Good and Bad days

Sometimes I think life is beautiful. Sometimes I think life is harsh. I envy those who have a constant positive outlook on life. I envy them because I know how hard it is to sustain. There is a notion  you often hear about one making it. I have often thought about my personal situation and wondered whether I've "made it". I've finished my schooling, got a University education, have a fairly decent career, family, etc ... In the spectrum of life accumulations those would probably have to be pretty high up there. I have not really explored the space of business though. I never really considered myself a businessman because I don't really have the demeanor and secondly I am not very good at soliciting people's money! I think I'm a little bit too honest. Most of all I think I am a little bit too conservative.

If I had to define myself I would say I am a simple guy who contradicted his fate by choosing the complexity route. Sometimes I do wish I had taken the simple route. Stay home on the islands, maybe engage in a little subsistence agriculture and do the things I love most which is being close to nature. After all I am an island boy at heart. I can't help but wonder sometimes if I am a disappointment to my father. I think maybe because he saw something in me that I never did. Sometimes I do regret my prevalent mentality of doing "just enough". I think father's want to see their sons excel. I know I do of my son but is it fair when I myself am guilty of the very thing that all derelicts with great potential succumb to? My pile of ponder gets the best of me sometimes.

Some days I am confident. I can grab life by the horns and control my own destiny. Some days not so much. I am afraid of tomorrow and whether I would be up to face the challenges a new day brings. There are other people that depend on me being able to fight the daily battles. I am here because of them and they are here because of me. My job is to maintain that balance.

Have I made it? The answer is I don't know. But what I do know is that there is no proverbial "made it" point. Its about transitioning and adapting to the different circumstances in your life and then deciding whether you want to move up, down or stay the same.Which way is really up to you.

American Dream not so sweet anymore

The current recession we are trying to dig ourselves out of was a result of the housing crisis. During the early to the middle part of the 2000's the housing market experienced a bubble. Loosely defined, a bubble is a situation where prices of a commodity experience growth levels that are not sustainable. So what that means in the real world if you buy something on a bubble you are probably over paying for it. As it turns out when it was time for my generation to transition into home ownership and raising our families, this was the market we inherited.

Purchasing your first home is supposed to be the most exciting time of your adult life. In our case it certainly was. But ironically it turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life. I kick myself every damn day thinking I should have known better. I was wrong and I have to live with it. There was so many so called expert opinions on housing at the time it made everyone feel like, "you must buy now or risk being left out". I wont rant on the shortfalls of Wall Street as it is outside the scope of this blog, but I will say the whole thing was a fucking mess and as usual the victims are those of us that comprise the middle class of America.

I lost 55% of the value of my house. I held on for almost three years thinking that there has to be something in the pipeline for people like me i.e. not in "real" financial trouble but have suffered a severe loss in home equity. I tried to get a loan modification but kept getting denied. So much for the federal stimulus package. Bail out the bitches who caused the mess in the first place. The issue was I never was able to satisfy the first criteria in that I had to have some sort of financial problems. Basically, paying out more that I bring in on a monthly basis. I didn't lose my job, I don't have mounting medical bills, outstanding credit card debt, etc... I was guilty and being punished for being a model citizen. Seems like all the help out there was for people who got themselves in shit. Those of us that tried our darned hardest to stay out of it were left to rot in the consequences.

I decided to foreclose on our mortgage. And just as predatory as the lenders there's an equally predatory market of agents that claim they can help! Go figure. Everywhere you turn there's always some asshole who tries to make a sucker out of you. I have had enough. I had to lick my wounds, take my losses and restart the machine. Foreclosure was the best option for me. I am wounded by the amount of money I sunk into this place. It also means that I can not buy a house for at least seven years but in seven years I would have saved $100k just by renting a house bigger than my current house. The irony is so palpable its ridiculous.

I am ambivalent about the whole situation. A part of me is sad to see my first ever home being lost and the other part of me is relishing in the money I will be saving by not overpaying for a house. I should have followed the first wave and bailed two years ago. I have learned a very important lesson by observing my American counterparts. In this country decisions you make should be based on financial consequences. Everything else is being naively hopeful. After all America is a "Capitalist" country.


American Dream temporarily on hold ...

The Talented Mr Thomas

I am not exactly sure why I am reminiscing about so many childhood friends. Maybe because I am all alone out here in the deserts of the Inland Empire. Or maybe because I never made any other friends since I grew up. Or maybe because I was a lot happier in my younger days. Maybe its all of the above. I hesitate to search for the answer in case I do not like what I find.

Thomas' story is a tragedy. A tragedy as defined by the perception of a society shaped by conformity and material success. To trivialize Thomas' existence would be to label him as a "god damned good for nothing bi-sexual alcoholic". I didn't see Thomas under that light. It annoyed me at times when my peers often judged him that way. There are human beings that come into this world well equipped for life. Some are inadequate from the start. Thomas was the former.

As young boys in our early to late teens Thomas stood out. Most of us were of average ability. He was always a little better than everyone else in whatever we did. Thomas was also a creative being I now realize, but nobody really thought much of it. He was always making little trinkets. Arts and crafts was in his blood. He was a handsome Samoan boy blessed with a mythological polynesian physique. Very talented in physical activity and very talented in creative activity. Thomas also had effeminate qualities. A quality which in some weird way was present in a lot of boys from his family.

Thomas' father was an alcoholic. An artistic man who had a business selling clothing with island prints. He was an imposing figure and a strict disciplinarian. But he had a weakness and it was the drink. He was a tall slim man with a protruding stomach from years of alcohol consumption. It finally led to his death after being diagnosed with diabetes.

Thomas was equally artistic. If not more. Whatever it is that required skill and attention to detail, Thomas would excel at it. He made beautiful jewelry, sculptures, clothing, etc. He was also an excellent dancer and entertainer. He can basically take anything, fool around with it and made it better. We would be sitting under a tree and he would be looking around then suddenly furnish a necklace from shit lying around. Or pick up a piece of driftwood on the beach and make something nice out of it. One day I needed a haircut and he just took a comb and a pair of scissors and did it. He was my hairdresser from that day on.

Years had passed and adulthood started to set in. I realized he stopped going to school and he never really held down a consistent paying job. He just did not fit that mold. He was not one of those people that got up in the morning, went to work, and at the end of the day came home. Its like he started to spend his life wandering around. Then came the alcohol addiction. Everything started to spiral out of control from there.

Thomas got involved in the party scene. He would congregate with all the other wanderers and drink beer or home brew. He socialized with whores, prostitutes and fafafine. Basically anywhere he could find the next drink. He started to display addict tendencies. He didn't mind being the whipping boy of any party as long as he got to drink. There was also something different about Thomas. It was rumored that he dabbled in homosexual acts.

One day out of the blue I heard Thomas was moving to Australia. He met some guy whom I assume was gay, and decided to take Thomas back with him. I am not sure what the nature of the relationship was but it was enough for Thomas to pack up and leave. He was gone for the most part of two years until he returned. I never really asked him what he did in Australia. He mentioned it one day while were sitting under a big tree infront of my house shooting the breeze. He was telling me how he was sent back to Samoa by this man that took him because he found out about him and a girl. I wondered if maybe he had found love. He told of a few other indiscretions as he sipped his beer and gazing into the distance. I didn't want to hear it.

I had been gone from home for over six years. On my visit back I went to look for him. I knocked at his door and a little kid said he was at the house next door. I walked over and called out his name. He turned around and when he saw me he smiled. He was drunk. It was only the middle of the day. He was very frail and had some facial scarring. I am not very sure he fully comprehended the situation. Either he was too inebriated or a recent beating he got while on one of his binges was starting to affect his sanity. I was deeply saddened by his appearance. He had well and truly assumed the reputation of the village drunk. And in true addict sense he was more interested in whether I had any cash. I had bought him some nice American cargo pants and t-shirts. Somehow I feel he may have bartered them off.

Thomas can not be saved. He is now a full fledged alcoholic and addict. Has been for many years. Its his escape. When you find that place of comfort in your head you're not so inclined to easily give it up. In some ways he is a big disappointment to me. My father once told me that talent and clever alone is not a guarantee to success. Its also putting in the work. I would also like to add "choices" to that mix. Thomas made all the wrong choices a man could make. But given his surroundings I am not sure he had any other than to succumb to the inevitable. Regardless of how the world sees him now, to me he will always be the Talented Mr Thomas.

Mad Mike

Mike's real name was Ueligitone. Mike was an American name he acquired while working for the tuna canneries in American Samoa. When he returned back to Western Samoa everybody started calling him by his American name Mike. I once asked him why the fuck he got the name Mike and he said, "Well if I ever happen to get into trouble and people say it was Mike. I would say I don't know who Mike is. My name is Ueiligitone". Smart and twisted I guess.

Mike was an interesting character to say the least. He lived in the portion of our village referred to as LA. I lived in the area referred to as the Jungle. LA begun off a dusty turnoff near the main road opposite a Mormon church. There was nothing glitzy about this LA. Miles from Hollywood some might say. It looked more like the shanty towns of Kingston Jamaica. Whenever a car took the LA turn off, hoards of children and dogs would run out onto the dusty road and follow the vehicle. Most of the children were half naked and covered with open sores. Many also had blackened teeth. Just off that dusty road was Mike's family home. A big tin roofed modern fale in the front, two smaller living fales behind it, and a umukuka (kitchen). Mike's shack was a small box looking addition attached to the umukuka. Mike's shack was lined with Bob Marley posters, drawings of marijuana leaves and semi nude photos of women cut from magazines. There were also car speaker wires run in all directions in his room all leading to an old tape recorder unit where Mike would queue his music. Not a shabby pad by LA standards. Mike was an old village buddy of mine.

Mike is not your typical Samoan well-disciplined christian teenager. He absolutely loved to drink and party. He smoked cigarettes and marijuana like a chimney. Ironically, he still looked athletic and loved to play sports. He was gifted with genes that could have made him a professional athlete. Instead he loved to drink and had a penchant for oral sex from fafafine. He absolutely loved fafafine palagi men from overseas that would come to Samoa and act as sugar daddy's. Anywhere Mike could get the next beer he would follow. Apart from the company he kept, I never sensed any homosexual tendencies from him. All of us around him would joke that he's gay but other than the fact he likes to be blown, he behaved like a regular guy. Hard to put a label on that one.

I thought about Mike because he came up in a topic of conversation with an old friend not too long ago. Since we had all grown up and moved on, Mike migrated to Auckland NZ and was working odd jobs here and there. Apparently old Mike was still up to his old vices. Then tragedy struck. Mike was involved in a murder case. He was involved in a beating where a man was killed outside a church social and as it turns out, Mike was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. The rumors were that it was his older brother from Samoa who committed the murder and Mike carried the blame. The brother was only visiting and had a family back in Samoa. Mike was, well still Mike.

Years had passed. Here and there I spared a thought for Mike. Prison is no place to spend any part of your life and I had hoped he would cope okay. Then recently an old friend told me that Mike has been released on parole. For some reason that was the best news I heard that day. Whether he committed those acts or not I don't know for sure. But what I do know is that at one point he was someone I considered a friend and was there when I needed a favor. I will not judge him for his sins. I will just root for his redemption.

Growing up. I wish it were only time I lost.

My son asked me the other day why don't the people who make documentaries help animals while they are filming. It was a random question and it caught me a bit off guard so I asked him what he was talking about. "Well if they're filming a seal being attacked by a polar bear why don't they chase the polar bear away and save the seal?"

"Because they want to film what actually happens in the wild and also they do not want to intervene with mother nature", I answered.

"But that's silly. They are in a position to help and they don't".

I am not quite sure when I lost my childlike reasoning and logic but I have clearly succumbed to adult rationalizations and worldly influences. In my case, decisions are driven by mostly subjectivity, selfishness and apathy. The guidance from my adult mind have cheated the young innocent boy that once inhabited my being. When I was a young boy I had childish thoughts like I will never drink beer, smoke cigarettes or just the innocent thought of not wanting to hurt anyone and end war in the world. There was always the hope that when I grow up I will...... That hope was usually something positive.

Years later I have gone back on every promise I made to myself as a child. I have indulged in all the evil and forbidden fruit the world has dangled at me. Unconciously there came a time in my life when I just didn't give a damn. No consideration for the values instilled in me during my adolescence and no consideration for my fear of God. I started to rationalize my actions with self-serving bias usually accompanied by selfish pursuits. A few months ago I made a decision that will haunt me for the rest of my life. One I never would have made in my adolescent state. But I have gone back on so many promises to myself I feel the damage is irreparable and I now function in a wasteland. I shunned the innocent child voice in me and for my sins I grew up.

Blast from the past

I got an unexpected email from my mother in Samoa. She had run into an old firend of mine, Ofo. I can't say that Ofo was a name that I had not crossed my mind in a long time because for me I sometimes wander back to my youth and Ofo was a big part of it.

I met Ofo by chance. Their family migrated to Apia from the rural village of Falelatai. His father was a plumber for the government and mother a homemaker. Ofo was the second eldest and had three brothers and three sisters. They lived in an old fale behind us in a space no bigger than my current bedroom. They were squatters from the village. Like many rural families they moved to Apia to search for a better life. And like many who followed the same path, they were poor.

I was skipping rocks in a water logged ditch behind our house when Ofo appeared on the opposite side. A short unattractive child wearing only a tattered green lavalava. He also had a freckled face which was unusual for a Samoan boy. In the outskirts of Apia open water drains snaked throughout suburban settlements. For curious little boys like me, we traversed these disease infested drains with our homemade spears looking for eels, tilapia and little shrimp. We never did anything with our catch. We were in it for the thrill of the hunt.

It was my eighth birthday and I was waiting for my mother to come home and bake me a chocolate cake. This became the topic of conversation between Ofo and I, and I may have casually suggested that later on that evening he could come and have a piece of cake. It must have set off a trigger in Ofo's mind as right before sunset there was a knock on our door. It was Ofo and his mother, Malia. Malia had succumbed to Ofo's insistence that he was invited to my birthday and that he had to come and claim his piece of chocolate cake. That was the beginning of a friendship that lasted 10 years.

Over the years Ofo helped me do odd jobs around the house. I qualify saying "help" because my family thought he did most of the work. In return we gave Ofo firewood and crops from our plantation. Or any other surplus food items we had at home. It created a sort of symbiotic relationship between the two families. In a way we were kind of a second lifeline to Ofo and his family.

Ofo was a hard and loyal worker. My father once said that wherever Ofo would go he would be gainfully employed. When I was eighteen Ofo's family got evicted from the land they occupied. I was there when they moved out. Up and out of my life. I only saw him sporadically after that. I later heard that Ofo had gone to American Samoa to work at the Tuna Canneries. I last saw him 19 years ago on a short visit from American Samoa. I miss him.

Does fate rule men's lives

I am in the middle of probably one of the most hellish three weeks at work. Things coming at me in all directions. Everybody needs something urgently and everybody thinks what they need is more important than what somebody else needs, etc. In our industry the work pace is fast and furious. Clients always want shit fast but accurate. There are no normal work days for me. 9-5 is not a luxury I can enjoy. In the midst of all the chaos I find myself wondering if this is it??? Is this what it has boiled down to for me??? Every morning as a boy waking up and going to school. Followed by University in my young adult years. What a wonderful little shithole I carved up for myself here. Right now I am fairly young, I am strong and I am resilient I can handle this. But what about 10 years down the line. I am not so sure anymore. Revelations about life manifest themselves in the unlikeliest situations. But that's another blog for another day.

Is this what fate had planned for me? If I believe in fate then I have recourse for all the wrong decisions and indiscretions I have committed in my life. But yet I still look at them with disdain. I guess if fate were true then I should be okay because it was all meant to happen right? Fate is an excuse. Hard to find solace in something you do not believe in. I am not really sure how and why I got here but I am pretty sure it was my fault.