Her Light is Within Me

Creating and RE-Creating SELF

Child's Play

When my Mom died, I died.

And then, in our very next breaths after our respective last ones, we both were reborn.

She, into her new Heavenly-colored world in the Infinite Dimension. I, into a womb of protective restraint, within the crumbling walls of my own, grief-stricken life.

Since then, I have spent my spiritual gestation inside a chrysalis of healing Light. I have received Angelic Aid, where no lesser form of guidance would've sufficed.

For the five and a half years since Mom's ascension, I have been surviving, growing, building, learning, strengthening, self-nourishing. And collecting every ounce of energy I would need to face THIS VERY MOMENT in time.

Now is when I break free of the safety that has held me necessarily still. NOW, I am finally ready to break out. To spread these brilliant wings. Ready to "tame my dragon", or "fly my Falcor". Ready to take charge, gain control, master my Fear and then use it as Fuel. With help from outside the realm of Self, I am prepared for takeoff!
And this time, I have decided to fly so high and so far, that I will reach the place where the primitive limitations of Ego and Fear will be nothing more than remnants of a darker, slower history. In the meantime, I am charging forth. I am taking every challenge I can find. Learning and doing things I've always "wanted to" or "thought about" or "talked about" learning and doing. I am facing every fear I have. I am turning the Dream I've been chasing into the Actuality I have created.

As the karmic/genetic r/evolution marches forward in Time, I am reliving my childhood. But this time, I am doing so - knowing what I know now. I am combining the profound spiritual lessons I have learned, with the joy, fun, wonder and carefree perception that is the gift of an innocent state of mind. I am getting physically younger, while growing spiritually older. I am practicing discipline, balance, fitness, strength and focus in physical, emotional, mental and spiritual contexts. I am doing Yoga, and learning to box. I am determined that THIS life...THIS, WHAT I FEEL COULD BE THE VERY LAST OF MY PHYSICAL LIVES BEFORE THE SEA OF NIRVANA...This is going to be the Life I have always wanted, always worked to create. Always dreamed of. And now - am certain I have earned.

MAGiC MAN

The New Theory of eVoLuTiOnArY cReAtiOn

"Have we any right to assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man?"

-Charles Darwin 
On the origin of species

With that massively complex system of neural networks and cognitive protocols inside your head, imagine.

With your uniquely human ability to co-create the stipulations of the environment in which your body is immersed, imagine.

Combining the purely sensory-input-to-brain relay of electrical impulses and chemical messages; with the self-reflective higher mind's analysis of what you are seeing, smelling, tasting, feeling, hearing, and being; bend nothing into a fantastic image that later you might decide to manifest in the world of three-dimensional reality. IMAGINE.

With the consciousness-expanding idea in mind, that you have the profound ability to designate the reason born of your individual thought processes, imagine.

Imagine yourself in a place of difficulty with no end. Imagine what appears, to logic, completely impassible. Now imagine surpassing impossibility, just like time does, as it hoodwinks mortality with every blink gone by in the eye of a cyclone or clock.

Imagine that you are a small and fragile body, wavering forever on the edge overlooking death. Only one breath dictates your standing or falling. You are atop a high mountain, which you have struggled throughout eternity to climb.

Something monstrous has melted due to changing environmental factors. Water is filling in the valley, rising rapidly. You have climbed as high as this mountain will allow. You are only a human being, with no materials for building a boat. You can't swim. You are not fit to face these ill-fated conditions. You kick and scream until you swallow water.

You watch the news each evening. You hear, see, and read nothing but nauseating reports of war, famine, forest depletion, oil drilling in the last pristine places, and the rate of extinction advancing exponentially with your every exhalation. Everyone you know has lost love to fear; freedom to captivity; and a personal sense of divine identity to unrecognizably damaged ideals. The flood overcomes you.

You are dying to possibility in the valley of doubt, as you feel the earth dying from within you of the same disease. While you have lost faith in yourself, and in the human race, the earth's pulse has slowed progressively to a deafening, monotonous thud. This is the sound of guilt and wilted hope.

We have reached the peak of urgency in which this image is no dream. We are the earth; and the earth is falling victim to our sickness. We must use our incredible minds and imagine something different. We are far too intelligent a species of animal to forsake the greatest Love there is. Certainly, with the power of our intricate logic, coupled with the will to survive that is innate within our every cell, we can imagine a future beyond death. We must imagine, and procure, a kind of intelligence beyond ours; beyond that which justifies the discord between a human animal’s behavior and the high sacraments of nature.

We must implement the truth in both creation and evolution now; for we, as human minds, are responsible for co-producing the forthcoming revolution in the mental design of our species.

We are to choose within ourselves, to transcend our selves, and further the one collective cause. We are never to break the promise of continuation; else God's disappointment shall break our hearts. With our particular minds, we can decide that impossibility is the necessary precursor to creative change. And on the edge of desperation, for the sake of nature’s respiration, we must.

For clinging stubbornly to ideas born of an emotionally selfish ego, and a dissected consciousness, we will surely perish. The metamorphosis of the adaptive landscape is selecting for a remodeled conscious framework, in which unified vision perceives the integration of dual concepts. In this model, the benefits of both evolution and creation theories, being seen in their true form as necessary counterparts, can be implemented with infinite efficiency through their movement in human vehicles.

If we cannot fathom the truth in evolution, but can only perceive that we were created once in perfection, never to grow into new form, then we shall not be able to lose opposable thumbs to the greater efficacy of fins when the water rises. Nor will we have access to wings for flight. We shall not survive to see our own fantastic rebirth. Thus we must recognize that our cooperation, in adapting to the insight of unification, is in line with the Plan and therefore imperative for our salvation.

If we live within the solitude of human solipsism, without any god but the backward law of logic, we shall meet our demise for the same reasons. Faith brings humans to explore the wilderness of the mind, where the objective capabilities of reason dare not tread. Reason shall determine our fate as falling, for by the standards of sensibility, every day is simply the next in a series tending toward extinction. For inspiration to grow spiritually - which, for humans, will determine our continued growth physically, morphologically, and even genetically -- we need the help of something higher than the peak and deeper than the valley. When scientific studies and academic statistics are not motivation enough, we must rely upon something logically ridiculous to force our hand in change.

So that somewhere in time, our design will be advanced beyond the likes of human-type awareness. Humans will someday earn exemption from the struggle to choose righteousness, selflessness, innocence, humility, and honesty. We shall simply be these, without effort or anguish. With only instinct and intuition. Somewhere in time, we will have eluded every barrier preceding the eternal perfection of Heaven. Through natural selection, which can be defined in the new theory as God’s process of decision-making, humans will evolve in synchrony with the order of the wild imagination.

With faith grounding thought, humans can and will achieve 
the enlightenment of the beasts.

The Best Job In The World

I, like virtually everyone else who has reached some semblance of adulthood, have always dreamed of having “the perfect job”. What separates me from more practical and sensible people, I guess, is that I am holding out for it, no matter how hard the Ego of Society tugs at my sleeve, begging to buy my dreams. I’ve tried to rid myself of this drive because frankly, life would be easier without it. I could settle in one place, define myself with a preordained title, and possess some perceived sense of security. But the vision of the Greater Plan won’t let me go. Though it often feels light years away and utterly out of reach, as if I may need multiple lifetimes to achieve what is expected of me, it remains the one divine possibility that keeps me breathing and moving, always closer to its guiding light. Grabbing onto something right here and now – something more clearly defined and laid out in ink on a desktop calendar – would simplify my day-to-day. But in accepting ease over challenge, I wouldn’t evolve. And in the long run, I would live sadly, shackled by the unforgiving weight of regret. Anyway, ease isn’t what I’m after. The purpose of life is to live it. And to experience every single thing as if it were the sole anecdote for dying.

For following Faith over surrendering to Fear, I have been blessed with many amazing opportunities. But still, at age 31, I struggle to formulate a “career path” that is capable of satiating both my professional and spiritual hunger - for financial, internal and physical freedom in carrying out my life’s work. When people ask me what I want to “do” for work, I cannot say, “I want to be a ________” (insert name of profession here). But I do know how I want to effect change in the world. I want to be my own brand of a cross between Jane Goodall, who single-handedly altered the way Humanity defines both animal and human animal beings; and Jacques Cousteau, the Father of Ocean Exploration, who communed with the fellow intelligence in cetaceans and studied the exquisite alien underworld of the Sea.

What I do for work will dictate how I spend my TIME, in essence what my life is made of. Thus, I must be outdoors, must be able to move my body, must be immersed in saltwater a majority of the time, and must be able to creatively share my experiences with others. I have pulled various pieces of this puzzle together, in my dog fitness and pet photography business, and in working for several whale-related organizations in various positions. But no job description has ever struck me as being so completely RIGHT as this, as I have been holding out for nothing less than the Best Job in the World.

*
My mom died four years ago, at 11:47PM on New Year’s Eve, 2004. And through the synchronistic progressions of the Bigger Plan, I ended up on The Big Island of Hawaii to begin my journey of healing. When people asked what I would do (here), I’d answer, “I am going to be barefooted at virtually all times, wear a bathing suit every day, swim in the ocean whenever my heart desires, and be near the whales that started me Sea bound, by entering my dreams and carrying my heart away on their giant, arcing backs. I will continue my evolution into an inhabitant of their undersea world.” Crippled with grief, and a soul critically injured, I needed (and could handle) nothing more than sun, saltwater, fun and adventure.

I landed in Kona late at night in early November of 2005. The following morning my new neighbor, Chris Rochon, stood on the doorstep. He was a skinny 21 year-old kid with funny hair, who invited me to go with him and his buddies on a hike that would take us more than a mile below the Earth, in a tunnel carved out by a raging river of lava thousands of years before we arrived.

We didn’t even leave Kona until 9PM, first stopping at Wal-Mart to stock up on batteries for Chris’s collection of neon-colored dive lights that would guide us through the lava tube. We then sped off into the night, northward for an hour or so, until eventually turning east on the one fiber of connective tissue between this side of the island and the other, known as Saddle Road. We drove for what felt like hours, finally pulling up to a huge gate, secured closed with multiple steel locks. We parked the car, hopped over the gate, and began what was to be a 2-hour hike across otherworldly territory that looked like I imagine the moon might. We trekked across miles and miles of jagged black lava rock under a full moon that rendered our lights unnecessary. We turned them on upon reaching the mouth of a huge underground cave, whose gaping mouth invited us in to explore its darker nature. We painstakingly tiptoed in our $4 Locals slippers (a.k.a. flip-flops), taking care not to rake the tops of our heads over hanging stalactites. At one point, we all sat to rest and simultaneously turned off our lights. There we were, breathing in darkness so deep it could hit the bottom of a black hole. Amazingly, it was a very serene place to be. By the time we hiked back out of the lava tube, back across the surface of this brave new world, and drove home, it was nearly 4:00 in the morning. This, remember, was ‘merely’ day one.

Since that day, Chris and I have adventured all over the Big Island of Hawaii, host to our fun-craving souls; our magical playground; emergent property of the marriage between the typically opposing forces of fire and water.

We have hiked countless miles across surreal terrain.
We’ve SCUBA dived with manta rays, feeling them brush against our stomachs as they swooshed like ballet dancers hunting their microscopic food.
We’ve kayaked along the Kona coastline watching the enormity of the majestic humpback whales as they migrate to warm Pacific waters to mate and birth their calves; and delighted in the antics of spinner dolphins showing off their acrobatic prowess. We’ve camped in Pololu Valley, carting tons of heavy gear on our backs down narrow switchbacks, where we took mud baths and exfoliated with sea salt while bathing in the purity of the ocean outside our tent.
We’ve jumped off the sixty-foot cliffs at South Point, and felt the surge of surf suck us into a cave and push us up to stand along its inside ridges, while the waves rushed in to taunt us.
We’ve jumped out of an airplane (on Oahu) 15,000 feet above the blue expanses of our planet, plummeting at 120 miles per hour before being lifted by chutes.
We’ve charged off the cliffs at Ke’e, where Chris then collected a handful of shipwrecked treasures, including a bottle cap, a barrette, and a beaded bracelet that had sunken to the sea floor.
We’ve half-swam half-crawled through taro marshes at the mouth of Waipio Valley, more watery mud than muddy water.
We’ve ditched our backpacks at the mouth of the river that leads to Hi’ilawe Falls, at nearly 3,000 feet one of the tallest waterfalls in Hawaii; and climbed up huge river boulders to pools beneath whitewater, until finally reaching the massive back wall of this sacred green place.
We’ve hiked barefooted to the flumes on White Road, swinging machetes through thick tangles of ginger, blazing our own trail where the 6.7 Earthquake of October 2005 had erased the original.
We’ve ventured on from there, along the rim of the Valley, and slid at mach speed down a water slide of Goonies quality, nestled deep in the lush belly of ferns leading to The Bamboo Forest.
We’ve played in some fantastic places, where the trail beneath my bare feet was a thick carpet of moss, the air was as sweet as candy, and the sensory intake was itself sensuous pleasure.
We’ve soaked in geothermal hot ponds among algae-coated sea turtles; and taken our SCUBA tanks into the freshwater caves at Kiholo Bay known as The Queen’s Bath, strapping rocks to our chests upon realizing we’d forgotten our weights.
We’ve been offroading down many an unnamed path, bumping along in wonder to see what we might find next!
We’ve gallivanted like children across white sand, naked under a penetrating full moon at midnight, where not another soul existed but ours and the Night’s.
We have loved and explored this island and made it our home. Now we are ready for our next assignment: a whole new world to discover.

*

About a year ago, Chris showed me that stored in his iPhone, he has pages upon pages of notes documenting every one of these amazing places, all of these awesome things to do! He has listed the driving distance and time from Kona to get there, the type of activity one can expect to engage in, what equipment one will need, whether 4-wheel drive is necessary, the difficulty level, and then some. In essence, he has already written the Table of Contents of a masterful reference for thrill-seeking visitors! Meanwhile, I have taken thousands of photographs of all our adventures to accompany the stories I’ve written, which I began posting to my blog, Dreaming In Real Time, shortly after I moved to the island. I told Chris – adamantly and excitedly - that we essentially had the well-endowed skeleton of a unique travel guide – (one that could easily be turned into a series of guides for places all over the world) - for the more adventurous travelers. What would make our books different than others is that it they would not only provide the technical and geographical details of the activities listed. But in addition to following in our proverbial tracks and creating their own stories, readers could share in our stories, too! The personal element would add something in the way of connection to readers, and potentially their own connections to the places & activities, and to one another.



Secondly, there is a common thread in each of our stories – in our adventures themselves – that I don’t believe is featured in any other guide book or on any travel channel series yet created: A beautiful, 6 year old golden retriever named Ginger! She is our third counterpart, and goes everywhere with us! She loves the thrill of feeling the world around her – smelling it, rolling down its hills, diving into its purity, racing over its wild plains, (rolling in its dead stuff). And our collective experiences, as three, make them far more special than if any one of us was missing. I’ve even considered gearing our guides toward people who want their DOGS to enjoy life in the great outdoors with them! The pet industry rakes in something upwards of $35 billion a year, and from what I understand, a blossoming part of that relates to dog-friendly accommodations all over the world, from posh hotels with doggy spas to Fido-fabulous rustic resorts!

*

While I am extremely independent, and have done the majority of my traveling and living alone to this point, I feel that I would only be half of the two-person team you need for your campaign to save tourism in Queensland. In this regard, Chris and I would come as a package! We are both used to living under extreme budgetary constraints; the salary and living conditions you’re offering would be enough for ten of him and ten of me. And if travel expenses were an issue, we would find a way to get the other one of us there and back. But if you’re open to being a bit flexible in what you had originally envisioned, let me tell you how great Chris and I could be together, as both the male and female perspective, each bringing something unique to the one collective of our shared voice. Just think: hiring us both (and “Us” together) could double the effect of the campaign!

Chris is the driver and navigator, the finder of adventure, the detailed mind, the map decoder, the strong and brave leader! He has traveled all over the world, from The Serengeti in Africa to the jungles of South America. He has even been to Australia and has dived the Great Barrier Reef. He is brilliant and extraordinary at everything he does, and has a physical grace unlike any I’ve ever seen. Best of all, his enthusiasm and genuinely youthful spirit of excitement and wonder is contagious! More than anything else, Chris loves to SHOW others the places he has been, and SHARE with those of us lucky enough, the beauty he has witnessed and felt in his own heart. He will be successful at whatever career he chooses. But, like me, he knows his destiny doesn’t call for a suit and tie, a cubicle housing one lonely plant, and a lunch hour for which one must clock out and back in. Drudgery and mundane will not do for either Chris or me. We need – and are perfectly suited to have – The Best Job in The World!

I am the open channel, the seer of unfolding energy and connection between us and the world in which we live, play, and let ourselves be wild! I am the artist, the photographer, writer, and communicator! Together, we are a dynamic, eternally childlike duo, with enough passion for life, nature, and especially the ocean to fuel a rocket ship to other worlds!

Both of us are extremely fit, not because we pencil time to work out into our otherwise busy days; but because activity is our very way of life! We are free and fast, moving in and out of Nature’s amorphous landscapes not as mere observers, but as breathing pieces and working parts of its form and function.

I swim across Kailua Bay most days at sunset with nothing but my body ‘on’. I don’t wear fins, a mask or snorkel, or even goggles. I do all of my hiking barefooted, having turned my feet tough enough to carry me over rough lava rock, scalding sand and even parking lots full of broken glass. I run ten laps around a standard soccer field many days a week, also barefooted. I keep my feet naked, vulnerable to the world beneath them, so that I can feel its energy directly, with no barrier. I spend the summers in Colorado, where I bike, walk, and run everywhere I go. I have tons of care-taking, pet- and house-sitting experience to boot!

There is nothing Chris cannot do. He can hold his breath for up to 4 minutes, and is a naturally graceful and calm free-diver. He plays virtually every sport to professional standards. He was a sponsored wake boarder in California where he grew up on the Colorado River. He is a level five tennis champion, a professional level pool player, a master at ping-pong, and will inevitably kick the pants off any opponent in just about any and every game. That I can keep up with Chris at all makes me proud; his strength makes me bolder.

We are both lovers of all things Nature and Science-related, and have insatiable appetites for learning-through-living. We are both known for bringing many people together who may otherwise never meet, and can captivate an audience individually, but not as well as when unified. Many who know me, (myself included), consider communicating my greatest talent and one of my strongest attributes. I can connect with both people and animals on many levels, some broad and abstract; and through numerous methods encompassing the relay of literal, visual and emotional information.

We are both burgeoning underwater photographers! My most ultimate dream in the whole world and for all my life is to swim with whales, photograph them, and write about the communion that ensues.

*

So. This is my application. This is how I communicate: with my whole heart, my whole self, my whole being. This is my plea: Help destiny come to fruition. I know beyond knowing that, not only is this meant to be. It is meant to be…Absolutely. Utterly. Beautiful.

Not a Sacrifice But an Offering

My heart wants to open. It can muster only a hairline fracture still, but is slowly waking up and beginning to trust. That inkling of a feeling makes me realize that I might almost be ready to come out from behind the ironclad shadows of grief’s paralysis.

***

I believe there is some unconscious, hidden part of the Self that protects us from the frightening wilderness of emotional vulnerability. An internal defense mechanism, it activates when we fear someone will see the naked truth in us. But the most awesome, grand, extreme and beautiful things happen there – in the zone of human wildness. This is the heart’s territory; the logical head doesn’t stand a chance. This is the mindless playing field. Just as exists on the vast expanses of the danger-ridden Serengeti, in the unpredictable fields of the intimate bond between lovers, there is predatory action, submission to uncontrollable fate, bloodshed, and absolute purity. Complete truth. Nothing cloaked in pretension. No real thing mocked by any fake thing.

I‘ve thrown my heart, a raw and bloody thing, out onto the wild plane – unclothed and idealistic – many times. And for my risk, I have felt not only the depths of violence and pain that pulse from within the heart there; but also have bathed fully in the immense beauty that transcends that gruesome stuff.

The whole scene – transcendent glory and all – is now light years away from the capacity of my heart, which has been obliterated in the wake of my mother’s illness and passing. I walk “alone” these days, trying to rebuild it. Trying to reassemble my entire understanding of life and death, which was already tenuous, to say the least.

But for as much indescribable pain, there are also gifts that bear strength just when I need it most. Since my Mom’s death, I have had the sense that, trembling and broken, I am curled up in a dark, sacred chamber filled with liquid, and surrounded by indestructible protective walls. This “room” won’t let me go until I am spiritually developed enough to handle the new world; this new life in which I will have to survive without the constant shelter of my Mom’s physical body and presence. This world is darker than the blackest of nights. But I believe my Mom still guides me with her brightness and lightness, just as she always has.

Within this “spiritual womb” that holds me, I feel strangely but completely safe. There are guardians far outside my own realm of recognition. They muffle unwanted noise from the outside. They turn away intruders. They let in only laughter, joy and warmth. Fun, childlike adventure, and simplicity. They are the band of angels assigned to my healing.

***

I believe that we have spirit bodies as well as physical ones. The spirit body is everything the physical body is not. As our physical forms consist of cells, flesh, blood and bone, our spirit bodies are the composition between physical elements. The offbeats. The negative space. The relationships and communication between all physical matter. The energy-relay at every synapse. If the physical body is the literal text, then the spirit body is the meaning embedded invisibly between the lines. The spirit body is what lives on the last breath of the physical body, eternally, far beyond the limitations of the lungs.

In this context, I feel like my spirit body is developing within my mother’s spirit womb, soon to emerge anew. I have been a fetus in the dark fathoms of mourning, but am beginning to see another world besides this dark one. I am being birthed into life again, as vulnerable as it gets. I will have to learn how to sit up again, stand, and walk on. But with me, I will bring the strength and wisdom that has shaped and reformed my mind and soul in this developmental chrysalis.

***

The next time I open my heart to intimate love with another, I will not do so all at once. I will not be naïve or overly idealistic. Nor will I be callously coated in cynicism, scarred over from a detrimental birth. With my Mom and the other angels holding me in their unbreakable ring of light, I will be open, and will reveal my heart. In so doing, I will be forever wrapped in the gentle silk blanket of my angels’ web. This will always cling lightly to my being, its threads thin and delicate, but stronger than any bars of steel or prison walls of fear. I will be openhearted, open-minded and open-eyed, with faith in higher guiding forces as my discriminatory faculty. In other words, I know that someday I will be healed enough from the wounds of loss to love again. But only because I know I carry my Mother’s protection always, and in all ways.

It all comes back to fear and faith. This is a fairly basic but fundamental meter: If you are making a decision or acting from a place of fear, you will put up defenses, keeping love out along with the inevitable pain born of living a true life - one of depth and meaning. Conversely, if you choose and act from a place of faith, you will move always toward the light of new worlds. You will evolve for having boldly and humbly accepted the challenge to be vulnerable, as my mom did when her cocoon crumbled and sent her flying. And for relinquishing the cast-iron armor of fear, you will be gently but thoroughly protected.

This goes for every single relationship, however brief or of whatever brand, in our lives. Whether referring to a lover, a family member, the grocery clerk, or a bird in flight - in faith, everything is given the glow of eternal life. Everything, in its purity, is made of a Love this Big.

BFFs

Good dirty fun is hard to find.

As are adventure partners who are willing to engage in rotten food battles, swim up streams not of muddy water but of watery mud, camp with someone who nearly ruins the tent zipper going pee four times in a night, and walk around in gnarly bare feet caked with every evil thing that can stick to a sole. But I'm lucky. I've found two friends who not only are willing to do these things, but love to do them as much as I do. In fact, Chris, Ginger & I did all of these things - and many others - in just a one week period.

In fact, let me count how many tons of fun we had...

It was awesome...
Camping in the forested belly of Waipio Valley, just hidden from the rushing whisper of the Sea...

...Watching you masterfully build a blazing fire, on which we cooked canned chili, gooey with melted cheese...

...Playing UNO, & other games with the deck of Hooters cards...drinking both wine and the next morning's coffee out of red plastic cups, rinsed - like the other dishes - only with muddy river water, scrubbed with the exfoliating power of grit, rocks and sand...

...Collecting arsenals of rotten guava from the beach for an all-out fruit war...rinsing those seeds from my body in the ocean waves...watching the dog body-surf them in, much to her adorable surprise...running barefooted across black sand...rolling down the slant of it into the water the same way I used to roll down the grassy hill in our backyard as a kid, becoming dizzy with laughter...racing back to the campsite – you on foot, me swimming upstream…

...4-wheeling like sidekicks to Indiana Jones down ambiguous rocky roads, looking for the secret pathway to the upper rim of Hi'ilawe Falls...seeing that man peeing to mark the potential spot...removing gates when they were in the way of our adventure...

...Walking through the skeleton of an abandoned house, finding a strange hole in its floor where bows and arrows mysteriously lay among the rubble…reaching the very top of that huge hill in the fog, whose flanks were dotted with sheep and cows for Ginger to chase down…letting her run her little doggy heart out – behind the car – while we watched her slowly empty of steam in the rearview mirror…

Being awakened by the sound of you, lifting the dog onto the bed and egging her on while she panted her hot morning breath in my face...Eating (at least decent) Mexican food, drinking Coronas with lime, and playing pool at Ocean's on “Taco Tuesday”...watching your Mom get hit on and called a "Sexy Bitch" by several men, young and old alike...watching all those little kids and teenagers on their boards, rocking Skate Night at The University of Nations…plotting our trip to the skate park in Volcano…making your coffee in the mornings, so sweet and milky it forgot it was coffee…

…Joining Aidan the Boy Wonder’s Kiholo Bay Thanksgiving Potluck Campout...…

Eating deep-fried turkey, stuffing cooked over a fire, and pumpkin pie with real cream whipped right on the spot…drinking Bartender John’s Hawaii-style lemon drops, as he sat on the bed of his truck, fishing hand-picked citrus of all kinds out of a box to mix with vodka and the natural sweetener agave nectar...

…Watching some dude in a speedo spin fire...

...Swimming with a group of naked hippies late at night in a freshwater cave with dive lights...Seeing Ginger dive in off the wooden ladder, along with everyone else…

...Sleeping – again – to the sound of water running endless laps to and from the breathtaking Kona shore…

…Playing a million games at the house, as usual… Rock Band in spite of the one broken guitar…Wii Games, fresh out of the wrapping…Wii ping pong, pool, fishing, racing, shooting, and then some…Tiger Woods PGA Tour on PS3…and the game where you smash all the zombies in the mall with whatever object is near you and you pick up and hurl at them until they are nothing but piles of really real-looking blood…playing Battleship and Backgammon…Talking about science, evolution, politics, people, animals and Life…Having heated debates about the nature of intelligence, challenging one another’s minds to grow bigger…

Hiking, picking avocados and climbing trees in the far reaches of the Breeze’s Farm in Captain Cook…eating lots of the chocolate cake that became Aidan’s secret dessert stash at the outdoor holiday festivities days before…hanging out at your house all day Saturday, leaving only to accompany your Mom to Home Depot for a Douglas Fir…stringing Christmas lights, arranging decorations as if your living room were a mall display in December…cringing and laughing as your Mom forced us to listen to both Josh Groban and Barbara Streisand’s Holiday Albums…nestling your childhood ornaments into the sweet smell of pine…remembering my own kid-Christmases, missing my own family – especially my Mom - painfully…but rejoicing in how nice it feels to have you and your Mom and all the pets as my family too…

God, am I forgetting anything? Probably. But just writing what I just did felt like having all that fun all over again…and that much fun might even be dangerous. I’d better stop for now.

Until next weekend…

Having Flown South

As Autumn falls like specks of gold upon the aspen-laden foothills of Colorado, I write, from thousands of miles across the Pacific Ocean. Here, on the Big Island of Hawaii, summer is perpetual. While I definitely appreciate the changing of seasons, I only enjoy the cold on theoretical and nostalgic levels. I like imagining the coziness evoked by a crackling fireplace contrasted with snow drifting lazily across the soft beams of streetlight outside the window. And the idea of sledding down the hill in our backyard, dressed from fluff-ball-topped snow hat to moon boots in winter gear, brings to mind precious childhood memories. But in reality, being cold makes me feel burdened and blue.

What makes me euphorically happy, though, is the sensual delights of tropical sunshine, sand, and the sweetness of salty seafoam. I love being barefooted, and having a wardrobe that consists of little more than a variety of bathing suits. I love the fruit trees outside my windows here, that bear starfruit, papayas, avocados, bananas, coconuts, and citrus of all kinds.

I love the surreal and spectacular opportunities that present themselves here: To swim in freshwater-filled lava tubes underground; to kayak across pure turquoise bays with spinner dolphins performing acrobatics in the nearby open sea; to hike up rivers surrounded in emerald foliage to the cold pools that catch rushing - or sometimes trickling - waterfalls; to see the stars with astronomical clarity and brilliance, as if in the real, living planetarium; to watch molten lava pour from the active volcano into the sea, creating more and more of this Big Island with every red hot drop.

I love the ocean with a passion difficult to describe. The simple act of swimming in the sea, to my mind, constitutes absolute euphoria. It holds me up, makes me weightless; it cools my hot skin. It provides my body - a vehicle for evolution's realization - with an environment right for practice. I am in training to become a more efficient and streamlined ocean cruising animal in lifetimes to come. The ocean is home to whales and dolphins; and, as such, is home to my spirit. The Ocean is a Heavenly cradle, and I feel small in and complete in its swells, under its deep and mysterious spell. So, here I am, having reentered my 'second life'. Not in the virtual world, but on the physical Earth. It has become a pattern, that I live in Denver for the Spring and Summer, and in Hawaii for the Fall and Winter. I know...I am most profoundly blessed.

Having flown south once again, I let thoughts of snow and cold drift away; and await the deluge of a stern tropical rain that will undoubtedly pour in from the Great Beyond, and saturate my thirsty soul from the Greatness Above.