P, his friend and the big blue
At first, there was only before and after Hawaii. To spend a year on the big island was the first major decision I made that would change the course of my life. There, amongst the wild ones, the veil of illusion burned away and from the ash the spirits of becoming and of evolving took flight. I found god on the volcano and I would devote my life to seeking truth and beauty forevermore. The details of what happened in Hawaii will come in time. This story concerns what happened after I left. Back in Austin, I was glad to be again with friends, but something was missing. The city allured but felt empty and oppressive. My senses, which had been honed with sensuous nature, were accosted with the chaos of progress. Was I to stay in Babylon? Was is possible to stay and live in such a way that honored and nurtured the path to which I was committed? My clarity became clouded by questions but in the dim light of dawn the ancient Hawaiians sang to me: Malama Pono… take care of yourself… Ho’omau I kai mi na’auao… persist in the search of knowledge…. Nānā I Ke Kumu… look to the source. So I left the city and went deep into the desert to connect, commune and find some answers. And answers came disguised as choices and were reflected back to me in brown eyes immemorial.
Tarzan or Fabio? 2004 and 2019.
And now, also, there is only before and after Skeets. Choices aren’t just actions and consequences, they are the people we let into our lives and the experience of sharing our existence. Today is Skeets’ 39th birthday and it would be easy to make this brief homage a list of his traits I find most endearing, most attractive. Sure, he’s romantic, adventurous, great with tools and has salon quality hair, but what has been the consequence of the choice to really know Skeets… or rather, to let Skeets really know me? Amongst the saints of my magical mundane, Skeets represents to me the virtue of Balance. Achieving balance is an eternal practice, as everything is always in motion and always changing. What works today sometimes won’t even make sense tomorrow and I’ve witnessed Skeets practice a mental, physical and spiritual resilience which has allowed him to become a man of conviction but also compassion, a man who lives in the moment but works for the future. He is the bread and the knife, the crystal goblet and the wine. I love you, Skeets. Happy Birthday. Thank you for loving me wild, so that l’m always free to choose and for being the man I choose to return to day after day after day.
“Things can fall apart, or threaten to, for many reasons, and then there’s got to be a leap of faith. Ultimately, when you’re at the edge, you have to go forward or backward; if you go forward, you have to jump together.” Yo-yo Ma
I read somewhere that love can be defined by the quality of the time you spend with someone, by the quality of intention you put into your time together. Choosing to move across the ocean has it’s tradeoffs, and this month I missed being physically present for my dear friend Maria as she brought light and life into a beautiful new baby, Diego. It’s unbelievable how much I love this little person, having never met him, never seen him, smelled him or held him. But he is of Maria, an absolute expression of her love yet totally one unto himself and I love him as I love everything she brings to this world. I am sad I cannot not be there with her for these most magical mundane first months of Diego’s life , but I know that the quality of our friendship runs deep and I look forward to the day we will reunite here on the warm sand by the endless sea.
Supermoon in the east, sunset in the west. Carrapateira.
In the spirit of balance, March wasn’t all longing for distant friends. March brought me Liz, one of my most enduring and cherished friends! Liz and I have now been friends for twenty-one years and I can without hesitation say that every moment we’ve spent together has been of the utmost quality, that the quality has only improved over the years and that if what we share isn’t love then I seriously don’t know what love is. What an absolute gift to love someone for so many years, to be witness to each other’s lives and act only in support, encouragement and admiration. Of the saints of my magical mundane, Liz represents to me the virtue of Becoming. Together we have transformed from girls to women, and there’s very little we’ve neglected to share of our journey along the way. We’re very different people, Liz and I, but we share love without judgement and twenty one years later, it feels as natural as breathing. She was only able to stay for a few days here in our new little hideaway, but she brought me home everlasting and I’ll keep that in my heart until next time.
“Your house shall be not an anchor but a mast. And though of magnificence and splendor, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing. For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.” KG
The last bit of news for March is that we were able to secure a beautiful little house in a quiet valley close to the beach surrounded by endless miles of hiking trails. Housing is a difficult situation here due to demand which far exceeds supply and the fact that all of this area is protected natural preserve making it next to impossible to build more homes but guaranteeing that the environment will be protected from overcrowding and the consequences thereof. It’s a privilege to live in this area because housing is so rare and the natural beauty so serene. So we’ll settle in, plant a garden and go about finding how we can best be of service to this land and people who have taken us in. A very wise woman in my extended circle of saints recently celebrated the anniversary of moving into in the house her husband and she painstakingly and with big love came to build for their family and she reflected with these words, “I’m very aware these days of how we came into this place, and that if we had stepped just a little differently we’d likely be housing insecure like so many of our friends. I don’t really know how to fix that, but I do think it’s important to be honest about the fact that none of us really earn our security. I can see how our sense of home really is rooted in the fact that others came to bat for us. I’m very grateful and I hope my little family can keep showing up for this community.”
From the inside looking out.
Someone told me recently that they do not believe all the luck is reserved for some and all the pain reserved for others. That perhaps luck and misfortune are actually evenly distributed between everyone and everything and that like matter and energy, which are never created or destroyed, come to us all in different measure as we transform from one life to the next. I like this theory. I don’t take it as an excuse to sit back, merely musing about injustice. We all still have work to do, but it does make me feel a little more at peace with the unfairness of life and a lot more grateful for the good fortune of the moment, knowing that one day, all of this shall pass. I try to remember, “The purpose of freedom is to free someone else,” and as much as I want to have and hold all of this love that’s been bestowed upon me, the greatest show of gratitude is to spread it’s seeds and watch it bloom.
“The only real voyage consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes; in seeing the universe through the eyes of another, one hundred others-in seeing the hundred universes that each of them sees.”
Marcel Proust, translated by Kiyotesong
Choices, tradeoffs and the luck of the draw. May our volition be righteous until the destined sweet hereafter.