The Pineapple Diet
We bought this air & hotel package to Honolulu months ago, when we thought we'd have money by now, but it's all right to be broke in Honolulu. We eat pineapple. At the $2.99 all-you-can-eat pancake breakfast, the waiter colludes with us--lets the three of us eat from one plate, turns his head as we stuff pancakes into our beach bags.
Later we heat them on the coffee maker in our room.
My bio-dad lived in this city for 20 years--not five blocks from where we're staying. It's sad to be here without him. Maia doesn't remember the time we visited here with her bio-dad when she was a baby. For one strange week, we both had fathers.
All-you-can-eat pancakes and fathers.
Six months ago my father sold his apartment here and moved to southeast Asia. Two months ago Maia's father died and we traveled to England for his funeral. I showed her the squat we'd lived in on All Saint's Road before I got pregnant. We met his family, met her family.
It's been a long season of death and grief and time-warp and disorientation.
I've spent my evenings finishing up the edit on my book, The Traveling Death & Resurrection Show. I wrote it last summer in Italy, before this wave of death in real life began. I wonder now if I was trying to prepare myself, trying to train my soul-brain to remember that death needn't have the last word, that is wasn't such a big deal.
Who knows?
I don't know much about death, but I know the way it makes some fights seem shockingly petty and absurd, and the way it makes other fights seem even more righteously important. And I know the way it doesn't always clarify which one is which.
These last two deaths have had almost nothing in common in terms of the way they've hit me, but they've had one random-weird thing in common: Both have inspired people I hardly know to rip me new assholes about what an insensitive piece of shit I am. By e-mail or phone or long-suffering, hand-written, snail-mail missive. When far-flung people tell you the same thing about yourself, the instinct is to take it pretty seriously. Maybe it's just a part of grief, lashing out at near-strangers' impurities, but I was born under the sign of cancer and I want to be good--not a saint, but not an asshole, either--so I'm trying to listen, trying to understand what it's all about. Not just the rants, but all the death, too.
What's it all about?
Keep in mind that I've just been eating pineapple for a few days, so you might have to explain it really slowly.
Later we heat them on the coffee maker in our room.
My bio-dad lived in this city for 20 years--not five blocks from where we're staying. It's sad to be here without him. Maia doesn't remember the time we visited here with her bio-dad when she was a baby. For one strange week, we both had fathers.
All-you-can-eat pancakes and fathers.
Six months ago my father sold his apartment here and moved to southeast Asia. Two months ago Maia's father died and we traveled to England for his funeral. I showed her the squat we'd lived in on All Saint's Road before I got pregnant. We met his family, met her family.
It's been a long season of death and grief and time-warp and disorientation.
I've spent my evenings finishing up the edit on my book, The Traveling Death & Resurrection Show. I wrote it last summer in Italy, before this wave of death in real life began. I wonder now if I was trying to prepare myself, trying to train my soul-brain to remember that death needn't have the last word, that is wasn't such a big deal.
Who knows?
I don't know much about death, but I know the way it makes some fights seem shockingly petty and absurd, and the way it makes other fights seem even more righteously important. And I know the way it doesn't always clarify which one is which.
These last two deaths have had almost nothing in common in terms of the way they've hit me, but they've had one random-weird thing in common: Both have inspired people I hardly know to rip me new assholes about what an insensitive piece of shit I am. By e-mail or phone or long-suffering, hand-written, snail-mail missive. When far-flung people tell you the same thing about yourself, the instinct is to take it pretty seriously. Maybe it's just a part of grief, lashing out at near-strangers' impurities, but I was born under the sign of cancer and I want to be good--not a saint, but not an asshole, either--so I'm trying to listen, trying to understand what it's all about. Not just the rants, but all the death, too.
What's it all about?
Keep in mind that I've just been eating pineapple for a few days, so you might have to explain it really slowly.
posted by Contact at 10:15 PM
2 Comments:
You are not insensitive. You are not a piece of shit. You have no idea how much you have done for people who hardly know you. Just this last week, I was wishing I actually knew you so I could e-mail you and vent about my financial instability because I just knew that YOU would understand and make me feel better and less worried about the future. How weird is that? You have responded to a couple of my e-mail questions and I subscribe (though I'm probably expired) to your zine, but we really don't know each other at all. And yet, having read your books and articles, I feel like I know you and like you are someone we all can count on. NOT many people inspire that in strangers! Only very insensitive, insightful, NICE people can!
Also, I am so sorry about Maia's dad. I didn't know. Even though he'd not been a good presence in your life, I know that must have been hard and strange. Take care.
I am in shock that someone whould call you insensitive, of all things in the world! I can only "here!here!" the previous comments on this topic (including condolences). Ariel, your words and actions have been so very valuable for me for a long time. I appreciate you!
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