1316
From a newspaper report:Police seeking woman's identity
Police are asking for the public's help in identifying a woman who was found unconscious at a bus stop near Ala Moana Beach Park Feb. 16.
The woman was found about 10:30 a.m. and may have been homeless and living in the park or surrounding areas, police said. She was taken to a hospital, but police have been unable to identify her.
If she wasn't found until about 10:30, she must have been unconscious for at least five hours. I wonder how someone knew she was unconscious and not just sleeping? Maybe a park regular who knew her invariable routine?
As I said in an email, I hope she recovers sufficiently to appreciate the comfort of a bed, after all these years of sleeping in a sitting position. I really don't expect to see her sitting outside McD's in the early morning again, but would be delighted to do so.
But there are no means to know what her last years were. Maybe she was lost in a pleasant dream of her own. I hope this was so.
I hope so, too, although there was certainly nothing about her appearance, her "aura", which would suggest that was the case. On the other hand, I have written, I think, somewhere in the Tales that perhaps these people are just more spiritually advanced than I, not needing the constant distraction of books or music, able to sit doing nothing all day, day after day, for years.
What strikes me in the Tales and their evolution is not so much that some of the characters are dying (though I certainly wish they stayed alive !), it is that there are no new ones. Are you fed up with humanity, are your sleeping circumstances making more difficult to meet new people, or is there some other reason ?
Well, the basic core group of characters are the result of the Hacienda. Certainly, the Dark Corner is the extreme opposite of that (although "Camilla" did arrive for a third time). I made it quite clear her presence wasn't especially welcomed. Also, the ban on smoking at Manoa Garden on campus means I rarely go there, so don't have the former chance to talk with students. And I don't go to the beach park, haven't since that awful night when the Sleeptalker and I were arrested.
The Sleeptalker is the last Great Love of My Life. Although there are approximately 18,000 students on campus, at least one thousand of whom are interesting, five hundred desireable, and fifty absolutely adorable, it's only "eye candy". Not really interested beyond enjoying the pleasure of seeing and watching them.
I don't know. Maybe I'm becoming a hermit?
1317
Brad Pitt is on the cover of four more magazines. Star, a weekly publication, hasn't managed to produce an issue for months without his picture. (I am NOT complaining.) He even gets two on the current cover, but then it's a special issue about the 50 most sexy people, so who can be surprised.There is a line in the I Ching which says something like "winds from the west, bringing no rain". Doesn't apply to Hawaii where westerly wind almost always brings rain. Brought a lot of it on Saturday when it rained quite continuously from morning until late afternoon. My sleeping spot was wet when I got there so I had to switch to the other, more exposed-to-the-outside, area (to outside viewers, but not to weather).
The Met provided a decent performance of Barber of Seville but, as I told Felix, I didn't have any regrets about not capturing it on tape. He was, as expected, worried about the less than elegantly written postcard. I hope I reassured him with two more this weekend where the control is obviously improved.
Prairie Home Companion was a repeat of a 2003 show but I hadn't heard it and enjoyed it so much that I listened again on Sunday. Randy Newman was a major part of the enjoyment.
I don't think I have read William Martin before, but found two of his historical novels on the dollar-book shelves, Back Bay and Cape Cod. Same device in both, switching back and forth from colonial times to contemporary Massachusetts, with a long-lost artifact forming a major part of the plot (a silver tea set by Paul Revere, the captain's log from the Mayflower). Interesting diversions, but I wouldn't really recommend them unless you are faced with a rainy Saturday and nothing better to do.
Lady Moana was outside the 7-Eleven when I dashed there during a break in the rain. She asked about the Sleeptalker. I told her he is sleeping under a bridge in Waianae and she wondered if it was the same one where they lived when he was still a teenager. Maybe. His Lordship is still in prison.
They have built new shelters at that bus stop I mentioned and new residents have already moved in. One is a man who worked for a long time at the Black Hole. Strange, going from working with homeless people to being one.
1318
It's been a quiet week in Lake Wobegone, Garrison will probably say on the radio tomorrow night. Been a quiet week in Honolulu Town, too, not much happening.I was sitting in the sunset area when a woman I don't recall seeing before walked up to me and handed me a twenty dollar bill, turned around, got in her car and drove away. The kindness of strangers ...
The dollar-book shelves keep providing surprises. I thought I'd read all of the James Patterson novels, but discovered Club Midnight and Roses are Red which I've somehow missed. Midnight is probably the worst thing I've read by him, almost gave up on it. Patterson is one of the writers who usually does a fine job of it but writes about such unpleasant people and situations, I wonder if I'm being stupid to read him.
I didn't do anything special for Saint Patrick's Day, avoided the party places. More people than usual on campus were wearing green, but I didn't. When I was in school, the story went that if you wore green on Thursday, you were "queer" (i.e., homosexual). Don't ask me why.
the tales