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I have completed my first week back in Honolulu. After a full week of catching up on tasks such as moving in, moving my studio, registering and attending classes, installing an exhibition, and running a chaistall at the opening... I was finally able to take a walk the other day through my neighborhood, searching for a possible new path or shortcut to the beach so I could breath a bit. There were almost no people on my neighborhood streets, no rubbish, not even little blades of grass that usually grow up between the cracks in the sidewalk and street…it seems sterile and lonely. There is so much space yet there are fences and walls that serve to divide the space as if to somehow claim and protect it. Does any of this stuff truly belong to us? Does it even matter? In comparison to walking in the neighborhoods of India, the people here rarely engage with each other – I must initiate the interaction with who I pass on the street. I used to think that Hawaii was so friendly, and it is, really, but that was comparing it to the other places I’ve lived in America. Today I really miss the people of India, the consistent eye contact, the body language, the absence of language skills, and that cute little head wobble that I seemed to have adopted a bit of while in India although I’m not nearly as good at it. I want to keep it as my personal evidence and objectless memento that reminds me that India has somehow found its way to become a part of my body in the months I spent interacting with its people, indulging in its delicious food, wearing its fabric breathing its air and drinking its water.
The visibility of the rubbish in India is unsettling in the beginning, but after being there for so long and watching the process of what happens to the rubbish, and learning how little rubbish is created by an exponentially greater number of people than what we have here in America. Bins (if India could afford them) would make India appear much cleaner and orderly, although it would require a lot more effort from the people who collect from them, and would likely be impossible for the animals to find their daily meals. I find the invisibility of our rubbish even more unsettling than the rubbish I see in India because it is what remains invisible to me that is more frightening. It is quite difficult to buy what I need in Hawaii without extra packaging that I know will end up in that unknown place – the sea, the air (burned), or underground. How else has all that plastic accumulated in our oceans? India’s heavily packaged items are usually more expensive, and when you purchase food, it is by the kilo, most often without new packaging. They give you a small thin plastic bag that is so thin it is in danger of getting a hole in it before you get home, or it is a bag made of newspaper, a material that is getting its second life of use. In India I reused both the paper and the plastic bags for either my personal rubbish or to transport my shoes or other items. Most things are used more than twice in India, and are used until they are no longer able to serve their purpose. Then the plastic fragments are brought to a recycle center and the paper is often dissolved into the ground, accidentally eaten by an animal or it is also recycled at the recycle center – made into more paper. There are no big trash pickup days in India. As soon as I get my truck repaired I’ll be roaming the streets of Kahala looking for free art supplies for my next work. It was much easier going to the recycle center in Jaipur, and it took a lot less gasoline too. I never found my shortcut to the beach. There were too many fences and walls blocking my way – I had to take the main road all the way around the golf-course.
