Get Away

We all need to get away sometimes.  That’s just how humans operate.  It may be our inherent need to change our pace.  It may be the nomadic genetics passed down from our distant ancestors.  It may be a fight or flight response to stressful situations.  Whatever it is, sometimes we just need to go.  Away.  Far away.  And if you need to get away, Kauai is as good a place as any to escape to.  Hawaii’s garden isle, the north and west most island, is a beautiful change of scenery and operates at a pace that is almost alien to those of us from the mainland.  If you are going to get away, do it here. 

It seems legit:  A getaway to a tropical paradise.  Who doesn’t want that?  I’ve been coming here since I was seven.  Not one time did I leave here worse off than when I came.  That’s a pretty good run for almost 30 years.  Not that it has always been a fucking carnival on these trips to the South Pacific, but I’ve never left feeling worse than I did when I showed up.  I guess, that’s exactly what I am doing here now:  trying to leave better than I was when I got here.

This morning, on the way to a hike up to the Wailua River Waterhead, we were about 20 minutes in to a 40 minute drive.  Kathy and I had bantered back and forth about life and all its shortcomings.  We had laughed about our relationships and family dynamics.  Then, at the point that the seven minute silence entered the conversation, we sat without words for a while.  She navigated her Outback over the red clay and waterlogged fjords as if she had been paid to make Subaru commercials.  I daydreamed out the window, watching the Paper Bark Trees unwind themselves. 

Breaking the comfortable silence, I started laughing.  I looked at her and said, “In the middle of all of this, I just thought to myself ‘Don’t forget to go to Costco when you get home.’”  She looked at me with eyes that said “Really. Costco?”  And I said “REALLY???  COSTCO???”  We both laughed.  I laughed because it seemed ridiculous to me that I was in a tropical wilderness with the only other human being around for miles sitting next to me.  She laughed because she knows that you can remove yourself from your environment, but you can’t remove yourself from yourself. 

That’s an important part of getting away:  Understanding your expectations.  Knowing that you won’t have to sweep your own floors or do your own dishes is a reasonable a reasonable expectation.  But if you expect that you are going to be able to get away from yourself, you are hallucinating.  And it’s going to be a really bad trip. 

So, if you do decide to get away, let me offer a little advice.  Go to a place that is quite, but not too quite.  Here, the silence is broken by the chickens and the sound of the river running over the rocks.  When you get away, make sure that you are in a place where there are dogs barking and kids laughing somewhere in the distance.  Because sitting in silence only allows your thoughts to scream at you louder. 

If you do decide to get away, go to a place where you can be by yourself, but not be alone.  Go to a place where someone can keep you grounded, but will also share thoughts and dreams with you.   Here, that person is Kathy.  She allows me to spend all the time I need by myself, but isn’t afraid to interrupt my thoughts or my writing or my comfort.  She knows when it’s time for coffee or lunch or conversation.  When you get way, make sure that you go somewhere with someone who will keep you engaged.  Because being by yourself is only healthy if you are not completely alone. 

If you do decide that you must get away, got to a place where you can be absent from your responsibilities, but present with your feelings.  Go to a place that doesn’t make you forget who you are.  Rather, go to a place that makes you comfortable with them.  Here, that place is the Wainiha River.  Sitting here is like a daily baptism.  Watching the water perpetually move through the same space every day is a poignant reminder that we should never stagnate.  Because, even if we stay in the same place, we need to move forward. 

During the hike back from the Wailua Watherhead, seemingly out of nowhere, Kathy said to me “I think that a lot of people come to Hawaii expecting to get away from life.  But there really isn’t enough distraction here to really be able to get away.  Unless they know what they are getting way from.”

-Inner Peas

What Am I Doing Here

Friday Afternoon, when I got off work, I was stuck in “traffic” on Bodega Avenue.  Now, traffic is relative here because, as most people know, I work 8 miles from my house down a two lane country road that winds through West Sonoma County to the coast.  It’s not the 405 on a Friday afternoon.   But the speed limit is 55 MPH and when I have places to be, i.e. home or work, I expect the people I share the road with to adhere to that speed limit.  It’s just a courtesy. 

I cursed the driver of the blue Accord for maintaining a speed 13 miles under the posted limit as I had done no less than six other times last week.  “What the fuck, bro?” I yelled to myself, as if the driver could hear me.  “Move like you have a purpose!”  It was then that I remembered that my only purpose was to go home and crack a bottle of wine and pack for a five day trip to Hawaii.  It wasn’t as though my purpose was going to be thwarted by getting to the house three minutes later. 

I got home on Friday, sipped on a glass of pinot and pulled out my suitcase.  I let it sit there for about an hour before I even made an attempt at packing.  As I folded tank tops and sun dresses, I wondered what I was doing.  A last minute trip to Hawaii isn’t a thing that I do.  I don’t buy tickets, then ask permission.  There are things that I do.  Spontaneous is not one of those things.  I asked myself again “What am I doing here?”  I guess I’m going to Hawaii.

I work up on Saturday morning, still not completely packed and a little hazy from the Saki I had at dinner the night before.  I looked at all the crap I had draped over the suitcase.  I thought about the drive to the city to get to the airport.  Then I thought about the security lines and the assholes at TSA.  And what is on the floor at the security checkpoints?  Thousands of people, daily, standing around barefoot.  There’s no way to clean that.  Surly there’s a flesh eating bacteria in there and I would likely lose my foot to MRSA by the time I even got off the plane in Lihue.  Again, I asked myself “What am I doing here?”  But the ticket was bought.  I had people waiting for me.  My out of office assistant was on.  I’m going to Hawaii. 

I asked myself the same question over and over in the 11 hours between the time I parked my car in long term parking and the time I got off the plain in Lihue.  When I was stuck in line at LAX in the middle of 20 douche bag frat boys.  When I paid $18 for a really embarrassing attempt at a burrito.  When I was pinned in a window seat surrounded by fighting, farting siblings who would not have stopped kicking my seat from behind if I offered them a million dollars and a trip to Disneyland.  The intolerable Scandinavian lovers in my row wouldn’t knock it off with all the touching and talking in that abrasive Nordic language. The 12 inches of leg room in front of me that I was robbed of because reclining seat backs.  Through all of that, I kept asking myself the same question:  “What am I doing here?”

By the time I got off the plane, got my luggage and made the 58 minute drive from the airport to Wainiha, I was too tired to ask the question anymore.  I sat down and had a cigarette, then without enough care to even change my cloths, I feel asleep in the treehouse to the wind rustling the ti trees and the crickets welcoming back. 

When I woke up this morning, I was on California time, two hours before everyone else.  So, I made some coffee and took a chair down to the river.  I sat in silence as I watch the sun come up over the Wainiha Valley; I listened to the river make its way to the sea.  And that’s when I finally realized it.  This.  This is what I am doing here. 

-Inner Peas

Care More

When I was a little girl, I believed in Prince Charming.  Or maybe I really wanted to believe in Prince Charming.  A lot.  I did all those things that little girls who believe in fairytales do.  I looked at pictures of women in beautiful white dresses with long, wispy vales.  I envisioned a handsome man holding my hand while we walked, with bare, sandy feet, chasing a brilliant sunset down an exotic beach.  I chose the names of my four future children.  There was a time when I wanted a fairytale.  At least I thought I wanted a one.  But looking back on those adolescent fantasies, I don’t know if I was ever really committed to them.  Not to the dress or the beach or the children or even the prince.  I remember wanting it all really badly, but I also wanted to be a lawyer.  Or a cruise ship captain.  Or a peacock rancher. 

Obviously, I have traveled a very long and treacherous road since those innocent, childhood day dreams.  I’ve given up on most of that stuff.  Except becoming a peacock rancher.  I kinda still want that.  But I hear they are really mean birds and my feelings get hurt really easily.  So, maybe that’s out, too.  Anyway, as I grew older, I also grew more cynical.  I don’t think it was intentional.  I just thinks that’s what too much reality does to unsubstantiated idealism.  And that brings us to now, or at least the last several years. 

I advertise myself pretty freely as a bitter and apathetic spinster.  I have no qualms with the cats and the kids and the wayward sisters who roam my house and my yard at their leisure.  I have no secrets about the men who periodically make appearances in my life.  I admit, without prompting, that sex has largely been a disappointment.  That’s probably a huge part of the reason I hold so many former lovers in contempt.  Not only did they prove to be emotional degenerates, they couldn’t make an orgasm happen with a magical sex wand.  (Which, by the by, I have several of.  And they work just fine.)

For years, I was forced to suffer the anguish that accompanied well-meaning encouragement from people who love me.  I was forced to listen to cliché reassurance from people who wanted me to be happy.  My friends would say things like “Oh Angela.  Just wait.  Happiness awaits you!”  Or “I didn’t meet my Prince until I was much older than you.  Hang in there!”  Or, one of my personal favorites “One day someone is going to treat you the way you deserve to be treated!”  Encouragement is excruciating when all you want is to be haggard and scorned.  And God fucking forbid, that in a jaded moment of forced hopefulness, you actually believe them.  Because the only thing that gets you is a ticket to the Mediterranean to see a man who should have told you not to buy the ticket in the first place.  That’s even more excruciating. 

While I eventually learned to appreciate what the lovely people around me were trying to say, I got tired of it.  I would never have told them that.  Because you can’t tell people who love you to go sell Cinderella to someone else.  It makes you seem hostile and unappreciative.  But, secretly, I was hostile and unappreciative.   I began to form an alliance of women who shared my disdain for the false representation of romance and the bullshit that people in committed relationships try to sell to those who are not. 

It was in that alliance, that I found one of my most sacred resources; one of the most powerful voices.  A young woman who I shared all of my secrets with.  A young woman who shared all of her secrets with me.  We didn’t necessarily approach the life and love the same way, but that never deterred us from sharing with each other.  For years she would tell me “If you wanna win with men, you have to play the game.”  I would always respond with “If a man want’s to play a game, he can get an Xbox.”  Even though we didn’t share all of the same ideals, we had no problem sharing all of our souls with each other. 

Then today happened.  As I talked to my little soul sister for a while, I listened as she told me that she had finally resigned to the fact that she was in love.  She said “I know we are in love because neither one of us needs to prove who cares less.  We both want to care more.” 

There was that minute in my head that everything shook and nothing seemed clear.  There was no way that my little sister just told me that she wasn’t going to play games anymore.  There was no way that she had found a man who didn’t want to play games with her.  I could have sworn that if love was a game, Rach would have been playing it forever.  Or at least until she won.  So, basically forever.  But instead, she proved to me that the only way to win at life and love is to care more. 

-Inner Peas

Imbolc - Halfway

Today is Imbolc.  Astronomically, it’s the day that lies halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.  It’s the day that marks the end of winter’s darkest days, and gives way to warmth that comes with more sunlight.  There’s a science to understanding it, I’m sure.  But for Pagans, Imbolc means more than numbers and dates and the Earth’s proximity to the sun.  Spiritually, Imbolc is a symbolic representation of the halfway point between the dark and the light; between where you were and where you are going.  Our ancestors viewed Imbolc as celebration of hope; a time where they hoped for the dark to wane and the light to melt the cold. 

It’s a very meaningful time to Earth bound believers.  Pagans celebrate this day in many ways.  Fire.  Water.  Prayer.  Cleansing.  Generally, we don’t dance naked on the beach, but sometimes, when the spirit moves, we do it anyway.  For the most part though, Pagans are very practical people.  So, usually, we worship silently; anonymously.  But on a few days a year, want other people to understand that spiritual celebration doesn’t come with a paid holiday or a greeting card.  Sometimes, worship comes when nobody is paying attention. 

Every year I celebrate the Pagan holidays as best as I can.  Every year I find a way to find a way to celebrate Christian holidays with some of my Pagan beliefs.  It’s the balance I try to find in my faith.  Because my spirituality lies in the universe, and not in the pages of a book.  It’s sometimes difficult to steady popular spiritual belief and an inexplicable feeling that somehow dictates a fortitude in your soul.  I don’t have a bible.  I don’t have words.  I just believe that feelings, desires and events may seem arbitrary to some, but to me, they make perfect sense. 

Today is Imbolc.  The halfway point.  The point that is directly in the middle of where I was and where I want to be.  I’ve been here before, and I will be here again.  Because life is a perpetual half-way point.  But for the first time in more years than I can remember, I can actually see that I am at the halfway point.  My Imbolc is between surviving and living. 

What is your Imbolc?  What is your happy medium?  Do you survive or do you live? 

-Inner Peas