Getting a leis on Kauai ;) (1 Viewer)

"Hey poptop, we're glad you're here and all, but you haven't said anything in over two weeks. Make a post. Tell us what (or who) you had for dinner. Make an ass of yourself somehow, you know how to do that. Jump back in the water, all the other freaks miss you."

[Hugging the toilet bowl with one hand and fumbling with the laptop with the other:]

I appreciate . . . the thought.

I figured you consummate Bukophiles would enjoy a few days of relief from Poptop making a public nuisance of himself under the pull of the moon. But since some of you maniacs seem to be interested and have had your molecules of mentality rearranged by B's literary canon"”to your apparent benefit"”I'll share something more personal and say that I was on a two-week visit to the Islands to visit a long-time friend, a former lover I met many years ago when I was a 22 year old musician and she was 40. What does this have to do with Bukowski? I think of his later poems when he was nearing the end of his run and what he wrote about Jane many years before...

My friend was something else when we first met: a 5'10" dancer with hair of vin rouge and a body that had a lot of milage left... beautiful freckled breasts and those oh-so-long dancer's legs that went all the way up. She had never been in love until we met; I had, but it was nothing like what I had with her. The first two years together we could do no wrong. Every meal, movie, trip seemed perfect. Now we met again to tour Kauai, where she lived, and catch up on old times. We didn't talk of love, but the connection was still there, and we could be completely relaxed with each other. I knew I had to see her at least one more time before she died, and she felt the same way"”all unspoken. It's good to see how everything comes full circle and the gratitude in one's bones that one feels to be aware of it. She's 76 now and gets angry with herself because she knows she's getting old and her memory for the simple things gives out on her. We got lost trying to find a canyon near Waimea Bay and I could see that she was caught in a cloud of confusion, almost to tears. I had never seen her like that, my initiation into seeing her life fall apart.

I tell her it's not her fault and what does it matter anyway? But she tells me that she remembers everything about our past. She has memories of us standing in some unknown garden with our arms around each other's waist. It could have been in this life-time or the last. She says she never knew that love like that existed. I couldn't explain my love for her, other than to say that she has a charm sprinkled with fairy mist and knows how to forgive someone like me who used to tell her that I hated her when I felt her slipping away. She ended up marrying someone else and is still with him after 27 years.

That guy could stand to get a few Bukowski poems under his belt and loosen up a little. The three of us would sit at the dinner table and he'd shovel the food in his mouth as if he couldn't get it down fast enough, and then bolt from the table. To get away from me? "No," she said, "he's always like that." He barely talks to her and isn't interested when she does. I don't feel that way. I just like to hear her talk about anything and everything. The sparkle is still in her voice and the lightning in her eyes, even after three decades. This was some type of last rite each was giving to the other, and I was glad I saw her at least one more time. You get old enough and the desires of youth seem like phantoms. Instead, you live side by side with a sense of eternity you'll never understand but you know is coming, and you're both part of it, and you make sure the moments brim with some type of truth to bring you back to the exact point where it all began"”to carry it with you into the vast unknown. I would do it all over again . . . with her.

Poptop
 
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poptop,

beautiful. I'm younger than you, but I've been thru similar experiences: seeing someone after 10-15 years and feeling the sparkle is still there. All unspoken, of course. You don't fuck, you don't French kiss, etc, but you share whatever is there to be shared... [well, sometimes you do fuck, but that's another story].
With hindsight, I'd say that sparkle is not completely real, though. I mean, you spend a few hours/days with someone you used to love and it's very easy to get carried away. Very easy, especially if you just want to see the "good" stuff. But don't we all love those illusions somehow?

I don't know, I guess I'll understand this better when I'm 50 or 60...
 

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