Artwork © Richard Spisak

 

Chapter 19

Nearly a year has gone by since, a month before turning 60, I abandoned my nearly three decades-long accumulation of belongings, reclothed myself loosely in tattered uniform and uniformity of my Americanness, and from Thailand departed to Hawaii. That the uniform was merely a partial acceptance that wayward dogs can be forced to return home when hungry enough to dig out and bite into the bone marrow of existence from a long-abandoned bone was a humiliation that mattered little. That the stability that a human craves and spends decades securing and deluding himself he has should be so illusionary mattered much more. And that the changeable effervescent creature called man should experience ever more likelihood of precipitous downward changes in the fickle turns of the wheel of fortune as he ages in respect to stigmas from societal attitudes about age, finance, personal health, and home, although seeming such an axiomatic or self-evident fact of little surprise, was traumatic and startling nonetheless when experienced personally. Man who often calls himself the son of god is nothing but a fireball of incessant changes and thus he never really is as he is always inchoate matter coming into being, and so diametrically opposite to what the gods would be if they were to exist which would be non-changing and contemplative realities.

Departure never an easy coming within a whirlwind of memories that like phantoms or Furies push back on every forward step, I nonetheless made my way through the crowd of specters with refractory, willful determination, even if trudging ever so slowly through mud and mire toward the dark unknown with no connections to this country any longer and citizenship, although pellucid in passport, dubious in the mind, mostly bitter if not baleful memories of the first twenty years on the mainland, and no certainty as to what would happen next. I possessed merely a few suitcases of small things randomly selected, a wallet with a telephone number of IHS Men’s shelter, a Bangkok Bank credit card, and Thai baht, and in my mind the realization that while healthy physically and mentally this had to be done. Little could I have imagined the scrutiny of immigration officers at my arrival and that the first night would be one of sleeping on a sidewalk walled into my luggage joined together loosely around me by clasped hand and foot appendages, and that I would be slapped in the face with spates of intermittent minutes of cold drizzle, which as a distorted extension to one of my early poems, might be rewritten as “Whereas in Houston the gods use the clouds as urinals for ten minutes daily, in Honolulu those clouds are their bath towels which the deities shake off as contemptuous acts of indignity toward their human subjects.” Bereft of family, friends, and acquaintances in this, my home country, and with mind forlorn in another continent and time, I no doubt was a dazed oddity in need of Christian compassion and charity and yet was impecunious not only of money but of societal norms as gods had become superstitions relegated to the past the way stories of Santa Clause are callow naive beliefs of forgone days. I had come to Honolulu with the false belief that the asphyxiating air of Christian conformity, although perhaps Procrustean in pockets, would be less pervasive, but in reality, I found Tacitus’ anti-Christian idea that “In Rome…all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their center and become popular” particularly salient when viewed against the new Romes of America, to which Honolulu is one. Startled as I was in the Honolulu airport on my arrival back in the states, with feelings and demeanor from this jarring experience manifested in not being able to locate my bags from the luggage carousel, it is no wonder that I fell under the scrutiny of customs and immigration officers zealous in inspecting my bags and obdurate on getting passwords to electronic devices. And yet even the demeaning is reassuring in a sense, as apparently being male and white does not provide immunity from the scrutiny of brutes –brutes who would do well to have sensitivity training– if one is judged peculiar enough, as justified as that peculiarity might have been at the time. Explanations for the confusion went on deaf ears as did my timid protests that the aloha inquisition cease no differently than any supplications of peons to the omniscient. And when they discovered on my phone a facetious text message telling a friend that coming here would be a social experiment to find out whether thievery and other related criminality was the result of circumstance Honolulu police and Homeland Security officers were brought in and it took some time before they found themselves bored by my innocuous disposition and I was allowed to leave. But with leaving being a coming and coming a leaving, and being or going anywhere something, one never knows if he should have done and if he should do, he knows nothing unequivocally and would, to get relative certainty need not only two of oneself (the control and experiment group, but a third as an objective experimenter). So many changes buffer mortal creatures it is short of a miracle that any of us stay sane and yet we so pretend the earth we are standing on now is Tierra firma the way the latest romantic intrigue is the reality to which all else are rehearsals.

IHS, the Institute of Human Services, is, of course, a dark warehouse of Human entities run, except perhaps on the executive level that is unseen, by ex-criminals and recovering drug addicts ready to stomp on their oppressed subjects by use of their much gloated, newly vouchsafed managerial power so its residents live in fear of expulsion that would mean living on the streets. But such silencing tactics do work. When they deem a person as having too many suitcases and confiscate them, and when not only the suitcases have been thrown into the trash but the content of them that one was told to put in the crate room, he issues no complaint and says nothing. Eleven months on, I am still homeless even if that homelessness is of a higher tier in a house replete with wierdos and I still vacuum floors of skyscrapers downtown and remove defecation of birds and men alike from sidewalks but then it is the changes of chaotic existence that makes an impact, as uncomfortable as it might be at the time, and the stories of tomorrow spoken with a wry smile.

 

Steven David Justin Sills is a literary writer in Honolulu Hawaii. His early book of poetry is in many academic libraries in the United States with a scanned copy in the Internet Archive. Sills’ early work can also be found on the Online Book Page at the University of Pennsylvania. After Sills finished his last literary novel “The Three Hour Lady” over three years ago, he began devoting time to writing a long war poem about what is happening in Ukraine. Most of those 25 cantos. including his most recent canto, can be seen at this particular journal. As his graduate degree is great books of the Western Canon, he has been hoping to write his own ethical treatise, and this forum affords him that opportunity.

As the Arkansas Gazette says, “Twenty-six poems make up this first published book by Steven Sills, 26, of Fayetteville. Sills’ vision is often a dark one. He writes of the homeless, the abused, the forgotten people. He is also intrigued with the mystical, the sensual, loss–as in losing those whom we hold dear, such as a spouse or lover–as well as the lost, such as someone who is autistic, who seems unreachable. Sills’ skillful use of the language to impart the telling moments of a life is his strength. He chooses his words carefully, employing a well-developed vocabulary. He is thoughtful about punctuation, where to break lines and when to make a new stanza. He’s obviously well versed in “great” literature. Sills’ command of language helps to soften the blows of some of the seemier passages found in his poems. Seamy may not be the best word to use. Perhaps gritty is a better word or just plain matter-of-fact and to the point…”

Richard Spisak began his artistic career as a light artist in the Lumonics Studios of Mel Tanner, a legendary Light Artist. After serving under Jack Horkheimer as a planetarium operator at the Miami Space-Transit Planetarium, he left to begin traveling with Lumist Kenvin Lyman, whose show Dazzleland Studios traveled across America. Richard later worked as a Laserist with LASERIUM and Laser Productions, served as a technical producer for the festival company PACE Concerts, and later as operations Manager and Senior Producer at WWHP and WTCN-TV in Stuart Florida.

Richard writes for Theatre, TV, radio, and the web. He published two short story collections, Two Small Windows, in a Pair of Mirror Doors, and Between the Silences. Followed by his poetry collection 7370 Allen Drive and the recently released STONE POETRY. Richard also produces “POETS of the East,” a televised webcast featuring poets from across the globe.

Chapter Guide

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen