db's ALOHA Pages / The story to date:

(Aloha means "Breath of God")

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pages 31-40
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I'D READ STORIES of things like this before, but Ginger was the first person I'd ever met who had experienced these things. I was fascinated by her stories. We did get to the barn eventually, and discussing the possibility of Dave King doing his workshops there. It turned out that the barn was actually full of antiques, with no usable space inside! Ginger mentioned again that there were places outside that could be used; but I told her it was my understanding that he wanted a barn because he needed an enclosed space.

I told her I had not yet found any students for him anyway, and was beginning to think that Kauai was a very difficult place for any of these kinds of workshops. I told her about putting fliers all over the Island last fall, for someone else who wanted to come teach a workshop, and getting no response to those either.

She said, "Oh, you'll never get anyone from the Island for any kind of workshop; you have to get people to come here from other places! You have to advertise these things in Germany!" She apparently had some experience with such things, and was telling me about someone who does a yearly watercolor workshop; it's tremendously successful, always booked full, months in advance -- and most of the people come from Europe.

She said, besides the natives (who are not interested in such things and don't have the money for them even if they were interested), Kauai is "an island of Stars." Not movie stars, but people who were Someone somewhere else -- with their own constellation of followers -- and who got burnt out and came to Kauai to escape the world, to write a book or to go inside themselves, make new discoveries, get re-energized and re-activated as Stars.....and then they start advertising themselves again, on the mainland and in Europe, attracting a following of people who love to come here periodically and learn new things (and wealthy enough to do it) and then go back home.

How very interesting! What a gem of a description of the population here! It certainly fits with my experience so far.

How interesting that she mentioned people coming here to write books. That was not my intention in coming here -- but it's what was handed to me not long after I arrived. It was a book project that got me started revising my Reiki manuals; and no sooner had I started, than a bunch of new information from Japan was made available to me. So I'd spent the past few months writing the book and revising the manuals: doing almost nothing but writing and distant Reiki. And I'd been given the perfect situation here for it: peace and solitude -- almost to the point of isolation. It was the best environment I could have asked for. It was totally conducive to going inward, hunkering down at the keyboard, letting everything swirl together and come out as words on the screen. Truly, I did not know where a lot of it was coming from; it did not come from me, it only came through me.

So I had been directed perfectly, after all, in coming to Kauai. And I was now beginning to feel directed to Kona. The message seemed loud and clear: Kauai for writing, for solitary discovery and creation; but not for connecting with people, not for establishing my Reiki practice.

Besides all the brochures I'd put around, I had also made a few personal contacts: people who did massage or some kind of energy work, who suggested other people for me to contact or ways to advertise. One of these suggestions led me to the woman in charge of the massage program at Kauai Community College. She happened to be a Reiki Master herself, and invited me to write an email about what I had to offer, which she would send to all of her students plus last year's graduates.

What an unbeatable opportunity! I wrote a wonderful description of Reiki and the benefits of incorporating it with massage, and the benefits of giving it to oneself every day, and the benefits of learning it from me : ^ ) -- and the head of the massage program sent it to all the students.....and there was absolutely no response.

A FEW WEEKS LATER, I sent an email to a woman who had started a business aimed at the caregivers of sick people. She wanted to give the caregivers a break, to pamper them for a week or so with the beauty of Kauai, and to teach them ways of reducing their own stress and fatigue when they went back to caregiving. She wanted to empower them, she said.

When I read about this, I couldn't think of a better way to empower such people than with Reiki. So I wrote to the woman, told her I would like to offer her clients Reiki training as part of her program, and pointed out the advantages both for the caregivers and those they were caring for. Again, it seemed a tailor-made opportunity for me. Again, I got absolutely no response, not even an acknowledgment of my offer.

These are the kinds of things (plus my difficulties of transportation and finding a place to live) that give me an itsy-bitsy indication that Kaua'i is no longer the place for me. At the same time, all signs appear to be pointing to Kona. The response to my ad, the conversation with Kent, the fact that Kona is the most western point on the island of Hawaii -- too many coincidences coming to my attention all at once, for me to think they're meaningless.

Another interesting thing: in Koloa, the same day I received the offer from Kona, I picked up the current issue of Zento Magazine, which is published here on Kauai. The very first article in it is called "The Islands in the Cards" -- an exposition of the essential character, the energy, of each of the Hawaiian islands, based on the card associated with it.

The essence of Kaua'i is "Peace of Mind," it says. Here's the description:

Kaua'i is the Four of Clubs and the land where time stands still, dreams come true, and creativity is heightened. Many authors and artists are born here and many known writers and artists come here to live, basking in Kaua'i's creative influences while cultivating their gifts and talents. The energy of Kaua'i gives way to dreaming, imagining, and the manifestation of ideas. Spirituality is profoundly present on this island in all forms. The Four of Clubs influence of Kaua'i speaks of strong action associated with expansion of the mind into higher thinking and learning, bringing ancient bodies of knowledge into present day form. This is the land where higher wisdom and learning beckon to be discovered.

This fits very well with Ginger's characterization, and also my own experience here. Also, knowing a little about the cards myself, I can say that the Four of any suit is generally associated with work-work-work-work; the proverbial nose-to-the-grindstone variety, which also perfectly describes what I've been doing here the last few months.

The essence of the island of Hawai'i, according to the article, is "Intuitive Wisdom."

The state of Hawai'i, and the big island Hawai'i share the same card; the Queen of Clubs. Mother of Intuition, Self Awareness and Knowing, the Queen of Clubs rules with wisdom, through service to the people. It is through intelligence and communication that this self-awareness becomes the leading force in this environment. The big island is a fine example of this. There are many healers on this island, many schools of healing and teachers from around the globe. The movement for higher consciousness is great and expanding rapidly. It is one of the most spiritual Cards, combining the wisdom of ancestry with the intelligence of the present, birthing ways to bring peace and harmony through self-awareness, mental organization, and global communication.

Sounds like one more indication that Hawai'i is the place for my Reiki practice. The Queen of Clubs has added significance to me because my own Birth Card is the Ten of Clubs, which means, because of my gender and age, that I'm also represented by the King of Clubs.....whose natural, undisputed partner is the Queen of Clubs!

I wonder why it never occurred to me to look at the Cards when I was deciding where to go..... But, if I had, I probably would not have come to Kaua'i, and would not have had the months of excellent writing.....

Chapter 15: Pineapple Park

THAT'S WHERE I SIT writing this, on Thursday the 3rd of April, 2003. On the lanai, looking off the west coast of the island of Hawai'i. Looking out where the ocean should be -- but there's nothing visible but sky and clouds, mostly clouds. Just the palest little smudges of blue in a blanket of grayish-white. It gives the feeling that there's nothing solid out beyond the treetops a hundred yards from here.

Pineapple Park is a hostel, 17 miles south of the Kona airport. Allow me to backtrack and piece together the story of how I got here.

Debra, the woman who initially contacted me about a place to live in exchange for work, wrote again to say that her best friend had written and was planning to move here -- so she would not have a place for me after all. As it turned out, she lives way out in the country anyway, where I would be stuck again with no transportation. She offered to post copies of my ad on local bulletin boards, though, and I still felt no less directed to come here. I found a few more places on the internet to post my ad also, and settled back to wait for a response.

Then the War started. I had a remarkable personal experience connected with that. I was cooking rice that afternoon as I worked on an article for the website. When I turn off the heat, I always leave the rice on the burner and let it cool.....but that day I let it cook a few minutes longer than usual, so decided to pull the pot off the burner. The time was 4:50. I took it off and set it on the stovetop -- a Pyrex glass pot -- and 5 seconds later heard a POP, then a couple more.....and knew the glass had broken. Sure enough, big cracks wrapping all around it! Obviously, the the difference in temperature between the burner and the stovetop was too much; the heat went racing out, into the cooler metal of the stovetop so quickly, it broke the glass pot. But what came to mind as I heard the POP was, "The War has started...." I knew the time was getting close, I had felt it from the vicious wind that had blown all night and continued through that day -- and when the pot broke, I felt that was the actual beginning of it.

I came back upstairs and went back to work on my article. Went down much later, when the rice had cooled considerably, and started carefully spooning it out of the broken pot. Got it all out -- every grain of it! -- put the pot in a bag for the trash, cut a slice of bread and brought it and some rice upstairs to eat. I turned on the radio just in time to hear, "From ABC News....this is live coverage: War with Iraq. It has begun, and it began with the sound of Tomahawk Missiles....." I sat there eating my bread and rice, listening.....and at 7:46, the voice said, "The War is 3 hours old now....." (This was 2 hours and 56 minutes after the rice pot broke.)

A few days later I heard from Debra again: her friend was unsure about moving to Hawaii now that we were at war, and was suspending her decision indefinitely.

I kept visualizing myself receiving another offer of a place to live, but nothing materialized. Then events propelled me to move anyway; it was time to leave Donna's house. I attempted to find another temporary place on Kauai, though my heart was not really in it. I knew that was no longer the place for me.

I had occasion to see Ginger again. I told her my feelings about Kona, and she recommended a book to me: a book with a very long title. Planetary Crossroads and the Key to Our Future: The Secrets & Mysteries of Hawaii: A Call to the Soul. I left her house, went to catch the bus back to Kalaheo, had 2 hours to wait, went to a nearby bookstore, and there, almost as soon as I walked in the door, was the book. Half a minute of reading it, and I was hooked. I bought it.

It's about the very ancient history of Hawai'i and the world, about the understanding of Huna and the magic of the Hawaiian language, and about Hawaii's unique role in the cosmic play of things as a doorway between worlds, a portal for materialization and transformation at this critical time in human history. It's about special healing energies associated with this island.....and connections with ancient Lemuria and extraterrestrials. It fascinated me, and convinced me more than ever that Hawai'i was indeed the next place for me.

I received an email notification of a special sale on plane fares, and found I could get a ticket to Kona for $67 (including taxes). I couldn't resist. Nothing else was opening for me, and here was one more signal pointing to Kona. I got the plane ticket on Saturday, to leave the next Wednesday, and started packing.

On Monday the Post Office in Kalaheo didn't have the boxes or tape I needed to finish packing my belongings to ship. I spent 3 hours and almost forty dollars getting to Lihue and back with 2 shipping boxes, amid a day of rain and super-strong winds.

On Tuesday a neighbor with a large vehicle took my boxes and me to the Post Office, where I had the pleasant surprise of being able to send everything for thirty-three dollars and ninety cents.

On Wednesday Donna drove me to the airport, left me off and said goodbye in the same spot where she had picked me up and said hello six and a half months before. I was through the baggage check and security screening in 10 minutes, with an hour to wait for takeoff. It went very fast. My head was full of memories of Kauai and prayers for Hawaii.

Then we were on the plane: a short hop to Honolulu, another one from there to Kona.

What a beautiful sight it was to see the whole chain of islands, one by one, as we passed them to arrive at the Big Island of Hawai'i. Each of them looks so different. Each has a distinctive energy and character, as the cards foretell.

Dropping out of the sky toward Hawai'i, toward Kona airport on the westernmost point of land, it's immediately apparent that much of the "land" here is solid rock -- black lava from the Kilauea volcano.

The Kona airport was surprisingly tiny -- and almost everything was open to the air! No telescoping walkways leading off the plane -- because no building for them to lead to. Everything was on the ground and in the open. There were some roofs covering people, but no walls around them! The only things I saw that were actually enclosed were the restaurant, rest rooms, and a gift shop.

I HAD FOUND THIS PLACE, PINEAPPLE PARK, on the internet before leaving Kauai. I called to make a reservation and was told I didn't need one; just show up, they said. Call us from the airport and we'll pick you up for $15.

I called from the airport and talked with the guy who would be picking me up. He'd be there sometime between half an hour and an hour, he said. He'd be driving a brown pickup truck. I reclaimed my baggage and went out to the street to wait; sat on a low wall made of lava rocks and watched the parade of tourists wheeling huge amounts of luggage, packing it into cars and driving away. I sat and also rested my hands on the lava of the wall, and it felt remarkably comforting and grounding. I guess you can't get much more grounded than lava, the molten innards of the Earth, which have come to the surface and solidified.

It was very pleasant sitting there, feeling no hurry to go anywhere, having nowhere to go. The words of an old Beatles song came soaring to mind: "Oh, that magic feeling, nowhere to go, nowhere to go ---"

Then the brown pickup arrived, and suddenly there was somewhere to go: Pineapple Park. It was a small, Toyota pickup. The driver was a large young man named Vince. He put my backpack in the bed of the truck, and I squeezed into the cab beside him with my computer case and knapsack; a rather tight fit. He told me they normally had a van for picking up guests, but it was having mechanical problems at the moment.

We left the airport and headed south on the highway. The entire sky was a monotone cloud cap. Or maybe it was vog -- volcanic air pollution. I asked Vince. He said it was mostly just the weather conditions. He said normally it was sunny here almost every day, but lately they had been getting rain and clouds.

We'd be making a couple stops on the way to Pineapple Park, he said, if I didn't mind. The first one was at Home Depot, to get some mortar for a bathroom floor he was repairing. We stopped. He went to get the mortar. I got out of the truck and stood, just because it felt good to stand. I could feel the sun focused on my forehead, right at the hairline, even though I couldn't see it in the sky. It felt surprisingly hot.

It took Vince a long time to get the mortar; then we were back on the highway. Next stop was the hospital, he said; taking some personal belongings to a long-term resident of the hostel, who had been run over by an SUV a few days before: 9 broken ribs, broken clavicle and some other stuff. The driver of the SUV had driven completely over him, then driven away.

Vince asked how long I would be staying at Pineapple Park. I said I didn't know, probably until I found a place to live. I told him I was looking for a place in exchange for work. He said the hostel normally offered a work-exchange program for staying there. Larry, the guy who was in the hospital, had been exchanging work for a room -- but now, even with him in the hospital, there was no work to be done. Two days after the start of the war in Iraq, said Vince, the business at Pineapple Park had shut off as suddenly as if someone had thrown a switch. There wasn't even enough to keep himself busy now, he said.

It took a very long time to get to the hospital. Traffic was moving just like 5:00 p.m. on a Los Angeles freeway -- only here there were just 2 lanes for it. The highway was a long, narrow parking lot. Vince came here from L.A. a couple years ago; it must have made him feel right at home.

Eventually we did come to a sign saying Kona Community Hospital. We turned there, away from the invisible ocean, uphill on a narrow road that went past a long, white building jutting out from the hillside. It was medical offices, though Vince said he thought it had been the original hospital. It did have the look: like one of those white-painted sanitariums that were popular in the 1920s and '30s, that were so often built overlooking the ocean, to take advantage of the clean sea air and the negative ions.

Past that, farther uphill, we came to the present-day hospital, looking quite modern and hermetically sealed against sea air and negative ions. We were stopped by a security officer, who asked whether we were going to the hospital or the school. This was apparently Wartime security; not that he asked any other questions, or checked our identification cards, or searched anything. Just wanted to know which building we might be blowing up, I guess.

There was a tiny health food store on the way to Pineapple Park, and Vince made a stop there, for me, after the hospital. I bought rice and wheat and lentils, and was surprised to find them considerably more expensive than on Kauai.

By the time we reached the hostel, the day was pretty well shot. I deposited my things in the dormitory, signed in at the desk, and went to the kitchen to cook rice and lentils.

Chapter 16: Adrift in Cyberspace

MY ELECTRONIC UMBILICUS has been severed! No internet connection for my laptop!! I can hike a couple miles to an internet cafe (with 2 computers!), pay $2.00 for 15 minutes, download email to a disk, then hike back to Pineapple Park, read and answer the email on my laptop, then hike back to the cafe, copy and send my replies from the disk. It seems I've landed deep in the boondocks.

Actually it feels good to have the connection severed a bit, I've been spending so much time at the computer for the past 6 months. My first day here, I went hiking to the north, back toward Kailua (the village is called Kailua; Kona is a whole district, one of 9 that make up the island; in fact there are North Kona and South Kona). I found a few bulletin boards to put my ad on. Went as far as the health food store, where I also found 3 ads for housing that looked promising. One was for a room in a house on the other side of the island, in the Puna district. A remote and "off the grid" house, it said, with an organic garden. It turned out to be a little too remote for me and my reiki practice.

One was for a room that was no longer available when I called. And the third sounded absolutely perfect. It was just off South Point Road, near the southern tip of the island. It was a self-contained cottage in a meditation/retreat center called Earthsong. The voice of the woman I spoke with on the phone was the most peaceful, caressing sound I've heard in ages. I asked if it would be workable to live there without a car. Yes, she said; there was a food co-op 2 miles away, and several of the residents at Earthsong had vehicles, and I could always hitchhike. It sounded perfect for me. I told her I would get there the next day to meet her and see the place.

I was up and showered and standing at the highway with my thumb out by 8:30 the next morning. By 9:00 or so, I figured I'd better start walking, maybe I'd find a better place down the road to get a ride. I walked and walked, and came to an intersection with a road coming up from the ocean. I positioned myself there, where cars had to stop before entering the highway.....and very soon came a guy in a white pickup truck, who pulled up and stopped and actually made eye contact. He asked how far I was going. I told him, and he said he was only going about a half mile. I decided that was better than nothing, and climbed in the back of the truck. WHOOSH -- off we went.

He left me just across the highway from a Post Office, so I went across and mailed a letter I'd been carrying around. Came back across and started walking again. As with most highways, there were very few places where people could pull off to pick up anyone. I walked and walked, and came to a little Deli called The Coffee Shack. There was a parking area full of vehicles. It seemed a great place to get a ride. I stood there between the parking area and the edge of the highway, thumb out, confident that someone would either stop for me or someone leaving the deli would give me a ride.

I stood there a long time. A few cars stopped, people going into the deli. Other people came out -- but they either headed north or, if they were going south, just glared at me as if I were an obstacle to their getting back on the highway. One car stopped and the people asked how far I was going. They were only going 2 miles, and thought I would have a much better chance of getting a ride here than 2 miles down the road. So I stayed.

The sun was very hot. Fortunately I had an umbrella in my knapsack, and pulled it out to use as a parasol. What a lifesaver! At 10:44 I called the woman at Earthsong and told her my situation. She said she needed to leave about noon; asked me to call back in an hour and give her an update.

An hour later I was still in the same spot. One of the waitresses had come out of the deli and kindly offered me a cup of water (I had some in the knapsack, of course), but there were no offers of a ride. So, at 11:44 I called Earthsong again and told the woman I was not going to get there. She needed to go somewhere, there were other people coming to look at the cottage, and I figured, if I couldn't even get there to see it, it must not be the place for me to live, no matter how perfect it sounded. So that was the end of that.

I folded up my parasol and went in the deli and sat down and ordered a green salad. It was a big plateful of lettuce (local, organically grown, according to the menu) with cucumber and tomato and croutons, and a little tub of Roasted Red Pepper dressing. It was just what I needed after standing in the sun for a couple hours. I savored every bite of it.

The Coffee Shack baked their own bread and, when I paid for the salad, I also got a slice of "whole wheat" bread for the road. It was so fluffy, it was nearly anti-gravitational! Still, it provided entertainment for a while on the walk back to Pineapple Park.

The trip back was much, much quicker. I knew better, now, than to waste time trying to get a ride. I focused myself totally on walking, and it didn't seem long at all until I was arriving at Pineapple Park.

Chapter 17: Rebirth!

I LOVED THE KITCHEN at Pineapple Park. It was simple and functional and very homey. At the back of it was the door to a room with 4 bunk beds. One side of the kitchen opened to a room with a dining table and chairs, a small couch and a television. Beyond that were 6 more bunks, cordoned off with white-painted, wood lattice from floor to ceiling. There was a separate room with more bunks -- the women's dorm -- then 2 more bunks in the open, alongside the hostel office. Then another small room with 4 more bunks, the men's dorm.

The men's dorm felt very confining to me, so I chose to sleep in the latticed area, in the very midst of everything. It appealed to me after all the months of solitude on Kauai.

The owner of Pineapple Park was a 50-year-old Korean woman named Annie. She had grown up in very difficult circumstances in South Korea, vowing to get to America. She had accomplished that at the age of 21, and now owned the Pineapple Park in Kona and another one on the other side of the island, near Volcanoes National Park. And she was planning to open a third on Maui.

I FOUND KONA to be a very strange place. The only thing resembling a town was Kailua, on the coast south of the airport. There were 2 or 3 shopping centers, there was a strip of tourist shops and restaurants along the bay, and there must have been a residential area somewhere -- but I found no center to it all. Life without a car would have been difficult and, more than that, I felt no sense of community or soul. I'm sure the residents had developed their own network of close friendships, but there was no sense of a town or village. Even the Post Office was in a shopping center.

The vog was another factor. I was in Kona for almost 2 weeks, and it was never possible to see the ocean without being right at the beach. The sky was a seamless, gray smudge that came down and blanketed the water, hiding it completely. And, from Pineapple Park to the ocean and back was a 3-hour hike: one hour down, 2 hours back.

Kona to me was just an endless strip of highway running north and south, erupting with little blisters of civilization, little clumps of shops and cafés, bed-and-breakfasts, gas stations, Post Offices, mini-marts, here and there a full-grown shopping center. And roads leading either up the mountains or down to the sea, to clusters of residences.

Thanks to Debra, I was invited and transported to a group meditation one night at someone's home, not far (by car) from Pineapple Park. The home of a woman renowned for swimming with dolphins and whales. A beautiful home, with spectacular photos of dolphins on the walls. There were 15 of us for the meditation: a guided visualization led by the dolphin lady, with the beautiful toning of a crystal bowl brought by one of the guests. Tea and cookies afterward. Then everyone got into their vehicle, back on the highway, back to their own little residential cluster elsewhere. The woman who gave me a ride back to Pineapple park had a 45-minute drive to get home, way up north of Kailua.

It made no sense to me, these dribs and drabs of civilization strung forever along the highway. People were always driving somewhere, adding exhaust fumes to the vog. So much time spent in their vehicles, they might as well have been in L.A. or Phoenix (and the traffic on the single highway jammed up just as badly). I really couldn't see how the place would be livable at all for a person on foot.

THEN I MET RENÉE, from San Francisco. She arrived at the hostel with a couple from Australia. The 3 of them had met on Maui, had come to Hawaii together, rented a car and driven around the island. Renée was one of those people that I knew I already knew, the first time our eyes met. "Oh, it's you; hello, old friend!"

This time she was disguised as a 34-year-old San Franciscan, who had grown up in Ohio. Her mother was a born-again Christian, her father was super-intellectual. He had done top-secret work for the U.S. Government until it drove him over the edge and he flipped out. He had died at age 41, when Renée was a Freshman at Yale. She had grown up with very little money, and paid for a Yale education with scholarships and work-study programs and the magic of credit cards. She bought even shampoo and toothpaste with credit cards, because she simply didn't have the cash. She would pay off the credit card debt later. She was banking on the earning power of a Yale degree. She studied Italian and Spanish and French (including a semester in Paris, at the Sorbonne), and graduated with a degree in Philosophy. And that year the Economy was in a slump and most of the employment recruiters did not even show up to interview people.

Facing the prospects of returning home to small-town Ohio (where she might get a job driving a cab or cashiering at a 7-11) or setting off on her own, she headed for San Francisco. There she had worked for a series of environmental organizations. Now she had quit her latest job, moved out of her apartment, and come to Hawaii -- looking for whatever was missing in her life. Thinking she might move here.

She walked into the kitchen of Pineapple Park and our eyes met and we said "Hi" to each other as casually as if we'd been doing it every day for 10 years. I would not even have guessed at her age; she could have been 24 as easily as 34. The aura of perpetual youth, freshness, rebirth (she would point out to me later that the name Renée is French for "reborn"). She had a sweet face, engaging eyes, and hair the color of straw on a sunny day -- that was the top layer, it was brown underneath. (How do they do that?)

We began hiking the highway together, exploring Kona. In 2 or 3 days we both knew we'd seen enough of it. We decided to rent a car and go around the island. Renée had been around once, with the Australians, but there were places she hadn't seen and places she wanted to see more of. She had Vince take her to the airport to rent a car. She came back driving a fire-engine-red Chevrolet Tracker -- a 4-wheel-drive SUV with a soft top (black) attached by Velcro. It was the only thing for rent, she said, except a car without a CD player; and there was no way she was going to spend 3 or 4 days on the road without her CDs.

We left Pineapple Park shortly after noon on a Wednesday. Put a CD of Ennya in the player and headed south, under the perpetual gray smudge that passed for a sky.

OUR FIRST STOP was The Painted Church. Then Honaunau, the Place of Refuge.

FIRE AND BRIMSTONE

THEN VOLCANOES NATIONAL PARK. We drove out to the lava flow, arrived there about 8:00 p.m. The road dead ends where the lava has run across it. People park their cars along the road, from there as far back as a couple miles, and hike out to see the fresh lava, wherever it happens to be emerging. When Renée was there with the Australians, the molten lava was coming right across the road, so they didn't have to walk far at all. The night she and I were there, the fresh flow was about 2 miles away. We could see its red-hot fingers, glowing in the dark, from where we parked the car.

Between the road and the molten lava there was nothing but inky blackness, punctuated by the flashlights of other tourists making the trek. Now I discovered that heavy hiking shoes and a strong flashlight were advised. I had only sandals and a miniature plastic flashlight, 2 inches long, that had been given to me on Kauai. But Renée was well prepared, with shoes and a powerful headlamp. She took the lead. I followed close behind, activating my tiny light intermittently, not knowing how long the battery would even last. For its tiny size, it did put out a surprising amount of light. Still, it was difficult to see where we were stepping; everything was pure black lava, which had congealed into a wild configuration of miniature hills and valleys and sharp cliffs. The park rangers had marked a trail of sorts, with small white reflectors -- but they were so far apart, we often had to stop and search for the next one.

The smell of sulfur dioxide swirled around us. From time to time, we would pass over areas with heat rising up as if from a stove. It occurred to us that it was possible that a red finger of fresh, burning lava could poke through the crust anywhere, at any time. We began to feel a little creepy about it, and also that we'd had about enough sulfur fumes. The clock was pushing us, too: the time was getting late, and we still had some driving to do. We intended to spend the night at Pineapple Park in Mountain View (run by Annie's husband, Doc), and wanted to get there by 10:00.

We turned around and went back to the car before reaching the red-hot lava. Renée had already seen it up close, and I figured I would have other opportunities to do so. We left the Park and drove on to Mountain View.

DOC'S PLACE

WE ARRIVED AT PINEAPPLE PARK a few minutes before ten. It was a much bigger place than the one in Kona. There was only one visible guest besides us. He was watching a movie in the big, common room. Doc was about to retire to his private quarters for the night and watch the ten o'clock TV news.

I had seen a photo of Doc and Annie on their website, before I'd left Kauai. Doc was a longtime sailor, who had retired from the sea and come inland to run this hostel, offering travelers the spirit of aloha and stories of his life. His photo had made me think of Ernest Hemingway -- but in person he was not that kind of presence. He was quite soft-spoken and very gentle. He clearly wanted us to be comfortable and happy in his place. He called Renée "Sweetie," as if she were his daughter. He invited us into his quarters to watch the news with him. We were both ready for bed, though, and left him to face the one-eyed monster on his own.

In the morning I got up early and started a pot of rice cooking, then went to shower and shave. When I came back to the kitchen, the rice was almost ready and Doc was there, making coffee and cutting big, fluffy muffins into quarters. Then came the guest I had seen last night, with a woman and baby. Doc put the muffin pieces on a big plate and told us they were for us, and to help ourselves to the coffee. He was heading out to work on the space he had for campers; he would have 60-some campers arriving in a week, and needed to get things ready for them.

RENÉE AND I went back to Volcanoes National Park; to the Thurston Lava Tube, and to hike the nearbyKilauea Iki Trail, which goes across a volcanic crater. Such a contrast of environments: surrounding Kilauea Iki, a lush, dense, rain forest, including lots of giant ferns. They unrolled themselves just like the fiddleheads I bought at the farmers' markets back on Kaua'i -- but these were so much bigger, they were trees. A regular-looking, wooden, tree trunk would grow up several feet and then a bunch of ferns would start unrolling out of it, on their separate stalks! It immediately brought to mind the words Jurassic Park (a movie I've never seen, which was filmed on Kaua'i).

These beautiful ferns accompanied us all the way down the trail to Kilauea Iki ("Little Kilauea") itself: a big circle (maybe a third of a mile across) of flat, nearly barren lava. A trail could be seen leading across it. Along the way were a few steam vents.

The sky was sprinkling rain when we started across. Renée had a waterproof jacket and I had my small, blue umbrella (which has served me so well since my days of living in Portland, 20 years ago). We could easily have thought we were on another planet, except for the ability to breathe the atmosphere (and even the air did not smell very Earthly, with the sulfur in it). This would have made a perfect setting for a scene in a Planet of the Apes movie. It was strange to realize that what we were seeing, what we were walking on, was exactly the very beginning of "new" earth.

The rain stopped almost immediately, and we were free of the jacket and umbrella. Renée sat on a big piece of lava and gave me her camera, and I took a picture of her holding Octi, a stuffed octopus toy that she had bought for her niece and nephew in Ohio. She was taking it everywhere on her travels, photographing Octi in exotic locations for the niece and nephew.

Having recorded Octi's presence at the crater, we started our hike across it. There was a wonderful, eerie, silent feeling, interrupted only by our meeting of a few other strangers in this strange land. From the trail, we could see, here and there, a fern or other bit of pioneer vegetation, growing miraculously up from the solid lava floor.

Chapter 18: Going Home

"Two of us Sunday driving
Not arriving
On our way back home
We're on our way home
We're on our way home
We're going home...."

----- "Two of Us" (John Lennon / Paul McCartney)

AFTER HIKING THE CRATER, we drove to another one and then to the Visitor Center. There we watched a couple films of volcanic activity on Hawaii, explored the Gift Shop, and Renée bought some posters to take home as gifts. She had decided to fly back to the mainland. The day she rented the car at the airport, she had booked a seat to Honolulu, and from there to San Francisco a few days later.

Her time was quickly running out. This was Thursday, and her flight to Honolulu left Sunday morning from Kona. We left the Park and spent the afternoon driving through the never-never-land of Puna District, taking in as much natural beauty as the senses could absorb. We spent some time in the sleepy little village of Pahoa. Supposedly there was a school of alternative healing nearby, which Renée wanted to investigate. We asked a few people in town, but no one knew about such a school. By then it was mid-afternoon and we were viciously hungry.

We happened into a restaurant-on-the-verge-of-being-born. Like the volcano, it was in a state of total, spontaneous creation. The furniture wasn't even arranged yet. But the people were so down-home friendly, they invited us in and fed us tomato soup and sprouted-grain bread. We were grateful. As hungry as we were, this was merely a beginning, though.

We went in search of another restaurant. We found 2 or 3 that looked good but were not open; we were in between lunchtime and dinnertime. At last we found a shop selling pizza by the slice. AK Pizza, it was called. As we sat munching our pizza and looking at photos of Alaska on the walls, we finally realized what the name meant (maybe the owner had been a postal employee in Alaska?).

The rest of the day seems to have evaporated without a trace (well, I am writing this over 3 months later). I remember spending the sunset at a beach somewhere....and arriving in Hilo town, at the Hilo Bay Hostel, just minutes before they locked the door at 10:00 p.m.

HILO TOWN

THE NEXT MORNING, with my first glimpses of the town of Hilo, I began to feel at home for the first time on this island. Actually, it probably started the night before, with our arrival at the hostel; the people who welcomed us there were so friendly and so genuine. In fact, as with Renée, it seemed I already knew them.

Hilo Bay Hostel takes up a considerable amount of the historic Burns Building in downtown Hilo. Just a block up from Kamehameha Avenue (on the bayfront), it was originally built (either in 1911 or 1913, depending on whether you believe the plaque in the hostel itself or the information on the website) as a rooming house. A great, wide, redwood staircase leads up from the street, to a very large main room, which is surrounded by the sleeping rooms and bathrooms and kitchen. The rooms have great high ceilings with fans hanging down. The main room and bathrooms have big, original skylights, and the whole place is alive with light and space and a feeling of gracefulness.

Many of the buildings in downtown Hilo have similar staircases, but it seems this is the only one made of redwood. This whole building is made of redwood, which has kept it termite-proof since its creation. According to the owner, it's the oldest commercial wooden building still intact on the whole island; the termites have eaten all its contemporaries.

I don't remember what we did that day (Was that the day we discovered beautiful Lili'uokalani Park and Coconut Island, where Banyan Drive goes along the bayfront?). I just remember loving Hilo, from the moment the sun came in the windows of the dorm at the hostel and got me out of bed. I felt at home in the town. I loved the old buildings and the obvious care people were taking to preserve them. It was a town with a loving sense of its own history, a town with soul.

That was Friday. I do remember going that night to Hawaiian Jungle, a small restaurant on the other side of the block, for dinner and live music. And remembering that, I now remember how we spent the afternoon! Yes, of course: driving to and from majestic Mauna Kea, the gargantuan mountain to end all mountains! Some people like to say it's the highest mountain in the world, over 5 and a half miles tall. What they may or may not tell you is, that's measuring from the floor of the ocean (which is, indeed, the bottom of the mountain). Any way you look at it, Mauna Kea is one heck of a WHOPPER. It's "only" 13,792 feet above sea level, but the mass of it is unimaginable. The sides taper down so gradually, it hardly looks like a mountain at all. If you superimposed Mount Rainier on it, for instance, the 2 together would look something like a surfboard (laid horizontally) and a tricorn hat.

THE ROAD TO THE MOUNTAIN starts at Waianuenue Avenue, which goes right past the hostel in Hilo. Straight up the hill, out of town, and then the road starts winding like a drunken snake (even though there are no snakes in Hawaii). Up and up and up, climbing and winding. Renée was pushing the limits of the road, too; it was a long trip and we had only a few hours to make it.

We had a bag of blue corn tortilla chips in the Tracker. I started eating them, hoping they would help my stomach stay where it belonged. They did seem to help. Chewing them became a saving meditation for me.

As we got farther up the mountain, the environment looked increasingly weird; increasingly desolate, with strange little hills of surreal shapes and colors. This could have been partly due to oxygen deprivation, since we were climbing so far and so quickly, but I don't think it was.

On top of Mauna Kea are several telescopes. BIG telescopes. REALLY big telescopes. Big, expensive telescopes -- owned by the government, I suppose -- for looking way out in space. They're at about 14,000 feet elevation. Back at 9,000 feet is a Visitor Center: a small building with cheery people selling souvenirs and warm clothing at outrageously high prices. There are also snacks to be bought, and 3 computers with interactive programs relating to various aspects of the mountain's telescopes.

We hustled into the building, reminded instantly how cold it can be at 9,000 feet elevation (especially when wearing shorts and T-shirts and sandals). There was quite a bunch of other visitors. We looked at the souvenirs, and Renée bought a sweatshirt for her brother back on the mainland. We played with the computers for a bit, then decided it was time to head back down to Hilo. We could have driven all the way up to the observatories, but there certainly wasn't time for that (not to mention the recommended one-hour stay at the Visitor Center, to prepare for the lack of oxygen).

On the way down, I focused my mind and stomach on the tortilla chips again. What a blessing they were! The perfect thing for the job. However, by the time we arrived back in Hilo, I was considerably full of them. We'd been planning all day to have dinner at Hawaiian Jungle, because there was live music every Friday night, a jazz trio. I certainly wanted to go, but couldn't imagine eating a meal after all those chips! Maybe I would just have a dessert....

But I didn't. We got there and the atmosphere was so welcoming and homey and candle-lit, and it was time for dinner....so I had dinner. The food was Mexican and Peruvian -- and we started with a basket of tortilla chips!

The food was very tasty and beautifully served, and the mellow '60s jazz was a nice accompaniment. All the windows were open, of course, and the fragrance of night flowers drifted in from the park adjacent, which occupied half the block.

We were served by the owner, a Peruvian woman named Luisa, who seemed pure gentleness and heart. Renée had traveled in Peru a few years earlier, and she struck up a conversation about it with Luisa, and immediately the 2 of them were chatting like old friends.

Before we left, they had exchanged phone numbers, and I had mentioned that I would be looking for a place to live in Hilo, a work-exchange situation preferably -- and Luisa said she might know of a place for me. She would meet me the next morning at 9:00, here at the restaurant, and take me to find out about it.

How beautiful! "Ask and you shall receive." I went to sleep that night feeling that I would soon be at home indeed.

IN THE MORNING Renée went with me to meet Luisa. We sat on the steps in front of the restaurant for over half an hour, with no sign of her. Finally, Renée offered to go back to the hostel and call Luisa, to find out what had happened.

She returned a few minutes later, to tell me that Luisa had been in the restaurant kitchen all along; she had been there working since 5:30 or 6:00!

We met her in the back. She took us, in a gold Rolls Royce, to the home of my prospective benefactor. Or it may have been just the home of some people associated with him; it was all rather unclear to me. The man was an old Korean. Luisa said he had concocted some kind of herbal soup that seemed to cure almost any disease. He was treating a lot of patients with it, and she thought I might be able to help him, in exchange for living quarters.

We arrived at the house. (Lest I give a faulty impression, I must say, though the car was a Rolls Royce, it seemed to be on about its third lifetime. It seemed capable of disintegration at any moment.) We were met first by a big, friendly dog -- with super-friendly paws and tongue. Then by a young woman, who asked us to wait outside for a few minutes; she was in the midst of some activity with other people in the house.

When she came out, she told us the old Korean wasn't there (and it was unclear to me whether he actually lived there or not). She also said he was quite ill, and we would not be able to see him. She gave me his business card and said I could call the phone number later in the day and speak with a man named Jason.

We thanked her, and Luisa drove us back to the restaurant. In the light of day it became apparent that she was not only gentleness and heart, she was also nearly exhausted. She worked long hours at the restaurant 6 days a week. She also made dozens of tamales to sell at the Mamo Street Market on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and at the Maku'u Market near Pahoa on Sundays. And she spent Sundays at Maku'u Market, making and selling crepes (the art of which she had presumably learned when living in Paris for many years, before coming to Hawaii). And she had other projects as well. It was obvious, from simple arithmetic (and a look at her face), that she was getting very little sleep.

One of her other projects was to buy a house. She was in the process of doing it, but it was taking a long time....and then, once the sale was final, the plumbing and electrical wiring would have to be totally redone. She told me I would be welcome to live there in exchange for work, only she had no idea when the house would be livable. I thanked her very much for that, and for the Korean possibility in the meantime.

She let us off at the restaurant, and Renée and I continued our exploration of downtown Hilo. I looked at the business card the woman had given me from the old Korean, and found it intriguing. I'm sorry I don't know its whereabouts now, so am not able to quote from it accurately -- but it seemed that the man had created his own religion, which was named on the card. He also claimed (as I recall) the ability to heal every disease; and that he had spent 7 years in a cave! There was a photo of his face, with a long, white beard; a photo that could easily have been taken just after his emergence from the cave.

Later in the morning I called the phone number and asked for Jason, who told me I was welcome to come and learn and participate in the religious rituals at their "temple," but they didn't provide housing for anyone.

This was Saturday, the main market day in Hilo. The Mamo Street Market was one of the reasons Renée and I had decided to stay another day. And we were glad we did. The market was wonderful! It was arranged on both sides of Mamo Street: fruits and vegetables and fresh fish and goat cheese and pastries, and Luisa's tamales, and sweet rice rolled in banana leaves and cooked in coconut milk, and chocolate mochi! -- all this on one side, and a crafts market on the other: handmade clothing and jewelry and baskets, original paintings and reproductions of them, crystals and stones and seashells, wooden flutes, drums, wooden bowls and platters and kitchen utensils; a man giving massages; a man reading palms; a woman doing psychic readings.

The sunny morning had turned to afternoon rain, but we were dry under the market awnings. Renée bought a few gifts for people on the mainland, and a turquoise necklace for herself. We bought bananas and sweet rice rolls to eat on the road, and got in the Tracker, and reluctantly said goodbye to Hilo town.

Chapter 19: Forth and Back

FORTH. . . .

WE TOOK HIGHWAY 19 up the gorgeous Hamakua coast. Reluctantly again, we passed the turnoff to legendary Waipi'o Valley; we didn't have time to see it. The afternoon was slipping away. We had to traverse the north end of the island, then down through North Kona District, into South Kona, to the Pineapple Park where we had started barely more than 3 days ago; and Renée wanted to be there before dark.

She also wanted to find a beach with sunshine before we got back to Kona; to spend a last little bit of time communing with Mother Ocean.

We found exactly the place in Hapuna Beach State Park. We spent probably an hour there. We unrolled the beach mat and sat, lulled into meditation by the sight and sound of the endless waves. Octi made another appearance before the camera, and Renée took a final dip in the water. Then we were back on the highway, and soon descending into the voggy, Sci-Fi Land of Kona.

After a stop on the bayfront of Kailua, to say goodbye to 2 acquaintances of Renée's, we joined the southbound traffic, and arrived at Pineapple Park in the final light of the day.

The next morning, Sunday, I was up early to see Renée off to the airport. She left in the first light. Standing in the hostel parking lot, we shared a goodbye hug. It reminded me of so many other Sunday goodbyes; life seems to be so full of them.

AND BACK. . . .

ALL I WANTED TO DO IN KONA was to get out of there, back to Hilo. I would have stayed in Hilo, but I had left most of my belongings at Pineapple Park in Kona. And Renée had ended up with more than she wanted to carry on the plane, so I told her I would mail the excess to her in San Francisco.

I got a box for her things on Monday, and packed it and took it to the Post Office. On Tuesday morning I was out on the highway with all my belongings, waving down the bus in the pre-dawn, a few minutes after 6:00. I had to pay for an extra seat, for my large backpack -- and I was glad to do it. On Kauai, one is not allowed on the bus with anything exceeding the dimensions of an airline carry-on! (I learned this to the tune of a twenty-eight-dollar taxi ride one day.) Besides, the bus to Hilo obviously needed another fare; most of the seats were empty (as usual).

I had barely dragged myself and my things into a pair of seats when I met Monika. She was across the aisle and one row in front of me. I don't remember exactly how she started the conversation, but within a few seconds she had launched a full interrogation of me: who was I, where did I come from, what was I doing here, and how long had I been doing it? Her face and body had the sharpness of a bird of prey, and she was pecking at me insistently, wanting to know all about me.

I told her I had been on Kauai for 6 months, writing a Reiki book to be published in Russia. She told me she had been attuned to the first level of Reiki, but she didn't use it much (how many of these people I've met!). Anyway, she was interested in starting to use it more; and she would really be interested in translating my book into German!

Hmm....it seemed like a good idea to me, too. We talked about it as the bus rolled on toward Kailua. Monika had a sister still in Germany, who could start looking for a publisher there....

It seemed my communication with Monika might be difficult, though. She lived south of Pineapple Park, way up the hill from the highway, without a phone or computer. And I didn't have a hard copy of the book manuscript, nor a printer to print one. I gave her my cell phone number and she said she would call me from a pay phone in a few days.

The driver let her off in Kailua and the rest of us rumbled on northward. We stopped for a half hour in Waimea: cool country, rolling green hills; the land of Parker Ranch. Then across to the eastern side of the island and down the coast, arriving in Hilo town about 9:45.

The first thing I did, after stowing my things in the dorm at Hilo Bay Hostel, was to walk up the street a block and rent a Post Office box. It's such a great Post Office! It takes up the center part of the first floor of the Federal Building, a big, white, beautiful structure placed majestically on a grassy rise, with an open, stair-step courtyard and a fountain in front. The customer area of the Post Office is all open-air: a wide, marble floor (covered by the building's roof, of course) leading to the service windows and alcoves full of postal boxes. The energy there gives such a good feeling: very proper and official and solid, yet friendly, welcoming, secure.

Across the street is David Kalakaua Park. King David, crowned in 1883, was Hawaii's last king. He is remembered for his patronage of traditional Hawaiian music and dance (hula dancing in public had been prohibited by the Christian missionaries, and it was King David who sanctioned and encouraged it again). His enthusiasm for hula won him the nickname "The Merrie Monarch." In the park named for him are a statue and plaque, in the shade of a huge, impeccably-shaped banyan tree.

Chapter 20: Hostel Days

I ENDED UP LIVING at Hilo Bay Hostel from mid-April to the beginning of June. Two of the people I felt I knew immediately in Hilo were Scott, the owner of the hostel, and his brother Dave. They're both world travelers, though they grew up in California.*

Another person who seemed instantly familiar to me was George. He'd been in the Islands for some time; working his way from hostel to hostel, it seemed. If there was one he hadn't worked at, I don't know which one.

He was a few years younger than I, and he had been a Marine for a while. I know they say, "Once a Marine, always a Marine," and there were things about George that certainly brought that to mind. He would not have said it about himself, I'm sure. He was inexpressibly glad to be as far away from the Marine Corps as he could get.

George was a born idealist, it seemed to me: idealistic, romantic, exactly the kind of guy those military recruiting ads are painstakingly designed to snare. George had signed up, gung-ho to protect America. But he was not only idealistic, he was also very smart, and it didn't take too long for him to see that the reality of military service didn't quite match the hype.

He ended up going AWOL several times. Nine, I believe he said. The last time, he went all the way to Canada, changed his name, got a job, started a new life. He lived there for years. Then one day, working as a furniture delivery man, he was out in the company truck with his partner. They had finished the last delivery of the day and were heading back to the shop. It was nearly winter, and snowing. The partner was driving, and suddenly George told him to stop the truck. "Why?" said the man. "What's wrong?"

"Stop the truck," said George. "Let me out. I've gotta go back." He got out of the truck and hiked through the snow to the nearest Royal Canadian Mounted Police station and turned himself in.

Telling this, he said that when he walked in the station, there was only one officer on duty and a secretary. Hearing what George was there for, the Mountie sent the secretary outside ("Go have a cigarette ---") and proceeded to try convincing George that surrendering himself back to U.S. authorities was not a good idea. When he ran out of other arguments, he appealed to George on the grounds that surrendering himself would necessitate an unconscionable amount of paperwork for the officer!

But George was still an idealist. He felt that surrendering was the right thing to do, and nothing was going to stop him from doing it. The Mountie could not talk his way out of the paperwork, and before long George was walking across the border into the waiting handcuffs of U.S. authorities.

The Marines were called, of course, and they took custody of him in Washington state....and they were going to keep him locked up for a long time before even transporting him back to the other coast to face the music. However, with characteristic ineptitude, they managed to let him walk away unnoticed. He went straight to a bus station and bought himself a cross-country ticket to his own court-martial. The way it all ended, he spent only a short time in the brig and was glad to walk away with a Dishonorable Discharge.

All this was many years before he arrived in Hilo. When I met him at the hostel there, he was a gentle soul in a middle-aged body, with tiny little reading glasses that made me think of Benjamin Franklin.

George had arrived at the hostel just after it opened for business. There was a lot of work to be done on the building yet, and George began painting in exchange for a room (he was a very good painter and handyman; he carried his own brushes with him wherever he traveled). Before long, he was not only painting and carpentering, he was also the night manager of the hostel.

When I arrived in mid-April, it seemed to me that George was pretty much the soul of the hostel. He loved the place and was very protective of it. There were not many guests in those days, and the few of us who were there became sort of a family. We all loved the place very much.

There was George, and Lillian (the day manager), and Pearleen (previously of Kaua'i and Alaska, now looking for a home on Hawai'i), and a guy named John, and I. Oh, there were other guests, but just passing through, staying a night or two. We were the Regulars.

In the men's dorm, it was usually just John and I. What an interesting guy, this John! In his late thirties, he was rather small and wiry, quiet, very deliberate and thoughtful. He knew the Bible from cover to cover (and every line of dialogue in Cecille B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments, which was his favorite movie).

Johnny (as he often called himself) had grown up around Hilo. He had lived on the Island all his life, except a few years in California. He had grown up picking a guitar, had spent several years on the streets of Hilo, addicted to drugs, and then had a profound awakening. His greatest desire was to know God -- and one day he felt the connection. He received a vision and a sense of purpose. He would devote himself to becoming the best musician possible, and God would speak to the world through his music.

He freed himself from the drugs (the worst ones, at least). He disappeared from the streets of Hilo. He spent 7 years in the jungle, alone except for his guitar and his dogs, perfecting his musical abilities. When I met him, he was still perfecting them, but he had been back in the world for about a year, working as a painter. He left the hostel every morning in time to catch the northbound bus at 5:00 o'clock, in order to arrive at his work site, near Waikoloa, by 7:30. And he got back to the hostel about 6:30 at night.

He would come in from work, take his guitar, go back out on the streets and find a place to practice with it. He would come back in an hour or so, eat a little supper, drink a beer or 2 (he loved beer), sit in the main room and let the television blank out his mind for a bit. Then he'd step outside and smoke a cigarette, come in and shower and go to bed, so he could be up and out again by 5:00 the next morning. He had adopted the guise of a worker bee....but all the while he was nurturing the vision of himself as the greatest musician ever, and preparing himself for the role.

* If you're scratching your head and thinking, "I could have sworn he said before that these guys grew up in Utah!" -- well, you're right. That was the way I remembered it, and I've now been corrected: They grew up in California, with relatives in Utah, where they commonly spent the summer.

PEARL

THERE WAS ALSO this woman Pearl. Her birth name was actually Pearleen. She was born December 7th, one year after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor; hence the first part of her name (though she was born in Colorado, not Hawai'i). The last part of her name was a tribute to one of her aunts, whose name ended in -leen. She was born and raised near Grand Junction, Colorado, about 150 miles from where I was born and raised.

My first impression of her, at the hostel, was that she was a little kooky. For those of you old enough to remember the TV show Laugh-In, think of Jo Ann Worley with white hair and revved up a few more notches (yes, it is possible). That was my first snapshot of Pearl. This large woman with long, whitish-blondish hair and a high-pitched voice, talking so fast that my brain had to grab strings of her words and stretch them out to decipher them. It was like translating a foreign language. And she would speak in snippets of language anyway, just verbalizing thoughts as they came into her head -- as if whomever was hearing her was also plugged into the same thought-stream. There was a bit of Marjorie-Main-as-Ma-Kettle in her also (now I'm really showing my age).

She had a job as a social worker, taking care of a 14-year-old autistic "client" (that's the official terminology). A job that would make anyone a little kooky, at best. At the hostel, she liked to sit in the main room and watch television. She and George had become close friends, and they both had amazing (to me, at least) appetites for pasta and for television. Those plastic packages of dried noodles with a foil pouch of chemical flavorings, called Ramen on the mainland? Well, here in Hawai'i they're called Saimin. Pearl and George would buy those things by the case at Cost-U-Less; those and pot-stickers (white-flour-dough wrapped around a clump of ground meat to form a half-moon shape, which Pearl would fry in oil in a skillet).

She and George would eat Saimin and pot-stickers with chopsticks in the main room at the hostel, and watch movies they had seen already. It was quite amazing to me; there didn't seem to be any movies they hadn't seen -- and they were quite willing to watch them again.

I watch a movie and, with very few exceptions, it evaporates from my memory very quickly. I'll remember the title for years; I'll remember a vague outline of the story, or the setting, or some of the actors, for a shorter period of time; and I can easily forget the details and individual scenes in a day or 2, sometimes even hours. But these guys, George and Pearl, seemed to remember almost every scene of every movie they had ever watched! Maybe just because of seeing them so many times.

George was the king of Sci-Fi movies especially. Whenever he was in charge of the TV, you could bet we'd be watching the Sci-Fi channel. I remember sitting there one night, with some totally forgettable Sci-Fi movie playing, and George being flabbergasted that I had never seen it before! This was his 9th or 10th time, he said. He could even remember the theater where he had first seen it!

Anyway, I didn't pay much attention to Pearl at first. I was busy looking for a place to live and have Reiki clients and students. I bought 2 folding chairs and made laminated signs and began offering Reiki at the Hilo Farmers' Market on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

Weeks went by. I was not finding a home for myself. I had put ads on bulletin boards, asking for a work-exchange situation, and got no responses. And there seemed no way I could rent a place: landlords demanded 2 months' payment in advance and local references before they would even consider someone. There seemed to be a lot more people without homes than there were places to rent, and the landlords were making the most of it. Many places were rented by agencies, which charged a fee for even allowing prospective renters to see the property!

I'd been at the hostel for about a month, when Pearl asked me to give her some Reiki one day; and that was what brought us together.

During the Reiki, she had some wonderful experiences. She said it opened a door to other dimensions. They were places she had been before -- but she had never before been able to open the door to them at will. The Reiki opened them right up. She was in a world of white light. She could see a beautiful, pinkish grid of energy encircling the Earth, and she was told things about it. And she saw and had a conversation with her son who had died years before.

From that point on, we began to get to know each other. Pearl had grown up in Colorado, 150 miles from me. She had gone to truck-driving school at one point, anticipating a career that never got started. She had managed jewelry stores, worked in a supermarket, owned and operated several elderly care homes (in Colorado, Washington, and Hawai'i). She had moved to Alaska in the '70s, where she flew airplanes, among other things. She had been married "a few times," and raised 4 children. She had managed a large coconut plantation in Fiji, and made ceramic and porcelain items, some of which were sold exclusively in the big resort hotels. She had even written a partial autobiography of all this.

Now she had been in Hilo since December, doing social work. But she wanted to get out of that, and back to making ceramic and porcelain artworks. She had found a property for sale, 15 miles from Hilo, currently a Bed & Breakfast, and she intended to buy it and make the bottom floor into her art studio. She would continue to rent the top floor as a B & B or vacation rental unit, and would live on the 2nd floor.

She invited me to live there also, to do Reiki and help with the rentals, and to make websites for her various projects. It didn't take me long to accept the offer. It seemed a perfect situation for me.

We were both eager to get started. The only holdup was the acquisition of the property. Pearl owned a huge house in Alaska, which she wanted to sell. She made an offer on the B & B property, figuring the Alaska house would either sell or she would use it to get a loan for buying the place here. Then her offer was accepted, but she didn't have the money from Alaska yet.

This was the beginning of an astounding saga for the 2 of us. It turned out to be nearly impossible to arrange a loan on the Alaska house -- though we were given the impression all along that the deal was all but finalized. Pearl had been waiting on one loan company for months, in fact, before she met me, and before they finally told her that they had done absolutely nothing! The story was very confusing to me; some paperwork had never been sent where it needed to go, or the loan company didn't handle properties in Alaska, or some such thing. Anyway, Pearl had to find another company and start the whole process again.

Meanwhile, she and I decided it would be wise for us to find a place to rent together, and move out of the hostel. Together we would have enough money to do it, and Pearl had the local references that I was lacking.

We looked at several places that didn't seem workable, and then Pearl got a tip from one of her co-workers. There was a guy who owned a house in Paradise Park -- a gigantic residential area near the town of Pahoa -- and was fixing it up to sell. It had 3 bedrooms, and he was looking to rent them for $250/month each while he worked on the house. It would be a month-to-month rental, with no deposit. Not an ideal situation, to have him there working, and the water supply was a catchment tank -- which meant that the water might not be safe to ingest -- but what the heck, we figured we might not even be there a month. Pearl would have the loan very soon, and we would be in our new home. In the unlikely event that we were in the rental house for a whole month, or even longer, it would cost us less than half of what we were paying at the hostel -- and we would have some private space. There was also a phone line, so I would have internet access for my laptop, for the first time since arriving on the island 2 months before.

As soon as Pearl got word of this house, she drove there to meet the owner. She took a quick look at the house, decided it was fine, and phoned me at the hostel. I said, if it seemed fine to her, it was fine for me, and she told the owner we'd be moving in the next day.

Chapter 21: The Bee House

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE HOSTEL, I met a most intriguing person: a woman about my age, tall, with long, red hair and a rather vacant look. She was a new arrival, and was pacing the floor silently, very deep in thought, it seemed.

I was sitting at a table in the main room, in the afternoon, making a sign for my Reiki space at the Farmers' Market. This woman, in her trancelike wanderings from the women's dorm to the kitchen and back across the main room, eventually glided near to where I was sitting. She paused to read the sign I was making. We said hello, and she said something about Reiki.

I asked if she knew Reiki, and she said yes. She had been initiated into the first level by none other than Hawayo Takata, the woman who had single-handedly brought Reiki from Japan to Hawai'i (and then the mainland and the rest of the world) after World War II. This woman with the red hair -- Eva was her name -- had been initiated into Reiki by Hawayo Takata in California in the 1970s!

I said something about Reiki being great stuff -- and Eva disagreed with me. Her experience had been very much the opposite, she said. Before initiation into Reiki, she had been quite renowned for her own healing abilities. Even bringing dead people and animals back to life on a few occasions, she said.

That was my first (and so far only) time of hearing anyone make that claim! And something about her made me believe it could actually be true. She wasn't very forthcoming with it, I had to fish it out of her; and she didn't take credit for it herself. She said, at least the first time it happened, it was not even her intention. Having no idea that she could summon such a miracle, she had merely prayed for the greatest good for a grieving relative of the deceased.

She had eventually done this a number of times (I remember her telling me of 3 individual cases), and had predictably garnered quite a reputation as a healer. Then one day some friends had taken her to a Reiki class of Hawayo Takata's. She had taken the Reiki initiation -- and subsequently lost her miraculous abilities! Not surprisingly, she did not have a high opinion of Reiki.

I didn't know what to make of all this. It was the only time I've ever heard of a negative experience with Reiki empowerment, and it's hard for me (still) to believe that the Reiki empowerment brought about the loss of Eva's power. I think there must have been something else involved.

Anyway, decades later, here at Hilo Bay Hostel, Eva was in the same boat as the rest of us, looking for a home. She had arrived from O'ahu, a week or 2 later than planned, and found that the place she had intended to live was no longer available. The man she had intended to live with was also no longer available, and she was feeling very lost. I told her there was a third bedroom in the house Pearl and I were going to move into, and Eva decided to take it.

MOVING IN

PEARL AND I MOVED IN the 4th of June. The first thing we discovered was that the man we thought was the owner was not the owner. When we arrived that day, he introduced us to his sister-in-law, who he said was the owner. She was also a real estate agent, and she had rental papers for us to sign. She was acting very official, which took us by surprise.

The day before, we had made a deal with the brother-in-law. Very simple and friendly, and sealed with a handshake: Pearl would pay $350 a month for the master bedroom (which was much larger than the other 2), and I would pay $250 for one of the others, and Eva would pay the same for the third one. There was no talk of a deposit, and the man assured us that he would provide a phone line.

Now, unexpectedly, we found ourselves signing official papers with the sister-in-law, who was asking for an additional month's rent as a deposit! We politely told her that we had already made a deal with her brother-in-law, that nothing had been said about a deposit, and that we did not intend to pay one. We had to say it a few times before it began to get through to her. I suppose, as a Real Estate Agent, she was used to waving official papers and telling people what to do and having them do it; she was not prepared for our resistance.

She began stammering that of course a deposit was standard, accepted procedure in rental agreements. We told her we understood that, but that was not the agreement we had made the day before. Then she tried to get us to pay a smaller amount as a deposit. "How much would you feel comfortable paying?" she asked.

"I would feel comfortable paying NO deposit!" I said. At that point, it seemed there was no way she was going to agree to this; I was merely giving a truthful answer to her question. But it surprised her so much, she acquiesced! We all agreed: no deposit.

Then she told us we would have to pay extra for electricity. Again we told her, that was not the deal we had made the day before. By this time, she was catching on that we were not going to be pushed around. After one futile protest, she gave in and changed the rental papers to show that utilities were included in the rent. Pearl and I signed them, and the woman said she would bring us copies of them the next day.

AFTER ALL THOSE WEEKS in the hostel, we were delighted to have even this temporary place to call home. It was out in the country, away from the all-night streetlamps and automobile noises of Hilo. It was dark and quiet and peaceful at night.

It was a rather strangely designed house: ground-level, rectangular; I suppose it would have been called a "ranch" style; but the 3 bedrooms were along the front, with the kitchen and main room and a dining room behind them.

It was a nice-looking house, with tons of koa wood inside. The whole dining room was koa, and the floor in the bedrooms and entryway and part of the main room. Some of the walls had koa paneling. Fifty thousand dollars worth of koa wood, the man had told us!

The less impressive features of the house included the kitchen floor, which was made of 2 different kinds of tile. There seemed nothing significant in the way the 2 were brought together, and they didn't seem to complement each other. It seemed merely a case of using what had been available.

There was no doorway between the kitchen and main room, it was all wide open. The only demarcation was that the tile floor ended and there was a big, rectangular frame covering most of the main floor; it stuck up a quarter-inch above the floor itself, and held what looked like the padding for a carpet. Everyone who came to visit us there would say -- almost the first thing out of their mouth -- "When are they going to put the carpet down?" We had asked the same question when we first saw the room ourselves -- and were told that this WAS the carpet!

It met the tile on one side, the koa floor on another side, and went almost to the wall and to the fireplace on the other 2 sides. Almost.

There was a high, peaked ceiling with large beams of dark-stained wood. Where the kitchen became the main room, a ceiling fan hung way down over the counter/bar. Apparently there were termites munching on the beam that held it, because every day we would sweep a fresh pile of wood dust off the counter there.

Oh, and there were bees. Sweet, little, honey bees. We had seen them in the back yard, the day before we moved in. The man had introduced us to a beekeeper, in fact, who was there to see about removing them. We were assured that the bees would be gone when we moved in.

But they were not gone, and the Real Estate woman told us that the bees were supposed to have been gone when she bought the house....and she had been trying ever since to get rid of them. They didn't bother me, but Pearl said she was allergic to bee stings; if she got stung, we would have to race her to the hospital for an injection to save her life!

Even so, she didn't feel terribly endangered. She took the precaution of staying out of the back yard. It wasn't until a couple days later that we realized the bees were also in the house.

THE FIRST NIGHT, in the bathroom brushing my teeth before bed, I heard something buzzing. It was so faint, I couldn't identify it. At first I thought it was a bee -- but there was nothing flying around the bathroom; and the sound was so faint, I decided it must be a motorcycle out on the highway.

The next night, hearing the very same sound again, I tracked it to the bathroom shower; to where the pipe that held the shower head came out of the wall. The buzzing was coming from under the metal collar that fit against the wall, surrounding the pipe. When I got very close, I could even see little black bee-feet pulsing in and out around the circumference of the collar! The wall was full of bees, and they were looking for a way out!

Then I noticed the window above the bathtub. It was only about a foot high, maybe 3-1/2 feet long, at the very top of the wall. It was an opening for ventilation; there was no glass, only screen. And the window sill, which was several inches deep, was covered with dead bees.

The next morning, exploring further, I found some live ones among the dead. They were barely alive, spinning and buzzing in tight little circles on the sill. They were coming up from inside the exterior wall, getting through the screen somehow, and dying very quickly. The only explanation I could think of was that they had been poisoned.

They were such beautiful, gentle, little honey bees. From that day on, as long as we lived in the house, there was a stream of them getting in through the screen (I covered the edges with tape as best I could, more than once, and still they got in somehow). Once in a while, one of them would have enough life left, it would get as far as the bathroom floor or even the counter that held the sink. A few even managed to fly around the room a bit before they died. Even being poisoned as they were, they never attacked us or showed any hostility; they were merely trying to live. It was a gruesome chore for me to sweep their dead bodies -- maybe 20 or 30 a day -- into the trash.

IT WAS EITHER THE FIRST NIGHT or the second that I got an account with an Internet Service Provider. I got it all set up just before bedtime. I was so happy to have internet access again, after 2 months without it! I was eager to go online the next morning, to deal with accumulated emails, and especially to be able to upload to my website again.

But, in the morning when I tried to connect, there was no dial tone. The phone was as dead as the bees in the bathroom.

Using my cell phone, I called the telephone company. They verified that the line was dead, and said it had been disconnected. So I called the owner of the house, the woman who had signed the rental papers with us. Asked if she knew why the phone had been disconnected. She said she didn't, that her brother-in-law -- the man who had initially presented himself as the owner and made the agreement with us -- was in charge of the telephone account. So I called him. He wasn't answering. I left a message on the machine.

It wasn't long before he showed up at the house again. In fact, he arrived there every morning about 6:30, and started clanging things around in the adjoining workshop. That had been part of the original deal, that he would be there working on the house. We just hadn't known he would be starting so early every day.

Most days, he was there much of the time. He usually came and went 3 or 4 times during the day. Almost always, he brought his brother with him. His brother was not quite right mentally, and needed supervision. So the 2 of them came to the house every day and puttered around, mostly in the workshop or the garage. Sometimes the one who needed supervision would get free of it and come into the house. (And, as I found out later, both of them were coming in sometimes when we were gone, and washing their clothes in the washing machine!)

THE NEXT TIME THEY WERE THERE, I asked about getting the phone reconnected. The man said he would take care of it. Shortly after that, he told Pearl that his sister-in-law said we would have to pay extra for electricity after all. Pearl told him we were doing no such thing, that she didn't want to hear another word about it, and that, if the sister-in-law had anything to say to us, she could make an appointment and meet with all 3 of us.

As it turned out, Eva had moved into the house when Pearl and I were not there, and the man had gotten her to pay a deposit of $250 and to sign an agreement that she would pay extra for electricity!

A day or 2 passed, and the phone was still dead. Then, Sunday morning, as we were about to go to the nearby Farmers' Market, there was a knock on the door. It was the man. He would have to remove all his personal items from the house, he told us -- since we were refusing to pay extra for electricity. (He had apparently been living there before the sister-in-law decided to rent the house. When we moved in, there was a television, a VCR and a bunch of videos, a set of shelves full of books and magazines and assorted items, some clothing, a mattress on the floor, and a few pans and dishes and utensils in the kitchen. The man had told us we could use everything there.)

I asked him about the phone again; how soon would it be reconnected? Now he said, if we wanted a phone line, we could get one ourselves. I reminded him that providing the phone line was part of his original agreement with us. He denied it. Now I was so angry, I was shaking. "You don't remember telling me that you would provide the phone line?" I yelled at him.

"It's not in writing!" he yelled back.

"I know it's not in writing, but you told us you would, and we shook hands on it!"

"Well, you've broken the contract by refusing to pay electricity!" he said.

"NO! We never agreed to pay electricity! We signed a paper that says electricity is included!"

Now he didn't know what to say. We stood there glaring at each other. It was clearly pointless to continue in this direction, so I calmed down a little and said, "Let's get your stuff out; I'll help you."

"What?"

"Let's get your stuff out. I'll help you move it."

So we did. I was glad to see the television go; not so, the rice cooker. Apparently the pans and plates and the few utensils were not his (and he was honest enough to leave them with us). We were glad to have his belongings and his energy out of the house.

Nothing was ever done about the phone line, and we were never given copies of the rental agreement we signed. So Pearl and I began looking immediately for another place to live. We did not want to stay in the bee house any longer than necessary.

EATEN BY COCKROACHES!

I HAD A NICE BEDROOM there, anyway. All the bedrooms were nice. The floors were koa wood, and we had a lot of window space; a lot of natural light and fresh air.

My room had a built-in set of drawers, also made of koa wood. (It went perfectly with the home-made motif of the house; the drawers did not fit quite right in the cabinet, though they gave a good appearance.) When I went to bed at night, I put my eyeglasses on the top of the cabinet. The first night, there was a big cockroach looking at me, as if to say, "You've got a lot of nerve!"

After a couple days, I noticed pock marks in one of the foam-rubber nosepads I had put on the glasses. Quite a bit of the pad was gone, in fact. It appeared that someone had taken lots of tiny bites out of it -- and that cucaracha sprang immediately into my mind! From then on, I kept the glasses in the pocket of my jacket, hanging in the closet, while I slept.

c > o > n > t > i > n > u > e . . . .

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pages 31-40

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