Unfurling

Wise Woo Woo

With all this talk of following the whispers (yesterday’s post), there’s a bit of woo woo in the air.  So what if I’m conjuring up meaning more than any rationalist would tolerate?  I’m hitting pause on the logic button and following my threads with the mind of a child and a heart open in curiosity.  Why?  Because it’s more fun!

I live for some goosebumped reality, unfolding like a treasure map. Who knows what’s buried at the X spot, but it can be enjoyable just watching for signs along the way.

It’s been said that magic happens in 3′s.  And this is the third time the Bohemian and I have been up close and personal with our neighborhood owl.  Though, this time the Bohemian was without me, but with his handy point and shoot camera.

Face to face in broad daylight with one wise bird of the night.  Seems magical to me (and pretty darn close).

courtesy of the Bohemian~ all rights reserved

The Whispers

I follow the whispers.

Those, essentially, inaudible prompts that come from Who-Knows. Some say God. Guidance, Grace. The Higher Self.

Higher, lower, I’m somewhere- driving my car down the road, when the whisper comes urging me to turn right instead of going straight. Take a walk on this beach, not that one.

And because my life is currently in a semi-state of flux (we are moving and looking for a new home), and because I’m kind of like a little scientist experimenting (always seeking proof that intuition’s real), and because I have the time on this particular morning, I turn right on to that dirt road that leads to my favorite beach. The one I’ve deemed my temple.

I haven’t been to church lately. This natural cathedral entails a bit of a trek, which takes more time to get there. Time being something that’s seemed tight as of late. But with an extra forty-five minutes on this day, my soles set foot on the path to sacred sand and sea.

It’s not far into the first stretch of empty beach that I see it glowing in the sunlight. A bottle washed ashore, I guess. Though as it rests near the tide line, the shape seems more round than a bottle. And in the case of any treasure found, once I am upon it, there is a gasp, a skipping heart beat. A smile.

“No way!” I say to no one.

A glass fishing float is in my hands, having lapped up from that mystery place of Who-Knows.

This is a rare find.

Anywhere from forty to a hundred years old, this glass ball unleashed itself from some Japanese fishing net long ago, beginning a journey that bobbed through the Pacific until rolling up on this shore. Now, held in my hands.

It’s not the first time this temple/beach has gifted me a treasured gem. This place has granted me many a precious Sunrise shell (once, three in one morning). On one October afternoon here, a hefty, golden-hued coin embossed with the goddess Lakshmi washed up at my feet. Heck, this is the beach is where I met my husband. And the same place where he, subsequently, proposed.

In each of those instances, when some offering was bestowed upon me, what was it that had positioned me in that very place and time?

It was the whispers.

I’d been following a nudge. A quiet, but clear suggestion.

I would venture to say that these directives are possibly more reliable than a GPS. Certainly, more fun.

A Hand In

Over the weekend, WordPress offers up a Daily Prompt urging photographers to post pictures of hands. I remember one I took a few years ago of my father’s hands wrapping wire near the tailgate of his work truck.

It’s the weekend and I’m lazy, so I only imagine posting the photo, never actually doing it. In the meantime, we visit Mary’s garden and she gifts me three big dahlia’s, wet with May rain.

This morning, I’m still thinking about my dad’s hands. The ones that are weathered from the sun, and always bearing some nick or scratch. They look tough but their skin is thin.

There’s something about the juxtaposition of hearty hands wrapping sharp wire and delicate blooms dripping with rain water. I want to put these images together. So different, yet, somehow connected.

I know Mary’s got working hands, callouses and dirt under the nails. But those hands cultivated these bursts of color blooming with petals, silky soft.

My father’s hands tighten barbed wire on splintered fence posts in 105 degree sun. But they also hold pen to paper, scrawling poetry of snow melt over granite and lush green pastures.

Here’s to what we have a hand in.

End of the Rainbow

This man is my gold…

The Offing

Friends bring home pictures from Sicily. Photos of verdant rock gardens with canopied courtyards – wisteria dangling in vines of lavender lusciousness. I want to sift in the scent of those roses and orange blossoms. Sit and stare at clouds.

But Jeb has long division and we’re tense in homework land at our kitchen table. The sun is setting outside our hot house. I don’t know what to cook for dinner. Empty boxes are stacked in the corner, because we’re moving soon. Tomorrow, the garage sale.

We volunteered to sell our neighbor’s things, too, and the Bohemian is sorting through their mix. In the piles, an old, plastic rice cooker and a porcelain harlequin mask, all covered in a film of time and dust and cat dander.

By dark, Jeb and I have just barely made it through word problems. I’ll admit it. Afterwards, I poured myself a cocktail. Scrounged up ingredients from a house of non-drinkers. Found the hand-me down bottle of Tanqueray. Squeezed a lime, got some ice, and mixed in a squirt of organic agave syrup.

We join the Bohemian in the garage, where he mills about in dust bunnies and piles of knick-knacks, grasping a roll of masking tape and pricing everything so low, we might as well give it away. Which is what we want to do anyway.

“Just move it out, right? We don’t want to have to haul this…Three dollars, right Jess?”

He’s tagging a pretty nice bamboo chair. It’s not ours. Our neighbors don’t want it, and it has to get trucked to the second-hand store if it doesn’t sell.

“Yeah, okay. I guess that’s fine. Someone will be thrilled.”

How the value of things can change. That chair was once someone’s brand new purchase, brought home lovingly and placed in some special nook. Now it’s covered in animal hair beneath a dusty socket set and a book titled “Why Cats Paint.”

Even Jeb gets exhausted in the stuff. He’s sorted his books and board games until he’s tapped. “Mom, it’s a school night…”

This morning, I wake to my writing hour – 4am – for the first time in a week. It feels welcome but vacant.

I let myself pause on words and play with colored pencils instead, trying to conjure some semblance of creativity. An abstract design of black squares push down on flowing lines of soft greens and blues. This is my dichotomous world.

I guess it all exists. Right angles and curves. Darks and lights. Purchases and give-aways.

We breathe somewhere at the center of these intersections, and I’m constantly trying to reconcile a balance.

As of late, the practical dark lines have been weighing heavier.

Oh, but I long for Italy.

courtesy of Putneypics

Olfactory Express

You’ve only got two hours if you want to make it to the Kilauea post office on a Saturday. Weekend hours got cut back a couple of years ago. I’m in line clutching my parcel to be mailed.

The contents are a project, which for now, shall remain nameless. It’s a culmination of something I’ve been thinking about for eighteen months and working on, diligently, for five.

This labor of love is two inches thick, heavy with content, and shipping priority, delivery confirmation requested.

As I wait in line for my turn at the counter, a woman in her seventies steps inside the door carrying a tray of gardenias.

“Good morning, would you like one?” she says to each of the handful of women that stand there. One by one, we beam smiles, choose a bloom and inhale happily.

I pick one that’s still budding but exuding a fragrance all the same. “Thank you.”

She leaves the final selection for our local postal worker who pauses at the package scale, takes a flower and says “Oh, my favorite!”

And with her delivery complete, the woman bearing blossoms leaves with an “aloha,” and then, it’s my turn to mail my hefty parcel.

I’ll take the gardenia gift as a good omen. Send my project to Chicago wafting on the perfume of Kauai backyard flower bushes.

It’s the way we ship here on the Garden Isle.