Gilding the Lily

Photo Fiction

Brett Paufler

Page 1

I went for a walk on a summer day and I took a lot of pictures.

Graffiti catches my eye, so I take picures of any and all that look interesting.

Rubber Ball, Coil of Wire, and Small Container of Liquid in a Bottle Cap

Along with most any other oddity, such as this little man-made cultural artifact above. I don't know what the yellow thing is. Looks like it contained a bit of liquid. Anyway, that juxtaposed against the small copper wirer winding and I'm thinking either a schizophrenic on someone strung out on meth assembled this little collection. Mainly, I took this picture so I could ponder on it later and try to figure out what meaning or significance it might have held for its creator. I'm still stumped.

Entrance Sign: 'Lili'uokalani Botanical Garden'

My goal for the walk was the Lili'uokalani Botanical Garden, which I reached soon enough.

Rules Sign: 'The Following Are Prohibited', which includes running.

Planning on maybe making a travelogue entry for my web site -- Haole for Life -- you know, should I ever get around to creating said travelogue web site. I took those pictures I though a tourist might find useful -- like the rules, hours, and so forth. I find it quaint that the park does not allow running. Of course, I think that I read somewhere that the park is dedicated to the natural flora and fauna of the area (as apposed to another nearby park, forget the name, that is devoted to imports and exotics), so I can see how rough housing might be hard on the intended inhabitants. But I digress (as I often will) and my first reaction was that 'No Running' was a stupid rule for a park.

Sign: 'Notice Park Closed to Public 5PM...'

This park closes at 5PM. This early hour is only of note if contrasted with other parks in the downtown Honolulu area (some are open until 10 or 11PM, I believe, maybe all night for some).

More Graffiti: '20 VR Zoompz' (or something to that effect)

I hadn't decided to turn my outing into a story yet, so this was just more colorful graffiti. A short coming of most Travel Guides (in my ever so freaking humble opinion) is that they are driven by advertising and so nothing negative is ever said. Guess what folks. Honolulu has graffiti and plenty of squirrelly people walking about and it's not hard to find either. So more than anything else, I was shooting for (and actively seeking) that steamy underbelly, so as to make my reportage more interesting. Though that said, we just might be able to work either '20' or '2-0' into the story before we're done.

'Blaze', oh, I couldn't ask for a better tie to the end of the story than this. It's just pure happenstance, of course. But there it is, nonetheless, right at the beginning. My first picture in the park (sort of at the edge, maybe outside of and under the bridge that the city streets cross over) and I get a picture that I'll be able to call back to at the end of the story. So even though the 'story' part of this project hasn't started in earnest, we already have a bit of foreshadowing.

The Next Exciting Installment of Gilding The Lily

(((Note: while the pictures are real (as real as pictures can get) all the text should be treated as fiction -- or at least, unreliable. Nothing has been fact checked. Things change. And the truth sometimes only serves to get in the way of a good story. Thus, taken as a whole, these web pages that comprise this story should be viewed as a record of one man's flight of fancy as he takes a walk on a long sunny afternoon. Nothing more. Nothing less. And most certainly, no disrespect to any individual (living or dead) is intended.)))

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