Blowing shit up and other things that have ruined Hawaii

For real yo, that's what the title said.  I'm sitting in my living room, doors closed, and the earth is rumbling.

No, it's not an eruption from some ancient but totally epic volcano. No, it's not an earthquake, something I'm equally as cool about, because seriously folks, I'm from San Fran.  It is in fact the United States Army of the good ol' U. S. of A testing artillery at Schofield Barracks. 

Now wait, I don't want anyone thinking I'm some liberal hippie with no respect for our sisters and brothers in the Army - because that's not true.  I live in a place so absolutely saturated with Army employees and Army families it would be asinine for me to lump these beautiful faces under a blanket "I don't like".  Hear me straight on this one, I have huge amounts of respect for what they do during the course of their careers.  What i'm speaking to is the long history of our occupation of this island and as it stands now, the effects of our military practices here. I'm talking about blowing stuff up!

Nearly weekly there is a rattle, a low rumbling. Gut wrenching rumbling like you're hearing a war zone getting closer to you. The kind of noise a tornado makes when it's approaching your small town in the Midwest, or the sound of dinosours stomping in a nearby jungle.  In truth, it's just practice. Someone, somewhere, just over the rainbow and there under the Waianae range of mountains, is blowing shit up. Big Shit.  Exploding bombs I would guess. 

Now, as much as I can get all tingly over some manly shows of bravado, and girl, don't think I don't look twice when a  hummer full of rugged men drives by (this is, by the way, my morning commute to school everyday), but when you don't live on post, when you don't even live within two miles of a post, and your house rumbles from bombs, or you hear the "rap-tap-tap-tap" of gun fire, it's disarming.  It's weird.  I hate to say it, but it feels wrong. 

Hawaii's just been along for the ride, corrupted by it's financial dependency on the military (That's a serious political and economic view, I have formed, and I am clearly the authority in these matters, but please incase you haven't already, insert my sarcasm here). In some real sense there is fear that the government's of other countries may want this stretch of land - even still. But the intensity with which this tropical place has become a militarized zone is kind of out of this world.

I don't know where this blog post is supposed to lead? We're here with the military. We use the same "company store" that the other military families use, the same doctors, the same bank. I don't for one second think we are above the rest of Hawaii's "visitors", the transient masses who come and go each year. I just felt compelled to say my house is rumbling, and the dust on our jealousy windows is rattling, and I don't think that's normal.

That, and Jesus.  But Jesus is a whole other blog post...

 

Comments

[frances]

I think you have a 'hook' here Mel, not for your food book but for your blockbuster of real life in Hawaii.