Tomorrow is my official one-month anniversary of being in Hawaii. I will celebrate it with a trip to Walmart, because that is how I celebrate everything. By consuming.
I have been working and living at one small farm, but soon must leave and move to another farm. I will only be at the other farm for two weeks, and they will not feed me in exchange for my work, so I've decided to live off of the package of spirulina I brought with me. I've been working for this other farm in the evenings for cash money dollar bills, but they are not technically part of the WWOOF organization and do not understand that they must provide food for their helpers. Alas, I am desperate for a place to stay while I await word from other farms. So I will probably smell like algea by the end of the two weeks.
Today I was hacking away dead leaves in a banana patch and a green gecko (not native to Hawaii, although cute I have found out that they are rat bastards who harass and sometimes even EAT the native brown house geckos) jumped out onto my foot. It quickly scampered up my leg and I tried to shoo it away with a banana leaf. It proceeded to run up my leg and into my shorts. I screamed. I hit my thigh with the banana leaf. The gecko, unharmed, scampered back down. I am starting a new anti-green gecko campaign. I learned that the native brown geckoes, who make a cute little chirping noise, only come out at night because the rat-bastard green geckos harass them so badly. DOWN WITH GREEN GECKOS!
Amidst the chaos of trying to find a place to stay while here I've been feeling homesick for the first time in a long time. Normally when I travel far from home I do not feel homesick. Here I long for the Hudson River Valley, all of my friends there, and my family back in the Midwest. I long to see those green, enless corn fields flowing like ocean waves in the stifling summer breeze. I think about my cats, my brother, my parents, my cousins and aunts and uncles, the barbecues and family get togethers I will miss (like always), the funny stories I will not be a part of, the births, and all of the things that are important to a Midwestern girl. In New York I will miss my community of lovely volunteers, the friends who are my extended soul family, the beauty of the valley, the rolling green hills and Catskill Mountains, the black bears wandering around at twilight, rummaging in the garbage in the early morning, the laughter, the connection, the music and merrymaking, the joy of community. I seek that here, but I do not find it in the same calibre as on the mainland. New York state is the only other place that has felt like home to me, and in my stubbornness I am loathe to admit that Hawaii does not fill that 'home' place in my soul. It is beautiful and slightly exotic and can be very fun, but it is not a place I can settle down into and grow roots.
I question whether I can do that anywhere, though. Five years of endless travelling, moving around every few months or weeks, never quite able to sink in. I feel like I have to keep moving.
