6/29/2006 - This Island Life

My muscles are sore and ache from all the bamboo-massaging and painting and gardening and climbing and hiking and swimming and surfing and dancing (oooh. sooo much dancing).

Of course it is a good ache. When I walk up the side of the mountain from the new temple to the tiki house I think of little mitochondria forming to compensate for my tired muscles and my legs that are teetering on the brink of "shall we work? maybe not but probably so".

The food we eat is healthy. We like to buy fish from the hawaiian boys who go spear fishing in the waters near Paia, where it is crystal blue and we like to dive with our faces to the ocean floor, suspended in salty bliss listening to the carbonated sounds of tickled and tossed sand.

Sleep is restful and well-deserved. This is the most active I've ever been and it is exhilarating. Amanda keeps getting sick, which is perplexing but I think it is part of the purge. We have been thinking about the joyful purge a lot lately.

I have not left the land all week. We went into town a lot last week and this week has been meditative, re-acquainting ourselves with our sacred land... on the ground, in the dirt pulling weeds and planting seedlings, treating them with the loving care as if they were our children, and pulling out scaldingly pink radishes and complimenting them on how very beautiful they are.

I have started playing my guitar every day again, not because I am sad but because beautiful music comes into my head and I am almost able to create some version of it with the chords I know, which makes me happy. The blisters are reforming on my fingers. I was playing a song the other night, one that particularly feels good to my ears and Amanda said, "I really love that song. It makes me think of a lover you've lost and miss, but that everything is going to be okay."

That made me happy, because I feel that way a lot. As if I were communicating in a way that words don't do justice. Music is heavenly. Song and dance is purposeless as life.

I had fear of the bliss I was experiencing. As if it weren't holistic enough to satisfy me, but as I was writing in my journal last week, problems don't disintegrate as the plane clears the mainland and your feet touch the healing earth of this island. They are here with me and I am healing them with every meditation and every thought. Things don't stand still here, nor are they tucked away in some dark crevice, waiting to emerge as neglected monsters.

Rather, everything is illuminated. There is a light shining on them and I see them for all they are, just that, problems to be solved or seen for their awe-inspiring profundity.

Anyway back to work. Things are always in flux here, I am realizing Rafael and Kutira prefer it that way... such vivid souls come and go from the land and change it in a way only they can. Two new people this week, Sofia and Jess. In August, Daniel leaves and two boys, a Texan (expert in coi) and a Swiss boy are coming. Amanda and Willem leave at the end of August. Amanda might stay until October. Depending on how I feel about the new boys I may stay longer, perhaps until October or November. Then on further west. I would like to stay on islands for a while. I wish I could sail. Maybe I will learn.