Paradise Lost and Last

And so it goes.

I finally get to return to the snows.

One season over and one season begins. Just by riding an airliner cabin.

My last session at Livewire Cafe. My second home. I'm going to sell my board today. Scrape the wax off with a comb. I've seen coffeeshop girls come and go. I've dragged the trash to the side of the road. The difference is that I lived here this time. I know the banks, P.O., hardware, landfill and that food is 'Grinds'.

At least three resident crazy freaks are Lahaina lifers. The fat man on his old fat tired cruiser has been doing slow lazy laps around town for at least fifteen years. And I think it's the same brightly colored yet very scraggly parrot that rides his shoulder. I've never seen one without the other.

The shiny whitehaired Asian guy still discusses his whatever to himself. He posts himself by the tennis courts like a lamp-post and holds court with himself. I think it was the acid. His hair is long and flowing and clean. He is not dissheveled. It's just that sombody needs to check his pH level.

Dirk the jerk roams the streets with a limp that he didn't have when I knew him back in Aspen in the early eighties. He was the kind of guy that liked to get in fights with his friends when he was drunk. And he drank a lot. My first visit to Lahaina in the mid-eighties was the first time I had seen him or thought about him in almost five years. Luckily (for more reasons than one), I had shaved off my big, bushed out, could 'handlebar'it, oh so seventies, and if you still had one today it's a secret 'I'm gay' message mustache in the interim. Dirk didn't recognize me and I let him walk on by. To this day, I see him slinking, shadow to shadow but he doesn't see me.

My favorite by far is the man I wrote a poem about years ago. He is the dark skinned, grey goateed, hold court with disciples and everything, every day at the Banyon Tree. He scribbles scripture on scavenger cardboard and carries a guitar. Sometimes he gets all fired up and stands at the edge of the park and reads scripture out loud, eloquently and with great inflection and emotion. He bellows it out forcefully and well read. He looks you deep in the eye like a real preacher in a real pulpit. Except his pulpit is invisible and his congregation is the flocks of cruieshippers, scrambling around Front Street searching for the perfect schlock.

They travel in packs. They don't make eye contact. They don't dare a glance at the preacher. It's as if he is as invisible to them as his pulpit is to me. He sings and screams the Lord's praises and gestures wildly. Forever grateful for his Front Street homeless state.

And then there's the Pali-walker. In Aspen we used to have 'Standing Man' and his nickname tells you everything you need to know to figure him out. In Lahaina they have a guy who some people refer to as 'Walking Man' or the Pali walker. He has been walking up and down the 'Pali" (highway) for twenty plus years. We are talking serious mileage here. Sometimes he can be seen on the 'otherside.' He's been spotted in Hana. I've seen him numerous times around here and up by Kaanapali.

I have to end now. I will go have one last session of paddle-surfing with Robin down by Kihei. There are no waves, so no actual surfing. I'm selling my board today.

I'm going home but the board will stay.