playing with possibility
yes, that is a dolphin!! here’s some more:
= my pretty poor attempt at capturing the whole crowd of spinner dolphins playing and leaping all around us, racing the prow of our little boat…
so our neighbor, the guy who owns the property next door to hedonisia, hangs out with us a lot. he also owns a boat and runs a little whale watching business during the winter (or used to? not sure). today he agreed to take us all out on his boat in return for a couple hours of weeding on his property sometime in the future. we drove up to hilo and launched the boat there–went out into the ocean and found those DOLPHINS, rode up and down the hamakua coast–the colors there just blow me away!
the blue of the ocean! the red of the cliffs! the green of the jungle! the other blue of the sky!
the ride itself was a whole lot of fun. lots of holding on for dear life and laughing and oh my god the dolphins! i’m pretty sure someone got some video footage of, well, the dolphins, but mostly all of us flipping out about the dolphins and how flippin’ cool and amazing they were. i know you’re all just dying to see it, so i’ll see what i can do for you, hm?
maybe all my happy rambling about the beautiful things i’m seeing and experiencing here is starting to be a little, i dunno, redundant. i wish i could pull out all the stuff in my heart and my head and put it into neat, straightforward words (and pictures, sure) for you (and me!)–all the beauty and the lessons and the doubt and the possibilities and the people i miss–i miss people a lot, but without the painful useless longing that has sometimes cut me off from experiencing the present–and and and. i know i’ve joked here a couple times about buying land here in puna and living off the grid in a jungle hut and eating fruit etc etc etc… i think what i really need to get across (to myself) is that there are so many more possibilities than i allowed for before this trip. i assumed that because i have been happy and fulfilled in portland that that is where i belong. then, coming here and discovering that this place is so, so beautiful and has a lot to share with me, a lot to teach me and a lot of joy to give–i thought about here (albeit not really seriously) as the be-all-and-end-all the same way i did (and maybe do) portland. when, obviously, the world is huge, there are so many good worthwhile people to meet and know and love, and i’m pretty sure i could seriously (ridiculously) do anything i set my mind to. it’s just that there are so many things! and which do i want first?
i never quite succeed in getting across what i really mean when i try to talk about this stuff. here in puna i say “god, this is so beautiful.” then i pause. think. reflect. then i say “i suspect there is a whole lot of beauty in the world.” and yeah, of course there is! one nice thing about puna is that instead of looking at you like “duh” or shaking their heads at your vague new age-y babbles, people here’ll just smile wider, take another toke, and nod… “i hear you, man…” and for the most part, i think they do hear me. the parts of me that matter right now.
hey friends, you can change your life. i didn’t really believe it, but now i know it and i want you to know too. if you want to, you can change your life. that’s all.
the wants, the exploring…
right now i am pretty explicitly on vacation. i’m having fun and recovering peace and joy. i am learning way more about possibilities than i am about living in hawaii, if you follow. if i did want to stay here and learn about that, i would be doing things a little bit differently. that distinction is important for me to be aware of.
