I stopped updating

because I was homeless in Seattle. I'm not homeless anymore. Instead of talking about my current living situation and what happened between the last post and now, the only thing I want to say right now is, um...I really don't like being a slave to a company that means nothing to me. Retail is not for me. If I don't find a way to make ends meet by doing something I care about reasonably soon, it's gonna...ugh. I have these sort of rough plans for the future (meaning the next couple of years) that involve creative projects coming to fruition, and it IS possible and what little free time I have, I don't feel is being wasted...

and
and
and

...

um

...

I have to go do the dishes.

Jason

I don't wanna be average.

I made those chop sticks (sans sanding) and read two of those Salinger stories like the day after I made that last post.

The psychic-in-training gave me a card for a free aura reading Wednesday. I am excited.

I love my blog. I enjoy typing on keyboards so much more than writing on paper. I could probably write in it all day and all night. But I'm going to bed.

Oyasumi,

Jason

Some Day This, Some Day That....

I felt disconnected today. Part of it had to do with waking up to a warehouse with no people in it. I thought I'd heard that a couple of people were going to the beach, but I didn't know where anyone else was. I was alone for thirty or fourty-five minutes. This isn't that common on the farm. When you're by yourself, it's usually because of a decision you make. You often have to go out of your way. Another part of it was I started the day with night-time activities: washing dishes and watching two movies (Lady and the Tramp and The Life Aquatic). This, to me, is eating the desert before the meal (not that I think there's anything especially sweet about washing dishes). The rest of the day I felt off-key.

There is a new person on the farm who is taking classes to be a psychic or something like that. He has a tarot deck (I've been wanting one myself for a while). He had someone fan them out face down, and then he pulled a card out. It was "ordinariness." At first, he didn't get it, but then he looked closer at the card. There was a picture of a guy in a farmer-type hat, out in the country on it. And before he came here he had spent a couple of years in India, which he thinks is the most amazing place in the world. So, there you go, I guess. I pulled a card out, too. It was the procrastination card. I can't imagine a more appropriate card for me. Some day I will pursue those creative projects on the back burner. Some day I will compile some stories. Some day I will carve that pair of chop sticks I've been meaning to work on for weeks. Some day I will read the rest of those Salinger stories.

I don't feel very accomplished today. I think about accomplishment a lot. I haven't figured out if that is important to me or not. I haven't even quite figured out what I mean by "accomplishment." Arriving in Hawaii was an accomplishment, and so was becoming a little handier in the kitchen. I think I'm looking at things in terms of scale. Coming here and learning a couple of kitchen tricks just doesn't seem big or substantial enough. At times. But at other times, it seems just perfect. Those times when I really like where I am, not just geographically, but as far as what I am capable of at the moment and my psychological fitness.

I have no idea what I am doing tomorrow. But it's okay. I know, essentially, what I am doing now.

Love,

Jason

I Don't Know If I Think About Salinger on a Daily Basis

but I do think about him, or at least his works, a lot. There is a perpetual sticky note in the back of my mind that's there to remind me to go and read his un-collected stories some day. Not ten years down the road, but this year, say, or the year after that. Maybe I'll read one tonight. People are charging hundreds of dollars for bound, pirated collections of those stories:

http://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwork/1244958/used/The%20complete%20uncollected%20short%20stories%20of%20J.D.%20Salinger

See those jokers charging $1,000 bucks? Is anyone paying that much? I hope not. You can find them online for free or in certain libraries.

Franny and Zooey is probably the most beautiful book I've read. Talk about lost youth. Salinger is the master.

I'm thinking about him a lot today because of a facebook comment Ben made.

Also, I'm leaving the island Friday.

Love,

Jason

I Swipe Emily's Picture

This was my first night on the farm.
St. Patrick's Day.

What the Hell, Brown Cow?

So it's like, Brown Cow plain yogurt already pretty much has the cream and the whey separated. The whey just kind of pools up at the top after you scoop away the cream. That diminishes last post's achievement (I used Straus European-style yogurt, which is mixed more uniformly), but only a bit...I guess.

Should I go on about how much I think about yogurt these days? How much I enjoy it and how I think those little single-serving Brown Cows with the fruit in the bottom are the ultimate snack? I tried the raspberry one yesterday...so fucking good. And the cherry vanilla one? Or was it French vanilla? I don't remember. Too amazing. Swallowed it in like two gulps.

Uh...what is this blog about again? I don't know.

Anyway a mosquito just bit my fucking face.

No, that's not what I was going to say. I was going to say something like:

Anyway, there's this greek-style yogurt that they sell at the natural foods store that is the most expensive of all, but I don't want to try it because it has an unattractive logo. And the color scheme on the packaging is really bad. It's like the color of nausea. Fuck that shit. I mean...I have standards. They may be shallow and aesthetic, but they are there.

Oh yeah, I guess this is a good thing to write about: I think I'm happier than I've ever been in my life. No, I don't have a girlfriend. I didn't just get a lot of money. I didn't score a killer job. I just really really like where I am.

And yogurt. I like yogurt.

Love,

Jason

Yes Whey

The title of this entry is a pretty dumb pun. Title puns are a magazine-article-writing tactic, aren't they? Now my post feels professional. The title is the necktie of my article and the dateline above it is a well-pressed collar. This is a white-collar article. Writing like the big boys now. But let's not dwell the dumbness of a dumb pun or on neckties.

I find myself drawn toward the refrigerator in the warehouse. I don't always open it up to get food out of it though. Sometimes, I just like looking at my shelf. Which--lucky me!--is the top, which is the roomiest. On my highly prized top shelf is a little jar partially filled with whey. It's this slightly sour, lemon-juice-looking liquid. I feel so proud of my whey. I wanna carry it around with me everywhere for all time.

I got the recipe out of a book called Nourishing Traditions. It's so easy to make. I used

1 big glop of organic plain whole milk yogurt
1 old dress shirt found in a box or something in the corner of the warehouse where the tools are kept
1 shiny chrome-colored bowl
some rubber bands
water

I needed a cheesecloth to strain the yogurt. John found a shirt in a box, and I used that. It was kind of a nice looking shirt before it was ripped up. It had these vertical magenta stripes and everything. The buttons were made of plastic, so I cut them off with a knife, because I didn't know if they were going to melt during sanitization. I boiled some water in a saucepan and put the shirt in. And then I boiled it again because I just think sometimes it's good to boil a shirt twice. I stretched the shirt over the top of the bowl (but left an adequate sag in it) to act as a net for the yogurt solids. The shirt was held in place with the rubber bands. Then I just glopped about 2/3 of a 2 pound container of yogurt on top and left it out on a table for a day. Oh, and I put a plate on top of it too keep out creatures. And you know what? It's a good thing I did, because when I woke up the next day there was a dead gecko on top of the plate. It was a really fucked up looking gecko, too. It was all pale and looked like it had been dehydrated. Ugh.

But no, guys, I thought about this yogurt all day. It was really at the front of my mind. I even had a dream about it. All I was really doing in the dream was sitting at the table and watching the yogurt sit in the cheesecloth. Very similar to what I did when I was awake. Anyhow, after a day, there was product. The stuff that dripped into the bowl was whey and the solid on top of the cheesecloth was yummy cream cheese. I don't know what I am going to do with either of those things. But the nice thing about whey is it is so much less gross than I thought it would be.

Oh, there is a second step to the recipie, but it is not that important and I am too sleepy to type it.

There is a little tickle in the back of my throat which I think is from shirt fibers.

Aloha, and I love you,

Jason

Whatever the Fuck You Want

So...the Captain Cook monument. People go there to snorkel. You've gotta hike down the side of a cliff and it takes about a half hour going down and forty or fifty minutes going back up. From the road it branches off of, it just looks like some kind of narrow walkway to someone's house. No signs to tell you what it is or anything. There is so much easter egged away here it's craaaazy.

I went with one of the other farm apprentices, and didn't snorkel because some other apprentices took the good community snorkel gear to a different beach before I woke up, so I was left with busted up gear. However, I did squat and wobble around in the water like the don't-know-how-to-swim non-swimmer I am. It's a really unfriendly sea-floor. Gnarly as shrapnel and blue and black spikey balls (Oh, that's what a sea urchin looks like!) are spread just...fucking...everywhere like little fishy mines. I stepped on one. But not that hard.

Look at it. It's super pretty. It looks very Pokemon.

So, um...I went off with the other apprentice to his secret hideaway across the vast black lava field that borders the water. He doesn't know why no one else goes out there. Yeah, it's kind of a walk, but it's a great place to get privacy and (I think) the best coconuts ever. He climbed a coconut tree that was 30 feet or so tall and sawed down some of the fruit. I don't even like coconut milk but this kind was amazing. It was "effervescent" (to use his word) as if it had been carbonated and tasted "like 7-up" (to use his simile). I mean, it really did. I couldn't believe this stuff came from the Earth.

I told him I was going to take a nap for a while and he said, "You can do whatever the fuck you want out here!" Yes, he really said it like that, and yes, you could, more or less, do whatever you wanted. There really wasn't a single person out there besides us. So, in the spirit of living it up, I ate some hot dog buns and drank a beer. Then I slept for about two hours and when I woke up, I wandered away from my travel partner, out over that triiiipy, cracked up lava. I pulled off my shorts and underwear and just walked around for a while naked. Just inland of the the lava field was a really thick forest with a) GOATS! and b) my favorite kind of climbing trees. They're those massive ones with these huge horizontal parts that you can just sit and relax in. So I climbed up fifteen or twenty feet to the bench of the tree and relaxed. I like being in trees without any clothes on. I think it's more fun than swimming. The bark is abrasive, but it feels better than stepping on sea urchins.

It's really late and I am almost always the last person on the farm to go to bed, and I don't like that. I gotta get some sleep. I want to write more tomorrow, but I don't know if I'll get around to it.

Tennessee and Sarah both sent me really interesting, but kind of spooky e-mails today. I will try to write you two some paper letters.

Oh, there's a Japanese girl on the farm now, so sometimes I get to say

Oyasumi,

Jason

Rat Wars

Evening. Sitting on a couch in the warehouse. Clunking sounds from the thin metal walls. Sounds like something softly banging on them from the outside. Light clicking and little knocks, resonating loudly, out of proportion to the size of the source.

"SQUEEEE!"

And a gray blob falls from a rafter to the toaster oven. Strange and slow and silly looking. It looks flat. A clumsy silhouette in freefall. The girls on the couch laugh. "Were those two rats fighting?" They were. The one that fell ran behind the sink and was lost behind dishes and cutting boards. "Rat wars!" one of them said.

The rafters are narrow. Assuming that rats can't go in reverse, if one comes to face another on a rafter, the only thing that could happen is one would walk over another (I mean, there could be particularly agile rats; why not?), or one would shove another off to get to wherever it was going.

As one of the sisters said, "At night this is really their warehouse. We're just intruding." I like the sisters. They're funny.

Love,

Jason

I Want to See Dan Deacon Live

and

1 typewriter
2 cassette recorders and a pack of cassettes
1 bottle of whisky
ice

That'd do, really. Various drums would be nice, too. And a well-balanced diet that supports my body type.

Here's a simple video cocktail:

1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xzPN0bZfFo4&feature=related
2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubT6L7kollg

I let #1 play for two or three minutes and then started #2. There's a part where #2 goes silent and that's where the music from #1 started. Just by chance. Do you like a good mishmash? All this probably goes well with whisky on the rocks.

I don't much feel like talking about Hawaii today, but I'll say something about the bananas that takes some of the appeal away from them. Rats live in them. Rats. They live in the banana bunches before they're harvested. "It's the safest place for them," says Michael. They make nests that look like bird nests. And that explains the claw marks and the rat poo looking rat poos that are usually in the bunches that we-the-people-on-the-farm eat from.

What I really want to write about is human drama, but I'm not going to.

Japanese dog says "wan."

Jason

Do you wanna be on youtube?

So, two more apprentices have left since my last post and on Pat's last day all of us went into the city (Kailua) and drank kava. Kava is a regional treat that I thought I'd try to get a taste of Hawaii. Like bubble tea in Seattle, which was equally foreign to my sheltered North Carolinain self. You know, I think I should have tried chittlins at some point. But I haven't. And I don't think collard greens were ever served at my table back home. There's something kind of weird about that. Am I really even from North Carolina?

Anyway, kava tastes like mud. I think it is mud. Two of the other apprentices described the flavor as being like "paper" and "cardboard." I think it tastes a little like a dank basement, too. I call it frown water.

While we were drinking Kava, Apprentice John asked a local to take our picture. And then the guy asked us if we wanted to be on youtube and took a video of us. But we're just kind of sitting there. Being customers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XT6PRPkbQI

Look at his youtube profile. He likes pot.

Love,

Jason

Templeton

Oh no. There's a bag on the floor about eight feet from me and it's moving and I think it's moving because the warehouse rat is in it. When there are other people in the warehouse with me, the rat is not scary, but when I'm by myself, it's like some crazy baby monster. I don't like being scared at night!

I am really fickle when it comes to deciding if I am going to go out. Half of the apprentices went to a reggae concert tonight, and at first I said I was going to go, but when they were about to head out, I changed my mind, because I was writing a letter to Wilton and I was enjoying the vibe in the warehouse, and most of all, I HATE not being able to leave a place when I am ready to leave a place. I don't like having to wait for other people to get ready. And I wouldn't be able to wander off like I might in Seattle if I got bored, because it's dark and creepy and woodsy (not in the deciduous sense) out here. Oh, and it was raining really heavy and the concert was supposed to be outside. I don't believe in the "dry side" of Hawaii anymore. It's gotta be a myth. There's the wet side and the somewhat-less-wet side, where I live.

Oh, I have an interest in bilingual comics right now. The Kealakekua (kay-ala-kay-koo-uh) library had several Japanese/English bilingual childrens books. I got one about some whales who stole the heart of the world, a REALLY cute one that has lots of baby animals in it and a volume of classic Japanese newspaper comics called Sazae-san. I'm trying to find bilingual comics in French and Italian, too, because I want to go to Europe within a year or two.

Hey, the rat (Templeton) stopped making noises now. I don't think I'm supposed to sleep in the warehouse, but sometimes I do anyway. I have this fear that he's going to nibble on my feet in the night.

God, there are a bunch of wild chickens around here.

Oh! I made some pretty good french toast today. It had cinnamon, vanilla extract and a little bit of nutmeg in it. I don't really like nutmeg that much.

I am thinking about making my blog private soon, because I'd be more comfortable writing about some things if it were. I don't think of this blog as a blog, I think of it as a somewhat open letter to multiple friends.

I hope you are all doing well.

Love,

Jason

The Meat!

What the hell, I forgot the meat! There was meat on that sandwich! Turkey baloney. And It was between the avocado and the chard. Sigh.

Wait, no! This is good. Now it's not just a combination of two preexisting sandwiches. It is truly deluxe.

Truly,

Jason

It's a Cookbook

I made this sandwich just now that really moved me. I mean, it was fucking deluxe, so I decided to call it

The Fucking Deluxe

It goes

bread>mayo>avocado>chard>banana>peanut butter>bread

I think really it's just a combination of two preexisting sandwiches partitioned by some chard. But wow! I will have to lock it away in my internal cookbook.

A couple of days ago, I won my first game of Scrabble in...forever? I lost the scoresheet (I think I got 160-something), but I remember "oxide" and "quoth" being my highest scoring words. I always get stuck with Q. It's my spirit Scrabble letter.

And yesterday, large waves beat me up in Kailua. I feel like they (waves) were twice as tall as me. I can't swim, really, but I am very skilled at getting thrown against what few jagged rocks are on a beach. I got a gory heel, and while I was off in a bathroom or something a seal came on shore and I missed it. Damn. BUT...I did see a guy that looked like he got knocked out get hauled off by his friends. You should have seen his head bobble when they carried him. He looked like he had a black eye and everything. His eyes were open, but I mean, he was gone. I'll bet a Fucking Deluxe could have revived him.

Potluck in the Pre-Apocalypse

There was a potluck at the farm Friday in honorof a Spanish apprentice who is leaving next week. There were two long, white-clothed tables set out on a hill overlooking the lettuce beds and it was extremely dark, even through the light of the four tiki torches around the table. I thought it was a really classy setup. I made cornbread! And not just any cornbread. Here's the recipie:

Green Chile Cornbread!

1 box of Jiffy Corn Muffin mix
1 can of creamed corn
1 egg
1/3 cup milk
1 can green chiles
about five slices of cheddar cheese
1 packet of taco seasoning

Whisk the Jiffy, egg and milk in a bowl. Add creamed corn. Pour half the batter into a baking dish (I forgot to grease the dish, but that would be a good idea). Tear the cheese into little bits (shredded cheese would be easier, but all I had were slices) and layer on top. Add a layer of green chilies (you don't need to use the entire can. I used 2/3 of it.). Pour the rest of the batter into the dish. Sprinkle with taco seasoning (I used about 1/2 the packet.)

I wanted the spices to be mild, because I didn't want to take away very much from the base cornbread flavor. And alternately, if you just wanted to take all the ingredients and mix them homogeneously into the batter, it would probably be really great. But if I did it that way, I would still put the cheese on as a layer. Hey, I might try it that way next time.

This recipe was modified from a oneI found online that called for twice as many ingredients, but I stripped it down to save money. Plus this way it's vegetarian (no hamburger) and one of the girls here is a vegetarian. Oh, the original recipe suggested serving it with a dab of sour cream on top. Don't you think that'd be awesome?

The dish was cheap and really well received!

In other news, I read The Road this weekend. One of the other apprentices let me borrow it. It's about a man and his son who are just scraping by in a post-apocalyptic world. The two of them walk down a road with a shopping cart full of their stuff. Drearyness ensues. I think it's part of the reason I didn't sleep well last night. I liked it well enough, even though it's repetitive and the first 50 or so pages are tedious. And it's a grammatical headache and there are hardly any dialogue tags.

I'm going to get back to reading Walden today. I need some green to balance some of that corpsy, ashy black and white.

Eat well,

Jason

"I See You're Still Alive"

The homeless people in Kailua-Kona know me. Kailua is where I started when I came to Hawaii. It's bloated with tourists. I went back a few days ago to get my mail. A hirsute man walking down the sidewalk recognized me from the free-meals-and-services-for-homeless-people place and said, "I see you're still alive." I smiled and stuff. Then I went to the library and got some comic books.

A couple of weeks ago in Kailua, I made a homeless friend named Judy. She is an ex-hippie, ex-biker, ex-healthy person. I think she's in her late 50s. She introduced me to the aforementioned welfare place. The manager there told me that she's "one of the good ones." She lives with lots of cats in a really awesome nook in the woods behind a shopping plaza. The day I met her she had a relapse of some sort of illness after eating a mean burrito and went to vomit blood behind a dumpster. More than once. When I went back to Kailua, I asked a friend of hers how Judy was and she said that Judy'd been taken to the hospital. Still vomiting blood. Well, I hope you get well Judy. Maybe I'll be walking down the sidewalk in Kailua some day and I'll see you without expecting it. I'll smile and I'll say, "I see you're still alive." Good luck.

I'm gonna escort some kids up the hill and get some beer now.

Dog-Eared Belfry

I logged onto blogger today and realized that I have had a blog on blogger since May 2007. I completely forgot about it. It was called Dog-Eared Belfry. I like that name! Should I blog under that?

And that brings us to today.

Is this my third week in Hawaii? I'm not living on the streets anymore. I have lettuce to thank for that. And the goodwill of Ken and Barry at Kaola...ala...something Farms. Everything Hawaiian is hard to spell. My God!

It's a communal setting. I've wanted to live like that for a long time. I am hogging the communal computer. I need to go to bed.

There's a big ol' rat in the warehouse.

Love,

Jason