Marmalade Daydreams

A couple of weeks ago, when it still looked like the Yankees had a good chance of stealing the division title from the Red Sox, I spent a Saturday morning in church, that is to say, drinking Guinness in a crowded sports bar. However, to the dismay of both myself and my Bostonian friends with whom I shared onion rings despite our formalized animosity, the setting we had chosen to spend our holy hours was dominated by another congregation altogether – approximately thirty Ohio State fans hooting, hollering, and singing fight songs (complete with bugle accompaniment – mind you, this is a crowded indoor bar) – and this drew us even closer together, as respectful devotees of civilized baseball in contrast to these vulgar college football fanatics.

Well, my devotion to New York (more specifically, the Bronx, where my father lived as a child) has waned a bit as the awesome –- a late-season Yankees surge coinciding with a Sox slump, inspiring old-timers to retell the ’78 “Boston Massacre” that culminated with Bucky Dent’s legendary home run over the Green Monster in a one-game playoff -– has subsided (wild-card, schmild-card), and as a deeper tribalism has exerted its annual calling – it’s time again for the Jewish High Holy Days.












I venture to say that Honolulu has a greater diversity of churches and temples than anywhere I’ve ever been on four continents. On my walk to the fish market, I pass the wafting smoke of a Chinese Buddhist temple, a Catholic organization in a nondescript office building, and a beautiful Japanese shrine constructed in 1906. Walk in the other direction from my house and within two blocks there is another Japanese Buddhist temple, a Portuguese Catholic church, and a Chinese cemetery; along the 1.5 mile stretch between my house and the Reform Jewish temple, you’ll find three more Japanese temples (and the Japanese are commonly categorized as unreligious!), a Unitarian church, a Mormon ward, a cemetery started by Protestant missionaries in the 1840s, and the Royal Mausoleum containing the mortal remains of the Hawaiian royalty, once revered as the last of the great ali’i that ruled with divine mana (vital power). Further up the road you’ll find yet more Japanese Buddhist temples, the state headquarters of Seventh-Day Adventists, and a Hare Krishna temple (whose vegetarian restaurant, I learn, is a popular place for Jews to lunch after Saturday morning services).

After spending Rosh Hashanah with a distant relative at Chabad, a Chasidic group whose breakneck renditions of the liturgy always leave me disoriented and spiritually unfulfilled, I decided to check out Temple Emanu-el, whose Reform services I assumed would be much closer to the ones at Larchmont Temple, whose absence gnaws at me whenever autumn finds me in distant lands. Since Emanu-el, set in the lush Nuuanu-Pali valley that connects Oahu's south shore and windward coast, is only about a mile from my house, I decided to walk. Much to my chagrin, as I set off at dusk on my journey into the valley, I discovered that the highway is not made for pedestrians. It began to rain. I was about ready to turn around, but I decided to stick out my thumb for five minutes. Perhaps an angel would slow and stop. He did, a Baptist minister with a Texan drawl, who administrates over a hundred churches throughout the Pacific and "always ready to help out our Jewish brothers and sisters." Hmm... an expansion of the tribe? I was troubled by being implicated in missionary work throughout Polynesia, iven its sordid history, but I appreciated the ride.

I was surprised that I was significantly overdressed -- not only was I one of the only congregants in a jacket, most were in short sleeves and sandals. I sat alone and followed the liturgy, somewhat comforted by the words and some familiar melodies, but a bit put off by the large choir, which always strikes me as distinctively Christian. Still feeling a bit out of place, I stayed for a while afterwards helping put away the prayer books for the evening and meeting some of the younger temple members. I was unsure about whether I'd attend the next day, but there I was the following afternoon, spending the last five hours of my fast following Chaim Stern's service in Gates of Repentance, its poetic reflections on human frailty, and its signature interpretations of Jewish responsibilities for social justice and Zionism. It was all very familiar, but I felt as though I were applying analytical reason to many of its claims for the first time. But as I grew weary of oscillating between flickers of the spirit and applications of analytic reason, the light grew dim, and I realized that soon we'd eat.

At this point, the temple performed a ritual I've never seen -- the lights were turned off, and as the world grew dark, we finished the service reading along by penlights. Looking around the crepuscular synagogue and the remaining congregants huddled around tiny lights, I had the sense of being in a medieval sanctuary, where we studied Torah in secret. This experience did wonders to transcend the everyday and instill a sense of being in the presence of the divine. This sensation increased even more as we were asked to congregate at the altar for the recitation of the blessings of Havdalah, a weekly Jewish ritual that is undoubtedly my favorite: saying farewell to the sacred time of the Sabbath with a haunting, ancient melody, sweet-smelling spices, and the extinguishing of a beautiful braided candle in a glass of wine. The sensory richness of this poignant service was enhanced by the fact that we stood arm-in-arm encircling the ritual objects in a hall lit only by the three wicks of the Havdalah candle. It was a vivid moment of comunitas, the feeling that alienation is dissolved through ritual group formation and the attainment of numinous unity with others. I count it among the most spiritual social experiences of my life.

Post-script: Though I believe "God was with us" at Emanu-el that evening, I never got integrated into the temple community out here. To make a generalization, I think that multiple membership is a characteristic of our post-industrial society; while I'll always be a Jew, I feel that the transition from being a "mainlander" to being a local is much more crucial right now. Due to the spatiotemporal location of my birth, my Jewish identity doesn't come into account in too many of my day-to-day social interactions; but being a "haole" in the sense of "outsider" (its original meaning, though now it's used generally for "white") affects the way I'm perceived here and thus my relations. While race and ethnicity are incredibly important out here, I've found that people draw tribal boundaries based more on how long you've lived in the islands than by ancestral background. Despite racial prejudice out here against both blacks and whites, I've heard a lot of locals talk about Barack Obama as "a local boy." The fact that he graduated from Punahou (Honolulu's equivalent of Stuyvesant H.S. in New York), is often cited as proof of his presidential qualifications, much the way Clinton's Rhodes scholarship was mentioned back in '92 (regardless of the . Despite a good deal of ethnic pride (I've never met so many people so eager to list their variety of ancestors or so bold about inquiring about yours), the provincialism here is intense. Last night, a buddy of mine whose family is Hawaiian but grew up in Texas expressed ambivalence about who he'd root for if the Warriors and the Longhorns had to play each other in a bowl game, and not a single local expressed empathy. "But brah, your family's from here!" Regarding his reluctance to renounce membership of one tribe, yet his desire to be more accepted by the members of another, I know how he feels.

So, last year, on the fifth anniversary of the attack I wrote a sort of tribute to 9/11 -- today, half a world away, it's not on the forefront of my consciousness (I only had one conversation about it), so if you want something along those lines you can click here and read some of my thoughts on the subject. Interesting that I.S. 218 chose to hold Open House on September 11 again this year...

Also that Kanye (as in "Kanyeezee Fo'Sheezee") chose to release his "Graduation" today, which I've been bumping since, well, literally the break of dawn. I didn't do anything as far as homework yesterday -- directly after I gave an hour-long presentation on the sociology of religion for which I'd been preparing for two weeks, I went to my favorite local bar, had a couple of beers, came home, had something to eat, and went to bed. So what that I had a Japanese oral exam today? It's my only class & I figured that we wouldn't have much homework due on the day of the test, right? Wrong. I ended up having to spend an hour this morning doing the homework out of the workbook, so I didn't have time to take the bus (where I was planning on studying), let alone a shower. I had to hop on the bike, showing up for class in the nick of time, sweaty and stinky, the only available seat next to a cute female undergrad. To add to the fetid aroma, the used textbook I bought smells strongly of garbage even after I've left it outside for a couple of nights airing out. I'm fairly sure I didn't impress her.

But it's all good, cuz I had Kanye's new beats (far superior to those he produced for Common's new album) in my head, and I got to listen to the album in its entirety a couple of times during my office hours. Say what you will about his public persona, and I have a few things to say about his message on tracks like the Diamonds remix, I'm still a huge fan of his music, and I'm praying that "Graduation" outsells 50 Cent's album this week (in which case, 50 said he'd hang up the mic for good)...
I also posted some pics from my housewarming BBQ and a hike I took on Labor Day -- it wasn't the West Indian Day Carnival by any means, but it was nice to get out of the house, and it was pretty cool that the starting and ending trailheads were about a mile from campus and my house, respectively.

And, though I know everybody's sick of hearing about how much tropical fruit I've been eating (don't worry, this fruiting cycle is almost complete & you'll have a two or three month reprieve), it was real windy today, which made up for the fact that I brought a half-dozen of my largest, juiciest mangoes to the office to share with my department. Just look at my babies! I think I'm going to have to dice them up and freeze them for the long months between cycles... [Author's note: I did this and made better mango sorbet than those punks Haagen-Dazs.]


Oh, and may the spirit of Josef Zawinul rest in peace. His contributions to Weather Report, the electric Miles Davis albums, and his own projects (Zawinul Syndicate, Orient Express) are, in my opinion, probably the most sophisticated use of a synthesizer in jazz and fusion history. For those of you unfamiliar with this master musician, you'd probably recognize his compositions Birdland and "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" made famous by Cannonball Adderley (as well as The Buckinghams, but I'm not sure Joe liked their version), and I think everyone would enjoy this clip with Trilok Gurtu (an amazing Indian drummer), Joe with Weather Report ('78), and you fusion peoples would also like this clip of Zawinul Syndicate, apparently from Korean TV (Joe's the Austrian guy with the 'stache and the little hat). Anyway, today the world said goodbye to a master. We'll miss you, Joe.

Last night I went to the most amazing ceremony; a group of about ten magician-priests led a crowd of hundreds in chants for hours, while the congregants rocked their bodies in unison with the rhythms of the mantras. Some engaged in orgiastic convulsion, others kept one arm aloft for extended periods in some sort of extended practice; all joined in with the most famous of the mantras as best they could. Many of the chants referred to this sect's esoteric lineages, which allegedly extend back to famed Buddhist and Daoist monasteries in the mountains of ancient China. Certain chants were dedicated to the spirits of masters of their lineage who have moved on to the next world, and offerings of fermented malt beverage were spilled on the altar while reciting the names of the fallen...

Okay, so I went to see Wu-Tang, but since I've been initiated into the cult of social science, it was hard to not see a hip-hop show as a surrogate for church attendance for secular youth who nonetheless possess the human craving for mythology, devotion to living gods, and the transcendence of developing communitas through mass recitation and repetition of phrases. I'm trying to say that I had a good time.

So, school has been good, and I'd love to spin some more nonsense, but I'm already a couple of hours behind schedule for working on this big project that's my initiation rite to my religion seminar -- I need to create a guide to the field of the sociology of religion to accompany an hour-long presentation -- this requires me to actually read the literature. It's funny when one looks forward to three-day weekends as a good opportunity to get a lot of work done. Frightening. But if I make enough progress today, I get to go for a hike tomorrow. Motivation.

Thank you to everybody for so much birthday cheer -- I have to move to the middle of the Pacific Ocean more often -- so many cards, calls, emails! We had a spectacularly successful barbecue out here -- over 50 lbs. of grilled meats, 8 gallons of beer, and 5 gallons of sake were consumed in consecration of a new home, in celebration of reaching a new year of my life, and in rejoicing in the intoxication of good company on a beautiful summer afternoon. The actual night that began the 29th year of my life was spent belting out karaoke with a couple of friends whom I met not far from the Shaolin monastery and the Wudang mountains last summer, stumbling off in that gloaming preceding dawn, grinning madly at the ways in which life's surprises arise. Alright, enough nostagiazing -- sacralization awaits...