Movement

Watch me...
When I'm elated, I explode.
When I'm livid, I implode.
When I'm afraid, I collapse.
When I'm justified, I inflate.
When I'm sensuous, I dance.
When I'm bored, I pace.
When I'm in love, I make love.
When I love, I embrace.

Saying what I mean is harder than writing it to you,
so let me move around you.

Something in the Water

I both love and am terrified of the ocean. Everyday people ask me, "Have you gone for a swim yet?" and I'm afraid to admit that I'm scared of the water, that when I can't touch the sandy bottom anymore I panic and I'm sure I will drown. Not seeing the bottom, feeling my toes wrap and twist in deep beds of kelp, being pulled unaware further out to sea until I'm within the grips of something much more powerful than my sense of control. All of this frightens me. 

On the way home from work, locals stop to take a swim to wash the dirt and stress of the office out of them before going home. You leave it at the shore and let the ocean demolish it. Just like leaving your shoes at the door, you leave your angst and worry at the threshold between land and sea. I go there for clarity. I go for peace. I go to remember things. I find that now when I approach the edge and let the tide swirl around my ankles I am overcome with the need to strip and jump in. I mostly watch and wait. I see other swimmers throw down their flip flops and shirts, and walk with familiarity and grace into the waves. They are going into the womb. They are going into the Mother to lie flat on their backs and watch the clouds pass over, to be cradled between land and sea and sea and sky. They dolphin flip down deep into the water and come up with treasures from the bottom. They swim dozens of yards out to sea and then they pray or they scream or they cry or they laugh. They just... release. And then they go home. 

People tell me, I must swim at least once everyday. The island is a waste unless I do. So when I'm up to it, or when I'm curious about what the water will make me feel today, I go to the shore and remember Ocean Beach with my mom. When I was little we would walk next to the surf on foggy days. My mom liked teasing me by running closer and closer to the waves until the rolled cuffs at her knees were in the water and then run back. I became so frightened once that I started crying. She couldn't swim and I was too afraid of the water to go out there after her. I was so afraid to have her out of my grasp, to give her over to something so unpredictable. She was teaching me how to lose control. 

I look at the waves now, knowing that JAWS has already begun to return to the north shore. JAWS is a swell of water that makes the waves larger than the Mavericks at Half Moon Bay.  JAWS is what you see when these waves curl over you 50 feet in the air. It has already started to change the anatomy of the local beach by shifting the sand up closer to the trees. The waves are much bigger and much closer. Farther out you can see even larger ones breaking where the ocean bottom drops down two thousand feet. The rip tide and the undertow are the strongest they've been since I arrived and are getting stronger. No one is swimming. Only bodysurfers and boogie boarders bob between the crests. The surfers will come when the waves are even bigger. I watch in the tide, sinking in the sand. It's not a good idea. But I still want to and I might. I'll keep watching. I'll keep waiting. Slowly i'll find ease in giving myself over to everything less predictable than myself.

Abundance in Maui

The Garden

I'm into my fourth week on Maui and though the pace, the people, and the weather are still new to me, they've all become a little more comfortable, a little more homey. I live in a community of people who are mostly Krishna devotees with their own individual eclectic beliefs tossed in. Mostly these people believe in constant compassion for other beings - human, vegetable and animal - gratitude, and joy. They talk to me with an intimacy that still catches me off guard and made me uncomfortable for about a week. When speaking we look each other in the eye. When greeting and parting, we embrace, always. When we ask each other how we are doing, we really want to know. I live in a house with Angelina (aka Prama which means love), Gaia, Kalia, and his daughter Luna. Angelina went with me to the emergency room last week in the middle of the night. Kalia makes me eat right and invites me to come swim with him and his daughter at Ho'okipa Beach when I feel lonely or homesick. Keone, whose on the mainland right now, does bodywork and massage therapy. He works in the garden. He showed me how miraculous plants are. He took me to the basil bush and showed me how to harvest the seeds before collecting them and placing four into the palm of my hand. He said one seed produced that huge overflowing basil bush that feeds us everyday and now there are hundreds of seeds which came from that one. So together we planted the four new basil bushes which will make hundreds of thousands seeds more. Everyone here has there own story too. Angelina is here to reunite her family. Kalia is here to kick start a super food product called "Maui Peace Bar" that comes in 24 different flavors (they're really good!). Gaia is here for healing and to do peace work, which involves combing the knots out of bright red fluffy microphone covers. Keone is here to heal others.

The living is simple here, and yet it is abundant! The garden is overflowing with spinach, kale, basil, onions, lettuce, papayas, peppers, mint, avocado, lilikoi and more. Everyday I find a new musical instrument hidden in an outdoor shed, under a couch, on the bottom shelf of a bookshelf. When I moved into my room I found a hammer dulcimer under my bed! If you know anything about me, you know that this is personal heaven for me. Outside of the house I live in (there are two houses with several rooms and a few studio units) there is a car port area made for creating and baking pottery. In front there is a large porch with Christmas lights hanging all around. Shell dangly bits and wind chimes hang everywhere among dozens of massive spider webs that no one will knock down. Buddha and Krishna and Shakti statues sit at the bases of trees and on the banisters of the porch with offerings of beads and quartzes and seashells beneath them. There is a cotton tree. There is a tree that looks like a dancer, and there is a tree that has been carved into a totem pole

There are animals everywhere. We had several chickens when I first moved here. There was Sita and her 13 chicks which the mongoose have trimmed down to a slim five. Today they were taken to a bird sanctuary because we couldn't keep them out of the garden but caging them wasn't an option. There's a rabbit, and several cats. One follows me around like a dog. There are the wild chickens that come in early in the morning which I have to chase off the property most mornings. There are the dogs that chase them. There are toads, and geckos, and lizards, and cane spiders. There are giant-leafed plants with leaves so big you think you could just sprawl out on top of them.

New Life

I like this little nook of people that I have landed into almost by accident. I think about why I am here. Why I left everything behind to come to a place where I know no one when I had everything and everyone before. I think about the struggle to get here and wonder if it was really worth it, if I'll make it here or leave in a couple of months. I think about the dreams I have and the pains I still feel. I think about the words I still want to write. I think and acknowledge that out of anywhere on this island that I could've landed that I couldn't have come anyplace better. What better place to infuse clarity, confidence, and self-love than in a community where compassion and support is abundant and where my creativity will have room to grow? I think about the dozens of reasons that I gave my family and friends for why I absolutely had to come to Maui. I was told I was being rash, even reckless. Maybe so. Now I'm here and I can barely remember half of those reasons. I believe I needed to go somewhere where I could just be. I needed to be somewhere quiet so that my self could take center stage in my life. Now she's here. I'm here, watching and waiting for whatever is next. Now, I want to have a job that doesn't define me so that my words can freely flow when I come home at night. I want to plan my trip to the next destination now, because I acknowledge and accept my inherent need to move freely and lightly between places. I want to make my own individual path towards saving the world. I want to help others write down their truths the way I have always striven to write down mine. Today, this is all I want.

Mama Sita and Five