Wonders of Healing

I'll give away an ending of a thread of my memoirs away right now. I don't have a split personality anymore. An old email signature of mine read, "Harnessing Stupidity Since 1991." I picked 1991 partly to be random but also partly as a private reference to a period of re-integration which marked the end of the split for me.

For the record, I don't think "dissociative identity disorders" are disorders. They're just styles of being. So I don't much care about the debate the psychiatrists have over whether they "exist" as disorders or not.

[Upper right: Not my problem.]

I also don't like that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is called a disorder. It's like calling a scab a disorder. If you know anything about scabs, you know that they amazing wonders of healing.

You would never call someone who'd been injured sick for having a scab. You would call someone who was injured and bleeding sick when a scab didn't form.

Anyway, the fact that I can recall the Hawaiian years as easily as I can is due to that 1991 re-integration.

The memories were never lost. But they were always Alaka'i's memories, so they were accessible only when Alaka'i was "out." So I couldn't have written these memoirs unless Alaka'i came out for long enough. The re-integration shared memories so it no longer mattered anymore.

The reason the memories were segregated to start with was to protect Kona from the knowledge that my parents had been so mean to me, so that he would be capable of loving them.

My parents died in 1978 and 1980. After that it was no longer necessary for any part of me to love them.

But in 1952, when I was 3, that was an urgent need.

For a while Alaka'i spent time trying to create edited versions of the events of the previous 3 years that would cover up the abuse, so that Kona could have as long a past as he did. But it was too complicated. So he finally gave up and let Kona only remember back to his own creation.

Besame Mucho

Video Find of the Day

I first heard Besame Mucho in Mexico when I lived there in 1961-62. There was a hugely popular version that was played everywhere at that time. Ordinarily hearing the same song over and over again would kill it for me. I have an extremely low tolerance for repetition. But I couldn't get enough of this one. I've been rooting through the many YouTube versions and found two I like.

Besame Mucho
[Kiss Me A Lot]
by Consuelo Velázquez [pictured]

Besame… besame mucho,
[Kiss me… kiss me a lot,]
como si fuera esta noche
[as if tonight was going]
la última vez.
[to be the last time.]

Besame… besame mucho,
[Kiss me...kiss me a lot,]
que tengo miedo perderte,
[I am afraid to lose you,]
perderte después.
[to lose you in the end.]

[1st two verses repeat.]

Quiero tenerte muy cerca,
[I want to have you very close,]
mirarme en tus ojos
[to look myself in your eyes]
verte junto a mi,
[see you next to me,]
piensa que tal vez mañana
[think that perhaps tomorrow]
yo ya estaré lejos,
[I will be far,]
muy lejos de aquí.
[far away from here.]

[1st two verses repeat.]

Here's a good clean vocal version by Dutch-Egyptian singer Laura Fygi. The car in the video has awfully familiar styling for me.



The version I heard in Mexico had a long instrumental bit that resembled this one by Ray Conniff and His Orchestra.

Dance Off

Video Find of the Day

I could watch other people dancing to Sweet Georgia Brown until I dehydrated and became a pile of dust in my chair.

This dance off is part of a Lindy Hop competition. I don't know how the categories work, but those people are doing varieties of the Charleston.



Speaking of Sweet Georgia Brown, here's a bonus: Anita O'Day at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival.

The Tricycle

At some point my Father came home with a tricycle for me. I think he was feeling guilty about all the stink about the ball and wanted to give me something that was brand new and free of any painful history. For a while I forgot about the ball as I peddled the tricycle up and down the block on either side of our house.

Again, my Father wouldn't let me take the tricycle past the end of the block because I might lose it. So when I went see to Lani and Lono I had to just describe it to them, just as I had to just describe the ball.

It occurred to me that if my father came with me to see Lani and Lono I could bring the tricycle with me, and they could see it themselves. I also thought that if my Father talked to them, he would like them and maybe have the over to the house, and I could see them more often.

So I begged my Father to come with me to see my friends. To my surprise he agreed. He followed along with me one Saturday as I peddled the trike clear to Stoneman Field to look for Lani and Lono. They weren't there. We ended up at the nearby tennis courts where I often met them. They weren't there either. My Father took this picture of me triking around the tennis courts.


If you click on the image for the full-size picture, you can clearly see the bulge of the cup I was still wearing.

Lani and Lono weren't there because it was the weekend. It had never occurred to me before that they got weekends off just like my Dad did.

The Precious Ball

Two days after my 3rd birthday, Dad came home from cashing the week's pay with a horror story about how hard it was to find an ordinary round rubber ball on the island of O'ahu. He had one, and he made sure I knew that his shopping for it was a supreme sacrifice. It was his Iwo Jima, his landing on Normandy Beach, his Alamo. Except that he had lived, of course, and was unscratched.

It was about 4 inches in diameter. I remember it being red, white, and blue, with five-pointed stars on it. The important thing, though, was that it was spherical, and it bounced predictably.

I completely ignored his speech about how much pain he went through to get the ball. All I cared was that I was going to be bouncing it.

And I bounced it, and bounced it. I was obsessed, really, with bouncing the ball. That's what I had wanted it for. I'd seen another boy bounce a ball, and I wanted to do that, too. Endlessly.

My Father could not relate to that. He offered to play catch with me. I kept bouncing the ball. He had to keep reminding me what the point of playing catch was. Finally he gave up. "Why did he need the damn ball so badly if he didn't want to play catch with it?" I was free to bounce it to my heart's content.

For days I bounced it on the sidewalks all around the house. I wasn't allowed to take it away from the house. It was too precious, the sacrifice to get it was too great, for me to ever lose it.

Then I discovered that if it hit a wall it would bounce back to me. I bounced it off the front of the house. This went on for about two minutes before my Mother sent me around back, hoping the noise would be tolerable back there. I then bounced it off the back of the house over and over again, softly singing chants to myself.

After doing this for an hour or so the ball took a bounce off something on the lawn and rolled into the crawl-space under the house. At that point there were slats in the way, and the space was too low for me even if I could get past the slats. I tried to reach the ball but my arms wouldn't stretch that far. My Mother's would, though. I knew that she would have to help me get the ball that Dad had struggled so much to shop for.

So I hollered as loud as I could, "E Mami! Ke ka'a ka pōpō malalo o ka hale!"

My Mother came to the kitchen window at the back of the house and looked out. "What did you say?"

"Ke ka'a ka pōpō malalo o ka hale!" I pointed under the house.

She came out and looked where I was pointing. She said, "The - ball - rolled - under - the -house."

I was really excited for a second. I thought she had understood Hawaiian finally. I said, "Ae."

But she hadn't understood. She said, "Say 'The - ball - rolled - under - the -house.'" She was just describing what she could see and giving me an English lesson.

I slowly repeated, "Da pall wollet una da hale." Then I added, "malalo o ka hale," for emphasis.

She was satisfied that she had made progress with me, and got the ball out, and I went back to the wonderful bouncing.

Mills Bros 1932

Video Find of the Day

Typically surreal Max Fleischer cartoon, built around a Mills Brothers hit, I Ain't Got Nobody, that came out in 1932 and features the Mills Brothers themselves.

Speaking of Illusion

Video Find of the Day

Before there was a Penn and Teller giving the secrets away, before there was Night Court, there was Harry Anderson turning tired old magic routines into wild comedy.

Another Crappy Birthday

OK, it wasn't as bad as the first. It was even better than the second, which wasn't celebrated at all, since animals don't get birthday parties.

It began with my Father getting his photographic equipment out. He set up a tripod in the middle of the living room, and a dining chair was set in front of it.

I was placed in the chair. He had to focus the camera. He measured the light and did his calculations to set the exposure time just right. He had to hang a sheet up to block sunlight from the window.

Then the big moment came. My Mother handed me an oblong object and my Father said, from behind the camera, "Here it is! Here's the ball!" I was excited! I looked around for the ball. I didn't see it, but I was sure it was there somewhere. I was happy, and there was a flash, as my Father got this picture.


After the picture was taken I said, naturally, "Where ball? What ball?"

My Father said, "It's in your hand, silly"

How is a football a ball to a 3-year-old who has never even seen a football game?

I've often wondered how bad it would have been if we were a normal family, and my parents hadn't tried to kill me on my first birthday, and I hadn't only just recently begun to bond with my Father again.

The way things were, it just symbolized everything that was wrong. I had a Father who couldn't see me unless he was imagining me being him. If I couldn't be identical to him, I was disposable. My Father was a football fan. I must be a football fan.

Even before I started crying, my Mother said, "I told you he wanted a round ball." I burst out in tears, and my Father said, "It's a ball! What's wrong with him that he can't see it's a ball!" "It's not a ball," she said. "It's a football." "A football is a ball!"

It took several minutes for my Father to calm down. Mother talked him into promising to get a real ball soon. I was talked down out of my sobbing, as I gradually was convinced that the next time wouldn't be just like this one, and the next "ball" wouldn't be shaped like a donkey, or the Eiffel Tower, or a stupid coat hanger.

Another present was brought out. I got a "kelepona", a telephone. It was a toy telephone with a spinning dial, just like the new one that my parents had recently got, replacing the old wall model.

Below are four photos. In all but the one on the lower left I was Kona. My Mother said something mean about me just before that shot was taken, and Alaka'i came out, protecting Kona from hearing the insult. You can see anger that Kona wouldn't have had. My Mother said to my Father, "See? See what I've been telling you? Look at him. You can see he's different! I told you the freak's got a split personality!"

My father told her she was crazy. "There are no such things as split personalities."