swimming in late autumn when the water’s cold? Yes it is! But it’s not crazy to be charmed by naked men tanning themselves on a nude beach. That’s normal. And what about Kenny Dean? Crazy or normal? Is it crazy to launch your life into a 5-week honeymoon on the other side of the Pacific Ocean with someone who is a little bit crazy? And to not know she’s crazy until one day into the honeymoon? And to know that their genitals do not fit, but to go anyway? If you think deeply on this question, you will conclude that it is perfectly normal for a guy to fall for a crazy sexy lady and commit to spending 5 weeks with her after only knowing her for three days, and who can’t get it in. Perfectly normal!

So, dear reader, don’t worry. I’m the normal one. As you read the story of Suzie and Kenny, remember, she is the crazy one, and he is the normal one. The real question is not about Suzie and Kenny – it’s about you. Which side of the line are you on? What would you have done? How would you answer the question: “How do you make love when your genitals don’t fit?” 

My attitude toward this dilemma is simple. I quote the words of Marcus Aurelius, fourth century Roman Emperor, who said: “Our lives are what our thoughts make it.” I prefer to tweak this translation a bit: “Our life is what our beliefs and attitudes make it.” This will be the true answer to your own personal craziness. Are you crazy or are you normal depends on your beliefs and attitudes. And my personal belief was that I could, in fact, have a satisfying love life with this wild and crazy tiny-twatted lady. And I had five weeks on Waiheke Island to prove it.

Suzie

Crazy to go swimming in late autumn?  Well, I waited for the sun to come out at mid-day and I was not the only one in the ocean.  I caught a few waves and swam until I was getting cold, then went out and up for a hot shower.  I think I may have caught Kenny’s cold.

I had swum across the Eyak River the summer of ’68.  Summer, yes, early July, but the water came straight down from a glacier.   And yes, there was a fire waiting when I got out.  No bathtub though.  That was Alaska in my youth.  And later in Haines, we would hike up Gei-Sun House of the Sun and strip, sweating, to jump into the little lake that still had snow floating on the other shore.  And in Portage Cove, again with a fire on shore, for a couple of minutes, to warm by the fire when a humpback whale breached offshore.  

Crazy?  No way.  Any Alaskan would do the same, except for Eskimos.  They always went in kayaks, fully clothed.  The first thing they taught toddlers was to stay out of the water.

But the really cool thing to do up north was to swim in some hot spring under the Aurora Borealis, cooling off by rolling around making love in the snow.  How ‘bout that, Kenny?

Ken

We were billeted in a small bedroom on the main floor of Jim and Irene’s vacation home. Across the hall from us was another couple, friends of Jim and Irene, who were staying with them while their home was being renovated. Jim and Irene slept in the master bedroom on the second floor. There was no central heating and it was late autumn. We would have to snuggle for warmth. 

Snuggling was not a problem, except for one tiny detail: our bed was actually two single beds we pushed together.  We would have to snuggle on the crack between the worlds. When Carlos Castaneda wrote about his famous ‘crack between the worlds,’ he was referring to that mystical moment when ordinary human beings catch a glimpse of the world beyond this world. When I refer to it in the context of making love to the Lovely One, I am referring to the possibility that the two beds would drift apart in the midst of some magic moment, and we would be unceremoniously dumped on the floor. That was the problem.

In preparing for this honeymoon I had thought of everything except for this. I had condoms, three different kinds of lubricants, a couple of Viagaras (just in case), and two “lovin’ towels” to wipe up the inevitable love liquids. I am not, (but at this moment, I wished I had been), into BDSM. I would have brought some rope. And I could have used that rope to tie the two beds together! We could have made love on solid ground instead of on the shifting rift, the crack between the beds. I felt quite unprepared.

So, what does a normal man do with sexy Suzie Wong, whom he met in romantic Hong Kong and is currently on Day 1 of a New Zealand honeymoon? He makes love to her, of course! Plain and simple! No doubt about it! He makes love to her!

Well, maybe not 100% plain and simple: there is the inconvenient truth that my body part does not fit into her body part. Has some miracle occurred since December that would magically permit entry into the tunnel of love? Had she done some mysterious feminine exercise to stretch her pussy? Or is the epiziotic gate still closed? Tonight would be the moment of truth.

Suzie stripped and lay down on her side of the bed. The fact that she had lived so long in Alaska probably explained how she was able to get naked in such a cold room. Her tiny erect nipples showed the world that she was, in fact, feeling the cold. But that direct “come to me” look in her eyes told me she was hot. Time for Kenny to strip and lay with her. 

The fact that I am a Canadian who has had way too much experience with winter’s cold did not help me at that particular moment.  Little Kenny felt the cold: and Little Kenny did not like the cold. I had a case of shrivel-dick!  Every man dreads shrivel-dick. Every man wants to rise up in his full glory and impress the daylights out of his eager lover by strutting his manhood before her like a peacock, strutting before his peahen. But, shrivel-dick energy is not strut energy. I wasn’t sure what to do with chilly Little Kenny.

She was.

Her “come-to-me” look morphed into a “come-to-me-and-I’ll-fix-it” look. I quietly remembered that I was with a strong, confident woman and quietly did what her eyes told me to do.

Once again I caressed my strong lover

As The Beauty man-handled The Beast.

Before a half minute was over

Little Kenny stood up for his feast.

I succumbed to her style of romancing,

Love-you-love-me had started again.

After five months, impassioned tongue-dancing 

Said we’d never be parted again.

I followed wherever she led,

Eagerly with my hands on her hips.

She sighed with her hands on the back of my head

And I soon found my mouth on her lips.

I succumbed to her heavenly heaving,

Not knowing if I could survive ‘er,

Her quivering body soon leaving

My mouth full of more than saliva.

Laying the foreplay and patience aside

The moment had fin’ly arrived

To enter the fortress, to get him inside

Blow a load twixt two thighs now spread wide.

We gave her a lube-job with water-based oil

That came out of a tube made of plastic.

I started to push in, our blood all a-boil

Both wishing she was more elastic.

Like the num’rous directions a stream flows;

From angles such as the wind blows

But try as we might

On that cool autumn night,

All we did was fog up the windows.

Now what? It was like a reoccurring dream – a reoccurring nightmare! It was all happening yet again! Mick Jagger all over again: “Cain’t get no – no satisfaction. No satisfaction!” All over again! Sigh. Some honeymoon this is! I’m freezing my butt off in a normally warm country with an abnormally warm woman, – an abnormally tight woman – and still, no satisfaction!

Suzie 

Abnormally tight woman?  Tight-fisted all right.  Penny wise and pound foolish.  Those ladyfinger bananas would have fit nicely, but the Immigration officials wouldn’t even let me peel them, let alone stuff them in an orifice.  If only I could have dropped them down a crack.  

Ah, the gap between beds . . . where we bumped our heads.  Dratisfaction.  Oh we  tried, and we tried, and we tried, and we tried.  All we got was dratisfaction.  Oh the stars were bright, out of sight in the fog.  Mars and Venus would not line up.  Ken would fall asleep and so would Suzie, snuggled up with her pillow, trying to escape the breeze from Ken’s heart machine, a cold cold blow job.

Oh the days were short and we cooked good food.

Booze in the kitchen and no time to brood.

We hooked up our laptops while

On the stovetops our supper was stewed.

Oh Ken, let’s do it again.

And now in the new year:

In a perfectly round hut

I sit on my lonely butt

The hut made of mud

My gut full of crud

And nothing with which to cut.

It’s Mandalay not Havana Club

In Pyin Oo Lwin not Mandalay.

Goes smoothly down into my gut

Makes my motor go putt-putt.

With Mercury retrograde

And the Internet fading fast

I lift my cup of Gatorade

There’s more than enough to last.

There’s a crescent moon in the sky.

It’s in Aquarius.

Though I do not want to die

I am not envious

Of those who want to try

To be amorius.

To love is glorious.

To drink vaporius.

As I tip my glass

To you I clink

As I dream ofTipperarius.

Though my balance is precarious

On this double bed I soon wt 

Kenny

I love to explore new lands. I love palm trees and citrus. I love flowers. I love Waiheke Island. I could see why Jim and Irene had decided to settle here. Who wouldn’t? It was time for Kenny to go exploring in Waiheke Paradise.

Normally I am good at reading maps. When I was an army officer all those years ago, I could shoot bearings, calculate elevations, read contours – the whole enchilada! So, how could I possibly be lost? I had a copy of the Waiheke Island official visitor’s guide map and it was broad daylight. How could I be lost? I had decided to walk across the island to the touristy little downtown.  My plan was to buy a few groceries and a bottle of booze, and return to the honeymoon hacienda. My logic was that we could do drunk what we couldn’t do sober. Perhaps tonight would be the night. It was a good plan; now all I had to do was find my way to the grocery store. And, to do that, all I had to do was find Wilkie Street. Where is Wilkie Street? Why isn’t it where the map said it is supposed to be? Once I find Wilkie Street, I will be able to find the Wilkie Street Liquor Store and the Wilkie Street Farmers’ Market. Why can’t I find Wilkie Street?

Have you ever had an OMG! Moment? It’s one of those moments when you GET it. You actually GET it. You had had a monstrous situation that you simply did not understand, and suddenly, WHAMMO! – You GET it. What happens is your normal consciousness flips into your higher mind. In normal consciousness, you have an intellectual mind and an emotional mind. The intellectual mind works slow and uses words, numbers and logic to sort out the world. The emotional mind works at lightning speed and sorts out the world with feelings. Well, when you flip into your higher mind, these two minds combine into one mind – your intellect suddenly gets a high-speed download of realizations accompanied by a huge emotional rush. People call them “Ah-hah! Moments” or epiphanies.

Well, that’s what happened to me on that cool autumn day in May on Waiheke Island. The sun is in the north in New Zealand! I’m from the Northern Hemisphere, where the sun is in the south. Suddenly the whole map of Waiheke thundered into my mind. I had visualized it upside down! I now saw every road, every turn, and every road in detail. I knew exactly where to go and exactly where I had turned left when I should have turned right. I was overjoyed! Soon I would be found again. 

Realizing my situation and rejoicing in my realization was only the beginning. I still had to retrace my footsteps and travel in the correct direction. Off I went. An hour later, I was back to the point where I had turned the wrong way. That was when I had my second realization. This one was just a normal intellectual realization: by the time I walked to the downtown area, both the liquor store and the farmers’ market would be closed. In fact, the farmers’ market was already closed. I sighed and reluctantly steered my steps back toward home. I would have to try the drunken lovers experiment another day.

When I got back to Jim and Irene’s, no one was home.  So, I sat down on the patio overlooking the Pacific, and pondered my afternoon realization. My grade eight science teacher had told us that in the southern hemisphere, the whirlpool created when you pull the plug in the bath tub, turns clockwise – and in the northern hemisphere, it twirls counter-clockwise. Since no one was home, I decided to have a bath and do the experiment.

There I sat, up to my belly button in hot water, ready for the test. Ploink! Out came the plug. Swirl! Down went the water. Counter-clockwise! What!!?? Let’s try that again. Re-plug. Stop the currents. Let the water settle. Pull it out again. Ploink! Ahh… clockwise. But wait a minute. Does this really prove anything? Maybe I should pull out the plug 10 or 20 times and keep track of which direction is swirls every time. OK – that will be a proper experiment. Here goes: Ploink! Ploink! Ploink! Ploink! Ploink! Ploink! Ploink! Ploink! Ploink! Ploink! Ploink! Ploink! OMG! It’s random! Sometimes it swirls one way, sometimes it swirls the other way. My grade eight teacher was wrong! All these years I had believed a false teaching!

What other false teachings had I received at the hands of this demonic grade school science teacher? Wait a minute: he taught that there are 9 planets in the solar system. He never taught us about Chiron! The tenth planet! OMG! Then he taught that we have 5 senses. Somehow, he had rationalized that our ability to sense hot and cold was the same as our ability to touch things, to tell solid from liquid from gas. And what about our sense of balance! This was serious! This lying cheating no-good rat had been misguiding innocent 14-year-olds for years. And all those teenagers grew up believing all his lies!  OMG! What other false beliefs am I carrying because of the untested assumptions of my youth? Have I been living in a dream world? It was my second Ah-Hah! Moment of the day. But, instead of filling me with joy, this one depressed me. I’m living in a world of false beliefs because of untested assumptions taught to me by idiots! And now the bathtub is empty and I’m getting the chills! And where is my towel? Damn! I forgot to bring my towel. Now I have to walk to my room, soaking wet and get my towel. Damn! Down the hall way. Double Damn! They’re home! And there I am, buck naked with another wicked case of shrivel-dick.

Suzie came to my rescue again. She brought me a towel. Then she told me they had gone shopping at the farmers’ market and the liquor store while I was out. Saved again!

Suzie

They’d also gone to the butcher and the supermarket and had fish and lamb for curry and beef and rice for bibimbab.  Sue had taught in Seoul and they were fond of Korean food.  They had watercress and oatmeal and other essentials.  No bananas.  Suzie would not buy inferior bananas after the $400 banana fine. 

They walked down to the beach, along it to the section frequented by nude bathers, then up to the road and into town.  Suzie decided she had to go swimming before it got too cold.

Suzie and Ken cooked up a fine fish curry while the others had happy hour, Ken of course sipping along.  They cooked well together.  If only they could have cooked his meat in her oven as well. . . Sue (Irene) was happy to leave the cooking to them and clean up after.  Then they all turned to their computers until Erin and Ron retired to bed with their books.

Suzie and Ken went into Auckland for the New Zealand Writers’ Festival and thought about how to get to the South Island and back for the remainder of their honeymoon. 

 Ken

It was time for our first adventure into Auckland. We had booked two nights in a small hotel and were going to attend my first writers’ conference ever. I am not sure exactly what a writers’ conference is, but I love to write and I love conferences. How could we go wrong? Even the price was right: pay as you go. You attend the conference and pay for whatever events you attend – $20 for this, $30 for that. No giant up front fee that made you feel you have to attend every event in order to get your money’s worth. Attend what you like – skip what you don’t: my kind of conference! My kind of life!

There must have been 5000 other people who liked the idea too. The place was packed! And the line-up of guest speakers was fabulous! There were poets and novelists, playwrights and journalists from all over the world. And, of course, Suzie Wong was there too, also from all over the world.  Isn’t it amazing how impressed we are by people from “all over the world?” I come form Canada, and when I am at home, I am not impressed by other Canadians. Why should I be impressed by others who are like myself? After all, who am I? And, guilty by association, who are people like me? Embarrassingly enough, there was a writer-presenter from Canada. I paid my $20 and attended her session, and she was great! But, she was only a Canadian like myself, and, therefore, I was not impressed. 

Hmmm… Why am I not impressed by people like myself? I’m a writer from Canada; she is a writer from Canada – but she did not impress me even though she was great. Oh dear! What is the flaw in my thinking that makes me think people like me are not impressive? 

Then I had a “slow dawn” realization. You know the kind: slowly, slowly, the answer comes – slow, like the dawn of a new day. The message was clearer than I had thought. Maybe, just maybe, I am wonderful too! Maybe I am not at all, the bum I thought I was! Suzie thinks I am wonderful. Maybe I am. Maybe I am impressive.

Now what am I supposed to do?

For me, the notion that I might be wonderful was new. I was taught to be humble. I was taught it is wrong to be all full of yourself. Arrogant. Self-centred. This is not how we should be! People are offended by overconfident arrogant jerks: that’s what my Daddy taught me. And, now, it appeared my Daddy was wrong.

This idea was reinforced at the next session: the poets’ corner. As I listened politely to these English language poets from all over the world, it slowly dawned on me that my poetry is better than theirs: especially my humorous poems – and my spiritual stuff. Oh dear! Maybe these people would like to pay $25 to hear my poetry. Oh dear! Now what am I supposed to do?

Suzie

I hadn’t been to a writers’ conference since the one for writers and publishers in Seattle held in spring 2014.  Alaskan and former Alaskan poets were there, including Richard Dauenhauer who perished just five months later.  I had published books by Richard and Nora, the former a former poet laureate of Alaska, the latter the current writer laureate, as owner of the Black Current Press (“Kuroshio” in Japanese).  Frames of Reference and The DroningShaman.  Helen Frost organized a dinner for Alaskans and former Alaskans of the 80s, poets published and unpublished, including Bonnie Bless, Nora and Dick Dauenhauer, Katherine McNamara, John Morgan, John Koistra, my daughter Rachel Scollon and myself. 

Gary Snyder and Ursula LeGuin read recent work.  Gary is an old friend who had some of the same teachers at Reed College—Lloyd Reynolds and David French.  We visited each other’s homes and went hiking and camping together.  Ursula LeGuin I had been reading since 1970.  Until I went to Asia in 1988 I had read every book she’d published.  Ron had corresponded with her and she used some material from Koyukon linguist Eliza Jones in Always Coming Home.  My relationship with writers either began with my reading their books which led to reading about friends in them, or meeting them and then reading their publications.  Helen Frost I first met by email.

When I go to professional conferences on anthropology, Asian Studies, Athabaskans, discourse analysis , Intercultural Communication, sociocultural psychology or linguistics, there are more participants who have read my work than whose work I have read. 

But at the Auckland Festival, there was not only no one who had read my work, there was not a single soul but Ken that I recognized. 

Ben Okri and Haruki Murakami were the only big names I knew, but their sessions were sold out.  I had read The Famished Road when it won the Booker prize, and Norwegian Wood by Murakami.  Helene Wong, Being Chinese: A New Zealander’s Story, I didn’t notice, though I had read a book in Chinese about early Chinese in New Zealand. “England’s insatiable scientist Philip Ball who has written on just about everything” gave an interesting and informative talk. The Good Women of China writer Xinran talking about her latest work Buy Me the Sky was also good and popular. 

Kim Thúy read a poem about going to an English language class taught by “Uncle Somebody” her mother sent her to in Montreal.  All she could remember was learning to say, “Goodbye, Asshole.”  Born in Saigon in 1968, she fled with her parents on a boat and settled in Montreal, earning degrees in law, linguistics and translation from the Université de Montréal.

I don’t think I heard the word “asshole” till I was in college.  In Hawaii it was “okole”, as in “okole maluna” (‘bottoms up’). 

Perhaps the most impressive presentation was by the vampire writer who self publishes and sells in the millions.  I won a copy of her latest book, but only read the beginning.  Most of the Festival is like that, left behind in New Zealand and forgotten.  Ken’s book wasn’t at the Festival, but I read it on Waiheke and still remember it and give copies to friends.  Which goes to show, The North is not Down Under, where books are torn asunder, left to plunder.

Ken

Since I was writing a novel at that time, I felt compelled to attend the “How to Write a Novel” session. It was a strange session. There seemed to be something in the air that they were all aware of, and I was not. Something overshadowed that session; some strange apparition was haunting the panel of novelists, magically preventing them from unleashing the puppies of their love for the art of writing novels. One of the panel alluded to it with a derogatory comment about vampires. Vampires? Where did that come from? And what’s it got to do with writing a novel?

My answer came the next day at a session presented by New Zealand’s most popular writer, Sally Singh. She was selling her series of books by the millions all over the world. Her fans were reserving copies of her next novel by the hundreds of thousands. And her venue was vampire stories. She was the writer the reporters all wanted to interview. She was the one with the big reputation and the big royalty cheques. And when she read a page from her still unpublished next book, I could see that she was the one with the talent. The panelists who were going to give me tips about how to write a novel, knew that it was Sally Singh who had all the tips. And they also knew that, if/when Sally Singh was going to give writers some advice, they wanted to be in the audience. 

Pride has a strange and tragic effect on us: same for resentment. That’s what the Tenth Commandment is all about. By being jealous of Ms.Singh’s success, they ruined their own presentation. If that panelist who made a snide remark about vampire books had celebrated Ms. Singh’s stunning success instead, he could have inspired his audience. “You too, can sell millions of books like Ms. Singh – here are some guidelines for you…”  

Footnote: Tenth Commandment – “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s ass… etc.” Genesis X – Y.  In this case, it would have been “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s success as a writer.” The key to following this commandment is to drop the jealousy, resentment, covetessness etc and replace it with a mind of celebration. Celebrate or rejoice in the property or achievement of others.  

After only 10 days of harmony, the honeymoon was over. For ten days we worked with the sexual incompatibility thing; conflict resolution by joint effort. No problem. Eventually we would get it right. But all too soon our no-problem days were over. Our free accommodation was over. We were being cast out of the nest in paradise to fend for ourselves. Suzie seemed OK with this sudden change of events, but I was not. I had budgeted for free accommodations for 6 weeks – not for back-packing around New Zealand in too-cool weather for 6 weeks. Hotels and travel expenses had not been part of my pre-trip preparation. But, it seemed I was the only one who had made this assumption. Suzie seemed fine with the fact that our hosts were leaving soon, and that meant we would have to leave too.  Suzie had planned to visit Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, and had somehow neglected to tell me! To hell with all this!

I’m outta here! I’m going back to Canada. It’s spring in Canada and it’s cold and damp in Newsie. I’m going home early! Kenny does not like surprises like this! Kenny does not like to spend his money going from hotel to hotel, bus to bus, city to city. That’s for back-packing young people. I am an older gentleman! Not to mention that I can’t afford it! This vacation is over! This honeymoon is over! I’m outta here!

I immediately went on line to see how much it would cost to change my date of departure from later to sooner. No surprises for Kenny! I’m going back home now!

That’s when I got my next surprise. Newsie Air are a bunch of dirty rotten thieving rip-off artists. It was going to cost me double to fly back now! Double! It would cost me as much to fly one way as it initially cost me to fly both ways. You’re kidding! I was beginning to see that New Zealand is a harsh land. First, Suzie got hammered for not eating her bananas and now I was about to get hammered for not being able to afford to be a tourist. Now what should I do? Damned if I stay and damned if I leave. 

Suzie remained surprisingly calm during all my mood swings. It was very interesting: if you met her, you would not be impressed with her calmness. Words like vivacious, exciting or adventurous might come to mind; but not calm. Similarly, if you met me, I might be considered calm, reserved, conservative – not excitable. Yet, somehow, the more excited and negative I became, the more calm and positive she became. Slowly, slowly, her calm sense of adventure was subduing my impatience with this unacceptable situation. And, when she offered to assist me financially, I realized I had been behaving badly. 

Actually, I am not as poor as I say. I have some savings and a small pension income. I just don’t like to spend money on traditional tourism. Most of my travelling had been done in the days when I was rich. And now that I am poor, I know what I like and what I don’t like. I like travelling to new lands and staying in one place and getting immersed in the culture. I like getting to know people, getting to know what they sell in their grocery stores, learning about their bees and flowers. That’s what makes a person rich: living in the wealth of nature and humanity. And what I don’t like is touch-and-go tourism, where I stay a day or two here and there and never get to know anyone. I’m not interested in the facts and figures of a new land – I want to meet people and meet nature… just like the ten days on Waiheke Island. Not like the trains and boats and planes I was about to experience. 

OK, so I was not as poor as I was letting on, but I am still poor compared to what I used to be.  The stock market is like that. Easy come, easy go. And, for me, my last call was “easy go.” No more luxury hotels for Kenny. 

Maybe this back packer thing is not so bad after all. In New Zealand they call them “beck peckers.” (It’s their accent.) Suzie wanted us to beck peck all over southern Newsie, staying in beck pecker hotels and eating beck pecker food for a month. Her sense of adventure was irresistible. And I had never beck pecked before. When I was a young man, I was in the army. They dragged me wherever they wanted. At their expense! It’s not that there was lack of adventure – there was plenty of adventure being in the Canadian Army in the 1960s. However, this time I had to pay my own way.  But, she assured me, it wasn’t really going to cost THAT much: certainly it would be less expensive than flying back home early.

She was right! Let’s do it! Let’s be beck peckers!

Suzie (Note: there is a doc entitled “pecker too big” that adds slightly to this part of Suzie’s part. I can’t cut and paste it into this section.)

Ken wanted to stay at Waiheke but Sue and Erin wouldn’t hear of it.  He had expected to spend the month there though we had talked about hiring a car to see the rest of the country.  He decided he wouldn’t drive on the wrong side of the road and he didn’t want to spend bucks on travel.  And he was behind in his Kadampa studies and wanted to stay put.  Willful lunatic.  But our hostesses got his beckpeck out of the house and onto the ferry.  

I had wanted to visit Dunedin, where my daughter-in-law was offered a job she kicked herself for turning down.  I had met a Maori professor from there at a conference in Taiwan.   I planned to ride the train and ferry and fly out of Christchurch where my ticket took me to Bali.  So off we went to Wellington, to the Waterloo where Queen Elizabeth had stayed on her first visit to Kiwiland.  

There was hail on the train ride on the ridge above Wellington.  We saw it from the open car going through the tunnel.  It snowed in Wellington at the same time, we saw as we arrived just before sundown.  It was so windy we were practically blown across the street to the Waterloo where we checked into a room with our first double bed on North Island.  

Found a Vietnamese restaurant open and had a luscious duck curry.  Then to bed and breakfast at the Waterloo before going to Te Papa Tongarewa the national museum.  The Maori exhibit took us into another world, more familiar to me from Hawaii than Kenny from Canada.  I loved seeing everything from rocks to houses to canoes, being in the hales (Polynesian for ‘house’) and hearing Maori and kiwi sounds.  There was also a facsimile of the Treaty of Waitangi signed with the British back in the 19^th century.  

The treaty proclaimed that te reo Māori was a taonga (treasure), confirmed by a Court of Appeal decision.  Kohanga reo, inspired by Māori elders in 1982. is a total immersion Māori language whānau program for young children from birth to six-years-old.  It inspired Justin Brown from Juneau to visit and attempt an imitation crèche program for Tlingits in Juneau.  Pila Wilson, my classmate from University of Hawaii at Manoa, and his wife Kauanoe Kamana, modeled their Hawaiian language revitalization project on it.  They started Punana Leo Preschools, a Hawaiian language immersion program, with their sons in 1984-85.  Now in their thirties, they can speak Hawaiian with their parents and thousands of speakers younger than themselves.  

Pila knows the history of the language.   Head of the Hawaiian Studies Department at the University of Hawai‘i, Hilo, he proposed to allow Hawaiian as language of instruction at Ni’ihau School because for thousands of years the people of Ni‘ihau had conducted their lives through the language.  Privately owned, it is the only island where people continued to speak Hawaiian at the turn of the century.  In 1841 the Hawaiian Department of Education formed as a Hawaiian medium system with education and administration through the language.  Then in 1896 the Republic of Hawai‘i following United States practice with Native American languages, outlawed the Hawaiian Language as a medium of education.

In 1978, thanks to Pila and Kawanoe, who earned her PhD in Hawaiian at UH Hilo, the Hawaiian language was approved as an official language of Hawai‘i along with English; Hawai‘i being the only State to recognize its indigenous language as an official state language. Within three months students were speaking in phrases.  The proof of the pudding.  Pūnana Leo was threatened with closure because native speaking Hawaiian teachers were not certified, but they were too successful.  Voila! 

They got kokua (help) from Canucks Jim Cummins and Fred Genesee, of Canada’s French immersion and Canadian Indian languages maintenance programs.  Dorothy Lazore from Montreal Mohawk immersion gave confidence and helped write curriculum. 

Sam Tïmoti Kāretu, Maori professor, answered questions about immersion.  

There are now over 2,000 children enrolled from preschool through grade 12.  The kids in this system are outperforming other keiki academically at the same time that they are revitalizing Hawaiian.  In 1997, the state legislature mandated that the Hawaiian Studies Program where Pila and Kauanoe work in Hilo become a Hawaiian language college. 

In Christchurch I sat at the public library, working on an abstract for the New Zealand Discourse Conference.  Out the picture windows I saw the surf breaking.   Nearby was a statue of the Duke Kahanamoku Surfboard from when the championship was held at Christchurch. 

At this point, Suzie added a parody on Paul Anka’s “Dianna” – but I was unable to cut and past it in here. It’s in the file “The Universe – too big”

We stayed at the Backpacker’s (pronounced bekpeker’s) Hostel in a private room with a double bed and kitchen and washrooms down the hall.  I picked up a pair of athletic shoes for backpacking from the free box.

Ken

Do you ever stop your life and look around? It’s a bit like waking up and wondering where you are. Well, that’s what happened to me on the train between Auckland and Wellington.  There I was, sitting beside a strange adventurous woman on a train heading south in autumn in New Zealand. What set of circumstances was responsible for this situation? How did I get here? Back home in Canada, I would get into this same mood between Christmas and New Year’s, the philosopher’s time of year. That’s the time of year we are taught to make New Year’s Resolutions – as if somehow our resolving to do something would actually result in it getting done. But I don’t recall resolving to take a train trip through New Zealand. I don’t recall resolving to fall in love with a woman with whom I don’t have sex. I don’t recall resolving to back pack all over the south island. How did all this happen? 

And while I’m at it, why don’t I figure out whether I’m having fun. Here I am, like the famous ET, far, far from home. I’m with a wonderful woman on some sort of storybook adventure. Am I having fun? Not really. I’m just being blown along like an autumn leaf in the wind. Suzie seems to be having fun. And I appear to be the Toy Boy being dragged along for her amusement. She’s having fun and I

I’m not. Why?

Like the answer to all important questions in life, the answer to this was obvious. It was because of our different attitude toward the situation. She expected this adventure to be fun, and for her, it was fun. I expected it to be expensive and inconvenient, and for me, it was. If I want to have fun, all I have to do is change my mind. Think like her instead of thinking like me. Obviously!

So, I resolved to have fun. It was easy. I just said to myself, “Wow! Isn’t this fun!” Every time something happened, I said, “This is fun.” At first I felt a bit embarrassed, because at first it wasn’t really fun. But this is exactly the problem. Fun isn’t real. Fun does not exist from it’s own side. Fun is 100% a function of your mind! 100%! Outside of mind, fun does not exist. The mind has to create it. And how does a mind create fun: by saying “this is fun,” every time something happens. And sure enough, it worked! I started to actually have fun! 

I tip my hat to The New Zealand Inland Railway Company for giving me a life-changing experience. Now I know how to have fun.

And just to prove my new theory, tonight I was going to have fun making love to Suzie Wong without penetration – maybe we would invent some new type of sex-play-fun. Or maybe we’d re-invent some old sex-play-fun. But, either way, tonight would be fun night.

Suzie

I’d found out in Hong Kong that Kenny had lost his sense of smell.  No scent, no sense.  Why did he want to bathe before bed?  To wash off the pheromones?  No make sense.  Me, I liked to sniff the okole.  Okole maluna. 69.  I was married in  ‘69.  Smell da stink okole, make da hole mo sweet.  Likum, stikum.  

Much of the courtship activity involved in the sexual mating process for drosophila fruit flies involves mapping neuronal circuitry.  Olfactory sensory neurons (OSNs) extend from the dendrites that are responsible for interacting with odors from the environment and are then recognized by distinct odorant receptor (OR) proteins that are located in the dendritic membrane. Therefore, it is certain that there is a relationship between pheromones, olfaction and courtship.

Chemoreception of sexual odorants by male insects has been considered to be very effective and sharp. The Bicyclus anynana species is known for their close-range pheromone response.  The male butterfly of the subfamily Lycorea has a pair of brush like structures on their abdomens named “hair pencils” that produce odors. The odors are given off in their aerial path while trying to find a mate. After finding a potential mate, the male induces the female by brushing the “hair pencils” against her antennae later leading to copulation. Males release close-range pheromones from their hair pencils and folds on their wings.

Flap your wings, Kenny.  Write with your hair pencils on my hair and then let’s do it.

Males secreting the pheromonal cues not only have glands on their antennae but some Bicyclus species have patches of velvety scales located on the dorsal surface of their forewing where pheromones are released. Hey Kenny ride your bicycle on me and shed your velvet scales on my hair, long or short.

And that’s the long and short of it.  Pheromones in my hair turn me on.

Ken

We had arrived in Wellington, booked in to the beck peck hostel and began to sort out what we were going to do. What are we going to do for fun?

I was getting good at having fun on demand. I learned that anything can be fun. Absolutely anything! I tried having fun while waiting in line for lunch. No problem! I simply said: this is fun. And an otherwise boring experience became fun. I tried it again when we cued up for dinner. It seemed somewhat less fun this time. And when I lined up for breakfast, I realized the error of my thinking. It was beginning to look like ‘fun’ really does exist from its own side. And standing in a long line of hungry people seemed less and less like fun. No! I was confident – fun does not exist outside the mind. That was correct for sure! The more I think of this truth, the truer it appears. No doubt about it. Having fun is completely a function of your own mind. No doubt about it! But somehow this knowing this truth did not help me turn ordinary boredom into fun. It simply wasn’t working! These long cues for every meal were not fun. Not fun! What was the error in my thinking?

Suzie 

I pass the time in queues singing, reading, chatting, or exercising.  No fun at all.  Well, yes, sometimes there’s a good laugh.  There was that English woman in the former Yugoslavia waiting for a bus.  In England you keep track of who arrives first at the bus stop and board in that order.  But in Dubrovnik as in most places on earth there is no queue so people haven’t a clue and simply shove their way on.  Having been shoved in front of till she was the last to board, she muttered, ‘There IS a queue!’  When my family tried to board a bus from across the Macau boundary in China to Zhongsan we were the first in line and the last to board.  Pushy Chinamen.

Then a couple of years ago I landed at San Francisco International Airport.  Taking  the elevator up to BART, I entered first and pressed the UP arrow, followed by  mob of Chinese who pressed DOWN and down we went.  I told a white guy I’d been “hijacked” by the Chinamen.  He said, “You can’t say that!”  I told him I’d been in China and I was an American and I certainly could say that.

Ken

The next day we went to the museum. For me, museums are inherently fun. Long ago, I had developed a fun-loving attitude toward all museums. It took no effort whatsoever for me to have fun in the New Zealand Museum of Anthropological Appendages. But not so for Lester.

Lester was four years old and he was not having fun at the museum that day. And he was letting everyone know he was not having fun! Strapped into his stroller, he looked like a fighter pilot in the cockpit of a WW2 Japanese Zero. His mother, patiently pushing his fighter-stroller along the tarmac, was showing the tiniest trace of frustration at his whining. Lester was filling the room with his protests. He was not having fun. She was not having fun. It was time for Kenny’s experiment: is having fun contagious? There was only one way to find out. Kamikaze. 

Most of you have never seen my Japanese Zero Hare Kari fighter pilot comedy routine. I developed it at a party one night, after my fourth tequila. I break into a Japanese accent and do an imitation of a Kamikaze fighter pilot flying his Zero into an American aircraft carrier near the end of World War 2. It seemed funny to my fellow party animals, and I thought Lester might find it amusing too. But, instead of my sarcastic anti-war dialogue done in a fake Japanese accent, I decided to imitate the engine of the aircraft. I thought Lester might find that more fun. And perhaps his Japanese mother would have scoffed at my politically incorrect script. So, little Lester got the abridged version of my Nip ‘n Tuck routine. (It was a two-seater fighter) (One seat for Nip and one for Tuck) I walked to the other end of the exhibition room and started my engine. As soon as he heard my engine, Lester stopped whining. And when he saw my outstretched arms, he knew right away they were wings. And when I started flying across the floor toward him, he knew he was in the presence of something really fun. It took his mother a bit longer to realize what was going on. Her son was being engaged by a WW2 fighter and he loved it! And when the enemy aircraft opened fire on her loudly laughing son, she too broke out laughing. Fortunately, the enemy pilot missed! Now he had to circle back for another pass. He banked steeply, his engine screaming, and circled back for another attack. Ratta-tatta-tatta-tatta. (Machine gun fire!) Oh no! Lester started to fire back! Bugga-bugga-bugga-bugga… (Apparently Japanese machine guns go “bugga” instead of “ratta”)  I was a hit! The little bugga got me! I went into a tail spin! Crash! Down in flames! Up in smoke! I was toast! Normally I do this death scene on the bridge of an aircraft carrier – but this time I died in the Maori War Canoe exhibit in the National Museum of Culture and History of New Zealand. 

My experiment was a big success. Fun is deliciously contagious. Lester had fun, his mother had fun, the security guards had fun, Suzie had fun, and, most important of all, I had fun.

Half an hour later, in the exhibit on Maori hut architecture, the fun had worn off: little Lester was whining again. So, I popped out from behind a sign and let him have it again, full bore, both barrels! “Ratta-tatta-tatt-tatta!” “Bugga-bugga-bugga-bugga.”  Next thing you know, one of the security guards popped up: “Ratta-tatta-tatta-tatta.” “Bugga-bugga-bugga-bugga.” That’s how it went all day. Lester sat waiting in his stroller-fighter. Every once in a while, some security guard would pop up and open fire, and Lester would return the fire. Lester had to stay alert! He never knew when danger would pop up again.

Suzie

I’m pretty sure my cousins’ machine guns went Ratta-tatta-tatta.  Bugga is what we used to call each other as kids in Honolulu.  “You bugga!  What fo you wen hide my marbles?”  Kids are funny.  When my son was 4 he wanted to know how to spell “fuck”.  So he asked me how to spell “duck”.  I never heard my father swear.  My grandfather would say “Gun fun it!” (Confound it) or “Son of a C Cook” (Captain Cook) 

My father was in the National Guard back in December 1941.  When they bombed Pearl Harbor he was called up.  He said they lay on the ground with rifles in case the Japs came back.

Ken 

It took a while, but finally I realized the error of my thinking about fun. Yes, fun is a frame of mind. No doubt about it! And, yes, there are some things that are more difficult to mentally convert to fun. Playing fighter pilot with a 4-year-old is easy fun. Standing in a long cue for your morning coffee is more difficult to turn into fun. Why? Because I was not good enough at it. I needed more practice. Changing my attitude required practice. Lots of practice. The fun attitude does not come easy. It takes effort to change your mind.

Effort is not the only thing that can change a mind. Earthquakes work too.

My first earthquake occurred in Dunedin, New Zealand, in a little house on top of a big hill. We were renting accommodations from a lady who owned a house, but lived in a trailer in the driveway. Suzie and I rented one bedroom, and a lovely couple from Mexico City rented the other bedroom. You would think people from Mexico City would be calm and cool whens the ground starts shaking. You would think people from Alaska (Suzie lived in Alaska for decades.) would be used to the ground shaking. But, not this time. It was the Canadian who had never experienced an earthquake at all until now, who remained calm and cool. The others seemed really afraid. The ground started to shake just after 2 a.m. I immediately got up and walked into the hallway. The two Mexicans were already there, looking very nervous. Suzie joined us 30 seconds later. Remembering the earthquake drill someone had taught me years before, I stood in a doorway. That way, if the ceiling collapsed, I’d have the top of the door frame to keep me safe.  There was no danger of the floor collapsing, because there was no basement in this house. After a couple of minutes, the shaking stopped and everyone started to breathe again. 

Linda strode in the front door, looking around to assess the damage to her house. Silly me! Now I saw the advantage to living in a trailer in the driveway! No damage. No cracks in the plaster, no broken glass, no leaks in the plumbing, no damage whatsoever. She seemed delighted. Our Mexican friends decided to stay up and have a coffee. They taught me the Spanish word for “aftershock.” Suzie and I decided to have a coffee with them, too. 

During the conversation over that night-time coffee, I learned why the Canadian stayed calm and cool and the experienced earthquakers were nervous. Naivety. The Canadian didn’t understand how dangerous earthquakes are. He had only seen aftermath video clips on the six o’clock news. The experienced earthquakers had actually searched through the rubble. Earthquakes had changed their minds from naivety to wisdom. 

As I lay awake that night, fighting the caffeine for the right to sleep, I wondered if I would be any wiser in the morning. I certainly didn’t feel any wiser. I could hear the Mexicans making love in the next bedroom. Suzie heard them too. She placed her cheek on my arm. They were the wise ones. Using adrenaline for its God-given purpose seemed wise. It certainly seemed wiser than tossing and turning and fighting caffeine. The earthquake had turned their night of fear into a night of love, a night of fun. Hmm… I wonder what fun can be had from two bodies where the hardware and the software don’t fit. Naiveté, fear, adrenaline, caffeine and fun: I was feeling wiser already.

Suzie

My first earthquake was at the Volcano on the big island of Hawaii.  It was only 5 on the Richter scale, enough to knock dishes off the shelves.  Then a couple of years later I was sitting on the toilet in my dorm at Reed College in Portland, Oregon when an even milder earthquake shook the water in the toilet bowl.  This was decades before AIDS, so I wasn’t worried about that.   Wasn’t worried about anything, in fact.  Just glad I had not deposited anything in the bowl. In 1990, when I was an intern at Perseverance Theatre in Juneau, Alaska, they put on a play about how you couldn’t get AIDS from a toilet seat.  Toilet water, though, if it was mixed with sperm that got in your privates, might be another story.

When I was in Bali at the Frog Pond Inn a few years ago with my laptop on my bed there was a mild earthquake, 4 points.  By the time I got off the bed it had stopped shaking. I went outside and saw the family with infant.  Good conversation starter.

 There were other earthquakes of that magnitude.  The Alaska earthquake of 1964 I felt indirectly, as tidal waves going north from Chile and then bouncing back from Alaska.  Homes along the shore were evacuated.  Then in 1968 we saw the fault line in Anchorage where the street had dropped on one side.  Ron had been there the year before on his way home from Japan.  It made him want to study geology.

The year I was born there was a tsunami on April Fool’s Day.  People thought the warnings were a joke and flocked to Waikiki Beach to be washed away.  Ah, impermanence.  My mother was 4 months pregnant.  She’d been working at Pearl Harbor.  Don’t know when she quit, but the days she spent at home with her invalid mother-in-law must have seemed endless, permanent.  My grandmother had Parkinson’s disease.  All she did was sit in her chair all day with her hands trembling.  As the wife of the eldest son, it was Edith’s duty to look after her.  They lived in a valley 6 miles from downtown,  with a daily round of vendors delivering ice, milk, peddling manapua or dim sum, and a truck selling vegetables.

Edith had been a freshman at the University of Hawaii when Pearl Harbor was bombed and the university was closed.  She and her school friends went to work at Pearl Harbor.  She enjoyed the work and the recreational facilities on days off.  After a couple of years she married my dad.  I sometimes think she made a mistake, but where would I be if she hadn’t?  She lost both parents to cancer at 11 and 16 and had to help bathing and diapering her younger sisters at an early age.  She and my dad had been neighbors, and she married him partly to get away from the house her half brother and his wife had bought.  My dad’s sisters were all students, lazy bookworms who left all the housework to Edith.  She was a long way from her friends, and after I came she suffered post partum depression, which her doctor knew nothing about.  After eight months, she hanged herself from the shower with an electrical cord.

My dad was devastated.  He did not turn to religion.  When asked why he did not go to church, he replied that he was Buddhist, but I never knew him to engage in any Buddhist practice.  He was more Confucian than anything, going to the graveyard to make offerings to his grandfather and my mother on Easter Sundays when his sisters went to church.  Confusion?  Edith had not gone to church either; spending Sundays with my dad while her sisters went to church.  

With my mom gone, Dad’s lazy sisters had to take turns with household chores as well as looking after me, dropping me off at the day care and picking me up.  When I was ten they had all moved away, Jenny and Pui to Hamburg, Germany where they taught in the U.S. Army school.  Marian and Hoppy had their own homes in Pearl City overlooking Pearl Harbor.  My grandfather had retired and did the shopping and cooking.  Dad’s youngest brother did the dishes and I dried them.  It was my duty to sweep and mop the floors.  

Our neighbors across the street had been interned during World War II.  Keiko was a year younger than me and Toshiko a year older.  They moved away after a year or two, but Uncle Wah kept visiting them and met Aunty Kayoko there.  Next door were two Nisei girls I did handstands with.  They also moved away.  I have only a photograph and memories of the summer we played together every day. 

Another neighbor we called Blackie.  He lived on the corner with his Hawaiian family, but every so often he would be sent to the Big Island to the low security prison for shoplifting.  There he would carve lamps and bowls out of koa.  He was Uncle Wah’s age.  Another neighbor, George, was drafted into the Army and asked my dad to look after Shirley.  He did, all right, and not long after she became Shirley Wong, mother of Cheryl, Clinton and Cindy who refer to her as “that Shirley Wong”.   

She had just turned 47 when my dad died at 67  .  She had been hanging around with Charley who was 70.  After nine years he passed and she took up with Burke, who was 80 something.  She lived with him until he passed just shy of his 99^th birthday, and for the first time in her life Shirley lives alone, next door to Clinton who looks after the property and the rentals.  Cindy married Charley’s son David.   He eats meat but Cindy’s been vegan for 35 years, since she followed Hare Krishna.  She gave up Hare Krishna but remained vegan.  

When I asked Shirley why she didn’t marry Charley, she said it would confuse people to have their kids married to each other.  They might assume it was incest.  David said Charley wanted to leave Shirley a sum every month but his daughter was against it.  She gets along with her three houses all paid off and garnering rent.  She and dad provided well for her.  They gave us 10K to buy our house in Haines in 1984, as they left one house to each of their kids.  We fixed up the house where we had a bookstore The Gutenberg Dump and a publishing house the Black Current Press.  We didn’t pay off the mortgage until we went to Hong Kong and made big bucks in 1992.  While we were in Hong Kong the renters trashed the house, made of redwood in 1912.  We renovated it for our retirement, tearing out carpets and linoleum and nailing tongue and groove northern pine floors.  It was perfect.  I even had a garden in the back yard.  We had an earthquake that shook down a hanging lamp.

That wasn’t the only earthquake.  We found out Ron had a kidney tumor that had been misdiagnosed as gout.  We put the house on the market in 2008.  He succumbed January 1, 2009.  In 2010 I sold the place and am carrying the mortgage.  A historical building, it is now home to Second Nature, where the owner sells dried wild mushrooms on the Internet, dried sour cherries from what was my orchard, and whatever one needs to make wine or beer.  

What did Suzie do for fun without the love of her life? She was desolate.  She started hanging out with Tibetan Buddhists.  There was a lot of work at first, tending to his publishing projects and authoring pieces editors asked us both to contribute to handbooks and the like.  I acted as external examiner for a PhD thesis on the signs in London’s Chinatown, defended at Jyvaskyla University.  That was the beginning of a four month-long journey that began with a flight to Helsinki that had to be rebooked because of the volcanic eruption in Iceland.  It took her to Antwerp, down through Bach country to Berlin, to Moscow, then to Hong Kong.  From there she flew to Singapore, then to Mumbai, to Bangkok for her first ten-day Vipassana retreat in Pitsanulok.  Then to Helsinki and to Washington DC for a meeting at the US Bureau of the Census.

The next summer saw her returning to Singapore then traveling by land through Malaysia, where she spent some time in the jungle with her friend Louis Michel and the Orang Asli, or indigenous people.  She went to Bangkok and Chiengmai and another Vipassana retreat near Chiengmai.  Easy to avoid speaking when she couldn’t speak the language.  

Flash Flood

She was in Cameron Highlands, Malaysia where the Brits used to go to cool off, waiting  Louis Michel to take her into the jungle to visit an indigenous shaman.  He had been delayed by a family wedding in Singapore so she went to the highlands to cool off.  It was November and she had been going to Bangkok to meet Jantima and travel to Laos, but Jantima had emailed her to cancel because the Chao Praya was flooding and she had to help her mother move everything upstairs.  

At Cameron she ate good Cantonese food like rice soup with frog legs, did email and walked around town.  One day she decided to take a little hike up to a summit that should have taken an hour on the three-kilometer trail.  Neglecting to sign in with the military police, she crossed a bridge and walked.  After an hour she was not at the top but it started raining.  She had tea and snacks and started down.  When she got to the bridge she’d crossed earlier the river was washing over it and a man was waving her back.  She went and sat on a boulder and watched the man rejoin his crew.  Around four they left and she started panicking, thinking she’d better get serious about crossing the river.  There was a forklift but the driver had disappeared.  She got a big stick and moved closer to the shore.  The man reappeared from having a smoke, his trousers still white.  She waved at him.  He grabbed a bamboo three inches across and held it across the river.  She grabbed the end and he pulled her through the chest-high water.  She got back to the hotel drenched with mud.  The clerk motioned her up the stairs and she went straight into the shower clothes and all and stripped there.  She washed and dried and warmed up before going out to the Cantonese restaurant to eat.

“Don’t ever go hiking alone in bad weather, Suzanne.”

Alone.  She was not used to being alone.

At Nalanda West near her apartment in Seattle, she often went for discussions, meditation, workshops.  She took refuge dancing praises to Tara at a weekend retreat given by Prema Dasara, who created the dance and has gone around the world teaching it for 30 years with the Dalai Lama’s blessing.  She went to Tara dance camp on Kaua’i, held every August, in 2011 and 2013.  In 2012 she went to Brazil, doing another Vipassana retreat before the camp at Paraiso na Terra.  

Then Impermanence struck again.  Aunty Pui, who had retired with Uncle Frank to ten acres and a beautiful house on Resort Road in Freeland, Whidbey Island, fell and broke her hip, was hospitalized, confined to a wheel chair and died in 2012, followed two months later by Uncle Frank.  Suzie had taken refuge with Kilung Rinpoche at Pema Kilaya on the Island in 2010.  She left on a pilgrimage with Prema to India which ended with dancing Tara on the shore of Lotus Lake on Losar, the Tibetan New Year.  

Was she having fun?  Adventures often followed or coincided with accidents and death.  There were academic conferences in Philadelphia, New Orleans, Stockholm where she gave papers on the horrendous rates of cancer at Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, downstream from the Alberta Tar Sands.  She heard Sogyal Rinpoche speak on the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.

And then came the invitation to be a Visiting Professor at Thammasat University in Bangkok.   She had audited Introductory Thai at the University of Washington, interrupted by conferences.  She loved Thai food and Thai people.  She emptied her apartment, giving away bed, sofa and dining set and putting everything else in public storage.  She flew off to Hawaii for her 50^th high school reunion, then to Kyoto to see the sights and do zazen at an international zendo.  

After taking a train from Singapore to Gua Musang, then traveling by bus to Cameron Highlands in Malaysia, she survived a flash flood and went on to report for work in Bangkok. She was too old for a work visa so had to leave the country every 30 days to have another tourist visa stamped into her passport.  Then came the message from Mona in Stockholm about the Asian Buddhist Festival in Hong Kong.  And off she went.

Ken

The next morning she showed up with roast mudbird. Linda had some left over mudbird and had donated it to Suzie and me. Now, let it be known that I am an adventurous diner. I will try anything. I have eaten a wide variety of dead animals, weird vegetables and wild-looking fungi. But mudbird made me hesitate. I was sure I was being fed a dead sea gull. As I ate this greasy, crunchy mud-flavoured roast bird, I wondered: “Why am I eating this?” It was ugly and tasted bad; but I ate it anyway. Why?

I thought about this for days. Why did I eat it? Obviously it was an ‘acquired taste’ that I had not acquired. So what mysterious force made me choke down the mudbird anyway? I wasn’t particularly hungry. I certainly wasn’t showing off. Why did I eat it? Was it because my father was a depression generation guy who never wasted anything? “We don’t waste food.” Was I living under the obligations of days gone by? Surely I am more self-aware than that!  Why did I eat this horrible thing?

The first answer came to me slowly, like the dawn of a new day. I’m a Canadian. I am polite. Of course I eat what my host offers me. Of course! 

As pitiful as that idea is, at first, it seemed true. Had I eaten that awful carcass because I was too polite to not eat it. My identity as a polite Canadian was in play. How pitiful is that? How very pitiful!

I began to wonder what other torture I was enduring in order to preserve my identity. Why was I here in New Zealand’s South Island, spending big bucks on accommodations and transportation when I really wanted to be sitting in someone’s house on Waihiki Island writing my books? Or back home enjoying spring time in my garden? Why was I travelling with a lover I couldn’t make love to? Was it all because of my false sense of identity? This is what Canadians do, so I did it. This is what men do, so I did it. This is what old guys do, so I did it.

This last one was the idea that snapped me out of my stupor of self-pity. I was definitely NOT identified with being an old guy. Old guys don’t do the things I do. They don’t think like I think; they don’t act like I act. No! The reason for my putting up with eating a greasy mud-flavoured carcass, spending my life savings on travel and loving the impenetrable Suzie Wong was not because of my false identities.

The real reason for my mis-adventures had become clear. I am an adventure. And part of being an adventure is the mis-adventures. 

Suzie

I am an expert in Geosemiotics.  And the way I became an expert was by getting lost and learning to pay attention to directions, to space.  And in my long life I had lots of misadventures.  I was taught to eat everything.  My dad died of overeating.  He grew up during the Depression one of nine children and had extra rations in high school because he was so thin.  When he started making money he first supported the family then ate all he could stomach.  It was comforting after my mother hanged herself. 

So mudbird was a delicacy, nothing like mud.  It reminded me of the fishy duck I had eaten in Dillingham, Alaska when I was teaching there as part of the Cross-Cultural Educational Development program.  The mudbird also ate fish but didn’t taste very fishy.