Monday, December 27, 2004 // 9:45 PM

i havent found a thing to say about hawaii, but maybe just this:

the two people i liked the most about hawaii
-the lady at the henna tattoo store, married to an artist, three months pregnant or something like that. and why i liked her, ostentatiously enough because of her being married to an artist, because of the beautiful henna her husband did across her back, the uncommercialized brightness of her eyes, how accustomed one must be, working in hawaii, to talking small talk. and yet, yet everything sounds sincere about what she says, the way she pats her tummy so proudly, tells me that she has found something real even if what she is, to us, isnt. do you know what i am trying to say? because i met another wife of another artist, lounging on a leather chair in a pricey art gallery, cousin of an artist, has no paintings in her house, asks me what i want to do in the future. oh i want to study the arts, i say. and maybe i am not fair to be saying things, her reactions and the lilting tones of her voice, the high-pitched daughter bounding across the gallery, i can't talk this mindless small talk, this complete cluelessness to everything except the price tag on the canvas. when i said to her, that kimono your husband painted upstairs is beautiful, her smile freezes and she goes incoherent. what do you like about it, oh i like the arrangement of the articles, the way they all seem to glow, both random and congruent, at the same time, the detail of the fabric, intricate, clinging onto light. please, lady, i have seen enough paintings of surfs and palm trees to last me a lifetime.
-the man running the airbrush tattoo store, from venezuela, the spanish teacher who found more money in becoming a bookey to the tourist dollar. what i like about you, more than i appreciate your sense of humour, is the way you said, a little too much so, when i said, hawaii is awful touristy, everything here is calculated for novelty. i wonder if people mind, if other people mind, not just say someone like me. i don't suppose you'd expect to need your brain when you're surfing or you're sun-tanning, i don't suppose you'd invite, even, the opportunity to take it out of your suitcase. what can i say. coz while it was all a good fun, i've just been aching for something to think about.

and it has nothing to do with tattooing.