Looking Back on My Days at Ho'omana

On the forested slopes of Haleakala, the East Maui Volcano, Ho'omana Spa Maui opens its doors to spa-goers and massage-enthusiasts from around the world, holding space for profound healing and deep learning. For seven months, I lived and worked on this two-acre retreat, amongst native Hawaiian plants and loving people dedicated to a noble cause: to share ancient Hawaiian healing concepts with visitors, welcome them like family, and give light through the transformational art-form of lomi lomi massage.

My roles here were plentiful and constantly evolving: I greeted guests in the spa, promoted Jeana Iwalani Naluai's lomi lomi trainings on various marketing platforms, helped her husband and co-owner Justin behind the scenes, and took care of their three beautifully energetic children after school. With each of these hats came an array of obstacles and rewards, but one gift stands out as an overarching experience-- that is, the blessed position to witness the power of loving touch in all its rippling ways.

The compassion that is so rooted in Hawaiian culture, the Aloha Spirit, is like honey: it pulls to center the logistical frays of running a family business with its sticky strength, toward a core belief in the work being done here; it is sweet, ever-reminding those who've tasted the love that all the sweat is making the world better.

One massage at a time, one guest at a time, Ho'omana Spa Maui touches the lives of guests every day. It may be simple relaxation that spa-goers are hoping for when they drive up Pi'iholo Road through the trees and away from the hustle-bustle of coastal Maui. But I see day after day—I feel it— that something more is happening.

Lomi lomi massage is a rhythmic modality. Using soft forearms and long, deep strokes, lomi therapists are working to reach the bones, which in ancient Hawaiian culture hold the richness and wisdom of ancestral connection. Time and time again, a client will glide out of a treatment room, into the living room-style reception space, and will say, "I feel like a new person. I've never had a massage like that before!" In my ears, this rings as, What in the world are you doing here that feels so divine?

My answer to all those spa-goers out there, who answered the call for self-care and found a richer experience than you'd hoped for: You are the same you as you were when you walked in. So what happened? That, my dear stranger-friend, is the power of loving touch.

We carry ourselves through the world with thoughts in our mind, worries, doubts, passions, overwhelming emotions, heavy baggage, memories, and inspirations-- and all of our experiences shape us. Every day we become more unique, for the moments we create and crash into each add a story to the narrative of our lives.

This wonderfully open landscape of possibilities comes with a hard truth: As our lived experiences contribute to our own independent ways of being in the world, the need to feel connected to others remains strong. This is where the power of loving touch begins to shine, and this is what I’ve taken away from my experience at Ho’omana.

No matter what kind of dreams your busily pursuing, whatever tasks fill the hours of your days, remember this: We are not alone in this world and were never meant to be. The power of loving touch is strong, and everyone holds it! Seek it, find it, and share it. That is the Aloha Spirit.

As I make my way to the planes of Western Colorado, I intend to carry this spirit of Aloha with me always.

When You Realize You've Just Contradicted Yourself Entirely

I stepped into the year determined to take life day by day, and with great will. In the past month my beloved Grandma Sweetheart passed away. I stopped writing, and it wasn't necessarily in that order. But one night I watched the moon and I was thinking about how I wanted just one more day with her. And distracting myself, I thought about my absense in the linguistic world. Perhaps my mind was only following a thread of guilt. 

Somewhere in this mess I became aware of the complete 180 my words have flipped since I embarked on the alter-ego of my blog, x/365. Now here I am, writing about my own writing. What is this blogging thing anyway? 

When you realize you've just contradicted yourself entirely, invite this most pleasing phrase to approach the mind: I don't know anything. 

Finding myself scrutinizing the quantity and significance of my possessions, strategizing for ultimate productivity and dream-catching, and getting nowhere near to a clear mind-- I realized that although I had recently composed a new mantra, I have not yet grasped an understanding of what the perfect life compass might sound like.

I don't know anything, when it comes down to it. When it comes to what we're all doing here, how. When it comes to how in the world we put up with loads of bullshit in the media and from institutions and then we spew it on each other because we don't know any other way. When it comes to the miraculous ability of individuals who really, truly believe in something.

Luckily, I have been blessed with people who remind me of what matters, when it comes down to it.

Grandma Sweetheart was a light for everyone. She still is, as her true-to-the-bone compassion is alive in the thought of her. If I learned one thing from my great grandmother (and I learned many), it's that nothing is more inspiring than sheer joy of living.

I have spent the past seven months living a sliding door away from three beautifully and highly energetic children. They are so full of love I can hardly stand it. In ancient Hawaiian culture, babies are thought of like bowls of light. They are close to the spirit world, having just come from there, and so children are cherished for their mana, their energy, life-force.

Please share your stories about people who light up your world. 

The Birth of Epochs

For better or worse, each of us is born into a life that is in many ways predetermined. We are born into a skin that presents us to society in a particular way, that carries histories of oppressing or of being oppressed, that stirs prejudices in others simply by its tone and complexly by bigotry and baggage, that privileges us or disadvantages us or both. We are born with genitalia that endow us with expectations of gender and gendered behaviors, roles, expressions, interactions, shoe sizes and representations-of-self in the media. 

We are born into economic status and the opportunities and barriers that come with it. We are born into families who teach us how to be--or not. We are born into systems--medical, industrial, educational--that craft our perspectives like mad scientists, and in these systems (and against them), we construct and deconstruct ourselves every day from the moment we are born. Despite, or in spite of, or because of these preconditions of our coming into the world, we do our best to live well--even as we try to figure out what the hell that means, anyway. 

"Stephen Martin describes his practice as 'squares and dots'."

I have been brushing aside my blog for weeks now, my head filled with preoccupations about what's next for me in this world. How can I write about my experiences when they are trapped in the mind-- hypothetical? 

And who am I to bore you with such nonsense, anyway? Between doubts that reporting on my restless thoughts would amount to little more than what my favorite art teacher would have called paint masturbation... it dawned on me that what goes on in the mind is very much real and happening, even if the matter of thought has yet to be realized in any tangible way.

So such is exactly the aim of this post (and my latest project #freedesignsforfreepeople): to make physical what exists in the mind. For surely all great actions (and not-so-great ones, for that matter) have a life of their own first in the mental/emotional realm. 

Enough introduction.

The birth of an epoch is like birth itself: It does not come to be upon an empty slate. None of us has the ability to just start over, to relinquish any and all ties to a humanity so intricately defined. And who would want to anyway? Even I, a satirical victim and perpetrator of this sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, racist, male-centric global society, can find overwhelming beauty in the daily doings of human beings, not to mention the wonders that Mother Earth, the universe and beyond produce simply by having an essence.

I am at a point now where a clear shift in my lifestyle lies ahead: In 36 days, I will board onto a plane that will take me away from the epoch I have forged here on Maui over the past several months, during which time I have built relationships with others, developed roles for myself, and felt a momentous understanding of purpose--all to be abruptly disrupted by the take-off of a large flying machine. And what I have finally begun to wrap my head around, amongst all the restlessness in my decision to leave, is that in creating this new lifestyle--this new landscape for my existence on Earth-- I am not approaching a blank canvas. I never have and never will.

So, like the perplexing, magnificent Margeuax in Sheila Heti's insightful and sarcastic novel, I will begin with what I have.

This is not a new idea, as readers of my previous post know. There is a nagging voice in my conscience as of late that brings me constantly back to material possessions. This time, though, I write with a question in mind: In creating a game plan for this upcoming epoch (really a How-to-Retain-Sanity-Amidst-All-the-Excitement-of-Something-New kind of strategy), are you approaching each moment with intention and genuine gratitude for the canvas that carries the burdens and glories of your brush strokes? For me, this is the question that, like a true lover, brings both overwhelming ambition and a guilty sense of self-doubt. 

As a reminder to myself, and perhaps to clarify the quasi-cliche symbolism of my question, a key:

intention = purpose, mindfulness, goals, passion, global/universal thinking;

genuine gratitude = acknowledgement and active utilization;

canvas = resources, privileges, perspective, lived experience, context-of-being;

brush strokes = actions, non-actions, choices

Now onto "The Margeaux, With a Hint of Carrie Newcomer": 

In genuine gratitude I define my canvas:

whiteness; womanhood; youth; support of family and friends both near and far; relative economic stability; a college degree; a decent resume; a network of connections in the worlds of small-business owners, academia, organic farming, entrepreneurs, fire prevention, artists, music, not-for-profit organizations; commercial and non-commercial radio--the list goes on, I'm sure; access to internet and social media; modern technology; health care I'm not paying for; travel experience; a driver's license; US citizenship; dwindling Spanish-speaking ability; the ability to read and write; food in my stomach every day of my life; sisterhood; exposure to more than one culture; exposure to more than one household; exposure to more than one method of parenting; multiple library cards; multiple bank accounts; multiple notebooks; a bed; a blog; a dresser full of clothes...

The list goes on, I'm sure.

In the birth of an epoch, there is a balance for which the mindful search: It exists between rolling with the tide and sailing a strong course, toward a glorious destination. Perhaps, with a little mindfulness-- of the canvas in front of me, of the histories behind me, of the potential of every moment in a string of moments-- perhaps I can be as temperate as the sea herself. She is, after all, the most powerful force in nature: wild and steady and infinite.

If you care to embark on this journey with me--that is, creating a next epoch with intention and care, you'll find a graphic below that might peak your interest. At the very least, I hope, it will inspire you to create a game plan (or a How-to-Be-Utterly-Epic strategy) for your days, which are filled with moments of spectacular possibilities. Whether our lives are predestined, fundamentally flawed, meaningless, objectified, or socially defined, I maintain fixed on the idea that our brush strokes are just down-right significant. 

Print it, try it, and for the love of community-- share your thoughts about it in the COMMENTS section!


#freedesignsforfreepeople

Email me for a PDF/digital copy, or for any old reason!

Have Well, Laugh Often

One week ago, I sat on the beach of Paia Bay and took turns looking out at the ocean and down at my Astrologer's Datebook. Notebookless, I used the lines meant for addresses to scribble my thoughts. They went something like this:

I read two things today--

1. When the moon is in Taurus, people are extra protective of what they have. "There is a feeling that it is necessary to protect the status quo or what one already has (key phrase is "I have"). The need for financial and material security is strong." -Jim Maynard

2. We only know about having and nothing about being. "Being and having. Being does not belong to man, only having. Thee being of man is situated behind the curtain, on the supernatural side. What he can know of himself is only what is lent to him by circumstances." -Simone Weil 

If our being is hidden from us behind a curtain of human misery, then it is no wonder why we invest so much of ourselves in our possessions. 

Paring down, for me, is about peeling away all the layers of false security. Raw. Naked. Three years ago I wrote a poem; I was very stoned; it went like this:

I don't know where to start

and I know not where to go next

the record stops

You can flip it, for the other side

but is it over yet?

My pen writes against my wishes

My heart aches to my despair

What awaits me? Tell me, ink.

Naked. Raw.

My mind searches, echoes in the silence

Every stitch fills space-- each makes stronger the whole..

Ready to be cooked. Not ready yet, though. Raw.

Naked. Free. Empty.

I don't know where to start.

This is not a poem worth publishing. 

But I find in reading it, a sense of longing. For being at peace with nothingness, perhaps.

Raw. Naked. This is when we are vulnerable. Raw, we are vulnerable to the fires of the world, to the wicked flames of our defensive brothers and sisters. Naked, we succumb to the possibility of being dressed by others; that they will choose our garments, our identities, our mark on this world. 

But aren't we all already doing that? Are not we subject to interpretation already? Does a tree make a sound if there is no one to hear it? This is a philosophical cliche, but one that speaks to our inevitable destiny: Does what we do mean anything if there is no one near to hear it?

So we possess. We possess this dress and that one, this necklasce and that boat and this lamp and that apple slicer. I have therefore I am. Isn't that what Descartes said? 

There are probably many thousands of writers who could argue for minimalism more elequantly than I, but what interests me is this: If one cannot escape the defining quality of having--cannot get at her being from the other side of the curtain-- how does one then have well? If I cannot be my best self, what might it look like to have at my fullest potential? 

Thoughts to action: I will write about every thing I own, and own nothing not worth writing about. Whether these writings will be interesting enough to post, we shall see. Little did I know, as I dotted the i's of my final sentence with a determined flick of the wrist, someone around the corner was hotwiring my car and driving it away.

Yes, never ignore the precise timing of the universe. Her ruthlessness is softened by her sense of humor, I think. 

Sunday, February 22: a bad day to park in the Mana Foods parking lot; a good day to start thinking about what I have, what it all means to me, and how much of my self-understanding I'm willing to invest in such things. 

Lessons learned:

1. Know your license plate number by heart.

2. Bumper stickers serve as more than indicators of political standing, alma mater and sass: They might just get you your car back before it ends up on top of a rock in a pineapple field with no speakers, stereo, glove compartment, seat covers or your favorite jacket.

3. Make friends with a towing company, and have their number in your phone. That way, if you're so lucky to be able to retrieve your car, as I was, you won't have to work with someone who's laughing in your face because you brought studs and lug nuts and hope that your car might make its way out of the tow lot with a crooked tire and a little love.

4. Laughing makes everything better.

How To Be Bold and Humble

One week ago, I arrived at a very small airport, hopped on a very small plane, and flew to a very small island. Nothing more about my weekend in Moloka'i was small... except for the two children that joined me in my sleeping bag for the best night of cuddling I've ever had.

This post is about getting there.

When I found the building that welcomes commuters to inter-island travel, I walked up to the counter and spelled out my name for the friendly young woman behind it. I handed over my backpack to the smiling man in the neon vest, only after he told me there was no added fee. I had an hour and twenty minutes and no security line-- just a bagel with lox, my notebook and a sky full of sunshine. So I sat on a patch of grass just yards away and scribbled down my scattered thoughts. I was determined to justify to myself my feelings of desperation.

How do I at once be bold and humble? How do I at once be thoughtful and brave? How do I know when to laugh off an insult and when to start a riot? 

The state of the world is in our hands yet we are not strong enough to hold it. We know this, and yet we carry on. We define ourselves as a species every single moment, and surely we must know this, and surely, we settle. We could do better, but even our best will never suffice, for the world will always be greater than our capacity to understand it. 

Need we understand to achieve? Need we know kindness in order to be kind? To love?

Our individual actions as a collective action will not save us from ourselves. There will always be pain and failure and misunderstanding. There will always be room to grow. This is beauty of our human state.

If our actions are doomed to be insufficient, our efforts, then, are our only indicators of progress. Our individual efforts as a collective effort shall define the character of humanity. 

"I am also other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness." This is a quotation from Gravity and Grace, a mind-blowing, mildly depressing read composed by Simone Weil. "Love demands that the lover sacrifice for the beloved." -Meher Baba.

We all stood at the gate as another guy in a neon vest called out our seat assignments, classroom-style. Nine passengers in all, we crossed the asphalt, climbed the stairs onto the plane, and crouched down the aisle to our respective seats. The co-pilot, looking over the lenses of his wayfarer shades, recited the rules and safety procedures with the Maui ease, holding the curtain that separated the control deck of the plane from the reliant rows of strangers. When finished, he turned back around to face the nose, and the pilot reached back to pull shut the little white curtain. I thought about his nerves and wondered if he felt the weight of lives-at-stake every time he lifted this island-hopper off the ground, or if it only occurred to him once in a while. 

Drive, turn, take off. Haleakala to my left, the rippling ocean to my right, I can't help but think I'm riding the magic school bus. The wobble makes me grin: Oh, Maui.

If you look down at the ocean from a hopper plane above on a windy day, you'll see a mass that looks not unlike the night sky. The deep blue vastness is speckled with spots of white-- little currents gathering and dismembering endlessly. Shift your gaze outward toward the horizon, and you'll see a blanket of waves. coming together as one breath, falling under and over itself like a silent warrior. 

As we flew over the cliffs of Moloka'i, I felt embraced. We landed smoothly. My Mor Mor would have called it anything but smooth. Upon braking, I looked left to see a family of smiling faces pressed against the windows as they beamed with anxious excitement over the arrival of one of my fellow fliers. Hoopea Airport is very cute. 

I hopped into the bed of Pihana's pickup truck with her husband Matthew. Uncle Mike was in the passenger seat. Matthew, a big-hearted young man, said to me, yelling over the rush of the air, "When people come to Moloka'i, they don't want to leave. This is the land that time forgot." When we stopped at his house to pick up his Coors, he gifted me and Kumu each an avocado. 

-

To read about my weekend on the magical island of Moloka'i, read our most recent post in the Ho'omana Spa Maui Blog.

The Revealing

When is the last time you received a letter in the mail?

Not a call to action, a book of coupons or a bill, but a hand-written bundle of words meant solely for you? 

It is cliche to call snail mail old-school, romantic or old-fashioned. The first hand-written letter is said to be attributed to Persian Queen Atossa around 500 BC, so, yes, they are certainly old; my high school English teacher often spoke of writing letters to the love of his life while he was in the Peace Corps, as it was their only means of communicating, so, yes, letters are certainly old-fashioned; and surely there are few butterflies quite like those that arrive in the stomachs of star-scrossed lovers, so certainly, letters are romantic. These cliche descriptors shed light on a thread of nostalgia for this lost art. It is obvious to name one's lack of time the culprit for not engaging in this timeless practice. But when did we become so busy? 

On my twenty-first birthday I was asked, "What will you aim to do this year?" My intention was to write letters to those I love so far away. I think I wrote three that year.

I wonder what it means to have let go of such a luxury. We clock-in to buy food in bright packages and pay the electric bill to keep our refrigerators running so that our milk will keep. But when did tomatoes become reliant on 35 degrees F? Who is Fahrenheit anyway?

We clock-in again, this time to pay for a roof that may or may not leak. Again, to put gas in the car that will get us there. Again, to take hot showers; again, again, again. Finally, we clock-in to fill our abodes with shiny things we can stare at: the glimmer of the dream. 

Take my words with a half-grain of salt-- I've never paid rent with my own actual dollars in my whole life. 

When is the last time you received a letter? If you remember, then perhaps you remember the shock-- the joy, the curiosity, the gratitude. Your name written in pen, the ink smeared over the stamp marking a single moment in its journey toward you. Did you stare at it while you walked towards a place to sit? Did you stop everything you were about to do to tear open the envelope? Or did you savor its arrival, laying it on the table until the moment arrived when you could indulge in its revealing? Maybe you set it down to relive the surprise later--to prolong the anticipation. Maybe you tore it open right there at the mailbox and read it even before acknowledging the immensity of the pleasure it might bring. Maybe it was everything it could ever be.

Receiving a letter is surely a luxury. And yet the opportunity passes us by day after day. The snail beats the hare. For easily one can see that writing a letter might have something to do with receiving this intimate gift. Or maybe the chicken came before the egg. Regardless of how our world began, or what animal analogy we're concerned with, it is clear that we deny one another the most gratifying experiences day after day. I am not one to administer responsibility for the happiness of others to others alike; in fact I often feel defensive at times when others come to my rescue, Here, dainty gal, let me do that for you. But a plain and simple reality is that we are all, each of us, entangled in other people's shit-- and equally brightened in other people's light.

We are shaping our world every single day with our shit and our light. We are spreading ourselves like cheese on the bread that our fellow earthlings consume day in and day out. Our actions spread like wildfire and our non-actions like microscopic debris-- I never took Physics but this world of instant access to information tells me that particulates are cause for concern because they reduce visibility. Will we see each other or fill our atmosphere with the blinding soot of never having enough time?

My call to action, my book of coupons, my bill to you is this-- ask yourself a little question that may or may not have an astronomical impact on you or someone else but will surely shape the world we are living in: When is the last time you sent a letter in the mail?

We Got Spahk

This past week, I've been itching to write. I jotted a few things down here, typed up a few lines on my ipad mini there. But nothing came out of me that said, "don't stop! Someone will want to read this." I counted the days since my last blog post: six. I asked myself, "Did I live a day worth writing about today?" 

For six days, I'd answered 'no' to that question by not writing when I felt the urge to. So, I thought, something's gotta change. And since I don't see anyone following me around with a pen, I'd better get to it.

Friday morning, I ate my cereal quickly and hopped in the car with Jeana when she left to take Lei to preschool. She dropped me off at Marilyn's house, with whom I make soap and frozen pizzas and run errands and whatever else she feels like doing on a whim. Her husband Ricky dedicated his morning to helping me find a car, as my own search has been slow and unrewarding, mostly due to my passivity and denial that one won't just turn up in the driveway one day (yes, I'm realizing how much I really take for granted my handy, generous mechanic of a father).

We arrived at Ricky's friend's car lot, who was willing to give me a deal on a Honda Civic he thought was running just fine despite its cosmetic quarks. We test drove it up Haleakala Highway-- the big test: It ran great! We stopped back at Rick and Marilyn's house for a moment before starting it up again and-- nada. "No spahk" was Rick's catchphrase that day, with his Haliimaile-born pidgin. "Noo sparhk. Buhmuh."

To distract ourselves from the hunk of metal blocking the driveway, we turned around to face the '88 Nissan Pathfinder he had laying around (Ricky buys cars from auctions and fixes them up-- a common side-job on the island, and elsewhere I imagine). We replaced the starter in that car, and wouldn't you know it: "Nooo spahk. Buhhmuh."

We tried this and that, this again and that again on this car and that one. By 3 that afternoon, we had returned to my Honda with a new distributor in hand. Looking down at the old one under the hood, I was worried about not knowing how to line it up right, considering I didn't know what a distributor looked like until that morning. We both hesitated a moment, until Rick smiled:

"We ain't no scaredycats. The one thing I ain't is a scaredycat. Too many people have fee-uh, ya know what I mean? We might not get it right, but we ain't gunna have fee-uh."

That said, the old distributor came right off. We rigged the fresh-out-the-box toy where we thought it might go. I'm not sure how much Rick knew what he was doing-- "I've never had luck with distributors," he said once and again. I certainly didn't know what I was doing. But we did it anyway. One 4pm lunch--and a fight with some plastic piece that has something to do with connecting wires--later, we cranked the key and-- "Ha. Noo spahk." 

Wow, was all we could say, over and over, totally defeated for the day. "Well we got some hands-on experience," we tried to redeem one another. "Rough day," we joked. It wasn't really funny, but we laughed anyway. We cleaned up, with a bit more tinkering in between sighs and jokes. When we were ready to start pushing the Civic to get it out of the driveway, that smile of Rick's returned. "What if it starts!" he said, smirking. One foot out the car door, he cranks it: Vroom. 

"What!" was all I could say.

We had spahk. In fact, we had more than spahk. That thing got us all the way up Piiholo Road--2,000 feet of elevation packed into 3 miles of windy mountain turns.

When I walked in the door that night, I said I'd be in the office the next day, "since I didn't work today. Today I was a mechanic." 

Ha. Hardly.

I didn't buy the Civic. I don't know if we really fixed anything, or if we got lucky when it ran for us that night. But we didn't have fee-uh, and I did have a day worth writing about.