Old Ryan was snoring as if he were communicating in a primitive language, a series of grunts, snorts, moans, sighs, and deep breaths, that could almost be decoded based on inflection alone.  Then, right at daybreak, he sat up on the edge of his bed and began talking to no one.  I lay on one side, grimacing in resentment after he left the room.  Twenty minutes later he walked back in and shook me awake.  He had cooked breakfast, pancakes, and Portuguese sausage for the two of us.  I knew he was in a lot of pain, his wife being in the hospital and all.

As we ate, I did manage to get a few words in edgewise, basically complaining about my lot in life.  As he saw it, if I hadn’t made all the choices that I had, we never would’ve met.  That was an interesting way to look at it.

It was President’s Day.  That meant little to me, having every day off for years.  That hadn’t always been the plan.  After so many years out of the country, seeing what people did in America just to stay afloat didn’t seem like a very good deal.  You had to pay for everything, even things you didn’t want.  All I needed was a room with a bed, desk, and fan.  Those kinds of situations existed, but even they weren’t cheap.  Prices were out of control.

I decided to walk up to Honoli’I Beach Park, a surf beach a few miles north of town.  It was the same direction as the scenic outlook, over the bridge, right across from the Alae Cemetery.  There were steps to get down to the beach and signs warning of the strong current and dangerous shorebreak.  The waves were a few feet high, and it looked like a good day to paddle out, but fun wasn’t in my vocabulary on this trip.  I was in Hawaii because I needed some place to turn, some sign that since I was born there, I would be welcome there.  Instead, I felt violently dislocated, not just in Hawaii, but everywhere.

There was a fallen tree that I sat down on.  I got my ukelele out of the case and laid it across my knee, but then a wave of depression and fatigue crashed over me, and I put the ukelele down and rested my face in my hands, wanting to cry but empty of tears.  You can only keep hope alive so long before it wears thin.  You need a fresh surge of it, an unexpected smile, a friendly stranger, a compliment that takes you by surprise. 

Eventually, I picked up the ukelele again and started working on my new song.  The melody had come to me on my first day in Kapiolani Park, but the words were taking some time.  It was about someone who takes their freedom too far and ends up wild and deranged, strung out at the end of their rope. 

That night I walked up to the jam at the Jazz Workshop.  I’d met the owner a few times on past visits, but he never seemed to remember my face.  This time he assured me I wouldn’t need to wear the COVID mask I had in my hand.  The scamdemic was over, he let me know.  The good guys had won.  It was hard to know where I might be expected to still wear a mask.  It had been a tedious process to get into Hawaii this time around, with a whole list of requirements that had to be checked off on a website before I was given a wristband at the airport.  Perhaps because of lingering concerns about the virus, it was a small crowd that night.  I took a seat up in the loft and listened to the band play a Bossa Nova number.

Walking back to the hostel after the show, I saw that on this night the open mic was at the Big Head Tavern.  It was some of the same talent I’d seen at the craft fair and Jazz Workshop in the past.  The California Raisin was there.  One guy was wearing a WWE belt.  It was a good crowd, a small crowd. 

I like Hilo, even though I’d bombed at that same open mic a few years back.  I don’t know quite what went wrong.  All I knew was that it wasn’t sounding good, and people stopped listening midway through the first number.  It happens.  You never know how good, or bad, you are until you get up and perform in front of others.  You might get your feelings hurt but it’s better than fooling yourself.  On this night I was content just to listen.