Thinning the Veil Thursday

Aloha Welcome,

Returning Friend!

click on photos to savor Waikiki I loved this stippled sky.

As you can see, the palms were so moved by it that they yearned upward, reaching for it, trying to brush its downy cheeks with their trembling, green fingers.

Why is this motorcycle armed?

Perhaps it feels threatened by larger vehicles?

(All of my motorcycles have been gentle pacifists)

The Bible says that we see through a veil, but someday will see reality

"face to face."

Plato spoke of us as the inmates of a cave, not seeing things as they are, but perceiving only shadows thrown on the stony walls of our consciousness.

Some misapprehension seems to be fundamental to our stay in this flesh.

If we recalled our true stature, the illusion of our loneliness would be shattered; and no choice would be possible

in the blinding light

of

love.

Last night

standing outside under a starry sky

I suddenly wondered

how the things we love of nature

will at last be revealed

when we see them face to face.

The moon that stirs me so deeply,

that ever-dear companion,

may be even more familiar than we guess,

a loving eye

watching disguised

until,

at last awake,

we run home

to loving arms.

A L O H A! Cloudia

Tuesday at da Beach

Aloha!

It's August in Waikiki

click on photos to instantly voyage here

Camera & Ukulele Case grace the local attire.

"The things we know best are the things we haven't been taught."

Marqis de Vauvenargues

Youth

"What you fear to be, that you already are.

Only welcome it home to see it's disguised beauty."

Unknown

Pay Attention to THIS!

(Turn off the media for a moment or two)

"The path is not a symbol. It is a way to get somewhere."

Unknown

Sensuous Roots - or Sinister?

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation"

Herman Melville

Really?

Back in the water, ready to go, after

Hurricane Felicia fizzles. YAY!

When I return to the boat, I see Kitty's face watching me from the deck.

"Ahoy Matey!"

Aloha friends!

Thanks for coming by the beach to visit today.

These are the lazy days of Summer, and it is with some selfish delight that I see University of Hawaii students tying up traffic at the mouth of Manoa Valley as they move into their dorms, line up to register for the classes they need, and explore the sweet little neighborhood of Moiliili with their loving helicopter parents. (It must be nice to have that support.)

I say "selfish" because I still have dreams (nightmares?) about the bureaucracy and lines of my Alma Mater.

It feels REAL good to have that degree!

I earned it!

Last weekend I wrote about Woodstock days and the sense of "Revolution" in the air back then. I was so certain that the established order was passing, that the idea of sitting still long enough to get a college degree seemed quaint. Instead I learned to build things, Spackle dry wall, run a micro-business, face life without the confining structure of a "work week" and generally survive outside the "system." We read a lot, talked a lot, and played some live music.

Credentials seemed a dying concept back then. And I found lots of life to experience. It was my quaint idea that a writer was someone who experienced and thought about things and then wrote about them, so I felt "right on track."

I filled the pages of dozens and dozens of note books.

So imagine how I felt at age 39 entering an institution that seemed stuck in the 50? I have a lot in common, I think, with the Cultural Revolution generation of Chinese. Were they lost years? I think not.

Multiple choice tests, classrooms full of high school graduates who groaned collectively whenever someone (me) found something interesting enough to ask questions about, studying at my night job. . .

Fortunately, I am a master of note-taking and memorization so my transcript is 4 pages of "A's" with a "B" hiding among them....

And there are some great people up there at the University too.

I had a lot to prove with all my "lost" years. So

I was deeply proud to get my degree in Psychology (with distinction). And I have enjoyed the opportunities it brought me to experience the professional world: I've educated physicians, won grants, flown on "business trips" and published my own research. Maybe even saved or changed a life with my HIV Prevention and advocacy work.

(So there!)

But I also experienced whats wrong with non-profits, medicine, academia, and governance from a privileged vantage point.

So I appreciate this August day of no meetings, hearings, deadlines, jargon, funder reports, or career politics seasoned with piquant pettiness.

Ahhhhh! Thanks, Hubby. Thanks bloggy friends!

I'm very proud to be a college graduate, a writer, a blogger who gets read, a beach bum.

And I'm SO happy that you share it all with me. My daily visits to New York, England, Tennessee, Louisiana, Detroit, New England, Jerusalem, Mumbai, Netherlands, Paris, the terrain of YOUR journey - enrich my days.

WOW!

So thanks for paddling by today. Mahalo &

Warm A L O H A!

Summer Sloth: Hurry!

A l o h a !

Just another beach day here in Waikiki. . .

click on photos to become tiny and enter their reality "The time to relax is when you don't have time for it."

Sidney J. Harris

“The very pink of perfection.”
Oliver Goldsmith




"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."

Buckminster Fuller

My weekend of Woodstock Flash-Backing has left me tired, and dehydrated. And where did this mud between my toes come from?
Much like that original journey back to normalcy afterwards, it may take me some time cruising the back roads, scenic overlooks, and detours of my memory to return to the Here & Now.






August has reached it's roller coaster peak, and from this suspended moment of pause I gasp as I look at the tiny Autumn below that soon will be rushing towards me.






Where did the Summer go?
Hurry up and RELAX everybody!







I just want to throw my hands up and scream my release as the ride of life plunges me into the vertiginous dive and curves and tilts of the Immediate Future.
Here it comes!






Try screaming with me:






AAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!







We used to say: "The revolution will NOT be televised." We were sure the old order was passing away, but the process is taking much longer than expected.
The talking heads on cable TV may be yammering on, but I don't hear them. The culture wars can roll on without me for a while.







Shhh! I'm AWOL from responsibility!






I'm just gonna lay on the beach and celebrate a Selfish Summer Monday. I suggest you do the same even if your beach is a sofa, a pile of magazines, or purely imaginary. Feel free to insert yourself into any of the pictures here at da Spiral.







Join me? A L O H A!

40 Years Ago This Weekend

I had my ticket. . . But when you got there, you didn't need one.

So I saved it all these years.

Yes, I know where I was

40 years ago

this weekend. . . .





It was a day and time when those of us who looked different, who had long hair and dressed differently were vilified and subject to rudeness, and even violence. We always seemed to be outnumbered. Suddenly we found ourselves in the largest crowd that anyone had ever seen. And it was US! None of us self-described "freaks" had dreamed that there were this many of us!

There was no sanitation, no hot food, or violence. Just people who looked like us and who wanted to celebrate

Music and Love.

What's so funny about peace, love, and understanding anyway?

Looking at footage of the crowds gives me flashbacks for sure! We were certain that the world was changing. It has in many ways. My eyes fill with tears, and I can't believe that it was 40 years ago. In some ways it seems like centuries ago. But it all goes by so fast!

Don't doubt that a single loving witness may tip the balance for good; The more loving world we thus create, becomes a new balance.

Thanks for dropping by my pad;

PEACE, Man!

Aloha, Cloudia

Read more memories of the Summer of '69 at this previous post: http://comfortspiral.blogspot.com/2009/07/40-years-ago-today.html

PO: The Dark of Night

A l o h a !

Welcome to the world of "Po,"

Po the dark, the night, the mysterious. . .

click on photos to awaken the spirits Beneath Waikiki's Mystical Moon . . .

"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, There is a rapture on the lonely shore, There is society, where none intrudes, By the deep sea, and music in its roar: I love not man the less, but Nature more."

George Gordon Byron

The leaves reveal their faces. . . See the profile in the center?

"Awful Night! Ancestral mystery of mysteries."

George Elliot

And we humans float our own puny moon-lets . . .

an homage. . . a propitiation,

Whistling past the grave yard. . .

"People like you and I, though mortal of course like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live...[We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born."

Albert Einstein

A L O H A ! Cloudia

Faces or Vase?

A L O H A!

Welcome to Waikiki

click on photos to go deepThis tree has floral shoots hanging down from it's branches.

"The only words that ever satisfied me as describing Nature are the terms used in fairy books, charm, spell, enchantment. They express the arbitrariness of the fact and its mystery."

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

They hang around the trunk like gaily attired courtiers.

"I would rather live in a world where my life is surrounded by mystery than live in a world so small that my mind could comprehend it."

Harry Emerson Fosdick

And now, on to today's very important psychological investigation. . .

I found this peanut, and wondered

if he was a happy little fellow with a bulbous nose. . .

Or a lewd fellow looking for. . . .
Call him Priapus!

Tomorrow: Back to rainbows and kitty cats!


A L O H A HA HA ;-] Cloudia

Aloha Means - PETS

A L O H A

Means "Love;"

Love when parting,

Love in Greeting,

Love Always. . . Under these skies . . .

We find love where we can. . .

We take our little friends with us wherever we can . . .

And when they pass, their energy remains around us, faithfully...


"All that is real in our past is the love we gave and the love we recieved. Everything else is an illusion. The past is merely a thought we have."
Marianne Williamson

Thank Y O U
for sharing the love with me today! Cloudia