Gonzo Lavaism 2

Yesterday I woke up with the sheet underneath me soaked in sweat, but my headache was gone. My sore throat was still a bit raw when I swallowed, but I realized that it wasn’t due to sulfur dioxide, smoke or any of the other noxious gases floating down from Leilani. I had a legit fever, but it had broke and I was on the mend.

Deciding to get upwind from the questionable air, I hopped in my car and headed to town. The Pahoa-Kapoho road was open again, and there wasn’t any traffic as I rolled into Pahoa. The Tin Shack was parking lot was packed. I found a table and sat down with a cup of coffee and Malcolm Gladwell’s 2005 book ‘Blink’ which had just arrived in the mail.

On the side of me, some hippie guy with a crystal adorned walking stick was telling a woman that people should focus on channeling love and light--typical Puna talk. I tuned them out and read about how people can intuitively sense bullshit before their logical minds arrive at the same conclusion. The hippie guy tried to lure me into the conversation by pointing out the angel wings tattooed on my shoulders, but I only smiled and resumed reading. Unfortunately, when the woman got up to leave, he decided to take a seat across the table from me. When I told him my name was Jasper, he showed me his forearm which was covered with goosebumps. He had all sorts of things to tell me, things he knew. Things that if I were a decade or so younger, I might have found mystical or inspiring. As of now, I could only smirk. Pele had a plan, he said. She would only clear out the people that didn’t have the purest intentions.

“Interesting,” I said. “Just today I read online that it’s offensive for white people to believe in Pele. The opinion was that it contaminates the pure faith of the indigenous people whose ancestors believed in Pele. We, as white people, have no place mentioning an indigenous goddess who has nothing to do with our genetic line.”

“Nonsensense,” Mr. Goosebumps asserted. “That’s just more racist and divisive ideology. We’re all guests on this planet.”

“Coming from a white guy,” I said, noncommittally, then shrugged.

“I’m a channel. I don’t speak my opinion. I only speak truth,” replied Mr. Goosebumps.

“If you say so. We’re all channels for something or another. No one really formulates what they’re going to say. They just speak words, so we’re all channels. We’re all made of the same atomic molecules, mostly empty space and all that, so yeah, we’re all one, but that’s not the way we perceive reality is it?”

“It’s people’s egos that cause division.”

“The ego is the only thing that makes us different from one another, if ‘ego’ is the word you want to use for it. ‘Personality’ is another word for an individual's unique perspective, but for me to believe that you have access to some interdimensional beings that--”

“I channel Michael the Archangel.”

“Hmmm,” I intoned, skeptical.

“Well, I’m Michael the Archangel in the flesh.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

“No, look right here,” Mr. Goosebumps said, and pointed to his third eye, “and you’ll see the truth.”

“I see what I see, and I’m saying that you are not Michael the Archangel.”

“I just received a download,” he went on. “You need not worry about the lava covering your land. The lava will go around.”

At this point in the conversation, I wanted out. His unbridled arrogance, the self assured way in which this “channeler” spoke was really irking me. Mr. Goosebumps said he was good friends with Chris Berry and several other shanti musicians. He was a medicine bearer and pulled out tinctures of CBD oil. Two times during the ensuing conversation he showed me his goosebumps. He was quite sure that he knew who he was, had quit drinking alcohol entirely, and was on a mission to uplift the vibration of the human race. Wow, did he choose the wrong person to talk to! But, it was going to be a long day, and so I decided to listen to his ranting about Christ, Michael the Archangel and Lucifer, and how they were all one and the same. He got me to hold his staff as he scrawled some gibberish down on an index card. I held his holy juju stick, but it felt silly and soon I handed it back, excusing myself to the bathroom. When I returned, he wasn’t at the table, so I made my way to the door and drove down to the Natch.

“Did you hear that smoke was coming out of the cracks in highway 132?” someone was saying.

“Yeah, and there are pets in the area. What’s worse is the 60,000 gallons of pentane gas on the geothermal site. They moved it to higher ground, but--”

“No, they just moved it out to HPP.”

“That’s not what I read.”

As I sat down, both of them were on their phones, furiously scrolling for the latest information.

“Isn’t it crazy how we rely on Facebook for the information?” I asked the scrollers. “There’s no better place. The updates from the state leak out too slow, and if we relied on them, we’d never know the play by play unfolding.”

“All I know is that 60,000 gallons of pentane gas would blow this whole half of the island up,” said the girl with her baby holstered in a shopping cart.

“But they moved it,” said the scruffy guy in glasses. He passed over his phone to her.

“I don’t believe that. They’re lying.”

I laughed, wondering how big of an explosion that amount of pentane would be. It would be a mushroom cloud but wouldn’t wipe out Puna, obviously.

A friend of mine walked up and asked, “Hey Jasper, how’s Seaview.”

“A bit smokey, that’s why I came to town,” I said. “I want to be here all day.”

“You should go to Kona. There are some bed and breakfasts that would take you in.”

“Maybe, but I doubt they’d have a wheelchair ramp, let alone a wheelchair accessible bathroom.”

“Oh, that’s interesting,” said a woman who had been quietly observing the conversation. “I just flew in from Oahu to do some reporting, would you mind if I interviewed you?” She handed me her card. Michelle Broder Van Dyke. She worked for BuzzFeed.

“Wow, that’s a big name,” I said. “Sure, BuzzFeed isn’t fake news, so why not?” I went on to explain that I would need to have someone attach my raised toilet seat with bungee cords to a toilet--something I can’t do myself. Just about every hale on this island has a step or two, and accessibility is a real bitch to navigate.

“So, are you thinking about leaving the island?” she asked.

“It’s a thought,” I admitted. “My folks in Washington think I should, but my friends are determined to stick it out, and unless the air gets intolerable where I’m at, I’m thinking about sticking it out. I’ve got a gas mask on the way.”

Just before sunset, I bought some taco makings and drove out of town to visit my friend on a hilltop upwind of the lava. Despite her location, she didn’t feel at all comfortable living a few miles from the flow. Tacos were delicious, and we had some laughs. She said her lot in Leilani had been eaten, but it was alright. At least she hadn’t built on it. She always looks on the bright side of life.

After dark, I drove back down to my smoky little neighborhood, chatted on Facebook for a few, and went to bed. This morning, I woke up and my throat felt much better. I’d just gone in the kitchen to put on a kettle for yerba mate when my buddy JC showed up thinking he might have left his smartphone at my place. Nope.

“Could you pull up the most recent updates?”

I opened my chromebook and clicked on the Puna Lava Updates Facebook page. There was nothing new about the flow activity.

“Well, the air is terrible this morning,” JC said. “My eyes are all puffy.”

“Seriously? My sore throat is better now, and I feel great,” I contended. And then I opened my door and looked out. “Holy shit!” I exclaimed, looking at all the haze.

“Right?”

“Well, I suppose it’s another day to head up to town. You know there’s some land on the Hamakua coast that they’re setting up a circus tent on. A hundred acres. The air will be clear up there, you should go.”

“You should.”

“Can’t. There’s no way that a circus tent has a wheelchair accessible bathroom. No doubt it will be a soggy mud pit with all the rain. Wouldn’t work for me.”

“Couldn’t you just get one of the RV blue water tank port-a-potties?”

“What? And have to dump it out? How would I lug it around or set it up? No, but what I was thinking is that I could take the front passenger seat of my car out and mount my raised toilet seat shotgun. That way it would be sturdy and wouldn’t get knocked over if I transferred onto it.”

“Shit in your car? No, there’s got to be a better way.”

“The only other thing I could think of is building something out of 2x4, something sturdy enough that it wouldn’t fall over.”

“Couldn’t you put the toilet seat on the ground and crawl across to it?”

“It would get knocked over the moment I tried to get up on it. Besides, I’m not going to crawl across the ground every day to take a shit.”

“But in your car?”

“It’s the best idea I’ve come up with. That or fly to the mainland.”

“Is that what you’re going to do?”

“Which?”

“Either one. Both sound ridiculous.”

“Both options are, but such is life in a wheelchair.”

“Alright, well, I’m gonna go get my buddies phone. I need to find out what’s going on with all this smoke.”

“What do you mean ‘find out’?” Pretty sure it’s lava.”

“Well, I lava you, Jasper. Catch you on the flip.” And so he left, and I typed this little diddy out as I sipped my morning tea. Life is good--a bit hazy--but good. The smoke reminds me of camping when I was a kid. That said, it’s another day to head up on into town. Have some Tin Shack coffee and listen to some shanti channeler talk about how God has a plan for everything. Duh, but don’t get it twisted. No one knows what that plan is. As far as the voices in your head, my guess is that they’re interdimensional trolls. Trusting anyone’s “download” about reality would be more ridiculous than installing a toilet in my car. Love, Light and Lava! Breathe easy out there~