The Radiant Deep: New Visions & Volumes

Here’s what I forgot to say about Kepuhi Beach. There is a semi-tall rocky ledge that runs along part of the shoreline (and which I think I may have had a photo of in my last group of pictures). The waves break to the ocean side of the ledge but with some of the sets, the incoming water creeps (or pours!) over, through the crevices, and around, and forms a little river, complete with tiny waterfalls and areas where it tumbles over rocks parallel to the shore until it makes its way to the end and runs back to the ocean. Between the roar of the waves, is the gentle, soothing, animated tinkling of a mountain brook. The first time I heard it I was blown away. My two favorite water sounds all in one place. Wow...

A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT~

I got an email a couple of days ago from someone very wise and very dear to me wishing me a “joyous reentry.” The first time I read it my response was right. I wish. There he goes again with all that joy stuff. But somehow, those two little words got under my skin and I couldn’t shake them. The very idea—for me anyway—of feeling joyful when coming home from here seemed almost unnatural. Certainly outside my experience, and as far from my habit pattern as it’s possible to be. Especially when it comes to leaving Hawaii.

The next day it was still really on my mind when I stopped at Kumu Farms to buy papayas and apple bananas. I really like the woman who runs the little market there and was telling her I was leaving in three weeks and made a sad face. Here’s how our conversation went, her side with her adorable Italian accent.

You like it here?
I love it.
You have to be back for job?
No.
Well then stay. Why not? You like it, you stay!

Oh, the simplicity of it makes me smile, even two days later. And the remarkable thing is that I could stay. I am free to move here even, if that is my desire, which gave me the much-needed clarity that I am actually choosing to go home. That conversation, along with the joyous reentry idea altered something in me. The Hawaiian “Word of the Week” in the current Moloka’i Dispatch paper is owaka. It means, “to open your eyes.” Between the email and the chat at the farm, I think owaka has happened. At least enough to begin letting some light in. Why not go home joyous? What is there not to be joyous about? Why would I choose to go home sad or depressed? How in the world would that honor me, this journey, this beautiful place on planet Earth? And once again, where does choice play in all this? Are we run by our unconscious habit patterns, and is it really possible to step outside the old and experience something radically new? As I see it, no choice until owaka, then, if we're lucky, choice can begin to happen. Or maybe then, not even a choice, simply a happening.

I have been amazed over the years at how hearing something can change everything. In an instant. A few words innocently (or strategically) placed and wala, light where in the past had been darkness. The whole “when the student is ready” thing; it’s like the words, whatever they are, are like caffeine injected straight into my veins, jolting me awake. For so long I’ve viewed and experienced the world through the lens of disappointment; fallout, I know, from a childhood perforated with it; where it felt like I never got anything I wanted, ever, from the pink-haired doll when I was seven that came with all those cute little dresses and hats, all the way to my mother’s love and approval, and so much other big stuff in between. I remember once in therapy I was bemoaning some wound or another that seemed to originate with my mother and my therapist asked how long she’d been dead. Twenty years, I replied. Twenty years? She was incredulous, and exclaimed in a way I'll never forget, twenty years dead and gone? Twenty years?! Time to give it up, don’t you think?

Simple. Though not as easy as it seems. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it has “worked” for me on some inane level for a long time. It’s safe, secure, and is a good start in explaining away a lot my lingering, embarrassing "stuff." People have been after me to examine and let go of the stories for a long time. It's just that the "default" is so deeply ingrained and incredibly unconscious. I see that right now in a way that maybe I never have. Why in the world would a bright, intelligent person choose "woe is me" over something lighter, more life affirming and giving, more enjoyable; and therefore, as a result of the former choice, remain stuck, living a current life blown hither and yon by winds from a past long ago blown away. A past that is not just gone, but dead and gone. (It's a rhetorical question btw, and I do have some theories...)

How reentry will happen, what it will bring, remains to be seen. Right now, I'm feeling pretty okay about going "home," in stark contrast to even a week ago. Not that there isn't so much here to be missed, because there is. And who knows what the future will hold. Maybe one of these days out on Kepuhi Beach, I'll toss those old, historic, suffocating and limiting volumes into the surf and let the force of nature have her way with them. Maybe for the symbolism, I'll do it as the sun sinks below the horizon. Then maybe, one day before I leave, I'll drive over to the east side before dawn, Murphey's Beach, at mile marker 20 might be the perfect spot. I'll bring an offering of thanksgiving, and sit and watch the sun come back up again, celebrating not only a new day, but a whole new volume, empty like a journal fresh from the store, that is there before me just waiting to be written, painted, and who knows, maybe even danced upon.

Here are some of the things I'll miss, though in many ways, they feel a part of me~

TROPICAL FLOWERS~