All Pursuits Worthwhile: Telescopes are Everywhere

 
At an unknown time in the navy blue night, only known with exactness to the navigators of stars, I walked outside to relieve my bladder and climbed back into the warm comfort of my upcontry cabin. I lay down to rest with a headache that verged on hurricane. I remained awake for an unknown time, wishing i wasn't myself and I fell into a dream.

I awoke hoping friends discover Al Green's "Love and Happiness." I dreamed of purpose which I will not detail here.

A few nights later, in a similar pattern, I awoke after 3 hours from a very spacial dream.

Altered shades of new green leaf emerge from heliconia stalks
As I push through thick tropical foliage
Gray smooth river rocks brushing the soles of gliding feet 
At close inspection the sheen on the rocks glows a path and a puzzle  
Felt a whir and in a blink, taken to similar looking landscapes,
Rearranged only by the formation and pressure of time and climate 
Zoomed out to an aerial view of my surroundings,
seen as the blueprints of a home, a map of the mind's landscape
Transported into each section first person, then back to the omniscient narrator
As I was playing the part of narrator, not the engaged character,
I started to affect the plants

Unconsciously working my way through the veinations on the leafs
into the stems and the plants' roots to cure illness through its depths 
A paradoxical feeling of viscerality while healing plants from afar
And then there was my life which needed attention, after the plants 
And its intentions of purpose to be manifested in different forms
The recogintion came of the thorough busyness and the clutter
And the only way to approach it would be
to enter with a clear empty meditative mindset
to distinguish and be present in each effortless moment

I have felt many parallels of the past lately. The lessons of learning and working with what has been learned. It would appear to me in this age of growing, of becoming, it gets harder, it gets easier. It gets harder, and so on.

With recent rides to the airport of seeing off and welcoming back new and old friends, I reflect on the state of transience attracted to this island. How it contains a special space in one's heart is akin to a locked mystery treasure box, an unsolvable riddle. A game not meant to be questioned, only to be respected and loved and positively played. This presence in my life of coming and going and returning is echoing my yearning to stay and to leave. Project upon project in towns all over the island, the blueprints of my past, the map of my future. Such, I believe, is the process of developing roots.

Reminders of the preciousness of time shared in a place with the 'aina, with the dwellers. Dealing with the pain in my foot. The curvature of the horizon, blurred and unknown in the hours before moonrise.

friends, friends, friends
what are we but droplets of water skating down a windshield
dodging, joining, breaking apart, existing for the thrill of the fall
dancing onto destinations and grasping onto moments
where connections grow so strong they extend beyond dimensional time
it is what we now view as exceptions when nature thrives as it intends
20 foot tall sunflowers and 6 pound tomatoes
this is how i thirst when i think of what can grow
foes, foes, foes
who are we to argue with each other when we share so much
we differ in what our parents taught us and what they were taught
whose brilliant idea was it to change nature's curriculum
to mess with the soil and our food and our minds
why can't children live without words, with feeling
what is so dangerous about freedom if your intention is happiness
this is what i dream in this lustless century
freeman, freeman, freeman
where are the bells and why is the ringing so feint?


Advice to you, advice to self:

Yes. Life contains peace, balance, conflict, pattern. There is light, darkness, duality and illusion. Picture life as a tree or as a circle. Recognize where you are, which part of the tree you are presently feeling like and what curve you are turning, chasing, bending in this never ending circle.

What we are is small. What we can affect is large. What we can dream is limitless.



It began at midnight, at yawning yellow dusk

since unfurled onto a messy bed

Lingering under my toes

like millions of microrganisms gasping below the grass

chaos, disillusionment, doubt

Shuddering at the thought of the godless spray, while

Embracing, trying, the notion of helplessness

To disappear, to erase, to change the present path

shedding one self into an unknown destiny

where the languages of the trees blend

with the toads and the ripples and the lunar desires

Is it escape or destination I seek

Somewhere between the overlap in time where legacy begins and ends

But wait

in a fresh green meadow where opposites attract

There are footprints everywhere, cold visible breaths, and still

no intimation of presence

There is a face with eyes that stare and a mouth with a jaw

that extends below rational boundaries

At its peak, the string section chimes in

beckoning the passing of a storm

gray cloud becoming orange becoming night

A beginning that reminds so much of the end that the heart sinks into its shell

undulates down onto the ocean floor

next to histories forgotten treasures

After, We are all limitless fallers - dreamers - walkers

I've done this before

I don't wish to go through it again

not with a senseless horizon

There must be colors to touch, songs to smell,

wet grass to shine and cacti to thrive

I have no request out of what is not natural, and I wish only myself

to be able to embrace what I have so closely rejeced

Aware of my sensibilities, my flaws, knowing if this pattern persists,

(which it will in indeterminable fractal lengths,

immeasurable laughters and whispering winds)

I will be

And in the words of the famed praying mantis

I will be and I will wish

knowing This:

If your wish is sent high,

there is no boundary below the stars,

only the magic of time

And

If your wish is true,

well... I cannot say more.



To be continued...