Monkey and Me

Thinking can be dangerous.

This has been our second week of project free living. It has been lovely. A lot of time to talk, to read, to take Bodhi out to play. The weather has been beautiful, rainy nights that keep the catchment full and sunny days that keep us going swimming----because ya gotta be outside when the sun is shinning.

We've been able to have a lot of much needed quiet time---and there in lies the danger. When you are busy with "to do's" it is much easier to keep a leash on your monkey mind. Andrew took Bodhi to school this morning, so I was alone as I finished the morning chores. I did the dishes and a little fuzz control. I am happy to report that I have surrendered to the fact that mold is all around and that I have to just work with it. The toys are holding up, just a few had mold spots, which I wiped off with alcohol and our dinning room table will be refinished soon--that is the best I can do. I have learned acceptance about the mold and acceptance is always a good lesson.

It was beautifully quiet and peaceful as I swept, yet I was nervous. I was having an, "Oh shit, what have we done?" moment---on a small, slightly unconscious scale. I have been having these thoughts the past few days---my monkey has apparently gnawed through her leash in search of bananas.

"What have we done?", my mind whispers. "Why did you give up the security and certainty that you had going for you on O'ahu?" "Why did you buy the land?" "What would your life be like now if you hadn't spent Lois' gift on the land?" My mind wanders, imagines scenarios in which we stayed on O'ahu, kept Andrew's job and Lois' money or moved to Portland or Europe. The monkey is bouncing around it's cage in my head screeching---"what if you didn't make the best choice with this move????"

And then I think about Andrew. My husband has fingerprints!!!! His eczema is almost gone. I can't stress to you how major this is. He has been in some level of pain for years. His hands would get so bad that they would crack open and bleed. And then there was his hacking cough and slight high blood pressure. All from stress. And ALL gone! I am also feeling physically better too. I am losing weight, like Andrew, and on the whole feeling much more at peace. I think about the fact that Andrew and I get to spend every day together. I think about how we are putting down roots and creating something magical for Bodhi.

I also think about the flow. Andrew and I have been committed, for some time now, to paying attention to and going with what seems to be flowing the easiest in our lives. The land purchase came about easily and effortlessly and so has the move over. We were blessed by Lois with the money, then blessed by Jim with the land, then blessed by Karen with a place to stay while we got settled, and then blessed by Jim again with the cabin. Abundant flow.

Now we are blessed by the time to be open and to allow our next moves to reveal themselves.

This is where my monkey sometimes gets loose. I am pretty good at keeping her caged, but clearly I still have fears. We have a few months left until we absolutely need to have some income flow. The clarity is coming, as to what we want to do to create income, and that is good. Now I just need to continue having the faith we need to resist swimming upstream. I know my job is to decide what I want and it is the universe's job to figure out the how. I just need to get out of the way. I need to breathe through any fear I may have, continue to hold good emotional vibrations and be willing to float. Float with the currents.

I will tell my monkey that there is no lack of abundance. She can have all the bananas she wants and I will build her a comfortable boat so that she can float with me on the peaceful and supportive currents of the universe.

Mister Dog

We've had this scraggly stray dog coming to visit us at the cabin. We've named him Mister Dog, a character in one of Bodhi's books. In the book, Mister Dog is a dog that doesn't belong to anyone, he belongs to himself. I'm not even sure if this stray that comes around to our place is a male or female, but for the sake of simplicity I will refer to it as a male. He lives somewhere in the woods and survives on whatever he can catch. He's light brown, shaggy, and his hair always looks matted down from all the rain and mud he has to endure outdoors.

Kim and I have had Lieutenant Dunbar from "Dances with Wolves" moments, enthusiastically waving our hands in the air trying to get Mister Dog to come closer to eat some of our leftovers. He's been very reluctant about getting near us. He's become this phantom that we catch out of the corner of our eyes and when we turn to get a better look, he scurries off into the woods. I'm thinking that life must be uncertain for Mister Dog. Most of the time I see him his tail is down between his legs. One time, however, I saw him at a distance, he pounced on something in the grass, ate whatever he caught, his tail raised up in a brief joyful wag and then it went down between his legs again as he disappeared into the trees.

In the book we are reading, "One Year Off", the writer, Daniel Cohen, makes the statement that people crave certainty. He goes on to write that certainty is an ephemeral illusion and that we cling on to routines to give us a greater sense of security about life. He cites a friend whose life took an unexpected tragic turn and uses that examples as one of the reasons he was willing to sell off everything and take his family on an around the world adventure. He believed that following routines makes it possible to put your life on auto-pilot. His hope with the trip was to disrupt his families patterns so thoroughly that they would be receptive to new options and possibilities.

I partially agree with Cohen. I do believe that we cannot, from our earthbound perspective, get a full picture of what's ahead and that some of the things we grasp onto our truly ephemeral. And I also agree that it is often good to shake up routines to gain a fresh perspective. I do, however, believe that we can balance the uncertainty question with a large dose of faith that we are attracting into our lives whatever our inner consciousness is putting out there. What are we going to choose to send out?

I've heard it described as a car ride on a dark road. You've set a course for where you want to go and you begin the drive. On the darkened road your headlights give you only a few feet of visibility. And yet you keep driving on with the faith that you are moving to where you want to be, knowing that you will eventually make it.

How comfortable can we be with uncertainty? The answer to that question is another question, how willing are we to leap with our arms wide open knowing the net will appear?

Kim and I have been spending a lot of time pondering the security and certainty questions. It's interesting how elusive the questions can be. As I write this post, I am aware that this may be one entry that I have struggled through the most. Throughout the writing of it I was really uncertain of what I was really trying to say. Perhaps it's because I was trying to intellectualize an idea rather than simply surrender into it. It's like Kim mentioned in her recent post, our job is to get clear on the "what" and allow the Universe to take care of the "how". As humans we want to get involved in the specific details of how something will be accomplished. We are action creatures that want to do something to get something done. All the Universe really wants us to do is to surrender and allow. But that takes faith and a willingness to let go.

What I am realizing is that there is certainty as long as you allow it into your life. There is certainty in knowing that what I am putting out from my inner consciousness is what I will be out picturing in my physical world. This has been proven to Kim and I time and time again. I must admit, that when I let go of my thoughts, I am enjoying the free fall.

For now Mister Dog will remain a shadow like figure that darts in and out of our living space. He is uncertain of us. We'll dance around this relationship and keep throwing out scraps for him to take if he wants. And of course, trust that he is living his life and we are living ours, following faithfully what is true for each of us.

Midlife

Is this move to the woods my midlife crisis?

I was pondering this question on an early ice run from the Hara Store in Kurtistown. The ice run was a rookie mistake on our part. We woke up Sunday morning and the ice in the cooler had melted away and the contents were starting to get warm. Now we know for sure, four blocks of ice will last seven days in our cooler. As far as the midlife question, I wasn't feeling down about it as my mind worked over it. Rather, it was more of a pleasant day dream. Kim and I have been reading a book titled, "A Year Off" together. Whenever we have a spare moment, Kim has been reading aloud from this book. It's so much better than watching TV. The book is about a guy, who shortly after his 40th birthday decides to sell his business, house, cars, and most of his possessions and take his family(three kids and a wife) on an around the world trip for a year. It is an entertaining and inspiring read. One of the thoughts the writer contemplates is whether or not this trip is his midlife crisis.

So as I drove up the rugged road towards the land my mind wandered over this thought. The idea of a midlife crisis evokes a lot of negative connotations in our society. We get a picture of a man looking back on his past and regretting some of the decisions in his life, feeling the weight of his responsibilities, and looking ahead to a bleak tomorrow. In a spur of the moment decision he drops everything, buys the sports convertible, and runs off with someone 20 years younger. That's of course one scenario, but it doesn't have to be the only scenario. Perhaps, the midlife crisis needs to be reframed to being the midlife awakening. It's the realization that some things are not working and the opportunity to move in a different way.

I wonder if the the spiritual itch that inspired Siddhartha Gotama to seek enlightenment was actually a midlife crisis. He dropped everything, including his wife and child, to seek out something better for himself. Wow! What kind of guy would do that? No disrespect to Buddhists everywhere, but he took the easy way out. Try finding enlightenment with a toddler hanging around, that's the true test of how much calm and peace one can maintain. Point in case, Halloween. The process of finding a costume for a little one can be like being pulled through the stages of death and rebirth over and over again. First, Bodhi wanted to be a bus driver for Halloween. So we set out to find some kind of uniform to meet this desire. Bodhi is very specific about what a bus drive wears. "Daddy, a bus driver wears a blue coat, blue pants, white shirt, blue tie and a hat." We scour the thrift stores and the mall to find these items. No luck until we finally go to Macy's and find a little boy's suit. The only problem, the suit has pin stripes and of course in Bodhi's mind a bus driver doesn't wear a pin striped suit.

Kim and I come up with a plan to sell the idea of him being a train engineer instead. This would be easy we thought, he loves trains. How hard would it be to find overalls, a red bandana, and a conductors hat? First stumbling block with this one was that Bodhi wouldn't have any of it. He was firm that a bus driver was what he wanted to be. It took us about two weeks of marketing the idea for him to buy into it. He finally did. The hat was easy. We bought one for him on our trek to the train museum in Laupahoehoe. Overalls were another story. You would think with the amount of ag land on this island, children's overalls would be standard inventory at most clothing stores. None to be found until we finally went to Macy's again and found a pair that was sized for a 24 month old that actually fit Bodhi. After all of this effort, we were standing in Macy's, Bodhi has the overalls on and is looking awfully cute, he looks at me and says,"Daddy, I want to be a violin player, like in the symphony." Needless to say I wanted to scream. Kim came by just before my synapses were about to burst and did a 15 minute convincing session to reassure Bodhi that he wants to be a train engineer.

As I paid for the overalls, Bodhi says to me,"Okay daddy, I need a red kerchief." I ask the Macy's clerk for bandanas. None. I go to Sears, none. I go to five other stores, none. The last store I go to tells me to go to Hot Topic. Hot Topic is a Goth store in the mall. We go in and the store is filled with teenagers looking for costumes of the sexy or zombie variety. I ask the heavily powdered clerk all clad in black, including nails and lipstick, if she had red bandanas. She smiles and says sure. I am relieved, the search is over. She takes me to the back of the shop and points to a display of bandanas. My eyes immediately pinpoint red and I grab it off the rack. To my dismay, the black print on the bandana is of all things skulls. I debate for a second on whether or not to get it. Bodhi is getting heavy in my arms, the store is crowded, and he keeps repeating I need a red bandana. It clicks in pretty quickly in my mind that I don't want my son being the engineer on Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train", so I put the grimacing skulls back and commit to searching on.

It's interesting how when you are focused on something you become hyper aware of it. I remember when I was a Class Advisor at Kamehameha Schools I needed to get red material and red yarn for the class. When the yarn I ordered arrived I began to worry that the red material I ordered wouldn't match the yarn. I became obsessed with red. I began to be aware of it everywhere; stop signs, brake lights, stop lights, red cars, red doors, red print on signs all popped out at me. I was so aware of red that I gave myself a case of pink eye and my eyes actually turned red, I was literally seeing red. As I was leaving the mall, I was hyper aware of bandanas. I saw them everywhere on people's heads. I actually saw a woman walking into the mall with red bandana that looked perfect for Bodhi but as I got closer I saw that the print on the material was hundreds of tiny little marijuana leaves. The search went on.

When we got to the car, as if by magic, Kim's phone rang and it was Karen. We told her what we were up to and she tells us, "I have a red bandana." It was as if a chorus of angels sang out in my head, the search was over.

As life moves on we find ourselves with a tremendous amount of responsibilities. It's very tempting to think about leaving it all behind, jumping behind the wheel of a classy roadster, cranking up some Bossa Nova music on the stereo, and zooming down the highway. But we don't because we know all of these experiences bring us closer to the precipice of enlightenment, and the joy of the journey is so much fun. So instead of a midlife crisis, I will call this my midlife awakening.

As I made my way up the bumpy road from the ice run. A neighbor about my age was driving down toward me. His Jeep was loaded with with his family on this early morning. They looked like they were laughing with each other and having a good time. As we passed each other we greeted one another with the very local loose grip shaka sign and the short upward head flick. At that moment I felt like we were both medieval knights, recognizing each other and acknowledging our nobility with a salute as we journeyed on to slay the next dragon.

Getting Out of the Box

I had some time to myself on the land today. Kim and our friend Carrie went to Hilo Town to have a girls' day. I was going to drive into Hilo today as well to have some time to read and write at a cafe. But after I dropped Bodhi off at school and was driving away, I thought it might be nicer to get some things done on the land.

When I got back, the sun was out and it seemed like the perfect day to take out the weed whip, a golf club shaped tool that I use to cut the grass around the cabin. I basically get up to the tall grass and take a swing and cut it down. I decided to do the 1/4 mile drive way that stretches from the cabin to the gate. The grass has been growing tall right up the middle of the drive where our cars' tires don't smash it all down.

About 15 minutes into the job I start to break a sweat and get into a rhythm with the swings. The sun felt good on my head and on my shoulders and I'm trekking right along. At about half an hour into the job, I turn around and see that I'm only about 50 yards from where I started. "Wow! This is going to be a long job." I carried on for about another ten minutes before I start wondering if the weed eater back at the cabin has any gas in it. That thought passes and I enjoy the feeling of letting my thoughts wander from one place to another. It felt great to be out there in the sun and working with no sense of a deadline. I swung at my own pace, watching the tall grass fall away.

I've really appreciated living at this pace. We're usually in bed by 8:00 p.m. everyday. There is usually some kind of physical work that needs to get done daily that keeps our bodies active. Since it is a little bit of a doing to get off the land, we eat out far less than we used to in Honolulu. Our meals have become simpler, but still very delicious and nutritious.

The physical transformation has become obvious. I've lost about 15 lbs. I feel far more rested. Since I don't have to put up appearances at any kind of job, my goatee has gotten long and scraggly, and I like it. One of the most marked physical transformations for me has been the clearing of the eczema I would get on my right hand. I've had really bad eczema on my right hand for over 16 years. The skin on my hand would be extremely dry, cracked and sometimes swollen. It would get especially bad if there was a lot of stress in my life. And now it is pretty much completely cleared up. I can actually see finger prints on my hand where there was only dry cracked skin before. Yes, life is a little bit less stressful here on the Big Island, but I think the clearing of the eczema is more about Kim and I making the leaps to live a more genuine and authentic life.

It's interesting that the eczema appeared almost immediately after I finished college. I think somewhere in my consciousness, the end of college marked the end of play time. It was time for me to be an adult. And under my belief systems at that time that meant getting serious about things and getting a job. It was about getting my proverbial S-H-I-T together. So I made decisions in my life that began to hedge me into a box that seemed to be "safe" and "sensible". My authentic self knew it, and was screaming out through the eczema in my hand.

Now I must give Kim and I credit for making some bold moves over the years as well. We got married by today's standards at a fairly young age. I was 24 and she was 22. When I told my mom the news about our marriage the first thing out of her mouth was a piercing, "WHAT?!" that shot through the house and hit Kim waiting in the living room. The next thing out of her mouth was a hissed,"Is she pregnant? You're too young." Everyone thought we were too young, but we did it anyway and we're so grateful we did. We've also lived and worked overseas and decided, when it was time to have a child, to have a home birth.

So we have made some bold moves over the years but, besides the decision to have Bodhi this move to the land has perhaps been the boldest to date. I am reassured, however, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, "Whatever you do, or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."

On my 40th birthday last month, we were driving into Hilo Town from being on the land all day. On the opposite side of the highway a man in his 60s was zooming by us on his Harley Davidson chopper. His long grey hair streaked behind him as the wind blew across his face. At that moment, that man epitomized fun to me. I looked at Kim and I said, "That's what the next part of my life is going to be about. Having fun." I've spent too many years of my life living in boxes and making compromises because I was afraid. It's time to be me.

By the way, I didn't finish cutting the grass. It got too hot and I got too hungry. The grass will be there tomorrow.

Humanure 101

Sawdust toilet and sawdust bucket under cover.

Step 1: Do your business in toilet on the right.

Step 2: Scoop sawdust from bucket on left.

Step 3: Pour sawdust on your deposits, making sure to cover them with a nice thick layer of sawdust.

Step 4: Spray layer of sawdust with water in order to lock in odors. Close toilet---dump out

contents in to compost bin when the sawdust seems high enough that it may touch your butt the next time you sit down!

Step 1: Bring full buckets o'honey, kitchen compost pail and soap to bin.

Step 2: Get straw to cover compost pile deposits.

Step 3: Open and dump all wonderfully non-smelly buckets of honey and kitchen waste in to middle of compost bin.

Step 4: Rinse all buckets with soap. Pour soapy sawdust water in to compost bin as well.

Step 5: All contents in bin including blackwater. Cover with a thick layer of straw and PAU!

It has been a truly amazing experience to be using this waste management system. It's easy. It's sanitary. And it's positively amazing that when you open the buckets to dump---they DO NOT smell--nor does the compost bin! You can literally stick your head in the middle of the compost bin and take a BIG whiff, all you smell is dirt and straw! Cool!

Check out the book: The Humanure Handbook, by Joseph Jenkins

www.josephjenkins.com

Just BE

It's a groovy kind of feeling, sitting in--the in between space.

The projects for operation "settle cabin" are complete.  Andrew and I can sit and be.  We are in that space where allowing and creation occurs.  It is exciting and a little scary.

Andrew left a little while ago to take Bodhi to school.  It had been rough to get Bodhi to go to sleep last night.  Andrew eventually had to lay down the consequence of taking all Bodhi's train playing away for today.  Not fun, but, unfortunately that seems to be the only thing that works as a leverage with the little bugger lately.  He is SO smart.  And he is working it!  Pushing those boundaries where ever he finds them.

This past Sunday we stopped at our local 7-11 for a bathroom break at the beginning of an hours long drive.  There were 3 toddlers under the age of 4 in the pick-up truck parked next to us.  The father had left them in the two door truck alone, without car seats, to go in the store.  We watched as the littlest got out and swaggered over in his diaper to the store doors.  The dad, apparently upset that the other two boys weren't watching their brother, raced out and proceeded, with intense anger, to slap each child quite hard.  The look on their faces as each got hit, repeatedly, was excruciating to witness.  Andrew and I drove away a bit shook up.  It got us talking later---we understand the desire to wallop our little one---boy do we feel it sometimes, but to actually see someone do it......makes it PROFOUNDLY clear  that that is something we would never want to really do!

The birds are singing happily, the dragonflies are fluttering about and the occasional confused coqui frog gives his little mating chirp--not realizing the moon is long gone.  It rained just enough last night to keep the catchment tank full, I completed my morning cleaning routine--of sweeping and cleaning up after breakfast and all that is left of my chores today is to put away all the wonderfully clean laundry that I did yesterday at my friend Carrie's house.

It is such a nice arrangement.  I bring our laundry to Carrie's every week and a half after I have dropped Bodhi at school.  We sit and talk, catch up on much needed girl time and have lunch.  I can get 4-5 loads of laundry done and folded before I have to leave to pick Bodhi up at 2:30pm.  On laundry days, Andrew will take our garbage to the dump in Hilo, do some errands and have some Starbuck's time for himself.   Lovely.

Today is the first day that is truly without agenda.  An in between space.  A time of reflection, of relaxation, of surrender and rest.  I know the "honey buckets" need to be composted today---but after that Andrew and I can just BE!

We are ready for more clarity.  Ready to get clear on the next steps.  Thanks for coming along on the journey.

The Work

Projects have slowed up a bit at the cabin.  We now have some time to contemplate our next moves.  We really are grateful that we have the luxury of time and the various experiences we've had since coming to the land to help us gain clarity on what we really want.  We'll spend the next month getting clear on how we want to flow income into our lives and how we'll approach our first building project on our land.

One of the last big projects we had was to lay out pea gravel around the entrance gate to the land.  The area was getting incredibly muddy with all the rain we've been having.  The mud wouldn't drain away and so it was getting that stinky stagnant mud smell.  Whenever we would pull up to the gate a huge mud puddle would be waiting for us to step in and trek that foul odor into our car.  It wasn't pleasant.  Jim had a huge pile of pea gravel on the land for us to use.  So when the right sunny day arrived, Kim and I decided it was time to cover up the bog.

We drove Blixie, our red wagon, to the gravel pile with two shovels, a rake and the enthusiasm to get the job done with as much fun as we could.  It took us eight car loads to get enough gravel to cover the area.    It was great.  The sun blazed down on us, we broke a tremendous sweat and we got to talk about stuff.  What a great way to spend the morning.  It was also just a fantastic work out.  We felt that great burning sensation in our arms, shoulders, and back muscles.  The twisting motion we needed to do to get the gravel from the pile into the car and then the from the car to the muddy bog added in a great ab workout.  We laughed at each other as we wondered whether real farmers think that their daily chores offer them a great ab workout.  Sometimes we feel like we are just playing at being farmers, carpenters, plumbers and electricians.  Perhaps we are just playing, but isn't it great to translate one's daily work to play.

We've had such a variety of work since coming to the land.  It's been everything from the mundane job of scrubbing mold off toys to the hair raising experience of being in the middle of a ladder climb and unable to step forward.   A few weeks back, we were putting up blinds on the upstairs lanai area to keep rain from coming onto the furniture.  We had the 24' ladder propped up against the house and I had geared myself up mentally for the climb.  I used to pride myself on being someone who was unafraid of heights and even death.  I would intellectually tell myself that if it was my time to go, I was ready to go.  This intellectual mantra I would tell myself was quickly dispelled a few years ago when we had a slight earthquake here in Hawai‘i.  I was laying on the sofa in our Honolulu living room when I heard the pre-earthquake sound of a jet stream and then the house started to shake like crazy.  I leapt off the sofa in a panic and my first thought was, "Oh my God!  The North Koreans are attacking!  We're all going to die."  There is sometimes a gap between what you tell yourself intellectually and what you actually put into practice.  I got some vindication from this about a year later when I saw the Ram Dass documentary, "Fierce Grace."  Dass had a stroke a few years back.  As he lay on the ground after the attack, Dass was startled that he did not have one holy, profound or spiritual thought.  He had spent decades being the guru to thousands and yet at this crossroad moment there was no thought of enlightenment.  It helped Dass reevaluate his teaching and his place on this planet.

And so there I was in the middle of this 24' ladder and it began bouncing quite a bit.  Sweat began stinging my eyes as it began to pour from my head.  I am generally unafraid of heights, but at that moment I was paralyzed.  In college, I had jumped out of an airplane from a mile above the earth.  That was pretty simple.  I leaned out of the plane and had the jump master, attached to me, do all the work.  I had, at that time, the benefit of an expert with me to make sure all the equipment was sound.  But now, halfway up the ladder, I was relying on my own judgement as to whether or not the top and bottom of the ladder were firmly placed.  Going up meant climbing into the unknown.  Going down meant facing the little demons in my head that would whisper, "coward" incessantly in my psyche.

Kim talked me through the process a bit and suggested that I take a break and come down from the ladder.  I wrestled with my demons for a little while and found the courage to step down from the ladder.  We actually found a better and safer way to put up the blinds that did not require us to use the ladder at all.  My ego was a little bruised from the climb down, but I'm working on not listening to him anyway.

Who are we when we are faced with those imminently dangerous moments?  Where do we find the strength to not run for cover?  It makes me think about the young men that crossed the border into Canada during the Vietnam War.  Was it more courageous of them to leave everything familiar with no thought of returning rather than follow the herd into the fire?

Kim and I have some work to do in the next few months.  It will be the process of getting as clear as we possibly can about what we want to create in our lives.  I know that this kind of work is all intertwined with the physical labor we've been doing, but it will be refreshing to focus primarily on the emotional and spiritual work.  And like the physical labor, if we approach it with an attitude of fun and courage, it will be great.      

Adaptation

There was a moment this morning that I wanted to pour concrete over the entire planet and yell at the top of my lungs, "I hate nature!"  I know it's one of those things that's not proper to say out loud.  It reminded me of when I was doing my ten day silent Vipassana Meditation retreat.  It was only one hour into the first day of meditation when I had the deep desire to stand up in the middle of the meditation hall that was full of ernest meditators and cry out, "OK!  I'm done!  Anybody want to go for some beer and ribs?"

How can you contend with billions of mold spores?  I came back to the land after dropping Bodhi off at school to find Kim looking very frustrated.  When I was out, she was cleaning up things trying to get things in order so we could have a relaxing day.  Today was going to be a day that we could just lounge around, read books and work on the computer.  We haven't had that kind of day in a long time.  Yesterday, we finished the last major project for the cabin, which was to put in the floor for the bathroom.  We were really looking forward to the break.  While she was cleaning up, she discovered mold had carpeted most of Bodhi's wooden toys.  All of these wonderful toys we bought for him had a fuzzy grey covering.  It was disheartening.  We bought these toys in a conscious effort to have more healthy toys for Bodhi and yet in this environment the mold just loves the porous untreated wood.

I wanted to chop down every tree that acts as a hiding place for mold spores or gnats or flies.  I wanted to dump concrete on every puddle that acts as a breeding ground for the mosquitos that attack Bodhi and make him look like he has the pox.  But what we did instead was to put all his infected toys in a plastic container and make plans to clean them up tomorrow.  We decided that the sun was too shiny today and there was other things we wanted to do with our time.

We do realize the mold is still there and it has provided us with the gift of good dialogue.  Kim and I got talking about mold, what it means to us, and why are we having it in our lives.  The talk about mold got us talking about how we feel about being on the land and some of the insecurities we feel about what we are doing.  It was a really good conversation that brought light to our dark places.  All of these situations we are going through are truly getting us clearer on what we want.  I am grateful for them.  It was interesting when Kim was looking up information on clearing mold, it seems that mold thrives in dark places much like how our shhtuff likes to hide out in the dark places of our psyche.  Shine the light in and the mold goes away.  Clear the clutter and the mold won't have a place to hide.  It was quite profound.

Kim had a good point about coming to a new environment.  She said that when we bring all of our old stuff to our new environment, there is going to be a process of seeing what works and what doesn't work in the new place.  If it works, great, keep it.  If it doesn't work, then adapt it to work or get rid of it.  It's a process of adaptation we are going through right now and we are seeing what works and what doesn't work.  We feel pretty confident that we will get Bodhi's toys cleaned up and more resilient to the wet East Hawai‘i weather.

After we packed the toy's into the plastic bins, we needed to recover from feeling like we'd been trounced on by nature.  We went upstairs and sprawled out on our bed.  The room we sleep in has windows all around.  We were surrounded by towering ‘ohia lehua trees and the sun was blazing, drying everything out.  We played the "Glad Game" to raise our spirits.  The "Glad Game" is a great way to raise your vibrations.  It's simply going through a list of what we are glad about at that moment.  We came up with so many things, the sun, the trees, the breeze, a healthy marriage, a happy and intelligent son, and that we live in this beautiful place for free.  I joked that it would be even better to live in a more modern place with maid and nanny services for free.  I know it may seem a little pollyanna to play the game, but if it works whose to dispute it.  While we were lying there, one thing that I was truly glad about was that I was lying next to my wife at 10:30 in the morning on a weekday and enjoying the feeling of being free.

One of the hallmarks of any species in nature is its ability to adapt.  Kim and I are adapting.  We are learning what works, releasing what doesn't and being willing to grow.

Connections

It's so nice to go to my small Kurtistown Post Office, have Alton, the Post Master, give me a smile, go to the back and get my mail without even asking my name.  There is a one year wait on PO Boxes in Kurtistown and so our mail gets sent to General Delivery.  It basically means that I have to check the mail during regular business hours, 9:00am to 4:00pm M-F and 9:00am to 12:00 noon on Saturday.  I was told that I could apply for a PO Box in the next town over, but I actually kind of like going in and having contact with the postal people.  I also like our mailing address--General Delivery, Kurtistown HI 96760---so simple.

As most of the people who know me will acknowledge, I am not a very sociable person.  I really much prefer to be alone and to be quiet.  So it is interesting to me that I actually like the kind of social relations that develop from living in a small rural area.  I like going to Abundant Life Health Food Store and the clerks recognize me.  They ask about Kim and Bodhi and how things are going out on the land.  The wait staff at most of the restaurants we go to all greet us with a real genuine feeling of good to see you again and already have a sense of how and what we will order.

When we lived in Honolulu there was a certain anonymity that I enjoyed as well.  Whenever Kim and I would go to the mall, I would marvel at how many people were there and that I did not recognize one face.  We lived in the same place for seven years and did not really know our neighbors.  We would drive home, park the car in the garage and do our own thing.  Our neighbors' homes were only about 25 yards away from us and yet we were strangers.  Our social responsibility surrounded around our work community and other organizations we belonged to.  I truly appreciated those relationships.  They helped create a basic feeling of being connected.  As much of a hermit as I claim to be, I do really need social connections with other people.

Now, out on the land, our nearest neighbor is about a mile away.  I picked him and his wife up from the airport the other day and stayed at their place for a bit to chat.  I think there is an understanding that we live in a remote area and need to stay connected.   We are to each other the police department, fire department, ambulance service, taxi service and general store.  We hardly see our neighbors out here like we would see our neighbors in Honolulu, but we know they are there and they know we are here and that is reassuring.


The other day, I was driving to pick Bodhi up from school.  It was a little overcast and some light sprinkles were coming down on the front windshield.  I had the wipers set on interval and they cleared the rain at a regular pace.  I came to an intersection where I needed to make a right turn.  To my right, at the other stop of the intersection was a red truck needing to make a left turn.  Just as I was about to make the right turn, my wipers swept the window so that I could clearly see the driver of the truck.  He was a man in his late fifties and his mouth was moving to the same song on the radio that I was singing in my car.  We caught eyes as we both sang, "OOOOHHH Baby I love your way!  Everyday."  We smiled at each other as I made my right turn and he made his left.

Peter Frampton is alive and well, and so are human connections.

Sunshine

The solar panels have been up for about a week now.  We have four panels that we bought from Costco and they are hooked into a 12 volt battery.  I don't fully understand the mechanics of how it produces electricity, but it has brought some of the modern world on to the land.  Basically, the panels are out in the sun all day and charge up the battery.  We can then run things off the battery.  It's not a huge system.  It runs about 60 watts of power.  It is more than enough to charge up the cell phones, the laptop, the rechargeable lanterns, and our Sonic Care toothbrushes.  We have named her Sunshine.  I sometimes stand in the lawn and stare at her modern lines against the wild grasses and the rustic cabin.  She's a thing of beauty.  One of the best things about her is that she is very, very, very quiet.  I think I am in love.

We don't usually name our appliances.  We have, however, named all of our cars.  The Volvo SUV is  Chloe.  Our Volvo wagon is Blix.  The Honda Odyssey Van we had in Honolulu was named Daisy.  Our Jeep Cherokee before Daisy was Sophia.  Before Sophia was Mindy another wagon.  We had a white Dodge named Speed Racer.  And our very first new car together was a red Honda Civic named Elmo.  Even Bodhi likes to get into naming his things.  His "Flintstone" style car is named Chloe-Eva after our Volvo and his friend in Honolulu.  His jogging stroller is named Bob, because that's the way it came from the factory.  The Maclaren stroller is named Sham-Sham after the cat at the Krishna Temple in Honolulu.  And of course, all of his trains have names.

Why do we do this?  Why do we name these impermanent things?  On one level, it's just fun.  On another level,  the practice helps us to embrace these items like members of our family and as such we tend to take better care of them.  I like the first reason best.  Sometimes it's just fun to come up with names for our stuff.

It took Kim and I a while to come up with the name Chloe for the SUV.  We actually started looking at baby name books to come up with just the right name.  We felt a twinge of sadness the day we watched Daisy drive away with her new family in Honolulu.  We knew the van wouldn't be able to handle the roads leading to our land.  We were really happy, though, with the family that took in Daisy.  They had three little kids and one more coming with only a small grey sedan.  They needed a van and we needed an SUV.  Chloe has provided us with a sense of safety, security and a little bit of luxury as we drive the rugged Puna roads.

I know all of this stuff is just stuff and it might be better to get a dog and name it instead.  But being out on the land has certainly given me the contrast I need, to know what kinds of things I am willing to allow and embrace in my life.  When we first got out on the land, I had thoughts of not having any modern conveniences at all.  But, by my own admission, the utility sink, the solar panels, the rechargeable lanterns, the laptop, and even the Sonic Care toothbrushes have certainly eased our lives.  I'm certainly not promoting the idea of mindless attachment to material things.  Rather, I am willing to allow these items in, embrace them while they are with us, and gratefully let them go when they no longer serve our needs.

Sunshine and the utility sink (we need to come up with a name) also show me all the abundance around me. The rain falls freely from the sky, fills the tank and comes flowing through the pipes for our use.  Sunshine soaks up the day's sun and gives electricity.  Rain or shine we are being provided for.

It's all good.

Plumbing 101

I'm sitting here waiting for the PVC glue to dry on some pipes we put together for the utility sink.  The sun came out to visit briefly today.  We've had a lot of rain in the past week.  It was a real feeling of appreciation when the sun was out and a cool dry breeze blew across the deck as we ate lunch.  It's a little overcast again.  I don't mind, it really makes me enjoy the sun so much more.  It's like a bucket bath.  I don't mind it, but when we do get a hot shower pouring over us, it's like heaven.

 In about an hour, when the glue dries, the days of doing the dishes out on the grass with the hose will be over.  Kim was the one that suggested that we get a sink set up.  At first, I didn't think we needed it.  I was feeling alright about roughing it a bit and getting a little rained on occasionally as I cleaned up after our meals.  But Kim began calling around to the different hardware stores to see what was available and what would be the best value. Not to our surprise, Home Depot had the best deal on the sinks.  I think my reluctance to get a sink was a lot about my feeling intimidated about doing any kind of plumbing.  But the sink train was starting to chug down the track and I thought I better get on board and understand what's going on before I was left behind.

Home Depot always amazes me.  You walk in and are greeted by the smell of lumber and the towering racks of goods to make stuff.  Whenever I would go into a hardware store before,  everything I saw was just a blur to me.  I couldn't distinguish between this, that or the other on the shelves.  But, now as I walk the aisles of the stores, I can begin to pick out more detail of what I am looking at.  It's a lot like learning a language.  When Kim and I first got to Japan to teach English, all we would hear was garbled sounds coming out of the Japanese as they spoke to us.  We would nod politely at the speaker and then later turn to each other with a quizzical, "Did you get that?"  Eventually, we could make out the words and comprehend what was being said to us.  But it took a while.

Although my hardware store vocabulary is getting better, it is far, far, far from fluent.  Point in case is our excursion to get the utility sink.  We get to Home Depot and head for the section of the store with the sinks.  We see a basic utility sink and then we see an all in one box set.  With the basic sink we would have to get our our own connectors and faucet and who knew what else.  It was only $57, but my insecurities were on high alert thinking about having to walk down the long plumbing aisle looking for whatever we needed.  The all in one set was $137, but we were unsure if it was of good quality, because it was all boxed up.  We called over a clerk that was willing to open the box for us, but couldn't answer any of our plumbing questions about water pressure or help us work through our unique situation of having a 100 gallon gravity feed tank.  The clerk was nice enough to call someone over from the plumbing department to help us.

In a few minutes, Jeff, the bold legged clerk comes swaggering up the way towards us.  He made me think of what Yosemite Sam would be like if he smoked a fatty before coming to work at Home Depot.  First off he told us the all in one was rubbish.  So he hoisted the basic sink into our cart and began rambling off this garbled speech about this pipe and that connector and this kind of glue and make sure to use some teflon tape.  Kim and I looked at each other and asked with our eyes, "Did you get that?"  Kim asked Jeff something about the inflow of water in the sink.  Jeff kind of just squinted a smile, slapped me on the shoulder and said, "He knows what I'm talking about.  You guys are OK."  I just stood there in a daze not having understood a word of what was said.

"Come, follow me," Jeff commanded.  He took me down the plumbing aisle and began throwing plumbing items into our cart.  "OK five of these.  One of these.  Two of these.  Three of these.  This pipe.  And this pipe too. You'll need this glue and this glue.  You got teflon tape.  OK, you got it?"  I must have had this look of, "huh?" and it must not have registered with Jeff because he disappeared.  I must have looked desperate because Kim looked sympathetically at me and said, "We don't have to do this.  We can put all this stuff back."  "No",  I thought to myself, the train's moving full steam ahead and I will understand how to do this.  We caught up with Jeff and got him to slow down his rambling a bit and got a better sense of what needed to get done.  Kim took it for the team by asking some of the "stupid" questions to which Jeff would always end his answer with,"He knows what I'm talking about.  You guys are OK."  It was a lot like being in Japan and I would have Kim order for us at the restaurant.  My Japanese was pretty good, but it was far from perfect.  So when the Japanese would see my Asian face and hear this broken Japanese coming out of my mouth, they would have a confused look and a questioning gaze of, "Are you retarded?  Or Korean?"  They couldn't quite figure it out.  But with Kim's Caucasian face and broken Japanese it made sense them.  So it was in Home Depot,  with Kim's female face and "stupid" question it made sense to Jeff.  Thanks for taking it for the team, Kim.

 And Jeff, bless his heart, saved us about $60 with his recommendations and gave us a great plumbing lesson. We feel good that there is no longer a language barrier at the hardware stores.  We are becoming more and more fluent every time we walk in.

It took us about two hours this morning to set everything up on the sink.  The glue should be dry right now.  I'm excited to see if we created a water system the Romans would be proud of.

Surfing

My husband is a saint and I am grateful for him.  He would be the first to tell you that he is surely not a saint and that he does many unsaintly things---but to me, this evening and on many occasions, a saint he truly is.

I would highly recommend NOT moving anywhere near the time when you might be experiencing PMS.  Just not a wise idea.  Any move, as Andrew has already pointed out, is rough--then add in a toddler and a move off the grid into a cabin and you've got the makings for some real adjustment pains.  But, my sweet husband neglected to let you know about the last ingredient into our chaotic brew--my seemingly raging PMS.  Yikes.  Now, normally I am fairly even keeled all month long and am able to ride those hormonal fluctuations with relative ease.  Andrew took about the first three years of our marriage to realize that PMS is real, but now he is a PMS pro---able to surf it right along with me.  However, this past week the waves came and crashed us both on the reef.  It wasn't a beating, but there were a few good scrapes and a dinged surfboard.

We went to the `Imiloa Astronomy Center yesterday, a good place to take the little one when it is raining, and saw the planetarium show, Mauna Kea.  At one point it showed the first ancient Hawaiian explorers heading out into the vast ocean on their way to what they hoped would be new land.  Now that's balls!  It made me pause.  I feel out to sea right now and I am not really sure where we will land at this point.  But at least I know---I will land.

Maybe that should be my new mantra.  I will land!  I had a great conversation with my friend Stephanie tonight and she reminded me that settling into a new place takes time---even when you know you have a lot to be grateful for.  I want to be happy NOW!  I want to focus on the fact that I have a wonderful husband, an amazing child, great new friends and fabulous old friends, freedom to be with my husband every day, a loving school for Bodhi and a rent free place to live and learn off grid living.  I have to surrender to the chaos.  I need make peace with the mold spores, the coqui frogs, the bugs, the constant dirt under my toenails, the things that still need to be put away, the age appropriate behavior of my three year old pushing the boundaries and enjoying saying "NO".

 I need to be OK with the pace this is all taking.  A few nights ago I actually sat down and wholeheartedly wished I was Samantha from that old 60's TV show--Bewitched.  Oh to be able to wiggle my nose and have us all unpacked, completely organized and comfortable---priceless.

But no, as Andrew and I have learned, there is a proper pace to all things important.  A pace which allows you to gain clarity, to gain strength, to gain confidence and gratitude.
 
And I am grateful---for the saint that is sleeping upstairs with our son right now.  The lovely man who has had such patience with me as I struggle with myself.

I surrender.  I open up.   I let go.

The Compost Pile

Kim and I were in a pretty foul mood when we started building our structure for the compost heap.  Although we've been having some very great experiences on the land, being on a steep learning curve as we are can be fraying on one's nerves.  Add to this a three year old nipping at your heals for this that or the other.  It was the formula for a moody cloud hanging over us that morning.

After I dropped Bodhi off at school, I went back to the land to work on some of the projects Kim and I had set up for ourselves.  The first on the agenda was the compost heap.  We really needed to get this done.  Over the past week of being on the land we managed to produce four five gallon buckets of our humanure.  We are on our last bucket and the saw dust was only inches away from touching our butts every time we sat on the toilet.  The first thing Kim wanted to do was talk about what we needed to do.  I on the other hand, just wanted to do the things we needed to do.  As we sat and made a list of the things we needed to get done, it started to rain.  "Great!", I thought to myself, now we have to work in the wet weather.  As soon as we were done with the list, I began grabbing the tools and building materials we needed for the compost pile.  Kim noticed the sullen look on my face and began asking me what's wrong?  Obviously, our male and female energies were clashing.  I told her that for now I would like to just get the things we need to get done, done.

It was interesting how building this structure together performed some kind of exorcism on Kim and I.  As we put the wooden pallets together and nailed some boards up for support, we began to feel lighter and the sun actually started coming out.  After we put the final boards in and wrapped around some sun shade to keep potential critters out we felt like we had sweated out the vinegar that had been coursing through our veins that morning.  We high fived and smiled at each other knowing how silly our bickering had been earlier that morning.

We lined the bottom of the structure with some straw and got ready to dump the buckets.  You know there is the expression we use about a cocky person, "He thinks his shit doesn't stink."  Well, I can say with the utmost humility that mine doesn't.  My gag reflexes were standing at the start line waiting to hurl forward the moment I opened the lid on the first bucket.  It didn't smell like roses by any stretch of the imagination, but it didn't have any strong foul odor.  It was like a clean barn, completely tolerable.

The structure stands away from the cabin, but it is within sight.  I like looking at it.  It serves several purposes for me.  It reminds me of what a great team Kim and I are together.  It also helps me remember that sometimes it's just not worthwhile to hold on to your crap.  It's better to just release it.  We all have stuff we are working through.  I don't think we would be walking this planet if we didn't.  The question is, how willing are we to let go of all that shhhtuff?

Thich Nhat Hanh, the great Vietnamese Buddhist Monk, talks about it in terms of the connectivity of life. He encourages his students not to label things good or bad.  He suggests rather that we look at things as they are.  The rose is beautiful and smells wonderful at one moment and the next it is dying and decaying.  Yet this decaying rose can be placed back on the earth and create the fertile soil needed to produce another generation of roses.  There is no good or bad in this, it all just is.  It's the same with my literal and figurative crap.  Some day my literal shhhtuff will help the garden grow, learning from my figurative shhhtuff and releasing it will someday help me blossom as well.