dusty lane with a song in my brain.

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2 october 1997

11:29 p.m.

Dear diary, Epiphanies comes at the weirdest moments. I went down to the Ala Moana Sears today to trade in my old cable box (Oceanic apparently avoids most customer relations problems by hiding in a small booth at the back of a department store). After getting the new box -- which looked like the old one but gives me the option of ordering dozens of useful new services like the Golf Channel -- I decided to grab a bite at the mini food court there. I sat at a table on a raised platform where I could watch Japanese tourists and count their Gucci bags, and forced down a greasy (though not quite Marriott greasy) Personal Pan Pizza. Just over the table divider, there was a guy drinking coffee from a little paper cup, talking and laughing loudly with a friend. I coudn't see the other person, but he was clearly content to just listen to this guy ramble. And without thinking, I listened too. I don't eavesdrop, or at least don't admit to it, but it was hard to ignore someone with a voice so rich and booming. He looked a bit like a larger, well poised relative of Danny Kalekini. Gray hair, gray T-shirt -- probably with the name of an old fish market or grocery store printed on the back -- reclining way back and resting one arm on a polished wooden cane. As it turned out, it wasn't much of a story. His son had gotten a new teaching job, and just bought a house in Pearl City. The only furniture was a bed and a television, but the guy was happy. That was when it hit me. No, not the absurdity anyone able to buy a house on a teacher's salary. This man was speaking Hawaiian. Full on. He was switching to English now and then, but did so seamlessly. And I hadn't noticed. I was totally dazzled. I just sat there, trying to look enraptured with my new Jerrold converter, listening to him speak and trying to pick apart what he was saying. It was weird. Once I was paying attention, I couldn't entirely follow the story. And I couldn't stop thinking about how at first my brain had quietly processed everything automatically. Now I was conscious of sentence structure, passive verbs, all the stuff I was studying. Though it vanished the moment I noticed, it was an awesome moment. I could practically feel the fading spark in my head. Even if I was genuinely "listening in Hawaiian" (versus mechanically translating it), I know probably missed a lot. But I got the essense of the story -- that has to count for something. The encounter really made my day. I had to wonder how the man came to speak Hawaiian. He looked local, but definitely at least half Chinese. Yet his voice was as sure as those of old full-Hawaiian kupuna we listen to in class. I was also impressed to hear how a native speaker smoothly threw in haole words without skipping a beat... "Noho `o ia ma hope o Buzz's Steakhouse, a nana kela `ikena." Students -- second year students, anyway -- aren't that elegent. When I have to use a non-Hawaiian word, it stick out sharply. "Ua hele ke kumu i Hard Rock Cafe." It just doesn't sound right. Hawaiian's actually the third language I've studied. I took Japanese in high school plus one semester at UH (taught so badly by a Korean national I had to quit), then a semester of French, then a year of German. And only with Japanese, maybe, did I have a moment like the one I had today... where somehow the language became second nature. Where I'd hear it, understand it, and never realize it wasn't English. Hawaiian class, or at least the reviews of what I was supposed to have retained from last year, has sometimes been as frustrating as those other languages were. But now I'm sure I want to stick with it. Besides, I'll never graduate if I don't.