Watching Star Trek is Futile

“Your movie will download in 27 hours 15 minutes,” said iTunes three seconds after I press yes to approve the $5.99 purchase.  Tom has popcorn ready to watch “Star Trek Into Darkness.”  My sci-fi fan of a son Josh would be proud of our selection.  We usually choose a dark, subtitled French drama guaranteeing an ambiguous ending so that we may discuss the possibilities for days.  This night, four days ago, we'll have to stash the popcorn to wait for the download.

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It has been seven days since we flew to Maui with one-way tickets out of San Diego; a very symbolic move.  We’re here. We’re at our new home.  Round trips will now formally originate out of Maui.  And, after a summer of chaos checking huge to-do’s off a life-transition list we weren’t sure we could achieve, we ended up red-checking each and heading to paradise.

We landed last Sunday at 9:36 a.m.  Once off the plane, Tom and I kiss in front of the terminal and say, “welcome home.”  But we ride in the shuttle van across the valley ignoring Maui’s sugar cane fields waving hello to us.  We ride without passion, without the familiar renovation toilet in the rear of the vehicle.  We just ride.

Tom usually unpacks his suitcase at the same speed as it takes a rodeo cowboy to: lasso a calf out of the shoot, jump off his horse, throw the calf on its back, and lash three of the bovine’s four legs together, to then raise his hand in the air in achievement at 6.7 seconds flat.  

Although I have not yet seen Tom raise his hand in the air at the 6.7 seconds flat mark it takes him to successfully unpack, I always watch impressively and feel guilty over my own negligence in just opening a hotel luggage rack, throwing my suitcase on top, and calling it good. I once mentioned to Tom as he filled the hotel dresser drawers and bathroom medicine cabinet that we will be checking out by ten the next morning.  “And?” was his response.

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“Your movie will download in 7 hours 45 minutes,” iTunes informs us three nights ago.  “Next time we recommend you use a lower resolution download,” iTunes admonishes us.  We put the popcorn away, again.

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We moved emotionless that Sunday after arrival.  So much so, Tom moved our luggage into the condo and it sat untouched for 24 hours.  A rodeo calf would find relief in this.  Yet Tom and I in all our lethargy felt like we should “do something.”  We felt obligated to enjoy paradise, so we managed to throw two beach chairs in the car and drive to a familiar shady beach spot.

After parking, we walk past a buff young man sunning himself, covered only by a red speedo, or rather, purposefully displaying his libido like a peacock, a point of purchase display, if you will.  Tom and I just walk. We walk past a wedding celebration overlooking the ocean with big white canopies, palm fronds, and people dressed in white.  And we just sit.  Tom takes a dip in the ocean.  I walk up to the aqua blue waves and dip my feet to at least say I did so on Day One of my new home. 

With waves lapping at my shins, I see many people bobbing in the ocean.  On just this beach alone, I count fifty to my left, and thirty to my right.  My mind is engaged enough to do the numbers.  Say, 5,000 tasty morsel-people have bobbed for a period of time in the waters around Maui today.  That calculates to 150,000 tempting nuggets in a month. In August, tiger sharks tasted four people in Maui’s sea stew of tourists.  That’s a .0026 percent chance any one person will be attacked in September.  I may try snorkeling this month, I think.  I walk back to my chair and just sit.

Kamaole Beach Chair View, Sunday, September 8

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“Your video will download in 17 hours 3 minutes,” iTunes notifies us two nights ago.  What!  The download time increased.  Fortunately we did not get the popcorn out until we checked.  We’ll wait.  After all, we have all the time in the world without a departure date from Maui.

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I could not read my book last Sunday on that beach.  I just sat. That’s the best I could do. That same evening, I could not stay awake to enjoy the sunset with Tom.  I remember him telling me he’d like to go.  Fortunately, the next day Tom told me it was only a 6 out of 10 on the Maui sunset beauty scale.  We’re getting particular, I tell myself.   We did the same in Utah.  Living nine miles from world-famous powder snow ski resorts, we would choose "perfect days" to ski.

It has been one week now and we’re tuned into Maui.  My greatest anxiety is leaving my family and friends, and dog Chester.  It is only Tom and I here, for now.  We have friends on Maui but they cannot replace our other friends.  I call my grandkids as much as I can.  I am getting my family tuned into Skype. 

My politically active friends think I will do something political out here.  I’m thinking a geothermal energy plant or something as a project.  I’ll contact Larry Ellison, the billionaire new owner of the island of Lanai, to get started.  I’ll wait a few days to have my people contact his people. 

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“45 minutes until your download is complete.”  Oh, progress last night.  “Let’s watch an episode of The Daily Show and then Star Trek should be ready to view,” Tom says.  “Great.”  We watch Jon Stewart and switch back to iTunes for the movie. 

“Your movie will download in 6 hours 3 minutes,” it says.  We just stare at the screen.  Reacting is futile.  It’s okay. We had refused to get the popcorn out anyway.  “Maybe we could try to leave the TV power on through the night, not just the AppleTV,” Tom says.  We do.

It simply does not matter when we watch Star Trek, I think.  For starters, we're on Maui, and secondly, time is not of the essence anymore.  We’ve got to remember this after a summer of craziness.

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This morning I walk into the living room and press “menu” on the AppleTV.

“You have 45 minutes until your movie downloads,” it says.  I start laughing.  “Tom, Tom, look we have 45 more minutes!”  I keep laughing and click the “power off” button on the remote.  We walk to Stella Blues Café to split a Sunday morning omelet.  Life is good.

The Grieving Coyote Countdown

I listened to a coyote die Friday night; the first and I hope last time I ever experience this sadness.  So unusual.  But then, my life is nothing but unusual lately.  I move robotic-like, exhaustively sorting through possessions, crossing one thing at a time off the thousand-item to-do list, deciding what stays and goes in our move to Hawaii.  

No roll of packing tape in this world can be as demonic as the one that twisted, stuck, rolled too much, submitted too little, and scraped my left thumb repeatedly this past week.  No demonic roll of tape has heard as many foul words as mine lately.  But it is okay. If someone hears any one of my creatively conjoined strings of profane nouns and verbs, so be it.  I can only look up, stare, then go back to work.  I am so tired I cannot even react to myself.

Earlier Friday, we packed our bed first in the shipment container heading to Maui. The moment was so definitive, so final; and me, so desperate to load possessions most needed and cherished into one 20-foot vessel. We loaded around Tom’s motorcycle centerpiece, which could be another blog post.  

It’s hard to sort and shrink my material life, and yet I think we all should do this more often.  How many moments have I opened boxes to read my mother’s poems?  How many pictures had I forgotten about until now? How many times have I unlatched my childhood jewelry box to find my watch, leather hair band, and handwritten letters from friends I now only communicate with on Facebook? 

“I should document this stuff, detail it, digitize it, give it dates and names,” I say to myself as I put photos in the “to-go-with-us” box, saving my grandiose archiving idea for yet a later date.

So Friday night, as I tried to sleep in the alternate basement bedroom for the first time in seven years, the coyote howled and grieved outside… somewhere close.  He seemed caught in a trap, as near as I could tell set by the water management district, past the creek bed and over the barbed wire fence behind our home. 

The canine wailed for two hours.  His calls were unique, bellowing louder and deeper from the gut of wild.  At first, neighborhood dogs chimed in, instinctually reacting, knowing a fellow needs a response, telling their comrade they desire him to be okay. Then they gave up.  I wondered: is this coyote traveling in a pack? Could they even help?  Or is he a loner finally reaching out to anything, anyone in his desperation?  

Two hours, 120 minutes, 7,200 seconds of thinking about his containment and he became quiet.

My time as a Utah resident is now measured.  I countdown in minutes the number of boxes placed in our shipping container.  I countdown in seconds my sweeps of the storage room floor, which had previously stockpiled dusty memorabilia.  I will never sweep this floor again.  I think about so many people who moved in this Great Recession against their will.  They probably did not sweep.

Four months, 122 days, 2,928 hours since we had set our countdown.  In this time, we cleaned and staged our Utah home to sell. We sold it.  We traveled to a memorial in Michigan, to San Diego too. I moved my son Daniel to Vancouver, Canada; dropped him off at college, as I had to say goodbye.  Tom renovated a rental home in Salt Lake to sell.  We spent two two-week periods on Maui during our countdown to start renovating our eventual home.  We still have much to finish. 

Our countdown in Utah approaches its quiet in three days. We say goodbye to friends and family.  I cannot cry anymore… I am now that robot.

I know this is our grand adventure.  This time, it’s a one-way ticket over the Pacific.  When I set foot on Maui and drive across the sugarcane fields swaying with the wind, it will be good.  I will be ready to live there.  The time before is just, simply, hard.

I must have watched the Hawaiian movie “The Descendants” ten times this summer.  I needed to.  I did not watch it for the plot.  I watched it for validation.  I watched George Clooney stop in his urgency to remove or slip on shoes while going in or out of hales (homes).  I watched their canoe floating in familiar aqua water as the family spread the mother’s ashes.  I listened to the music of John Cruz and other Hawaiian artists.  I heard the gecko call in the background during two scene shots.  This is the Hawaii I said I wanted to experience.  So I watch the movie repeatedly to remind myself of why.  I cannot discount the wonder and beauty of Utah.  Maybe the beehive state offers a little more wonder than beauty, but one place cannot replace the other.

The coyote I so wanted to help went quiet Friday night.  Those who know me, know, whether here or there, Utah or Hawaii or Katmandu, I will never be quiet.  I could just use some temporary peace about now.