March 2006
I saw more of the Sleeptalker last week than I have in quite some time. He was sleeping at the Cloisters so walked uphill to campus each morning and spent some time with me before going off to play on the computers.Each morning he arrived talking of the game with great enthusiasm. (We have both more or less given up on Seventh Circle, are playing Realms of Despair.) He loves discovering things I don't yet know about and has actually helped me a little even though I'm already several levels about his top character, mostly because he continues his routine of creating many different characters rather than concentrating on one.
But then, after an hour or so, he returns, complaining about how boring the game is. (Repeat next morning, at least until he again disappeared on the weekend.)
He actually managed to qualify for Crazy Money again. For one month. At his age he not only has the doctor appointment to keep, he also has to attend an AA-type "substance abuse support group". That he hates, and I am sure I would, too. So of course he missed one and is now suspended from the program for six months.
He's also banned, yet again, from the Black Hole after getting into a fight there. And he's banned from River of Life (reason not explained). So he's managed to block himself from the two main daily providers of free food.
I wish I knew how to be of more help to him, but I guess all I can do is what I have been doing. Be there when he wants someone to talk to.
In like a lion, out like a lamb. I've no idea how that bit ot folklore got itself attached to the month of March, but if it holds true, we have a pleasant end of March to anticipate.
Of course, we can't really complain here on the southern side of the mountains because most of the nastiness has stayed on the other side. Heavy, heavy rain and flooding, the afternoon radio programs being frequently interrupted with bulletins from the National Weather Service giving "flash flood warnings". The rain on this side of the mountains has been during the night. It lingered on into the morning on Thursday and although I luckily managed to get from the Dark Corner neighborhood to the mall without getting wet, it was then raining too steadily to consider a trip to campus.
A day spent entirely at the mall is not something I particularly cherish.
The Sleeptalker told me he had seen Tanioka who was "all cleaned up". So he is, as I discovered myself on Monday. I suppose a few months in prison provides an opportunity to get "cleaned up". It was a brief encounter, a quick handshake as I was exiting a bus and he was sitting on the seat next to the door. "Good to see you," I said, and it was.
"My mother is an angel. And I hate her."
"How can anyone hate an angel?"
"Why did God give me an Angel Mom?"
No need to tell you who took part in that conversation.
The Tuesday before Third Wednesday, the longest day of any month.
Subjectively speaking, of course, nothing to do with equinoxes and solstices.
And it's yet again a dreary, gray, wet day. The worst late winter weather in these islands since I've lived here.
I've thought often recently of Bob Dylan's "Not Dark Yet".
... and there's less and less to say.
Edith Sitwell's "still falls the rain" surely is the theme for March 2006 in Honolulu.
"This is SO boring," the Sleeptalker said on Monday morning, while the water poured nonstop from the sky. (There were moments of sunshine in the afternoon, for the first time in a week, but storms raged again through the night.)
I was invited to see Fleming with the Honolulu Symphony on Sunday. Much to my regret, I had to decline. As I told my French Reader, I would have had to get a hotel room so I could give myself a good scrub and buy new clothes, neither of which I could afford. She scolded me, said I should have gone and asked "who would have noticed?"
I would have.
The Sleeptalker and I were sitting in the mall when a new derelict walked by, really in bad, dirty condition. The Sleeptalker hid his face with his jacket in mock horror. I said that if I ever lost interest in on-line life, I'd probably be just like that since I wouldn't have to maintain appearances sufficiently enough to enter Hamilton Library. (If not enough to enter Blaisdell Concert Hall.)
the tales