With Aloha

While I am waist-deep in the ocean of my dreams, the birds are practicing their musical scales, warming up their vocals. By the time I’m wading into a new day, they’re in full chorus — and they have stamina; they continue throughout the day. Some hours are more polyphonic than others but their singing is constant. When the sun begins its steady dip beneath our eye line, the birds clock out as the...

Click the play button above to hear me read this. (And for the full experience, put in headphones and close your eyes.) I'm sitting at a desk left behind by a National Geographic photographer whose wife left him behind. I'm trying to apply to my writing the same elbow-grease discipline I used in my previous career. It isn't working. Trees are quaking in the hot air balloon rising-heat of summer, j...

Click the play button above to hear me read this. (And for the full experience, put in headphones and close your eyes.) At night, I practice dissolving…The process feels how a time-lapse video of a decaying log looks. Like sugar melting into hot water or a patch of sand swallowed by the hungry tide.  When I was first learning how to do this, my body fought it. It would jump me awake into a startle...

I open my computer and log into the site I logged into every day for 80 days in a row from January to April. The site is called Akimbo, and I signed up for their 100-day program called the Creatives Workshop while I was on medical leave this year.  After about a month, the novelty of laying on the couch curled up in a ball had worn off. I needed something to do, somewhere to focus my energy. I nee...

I'm standing at the edge of the rest of the world, leaning over the Cliffs of Moher like a flying squirrel mid-glide. A hood pulled tight around my head, eyes watering from currents as strong as my desire to ride them. Leaning  into  the wind — not backing away from it — tempting the gusts holding my body against gravity with my 20-year-old life. I remember French-braiding my hair that morning, ea...

I am the kind of tired that only the sun can make you feel after too much of it. A carmine color traces my shoulders and my back, the negative space taking the shape of a sports bra. I painted my catchment tank today. Well, I hand-scrubbed and then hosed down and then primed (with two coats) my catchment tank. Kev helped, then he had work calls, so I finished the first coat and did the second by m...

Click the play button above to hear me read this. (For the full experience, put in headphones and close your eyes.) It’s small in size but sturdy. Well-built enough to withstand the tides and ages, one in the same. It’s rocked by a gentle but unrelenting current, bumping against the legs of the dock to which it’s tethered. The sound is pleasant, calming. It doesn’t hurt the boat. It has two oars,...

I’m chomping on the residual grit of raw coconut meat like gum while I wait on hold with the company that manages my 401k. I left my job with no other options on tap, and I’m trying to sort out some finance stuff. I’m trying to be responsible. But I’m not thinking about my future or even my past as they drudge up active and old accounts attached to my social security number. Accounts where I’ve hi...

The Hong Kong orchid tree in my front yard blooms magenta flowers the size of fists with leaves that look like lily pads. Its sweet nectar fragrance wafts across the yard and catches me. When I'm walking back from feeding the cats, head down and caught in a maze of must-dos. When I step out into a moonless night to see the stars shine like Christmas lights left up past the new year. When I'm auto-...

The wind animates, blowing the tops of trees like drunken heads. Swaying together to a song that reminds them of their high school days. Unsteady and accidentally rhythmic. The wind animates, shivering the full length of tall blades of grass. Like the hairs on my forearms that extend themselves atop goosebump mountains. White-blond flags of surrender. The wind animates, swirling the chimes on my l...

I was wiping off my yoga mat when I heard it. A delayed sound. A glitch. It barely would be detectable if I were in a hurry or not one to notice details. I fit neither of those descriptions. I don't need an algorithm monitoring my speech to tell me that "Look!" and "Wow!" are two of my most-used phrases. Both are usually accompanied by a pointer finger aimed like an arrow at a distant target. In t...

My brother and sister are here. After 16 hours on three different planes, across the whole of America that separates us. Across the ocean that symbolically and otherwise separates Hawai'i from the rest of the country. After a two hour trek across the island that I now call home. All to be here, to stand in the same space together. The least I can do is give them an adventure. We'll drive north and...

Not in the form of imaginary beings that haunt, but the hungry ones Buddhists say are cursed with an appetite that can't be sated. The ones with mouths the size of pinheads and stomachs as vast as mountain ranges. Animalistic in their fervor to feed themselves. Exhausting themselves with their endless eating. Theirs is desire unchecked, the drive to obtain. Más, más, más they say with each bite. T...

This is the time of night I find myself drifting in a vessel to other worlds. Suspended between worn cotton sheets and the thin veil of consciousness. On a hybrid mattress with enough fluff to feel dreamy and enough memory foam to trace my shape without feeling like a bag of sand. This bed will be paid off in 5 years. I bought it within the same month I bought a house and a car. It was expensive f...