Maui meows and birds on twitter

I captured some video here (around the 2:30 mark) which gives you an idea of the Maui lovebird "problem" - an invasive, non-native bird species capable of wreaking havoc on the environment, which is also cute as a green-feathered, peach-faced button. I adore birds and have made a hobby of observing them (one of the benefits of slowing down in retirement - it's hard for me to believe now that they were there all the time, right in my back yard, and I was oblivious to them.) These guys captivated me because they, unexpectedly, seemed attracted to me, but it was a love-hate thing. A meowing cat on the ground below the lanai added some excitement, though the birds were smart enough to keep well out of its way. 

One little guy kept coming around - I could tell it was him because he looked like he had an injury under his beak - scolding and blatting at me, then suddenly falling asleep in that adorable puffy, winky-eyed bird way. I kept wondering where this strange ragtag flock had come from, and why some of them were obvious hybrids or mutations - colors that would never result from random wild breeding. Were people just opening the cage door, or what? 

This may be our last vacation, which is why I'm posting so much on it. I've had to make the best of it. I am not a natural globe-trotter, we have very little money, and my health, while better than it was 15 years ago, is maintained with the benefit of multiple prescriptions. If I ever got separated from them for any length of time, I am not sure what would happen. Time zone shifts I can't handle (though it only bothered me this time after I got home and had to do Christmas). My mate's knees are awful, and he hates planes. So I am left to make the best of this one last glorious holiday. 

Maui, my island home (for 9 days!)

(I HATE it when people post their boastful deluxe vacation photos for the sole purpose of making everyone else jealous and depressed at the shabbiness of their own uneventful lives. I do this only as an act of vengeance. Not that they'll notice.) 

 

San Francisco: I left my heart (and my wallet)

No, seriously, it was beautiful, even though I came home with some wretched bug that must be the flu. My ears were assaulted with hacksaw blades for the last 35 minutes of the flight, and are still recovering. But it was good to be there, and eve better to be home.

This is my almost-first attempt at posting on YouTube. I apologize for the jerky camera work in this one, but hey, IT WASN'T ME, but my husband trying frantically to find the legendary crossroads with glaring sun in his eyes. Still and all, the Land of Rice-a-Roni was fairly magical, with faint traces of the Summer of Love wafting (along with the pot smoke) down Ashbury Street where, I think, the Grateful Dead once lived.

The Golden Gate Bridge was sighingly beautiful, truly worthy of that song (and the tour guide blasted it over the PA system as we crossed it on the bus). The cablecars, well, I'm going to devote a whole blog post to the cablecars. Ding, ding, ding! It's Rice-a-roni, gang!

Holiday/Holy Day

Since this won't align in the centre (er!), I'll just write from the centre too.

The origin of holiday was Holy Day.

Nothing much holy about it any more,

unless you decide to go to the Holy Land,

a trip I've never understood

because it always seems to be undertaken by churchy retirees

who then inflict their pictures ad nauseam, complete with

running commentary:
"Look, there's the head of Jesus!"

Nothing is questioned,

not even seventeen femur bones of Lazarus

or somebody.

I once saw a mummified Pope, but I forget

where it was, maybe

Venice. I loved

Venice

in spite of its stinking waters

and guys in striped shirts with barge poles,

but Florence (Firenze!) blew me away

with its San Marco, its

gold-lined cathedral.

If God lived anywhere,

it was here.

David, a must-see

was extremely tall

with a huge head

and (in spite of all the fuss)

a very small penis

he was out of proportion

because everyone was looking "up"

This year it's a driving trip to Alberta

a place we lived a long time ago

and didn't see:

Moses mountains

bighorn sheep all over the road

moose and elk and the occasional shy white

mountain goat

and even, once,

a wolf bounding out in front of our car

on the highway at night,

its feral eyes lit up like incandescent disks.

I want to get away from it all,

the whining I've done lately, which makes me ashamed,

for surely the only direction is forward.

They say

and maybe "they" are right

that a vacation

(origin: vacate or vacant or evacuate or vacuum cleaner - heh-heh, sorry, I made that one up)

that a vacation, no matter how modest

is a way of hitting the reset button of the mind

Letting a fresh breeze blow through all those sizzling neurons

Eating things you're not spozed to

and not caring.

And that brings me to another subject: in a memoir I read not long ago,

by never-mind-who or you'd

wonder if he really wrote it,

which he did,

the subject said he was mastering the art of "caring

while not caring"

I liked it

though could only get it

with that part of my brain or liver

that gets things

not careless, per se

but perhaps carefree

and isn't that the ideal state

in which to go on vacation?

Up north

My mother had a funny way of saying things

she'd pronounce them a little off,

and when she'd start talking about "going up north"

we knew she meant "up at Bondy"

her name for our paradise.



I don't know if the perceptions of children are
compressed because of their short time on earth,
or infinitely vast, as yet unimpeded by "you can't" and "don't".

"Up at Bondy" meant Nancy and Brian
and a couple of weeks of unlimited freedom
and running around in our bathing suits
jumping off the dock


the magic of July nights
of bullfrogs booming like bassoons

of lying face-up on the swell of the hill
and staring at stars ripped free of all veils,
with the eerie music of loon-flutes quivering.


I can't tell you about the smell of small-mouth bass
in a pail, fishy and sandy
and fried up in butter
and heady smells of bacon
and burnt coffee
and the perpetual barbecue.
Great slabs of meat, porterhouse steaks
and kippers for breakfast
I don't remember eating anything else
but potato chips and brandy snaps.


Bondi was playing horses with Nancy
(we wanted a horse so bad we could die)
we knew it would never happen
so we would BE horses
prance like wild things on the ridge,

not knowing we'd never
be this carefree again


I can't express a summer in my mind,
the smell of lakewater, Noxzema cream
on burnt skin,
and a Camelot built from wet sand.
I can't express a memory
of a red bathing suit
and a baby kingbird
somehow, impossibly sitting
on my outstretched hand

like some Bondi falcon.

I learned lore from Nancy
whose grandfather was an opera singer
and when it rained, we'd
climb up the shelves of the linen closet
into a hole, an attic trove
of old things, dusty costumes
and dried-out makeup kits
from Gilbert and Sullivan productions


a gramophone you had to crank
and impossibly old records:
Keep the Home Fires Burning
My Little Grey Home in the West
(and our favorite)
A Cornfield Medley
which was shockingly racist:
"Some folks say dat a nigger don't steal. . . "
We saw that the record
thick like a slab of slate
had grooves on only one side
No one had thought to record on the other side
and I was later to learn it was made
in the 1800s

when sound in a bottle was still a miracle.


The two weeks "up at Bondy" blew by too fast
Nancy and Brian went back to being
the owner's kids,
and even on this day they own it,
still own Bondi:


it exists in an unchanged form
that seems like time suspended.

Humans hang on to Paradise, to a
place or state of mind eternal
as if it represents the ultimate reward,
finally, finally letting down the burden
of constant change.


I would go back to Bondi,
I will go back to Bondi,
and I know I will find it pristine,
with a few things added, a horse arena here,
an indoor swimming pool there,
so people don't need to rely on the weather;
Nancy and Brian still live there, but they
aren't the Nancy and Brian of old,

nor can they be,

any more than I am that child who dreamed
she was a ridge runner

and held a bird in her hand.

http://www.bondi-cottage-resort.com/