Some reflections and meditations on my 22nd birthday. Life is good. Off to camp on Lanai for a bit, then moving to Huelo, where an expansive ocean view and large jutting cliffs await.
Pink clouds give way to the rising sun.
Black, red, and white pebbles
perpetually washed by
The noisy blue giant.
Kerouac's The Town and the City
and Zen meditations on my lap.
Alternated with my own
feeble attempts at story and meditations.
Odd jobs for food and gas money
and some grass to lay on.
Back come the heavy pink clouds,
weighed down by a beaming sun.
Then to dreamland I travel
through wet cloud tunnels
in-and-out of the milkyway
en route to inner space
where everyone is a shooting star
Sounds pretty good on paper, feels pretty good in spirit. What, you may wonder, is missing? For starters, I haven't slept within 15 miles of the same location two nights in a row. It's been a loaded week, each day an adventure, each conversation an opportunity, and the only schedule I am willingly tied to is the sun's.
Ode to Running Water
your drawn out breath
lady-like grace
rebirth from the sky
humility of a masked hero
steamy and moist as a first kiss
under
starlit canopy, never unshining
always playing
glowing
silent
always
I've been able to reflect which is, when done healthily, a way to progress. I perceive my relationships with people and the land and how they've changed and grown. I see myself. And I am different. I have learned and relearned, and will continue to learn and relearn again. I think of time. I am uncertain of how each it passes for each soul, but am certain that as it passes for me, it passes for everyone. I think of city life, and town life, and I know I prefer the town. I dig elements of the city, the envelope pushers and whistle blowers and poets of the city walls. But give me traditions, values, familiar, friendly faces (of both animal and human), and a life built from scratch any day. We all fight our private revolutions. I'd rather fight mine with the people I care for and know their story, intimately.
destined
to swim
in a never endless
long song
we wait
with infinite patience
and we play
and we pray
to each their own way
We humans are a social mamal. We know nothing of the lives we pass every day. The beating souls and bone and flesh bodies that share our air. We know nothing of them. The same goes for plants and those with many legs and hands, big furry eyes, shiny flourescent fins, and let's not forget the winged-gods that soar in the way the air's breath guides them. Yet, in this miracle of existence, we share their air. And above and beyond the infinite horizon - we connect. We connect to the night sky, the fertile earth, the animals and plants, each other. We share intimacy, passion, good nature, belly laughs, and ripe fruit. We share words and music, and we humans, a very social mammal, do so in a unique way. How is life not a blessing?
I wrote this, below, on the morning of my twenty-second birthday. It is the raw beginning of a story I am going to see through.
Shalvah
Shalvah sat. A fierce and wiry looking creature hardened by life's waves of challenges at the age of one. 365 days since his planet shined with the equal light intensity on the date of his birth, where he was conceived at dawn in a cave, a promise of new beginnings. Each direction he peered: a possiblity. One filled with ancient critters hopping through tall thin trees, another flat and orange with bumps the size of mosquito bites, another masked by a layer of glistening waving enigmatic blue. They all would bring him towards his destiny, which was the same for him as any other, an edge of the world cliff where time would prompt him with knowledge of what to do.
Abandoned by his mother after a week of full care and nourishment, Shalvah couldn't conceive of how to live. Breathing was natural, for he heard the tide in his mother's womb for months. But as for nourishment, his mother's milk and tiny insects were handed to him. Until he was 8 days old, the child did not consider how spoiled he was, and only now began to suffer the consequences. Shalvah sat, peering and brooding, curious and hopeless, til he inevitably fell asleep, curled in the fetal position on top of crackling dry leaves under a banana sized moon.
His sleep didn't last long, for he was on an empty stomach. He felt ill and cold and miserable in this state of unhealth. Young and fragile and without energy, Shalvah felt his blood thin and his muscles weak. In this unwelcome state, Shalvah could only sit. He fell back asleep with thoughts and images, flashing at first and then appearing steady, on the backs of his eyelids. An unknown and unvisited reality began to creep its way into existence. Just as the fire can illuminate the darkness and provide comfort to a disturbed two-legged land dweller, Shalvah felt a new sensation that night as he slipped away. Into his first dream.
Matthew K.
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