Me

I killed it in the gym this morning. Drenched in sweat, hands shaking. I realized that I've been trying to figure so much out. This massive job, a relationship written in a different language. I have felt joy and satisfaction but it's been at the expense of feeling at all grounded.

I'm releasing both.

I'll still do my best, but my focus needs to be on myself. I absolutely have to nurture me right now. Not the company that I don't own, not the married man. Me.

The job will get easier.

Who knows what will happen with the man. But I will have to grow old with myself. I intend to do so surrounded by my best friends, feeling my most confident, humbled by love in all its forms.

I know myself, and I know that I don't love second place.

I am going to Mexico this weekend with two of my best girlfriends. This life is about deep friendships and travel.

I admit without reserve, I am all about ME.

Aloha.

Room Service

One of my favorite things about all the traveling that I do is all the new people I get to meet and the best way to meet people is the hotel bar. Or really, any bar at any restaurant, but a sushi bar is often best, after the bar in a hotel. It's where the business travelers sit, where people are ready and willing to talk to you. Being a single woman has pros and cons; people often want to talk to you but intention isn't always clear. Not that it matters. A little daily flirting is necessary and beautiful in this life.

I am so tired in this new job that I find myself ordering room service, something I have never done before with any regularity. I woke at 4:30 this morning, caught a 7-somethingam flight. I worked all day, public eye, sparkling. Back to my room at 8pm, pst. I ran a bath with one hand, put a girlfriend on speaker with the other. I ordered the salmon and two glasses of pinot. I'm so tired.

I think of it though and wonder- tell me of a life where I'm not tired. What then, am I well-rested and under-stimulated? I would rather challenge myself mentally and physically.

I would also rather starve free than live a fat slave.

I'll wake up tomorrow and do it again. I need to be grateful for everything, especially if it's challenging. Challenge me, make me consider my options, please.

Bedtime now and I have earned it.

Alohazzzzz

good witchery.

I sat in my car in the sea of I 25 yesterday afternoon, waiting to migrate off a road turned into a graveyard. May she be peaceful on her way. I had lots of numb time to think, to sort of dwell upon the melancholy that's settled over me.
I equate the feeling of stress with suburban malaise. It feels like failure. I will jump into high-stakes situations and feed off the adrenaline but boring common-place stress feels like failure. And like someone is sitting on my chest, eating more and more, the weight becoming greater each day.
I awoke at 2am and didn't resch for a pill. I read a fashion magazine, massaged some oil onto my skin. Today I was tired, but not drugged.
I love the people with whom I work. An amazing family, my tribe. Queer. Smart. Loving. The stress I feel is due to lifestyle and I spoke up today. I feel better to keep trying now, I just needed to be heard. Life is too fragile and beautiful to be wasted on an airplane if it's not what the heart desires. I've turned down two dates this week due to my schedule, and who knows, they could've been the night, the person. SuperDave and I had a beautiful night in SF, walking hand in hand through the twisted streets. A kindred soul. Gypsy, like me. I feel connected to him in death as I do in this life. He was so close to it and he tells me I was there. He has been one of my hardest friendships, but most profound.

Adam returns tomorrow. Love is is spell beyond me, ensnared.

Aloha.

Clean sheets.

My sheets are clean tonight.

In one year' span: I left Jason, I became pregnant, the baby died, I left California, I left my job. I moved to Colorado. But first I went to Mexico by myself for a month. I made friends, spoke Spanish, ran a business. Returned to Colorado on my 37th birthday.

I lived at home for a month. For one week in January I didn't leave my bed. I cried for that lost baby. I ate nothing. I just cried and cried and tried to release that child. 2015 came on with a wail, the deepest sounds evoked by blood and grey tissue where there was once a heartbeat. It wasn't yet a baby. It was a heartbeat in the Petri dish of my body.

In one week, I was feeling better. I drove to Boulder. Something happened that night, something as deep as a fairy tale, a story deep in the subconscious. I wore red. Freedom from blood, symbolic of new attractions. I knew he would teach me, again.

 The world steadied again and began showing me graces and muses.

I've been thinking of what happened so much in the last few weeks and this morning it came to me why.  This is the month I would have given birth. The last bit of my life has been under the knowledge that I would have been pregnant now. Time hurls forward, and if if if, I would be a mother now. Instead, I'll be the best woman I can be. The best friend, the best companion, the best daughter. I'll always do my best.

It's never that easy. The world still tilts. Tell me the last frontier of feminism. It's the freedom from being judged on how you seek knowledge and pleasure and experience life. Its also freedom to love without fear. It's freedom from ownership.

It's better than anyone telling me that they're sorry for my mistakes. It's better than banality. I hope it rips my ego to shreds.

Aloha.

No one else defines me

I will give this all a chance. But because I choose to, not for any other reason. I am deciding to take the new job and ride it out. My goal is two years and that goal has become quite malleable in the past two weeks. I want to work for myself. I want to be at home, to cultivate. By home I mean in my own rhythms, driven by my own choreography.

I bled with Adam last time we were intimate. I didn't discuss the thing.  I just wanted a nice dinner and a heart connection. My body bled, my heart bleeds.

Giving up the idea of children is freeing. It's life that I can dedicate to those I love and chase every curiosity. I want someone to tell me that I'm wrong but I don't know why.

I find myself putting up ever more boundaries in relation to work while I shatter personal ones.  Or rather, I work to continuously shatter any boundary of ego that doesn't serve me.

I'm sleeping in my bed tonight for the first time in four nights. Every day, a different town, a new bed. Colorado is like a fire ceremony to me, smoke drifting in, teasing past my bones. I drove through mountain, canyon, snow, ice, sun, and rain today. La querencia is nestling in again.

The Casual Sex Project

Energy is the currency of the universe.

Today I read something and tears came to my eyes immediately. A sickening sadness, deeply personal.

What if you read something wildly personal about yourself? A chop shop version of an intimate encounter that meant quite a bit to you. And now the only meaning is the titillation of the one you shared the night with and his wife. They got off on my story, this encounter. What then? I cease to matter except in relation to them. I did think he cared for me. I am so naive in the softest ways.

There's your moment. There's the thing that mattered at the time, that still matters in the small sweet hollow of my heart. He left out many details. He described my hair, my eyes, my body, the play by play of the night. But what I felt is mine. The excitement, the happiness, the following meetings. Waking up next to him crazy with desire. The way our dreams invaded the energy of the other. My desire to bring him into my world. The lizard brain he nudged awake.

I read it this morning on Twitter but it's on Facebook too. I let myself cry, I felt the pain. Then I pulled on my running shoes and pushed out the door, clocking a pr in my local run. I went to Courtney's house and lay across her bed and basked in the sweet necessity of female friendship. I came home and made the most vibrant meal and read halfway through a fascinating book.

My alarm is set for 5:30 tomorrow morning and the day is full of delicious learning and possibility.

I hate cages but I honor love and respect. I wish he had set me free before I became nothing more than a kink, unfinished business that delights his current situation. I'm so strong and so willingly to walk away. I wish he had let me.

A man I barely know brought me a poem, roses and a bottle of Jameson yesterday. But the things is, he doesn't seem like a risk. He would be another Jason.

No one reads this blog but I need to immortalize what happened as a reminder. He speaks a different language than I do. I thought he could translate. I was wrong.

Aloha.

Circles

I love the feeling of falling deep inside a story, giving up little bits of my everyday reality to a better, grander theme.

I am so good at living out particular stories. Stories where I save people from a reality they are scared of, that doesn't feed them.  Stories where I walk away. I've walked away from the domestic story so many times. Three times offered rings, once accepted because I knew I was leaving anyway and it seemed kind. It was completely fucking cowardly though.  I tried to offer it back to her and she cried and said no. I keep it in a box on the windowsill.

On my mind tonight:

It was four years ago. I had known him ten years. A divorce waiting in the wings, papers in the mail.  Life probably seemed dull and heartbroken and lacking in all fecundity.  And then there I was and he remembered meeting me for the first and I was wearing red pants. How cavalier, a woman in red pants. But this time I had on a little dress and hair down my back and sweat on my face. And he saw me as his medication back to masculinity. I took him to my jungle hale and he played guitar and cards and drank whiskey with outlaws. He felt the mana of 40 foot waves. He let me come to his timeshare and clean my red-dirt clothes and one night, he made love to me.  I hadn't been with a man in years. I bled.

His wounds began to heal. His swagger came back. He went back to the mainland and sent me a ticket to meet him in Tokyo. I felt him healing. The virility that a broken marriage had took from him was restored. He would write and tell me loved me, that there had never been anyone like me in his life.

And then slowly his life became to ripen where he was, and after a brief mourning, I let him go. I saw him last November in Denver.  He's with the same kind of woman he always ends up with. I finished my whiskey and left. Back to SF, always leaving.

I want more than to be a palate cleanser.  I don't want to be a caretaker, nor a way to help a man find his way to another safe, sweet girl. I am very sweet, but I dream big and I've travelled and stayed single to live those dreams.

I love watching someone I care for blossom with their renewed urges, seeing potential ripe again. It fills me up too; I smile more at strangers, keep eye contact a heartbeat too long.  It's good medicine for everyone. But I am far away, again.

Abrigada for your stay

I am in Portugal, staying for five days at the five diamond resort in the Algarve.  I opened a small bottle of white from the mini bar, ordered the chicken from room service, took a bath in a massive tub.

You're always with yourself, no matter where you are.  I feel like I should be out socializing, mixing with the Hilton bigwigs.  I feel like the shy, dorky kid still.  I awoke early, went for run, worked for a few hours this morning, then went shopping for souvenirs, then finally allowed myself to sneak down to the pool for an hour or so.

And I walked down the path to the pool, up comes the spa director, the Hilton Conrad point person, and then the All-Hilton spa person.  Big, big, big.  And there's me, probably looking messy and sweaty with a bad tattoo showing.

I don't think they noticed me.

I like my solo time. I am listening to Portuguese radio, drinking vino verde.

I want a support network of others that travel for work.  It's a different life.  Always going, streamlining the process (yes to bose headphones), away, leading a different life than your partner.  Flights delays, jetlag, weird food, constipation, crazy skin, searching for wifi, walking down unknown streets searching for a convenience store in which to purchase a corkscrew,  not posting to fb, eyeing the stranger at the hotel bar, BBC and Al-Jazeera, jetlag, should I order a meal, compression socks, friends with the bartender, small change ones and fives on hand, duty-free makeup, I want a cigarette, febreze travel size, economy plus is worth it, no one has a real camera anymore, this is out of my control, what's the worst that can happen.

My brother and my sister don't speak to me

My sisterhood is splintering because of the relationship that I'm in.  Girlfriends falling by the wayside, some in judgement, some just too ill-at-ease with the other woman.

Is that me, or she?  It's unraveling.  He told me he's moving out this weekend. He told me.  He said.  He promised.  The whining of a hundred promises. I am tough on the exterior, mush on the inside.  I watch him speak the words and I believe him. I never believed the others.

I don't remember falling asleep last night.  I remember laying in bed, him beside me.  He stroked my back and talked.  He talked about his dreams, the first time he realized how much he truly loved music and wanted to share it.  I feel asleep and stayed asleep through his departure.  He must have got out of bed, turned off the light and music, gathered his box of greens, and left.  All as I slept.  It's very unusual.  I notice things.  I smell, I see, I watch.

With him, I trust and am vulnerable.

But I don't blame them...

I feel a storm coming but I am trying not to manifest it. Keep in the light. So much is happening in my professional life, it's huge. In my personal life, I must hunker down, protect what to me is sacred and special right now. This storm will pass, and I am working so hard for my own gains.  The new year will bring huge changes and in those changes, I will decide if I want to stay here.

Edit- I wrote this last year, in the fall, literally and then some.  I stayed here with him.  And now we move to San Francisco next week.

I deleted facebook

Kauai is so small and my heart and dreams so big... I battle with suffocation almost daily.  I deleted facebook as a way to preserve a bit of privacy, which is in turn, dignity.  Life is rich in adventures that I did not even dream of before moving here.  I'll begin to write again.

Photo is off a full moon party at Taylor Camp we had on Saturday night. Four hours of pouring rain, opened up to a brilliant full moon reflecting green off the ocean.  I was with my best friends, until sunrise, dancing and laughing.  That is the reality I need to cultivate.  The rest will fall by the wayside, washed away by the next thing.  My friends, my work, my love, I will pour my focus there.  As I am reminded constantly, your focus is your future.  My focus is holding the light.

Aloha

Happy New Year!

Expectations

Mom called me this morning and in the course of our chat, I mention that I see myself on Kauai for at least another year or so.  I want to save a bit of money and be in a really good space before moving back and I'm still thinking the island has some big lessons to teach me.  She says, "I don't think that's a good idea."  I ask why and the answer I got is still messing with my head.

She basically spelled out that Kauai has turned me into a loser.  That she was very surprised at my appearance when I was back in Colorado.  Embarrassed actually.  Apparently I used to be of the "most polished people she knew," and now I'm a scruffy, uncultured, island girl.   She then said she didn't think I'd be able to get a job in Denver. 

My self esteem doesn't revolve around what my mom thinks of me but to have her say I was embarrassing and have her doubt my ability to find employment?

Yes, things here are different.  I was talking to my friend Tia today and we both found that when our mainland friends come to visit, they feel uncomfortable.  Tia said her sister felt ugly here because the women tend to be so slim and fit and there are no real bombshell-types.  Her sister defines herself as a glammed-up bombshell vixen and so to come to an island where people don't use hairdryers, wear much make-up, and are very slim, totally made her feel insecure.

I saw happen to Jen as well.  Jen defines herself as a city-dyke.  She rocks weird haircuts and men's undershirts and loves showing off her tattoos and lifting weights.  She's very pale, very city, and very butch.  We'd go to the beach and she'd be in her sports bra and board shorts and all her confidence would crumble.  She'd hold her arms over her belly and kick at the shoreline.

Well, when I first got here, I was like that too.  I was way too dressed all of the time, I wore too much make-up, and I was pale, as should be a redhead.  It took 6 or 8 months but slowly my hair grew out, my skin grew dark, and I stopped worrying about it so much.

In Colorado this summer, I was astounded at how many friends I made in the short week that I was there.  I was open, happy, free.  I want to hear people's stories. I want to bond with them, learn from them.  And people are drawn to that.  I wasn't like that when I got here.  Not nearly as loving, as accepting.  I've tried to put love before every emotion that I feel, and it has enriched my life tremendously.

But am I delusional?  I believe that I'm free and loving but really I'm stunted and immature?  I've always been proud to be a well-versed woman.  I've seen some shit, been around.  I feel like that works against me sometimes, as it can come across as snobby or cold.  Or I used to come across that way.  Now I believe I am much more approachable.

Approachable... and embarrassing, with unemployment in my future.

Damn it.

Aloha.

Leaving it in the dust

Today I was running up a trail when I passed two hikers coming back down.  The woman shouted at me as I passed, "You're an inspiration!"  Wha... really?  It didn't sink in until after I was done with my run.  I returned a friend's call and heard myself offering up advice in regard to a woman who's making him crazy. I said "I know you love her, but you have to love yourself more."  So if I'm going to be an inspiration, it's not because I tackle steep inclines, it's because I'm going to walk the walk.

People do shitty and selfish things all the time.  And sometimes we love them and they still do those things to us.  But the only damn thing I can control in this world are my thoughts.  And my thoughts for the last 3 weeks have been hurtful.  I've blamed myself.  But I've come to the point where I've out-run the woman crying on the steps.  I can do nothing else but keep running, keep laughing, and keep loving because damn if I will be withheld from any of it any longer.

Books are falling in my path as I need them.  Meagan gave me her copy of Jitterbug Perfume for some reason and the next day, I smacked Ian with it as I fought for satisfaction.

End of relationship/dodged bullet.

The same day I received an Amazon package containing Born To Run.  The book has been my bible.  I would do it an injustice by summarizing it here, but it's changed the way that I run and by extension, think,  physically, spiritually, and mentally.

There will be more dark times, I know, but I'm through the worst of it.  I have run myself past the head noise and back to clarity.

aloha.

Yesterday and Today

Yesterday I felt good.  I went on a hike with a friend and her toddler and talked it out.  I stopped by the Tamba shop on my way home, bought a new hat, and let the braddahs hit on me.  I got home, worked out, and decided to unblock Ian on facebook.  I felt like I had moved past needing to cut ties, moved past animosity.

What I realized today is that last night and this morning, I have been preparing for Ian to get in touch with me.  I have been preparing for him to come back and hold me and apologize.  I had been preparing to forgive him.

I was tricking myself.  He left me.  Abandoned me.  Threw me away.  And thank gods I have both the internal strength and external support to withstand such treatment.  I have to let him go, have to let that hope go.  Even if if I have to hide it until I simply forget where it ever was, I cannot hold onto to any amount of hope.

Today on my run, I again thought about living in fear.  I am scared of what might NOT happen and so my reality is overlooked in preparation for a future that is uncertain.  I have wonderful friends, a very healthy body, well-paying and soul-satisfying job, and a small family of three that love me.  It is abundance.  I need to honor it.

Running has been my medication and my regulator through this time.  I run trails often, twisty, muddy trails through rain forest that require exact concentration in order not to fall on my face.  It leaves little room to think about what's happened.  It also forces me out the door by 7 am or earlier each day, and if I've been up crying and popping pills all night, it is a punishing start to my day.

It wasn't supposed to happen this way...  Right?

Aloha.

Damaged Goods

It's 4am on Kauai and I'm up for a reason yet determined.  I checked my phone, email, listened for suspicious noises... nothing.  I tried to sleep for another hour and have given up and decided that perhaps the reason I'm up is to update this blog.

I've had a taste of heart break.  I think it's medium-rare kind of heat break, not a charred, burnt-to-a-crisp kind, but it'll do.  He left me without a word.  I know that I need to view this as a dodged bullet, a gift from my higher self that unleashed events that would show me his true colors. The problem is, when someone leaves with no explanation, you're left to do the coloring yourself, making it up as you go along, because you've been left with no outline.

What happened?  What were the words I used that sent him so far from me emotionally that he was able to treat me that way? And why am I not worth fighting for? These are questions that have haunted every single day for the last 10 days. I haven't called him but once, I blocked him on facebook, but I am dying to invade his life and search for answers.

Damaged goods.  Over a year ago, a woman he was madly in love with on the mainland broke his heart and took up with another.  Apparently he was ready to move to California, leave Kauai, to be with her.  It came as a surprise and according to his friends, it tore him up completely.  I wonder if he saw a chance at vengeance with me.  I'm not innocent, I know that I said inappropriate things in some lame attempt to protect myself.  A few weeks before this happened, I suggested we see other people in a weird fit of totally fake nonchalance.  The fight we had the morning he left was about sex.  I wasn't satisfied.  After what's happened I have been completely without any desire and the thought of having an orgasm almost shames me.  I feel as though my desire is what caused this, sickened him in some way.

How to move forward?  I've barely begun sleeping again, eating is still difficult, running not quite where it was two weeks ago.  And the sadness just overtakes me.  I went to the bay yesterday for a walk and a swim.  The ocean has always soothed me, taken off the sticky mess of any day.  Yesterday I got in and the waves rolled and tossed me about and I cried.  I thought maybe then I was done.  I reread The Four Agreements and went home.  And now I am up at 4am, with tears in my eyes again.

The next month will be slow at work and my best friend here is leaving for 2 weeks to Ireland.  The time kills me, time that was spent with Ian, now is spent alone.  My girlfriends have rallied, been incredible, but I know I'm on a deadline here.

I need to forgive and release him. And I need to find a way to do that without closure.

Aloha.

A perfect weekend and an invitation.

Ian's invited me to his sister's wedding and I am debating...  We've been hanging out a month, but it's been an intense month.  We fit.  Yet no matter how perfect our time together, Kauai would never let two people get swallowed up in each other.  This island has a say in everything, especially when you're dating a man born here.  I've met his boat crew, a few of his friends... And now as I prepare to meet his entire family, extended mainland family included, I find myself very hesitant on a couple of notes.  Is it too soon?  Yes, it might be awkward, and I better damn not catch that bouquet, but there's usually no harm in meeting new friends.  The pressure will be on, and I know I will be scrutinized.  Locals looove sizing up newbies and usually find them lacking.  But my friends that know his family tell me they are an easy bunch.

What to wear?  Look PRETTY is the overwhelming answer I've been given.  Don't look glitzy, not trendy, just pretty.  And wear a flower behind your ear.  I need to sort out which ear though.  Usually a flower worn behind the left ear means you're taken/married and the right means you're single.  So both options are really quite tenuous when my date is a man I haven't yet told I love, and we're so new into it. Maybe I won't go.  It is really early for all this.

I think that I do love him though.  He took me to Polihale last weekend.  We arrived at midnight, under a full moon.  After about ten trips from the truck down the dunes, we were sweaty and exhausted.  We took off our clothes and swam naked in the Pacific Ocean, water lit up from above.  Polihale is remote, detached, wild.  It makes the rules and its visitors heed them.

Meagan, Drew and their child, Sequoia, came to visit us the next day.  They have four wheel drive and so cruised down to our camp, and stayed all afternoon.  As the afternoon wore on, I grew more and more elated.  This is the life that I want.  At one point Ian radioed his boat, then grabbed his longboard and paddled out to meet them as they cruised by.  They dropped us a bag of ice.  Rabbit out of a hat...

The winds grew to 30 knots and we decided that since cooking dinner would be impossible, it was time to call it.  We packed up and drove back to Hanapepe and set up a hibachi in front of his place, and grilled the best piece of Ahi I have ever tasted.

Aloha.

Life is Beautiful

I have no words

I walked into work with a friend and we both stopped and stared, open-mouthed for about 30 seconds.  Then I burst out laughing and took a picture and she started loudly asking, "but I'm Mexican, where do I go???"

Oh Kauai, there are no words.

Give

Excerpted from "Start Where You Are : A Guide to Compassionate Living" by Pema Chodron, Copyright 1994, Shambhala Publications. 

Our next slogan is "Abandon any hope of fruition." You could also say, "Give up all hope" or "Give up" or just "Give." The shorter the better.

One of the most powerful teachings of the Buddhist tradition is that as long as you are wishing for things to change, they never will. As long as you're wanting yourself to get better, you won't. As long as you have an orientation toward the future, you can never just relax into what you already have or already are.

One of the deepest habitual patterns that we have is to feel that now is not good enough. We think back to the past a lot, which maybe was better than now, or perhaps worse. We also think ahead quite a bit to the future - which we may fear - always holding out hope that it might be a little bit better than now. Even if now is going really well -we have good health and we've met the person of our dreams, or we just had a child or got the job we wanted-nevertheless there's a deep tendency always to think about how it's going to be later. We don't quite give ourselves full credit for who we are in the present.

For example, it's easy to hope that things will improve as a result of meditation, that we won't have such bad tempers anymore or we won't have fear anymore or people will like us more than they do now. Or maybe none of those things are problems for us, but we feel we aren't spiritual enough. Surely we will connect with that awake, brilliant, sacred world that we are going to find through meditation. In everything we read -whether it's philosophy or dharma books or psychology- there's the implication that we're caught in some kind of very small perspective and that if we just did the right things, we'd begin to connect with a bigger world, a vaster world, different from the one we're in now.

One reason I wanted to talk about giving up all hope of fruition is because I've been meditating and giving dharma talks for some time now, but I find that I still have a secret passion for what it's going to be like when-as they say in some of the classical texts, all the veils have been removed." It's that same feeling of wanting to jump over yourself and find something that's more awake than the present situation, more alert than the present situation. Sometimes this occurs at a very mundane level: you want to be thinner, have less acne or more hair. But somehow there's almost always a subtle or not so subtle sense of disappointment, a sense of things not completely measuring up.

In one of the first teachings I ever heard, the teacher said, "I don't know why you came here, but I want to tell you right now that the basis of this whole teaching is that you're never going to get everything together." I felt a little like he had just slapped me in the face or thrown cold water over my head. But I've always remembered it. He said, "You're never going to get it all together." There isn't going to be some precious future time when all the loose ends will be tied up. Even though it was shocking to me, it rang true. One of the things that keeps us unhappy is this continual searching for pleasure or security, searching for a little more comfortable situation, either at the domestic level or at the spiritual level or at the level of mental peace.

The shorter the better.  I feel like I've been chasing lately.  Chasing the idea of a baby, a relationship, safety and security.  In that chase, I've encountered sleepless night, frustration, and wee bit of guilt.  Friends too, yes, but I don't sleep any easier for it.  I think the above ideas are acting like a tether around my neck, binding me to expectation and the pleasure of others.  

Tuesday I spent the day hiking, swimming, at the farmer's market, and in the evening, with friends.  It was perfect but it was while hiking that I felt the most at peace.  Simply in the now, one foot in front of the other, tenuous footing in the slippery mud.  A few couples passed me on the way back and both asked if I was alone.  Is it unusual to hike alone?  I love it.  Wild and free and sweaty and strong.

I'm relinquishing the search and am just going to give.  

I love this one because it looks as though I'm wearing the flowers in my hair and you can see the sweat on my face.

My mantra through the hike was, " I went to church today." How do you not feel god on this island?

Aloha.

Alpha males on the mainland

The woman who brought me to Kauai left the island about a month ago and now her second-in-command also announced his departure.  The opening team bails and new blood is brought in from the mainland.  When Bridget left, I moped for weeks, uncertain about the future of everything I had build here.  With Theron leaving, I'm mourning the loss of a friend, but am starting to understand what people have told me since I got here; There's always someone new arriving on Kauai.


Kauai continues to change me.  I've been hanging out with someone new, just a friend, and one night as I walked with him into the parking lot I found myself thinking that he better not drive a sedan.  I was ready to judge the poor boy on driving a normal car!  Somehow it's in my head now that real men drive trucks.  Imagine that ten months ago... I used to view men that drove trucks as scary Republicans on their way to a hunt.  It's the fucked up gender roles here.  Justin (new friend, and yes, he drives a truck) was telling me he visited New York City recently and he said he went to a club there, and "felt so alpha."  He said he was one of the biggest, most muscular guys guys there.  He said he felt like the only guy who'd ever been on a surfboard and he was full of judgment about it.  Even if they're skinny, the guys here are still alpha.  They hunt pigs, fish, surf, keep pit bulls, and drink lots of beer.  I wonder if I moved somewhere in the south or rural northwest US if I would change this way, or if it's the smallness of the population coupled with the absolute isolation.

Kauai can be a bit of an insider's club as well and I think that adds to the value morph.  The island makes  you fucking work for it and it is not easy.  Once you're settled though, the people here embrace you like nothing else.  I was out with some girlfriends last week and one of them had moved from LA about 5 years ago.  She said she still loves her friends back home but nothing compares to the friends that she has here.  It's true, in ten months, I have closer friends that I did in Denver.  Different kind of close.  Family kind of close, we're all in it together kind of close.

Secrets are impossible to keep here and I want to believe that keeps us honest, if not in action, at least in emotion.

Aloha.