It rained hard and the wind blew all night long.  The two younger guys who were sharing the dorm room with me had gone out drinking together.  One of them passed out right away, but the one in the bunk above me spent a few hours loitering around the bathroom, brushing his teeth.  I got up to use the bathroom and he was brushing his teeth.  I got up a few hours later, and he was leaning against the mirror with his eyes closed, still brushing his teeth. 

That morning I got up early and went out to drink coffee in the main room.  Seth and Joe were sitting there, the two of them switching off shifts, working every day of the week.  A Samoan woman who seemed to be living in the hostel was eating a bowl of oatmeal.  I went down the backstairs to where there were a few smaller rooms that could be rented by the month.  If there were any vacancies, I would’ve moved right in. 

One guy who was cooking at a restaurant came out and started talking to me.  He said that the first time he ever tried surfing he got tubed.  He might’ve meant he got rolled over and over by the waves.  That was a possibility.  Then he added that the first time he ever went golfing, he got a hole in one.  Now I knew what I was dealing with.  Perhaps, he’d started on the practice putting green.

I took my ukelele and walked towards the sea.  The rain had let up but the clouds were black and turbulent overhead.  There was a black sand beach with a homeless encampment surrounding a small lighthouse.  One picnic table was open but when I went over and sat down on it, it felt like I was squatting in someone’s yard.  A woman came out of a tent and started showering about fifteen feet away from me in all of her clothes.  I kept my eyes fixed on the choppy water and churned out a rhythm on my ukelele.  This is why I’d come to Hawaii, to sit and play my father’s old ukelele to the spirits, to try to fill up the instrument, and subsequently my life, with positive mana energy. 

Just north of me the Wailuku River ran into the ocean.  Next to it some people were loitering around.  It was hard to say what drugs were responsible for the scourge of hard-bitten homelessness that I’d already witnessed in my travels across the States.  Meth?  Opioids?  Heroin?  Probably all of those and more. 

It hadn’t been that bad when I’d been growing up.  Kids had started drinking in junior high and high school, and when we moved to California, I found out about weed, but I didn’t know anyone that died of drug addiction.  Now people were dropping left and right, and the aggressive, schizophrenic, behavior the new drugs were causing was upsetting to see.  They are the modern-day demons that are possessing the nation.  The country is warring against itself, preying on the vulnerabilities of its weakest citizens.

I followed the Belt Line Road around Hilo Bay, sometimes stopping on a stretch of wall to work out a new song I’d started in Waikiki.  Being in Hawaii as dispossessed as I was made me frantic with anxiety, and the only place to put that energy was into my instrument.  I was temporarily able to find solace from my troubles as my mind struggled to put the right words in the right order.

Eventually, I came to the Liluokalani Gardens, which I visit every time I’m in Hilo.  It is the largest Japanese ornamental garden, built in 1917 to honor the immigrants who worked in the sugar cane fields.  On this day, there were large puddles on the footpath, and the bridge to the teahouse was inaccessible, but I wandered past the fishponds, through the rock gardens and around the stone lanterns.  Two little yellow birds, saffron finches, hopped along the trail ahead of me.  Pinpricks of rain began to poke at the pond.

Continuing on, I made my way across the footbridge to Coconut Island, or Moku Ola, or healing island, which once house an enormous heiau, or temple.  The legend is that anyone who swam around the island would be cured of any illness or bad feeling.  If that were true, I’d have to swim around the island a dozen times.  My afflictions and insecurities that day seemed too numerous to count.