(Aloha means "Breath of God")

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Chapter 1: Go West!

FOR MONTHS AND MONTHS I had been feeling attracted to both Hawai'i and Massachusetts; I was seeing and hearing things about them everywhere. Especially Massachusetts. It really began when one of my reiki students from the East Coast told me about her home town of Northfield, Massachusetts. It was right where Massachusetts and Vermont and Connecticut come together, she said -- and the Connecticut River runs through the middle of town. She described it as "the most beautiful place on Earth."

The first time she mentioned it, I thought, "Oh, how nice...." Didn't think any more of it, and then, months later, she mentioned it again and said I really should check it out, she thought I would love it. So I began seriously considering going there. And then things began happening that brought Massachusetts to my awareness almost every day.

Then another friend, who had grown up in Massachusetts, said I would be bored to death in Northfield; it was a tiny little town with small-town mentality, a nice place to go for a weekend maybe, but not a place I would like to live. He thought Cambridge would be a much better place for me. A progressive, cutting-edge kind of place: the Berkeley of the East, he said. So I began contemplating a move to Cambridge. And then I was seeing reminders everywhere not only of Massachusetts but of Cambridge and Boston specifically.

Then, at some point, Hawai'i came into the picture. A similar thing, it just began popping up in my world all the time: I would pick up a newspaper and there would be an article about swimming with dolphins in Hawai'i; or my friend Delano, the King of Otter Rock, Oregon (who had lived, years ago, on Kaua'i), would call on the phone and say, "You know, next time I go to Hawai'i, you really ought to come with me, you'd love it over there...."; or I would pick up the TV schedule and a program about Hawai'i would jump off the page at me.

There were other things, too: other friends who had lived in Hawai'i, others who had made many visits there (and who described Hawai'i as "the most beautiful place on Earth").....and years ago I had written a novel (which never got published, though excerpts of it did) containing some scenes on Kaua'i and Ni'ihau -- and had become rather fascinated with Hawai'i in the process of researching that.

This phenomenon reached its zenith when I read a new book by a guy in Phoenix named Keith Varnum. A friend had introduced me to his website a couple years before, and I had read some very interesting stories there, about his life. Now he had published a book, and I got a copy and read it, and there were stories of his years living in Boston and Hawai'i.... Hmmm. What a coincidence :^ ).

Now I had a dilemma: Cambridge or Hawai'i? You couldn't get much farther apart in terms of climate and type of energy. I was not delighted at the thought of damp, freezing, New England winters -- and yet I felt destined for Cambridge. I was getting lots of messages about Hawai'i, but it felt more like a place to visit than to live. Even so, I was not sufficiently clear about this to make a decision.....

But another friend (and excellent astrologer) had told me, long before, about locational astrology -- and the guru of locational astrology, a man named Julian Lee. She had recommended, more than once, that I get a reading from him. And, more than once, I had almost done it. Now, in my dilemma, the time seemed right. I went to Julian's website and followed the procedure for getting a reading. And the answer was -- Hawai'i. By far the best place for me in the United States, he said. And a place that would be more and more favorable to me for the next 18 years! I figured that was about the best recommendation I could ever have; my decision was made.

He even told me which island, and when to arrive. My planetary influences were best of all on Kaua'i, he said, and the best time to arrive was the afternoon of September 16. However, he also thought I might prefer either Oahu or Maui, because they were more populated than Kaua'i. And it just happened that one of my friends had moved from California to Maui a few years before (I assumed he was still there, though I hadn't heard from him in a long time).

Anyway, I was now envisioning my arrival somewhere in the Islands on September 16. I put down the phone from talking with Julian and went out on some errands. I was sitting in the car at a traffic light and, across the intersection, staring right at me, was a car with Hawai'i license plates -- that said ALOHA, no less. What a wonderful confirmation of my new home!


I CALLED THE KING of Otter Rock, to ask his advice on which island. He didn't like the idea of me settling on Oahu: too many people, he said. Keep in mind, this is a guy who lives in Otter Rock, Oregon -- population maybe a couple hundred. Nevertheless, I valued his judgment (though I did know someone on Oahu -- a woman I used to send a lot of reiki --and I even called her on the phone about my impending move).....and I assumed my friend Leonard was still on Maui. I called another friend, who spends a lot of time in Hawai'i, and gave her the news, and she told me to call a friend of hers on Maui.....so I got myself a plane ticket to Maui (my mother actually paid for it, as a going-away gift).

This was several weeks before my scheduled blast-off. I got the ticket and went on with the business of daily life. The time was evaporating.....and, about 2 weeks before the 16th, I began to feel not right about Maui. Finally, 9 days before my departure, I had such a strong intuition that I needed to go to Kaua'i, I phoned the airline to see if I could change my ticket. No, I couldn't, the airline didn't fly to Kaua'i. So I got a second ticket, from another airline, from Maui to Kaua'i. I would be on Maui only long enough to change planes.

It was only then that I remembered: astrologically, Julian had said, Kaua'i was the very best place for me. And, within a week of getting the second ticket, I was given 3 personal contacts on Kaua'i. Two days before I was to leave, I got through to one of these people on the phone: a woman named Donna. (I'd been given her number by Keith Varnum, who also happened to be leading a workshop on miracle-making, in November, on the island of Kaua'i. :^ ) I had emailed her already and she had offered to help me. Now, on the phone, she said she would pick me up at the airport and take me to live in her guest room indefinitely!

She asked what I would be bringing, and I told her: a large backpack, a small knapsack, a laptop computer and a mat for sleeping (the one I use for reiki treatments, actually). "What kind of computer?" she said. "Toshiba," I said. "Oh," she said, "I'm sorry...." I asked why and she said, "I just thought maybe you were a Macintosh person."

Well, besides being very bizarre to me, this was also quite interesting because I had a Mac laptop that I was wanting to sell. It was right there on the table as I was talking with her on the phone. I had tried auctioning it on eBay for a week -- the auction had ended just 2 days before -- and no one had come within $300 of the price I wanted, so I didn't sell it. (I had bought it only a few months before, from a guy who collected Macs and taught Computer Technology and seemed fair and honest, and I was only trying to get my money back out of it, so I felt my asking price was fair.)

So I said to her, "I have a Mac I'd be glad to sell you." What kind, she wanted to know. I told her and she was getting excited. "I want it!" she said, "Bring it with you!" I suggested giving it to her in exchange for staying at her house, and she liked the idea. I asked how I would recognize her at the airport, and she said, "I'm short, I have short brown hair, and I'm incredibly attractive." She said it not sounding egotistical, more as if her incredible attractiveness were just so universal and such a life-long thing she had been dealing with, that she had accepted it as a way to describe herself to strangers.



Chapter 2: Getting There

FORTUNATELY MY TOSHIBA case was big enough to hold both laptops. Plus the master hard copies of my newly revised reiki manuals. Plus a beautiful photo of a white cactus blossom, taken by a friend, and 2 sheets of mat board for mounting it in my new home across the water. Plus 4 pairs of socks and some boxer shorts. I packed the Macintosh case with computer hardware, a book or 2, razor blades, fingernail and toenail clippers, scissors, and a bunch of my favorite, green, kitchen scrubbers that happened to fit in perfectly.

Packing my backpack, Sunday night, it seemed I was going to have a lot of extra space. I wasn't taking my sleeping bag, and the only clothes were underwear and shorts and T-shirts. Then I called the airlines, to find out the luggage requirements, and was told I could have only 2 pieces of checked baggage. That would be the backpack and the reiki mat -- so the Macintosh case would have to go inside the backpack.....where it just happened to fill up all the remaining space.....


ATONEMENT AND INDEPENDENCE

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, was Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar: the day of Atonement, At-One-ment. A day of prayer and fasting. It was also Dieciseis de Septiembre, Independence Day, the biggest holiday in Mexico. So I would be arriving in Aloha-land under influences of atonement and independence, not to mention beneficial planetary alignments.

Sky Harbor International Airport seemed uncrowded when I arrived a little after 7:30 a.m. There was only 1 person ahead of me in line when I checked my 2 pieces of luggage, and 1 or 2 at the x-ray portal to the boarding gates. This was to be my first experience taking a computer on an airplane, and I had assumed that computers could be inspected personally instead of x-rayed. But I was wrong; they not only had to be x-rayed, they had to be removed from their cases, in order to soak up the maximum dosage. There was a quaint little sign posted above the conveyor belt that fed items into the insatiable mouth of the x-ray monster: "X-rays will not harm film or computers," it said. "Right," I thought, "and nuclear radiation doesn't cause cancer, either. It's good for us, that's why it's now being applied to our food supply." I felt almost like lying down on the conveyor belt myself, just to top off my energy level.

I had a bunch of computer disks that I really did not want to be x-rayed, though. I handed them to the attendant. "Can these not be x-rayed?" I said. She took them, with a pained expression on her face. I went through the door frame, retrieved my radioactive computers and put them back in the case, and started to reach for the disks. "I'll have to run the wand over these before you can have them back," said another attendant; and she did exactly that. I was so glad I had saved them from the big, impersonal radiation on the conveyor belt, so they could be zapped more intimately, through direct contact with "the wand." I made a point of thanking her for the personal attention.

We were on the plane and ready for takeoff around 9:20, just as scheduled. The flight to Maui was supposed to take just over 6 hours, putting us there at 12:42 p.m. local time. We actually arrived a bit early. The pilot was describing the sights as we approached, though I was in an aisle seat and couldn't see out the windows.

My first sight of Hawai'i was a few palm trees blowing in the wind, as I scampered down the airport corridor to reclaim my baggage. I was at the baggage carousel at our scheduled landing time, very glad we were ahead of schedule, because I had just over an hour to get my baggage, recheck it and get a boarding pass at Aloha Airlines, and get myself through the x-ray labyrinth again and onto the plane.

Waiting for the baggage, it seemed for a moment that I was still in Phoenix: there were people holding signs saying "Ed Clayton Ford." Apparently Ed's employees were taking an island getaway....

Again I was very grateful that we had landed ahead of schedule, because the luggage took about 25 minutes to arrive. I grabbed mine, slung the big pack on my back and, holding the rest of it like an octopus, took off in search of Aloha Airlines. Found it soon enough.....with quite a long queue of people and baggage ahead of me. On the way there, I had passed the x-ray portal to the boarding gates, and noticed a long snake of people there too.

Standing in line, I reminded myself of some reiki precepts: "Let go all fear and worry, have absolute faith.....have absolute peace, welcome what is...." And I began envisioning the line ahead of me melting away.....and sure enough it did. Then I had to wait while they x-rayed the bags I had checked.

When I got back to the place to have myself x-rayed again, I was delighted to see that the long line there had also vanished. I walked right up, took my computers out of the case and sent them through the zapper -- along with the computer disks and everything else. And with plenty of time to spare.

Waiting to board the plane to Kaua'i, I got my second view of Hawai'i: a beautiful scene framed by a big, long window -- dark earth and green, growing things, with a line of hills behind them, a big, wedge-shaped, windblown cloud sitting on top of the hills. Yes, this was my new home!

It came time to board the plane. We lined up and handed over our boarding passes -- but, before we could board, we just had to get a few more x-rays! Better yet, we got the full terrorist treatment: "Step over here....put your luggage on this table" (to be searched by hand)...."Now step over here....remove everything from your pockets....take off your shoes" (which were then thoroughly blessed by "the wand," as were the soles of our feet and finally our whole bodies). Then, 30 minutes in the air and we were landing at Lihue on Kaua'i.

On the plane, something compelled me to open the inflight magazine, where I found a piece about Island lore. Not only was Kaua'i the oldest of the Islands geologically, it said, but also the first home of Pele the Fire Goddess. She had arrived there and punched a few holes in the earth with her digging stick, but didn't hang around because the holes kept filling with water. Kaua'i was too wet for her liking, and she went off to make her home on the Big Island, in the form of the Kilauea volcano. Well, it stands to reason, considering that Kaua'i is the home of Mount Waialeale, "the wettest spot on Earth" (with something like 480 inches of annual rainfall).

Nevertheless, I have begun to take such Hawai'ian lore with a large grain of Hawai'ian sea salt. Since arriving here, I've read an obituary of Mrs. Robinson, the matriarch of the family that owns the island of Ni'ihau -- in which it was claimed that Ni'ihau was geologically the oldest Island and home of Pele the Fire God(dess).


DONNA

SHE DROVE UP in her Mazda RX-7 as I was standing on the sidewalk outside the airport, enjoying my first real view (unhampered by windows) of the magnificent landscape. Drove up and said, "Hey, Sailor, want a ride?"

She got out of the car and put a lei around my neck; not one of flowers, but of beautiful, large, black-and-white "beads", obviously natural, not man-made. Kukui nuts, she said. From the Kukui tree. They make a wonderful necklace (I'm wearing them as I write this), strung on black ribbon with a knot after each nut and a bow holding the ends together. The nuts come in either black-and-white or brown-and-white, she said. She had gotten me the black-and-white, the more formal :^ ).

We put my stuff in the back of the RX-7 (kind of a battleship-gray color with a slight bluish tinge and considerable wear and tear), and me in the front, and drove away from the airport to a little pullout that overlooked a beautiful oceanscape of popcorn-white breakers on deep-blue water. We sat and talked a bit and figured out where to get me something to eat (I had eaten nothing all day; it was Yom Kippur after all, and I figured a day of fasting and prayer was especially appropriate for arriving in my new home).

Before leaving Arizona, I had emailed Donna that, after I arrived, I wanted to take some food as an offering to the Spirits of the island. My friend Michelle, who lives in Alaska, had lived on Oahu at one time, and told me it would be a good idea to gain the favor of these Spirits. They live in places called koho laus, she said, which once were places of worship where the Kahunas held ceremonies. Nowadays some of the koho laus are in public parks: little, roped-off areas with a plaque describing them. She said the Spirits are fond of pork and poi (taro root, boiled in water and mashed) and cinnamon rolls! And that some of them had come to her in a dream once. "They are quite magnificent people of amazing stature if you should ever have the good fortune to meet them," she said.

So I had asked Donna if she knew of any koho laus. She didn't, nor had she ever heard the term. She checked with a friend, someone who does translation work, and this person also had never heard of koho laus! But Donna said she knew a place where the Spirits were said to hang out, a place near a waterfall, and we could go there. Talking about it now, in the car, it seemed it would be better to go there another day, and we tentatively scheduled that.

Donna was a child of the '60s (and of Scottish and Irish parents, living in Chicago). At some point she had moved to San Diego. She had first come to Kaua'i in 1981; moved here and married a man named Rick the following year. They had raised a family and lived various places on the island (at one point tending 40 acres of mango trees). Rick had been a pilot, and they had both taken tourists on diving excursions. Rick still did some of that, though Donna had stopped.

Now Donna lives in Kalaheo, about 30 minutes (by car) west of Lihue, and Rick lives in Waimea, 30 minutes west of Kalaheo. Waimea is populated by sugar cane workers and people associated with Barking Sands PMRF (Pacific Missile Range Facility), better known as "The Navy Base" or simply "The Base." Rick is retired from the Navy, but works at The Base now as a civilian, doing engineering/design work. He lives very much in his own world, and Donna's involvement in it is mostly talking with him on the phone a few times every day and driving to Waimea most evenings to fix him supper.

As I would soon learn, Donna knows not only most of the people "on island" (as they say here) but most of the dogs and cats too. She befriends them all.....and birds, and spiders, and wasps, and lizards, and so on (including people like me, who call and tell her they'll be arriving in 2 days :^ ). Aside from this freelance humanitarian work (she bills herself as a Cosmic Concierge), she's involved in bringing artists and entertainers to the island for various functions, and does computer consulting for clients. I couldn't have connected with a better person to get me started here. We talked and watched the waves a bit, then she took me to a health food store where I bought a couple sandwiches and a head of lettuce, and then home to Kalaheo.

Kalaheo is a very small town. Some residential areas, a Post Office, a few gas stations, a Subway, and 2 breakfast places (one of which is the best bakery on the island, according to Donna). We arrived at her home not long before sundown. It's a big house, not much different in color from the RX-7 (though a few shades lighter). A big, tall house with louvered-window skylights, with a loft above the main room. The house is on a hill above the town. The living area is above the garage, giving even more height to enhance the panoramic view of surrounding hillsides and, way in the distance, a bit of the ocean. Donna's office and bedroom are on the first floor, with the kitchen and a bathroom, and upstairs are the loft and 2 more bedrooms and another bathroom (a sink and toilet, actually). Downstairs, off the main room, is a covered lanai with a table and chairs, and a walkway leading to the stairs, which lead down to the garage.

The table on the lanai is a wonderful place to eat, or to sit and enjoy the scenery: hillsides covered with grass and trees, dotted with other houses; a lone horse on the steep hill to the north; chickens here and there (and many roosters, who make themselves known mostly in the pre-daylight hours); minah birds; butterflies; a few spots on the green hillside where the dark red earth of Kaua'i shows through (looking very much like Oklahoma red dirt, or Mississippi). And big, billowy, always-moving clouds coming up from behind the hills to the north.

Donna told me a story of a local man who started a T-shirt factory, had problems with the red dust blowing in and staining his shirts, and then decided to use the situation to his advantage. Now he mixes red earth and water to use as a dye for the shirts, and makes famous Red Dirt T-shirts! They've become so popular, he now has imitators. I saw one in Waimea just a few days ago: a shop advertising Red Earth Dirt Shirts!! It's a wonderfully attractive color, in any case.



Chapter 3: First Days

I WAS SO TIRED the night I arrived, I could barely shower and get to bed after eating. Was it only 4 time zones I had crossed? Or was it something else altogether, like the threshold to a different reality? I didn't spend a moment thinking about it, I went to bed and slept -- more deeply than I had in a long time. Just sort of dematerialized.....and came back at 4:30 the next morning, wonderfully rested, to the sounds of roosters crowing. I stayed in bed, doing reiki, for a couple more hours.

With Donna's computer, we made a small advertisement for me, asking for a place to live in exchange for work; printed a bunch of copies and left, in midmorning, to dispense them.

We put one on a bulletin board at the breakfast hangout in Kalaheo, then headed east and north around the perimeter of the island: Poipu.....Lihue.....through Wailua (without my even knowing it).....to Kapa'a.....Anahola (where someone makes "Anahola Granola")..... Kilauea.....Princeville (with the luxurious Princeville Hotel, overlooking the beach where South Pacific was filmed (I never have seen that movie!)). This was to give me a glimpse of the island, as well as soliciting a place to live. And I would leave an offering for the Spirits today. Donna knew of a heiau (which seemed to be the Kaua'ian equivalent of the koho laus on Oahu that Michelle had told me about) near a waterfall, near Kapa'a. We would go there on our way home from the north shore.

It's remarkable how long it takes to go from place to place here, considering the whole island is only 25 miles across; but the road hugs the perimeter all the way, and goes up and down hills, and winds around in some places. And the speed limit is never over 50, and often 35. And I did say road; you wouldn't call it a highway: 2 lanes, fairly narrow.....and the pace of life is just slower here. That's part of the attraction of the place!

Kaua'i feels to me like the Hawai'ian frontier -- sort of the way Baja California is the Mexican frontier. Besides the amount of wilderness and the feel of Nature everywhere, the people here are just more individualistic -- rugged comes to mind, but it may be simply that they're a little more real, a little more alive than people in less natural settings. So they have ruggedness, but also great tenderness. Donna is a prime example of this, and I see it also in everyone she has introduced to me.

We had lunch in Kapa'a, at a marvelous, natural-food store called Papaya's; all the more marvelous because it's the only such store on the island. Naturally, I started filling bags with grains and legumes, and grabbing packages of seaweed and miso :^ ). We also met 2 other contacts Keith had given me, Jen and Jonathan, who work in the store (and who are friends of Donna's). They were able to take a very short lunch break with us -- just a few minutes, but at least I got to meet them.

We were sitting at a table outside, finishing our lunch, when along came another of Donna's friends, a woman named Sally: a graphic artist. She used to live in Kapa'a, now lives in Kalaheo, and her work is just now beginning to sell in New York.

In Kapa'a we also stopped at a place called Cost U Less. It's a place where you can buy various things, mostly in enormous quantities, at a good price. I wanted to get some poi, a paste made by cooking taro root in water and then mashing it. Poi is the traditional, staple food of Hawai'i. I was eager to taste it, and also wanted to include it in the offering for Spirits. Michelle had said the Spirits liked poi and pork and cinnamon rolls! At the bakery in Kalaheo, I had bought a Peach-mango Scone for them (I was going to buy cinnamon rolls, but the message I got was for a Peach-mango Scone :^ ).

We found the poi in a refrigerated case. It was packaged in clear, plastic tubs, the size that fit into your hand very nicely. This was Hanalei Poi, from the north shore -- gray in color, with just the slightest bluish tint (hmmm, just like Donna's car). I bought 3 of them. She bought some tofu, and was looking for a box of blank address labels. She had seen one here one day, she said. But we couldn't find any. She found the manager and asked him, after they exchanged hugs (Donna knows everyone, as I said). "Sorry, no labels," he said. "We only had them once. You shoulda bought 'em then." (See, it is the frontier.)


WE DIDN'T GO beyond Princeville. That part of the island gets more rain than I felt I would like, so no need of looking for bulletin boards there. It was late in the day, too, and we were getting tired. We turned back toward Kapa'a, to find the heiau.

We found an area by the side of the road, marked off with a chain, which seemed to be the heiau -- but we were drawn instead to go farther up the road, where, on the other side, we could see the waterfall that Donna had mentioned. There was a long strip of parking space with a few cars. We parked and got out and started walking along a narrow trail that paralleled a hand railing. The railing was there to keep people from falling into the gorge that separated us from the waterfall.

At the end of the parking lot was a pickup truck. The tailgate was folded down and, sitting there with his legs dangling was a Hawai'ian man with a knife. In the bed of the truck were some palm fronds and a few other things. The man was trimming palm fronds with the knife, and making them into baskets. One finished basket was sitting on the bed beside him. What's the word to describe it -- Beautiful? Magical? It was very much alive and it made me want to hold it. The beautiful, dark-living-green color of the fresh palm fronds.....and it had the diameter of a basketball. If you cut a section off the top and bottom of a basketball, leaving a middle ring about 4 inches high, and then put a "floor" on the ring, you would have the shape of this basket. But the color and energy of the palm fronds gave the basket so much life! -- and the weaving of them gave it beautiful texture and pattern, both on the curved sides and radiating out from the center of the bottom. And somehow the man had also created a gorgeous, round, focal point -- maybe 2-1/2 inches across and an inch thick -- that seemed to be an integral part of the side of the basket. It was there on the upward angle, like a mandala, drawing my attention into the emptiness at its center.

We started to walk past, but the man spoke to Donna. She had not recognized him, but he knew her -- by way of her brother-in-law. His name was Radar, he said. We stood and talked with him a few minutes, and remarked on the wonderfulness of his basket. I was carrying a sack with the scone and the poi in it -- a little sorry that we didn't have any pork to offer the Spirits -- and it occurred to me that this palm basket would be a most excellent holder for our offerings, in any case.

It was an idea that was hard to let go. I wondered what price he would sell the basket for; and if I had enough money to buy it; and was I willing to spend however much it might cost? I told myself the poi and the scone would be good enough without a basket.....but the basket kept tugging at me. I did a muscle-test, resigning myself to whatever it dictated. The answer was, Yes, get the basket!

"What price will you sell that for?" I asked. "What do you want it for?" he wanted to know. I told him, to leave an offering for the Spirits. He picked up the basket and handed it to me and said, "It's yours."

Even as I was saying, "Really? Are you sure?" I was feeling a rush of energy pouring through me: another confirmation that I was in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing. The basket felt so good in my hands.....the Spirits were going to love it.

Donna had already started walking up the trail. I caught up with her, showed her the basket, said, "Look what I got!" From the look on her face, I think she almost didn't believe it.

The path along the handrail went only a short distance. We walked to the end of it, and there was a perfect place for the offerings: a little jutting of land before the abyss of the gorge -- and a bush growing there, that would hide the basket from the view of other visitors, so it wouldn't be taken. I slipped around the end of the handrail, got down and put the scone and some of the poi into the basket, and tucked it under the bush. I came back up onto the path and we stood there a few moments, looking at the waterfall in the distance, while I silently thanked the Spirits for bringing me here and asked that I be allowed to stay and make the island truly my home. And apologized for not having pork for them!

On the way back to the car, we passed Radar again. He had finished making another basket already. I thanked him again and shook his hand, and we said Aloha.

We arrived home about 7:00 p.m., as it was getting dark. After a very quick supper of poi and bran muffins and twig tea, Donna went to bed and I fell asleep sitting on the couch. I woke up at 10:40 and went upstairs to bed.


THAT WAS 2 WEEKS AGO. Amazing! Time does indeed fly when we're having fun. And yes, I'm having it.....(and this brings back a memory from years ago, the late '70s, when I was writing fiction in a basement in Boulder, Colorado, and I decided I was going to take care of my financial needs, while I was learning to write, by making occasional excursions to Nevada and playing Blackjack in the casinos there (this was before the days when casinos were seen anywhere outside Nevada and maybe Atlantic City). I read a book about winning by counting cards; read and studied it, and spent uncounted hours at the kitchen table in my little underground home in Boulder, dealing Blackjack hands to myself and playing them. And I made a few trips to Nevada -- one to Lake Tahoe (where I actually got banned from the Blackjack tables in one casino, because I was winning too consistently and much too visibly) and a few to Reno, which I liked much better (and, by the time I got there, I had learned that winning at Blackjack was more dependent on playing the people correctly than playing the cards). Suffice it to say that I never became much of a Blackjack player; I just didn't have the temperament for spending enough time in the casinos; it was onerous work for me!

Anyway, the point of this reminiscence is one of the little jewels of life that happened in Reno, during my Blackjack period. There was a Mexican restaurant called La Fonda, where it was my habit to dine every Monday night (the one night of the week that my regular feeding place, Bill Fong's El Cortez Dining Room -- yes, it was Chinese food! but located in the El Cortez Hotel -- was closed). La Fonda was a boisterous, rather noisy place: very dark, except for the warm glow from the candles on all the tables. The plates of food were truly enorme -- and the waitresses weren't bad either :^ ). They were very healthy looking women, dressed in very economical uniforms! They certainly got plenty of exercise. The restaurant was always busy, and they were racing to and fro, delivering whole trays full of these enormous plates of food!

But yes, my point, I'm getting to it. Sitting here on the island of Kaua'i, 25 years later, starting a new life.....what came to me, speaking of fun, was the memory of one tiny incident in that restaurant in Reno so long ago. One of those Monday nights I was there gorging on a bur-r-rito and, out of all the surrounding cacophony, what came to my ear was the voice of a man saying (to his dinner companion), "I ain't never had too much FUN!" And I remember thinking how right he was; that none of us has ever had too much fun; that it would not be possible to have too much fun -- and where did we get the idea that life was not meant to be fun, anyway?

So I'm sitting here on my new island, 25 years wiser, and realizing again that, up until now, I've not been having nearly enough fun. Here it is the first day of a new month, the first day of the rest of my life, and I AM having fun, and I'm going to devote myself to continuing to have fun!

I was going to write about the past 2 weeks, which have melted away so effortlessly; about the days of helping Donna pull plants out of the ground and replace them with other plants, at the condos on the beach in Waimea, the condos for which she is the Property Manager, the condos where Rick, her husband, lives. Pulling out plants and putting others in, and cutting massive amounts off huge bougainvillea bushes, and hauling the results of our cutting and pulling to the landfill.....and sweeping out garages, and replacing light bulbs, and watching the sun set every night, from the pier, and fixing dinners in Rick's kitchen and the 3 of us eating together, amid the astounding accumulation of STUFF that jams his condominium (to the point that merely navigating a pathway through it all is a challenge worthy of his engineering prowess). And about meeting Giorgio, the artist who paints the most vibrantly alive, palette-knife landscapes and seascapes.....who has recently returned from a trip to Santa Fe, which looked like his concept of Heaven and where he is probably going to move. And about Al, who makes the most exquisite things from wood (like a very large, rectangular, dining table with chairs, all made of a hardwood called koa).....

I was going to write about the day we helped Rick move his kayaks, to make room for a shipping container -- this was not in his living room, but on a piece of land he rents in Waimea -- I mean shipping container, one of those great big metal gizmos that go on ships and carry 10 tons of handmade soap from Java, or olive wood spatulas from Cyprus, or motorbikes from Taiwan. He already had one of them on the property, to begin absorbing the overflow of clutter from his condo. The new one he's going to use as a workshop. It was quite a touchy thing, watching the deliverymen back the huge truck with the shipping container on it, over that narrrow, lopsided path onto the property, maneuvering inch-by-inch under the electric lines and kiawe trees. It was more than Donna and I could bear to witness, in fact; we escaped back to our meditative pursuit of uprooting plants.....

And I was going to write about the day we were set to help Rick tow his old, broken down Peugeot all the way from Waimea to Lihue.....how he forgot the brakes didn't work, and the car rolled down the slope of the parking lot and knocked over a light pole -- snapped the concrete base of it right in two and laid the pole out horizontal on the lawn, under the Poinciana tree.....and then, when we actually began towing it toward the street, the whole towbar apparatus broke off from the car, and the Peugeot almost crashed into the back of the Jeep we were towing it with.....

I was going to write about Donna's friend Margaret, how her mother, who recently died, is now materializing playing cards in the house she departed. Playing cards, because Margaret understands the esoteric meanings of the cards; they're a perfect way for her mother to leave messages for her. Margaret goes there to finish emptying and cleaning the house for its new residents, and she finds a meaningful playing card in the rocking chair, or at the edge of the kitchen sink. The most impressive thing is, these are not cards that have simply been moved from elsewhere in the house; they have no brothers and sisters, these are lone cards that have just somehow
m-a-t-e-r-i-a-l-i-z-e-d
in her mother's favorite spots. Her mother, whom she used to call The Royal Mum -- and now, in addition to the playing cards, Margaret found, one day, on the seat of her Mum's chair, a purple mum blossom!

I was going to write about all this and more, but the past is devouring it faster than I can retrieve it. Two weeks have disappeared like a whiff of smoke. I started writing this tonight.....and it's not even tonight now, it's tomorrow already!


DONNA LEFT 4 DAYS AGO, for a week's vacation on the Big Island. She left me the use of her car, and today -- well, yesterday now, October 1st -- I made my first solo excursion in it. I went to Lihue.....to Long's Drug Store, where I got motor oil for Donna's car, and a beautiful, bright yellow, carrying case made of cardstock, for carrying papers; and a bamboo mat for making sushi rolls. Long's is much more than a drug store: aisle after aisle after aisle of every kind of household item and pseudo-food you could dream of even some whole grains, though not organic, and some organic, dried fruits). As soon as I have a household to call my own, I'll be getting a pair of kitchen knives from Long's. I was admiring them today: good quality, vegetable and paring knives, beautifully shaped, with wood handles. The big veggie knife was only $13.99!

From there I went to a bank and extracted some money from Arizona; money to pay for a software program that will allow me to make (and save, and edit) pop-up menus like the one you're using on these pages (the free version works fine, except, every time I add a page, I have to remake the entire menu from scratch and upload all the pages again). Then to the Post Office, to convert the cash to a money order and send it off to Pennsylvania.

Then, just down the street, at the Salvation Army Thrift Store, I found the Deal of the Day. I was looking for a stainless steel steamer basket.....but instead I found a beautiful telephone.....for two dollars. Light gray in color, absolutely clean and sleek, a model I haven't seen in awhile, I think it was called the Trimline. The whole phone is the shape of the receiver, which nestles into it. It was calling out to me, and I couldn't pass it by. Now I have a telephone for my yet-to-be-discovered home.

From there I did a little exploring, just driving in the direction where it seemed the ocean would be. Sure enough, it was there, and I found a pleasant little bay. I parked the car and walked along a long, rock wall -- lava rock, of course -- past a park with grass and lots of people enjoying it. I followed the horseshoe curve of the bay; took off my sandals and walked on the sand, and let the heartbeat of the Pacific Ocean send its healing water pulsing up to cover my feet and roll against my legs and then pull itself back and regain its power for another surge. My very first contact with Hawai'ian ocean!

I walked all the way around the horseshoe and back. Some kids were sort-of surfing. People were swimming. A guy was snorkeling. A kid was fishing. At the edge of the beach, on another stretch of grass, by a big high-rise hotel, were a bunch of white chaise lounges, and people lounging on some of them. Farther down the beach, I passed a wedding party posing for photos.

I had thought to hang out there until the evening traffic on the roads had subsided. I'd even brought a container of rice and beans to eat. It was 5:00 p.m. and I hadn't eaten all day -- but I really wasn't hungry, and I was getting the message it was time to go home. So I got in the car and joined the stream of vehicles crawling its way west. It really wasn't bad. Compared to Phoenix at this time of day, it was absolutely nothing. Kalaheo is 11 miles from Lihue; 11 miles of gently winding, mostly-2-lane road that goes up and down through some very scenic country. There's only one short stretch, just west of Lihue, where traffic bottles up and you have to creep in second gear for maybe a half mile. Then you're whizzing along at 50 or 35 almost all the rest of the way.

In Kalaheo I stopped for gas, at the Chevron station. This is where Donna fills up. It's run by a very nice family, and they give full service: put the gas in the tank, check the air in the tires, check the oil, wash the windows. All while you're sitting in the car. You don't even get out to pay, they take your money inside and bring back the change. Sometimes one of them does all this, and sometimes 2 or 3 of them will appear at once and coordinate their efforts, as if you're making a pit stop in the Indy 500.

I went on up the steep hill to Donna's house, pulled into the garage, took my treasures out of the car and up the stairs to the house. After putting things away and making a salad to go with the rice and beans, I sat on the lanai and ate, and watched a fabulous sunset. The colors kept changing and the brightness kept going up and down, as if Someone were having fun with a new toy. There was a great, mitten-shaped, heavy cloud above the western horizon and, very unlike most of the clouds here, it wasn't moving. It stayed as still as an anchor, and the light show lasted through my entire meal, which seemed very unusual to me. At the end, before the lights finally did go out, there was such a remarkable red glow in the sky -- and, like the whole sunset, it seemed to last unnaturally long -- that I couldn't help thinking of Pele the Fire Goddess.



Chapter 4: Where the Heck is Hawai'i Anyway?

THIS IDEA -- this Divine Revelation, may I say -- that none of us has ever had Too Much Fun, is monumentally important, it seems to me. Way beyond important -- it's absolutely crucial and essential to our well-being! Actually, the word fun is probably not exactly right; what I'm talking about is much deeper than fun. The Indonesian language has a word, baHAgia, that means the deepest, most genuine, all-pervading happiness -- and what I'm talking about may be even more than that. I'm talking about the necessity for us to connect with the fathomless, boundless JOY that is our very nature and essence. To connect with it and stay there every possible moment. Because every moment we are not feeling joy, we are disconnected from the truth of ourselves and from our divine Source. We become alien, half-dead creatures in our own bodies!

This is something that has dawned on me momentarily at various times. But I never did much with the realization. And now it feels like it's really registering and could even actually be here to stay. My move to Hawai'i seems to have catalyzed a small string of realizations; they're coming together and linking up now, to create what may be a great awakening for me. Actually, they're all coming from 2 primary threads:


THREAD #1: YOU ARE THE UNIVERSE!

THIS CAME TO ME after years of giving myself reiki, putting my hands on head and body, day after day after day. It's an idea that a lot of people have talked about for ages -- that the human being is a microcosm of the greater Universe -- but I had never actually FELT it. Then one day I did.

My preferred way of giving reiki to myself was (and is) to lie on my back and start by covering the head with the hands -- over the eyes and Brow chakra, then the crown, temples, ears, back of head.....to the throat and straight down the center of the body, covering all the main chakras one after another.

One day as I was doing this, it came to me just how the human body is indeed a microcosm of the macrocosm. Picture yourself absolutely enormous, a see-through energy-body, superimposed on our solar system, and you'll see what I'm talking about. You're so enormous, you could hold the Earth in one hand like a baseball. Now picture the Earth not in your hand, but at your Root chakra, just below and slightly in front of the base of your spine. You can be reclining or standing up, it doesn't matter :^ ). And your head extends way out beyond the atmosphere of the known Universe, into the Void of Deep Space. Out where there's absolutely nothing but

S - T - I - L - L - N - E - S - S.

Now, the 7th or Crown chakra, on top of your head, is the gateway to the Source of All That Is, the gateway to pure Spirit -- or Great Spirit, or God, or Goddess, or Allah, or Sonten, or Yahweh or YHWH or whatever name tickles your fancy. The people who named reiki reiki, call this one Shinki. (By the way, for any Macrobots :^ ) reading this: just as a confirmation that different flavors of Truth do fit together, take a look at Michio Kushi's Macrobiotic Home Remedies and you'll find, in the first chapter, where he identifies 7 physical energies that make up the human body -- Reiki being the 7th and highest, the one that coordinates and directs all the others.)

Anyway, the energy out beyond the Void of Deep Space -- this Divine Absolute Source energy -- is not physical. It's purely spiritual and the very subtlest of all energies. Now your head is out there in the Void of Deep Space, bumping up against this Source energy.....and your Crown chakra is the gateway between it and the physical energies in your body.....and the Reiki, being the highest of the physical energies, has the ability to bring Source energy (or some version of it, at least) into the physical body.

So now we have Source energy coming in, whispering oh-so-subtlely into the Void of Deep Space (your head, in other words). Could this be where thoughts come from?

Down a little farther, at the 5th or Throat Chakra -- (#6 is in the Void, right between your eyebrows, and is Reiki Headquarters) -- we come to something tremendously special: the "edge," we might say, of the known Universe. Where the manifest world begins. The realm of Vibration, Duality, Yin and Yang, Polarity, Magnetism. The border between Thought and Action, between Concept and Realization. Hmmm, what a perfect place for vocal cords! And maybe this begins to explain how the human voice can be so mesmerizing and magnetic and powerful; how a person who masters the voice can become a Hitler, a Sinatra or a Streisand.

Here's the key to everything: the phenomenon of vibration creates All That Is. First it creates basic elements, then the vibratory patterns of those elements interact to create everything that exists. And what's the first element? Going down to the next chakra, the 4th -- the Heart -- which element is in charge there? What may not be apparent at first is that the heart is actually controlled by the breath. The main organ of breathing, of course, is the lungs, which are right there next to the heart. And the element that makes breathing possible is Air. So, in picturing your giant, macrocosmic body, picture the lungs and heart just this side of the Void, in the outermost reaches of the realm of Vibration, where Deep Space is replaced by a tangible atmosphere. The energy here is more materialized than the Void, but still quite subtle.

Moving down in the body -- and farther toward Earth, from Deep Space -- we come to the 3rd or Solar Plexus chakra. The element here -- just slightly more materialized than Air -- is Fire. This runs the stomach, spleen, pancreas -- digestive organs. We use Fire to digest things (not only foods, but ideas). In your macrocosmic body, this is the Sun (hmmm, could that be why it's called the solar plexus chakra? :^ ).

Move down one more notch -- and a few million miles closer to Earth -- to the 2nd or Sacral chakra, just below the navel. This operates the intestines, kidneys and reproductive organs, and the element here is Water (more materialized than Fire). In the macrocosmic body, this is the Moon (which may explain why the Moon has such a strong effect on the ocean tides and romantic feelings).

Down one more step, we arrive at the 1st or Root chakra, which is the densest element, that of Earth -- and our little planet of the same name. This is the element that gives our bodies their physical structure and the ability to function in the physical world.

So, each one of us truly is a miniature of the entire Universe. We have all the elements and forces of the macrocosm, not only at our fingertips but flowing throughout our bodies. For some time now, I've been incorporating the realization of this into my reiki practice, working consciously with these elemental energies in the body. And now, along comes the second thread of my recent awakening:


THREAD #2: ABRAHAM, YOUR LIFE IS WAITING!

ACTUALLY, I'VE BEEN groping my way toward this realization, a bit here, a bit there, for years. And then, just over a year ago, the whole package was handed to me -- everything spelled out in detail -- by a friend in Utah. But apparently I was not ready to do much with it. Now it has come into my life again, in a slightly different form, and it seems I'm ready for it.

The first time, it was given to me on cassette recordings of a woman in Texas named Esther Hicks. For 20-some years she has been channeling a group of spirit beings with the collective name of Abraham. These beings have been telling us, through Esther, the most fundamental nature of reality in our world: exactly how life works here, how we attract or create every experience in our lives, and precisely how we can do it more consciously, to have the kinds of experiences we'd like to have.

I'm always a bit skeptical of "channeled" information. It seems almost everyone is channeling somebody these days.....and, before I heard Esther, I'd heard nothing more profound than what would have been common sense to most 12-year-olds. But Esther's information struck me as really genuine. It was so profoundly simple, it rang the bell of truth in me -- and I had had experiences, at times in my life, which absolutely corroborated what she was saying. I just had never connected the dots well enough myself to realize what was happening.

Here's the deal: Each one of us is an extension of the Source energy that creates All That Is. Because the Source is nonphysical, it cannot, in its wholeness, interact in the physical world it has created! Rather, we are its eyes and ears, its hands and voice, its presence in this world. Each of us is an extension of Universal Source, proceeding through the Void of Deep Space, to play in the realm of Vibration and Magnetism, which manifests through the elements of Air, Fire, Water and Earth, creating All That Is -- from which we attract every thing, person, experience, you-name-it, that ever happens to us. We attract everything by the kind of vibrations we are sending out. And, once we learn how to monitor and control our vibrations, we can attract exactly the kind of people, things, experiences and situations we desire!

The simple truth -- which we somehow lost, way back down the trail -- is that our lives were designed to be vehicles of Joy and Fun and Happiness and Creativity and Abundance and Gratitude. With no one in the driver's seat but US! In fact, we have been in the driver's seat the whole time, but we've been asleep at the wheel. By now, we've pretty much wrecked ourselves and the whole planet. The good news is, we can transform EVERYTHING, and very quickly, if we just wake up and change the way we're vibrating! This knowledge has come into my life again just recently, in the form of a book called Excuse Me, Your Life is Waiting! by Lynn Grabhorn (who has, in fact, taken the material directly from Esther Hicks).


NEW MOON

WE'RE ABOUT A DAY and three-quarters into the New Moon. I just got back from a walk down the hill -- I left the house when there was just a little daylight left in the sky -- and the moon is remarkably beautiful tonight. Just the slenderest little crescent of light, reaching around most of the circumference, and in fact a wee thread of gold completes the whole circle, if you look carefully enough.

I went down the hill mostly because my body was craving a walk -- I've been locked onto the computer for days and nights, working on webpages -- but also to drop a couple postcards in the slot at the Post Office. The walking felt so-o-o good, and the air so full of life. The air here is always moving, freshening itself. The air itself is Alo-ha, the Breath of God. I went down and mailed the postcards and, just for maybe a minute, there was the finest imaginable mist in the air -- and the Moon was washing everything so gently with her New light.

The road down to town is maybe three-quarters of a mile. The first quarter of that is very steep -- enough that you can't go slowly down and you can't come quickly up. The neighbor just below us has been hauling gravel up to his house, to improve the drainage from one of his rain spouts, and the hill is steep enough that the gravel truck had to be towed up. So, you get down to the level of town very quickly, and then it's a nice, horizontal stroll, following the narrow, curving ribbon of black asphalt -- about one and a half cars wide -- that makes its way around and among big old trees and past a reservoir.

Anyway, I haven't been walking nearly enough, haven't even been outside except to eat a very quick bowl of food on the lanai once or twice a day, and marvel at the movements of the clouds. I've been magnetized to this little, wafer-thin, black box with its glowing screen and its threadlike connection to every bit of information in the known Universe. Donna returned from the Big Island Friday night, picked up Rick at the airport in Lihue on Saturday, and disappeared to Waimea with him until mid-afternoon today, Monday. Except for driving to Lihue one day, and to Hanapepe another day, to get veggies at the Farmers' Market, and a trip to Kapa'a, I've been upstairs in this house, at the desk, for most of the past 10 days (and much of the nights). It's always quite amazing to me, how computers were supposed to save us so much time, and how they have instead gobbled up vast portions of our lives and enslaved us to a considerable degree in the process. They are not, as advertised, simple dumb tools to facilitate our work; they are alien life forms (whose intelligence resides in their silicon crystals, grown necessarily in the non-gravitational atmosphere of Outer Space) -- alien life forms, with whom our daily interaction has become our work.

So, I've been working on websites. I received my registration for the professional version of the Pop-up Menu Maker, and have been remaking menus, for one thing. Also made a new reiki flier; made it in html, so I could print it with Donna's printer (though Alyce gave me a wonderful piece of software called PageMaker, just before I left Arizona, I now find myself without a printer -- and not wanting to get one until I have a home for myself -- and Donna's computer doesn't have PageMaker, wouldn't you know!). So I spent all of one day -- from mid-morning till 3:00 the next morning -- making the flier in html. Unbelievable how many tiny adjustments and tricks were needed before it would finally print out on a sheet of paper the way I wanted it! I was running up and down stairs quite a bit, too, between my machine and hers -- making graphics on mine, emailing them to myself and retrieving them with her machine. It was quite a Neanderthal process, but it did finally succeed.

I was deliberately getting multiple projects underway, to make the most of the New Moon energy. And yesterday morning as I was shaving, I started spontaneously humming that old song "There'll Be Some Changes Made." It was in my head the rest of the day and night (I was feeling burned out, ready for bed, last night at about 10:30; shut off the computer, went downstairs, ended up standing in the kitchen eating papaya and bananas to the accompaniment of Art Bell's radio program, giving Donna's white cat, Summer, several minutes of concentrated petting, then eating half a bag of delicious blue tortilla chips -- still standing in the kitchen, while Art's guest was talking about the "Greys" and how it was obvious, from the size of their enormous eyes, that they were not space creatures but subterranean dwellers -- and then at midnight I came back upstairs with a mug of twig tea and fired up the electronic slavemaster again and sat here peering into its glow until 5-something a.m.) and again this morning when I woke.

Yeah.....Be Some Changes Made.....Times They Are A-Changin', as Mr. Dylan sang so many years ago (I wonder if those bug-eyed Greys, down there in the netherworld, posing as jet-setters -- I wonder if they're singin' Bob's "Subterranean Homesick Blues."). Anyway, the dear old Moon makes her own changes every 28 days or so, and I've certainly been feeling the new energy this time.


DONNA CAME HOME today and started going through her phone messages from the past week and a half, and there was one for me: from a woman in Kapa'a, named Isis (speaking of Bob Dylan songs!!). She had seen my advertisement -- on the bulletin board at Papaya's, no doubt -- and had called to offer me a place in exchange for work. She had called a week ago yesterday -- and when I called her back today, she had already found someone else.

By the time I hung up the phone, I was feeling sort of robbed, imagining that it would have been the perfect situation for me, if only I'd gotten the phone message in time. If only, if only..... But, before that silliness could really take hold, I had the more sensible realization that No, this wasn't the best situation for me or it would have come together perfectly. The fact that it hadn't, meant something even better was yet to arrive. With that realization, it was easy to crank up a high vibration of anticipation and gratitude for what was coming. Yes, yes, yes, and thank you, thank you, thank you! I got the feeling of the way it used to be when, as a youngster, my father would take me fishing; the way you could look at a stretch of water and F-E-E-L the presence of fish in it -- and feel just how the tug on your line would be when one of them took the hook. I was feeling that again, for the first time in decades, and it brought back great memories of my father. I was feeling that I had just had a nibble, and the 2 of us hadn't quite connected, and that it only served to prepare me for the one that was coming next, the one that might be the perfect match for me.

She called this evening, just as I was stepping out the door and putting on my shoes, to go down the hill with my postcards. Her name was Diane -- my sister's name. She said she lives in the hills above Kapa'a, in a house with lots of land. We talked for a bit, and made tentative plans to meet on Thursday or Friday, and then I went down the hill for my walk. Just that simple. So, maybe this will be the situation for me, or maybe not. We'll find out Thursday or Friday. Either way, I know it's coming, and it will arrive when the time is best.

I started this chapter with the question, "Where the heck is Hawai'i anyway?" I was thinking about Donna going to the Big Island.....and how strange it seems that all the other islands have names with immediate character, but that one is called The Big Island (well, Duhh).....and kind of strange that they all together make up Hawai'i. And, about that time, I received an email from Alyce, with a website link that explained the situation very beautifully, as well as other things about Hawai'i. The website is Huna.com. Here's what it says about the name Hawai'i:



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