All Pursuits Worthwhile: Staring at the Dividing Line

Each day the sun will drop from sight and return on the other side of the world. It passes through the horizon, the divider of earth and sky. Though the distance between our eyes and the horizon remains the same, our intimacy with it varies as we move forward in time.   As I gaze towards the ocean, and the sky lights up reflecting colors, lights, and shadows from below to above, I waver between notions of helplessness and purpose.

Our perceived timelines are so small, it is difficult to feel like we are enacting any great change on this world. Still, the amount of damage and benefit we affect on our community is enormous. The history of this world has created our present.  It is our choice to engage with it positively today.  I am finding myself less worried now about receiving or finding definitive answers, less concerned with a career choice. I've been around too many good friends and family passing on lately, and all were happy until the end.  It gives me hope that I too will end up happy.

There are ladders to climb, vines to swing, branches to grasp and tree houses to erect. People on all sides of this universal tree that we play and share our stories in are expressing their insights, knowledge, experiences. So many people in this diverse ecosystem to receive truths from! One suggests all you need is a college degree, masters, and PHD and you can teach Grad school! Another winks at you saying, Come get your hands dirty and learn how to work with natural systems to instill permaculture design into the landscape and attitudinal and design principles in yourself! Then some beauty says something in a foreign language and laughs and disappears into the next tree and you would could spend the rest of your life trying to understand her laughter. Complete sets of answers for your own contentment and stimulation are available in 1, 5, and 20 year plans!

These paths would all do me well. Anything that would allow me to sustain my existence would be positive, yes (or should we quarry about happiness and suffering, what is good and what is bad)? All paths allow for endless growth depending on one's commitment and engagement. Here I am though, hopping one from one path to the next, committed in the beginning and then interest drifts like a bird in the breeze. I am six years out of High School and my experiences have piled up like the bottom of a composting toilet. Does the substance of what you've accomplished matter, or is it how you personally recollect your past? Is what matters what you leave behind for the next generation?  The ripple effect of their memories and lessons that they carry in their hearts?

Here I am, 3 years plus on Maui and I feel the need to follow a new path, though not a new beginning. I seek distance. In order to center, I remove myself from what is familiar. I take away the associations and am left with my naked self and core beliefs to guide me. I seek physical and emotional distance from the landscape I've resided. The last few years have been several journeys, both overlapping and overwhelming. It has become a mashed potatoes of grief, ecstasy, love, sadness, beauty. Mix in New York, Maui, Kauai, Wisconsin, with dreams of Alaska and Spain.

Keeping myself moving. Haleakala, Northern California, Australia on the metaphorical horizon.

Just another rainy morning on Maui. Take what you need, give back what you can,  Spread the Aloha,

Matthew

All Pursuits Worthwhile: Letting in the Breeze on a Chilly Evening

Some words, thoughts. 

What extent of silliness has removed us from ourselves, distorted our notions of standards, removed the hands from the clock and shattered our perception of time? Has this generation evolved so quickly it forgot to enjoy breakfast? Did it forget to wake with the birdsongs?

Yes. We possess a large toolbox. Congratulations. It's kind of heavy though. Why uncomfortably lug around what you aren't using effectively for good or growth? Why be weighed down with distractions and notions of culture that seesaw like the weights of the wallet and  our stress levels.    Ever try measuring knowledge and laughter, unburdening ourselves from desires.

When did this become mine and that yours?   How did the development of faceless control emerge into our 'nine to five?'  Force fed with synthetics, medicating with the same, nurturing conditions for for discomfort without a cure.  I think. I don't know. 

I'm on a rock that's working on feeding the future because these effects have rippled past a strong current.  A current previously unpassable to those with opposable thumbs.  All but the ones in sync with night sky lost their way.

Honestly, I am sharing this because of time, and the biophysical limits of resources on this earth (with potential for abundance if we nurture its natural growth), and the way our reality shifts when we engage the world with our senses, our hearts. Actions ripples, minds perceive. Our senses bridge this barrier of idea and creation. Art, a secret smile, an uphill ride. I see more when I close my eyes . 

I smell the puakenikeni flower, taste a daikon radish, associate the past as a timelapse blooming fire. There are limits to what this life offers on an individual level. On the collective though, the connections and degrees of separation from a camping trip in Western Australia to eating pomegranate jalapeno jelly in the Mojave desert are a blink away, a foot on the map.. We always have the ability to bend time into the scales and proportions of our choosing. 

When the nostalgia clicks in, like a germinated bean seed shedding its shell, the natural progression of skipping through the past occurs. The older I get the more grateful I am for the diversity of experience, the relationships and connections of people and places that have formed, and the reminders of mycorrhizae that connect us. As far as linear time goes, we are growing apart, yet I feel closer to past and future friends when I fall asleep at night.  I try to smile, remember the image of the torquoise mountain in the lakes' snowy reflection, or the time we teared up from laughter as strangers became friends and night followed into day.

Look. There are so many places to look. We aren't changing. We aren't ending, we aren't beginning. We are here, becoming, cycling through as nature intends.  Life will happen, and presumably it feels unexplainable, and we will react and respond as we will.   Patience reveals it was meant to happen.  If there is a goal you have, a yearning to be, what's preventing you? Your mind will play its tricks. Just breathe and enjoy and PURSUE cause on an individual level it doesn't last forever, but as a collective footprint, well, I'd like to think so. Just look, up, at all the stars. They all happened once.

Yes, the world is
real. And yes, there is ripe fruit
splattering

Thankfully, there is an ocean whose current
checks on the elders, like
the sky
for the children, and the wind for the
in-betweeners.

Yes, time isimaginary, and the spinning
is bringing us back
to the middle,
Has Spring crept up on us already?

I jump and I stretch and I reach
and try

to grip a cloud. I pull down
with the loadmy heavy heart
against the weightless cloud and
the scale reads:
empty and true.

Each cloud that passes across
the sky, uneven on the rocky terrain
that I lay on, floats by
beyond reach.

In this everpresent
everchanging landscape
life clings, like
feint songbirds on morning branches,
to a rock.

There is little I know,
and nothing I can confirm,
Yet I retain the belief:There's a bridge beyond the horizon.

Sending aloha vibes to the folk whose seasons are distinguished differently from the volume level of morning birds and the blooming of the jacaranda. Working hard here, living light, loving trips to Hana, remembering the good times, continuing to have them, Haleakala quarterly, Lanai biannual. Spain, Nepal, Alaska, Cambodia, Morroco, Redwoods, Iceland, Friends from the past, Friends of the future, I will see you all soon, one day at a time.
Enjoy Spring, or Autumn for those in the South!
　


maybe to you it sounds kinda funny
but i'm really not too attached to money
maybe cause i can take care of my self
in the wilderness, the country, where fruit values wealth

maybe i'm happy to let the silliness slip
into the comericals, the cities, where idol worships shifts
so what, he can hit a ball or act like a king
i can top that with funny faces, smiling at the laughter it brings

sometimes i'm able to rhyme but that doesn't matter
in the hiearchy of hte universe i'm just a rung on the ladder
wait and be patient when trouble surruonds you
the river will make its pass and the flood will unbound you

with hands that do magic when going deep in the earth
I found what I value, I care about its worth
Lets help those in need with what we are given
Lets engage and be grateful for this life that we're living

you may believe me now, when I say I don't care about the money
waste not, want not, breathe deep, taste the sweet honey

All Pursuits Wortwhile: Self Made Puzzles

After Saturday night, or more precisely, a few hours before the sun rose above Hana's coastline on Sunday morning, I was awake and began to rearrange words and letters. I tried the combination from Paula's series and took the theme into account:

"Words Left Unsaid."

Language and sentence structure take on many forms. I like to think of language as a riddle with infinite combinations and no truly right or wrong ways of doing so. Maybe it has something to do with reading Dr. Seuss, books of Palindromes, and playing mouse trap as a child.


I Draw Sound lifts,

And I Dust Flowers!

Flutes or Sad Wind?

Frost Law: Sun died.

Lost War Side Fund

Run Self, Wait... Odd.

Wait Self, Odd.... Run!

Infused last word:

Louder Swift Sand


What I'm getting at here is everything and nothing. 
Feeling great and rejuvenated from Hana,
Going to Haleakala this next weekend
And I'll be flying on a new breeze of inspiration still