This store doesn’t look too fancy but it’s the favorite spot of a very famous person. The unhappy lad next to its door is impatiently waiting for his shaved ice order to be ready.
This cutie pie (growing up way too fast) is standing next to a picture of the very famous man who frequents Kokonuts every time he’s on Oahu. His initials are BO. Don’t ask me how these shaved ice thingies taste. I’d had a knockoff at Sea Life the day before and was not impressed.
Door into underwater life. Sea Life Park, Hawaii
Sea Life Park focuses primarily on sharks, dolphins, all kinds of tropical fish, penguins, sea lions, giant sea turtles and otters but does have a aviary filled with parakeets and other small birds that you can feed at your own risk.
They’re very excitable and aggressive and their wild behavior caused several children to run from the aviary screeching as though in a scene from the movie The Birds.
Sea Life is a smallish aquatic park most famous for being the setting for scenes from the Adam Sandler movie 50 First Dates. I enjoyed it’s intimacy but some people feel it’s overpriced for what it is.
Yes, I have run away to Hawaii – the southern tip of the island of Oahu. The picture above is a wedding venue within walking distance of the Obama estate (via the beach). You can’t actually see his estate from the road.
Path leading to beach. On Oahu people cannot restrict beach access. Even ex-Presidents.
The second image is from a small botanical garden near the Obama estate which is free to local residents and rather difficult to find!
This tile mural was installed on the masonry wall of the Orinda Community Center. To get close enough for a photograph you have to climb the stairs leading to the adjacent library. Thus the slanted angle.
Care to guess what it is a “visual metaphor” for? Here are a few clues:
Above the bull are images of people many of whom are glued to their iPhones. Transposed in front of them is a figure all in white. Why is he running? Is he a cricket player? Do you recognize the climate activist hidden amongst the crowd? How about the political sign?
Below is a close up of the bull – note the palm trees blowing in the wind etched on his torso. Humm, palm trees blowing in the wind … a hurricane?
And then there’s the crumbled figure at the bull’s feet. He’s not dressed like a matador. He’s dressed like a farmer. What does he represent?
Surrounding the the bull (on the red tiles) are images of wild animals – an owl, a lion and a wolf and others. On the blue tiles (and admittedly harder to see) are images of cartoon animals. I think that’s Goofy on the upper left.
I was completely stumped. What on earth was the artist trying to say? A murderous bull with hurricane tattoos, people who only see the world through the lens of their social media, a cricket player trying to run away from the whole bizarre scene?
I don’t know if there’s any difference between teasing a bull in the bullring or wrestling a bull in a muddy field. Granted, in the bullring you might have a better chance of surviving. What am I missing?
We had to put in a new retaining wall and fix a drainage problem which required a lot of dirt moving and unearthed tons of rocks. Literally. The entire project was supposed to take a week. It took over a month. I just wrote the final check.
I began noticing many smooth rocks were being unearthed. The kind of rocks that are gentle to bare feet. The Mexican guys who did most of the work must have thought I was nuts, stacking piles of silty stones along the new retaining wall, but I grew up in Nevada where rock collecting used to be a very popular hobby. Admittedly most people were looking for arrowheads.
All that remains of my childhood rock collection. Three rough cut garnets, two arrowheads and a bit of silica (I think)This rock has bubbles which makes it difficult to get a good picture of. A close up of the bubbles. Looks like a serpent’s head, I think. Maybe an alien life force?
Amazing what you can find in nature. An art gallery once the silt of ages is washed away.
I’ve never been a big fan of circuses. I always have visions of the tightrope walker slipping and falling head first into the path of an elephant who’d been whipped into obedience a wee too many times. Or the clown on meth who flips out and decides to randomly fire into the audience. Only with real bullets and not water balloons. And then there’s the evil ringmaster with his Snidley Whiplash mustache!
Luckily my parents much preferred torturing us on the ski slopes or on rocky, dusty trails into the back country. Bears versus demented clowns, hum, I don’t know. Which one would you prefer?
However, many years ago I visited a friend in Las Vegas who was the “queen of props” for Cirque du Soleil’s Mystere and she was able to wrangle us “very special seats” for the midnight show. Despite my fear of clowns, we just couldn’t pass up very special seats to a Vegas show even if it was a circus. I hadn’t seen Jo for many years and was surprised that my brilliant friend, a person so well read and so knowledgeable in so many fields, would find joy and fulfillment dealing with, as she called them, “childish Russian acrobats with garlic tinged breath.” But she did.
Just before midnight, we slipped through a guarded back door and then rode the freight elevator up, up, up to a room which was basically a glass bird cage suspended from the ceiling. There, a team of technicians monitoring the sound and light equipment greeted us with a list of instructions:
No talking!!!
no sneezing!!!
no coughing!!!
no photos!!!
no eating!!!
no drinking!!!
no recordings!!!
and, don’t dare move from your seats until the break!!!
Our “seats” were actually a bench that faced a wall of windows sloping dangerously forward. Far, far below we could see the stage and the audience as they trickled in to find their seats. To be in that box as the theater went dark and all you could see were the muted lights on the various instrumental panels was … well I couldn’t breathe. It became even more surreal when several acrobats on swings dropped down from the ceiling, their faces so close to the glass we could see them chewing gum!
Then the beating of the giant taiko drums announced the start of the show. The acrobats flipped over backwards and dropped headfirst down towards the audience as search lights highlighted the startled faces in the audience. The acrobats flew over the audience like the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz until this creature appeared.
Alice the Escargot who marks the passage of time
The story line is impossible to follow as act after act explodes upon the stage, each one more daring and mind-blogging than the one before. If you’ve never seen a Cirque du Soleil performance, it’s hard to believe the acrobats, dancers, contortionists and magicians are really human beings. We were bedazzled, shocked and almost dizzy with excitement as we left the magic lightbox and exited into the now quiet casinos of the Treasure Island Resort.
Jo was dying. I think she lasted another year and it was a rough year. But the cast of Cirque du Soleil all signed a giant Get Well card for their “Queen of Props” which she cherished until the end.
And that’s where I got the idea for Flipka, the psychiatrist who ran away and joined the circus.
Every Friday I will be posting a snippet from the sequel to Flipka. If you’re interested in following along, welcome! All feedback, be it fair or foul, is welcome.
SERGEI SLEPT ON A COT in one of the prop rooms, although never the same cot and never the same prop room. Thus, finding him in that labyrinth of costumes, backdrops and props was nearly impossible but … I knew where he showered every morning.
“Flipka!” He said, emerging from the row of showers in all his hairy-as-a-Russian bear and built-like-a-Polish ox nakedness. “Haven’t they caught you yet?” I asked as he pulled a clean towel from the bin and began drying off, armpits first. “When it comes to the ladies, I never tell,” he winked. Sergei claimed that the male acrobats farted garlic when they showered. He didn’t mind garlic on someone’s breath but expelled via the anus was a different story. And so he had taken up the habit of showering in the dressing rooms used by the showgirls and female acrobats. Generally after all of them had left for the day. When he’d saved enough money by sleeping in the prop rooms, showering with the ladies, and eating throwaways from the all-you-can-eat buffets, Sergei planned to bring his entire family over from Moscow, and then, they were going to take over Vegas. And I believed him because he knew things about the town that no one knew, not even Hyman. He claimed that he’d stumbled upon the real plans for the Strip. The secret passageways and tunnels unknown to any city planner or building inspector. He would never say where he’d found them or where they were hidden because those plans were more valuable to him than all the “gold in the Kremlin.”
“I’ll get right to the point: I need you to get me out of here,” I said. “I heard you meet with big man.” “Yes. I may be a little paranoid but —” “Last year we hear stories of his daughter’s big rescue. See pictures in newspaper. Ha!” Sergei rarely believed anything he read in the newspapers or saw on television. “You think girls in Switzerland … in mountains … yodeling? And big man pays? Ha! Fairy stories. Girls in newspaper … girls they show on television … actors.” “I didn’t see any of the news coverage. I was —“ “And then we hear our Flipka very sick. We send get well card!” He chuckled. “Everybody sign!”
“Yes I got your card.” The news that a trio of missing teenage girls had been found in the clutches of a polygamist cult had failed to ignite the East Coast media. It was Nevada, after all. Another planet in another solar system. A place where stuff like that happened all the time. Didn’t it? “I wasn’t sick. I was deported. Someone didn’t want me around when the story broke.”
“Hyman?”
“I didn’t think so … although I’m starting to wonder…” What kind of a father would try to profit off a bogus story about his own daughter? What kind of father?
“We have to find new prop lady.” Sergei continued drying his body. After the pits, he dried his hairy arms, then his hairy legs and finally … his considerable groin sac. “I get you out of here, Flipka,” he mumbled tossing the towel into the dirty bin. “I’m thinking afterwards … steak for breakfast. At Steakhouse. With a Stoli. A bottle of Stoli.”
I handed him a couple of twenties. “I didn’t come with a lot of cash —” “And some cigars …” He added as he pulled on grey slacks and grabbed a plaid shirt. “You louse! After I helped with the immigration!“ He threw back his head and laughed. “I kid you, little one. You lost sense of humor?” “Then I’ll take the twenties back …” “Ha! I have new gaffer at eleven. We have steak at Steakhouse with Stoli then he tell me why is best person for job. Ha! Follow me. We go fast.” he said as he began walking toward one of the prop rooms. “First, we suit up!”
“Suit up?”
I may need to take next week off. We’re having work done around the house and have already had one emergency and one haggle with the contractor … those of you who live in old houses know what I mean!
A description: Unseen in the branches of a young redwood tree. Perhaps alone. Perhaps lonely. Perhaps a mourning dove. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps But hoping to be ... unseen.
Seen, By the lone lantern, nearby, as the sun sets, and prepares for the hollow moon.
Saying nothing in particular 