Sadly, the appearance of this story set on Maui was terribly timed—its online publication by JMWW coming on August 16, 2023, only a week after the terrible fires. I like, though, to consider it a kind of celebration of the island and its unique spirit; a gathering of mana to wish all its denizens good health again; a healing prayer, pule ho’ouluulu. After all, my heroine is rather lost until she summons back (or conjures back, as is her wont) the special magic that she found there once.
“As usual, her approach was to brush the crumbs fallen from the mess of her life under a bright magic carpet, Turkish or Flokati. Ignoring the real problem. She thought of Gilbert and Sullivan's Bunthorne, lofty Aesthetic poet and self-acknowledged sham, asking his beloved Patience, lowly dairymaid, ‘Tell me, girl, do you ever yearn?’ And her matter-of-fact answer, ‘I (y)earn my living.’ That was Hana's standard approach as well, deflecting all attempts at getting at her emotions, through side-stepping words, adroit language and puns. The stage magic she used daily, to make herself seem whole and functional.
In her job as Dear Sybil, dispensing advice, she had to endlessly sift and digest the advice of others—ancient Persian poets, Motown greats, Athenian philosophers, Tibetan sages born in the year of the Wood-Pig, Bishops of Lesotho, experts on black holes and relativity, Jungian analysts, the butler Jeeves, the Farmer’s Almanac and the ancient Toltec, the rich-voiced Maya Angelou, all-seeing Mary Oliver, Pippi Longstocking, cartoonists. Shakespeare, often. She was a collage artist, when you came right down to it. A pickpocket, a thief of ideas and words. A conjurer, of sorts, pulling bright scarves out of her empty sleeve. Out of thin air.”
Image: Photo by Dwinanda Nurhanif Mujito on Unsplash
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