Pearls for Breakfast

Click on photos to enlarge! Waikiki Morning Skies

"Be pleasant until ten o'clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself."

Elbert Hubbard

"There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast".

Author Unknown (Sepiru Chris?)

A Luxuriance of Palm Fronds

"Luxury is an ancient notion. There was once a Chinese mandarin who had himself wakened three times every morning simply for the pleasure of being told it was not yet time to get up."

Argosy

Friends on a walk

"The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth."

Chinese Proverb

It seems an important article of my faith to prefer the individual, the unique, and the "one-off" over the mass produced and the popular.

Perhaps that's what I love about the cacophony of the blogosphere - it's the individuated voices that all of YOU one-offs bring into my world!

Then again, routine can be a balm. Like my habit of looking in on YOUR blogs as often as I am able. So even though I'm no fan of the world-wide uniformity (or food choices) of McDonalds, it seems that breakfast at the Golden Arches has become a some-time morning ritual that grounds me in my day - and in a particular time and place.

This morning I walked Waikiki beach, stopping for breakfast at "Micky D's" on Kuhio Avenue. Spearing a slice of only-at-McD's-of Hawaii pineapple, listening to the babble of Japanese tourist families, and humming along with the piped-in Hawaiian music, my mind went back to other mornings long ago. . .

The Philadelphia of almost 30 years ago was very different from the Waikiki of today. And the struggling young Me was certainly very different from the Cloudia writing this today. I lived then with my gelical cat, Jennifer, in a hundred year old church bell tower. Looking back now, I realize that I was a sort of "project" for the intellectual, Epicopalian congregation. Eating take-away McMuffins and gazing out over the wide stone parapets

was a peaceful moment for kitty & me in an otherwise hectic time.

Resources were thin, and the ultimate recognition of my genius uncertain, but I had a few, dear, twisted friends, and my favorite used-book store was open till midnight. The city of my birth was then a playground of bohemian possibility. One block from the over-stuffed couches of Book Trader, a young guy named Bruce Springsteen was packing them in at a tiny South Street bar called Grendel's Lair.

Struggle is romantic in retrospect. But at least one close friend was hip to the jive even way back then. "Life is such a struggle, Jim," I said to my partner in crime and hope. "Better days are sure to come."

"Cloudy," He said,

"These are the good days!"

Who would have guessed, all those struggles ago, that someday I'd be wielding my plastic fork here in the 21st Century? That I'd walk in Waikiki and look back over my many, many Egg Mc Muffins. . .

. . . Thinking of a dear friend many years gone. . .

"They're ALL good days, Jimmy," I thought with deep gratitude,

sipping not- bad hot coffee.

"But you were right all those breakfasts ago. Those days of doubt, discovery, struggle & ecstasy were in a real sense our "Glory Days."

I wouldn't have missed it for the world!

Here's to many more - with thanks to all of YOU for strolling along.

A L O H A! Cloudia