Where the Wombats Are

24 July 2008
Waikiki

so what we’ve been lead to believe is the hula, isn’t, evidently. the show was fine, but not what i expected. i guess what we’re used to seeing is more like belly dancing. no coconut bras either, damn!!

sorry to be brief in the emails but, i’m slow typing and the time adds up quick. tomorrow maybe i’ll bring my laptop to the coffee shop and do some extended stuff. saw the sunset tonight, very nice. it’s quite pleasant here. very sticky air too. i’m also surprised to notice how pale the asian folks are. at least the tourist anyway. now i don’t feel so bad. saw a couple of folks sporting the “boiled irish” look on the way down from Diamondhead. perhaps they actually were. irish, that is. it was nice to get out of honolulu and see some of the more regular areas of the island. very beautiful! mountains and sea just like in the brochures.

tomorrow i’m gonna see Pearl Harbor and a couple of temples somewhat near there. i also need to do laundry. i got no socks man!

24 July 2008
Hawai’i

Despite my volcanic hatred for all things Jimmy Buffett, here I sit in the “A Cheeseburger In Paradise” restaurant eating a, you guessed it, a salad. Ha! I just couldn’t eat a cheeseburger here because part of my soul would turn to stone and I would almost certainly come back in my next life as a flapjack, a dog bone or a memeber of the Rolling Stones. Pure hell any way you twist it. That having been said (i love that phrase) my salad is excellent, the view of the beach is great and the beers are flowing like tears at a Journey concert during “Don’t Stop Believing”. In other words, I feel good.

Diamondhead this morning was very cool. especially the 52,000 step staircase. i exagerate, of course. still, a big set o’ steps. also the 50 yard long cave/tunnel. amazing 360 degree view from the top. although too many folk up there for any kind of spiritual connection with ones surroundings. such is the nature of nature these days.

Took a long busride out to the Valley of the Temples afterwards. Not quite as serene as i’d hoped for, but still quite beautiful. Especially the backdrop of stunning mountains. Razor sharp ravines running almost straight up the sides all covered in deep, mossy green vegetation. the temple itself is a replica from 900 year old one in Uji, Japan. built without nails even! It housed an 18 foot high hand carved Buddha. most impressive.

doh! out of time. i’ll get back to you after the hula show

bye!

23 July 2008

i’m in lovely oh waaahooo at the moment. the beach is really beautiful, but the rest of honolulu looks like the cambridgeside galleria. shopping, shopping and umm… oh, more shopping. a little too much stimulus on that count. but the weather is awesome. tomorrow i’m gonna go to diamondhead and
later to this place called the valley of the temples on the north shore. maybe pearl harbor on the way back, see how i feel.

hawaiian airlines was excellent. waaaaaayyyyyy better than american. plenty of food & beveridge service, seats go waaaayyy back, i rented a handheld dvd player for $15 that had about 12 different movies and a bunch of tv shows. most of the content was pretty goofy, but entertaining enough. (Drillbit Taylor, 10,000 BC, 27 Wedding Dresses?! please.) all said and done though they get the thumbs up from me and american gets a big doodie dropped on thier shoe.

Below are excerpts from emails I’ve received from Slade in the past few days…

22 July 2008

it’s tuesday morning and i’m at bill’s. sent the kitties off no problem last night. i feel horrible doing this to them. they just look so terrified. by the end of the afternoon yesterday ernie had actually started to get a bit playful and bert didn’t look quite so horrified. Trixie would’nt come out of the carrier and was just staring ahead and breathing kinda heavy. i put bert in with her and that seemed to help. they kinda snuggle up with each other. once the usda guy showed up i had to separate everyone. more nervousness. by this point they’re probably at Eastern creek and will calm down once the hustle & bustle stops. ugh, i can’t stand thinking about the look on their little faces.

anyhow, onto more cheery matters. went out with Bill & Mary last night. i’m having lunch with donna this afternoon and tonight will be dinner with Ray & sandy, Dave & Gail(hopefully) bill, mary and other folks i don’t know. so, should be fun. i’ve been checking out things to do in Oahu and, of course, there’s plenty. i wanted to do some hiking, but i don’t have anything but my sneakers with me. oh well. maybe i can find some cheap approach shoes and wear those.

alright, it’s coffee time. i’ll give you a shout when i’m in hawaii. yayyyyyy!!

23 July 2008

dinner with everyone at some korean bbq place last night was great. everybody says hi to you and wanted to know how you’re doing. i haven’t taken too many pics yet as there hasn’t been much of interest, but i’ve been writing everything down.

ok, time to go to el aero puerto.

i’ll email you tonight from good ole’ honolulu. with any luck i’ll be wearing a coconut bra by 9pm.

22 July 2008

I just had a long chat with Kelly at the Eastern Creek (Sydney) quarantine station. Everybody has arrived safely. Ernie and Bert gave her a little attitude during their checkup (growling and hissing) but they let her do everything she needed to do. Trixie was very good – no problems.

Bert and Trixie are together. Ernie is on his own. (They can only put two animals together) She might be able to move them around after two weeks and put Ernie in with Trixe and Bert on his own or something, but there is heaps of paperwork to move them around into different kennels so it just isn’t feasible to rotate them every few days or anything.

We don’t need to bring t-shirts or blankets or anything. Kelly said she’s got a huge pile of washing (not really soiled – just water spilled from their drinking dishes) and then she will put it all back for them. She started laughing. She said “Oh, no. Don’t bring anything. They each had about five or six t-shirts in their kennels. I’ve never seen so many. I wondered if he had any clothes left to wear.” She said, “I reckon he must work in a factory that makes t-shirts.” It was then my turn to laugh and I told her that Slade worked for screen printer who made t-shirts! Too funny. We can bring some toys though, if we want.

Kelly was super nice and she’ll be looking after them through the end of July, so we’ll meet her next week when we go. Their shifts rotate monthly and she’ll be moving over to dogs for August so we’ll have someone new for the second two weeks. There are two catteries, each with about 60+ cats at present. But I have Kelly’s mobile phone number and we can call her any time between 8a-4.30p every day. I really liked her and feel good that Ernie, Bert and Trixie will get good treatment from her.

Slade is happy in LA, visiting with everyone, but already thinking about climbing mountains on Oahu by week’s end. He sounds more relaxed than I’ve heard him in months. I’m so glad!!

Did my first real yoga class today at lunch. Great! I feel like I can breathe. I love it. The yoga I tried once before was so low impact that it wasn’t really anything. This was great. It’s especially great that I’m breathing more easily on a Wednesday, because choir rehearsals start again tonight!

22 July 2008
my office

Talked to Slade this morning via relay. I had my sister on Skype and she managed to call Slade on the mobile phone and put him on speaker phone in her office in Denver so we could hear each other. He was in the freight terminal at LAX, with the kitties, waiting to meet up with the vet. So at least they made it halfway!

Kitties should be en route now and Slade out partying with all his Boston pals that moved to Los Angeles (so many have moved there!).

Next report… hopefully cats are safely and snuggly settled at the Eastern Creek Quarantine facility outside Sydney. All the folks I’ve talked to there seem very nice. I sent pictures and they all say they are looking forward to meeting them.

More soon…

20 July 2008

La Boheme at the Canberra Theatre last night. Not quite the quality of Don Giovanni, but lots of fun just the same. What a mix of joviality and tragedy. The Musetta was terrific! The move is happening…. no time to write…

c

11 July 2008
Watson’s Bay (Sydney)

Went to see Mozart’s Don Giovanni at the Opera House last night. It was great. The scheduled Donna Elvira (Catherine Carby) was “indisposed” so we got Alexandra Wilson. I don’t know what the other Donna Elvira was like, but I thought Alexandra was great and stole the show (as well she should)! And what a nutty show it was – modern staging and costuming, which I wasn’t liking at first, but it grew on me… plus naked guy showering live on stage… can’t be bad, eh? well, I suppose it could…

Story here, for those who don’t know: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Giovanni

Basically Don Giovanni is a ladies man who has bagged 2065 woman so far – three in the course of the opera (two away from their fiances) - with help from his trusty, but reluctant, servant Leporello. Don Giovanni gets his come-uppance in the end at the hands of the statue of the dead Commandatore, who he killed in the first scene and was the father of Donna Anna, the woman he was taking advantage of as the opera starts, who spends the rest of the opera enrolling her fiance, Don Ottavio, another victim, Zerlina, and her fiance, Massetto, in her plot to avenge her father’s death. Got that?

Oh, and Donna Elvira comes in and out throughout… alternately advising people what a wretch Don Giovanni is (periodically joining Donna Anna’s revenge campaign), and falling in love with him again.

Singing was glorious. I was overdressed… for Australia (though wouldn’t have been for NYC). But I didn’t mind. I like getting dressed up. And I’ll do it again next weekend in Canberra when I go to see Puccini’s La Boheme with a bunch of my fellow tenors and their partners.

Oh no, bus in five mintues… gotta go

2 July 2008
ACTION Bus #3, 6p
Old Parliament House

We are stopped behind another bus at a light next to Old Parliament House. I’m in the back, where the light is, reading about Prince Rupert drops (the larmes bataviques) in Peter Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda.

I hear the driver say, “Can you make any sense of that?”
I hear another man chuckle, “I was just reading that!”

Our bus is less than a meter from the bus in front of us, and on the back is an advertisement. From the back of the bus, through the front windshield, I can only see what looks like the word “Courting” with a half dozen lines underneath that I can’t read.

One of the men starts to read out loud, “At her funeral he knocked on the hard wall of her casket. They had been married sixty years…” Then he makes a puzzled, but not critical, harrumphing sound, followed by a “Hmmm…?”

There’s a slightly longer than brief pause, and the other man says, in a genuinely reflective way, “Hmmh. That must be poetry, huh?”

The bus in front pulls away and I see the right hand side of the ad, formerly blocked by the bus driver. It says “Poetry in ACTION” (ACTION is the bus network in the ACT – Australian Capital Territory).

I love public art!

Here’s the full ad: Poetry In ACTION – Courting/
Here’s a link to the Arts/ACT website: Poetry in ACTION page

** AND CHECK THE COMMENTS – the poet responds…